Thank ye, Sandy

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That’s my poor little dinghy, left foreground, tied up in a badly-chosen spot at the 79th street boat basin. (It’s somebody else’s picture, not mine.) I was down there around 1 PM today — before the cops chased us all away, as usual — and it was heartbreaking to see how the poor thing was getting tossed around. I  felt certain that it wouldn’t survive the afternoon. I guess I’ll venture down again tomorrow and find out.

But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. At least it’s stopped people talking about the fucking ‘election’ for a few hours.

 

22 thoughts on “Thank ye, Sandy”

  3. I got up this morning and thought of dropping you a note to see if you’ve weathered the storm alright. I hope your boat has made it through.

  4. I have to admit, it got scary for a few hours. I live in a four-story brick building built in 1890. From my top floor apartment, I could feel the wind gusts literally swaying the building. I know modern highrises are designed to have some play in high wind, but this was a squat haphazardly renovated and turned into a coop, similar in design to a building that did partially collapse. On top of that I had to go on the roof to place a sandbag to keep a skylight over the kitchen from blowing off.

  5. At least it’s stopped people talking about the fucking ‘election’ for a few hours…

    Yeah, never thought of that. In other good news, the Ground Zero construction site, where America’s building its monument to itself, has also been heavily flooded. Boo yah!

    On a slight downside, a supposed hurricane relief fundraising event in Dayton opened with the Romney campaign bio video, and Obummer’s had his picture taken with his tie off and collar undone while sitting with a bunch of FEMA people in some command center someplace, looking all Presidential ‘n’shit, like he’s really gittin’ ‘er done.

    “Not campaigning during the hurricane,”, my ass.

  6. Sandy seems to have killed your link to Counterpunch… Or is it just me.

    That outboard looks like a 50hp monster. Not how I had previously imagined your fleet of watercraft! Look out, Staten Island Ferry, it’s the Iranian Navy taking revenge!

  7. “That outboard looks like a 50hp monster. Not how I had previously imagined your fleet of watercraft! Look out, Staten Island Ferry, it’s the Iranian Navy taking revenge!”

    Personally I’d figured that Michael had a 40+ foot ketch with mahogany decking and cherry wood cabin trim and with a wet bar stocked with cases of very old and smooth scotch.

    Or at least I’d hoped that for him.

  9. It does occur to me, most of the damage–not withstanding the subway system–was done to suburban homes. Perhaps there’s a lesson in this…

    • Down in my neck of the woods, Washington DC, the damage inside the city is apparently fairly light, with the usual number of toppled old trees. The WRC/Channel 4 Web site, in the section where viewers send in their hurricane fotos, has lots of images from the ‘burbs of flooded streets and backyards and ripped-down power lines. There’s only two or three fotos from within the city itself, of an old tree knocked down near Dupont Circle, one in upper Northwest, and one near the Channel 4 building itself — all really old trees planted nearly a hundred years ago which might well have been ready to go soon anyway.

      Personally, though, the DW and I have actually been out of town since the 20th, so we’ve had to watch from afar and hope for the best, but so far no word of anything disastrous from our neighbors, or the DW’s daughter and her husband, or the cat sitter, or anyone else who’s been by our place, so we have to assume that the two old trees in our back yard haven’t been blown over (they survived Irene and the “derecho” last year).

      With all respect to the NYCers… I noted from the forecast maps, radar and sat imagery that Sandy was a Cat 1, despite the amazing amount of real estate it covered compared to Irene, also a Cat 1. While Sandy certainly landed a haymaker on NYC, still… does a Cat 1 really qualify as a “superstorm”, as CNN’s been yelling for the past three or four days? There was a lot of hype about another storm coming in from the West to hook up with Sandy — hence the irksome “Frankenstorm” hype — but whatever happened to that? That shit was big hype for a few days before Sandy came up the East Coast, but all that shouting just seemed to fade away like last year’s summer blockbusters.

      I can’t help wondering now… if, after stomping on Haiti — which somehow didn’t make it onto CNN — Sandy had decided to swing into the Gulf Of Mexico instead. Would CNN have been yelling so loudly about a “superstorm” if it hadn’t headed for one of the highest concentrations of rich white people in the country?

  10. The newscasters on the TV yesterday reported breathlessly that 5, 10 and then 20 people were dead as a result of SANDY. I thought back and remembered ..that some African and some European newspapers, websites and TV stations reported that thousands of Black Libyans and African immigrants had been “ethnically cleansed” as a result of Obama’s support with U. S. taxpayer’s $$$$ of NATO’s illegal invasion of Libya. I did see the report of the deaths in BlackAgendaReport..and the WSJ did an article which cause Rep. Jesse Jackson such stress that he asked for an investigation (which never happened and never will), which must have been difficult for him, being a long-time Obama supporter. So..I’m trying hard to understand why 5-20 American deaths are more tragic and important than 10- 20 thousand Libyans. The BlackAgendaReports
    article:

    by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

    “Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appeared like ghoulish despots at a Roman Coliseum, reveling in their Libyan gladiators’ butchery.”

    Last week the whole world saw, and every decent soul recoiled, at the true face of NATO’s answer to the Arab Spring. An elderly, helpless prisoner struggled to maintain his dignity in a screaming swirl of savages, one of whom thrusts a knife [4] up his rectum. These are Europe and America’s jihadis in the flesh. In a few minutes of joyously recorded bestiality, the rabid pack undid every carefully packaged image of NATO’s “humanitarian” project in North Africa – a horror and revelation indelibly imprinted on the global consciousness by the brutes’ own cell phones.

    Nearly eight months of incessant bombing by the air forces of nations that account for 70 percent of the world’s weapons spending, all culminating in the gang-bang slaughter of Moammar Gaddafi, his son Mutassim and his military chief of staff, outside Sirte. The NATO-armed bands then displayed the battered corpses for days in Misurata – the city that had earlier made good on its vow to “purge Black skin” through the massacre and dispersal of 30,000 darker residents of nearby Tawurgha – before disposing of the bodies in an unknown location.

  11. I have to say, I’m kinda liking the City (well the part I bike through to and from work) with no power. A lot less assholes out and drivers actually seem to have some awareness of other road users, other than as an obstacle to run down. I just hope the idiots who choose to walk in the bike lane on the Williamsburg Bridge in pitch darkness realize I’m still getting used to a fixed gear.

  12. Michael, the inquiring minds want to know, did your boat survive Sandy?

    As for the Merkin, I just made it back to Montreal this morning and can I say this: I fucking hate them motherfucking TSA assholes. They rummaged through my luggage and didn’t bother putting everything back properly. They didn’t even bother tightening the straps inside the suitcase and consequently, some of my stuff broke. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them!

  13. Heh, heh. Such naughty language you embittered & angry folk employ! I once received suitcases 7 days late, with a note from TSA stating they broke the locks & if anything was missing or damaged it wasn’t their fault, too bad. There are no longer limits. A blazered search guy (“punk” is my senior citizen expression) on another flight rammed his hand into my gonads, and when I (gasping) diffidently protested let me know more or less that I was risking a tazering. It’s wunderbar. I now only travel the Atlantic by ship. Seig Heil!

  17. MJS – How’s the boat? If any moreless small cracks or breaks in the hull, I’m pretty sure they can be repaired with a metallic epoxy – if larger then same in combination with screening.

  18. Alas, I fear the poor boat is no more. I don’t quite know yet, since I haven’t been able to get up to Eastchester Bay since Sandy reminded us of our limitations, but from all I’ve heard, Charlie’s marina got clobbered, almost unimaginably, by a storm surge several feet above anything attested in historic memory, and the place is a shambles. Thanks to all you kind folks who asked.

  19. TSA …. alot to be said about them. I have bought taser stock. I also drive everywhere now. Although they’ve always been good to me, terrorists have never been on my flight or asshole travelers who insist their carry on is of proper size, when it clearly isn’t, then freak out and yell at airline staff when the bag is attempted to be checked at no charge, eventually being denied boarding. Yes i drive now……but im looking forward to Germany next year!

  20. We risk diverging from Marxist dialogue to travelogue (not to mention monologue), but I highly recommend “carry-on” “carry-along” “mitfahren-mitgehen” by air, land, or sea. We discover we don’t need all that stuff. (When the figurative yields the literal which became the figurative: “we carry too much baggage.”)

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