Just wanted to let you all know, if you remember hearing from me in the past, that I'm doing fine. The tornado that touched down in Brooklyn yesterday did not come very near my house, but since I live on the top floor, I sure took notice when the high winds came by! A colleague lives four blocks away from where it hit, and the street is impassible, with trees down and wrecked cars and a torn roof or two and broken glass everywhere. Those of you who live in tornado areas would probably look at this damage as nothing out of the ordinary, but it's a once-in-a-lifetime event here, the forecasters say. I hope they're correct.
I'd gone on a five-mile hike over the weekend, so I was able to survive my two-mile walk yesterday morning to find a working subway. The most difficult part of it was when I had to walk through an industrial neighborhood lined with auto-body shops; the wet sidewalks were streaked with oil, which made walking on them with rubber-soled shoes rather dicey. But as I walked along my fellow pedestrians and I exchanged more and more information, opening up into the realization that we were, again, all thrown into an extreme situation together, and needed to help eachother out. By the time I got near the bridges, I'd told half a dozen people which subways in south Brooklyn were not working, and they'd told me which ones in Downtown Brooklyn were. After a sweltering fifteen-minute wait on the subway platform -- all pretensions to remaining well-groomed were abandoned as everyone was dripping sweat, and cotton and linen clothing melted on our bodies -- an almost vacant train arrived with beautiful working air conditioning. The train was rerouted and ended up making an unusual journey over three different lines to land up at a station ten blocks away from my job.
I was relatively lucky with a two-hour commute. Some people spent four or five hours getting to their offices. This made me very proud to be a New Yorker. There are lots of very hard-working, committed people here.
I got home last night on my regular subway, and after two stops a whole family got off and I took one of the seats. I nearly fell asleep on the ride home, and when I got back to my apartment, had just enough energy to eat dinner, feed and medicate my ailing cat, check my computer, put out the trash, and haul myself into bed at an astonishingly early 10 pm. I slept like a brick and woke up this morning ready for a nice big breakfast, but before I ate I opened my deck door and assessed my garden. Only the tomato plant looked cowed; everyone else was OK, and I realized one good thing: I sure won't have to water those plants for a while.
Janis_G
mwoods
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