I wiped away the weeds & foam. / I fetched my sea-born treasures home... Ralph Waldo Emerson







Monday, November 5, 2012

Before and After...and a little Voting Rant


Sandy surge Oct 29 6 PM


Hi! First off all...many many thanks to everyone who has contacted me since the hurricane hit the Beach a week ago...just about...NOW:



waves sweep over seawalls and dunes as darkness falls

Yeah, it's out of focus because I was scrambling to get to safety. I have other good pre-storm shots but still cannot get them out of the camera/ tech issues.The good news sort of is that I was able to check my house yesterday and though uninhabitable, due to no electricity and no gas for the car [to get supplies], the structure itself is fine. The huge frightening question is when and even IF power will ever be restored.

On the drive out to the beach I saw NOT ONE Long Island Power/ LIPA truck! Not one. No cars on the road, no gas stations open. Nothing is being done, no public official from Long Island has shoved loudmouth bigshot NJ Gov. Christie aside and said, "Hey, we need help too."

We are forlorn and forgotten. And in the dark, literally and figuratively.

I did see one solitary gas tanker truck under police escort, four NYPD SUVs, on the highway. Here are the tanker ships still waiting to deliver the gas.




11.4.12

This is the cabana park near my home. You can see how it looked a week ago in my post of Oct 23rd. [links not working, sorry]





Dunes, seawall....






Beach as big and beautiful as ever. We had no wind damage, the trees are upright and most have leaves. It was the storm surge that destroyed our lives here.  On the left you can see the American flag that's in all my looking-east pics,  still waving happily yesterday, not even tattered.


o
one week post-Sandy


Here are my dear feral "pet" cats, on my neighbors' back steps yesterday. Kitty and Stripey. I am so thankful they and their babies survived.




They came to my deck as soon as I opened the sliding glass door and I fed them what I could find. My pair of mockingbirds have returned to the front yard. They are the only locally resident songbirds except the flock of small spotty sparrows. Next time I will bring seeds and cranberried for them...whenever the next time is. I hope they can wait for me.

There was a roadblock of state troopers at the entrance to the bridge to my island. They stopped evry single car. Only residents, ID'd with car registrations and drivers licenses are allowed on my island now. Which is a good, safe thing.

This is not a political blog but I have to vent a little and say this:  

If President Obama wanted me to vote for him, he'd have made sure I had electricity to run the voting machines, and gas to drive me to the polling site. Obviously, Mrs Obama was wrong when she ran those ads about "every vote counts." Not if you're one of the homeless Long Island victims of Sandy, I guess. [Not that NYS Gov Cuomo or Mr Romney or anyone else has done more either. What the heck do we pay the highest taxes in the nation for? Dark/ cold/ ignored. Thanks, officialdom. Thanks a heck of a lot. Next time I vote I will remember this day.]


Next post: Gone to the Beach Does NYC! Yay!

love

lizzy

gone to the beach



ps I apologize for less than wonderful pix and graphics/ links. I am working on a tiny netbook, borrowed wifi, marginal photo tolls. Stick with me...