I love New York

Long may it live.

Today, I’m thankful that I have heard from most of my NY/NJ friends.

Hurricane Sandy—as far as I can judge from a distance—was about the worst thing that’s happened there in a long, long time. It’s true that it lacked the shock value, the loss-of-invulnerability fear factor of 9/11, but the damage was more widespread.

However, people have been speaking up here and there, and they all seem to be all right. Most of the New Yorkers even have power. Some of the Long Islanders and all of the Jersey folks are in the dark, but they have roofs over their head and working cell phones.

I suppose the biggest problem is water—inside and out. Flood waters are health hazards on many levels—and high rises depend on pumps so even if the water mains are intact, there’s no running water in the building. So, that’s a concern.

There are millions, if not billions, of dollars worth of damage. And a fair number of homeless people just now.

But most of the people are okay.

And that is certainly something for which to be thankful while we sympathize with those who have lost their lives, their living spaces, and, temporarily we hope, their livelihoods.

As always, the Red Cross is on the scene.

If anybody wants to help out, you can donate $10 by texting REDCROSS to 90999 on your cell phone. Quick and easy. The $10 just gets added to your cell phone bill for you to pay next time around. As in most disasters, they really need money more than canned goods or blankets or whatever.

I’m sure that New York and New Jersey will survive this, as they survive most things—with panache. But, golly! What a mess!

I’m also sure large thanks are due to New York’s finest and to their Jersey equivalents and to FEMA and the National Guard and to all the federal, state and local officials who worked so hard to coordinate with each other.

I love New York. Thanks for hanging on and hanging in.

Silver linings

And very black clouds.

There’s a hurricane out there. It may even have made landfall by the time you read this—although they say it’s moving very slowly—so maybe not.

There are going to be a lot of miracles this week connected to Sandy. There could easily be a lot of not so nice things happening as well. I’ve heard about some of them already. A playwright friend whose reading, long prepared and anticipated, had to be canceled and may have difficulty rescheduling. Another friend who gets a much needed extension on a project because a class can’t meet when subways are shutting down and mandatory evacuations are proceeding.

It’s easy, under circumstances like these, to take it personally. People have a tendency to do what I call omenizing. (Sometimes I make up my own words I’m a writer. I’m allowed.) I’ve even done a bit of omenizing myself.

This really good thing happened! Fate is on my side and everything will be perfect.

This really bad thing happened! The universe is out to get me.

Oddly enough, I thought this was going to be a post about the irony and the luck involved in moving from New York to Florida and finding that the two biggest hurricanes of recent years are hitting the City instead of the oft-troubled and occasionally inaptly named Sunshine State. And I thought I’d be segueing into a hope that there would be even bigger miracles—that the storm would turn out into the ocean, missing my fellow Americans and all the ships at sea.

But, as I write this, a little quote comes to mind that I first read in one of Robert Fulghum’s books, and I think this is the larger idea.

Sometimes it rains on the just. I believe that.
Sometimes it rains on the unjust. I believe that, too.
But I also believe that sometimes it just rains.
Neither God nor Justice or belief has anything to do with it.
—Anonymous

I think the fact that humans have the capacity to evolve to the point where we do not have to attribute these things to superstitious beliefs is, maybe, the biggest miracle.

And we can still hope that no one is hurt in the coming days.

Hope hard.

Hope never hurts.

300 miles

Out at sea.

Hurricane Sandy is 300 miles off the coast of Florida, and the wind has been blowing hard all day. The sky is gray and gloomy.

300 miles away.

Now, that’s influence.

Some big storm.

I’m hoping it blows itself out and doesn’t hurt anybody.

It caused me to check into something, though, and I’ve discovered that one of the things I remember never happened.

I used to tell people that my fifth birthday party had to be cancelled because of a hurricane. “And I think it was named Elaine,” I tell them.

I thought it was.

However, thanks to Google, I now know that Hurricane Elaine didn’t happen when I was five. There have been quite a few storms named Elaine. It’s just that none of them happened when I was five.

I’m absolutely sure my birthday party was canceled that year because of a hurricane. Research shows which one, too, but I’m not going to tell you. (Cyber-security. I may have lost my punchline, but I don’t need to give up my birthdate to random readers.)

There’s some Sandy somewhere, though, who is going to have a birthday party canceled this week. Let’s hope that’s the worst that happens. She—or he—will have a good story to tell, at some point.

It’s just not my story.

Google should come with spoiler alerts.

I guess I’ve had that writer’s impulse to make a story better for a lot longer than I knew. Can’t use that one anymore, though.

Oh, well.

What we lose in irony, we make up in veracity.

The truth will set you free.

And, sometimes, it will spoil a good story.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Tag Archives: Hurricanes

I love New York

Silver linings

300 miles