Scattered Thoughts Following Superstorm Sandy

My own neighborhood is almost totally unscathed by this massive storm, which lets me be slightly philosophical and reflective about it.  Here are some observations.

The neighborhood I live in is called Brooklyn Heights.  It is well named.  We are on bluffs over the New York Harbor.  We thus never flooded, our power was never off and on our whole enormous apartment complex grounds, only two trees blew down.  Just a few blocks away, down the hill by the waterfront, the "DUMBO" area was part of the City's "Zone A" mandatory evacuation area, there was extensive flooding and power was in fact out for several days.  How fortunate are we?!

New York City can be creative in devising alternate means of transportation.  By foot is popular, and the foot traffic over the Brooklyn Bridge walkway reminds me of the 1980 transit strike, when that was the way many of us got to work for a good number of days.  In addition, the brand new Barclays Center basketball arena didn't feature basketball this week, but has instead been a bus terminal.  Steady streams of MTA buses have shuttled people into and out of Manhattan from there, which has been the last stop on all the major subway lines.  They built the Center near an existing rail transportation hub to encourage that means of coming to games instead of driving.  Who knew this would be its first use instead of sports event attendance!  [As this article was being written service on some of the major subway lines was restored.  Hurray!]

Donations

People around us are in tough shape.  Any of you out there anywhere, please donate.  Episcopal Relief and Development is a fine place to start:  https://www.er-d.org/donate-select.php .  The first check box covers the Hurricane Sandy fund.  Note that ER-D also supports relief work in Haiti, which is still rebuilding from its 2010 earthquake and suffered again in the first days of this storm.

ER-D helps communities, but not churches directly. Those must be handled by the churches themselves or in some cases, their diocese.  My own Diocese, Long Island, has a quick form for churches, people and communities in Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk Counties of New York: http://www.dioceseli.org/index.php; see the donation item under "The Latest".

Other dioceses' home-pages have lists of supplies and volunteers needed.  For instance, see New York: http://www.dioceseny.org/news_items/232-sandy-call-for-food-and-supplies .  Staten Island is in that Diocese and is among the most damaged places.

No list of donation opportunities would be complete without the American Red Cross.  A couple of days ago, we got email from one of the Presidential Candidates, and I thought, how on earth could they ask for money right this second?  But they weren't asking for it for their own campaign.  They wrote an appeal for and a link to the Red Cross.  I liked that.  We include that special group here too: http://www.redcross.org/charitable-donations

Getting Priorities in Good Order

Speaking of sports, we had to agree with New York Mayor Bloomberg Friday night, when he finally cancelled the annual New York City Marathon.  Holding the race anyway sounded on Tuesday and Wednesday like a good, uplifting idea.  But as the week wore on and patience wore thin among folks waiting in gas lines and shivering in chilly houses, it felt less and less like the right thing to do.  Sure enough, Friday evening, after the Mayor's announcement of the cancellation, we saw the President of the organizers, the New York Road Runners Club, explain that all the bottles of water and blankets accumulated for the runners' use during and at the end of the race would go to the storm victims.  Of course!  Isn't that a much better use for them at this moment?!  Some aspects of this mega-disaster remind us of 9/11, and if the Marathon had come just a week after that, it probably would have raised people's spirits in a positive way.  But now, with Sandy, we're still just at the beginning of recovery.  Too many people remain in mixed and tenuous circumstances to face that kind of City-wide, daylong distraction and absorption of optional resources.  So Bloomberg did a good thing.  Hopefully all the runners will understand and feel with us.

In another instance of putting priorities in the right order, we read with interest about a Budweiser beer brewery in Atlanta that has stopped canning beer just now.  They are canning water instead and shipping it to the New York area, 1 million bottles of water.  Their regular retail distribution system can easily get the cans around to numerous locales where people need it.  Among other disasters when they have done this, they also sent water to San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.

Then, there's an election Tuesday.  A lot of places won't even have power by then.  Some polling places have been entirely destroyed, especially along the Jersey Shore.  What can be done?  FoxNews.com reports that army trucks and National Guardsmen will be assigned to those locations; they will have big signs saying "VOTE HERE!" and makeshift booths will be installed in the trucks and paper ballots will be utilized.  Hey! you know, whatever works to help people cast their votes.  Officials in each of the three states most involved, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, have asserted that their states will be ready for Election Day, whatever it takes.

Electric Power and Other Power

Finally, at home, if you don't have power, how can you cook?  In your wood-burning fireplace, of course.  See this lovely commentary in today's eMo by the Geranium Farm's Chief Farmer, Barbara Crafton, on how she baked bread in her fireplace.  Barbara points out that electric power is only one kind of power we possess, and the loss of it hardly means we have lost all power to do everything . . . .