Tenth Anniversary of Sandy and a Music Tribute

A strange combination, Sandy and a musical tribute, but that's the timing of this.

Today for the New Jersey/downstate New York area (and many other communities in the Northeast United States), marks the 10th anniversary of Superstorm Sandy. 

At 7:30 pm on October 29, 2012, Sandy hit New Jersey just to the north of Atlantic City.  That night and the following day, the storm slammed this area, including Long Island/New York City.

The storm is long gone, but not forgotten.  

Repairs are still being made, and we don't know if precautions being made will be enough. 

The vulnerability of the New York City mass transit system is just one concern out of many. 

Although I don't live in the area most impacted, Sandy is very much on my mind today.

I was born in the New York City suburb of Queens (which is on Long Island) in the Rockaways, one of the severely damaged area.  My childhood best friend, who lived in Brooklyn, and her husband, took in people who were more severely impacted than they were.

My spouse and I visited Brooklyn the following May, when the damage was still fresh enough for me to smell (yes, floods have a smell.)

Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, May 2013

During that trip, we visited Kingsborough Community College, which lies near the ocean.  My friend's spouse (a senior citizen) was a student at the college.

Trees were waking up after the winter although some had been killed by the storm. Spring is the time of renewal and rebirth, and at the time, I blogged:

"This past Sunday, we visited the campus of Kingsborough County Community College in Manhattan Beach (one of the many neighborhoods in the New York City borough of Brooklyn) for their annual Spring Concert.

Kingsborough County Community College is considered one of the top five community colleges in the United States.  One of the perks springtime students enjoy is the ability to use a private beach on the campus - what could be more perfect than a New York City college campus with its own beach?

Well, not when a Superstorm like Sandy hits.

 Meanwhile, at the concert auditorium, people were arriving, many of them (and many of the musicians) senior citizens.  I heard more than one friend greet another with tales of losing their homes or apartments.  That story is all too familiar to me, in my area of upstate New York, due to our own flooding in September, 2011.  But our flood was river water, not the ocean.

Two choruses performed - the "Day Chorus" of day students and volunteers, and the "Night Chorus" of night students and volunteers.  One of my friends is a member of both choruses.  We were also treated to the Brooklyn Wind Ensemble and Concert Band.

There were a number of songs with a religious theme, or "river" imagery (as in "crossing over to the other side").   One song in particular, Arlo Guthrie's "Valley to Pray", was an absolute pleasure to listen to, as was a medley of song from Les Miserables.

In the aftermath of Sandy, it just seemed surreal to sit in that audience.  But, after all, life doesn't stop after a disaster - nor should it."

In December of 2018, I visited a different section of Brooklyn.  A cousin drove my spouse and I around to different areas of the borough on Christmas Day after we watched a movie in Kings Plaza.

This area, called Geritssen Beach, was not supposed to be greatly impacted by Sandy.  No mandatory evacuation order was issued this area suffered a lot of damage.  By Christmas Day 2018 things looked a lot better.

But, with all disasters, the memories remain, as they will for people who experienced Ida, Ian, and many other storms since Sandy.

Speaking of memories, it's time to pay tribute to the late Jerry Lee Lewis. Lewis died yesterday at the age of 87.  A greatly talented man with several hits in 1956-58, he also entered into a controversial (what an understatement) marriage to a cousin who was only 13 years old at the time.  It collapsed his career for years, but it's also true that he was one of the founding parents of rock n'roll music. 

Lewis was also one of the first inductees into the Rock & Hall of fame, in their first year (1986).  On October 16,  he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. 

I decided to post a couple of videos today to acknowledge the passing of this great musical talent of my youth.  First,  "Great Balls of Fire".

Finally, a live performance from 1964 of  "Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On".

RIP.