Aftermath

Some images I found of New York City, post-Superstorm Sandy:

Pre-Dawn Blackout at the ConEdison Plant:

Morning Slowly Dawns:

from my kitchen window:

From Superstorm Sandy

86th St N Line:

Battery Tunnel:

East Village:

Pile-Up:

Battery Park, apparently:

Sitting Out the Storm

Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York, USA

It's funny. Olga and I are usually content to sit at home in Bushwick for literally days at a time. Today, though, we woke up around noon, and by two in the afternoon we were going absolutely stir-crazy!

From Superstorm Sandy

From our windows, there doesn't seem to be anything going on in particular. Some wind, almost no rain, and eerily empty streets. Actually, not even that empty. The bodega across Wilson Street is open, and the Chinese restaurant, and the new coffee shop across Suydam Street, too. The coffee shop has only been open for a couple weeks, so they probably can't afford to close ... and they're still getting customers! As for the bodega and the Chinese restaurant, the families that own and run them also live on the second floor with an internal staircase to get home, so why wouldn't they stay open for as long as they have even a trickle of customers?

Meanwhile, I'm more than a little jealous of friends like Tiffany who are living close enough to the rivers to go for a short walk and see the storm sweeping in. I love storms, especially after all those years in the desert, but I love being safe and dry even more!

So we're sitting at home, watching it unfold on Facebook and TV (our electricity and Internet are just fine!), playing wild and vicious card games of Spit and Speed, and trying not to remember that we couldn't go anywhere even if we wanted to....

Friends and Foliage

Bear Mountain State Park, New York, USA

From Bear Mountain before the Hurricane

Across the Hudson and not too far upriver, the Appalachian Trail passes over Bear Mountain, and many other trails criss-cross the state park. I've been hearing about Bear Mountain since I first came to New York City, and all this time I've been keeping my eye out for opportunities to get out there and go hiking.

When the Twenties and Thirties Group at First Unitarian Brooklyn announced a hiking day there, I knew it was the right time. UUs are always fun people to spend time with, and I'd decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to get more involved with the young people at the Brooklyn church.

So I put on my sturdy shoes, filled my Camelbak, layered up and grabbed my camera. Not only was it nice to get out of the city, and great to spend time with a group of really wonderful young people, but it was also the peak of fall foliage season on Bear Mountain.

The colors were so brilliant and vibrant, and in a way that I haven't often had an opportunity to see in recent years. Frequently I found myself lagging behind as I stopped to take photos of vistas, popping yellows and deep reds.

With the first clouds driving ahead of the impending Frankenstorm Sandy, the sky was heavily overcast and the light was uninspiring, but the leaves and the company most definitely were inspiring. It was a great day.

From Bear Mountain before the Hurricane

Sometimes the Job You Need

Isn't the Job You Were Looking For

Manhattan, New York, USA

When I was in high school, we had an interim minister at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Harford County whom I found to be really inspiring. I'd been interested in comparative religion for most of my life--since long before we became Unitarian Universalists--but initially mostly in order to be able to defend my agnosticism from my evangelical classmates. Sometime during Rev. Kathy's interregnum, I realized I was interested in comparative religion for its own sake, and that eventually (in my 50s or 60s for a "twilight" career) I would like to go to seminary and become a UU minister.

But first, I had some other careers in mind. It was being said over and over that my generation would have 3-5 careers or more--not jobs, but careers--over our lifetimes, and these were gonna be mine: simultaneous translator of Arabic, then special education teacher, then bestselling novelist, then UU minister. Along the way, the plan has changed. I passed over the simultaneous translation, tried out the special ed thing in a few venues to varying degrees of success, and have worked on-again-off-again on the novelist gig. In my unemployment this summer, I've been looking for nonprofit entry level program management positions, preferably with connections to Arabic and/or the Middle East and Islamic world writ large. When the Unitarian Church of All Souls I've been attending for more than a year advertised the position of Membership Coordinator, I applied on a whim--or perhaps something of a sense of desperation!

Garth Brooks says that "some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers." Whether you believe in God or not--I'm perpetually on the fence--I think it's a truth universally acknowledged that from time to time we all look in the wrong place with the best of intentions. I think that nonprofit program management in the Middle East could still be in my future, but there are so many reasons why the job I started last week is the perfect job for me right now.

For one thing, I get to stay in one place. I get to stay in the United States for awhile; globe-trotting is fun, but exhausting, and hard on your social life! Better yet, I get to stay here in New York, where I've established a nice network of new friends, and many of my old friends are less than 4 hours by bus away and happy to come and visit. I'm close enough to my parents, siblings and cousins to spend holidays with family, which hasn't often been the case in the last 15 years. I get a chance to try having a relationship that doesn't start with an expiration date.

Better yet, I get to spend the next several years in nonprofit management, so that when I'm ready to go back to the Middle East in a few years, I'll have more than fluency in Arabic and understanding of local culture. I'll also have the technical skills required to get one of those development jobs I really want.

Best of all, I get to work with an office full of people who share my convictions, who are working to make the world a better, more loving place, and who appreciate my talents. It's been a long time since I felt like the whole office thought of me as a good employee.

Battery Park Memorials

Manhattan, New York City, NY, USA

From Battery Park Lunch

This week my temp agency sent me to work at One Battery Park Plaza, and lunch this week went best with the view from Battery Park.

This flower garden is actually a memorial to the victims of 9/11, as explained by a small plaque at one end of the sidewalk that runs through this wildflower explosion. It's exactly the kind of understated memorial for peaceful contemplation that I can really get behind.

The sunlight was soothing, the flowers beautiful, the boats passing by just what a sailor loves, the butterflies entertaining and the photography soothing. All that, and an income, too! Temping is not a bad way to pay the rent!

From Battery Park Lunch

Reflecting Pool

Manhattan, New York

From 9/11 Memorial

I knew sooner or later that someone would come to visit me in New York who wanted to go to the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero, but I was in no hurry. I'm still furious about how all the goodwill the United States had in the aftermath of the attack was squandered, only for the tragedy to then be appropriated as an excuse to do terrible things in the world.

But I have to admit that it's a impressive, beautiful site. When the construction is finished and the square is open on all sides, it will be a beautiful place to, say, take a lunch break from your job in finance. It's crowded now, a pilgrimage site of sorts, but I can anticipate a time when it will just be a quiet oasis of trees, water and white noise in the bustle of downtown.

From 9/11 Memorial

Marina and the Diamonds

Manhattan, New York, USA

From Marina and the Diamonds

When my cousin Peter said last week that he was coming to New York for a concert and could he spend the night at my place, I said, "Of course!" It wasn't until he called as he was leaving Boston this morning that he said, "I told you I have an extra ticket for you, right?" No, but at least I had time for my beauty regime before he arrived. Good thing, too, because Weber Hall was packed with the uber-fashion conscious.

The opening act, Ms Mr, was hard to hear, but pretty good. Very similar to Florence and the Machine, we decided.

I think I'd heard the name Marina and the Diamonds before, but I don't think I'd heard her music until tonight. She's been opening for Coldplay all over Europe, where the Welsh singer is much more widely known, but she was popular enough here in the States that she needed to schedule a second show in New York after the first one sold out. And the lady sure knows how to put on a show!

From Marina and the Diamonds

Boy on a Bike

Westford, Massachusetts, USA

From Boy on a Bike

It turns out that training wheels are the wrong way to learn to ride a bike. The hardest part of riding a bike isn't actually the pedaling, as the training wheel presumes. In fact, it's the balancing that's the hardest part, and if you learn that first, it's much easier to get on a 'real' bike and learn to pedal. My cousin's son is testing out that theory on his balance bike.

From Boy on a Bike

Independence Day

Bridgton, Maine, USA


It's been a long time since I had a traditional American Independence Day celebration. I was in the U.S. this time last year, but I didn't really celebrate, because I didn't yet have the friends in New York I now have to celebrate with. This year, in contrast, I had to choose between celebrating with my friends in New York, a friend with a front row balcony to the fireworks in Boston, or my family in Maine.

Family in Maine was an excellent choice!


Last night we joined mobs of other tourists for fireworks at the local elementary school, and contributed to some of the fundraising efforts of townies (like a band trip to Montreal). We took my cousin's son to the parade in Bridgton, where he was an enthusiastic scavenger for candy, but the firetrucks' loud sirens sent him cringing in his Grammie's lap.

Then we had an awesome beachside lobster picnic, thanks to Grandpa who paid and my brother Ben with the new job slinging fish and lobsters at the docks in Portland.

I love my life of travel and adventure, but sometimes it's true ... There's no place like home!

From July 4, 2012

Maine!

S Bridgton, Maine, USA

It's so nice to be in Maine for vacation!

I went swimming in our little pond....

I took pictures of Grandpa's amazing flowers....

I practiced flower close-ups like the ones I so admire by Jennifer Khoury Photography....


And I played around with a unique way to get a photo of the house I've vacationed to in Maine all my life....

This is what vacation should be!

From Lake in Maine