So you're saying 'well we did warn him'. There was some snow and wind for about twelve hours (reported internationally as a 'great Storm') and, sitting in the New York Public Library library today, I did hear a couple of thunderclaps, but it would normally be heralded as the start of winter (a week earlier than last year). However, if you're living in a devastated house, with no electricity it's a Great Storm. There are still nearly a million people across the NE of the US without electricity. However, tomorrow, New York will be over 60 degrees and sunny, or so the media tell me (and why you might say, would I believe them).
On Tuesday I went across to Staten Island as I had three meetings arranged. A beautiful day going across the harbour on the ferry. The Statue of Liberty still stands, inelegant and proud, the new building going up to replace the twin towers glistens. On the ferry a young man talks into his phone: it's fucking awful he says. I keep ringing, he shouts. They do the electricity but its only enough to heat the stove. My next door neighbour is fine. I'm fucking awful. And those fucking Nets ( the Brooklyn Nets basketball team) blew it (they lost to Minnesota Timberwolves after leading them by a long way). As the day goes by, I realise that it is mostly the stress of not being able to be normal. There's no real chance of starving, but you can be cold, damp, miserable, stuck in traffic, unable to get to work or buy petrol, and just pissed off. It's now six days.
I walk over to the my first visit which is at St Mary's Episcopal Church in Castleton. It's a beautiful little church, built in 1851 in the Ecclesiological style. The Island is full of these churches from a time when it was a wealthy rural retreat for the rich. I'm there to look at the vestry records because I think John De Morgan was the Vestry Clerk. Kevin, the minister, and Jane, his wife, who live in a beautiful little rectory give me some typical US hospitality and then park me in the church hall, usually used for Zumba, but now a food distribution centre, except no one is coming for food. People have been delivering food, baby stuff, bags, etc etc to the church for days and to all other possible points around the island. The people who need it won't know it's there, and in any case don't live in this area, and are often people who couldn't or wouldn't go looking for charity. In the first few days when very few people had electricity (including the church) there were no shops and these centres were useful, particularly for child stuff. I've sometimes laughed at the NZ obsession with disaster and disaster kits, but this proves that, even if you aren't hit with the tsunami, the first few days are difficult for everyone. As I go round the island (which varies from downtown slum to rural beauty) most people are still inconvenienced (not much fuel, poor Internet and phone, transportation issues) and a bit battered. The always vulnerable are suffering more than usual, and those who lay in the path of the tsunami are looking at a bleak future. They mostly live on an extended beach area. I meet someone who tells me that she was always told not to buy a house on the beach side of Hylvan Boulevard because it was below sea level. But over the century, people built holiday houses and these became permanent dwellings and nothing disastrous happened. Irene came and went despite the predictions of doom. She herself almost bought a house there (there are great views) but she remembered her mum's advice.
So there is a small amount of outright misery, a large scale inconvenience, and me walking around (I must have walked 12 miles) on a lovely day, seeing all sorts of interesting things - think Mongrel Mob, through the Sopranos, through to Devonport - and finding that it's place with much to admire and much to worry about. In the evening I give a lecture in another beautiful church, to the local Improvement Society (the equivalent of Devonport Heritage or the Plumstead Common Environment Group) which is across the road from the house that De Morgan lived in for the last 25 years of his life. I try to explain how he moved from being a Marxist Revolutionary in Ireland, to a notorious agitator in England and then ended up as a Vestry Clerk, Tax Receiver, Bank President and dime novel writer on Staten Island. They're still working out whether they can cope with the idea of a Marxist revolutionary living on the street.
On my way back I walk through the lower part of Manhattan. In the dark streets there are a number of very large vehicles, with lots of very large machines, trying to get water out of basements, to restore electricity, and to get the City that never sleeps wide awake.
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