Sandy has come and gone, thankfully.  In her wake there is devastation and disaster.  Locally, all roads in and around our town are blocked by downed trees and live electrical wires.  We are personally without water, power, phone and internet, except for a few hours during the day with a generator.  And we are some of the lucky ones, even though a large tree fell on and damaged our other home across town.  The men from our contracting company found a way to get trucks in and are cutting apart the fallen trees.

The best I can do is keep them in coffee and the fresh chocolate chip cookies I baked yesterday.  It seems a lot of us were baking and cooking before the storm hit.  Probably good therapy, as I have said before.

Our schools are closed until at least Wednesday, which is good since I am stuck here until the roads are cleared.  I am hearing on the news of an entire neighborhood block in Breezy Point, Queens, which burned to the ground; flooding waters up to and beyond the lower East side of Manhattan, and the very sad news of the death of several people including two young boys in our county, and  the son of a friend of a friend in Queens, who were all  hit by falling trees.

The storm was a “freak” rare thing, they say…the collision and collusion of two major systems that came together and caused the havoc we are left to deal with.  The howling wind and the sounds of bending and snapping trees that we heard through the night is not something I would like to experience again.  As usual, neighbors come out and help neighbors, and reaffirm the best of human nature in the face of the worst of nature itself.