Past:
10 years since Hurricane/Super Storm Sandy (10/29/12-10/30/12).
Time flies. It strikes me as both sad and almost trivial as to how I now think of Sandy as the storm that ruined Halloween 2012, when it was much more than just that. I don’t know if we as the American society – we as New Yorkers – have fully processed lessons from it. Apparently, the COVID-19 pandemic has helped delayed much efforts to keep rebuilding and becoming more resilient from such storms.
Otherwise, Facebook Memories reminded me of those eerie times when we had extensive subway system damage and other consequences.
See here for what I posted here on triscribe on the eve of Sandy. Here for FC’s posts on the local gas station and the return of the subway. Here for my post on the Days After Sandy. Here’s the link to my post on the One Year After Sandy. I really don’t know if any or all of the links within the posts are still valid, but you can let us know.
The dead tree edition of Sunday’s NY Daily News (October 30, 2022) reminded me of how we had half of Manhattan as an electrical dead zone during the immediate recovery from Sandy. (I’d link to an e-version of the NY Daily News piece, but it appears to be behind a paywall, and it’s not nearly as accessible as, say, the NY Times’s website.)
But, eerie recollections. I’m sure looking at my posts on Facebook and tumblr from that October 2012 period will remind me how much we had to rely on community in November 2012 to keep going.
Back then, as much as we were divided by partisanship, at least NJ’s own Chris Christie had the sense to cooperate with the Obama administration, and the Republican candidate of those days, Mitt Romney, wasn’t (and still isn’t) insane. We cancelled the NYC Marathon, but we couldn’t – and didn’t – cancel Election Day in 2012.
Past, Present, and Future?
See here for a link to the NY Times’s own look at an individual recovery from Sandy, and the myriad of questions of whether we’re prepared for the future. Considering the storms since Sandy and the worsening of climate change, I don’t think we’re close to figuring out anything. Certainly, our mass transit is still figuring this out, and the storm of September 2021 did not help at all.
See here for some illuminating posts over at Gothamist about: memories from Sandy and a photographic look at now and then. There are lots to think about regarding the past, the present, and the future. Let’s keep at making things better, somehow.
Well, More of the Present and Future:
Anyway, Halloween 2022 is on a Monday, which is weird, but it does give a whole Halloween weekend an excuse.
On Friday night, I saw a guy dressed as Cat in the Hat (how cute).
Saturday afternoon: I did see some people trying to dress as something or other, but the person dressed as the Halloween movie franchise’s Michael Myers was too freaky. He had a knife in his hand, and I hoped that it was a plastic cheap kind (it did look cheap). That was a freaky sight. Outside of Halloween, this person would have been stopped by the police. I hope… I think? (sorry, I took no photos…!).
Anyway, Election Day 2022 is coming. That’s scary in its own way. But, Vote! And, don’t vote stupidly… but perhaps it’s best that I leave it at that.