Postcards

• Giant Christmas decorations in midtown Manhattan.
• Rockefeller Center.
• World famous Rockefeller Center skating rink.
• Radio City Music Hall.
• Espresso machine at Sunday brunch after church.
• Part of the Thanksgiving spread before dinner. It was amazing. Ten people. We had a view of the Empire State Building.
• The Christmas tree at MetroTech Commons onto which my lab at school looks.
• Our new chalkboard at my apartment wherein we put up our Christmas tree.
• NBC Studios at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
• 23rd Street station.
• Wooden escalator at Macy’s.
• The moon peeking over a sign on a beautifully clear New York City autumn night.
• Chelsea Market.
• Stephanie, a friend from home, celebrating a big birthday in the city.
• 9/11 Memorial: Tower Two pool.
• 9/11 Memorial: Backlit names of the fallen surrounding the pool.
• A view inside the as-yet incomplete 9/11 Museum: A pair of the Twin Towers’ structural “tridents.”
• Toys in my lab at school for a project.

Hello, pussycat.

This semester is rapidly coming to a close. I’ll certainly have more to say on that when my semester is officially done. In the meantime, a funny thing happened to me on the way home from the grocery store…

Every semester works out a little differently. Different class schedules. Different meeting schedules. And so on. Within the first few weeks I settle into a routine. This semester I get groceries on Monday nights immediately after my evening class. The store is close to school and my class often doesn’t get out until after 8:30 — so the night (and my brain) is largely shot anyway.

This past Monday night I got groceries like I do and was walking to the nearby subway station like I do. It was an unusually warm night for December. So warm I wasn’t wearing my coat. And might I add I was looking pretty sharp in my dark jeans, wingtips, check shirt, and vest.

In this part of Brooklyn most shops are closed at this time of night but most restaurants are still open as is the movie theater. There are several subway stops in the immediate area as well. So there’s a fair amount of foot traffic even at ten o’clock at night. I saw a dapper gentleman coming towards me up ahead on the sidewalk. He looked to be in his late thirties, wearing a tweed jacket and tortoise shell glasses. How do I remember these particular details? Given what happened next, you’d remember such things too.

As we approached one another, this gentlemen looked straight at me and meowed. Loudly. With purpose. Almost with a slight undertone of aggression. When I say he meowed, I really mean it. He said the word meow and made his voice to be a bit cat-like. Being completely stunned by this I kept right on walking. As he was just about to pass me, he turned his face toward me and did it a second time. No other words. No body language. No explanation. Just meow. Loudly.

Upon hearing this story, some have suggested this is merely the curse of my universal attractiveness (har!). I haven’t a clue as to what happened or why. But I can say this with certainty. Only in New York.

Rough week.

Some days you’re the windshield, and some days you’re the bug.

On Monday I had a midterm exam for one of my core curriculum classes. These core classes have stringent grade requirements towards an evaluation of my performance at the end of next semester — the official decision on my status as a doctoral candidate. Thirty five students took this midterm. None of us finished it, not even with extra time. I did what I could. Sadly, one of the four problems was material that I had studied before the hurricane hit but had not reviewed again in-depth by the time of our rescheduled exam. Boy I sure wish I had just read that section again in detail before I walked into the exam. I’ve been investing great time and effort in this class as it is quite challenging. I can only hope whatever curve the professor uses is favorable to my efforts. One thing I certainly do not enjoy about returning to school is exams. This midterm is a sizable 35% of my grade (as is the final exam). I’ll be buckling down even more over these last six weeks of the semester.

In early September I submitted my first big deal smartypants paper to a conference. If it is accepted I get to go to Paris to present it. My advisor said of it on more than one occasion that she expected this paper of mine to win an award. That may have been hyperbole on her part; whatever the case she was very pleased with the final product. I set my expectations lower than hers, hoping simply for its acceptance, period. The evaluations came in early this morning. The evaluators found it to be a weak submission and unlikely to be selected for publication. I cannot explain to you the large disparity in the assessments of my work. As papers are now the most important thing that I produce, this is a blow.

And on Friday I discovered some difficult, possibly insurmountable, problems in one of my ongoing research projects (the same one addressed by the aforementioned paper). I don’t yet know how we will solve these problems or how much more time it will take to do so. Because of the demands of my classes, progress feels to be at a snail’s pace as compared to this past summer when I was able to spend all week on this project.

The walk to church this morning was melancholy at best. However, in those meditative moments I was reminded of the old adage, “If you never fail, you’re not trying hard enough.” By the measure of this past week, I seem to be trying plenty hard enough! I regret how I handled my most challenging classes and circumstances when I was a college student the first time around. I’ve come to see grad school as redemption for those missed opportunities. I am certainly discouraged at this moment. But whatever may come, I can honestly say that I have given my all in each of these circumstances, and I am thankful for the opportunity to see just what it is I’m made of.

“Pull out bleach for the local residents…”

Yesterday was my first day back at school. After a little more than a week, apart from subway delays and sparse grocery store shelves, my life is pretty much back to normal. The subway is operating at about eighty percent of its normal routes (but this translates to less than eighty percent capacity). Some under river tunnels are yet flooded and some stations are badly damaged. There is discussion on how to fit in the classes we missed; I’m not looking forward to that.

In my earlier post I said that my roommate and I largely escaped the destruction of Sandy. To give you an idea of how violent the storm was, we live just across from Prospect Park. Last I heard the park sustained damage to three hundred trees — severe enough damage to warrant a fundraising campaign for new planting. The felled branches and tree trunks required full size construction equipment to move out of there.

News reports and photos abound. I don’t know that anyone, including myself, has a great picture of where things stand. But I’ll offer what I can here. On the one hand, the response from all levels of government, the utilies, and non-profit disaster relief organizations has been almost breathtaking to watch. It’s been organized, proactive, responsive, caring, and actively engaging the region. New Yorkers have been donating their resources and time to such a degree that large numbers have had to be turned away for lack of an ability to use them. The New York Marathon was cancelled so the runners volunteered along the route. All this being said, the destruction is widespread and the needs are many. At last count, New York City suffered forty-one Sandy-related fatalities. While Manhattan has power again, many buildings are yet uninhabitable. Those from that area are generally of the means to deal with such disruption, and their homes are safe as they are off the ground. Others are not nearly so fortunate. Tens of thousands have no home or are holed up in dark, cold, putrid living quarters. It’s been dipping into freezing temperatures at night. Many areas still have no power, or their buildings cannot yet handle the power that has been restored. If living areas are still standing they lack steam to provide heat and water to flush toilets and wash. The elderly and unemployed are not doing well. Parts of New York, New Jersey, and Long Island are much like New Orleans after Katrina.

I helped out where I could over the last half week, torn between doing the work I very much needed to do and trying to be of use to the dislocated and devastated. Transit was iffy so my roommate and I biked in several overloaded backpacks full of supplies to distribution centers when calls for specific items went out. I helped unload a full size semi-trailer sent up from the Carolinas by a church that got in touch with my church. There was no pallet handling equipment. But that didn't matter. At least a hundred people showed up (more than just my church), and we unloaded and sorted the boxes by assembly line. When it came time to truck those supplies to different areas, because of the fuel shortage, people volunteered their gas tanks to be siphoned.

Several churches as well as other groups spontaneously self-organized to meet the needs of a devastated neighborhood, Red Hook, not far from me. I cannot begin to explain to you the miracle these people pulled off. And miracle is the word. These amazing organizers were working eight to fourtneen hour days to do it. Surely God gave them the strength and opened doors to allow so much to happen in so short a time. Donations poured in. Volunteers showed up in droves. So much came in that it was distributed to other hard hit areas. When vehicles and fuel were short, the NYPD offered a truck. After that, miraculously, during a fuel shortage, people with minivans and hatchbacks started appearing. I can’t say enough about what these people did.

I spent most of Sunday at the community center that hosted all that I just described. Sorting and carrying and packing. Somehow I ended up at the front door as something of a communications person. It took three of us to direct local residents to resources and turn away volunteers and redirect their donations (the community center had to be empty by Monday as it is now the temporary home of a displaced school). In the morning, one of the directives I was given was to collect bleach from the the various donation piles so we could keep it for the local residents. Those who couldn’t make it to the temporary toilets were living with human waste collecting in their bathrooms; the bleach helps with the smell.

If you are able, please donate:

• My church's hurricane relief fund [requires creating an account]
• Red Hook Recovers
• Mayor’s Hurricane Relief Fund
• Other options

Finally, the photos above:

• A touching donation I sorted.
• Classic New York City coffee cups that summarize the feelings of all the volunteers.
• Well. Um. Disaster relief comes in many forms.
• Fresh produce distributed in Red Hook (it was gone in ten minutes or so).
• Loading a police truck for Coney Island relief.
• A gas pump on my walk back from the community center (not shown: police tape around the gas station as there was no fuel to be had).

UPDATE (Nov. 7, 2012): NYU•Poly has come up with a plan to make up for the lost week of classes. Long story short I now have a final exam on the evening of Saturday, December 22nd. This is a bummer. But in the grand scheme of things, as compared to what many are enduring, I cannot complain.

Another year, another hurricane. And, yes, I'm okay.

I've lived in New York City for a little over fourteen months now. Or, counting in alternate units: two hurricanes. First Irene and now this super storm that included hurricane Sandy. Yes, I'm okay. Thank God. But many others aren't. Many New Yorkers were rather dismissive of this storm because Irene was mostly a non-event. I felt like I was actively campaigning to convince some of them otherwise several times. Even without a direct hit, we were in for trouble. And that's just what happened. It’s been worse than even the City’s warnings. As of today, there are eighteen fatalities reported for New York City.

Even now as I look out my window the trees are still blowing pretty hard now and again. Public transit was shut down Sunday night. Mandatory evacuations for low lying areas were issued. Roommate and I have been holed up in our apartment since Sunday afternoon. We got supplies, filled buckets with water, removed our A/C window units, did some last minute caulking (seriously), and just went about our business as best as we could.

By Monday morning the winds were getting bad. We never got much rain. However, Sandy was so big and such a low pressure system that it caused a storm surge that broke records from the early 1800s. It didn’t help that the storm coincided with high tide. We started getting reports and images of flooding in the low lying areas not far from us (we live on some of the highest ground in Brooklyn, however).

By Monday evening we heard at least two goodly sized branches give way out in the darkness. We even felt our six floor brick building sway in the wind at one point. I lost count of how many times our power flickered. We sprung a leak in one of our kitchen windows. A towel, a spatula, string, a bucket, and some engineering took care of that until we can get the flashing of that window fixed properly.

School has been cancelled for three days now. It may not even be open on Thursday contingent upon the subway system being in working order. Jimmy Fallon recorded Late Night Monday evening without an audience. His monlogue to an empty studio is strangely hilarious.

Speaking of the subway system, the tunnels under the river and many of the stations are flooded. The transit authority thinks it may take up to four days to pump the water out. We’re fairly certain that the Metro North line was designed for trains, not boats. Of course, car tunnels have been flooded as well, but public transit is the lifeblood of the city.

The City is reporting 4,000 service requests for downed trees and branches. The World Trade Center construction site is under water. In fact, much of lower Manhattan is flooded. It's also without power. A power station even exploded. An NYU hospital had to be evacuated when its generators failed. Of course, the hardest hit areas are those on low ground near the water. A fire in Queens burned up to fifty homes.

New Jersey was hit even harder than we were. A pastor friend in Connecticut is without power for seven to ten days; he and his family are collecting wood and making use of the fireplace in their parsonage.

The City has been really on top of this storm. The photo up top is of my iPhone screen after an emergency alert was issued by the City. I've never seen that symbol nor that style of message before. In fact, my phone sounded the emergency broadcast alert sound when it came in. I have to admit that my roommate and I freaked out just a little upon hearing that ominous tone unexpectedly from the other room. We’ve been getting regular updates and all manner of preparations were made for the storm. Bridges are now open again and clean-up is under way. The sun made a brief appearance. I can hear car horns and loud music through my window. I suppose, then, in its way, New York City is back to normal already…

UPDATE (Oct. 30, 2012): NYU•Poly is now closed until Monday November, 5. This means no classes for an entire week.

UPDATE (Nov. 2, 2012): The death toll for New York City has risen to forty-one from the eighteen I originally cited. The subway is yet half offline. Crews are still working to pump the tunnels. It may be until next week that we have public transportation among all the boroughs. Various ferries, carpooling rules, and shuttle buses have been filling the gaps as best as possible. Though it's gotten progressively streamlined, the city can only limp along without the subway.