Sunday Observations 11.4

As I write this it is only 40 hours till election day ....

It has been one hell of a week so I don't have much this Sunday but I did have one thing I wanted to pass on. Congresswoman and Chair of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wassermann Schultz is one of my favorite politicians for a number of reasons not the least of which is that she is a cancer survivor. I was catching up on some reading this week and read an article on her in the October issue of Vogue.

"Her seemingly inexorable rise was interrupted in 2007, when she found a lump in her breast while doing a self-exam in the shower. The cancer was at an early stage, but because of a history of cancer in her family, she was advised to undergo genetic testing for the BRCA mutation. "When the tests came back I realized there were too many people in the room for them to be negative," she says. With her BRCA2 mutation the odds were as high as 80 percent that she would eventually develop ovarian cancer, with a similarly high risk of her breast cancer recurring. She opted to have the most aggressive preventative treatment possible: surgical removal of her ovaries and a double mastectomy."

It goes on to describe how the hardest part for her was keeping the news from her kids until she knew she would be fine and from her colleagues because she didn't want any special treatment. During the 2008 presidential election she campaigned for now President Obama even as she underwent seven operations. I wish I could link to the full article, it's very good, but it isn't online anywhere. Wasserman Schultz is now one of the leading candidates to replace Nancy Pelosi as House Minority Leader if she steps down after the election.

Observations on Sandy 11.3

And than yesterday it happened, slowly lights began to spread across lower Manhattan. It started in the East Village where the sub-station had exploded during the storm than spread to Chelsea, SoHo, and finally the Village. You would have thought it was New Years Eve the way people were honking their car horns and yelling in the streets. The gallery is in the East Village and was in the first wave so that's where we spent the evening until we heard our building had power sometime around 11, than it was off to a now well lit and warm apartment. One would think a party was called for but after a small celebration at the gallery all I really wanted to do was crash in a warm bed.

It's nice to have our power back but as I write this there are still a million people without power in New York City alone. Some loose ends ...

I still haven't had much first hand news from Stone Harbor but I saw a headline that said Wildwood and Ocean City were the two hardest hit areas in Cape May County, New Jersey. One is to the south of Stone Harbor while the other is to the north. The storm gods must have smiled on Stone Harbor a bit.

Yesterday afternoon we could hear explosions in the city, under the circumstances not exactly what one wanted to hear. Turns out the NYPD was exploding what they called "damaged munitions" out in the harbor. A heads up would have been very nice, very nice indeed.

Some laughed when Goldman Sachs totally sandbagged their building before Sandy hit, the joke being that maybe they wouldn't take away the bags after the storm passed. Nobody laughed afterwards because their building was the only one in the Financial District not flooded and due to their massive generator it was also the only area that never went dark. The dark area immediately bordering Sachs' building became known as the dead zone.

I never thought much about who lived in our neighborhood a century or more ago until Halloween this year. Street after street of darkened apartment buildings and store fronts looking like one huge eerie haunted village. It wasn't hard to picture ghosts peaking out of the windows and zombies running across the wet streets. You don't believe in zombies? Just wait, if Willard wins Tuesday's election the zombie apocalypse will be upon us for sure.

One important lesson I learned during the blackout was that I can survive for a time on bottled water, those little Via Coffee packs by Starbucks, peanut butter, and Ritz crackers. Good to know.

Sandy

This is another video taken during Sandy that a friend sent me and I never got posted. You may have already seen it because I think its been everywhere but I thought I would post it anyway. It's a great vid but all I could think when I first saw it was 'what idiots,' I mean who rides bikes in a storm like that? This coming from the person who wanders around in storms with water almost up to my knees. For my dad's sake I should add I'm speaking hypothetically. I like the description that follows.

Hurricane Sandy on Bikes in NYC


link

Published on Oct 31, 2012 by caseyneistat
Do not try this. also, i know i spelled incident wrong. but thank you for letting me know that over and over again. you see, in addition to the entire city being flooded we also lost electricity. editing video is tricky with no electricity. most of this video was edited at a starbucks in harlem, where there was electricity and some corners were cut. all that and i can't spell very well. i really did think incident was spelled
with two e's.

Observations on the 2012 Election 11.2

The election is only days, literally hours, away now but it really hasn't been on my mind much. I know, I must be ill, but somehow living in the dark zone seems to do that to you. Still I'm still breathing ....

Yesterday, in a totally surprise move, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed President Obama in Tuesday's election. Bloomberg had stated all summer long that he wouldn't endorse anybody, probably because he thinks the best person for the job is Michael Bloomberg. In all honesty sometimes, especially after the past few days, I think the same thing.

On his website Bloomberg, who is both an ex-Democrat and an ex-republican, said this; "One sees climate change as an urgent problem that threatens our planet; one does not. I want our president to place scientific evidence and risk management above electoral politics." Also important in his decision were education, marriage equality, and women's rights. Bloomberg added that if the Willard of old were running for president he would have voted for him, but he isn't, well not today, maybe he will be tomorrow.

Full Endorsement

Observations on Sandy 11.1

The 'Escape from New York' edition, not the old movie but the story in which the gods conspire to keep us in this cold darkened city. I woke up this morning and it was cold, not arctic clipper sub-freezing cold but hundred year old walls don't keep out the chill and it's 40° but feels a lot worse cold. Plan B call for our escape to my dad's for the weekend but the plan has run into some serious issues. The first being a total lack of gas in Foxy's tank. I know I should have filled it Sunday night but I had just gotten back from the Penn State game and I had other things to do. That and I'm not one to panic, I usually expect the worst but that doesn't mean I always prepare for it.

Buy gas you say, easier said than done. There is none to be had in lower Manhattan and even if there was there is no power to run the pumps. If I took my usual route through the Holland Tunnel I might have enough gas to get to Jersey, where gas lines are a half mile long, but the tunnel is still closed which means I either use the Lincoln Tunnel or George Washington Bridge. The GWB is only 15 miles away but would take an hour to get to in this mess, I don't have the gas. The Lincoln is half the distance but has a totally different issue.

Yesterday traffic in the city was brutal, everybody from the burbs trying to get to work without trains running (fools) and just parking their cars anywhere they felt like. Because of that Mayor Bloomberg announced a three passenger rule for the rest of the week, no car is allowed into Manhattan without at least three passengers. You might laugh but it is being enforced with checkpoints outside the city and if you don't have three or more in the car they send you down an off-ramp, supposedly waiting lines from Connecticut are miles long this morning. I probably could make it to the Lincoln and get gas in Jersey but I have to check on the line first, wouldn't due me any good to run out of gas and have to push Foxy back to the garage.

In other traffic news garages are full, buses are full and drive right by and also don't go south of 23^rd Street after dark, and even though the rule has been waved some cabbies refuse to take multiple fares. I can only think some of them didn't understand the memo because honestly sometimes they don't even understand where you want to go. For now the fastest form of transportation seems to be walking.

3:50PM - At the moment Camp Daddywood seems to be on hold until I can appropriate a few gallons of gas, maybe tomorrow or maybe not, I have no clue at this point.

Under the circumstances I think the city and mayor have done a totally awesome job here but there are a couple things I do disagree with. One is opening everything up so soon instead of waiting till maybe this weekend because it just created total gridlock. I spent half the day just getting uptown to charge some batteries and find some food. I'm sure there are perfectly wonderful financial reasons to do it but just get the brokerages going again if you must and let the rest of us die in peace. The other thing I disagree with is running the New York Marathon this Sunday. Hopefully I wont be here for it but I just don't get running it. The city doesn't even know where to put the people, hotels are all full and such. I know it's not something that can be postponed for a week, I understand that, so just cancel it.

Cell service in lower Manhattan is getting worse and worse, sometimes I get a connection and sometimes not. For good WiFi you have to get yourself above 39^th Street or squeeze into a library because somehow those wizards have managed to get their WiFi back on without power. The library people are quite proud of that fact and by the gods they have every right to be.

Earlier today Mayor Bloomberg endorsed President Obama today citing climate change as his main reason. Imagine that.

Sandy

I can't take credit for the video, and the gods know not the tune, but when I saw the video today this tune instinctively started playing in my head. The video is awesome on its own but it has no sound so I thought I needed to add some. What you need to do is click the music link, it will open in a new window, wait for the tune to start, and than come back and click the video. Or you can just watch the video, after 48 hours without power I really don't care what you do, they do seem made for each other though. You might want to watch the video full screen too because it's just awesome that way. Sadly beautiful.

video link
music link

Observations on Sandy 10.31

ghost on flickr

With power in the Village out for at best a few more days, and the temperature plunging into the forties, it just may be time to activate plan B. I hope my dad is ready for company because ready or not it's going to be there soon, probably for the weekend.

The photo above is one I took of a friend of mine during the storm. We were down near Hudson River Park and the visibility was atrocious so I really didn't think I had any shots worth keeping, including this one. But the more I looked at this the more I liked it, sometimes bad visibility is actually a good thing, the lesson being don't delete your shots on first impression.

The flooding in the subways is so bad that something called the "unwatering team" from the Army Corps of Engineers is in the city, I have no idea what it is but I like the name and I wouldn't mind having one of their jackets as a souvenir. Seriously, one of those blue jackets with "Unwatering Team" across the back in big yellow letters. No?

I haven't been online much because cell phone service is getting increasingly spotty around here. I think one of the reasons for that spottiness is mental; Monday was the day of the apocalypse, Tuesday was the day to look around and take a deep breath, and today was the day to get back into it (Ash started living on her cell again), whatever your it happens to be. Another reason is purely technical, the backup batteries on the cell phone towers are going dead and have no way to recharge. The truly ironic thing is that the POTS lines are working just fine, not that anybody has them anymore.

I finally had some news about Stone Harbor today. My dad has had no info and with the spotty cell service I couldn't find anything out myself. What video I had seen from the shore so sad, places I had been totally devastated. Earlier today I had an email from a friend who had heard an interview from Stone Harbor on NPR and said it sounded good. That was so awesome to hear and I hope I thanked her for emailing me.

Finally a fashion note, I've been getting some rave compliments on my Timberland hiking boots, mountain holdovers that have come in damn handy lately.

Happy Halloween

Observations on Sandy 10.30

Thought I would throw up a quick post before I wander out to see what's happening. Just shy of two million without power in the city and as of now I have no idea for how long. I have double batteries for everything so I should be okay for now and I can always go uptown for a charge but than I'm sure everybody has the same idea. The apartment smells of wet clothes and something electrical. The latter isn't anything here, I think it's coming from the subways, probably everything shorting out overnight. As with the power there isn't any timetable for when the subways will be back, than again I suppose there can't be without knowing about the power first. It's either a vicious cycle or I'm still mentally wiped, hard to tell at this point.

I guess I'm just an adrenalin junkie because I need to get out and look around while the VQs seem to be perfectly happy watching a movie and contemplating empty wine bottles, probably mentally calculating how many they have left and how long they will last. As for myself, I went up on the roof when i woke up and what stuck me was just how quiet it is, unreal how a city this size can be so quiet.

12:45PM - Surviving so far, actually I'll be happy as long as I have batteries and a 4G connection and those are a few things I do have. Well I have batteries and Ash has the 4G but she doesn't need it to drink wine and watch movies so I claimed it. Latest is the power could be out here for two or three days but that is subject to change. All the subway tunnels in lower Manhattan are flooded and it's a total mess in the streets, trash, trees, leaves blowing everywhere. Haven't heard anything about Stone Harbor yet, my dad said it could be days till anybody gets in there too. I was looking at photos I took yesterday and so far I'm unimpressed, visibility was terrible, it was more like a blizzard than like Irene. As always we shall see, maybe with some work. Now I'm off to check on Foxy.

5:40PM - The sun returned to the Village an hour or so ago, briefly, but it was there, I know it was, I saw it, maybe. Anyway, when I checked on Foxy I found the family had sustained an injury, Foxy has a massive scratch on her hood. The garage manager said some branches had blown in and one landed right on her. Pisses me off cause that may be the biggest scratch in all the time I own her. The latest on the power situation is four days, via Reuters not ConEd, but we have come up with a wonderful plan in the event it drags on, it seems my dad is going to get some company. There is nothing much to keep us here without power so some outlet shopping may be called for plus I can get an estimate on a paint job while I'm there because I am not about to pay what they would gouge me up here.

Geek notes, I know it's probably something not worth mentioning but don't forget you can always use your cell phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot if you lose your Wi-Fi. Also there are some decently priced battery packs out there that can run your comp for up to 6 hours, I just grabbed a Duracell model today.

Political note, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was asked on Fox News whether Willard would tour damage in his state and said; "I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested. I have a job to do in New Jersey that is much bigger than presidential politics. If you think right now I give a damn about president politics, then you don’t know me." So some Republicans still really are relatively sane, too bad their party despises them for it. Today was probably the day Christie lost the 2016 Republican nomination for president.

Observations on Sandy 10.29.1

9:15AM - The first major kink in my storm plans. With an 11' high tide expected tonight there is talk of shutting off the power to lower Manhattan because that much water could flood the subway and turn off the power the hard way so I now need to get ice for my beer. Of course they aren't saying how long said power would be off if they turn it off. To complete the weirdness it's now snowing in West Virginia.

1:25PM - Starting to have a gut feeling that this is going to be nasty, I don't know why, but it's so bad so soon. Wind is picking up, rain too, and the river was as high as Irene with a good 24 hours or so of storm to go. Really not a good feeling at all. LaGuardia and JFK airports are both starting to flood. Wind gusts are 60 mph now in the city. South Jersey looks like the hardest hit so far with everything from Atlantic City to Cape May flooded and Sandy still 100 miles away. Not a battery or loaf of bread to be had in my immediate area but I did find ice for the beer, one never knows. Inside, The Weather Channel keeps playing music that reminds me more of a "Halloween" movie than a storm.

4:30PM - The NWS forecast for Central Park now lists 'wind gusts to 80mph' for tonight, the term "ghost town" is being thrown around a lot and it fits. I don't know where everybody is hiding but they aren't outside at all. The tide is on the way in now, water is rising in Battery Park, and a crane is dangling on 57^th Street. The last bridges will be closed at 7 PM which means for all practical purposes Manhattan will be cut off, that is a new one but still no word from ConEd on turning off the power. For now I'm going to try and get some more pics before it gets dark and worry about the power after that. The proverbial sky isn't falling yet but it's looking pretty damn bleak around here. Meanwhile my brother is working in western Pennsylvania and it's snowing. One last thought, what does one have to do wrong to be the reporter CNN sends into Atlantic City?

8:50PM - I was just up on the roof and to our south is an amazing sight, looking towards Battery Park is a black hole where ConEd turned off one of the power grids. So far we have power but it flickers on and off, sometimes for five minutes. Gawker, BuzzFeed, and other sites are down so I have a theory that the internet runs off the New York power grid. The water level at Battery park is 2' above the record and rising, streets flooded everywhere in the East Village, haven't heard anything about water in the subways yet. If that happens the city is screwed for some time.  Now I just saw there are fires in at least one subway tunnel and seawater is flowing into the Battery Tunnel. Over 3 million in the NE without power, Ash wants to know why I keep tweeting if nobody can read it, good question, I'll worry about that tomorrow.

9:05PM - Water is now rushing into the subway tunnels. For all practical purposes lower Manhattan is f*cked.

10:25PM - Probably my last post for the night as we lost power about 30 minutes ago and I'm on battery power now. Power out in all of lower Manhattan, subways flooded, Brooklyn Battery Tunnel flooded, streets flooded all over, not pretty at all. The water peaked at I think two feet over the record but don't hold me to that. NYU hospital is being evacuated because their backup generators failed and on and on.

To end on a lighter note I think I invented a new word today, the yell text. It's what you get from your best friend when you are wandering around outside in a storm such as this. In said texts she calls you an idiot and other colorful terms that you can probably guess. Looking at three sets of wet clothes hanging around an apartment with no power I may have to agree with her.

Take care and be safe people.

Observations on Sandy 10.29

After this post I'm probably going to do like I did with Irene and just keep updating the same one or two posts unless something drastic comes up. I have no idea what would be drastic in this situation.

To catch up last night's last projections had sandy coming ashore just about on top of Stone Harbor, New Jersey, the beach house, and Fred's. Unlike Irene this storm is going to drive straight into the shore and not run parallel to it. I don't think Stone Harbor has ever received a direst hit. Some video I saw on Philly news yesterday already looked bad, I hope the house survives.

In the Village the first hard rain fell just after 1 AM last night. About an hour before that I went for a walk and the streets were just dead, empty, I know it was one in the morning but this is New York. The streets were nowhere near as dead before Irene. Also it was deathly quiet without the subways running. The only major event was what I swear was bird flying into the window while I sat chatting. Scared the crap out of me.

One thing I noticed during my first look today was the sky. So reminiscent of a blizzard and not at the churning nasty sky of a hurricane. Found a small coffee shop just inside Zone A that the owner said will remain open for the duration. Nice to know for later but I wont name it for obvious reasons. Not that anybody reads this but why take the chance? I may need a place to dry off later. For the record I live in Zone B, about a block from Zone A which was evacuated yesterday (375,000 people live in Zone A).

For the science geeks, that would be you Sean, Central Park already set a record for low pressure this morning. At 7 AM the pressure was at 946mb, the record low was 961mb on March 1, 1914. Sounds impressive but I have no idea what it means. Right now it's two hours away from high tide and the storm surge in the harbor is only one foot below Irene's worst. I know what that means and that isn't good at all. High tide tonight includes the full effects of the full moon.

The National Weather Service in New York just called Sandy "a worst case scenario" for the city. Going to be interesting to say the least.

Sunday Observations 10.28

Next year is the 100^th anniversary of the Armory Show and there are two big exhibitions to celebrate it. One, "The Armory Show At 100," opens in October at the New York Historical Society Museum. The other opens on February 17, 2013 at Montclair Art Museum and is a little more interesting. "The New Spirit" will put together fifty pieces of American art that were sold at the original Armory Show.

You can file this under a 'it's a small world' tag. From an article about the current natural gas boom in The New York Times last week;

"It is a great time to sell,” Mr. Eads recalled telling Terry Pegula, the founder of East Resources, who had built up his own operation in the Marcellus region of Pennsylvania from one well to 75 over the course of one year. “With all these new plays popping up, I had a real concern gas prices would weaken.” Mr. Eads then helped arrange what will go down as one of the great early paydays of the shale revolution: the 2010 sale of East Resources, which Mr. Pegula had started with $7,500 borrowed from family and friends, to Royal Dutch Shell for $4.7 billion."

You might wonder what that could possibly have to do with me, well here you go. Pegula, a graduate of Penn State, is huge ice hockey fan and he spent part of that fortune to buy the Buffalo Sabres. More importantly he donated $102 million to Penn State to launch its Division I men's and women's ice hockey programs and build the Pegula Ice Arena as there home. On the flip side Shell indirectly employs my brother, also a Penn State graduate, mapping wetlands in the wilds of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Donald Trump proved once again that he is just an ignorant self-important blowhard and I'm not talking about his big announcement on President Obama, I'm not even going to discuss that. Monday Trump spent a full day on Twitter talking about nothing but Diet Coke. A small sample; "@realDonaldTrump: People are going crazy with my comments on Diet Coke (soda). Let's face it--this stuff just doesn't work. It makes you hungry." Enough on that, the man just irritates me to no end and I don't even drink Diet Coke.

We got back from the mountains just in time to see the evacuation of Zone A in New York City as the storm otherwise known as Sandy ever so slowly approaches. I'm having flashbacks to Irene now and wonder if Anderson Cooper is going to be in Washington Square tomorrow morning. I may have to go check.

Observations from the Window 10.26

the calm before the storm on flickr

You can probably guess that the main topic of conversation around here today has been the impending frankenstorm, snor'eastercane, or just plane big ass storm otherwise known as Hurricane Sandy for short.



At the moment I really don't have much to say about Sandy other than it's supposed to hit somewhere in the vicinity of New York in a few days. Personally I think it's bad karma because there have been altogether too many blizzards and hurricanes hitting the Village since I moved here but my brother swears it's just climate change in action.

Earlier today we were reading what I wrote last year during Hurricane Irene. Taken together the Irene posts are one of my most read series of posts so I thought I would take a look back here too. This wasn't my first post about Irene but I like it because it contains a very serious list of items we stocked for the storm. As I write this tonight I think the VQs are probably out buying the very same items. If you want to read the full series just click the Irene tag.

Saturday, August 27, 2011
Observations on Irene 8.26

I thought maybe I would take some early morning photos so I rode an empty subway train down to the soon to be forbidden zone of Battery Park. Truth be told I didn't take much of anything because it was just a cloudy dreary humid morning and on top of that the Starbucks was closed. If this is the calm before the storm I think I'll pass.

Irene came ashore in North Carolina around 7AM as a category 1 storm. The weakening doesn't change the situation much here as the problem is how long the storm will batter the city and how much water will be pushed into the harbor, the rivers, and down the street. Later today ConEd will decide if it is going to shutdown the power to lower Manhattan. Because the cables are all underground they are vulnerable to saltwater if they are in use but not if they aren't in use. Now I understand why there are no batteries to be found in the Village.

Everybody says be prepared so we stocked up with the following ...

One case of Corona, one case of Corona Light, and two bags of ice in the freezer. Multiple bottles of red and white wine because Ash can't decide which is the right one for a hurricane and one must follow the wine rules at all times.   A bag of limes and one bottle of Jose Cuervo Black Medallion tequila because one shouldn't ride out a big storm with cheap tequila.   One carton of Misty Menthol Ultra Lights otherwise known as Misty Silver under the theory that people think ultra-light smoke is healthy and will think silver isn't.   One carton of Marlboro Menthol 100s because Chloe isn't a lite weight like me and smokes a real cigarette, or so I am told.   New lighter to light those above named cigarettes.   Two camera and two laptop batteries charged.   A camping lantern and flashlights along with a jumbo pack of priceless D size batteries. The latter I am tempted to sell on the street because, well, they really are priceless right now.   My older digital camera packed in a towel and zip-lock bag. Don't ask on this one because I'm not going to tell.   Shit I forgot to get food.

A bit of worthless hurricane trivia that doesn't seem so worthless now. If the storm is a category 1 at ground level it is a category 2 ten stories up. I can hear the glass raining down already.

No subways running down below and it just started raining in the Village. I suppose this really is the calm before the storm. Let the games begin.

update - Due to some concern I would like to add that we have cookies, coffee, and two cases of bottled water too.

Observations on The 2012 Election 10.25

There are only 12 days left until the election but it's not too late to donate to one of the four state marriage equality campaigns and hopefully be part of history. Or you could donate nationally. I'm not one to beg, I'm more one to say why the hell not?

Maine, Why Marriage Matters
Maryland, Equality Maryland
Minnesota, Minnesotans United for All Families
Washington, Washington United for Marriage

Nationally, Human Rights Campaign

Observations 10.25

Marriage for All Families: Stories from Maryland

link

Published on Oct 23, 2012 by NewLeftMedia

The final of our four-part series made in each of the states that have marriage equality votes this November, this short shares the experiences of same-sex couples who want to get married in Maryland. They have the same challenges, responsibilities, and aspirations as any other couple, but they are strangers in the eyes of the law. That's why marriage equality is so important: it aligns personality reality with legal reality, as a simple matter of fairness.

The series is produced in association with The Four, a social media campaign to support marriage equality in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington State. Learn more and get involved at TheFour.com.

Film produced by Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll.
Music by Timmy's Work.