What a Wind!

This has been quite a week. Sandy visited us here in NYC and she was NOT a good house guest. Unlike those I’ve had as a result of her dreadful behavior. Say my good friend Roxanne Feldman (aka fairrosa) who had to evacuate her home on Sunday and has been with me ever since. Or her husband David who joined us the night of the storm and came with me as I walked my twelve pound dog who got pretty blown about as we tried to get her to …do…something… between falling tree limbs and watched a couple of young men run by shirtless while the local bistro start to pack it up. And my niece, who lives in Brooklyn, and is coming tonight so that she can manage to get to work tomorrow morning in a reasonable amount of time, public transportation being still very problematic.

I am fortunate to live in Morningside Heights where Sandy caused little damage. Yes, Riverside Park is pretty battered, but we have electricity and no flooding. People downtown and across the rivers have not been so lucky. Roxanne’s building is without power and may be for some time as there was equipment failure that needs significant parts and repair. I know of many others downtown, in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, and New Jersey who are suffering so much more than we are and my heart goes out to them.

My school has been wonderful, trying to figure out every day what was going on for everyone in the community.  For many of us, just getting to school would be challenging. The MTA has been incredible in getting buses and subways working again, but there was massive flooding in many places and so getting in and out of Manhattan is very difficult.  Given how many in my school’s community are from outside of Manhattan I am grateful that the administration made the decision to keep school closed until Monday.  By then I hope that transportation is sufficiently back on track to make it possible for everyone to make it to school.

There was Halloween for children here, but those in New Jersey have had theirs postponed.  Roxanne was worried about the pumpkins rotting in her annual Haunted House (she turns the library in to one and it is always awesome), but a couple of staff members who live near the school thought to toss them before they became too rank. I’m sad that we didn’t have Halloween in school, but so it goes.

I’ve just an email out to my students’ parents to see how they are all doing.  Some of them live quite far from the school, in areas that are still suffering flooding and loss of power, so I am hoping they are managing.  I will be happy to be together with them again on Monday.  It has been a very strange time, this Sandy time.