Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis Sandy, cvontinued The hurricane mildly named Sandy is still the overwehelming event for this ST/PCV dominated neigghbourhood. There have been three weeks of post-WWII atmosphere for our placid upper middle class population, of retirees with walking sticks and young people with baby carriages. Our neighborhood, almost suburban in character but better in its green qualities, walkable and cosy, was chosen to be hit by Mother Nature with vengeance not seen since the 1938 Long Island Hurricane (no nice names then). This, despite the relative mildness of Hurricanes Irene in 2011 and Herta in 2008 brought to mind that man is not the ruler of the Universe as we know it. Past experience is not necessarily a forecast of future events, and overwhelming egos bolstered with money cannot buy life in Lucullan luxury on the sunny beach. On the other hand, we also learned that compassion and desire to help others has not died, as evidenced by the Ivy League grads who rolled up their sleeves and helped clean up the destroyed Rockaway and Staten Island fiber board walls and broken floors and ocean refuse washed ashore and ..oh well.. everything. And the nice Gramercy ladies who boughr 500 pairs of socks and underwear to bring to the distressed, and were ashamrd of their good cars (luckily, not polished clean) and Princeton shirts. That is called compassion, and desire to help others, a feeling that is coexistent with the typical NewYorker's desire to earn much and advance fast, a faculty that all of us hasve and that comes out in times of distress. It is the context, when some of the privileged handing out donations to the distressed that brings out the contrast. In the Rockaways, a refuge, some say the society's bad corner, to hide the outcasts, the contrast is so evident to evoke negative feelings. ever so often, when the refugees of Somalia and Sierra Leone and outcasts of Latin America meet the natives. I expected to get some positive stories, even jokes, of good feeling. but none came through in the e-mail Sandy was not like 9/11/2001, when enemy terrorists attacked us, and anger against the bombers was the dominant emotion. One true bitter joke came through,when a squatter in Stuyvesant Square Park watching a Rhode Island nursery truck labeled as hired by Mayor Bloomberg's Committee work, bitterly referred to His Honor as the second best in NYC's history. When I asked to identify the best, he sneered and declared: "everyone else.' justifying his anger by the Mayor's late cancellation of the Newe York Marathon, after the NYM chairman had challenged the appropriatenerss of the event. Other stories:\ A friend, questioned after the lights in midtown T&V area returned (that is not counting our poor SP/PCV area, which suffered longer and still continues to be be in some darkness, along the Avenure C perimeter) self-demeaningly declared that the event was sufferable, although Scotch whiskey after October 31 was too warm, but he managed to survive with a gin and Blaody Mary mix. Upon further questioning, the stoic –admitted that he had a dozen eggs and some cans of soup, and the use of the gas oven. For news he had the telephone – the old dial-up unit worked but the push button portable died. He offered one rule ,pertinent to blackout sufferers ; “do not look for the portable radio after dark,” but was able to find flashlights, for emergency. The commentator, who is also a Luddite, refusing to acknowledge the role of TV and Internet in our lives , also managed to walk up and down the stairs several times, for food when life returned to the neighbourhood, so the locked-up feeling that most highriser inhabitants suffered , was not his complaint. This rejection of Internet and e-mail is not unusual in our up-to-date T&V area. Among retirees, anger towards Internet is not uncommon, and many retireees, who used the digital systems in their business lives, find a distinct relief in shedding the shackles of technology. Nevetheless, even those opponents often eventually invest in an unit, to keep in touch with the kids, and correspondence, in a polite format. Of course , then comes the digital phone with texting, an even more repulsive intruder, with its terse abbreviation-ridden formant, so there’s no real escape from the rudeness the 21st Century. One commentator, preservationist Jack Taylor, offered another rule: ‘”do not build above the 4th Floor,” a recommendation I do not quite know how to respond to, not having lived that low ever, except for holidays.He also brought out another proof of the old technology coming to rescue of the new environment, his 1956 Olivetti typewriter, dated in Glasgow, 1956. from the authorized purveyer to HRH the Duke of Edinburgh. Wally Dobelis also thanks New York Times, the old reliable.