Back to the Beach

11.15.12

Hi!
I am home, and all is well. My photos are safely moved to my big computer, no more itsy-bitsy netbook for me. My son fixed the wonky wifi last night, don't you just love having kids?! I was gonna show you more NYC but of course first thing I did, well after a couple loads of laundry, was run out to my beach. So I'll show you NYC flea markets this weekend, because for now...we are going to the beach!
[Can you tell how happy I am?]

This is what I saw:
east....

west:

Straight ahead, south...very peaceful now, isn't it....

East-south-east, out the Long Island coastline.....

Back towards the north, or bay...

geese, headed to the golf course,lol. not south

My little friend!? He waddled right over for his bread!

These are the highest inner dunes now. They survived though very changed.

The dull color is from the the seawater; it kills the green plants' leaves/ stems, though the roots survive. You can see the swales, the water behind the reeds. These semi-natural swales give normal storm surges room to flood but usually not overwhelm.

The above dunes are the ones I showed you a few weeks ago, when they were high rolling ''hills'' covered with pines, bayberry, heather, woolly grey lambs-ear, moss, and seagrass....

October '12



Oct 2012

 
The outer dunes now, seen in the far distance in the above pic,

...are, well, gone; [above] though I suppose the sand is there somewhere.

 More outer dunes, gone after Sandy .

To the east again,
Now...

before...

And the familiar boardwalk, now.[note the dunes on each side, once perhaps 20 feet high, are gone!

before

now

before

before

Now we know why these signs are here! Or were here. But the beach will recover. When I first moved here there were no dunes at all, not a speck of vegetation , just hundreds of feet of pristine white sand. A lady in our community fought hard to get these dunes built! We planted seagrass, dug swales or catch basins, so more plants would grow; beach roses and bayberry were introduced. This took years...but her vision  saved my tiny community. And the beach will rebuild on the bones left behind.

10.25.12

Speaking of bones...tomorrow I'll do a separate post, part two..with all my cool beach finds---antique/ bottles, driftwood, and a very old 19th century shipwreck!

so please check back!

Thanks to Surf Fire Island for this interesting Sandy data:

Buoy 44065 saw a 32.5' wave height at 8:50pm on October 29; this buoy is located near the entrance to New York Harbor, roughly 15 nautical miles southeast of Breezy Point, NY. This exceeded the previous record of 26' set at about 9am on August 28th, 2011, associated with Hurricane Irene.

Buoy 44025, which is roughly 30 nautical miles south of Islip, NY, a record 31' wave height was recorded at about 8pm on the same evening. This exceeded the previous record of 30 feet set on December 11, 1992.

I guess I should be glad we couldn't these waves, it got so dark! Now just a memory....

love

      lizzy

gone to the beach.....!

and from Fire Island, NY, so apropos...if misspelled!


 ''*we're* coming back''



PS  Today, Nov 15th, 17 days after Sandy destroyed much of the NY/ NJ shoreline and many communites in ignored Long Island...President Obama finally did a flyover! He didn't stop, mind you, he FLEW over. He did stop in Staten Isalnd where the guy interviewed on TV said, ''...I thought it was just a publicity thing, you know, a photo op...''.

Yeah, me too.

I didn't look it up but I bet it didn't take  the president almost three weeks to go to NO after Katrina. [*Bush flew over NO 2 days after Katrina; he was highly criticized fpr not putting''boots on the ground.'' This is not a political blog. I believe a show of Presidential leadership is essential during a crisis. I do not live in NYC, Bllomberg is not my mayor; so his refusal to have FEMA prior help is not  relevant to my area.

No more politics here. Ever. I promise.]



Home at Last!

We're home! More details to come [plus more fun stuff from the big city!] but it seems LIPA and FEMA needed a huge space to park their trucks and feed their crews...they found the parking lot by the cabana park yesterday, where we normally have snow plows in the winter....

Oh and ooops, picture this the FEMA Guy and the LIPA Guy, scratching their heads : ''Where shall we plug in our big stadium lights? Hmmm....let's just see, yep. These people have power, let's turn it on! Wow!''

Effin' idiots.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach

Beach Mouse, City Mouse



Hi, everyone...yes it's snowing in NYC as I type this. But the past few days have been gloriously autumn and despite the discomfort and sadness of having left the beach, I know I am more fortunate than many Sandy survivors.

On the other hand I am very in need of a map! This is a whole new Manhattan to me. My temporary refuge is a beautiful apartment in NYC's Battery Park City. here  

This is a planned enclave on the Hudson River, south and west of Wall Street and the new WTC. Quiet, with manicured esplanades, parks, marinas, sidewalk cafes and restaurants. Hard to believe that this area and much of lower Manhattan---I've heard as far up as 14th Street!--- was under water from Sandy's storm surge, just a little over a week ago.

My friend has fabulous views from his rooftop terrace!
Statue of Liberty...

New World Trade Center...

Lower Manhattan is a fantastic surreal mix of places and humanity...

The Wall Street bull...just stands in the midst of chaos

It was very dark, with police cars and traffic cops on every corner, every block [apres-hurricane protection]. And such a mix of centuries: the modern mixed randomly with very old and historic...

early 1900s steamship wharf,
being recycled for boutiqu and food space

Very old spaces abound; some recycled with new intent, while others retain their eighteenth century original use, like tiny round Bowling Green Park, the oldest park in NYC. It has been a public space since the early 1600s!

It faces the majestic original Alexander Hamilton Customs House that is now a museum. On its other side is the huge Titanic-fame Cunard Line building, now an "I don't know what"--- apartments? Radio Shack ?

There has been a church here since 1698,
current version is from mid1800s

Trinity Church, above, and its New England graveyard, just plunked down among the skyscrapers. Or vice versa I guess.

And then there is the very new:



WTC reflection at night,
seen on another huge glass tower



Still rising hopefully from the ashes...

...the exotic, like these majestic royal palms inside the World Financial Center that is really [and rather bizarrely] a food and shopping mall.

The people, too--harried New Yorkers trudging rapidly about their lives, endless crews of Con Ed and other massive equipment trucks pumping the floodwater out of the tunnels, the subways, the basements and garages...And in every other space, masses of tourists, all frantically walking somewhere, all armed with huge lethal backpacks and camera phones.

To see the regular residents blandly walk past the endless lines at the WTC Memorial [why is it barricaded and invisible?] left me shaking my head in wonder.

And then the new WTC itself. Construction everywhere. You can actually walk right through the base of the construction, there's this massive foot bridge thing, lol...and when you come out you crane your neck and look up, and up, and up.....

For me, as a survivor / evacuee, one of  the best things so far in NYC---on the night when we arrived from the cold dark beach we went to NYC classic pub, its incarnation at the Battery, P J Clarke's. That was the first hot food we'd had in days...man, that was the best burger and fries I think I've ever eaten!
More NYC soon, as we are relocated indefinitely, our little bit of heaven at the beach has been abandoned by officialdom and repair crews alike.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach

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...