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.

Zoo #AtoZChallenge #blogboost #MusicMovesMe

I never thought that the end of my January trip to Florida would result in a trip into my early childhood.  But it did, in one of those "it's a small world" events.

We were on the Auto Train, preparing to head back to Virginia.

We were just about ready to leave the Sanford, Florida station when the woman sitting in front of me struck up a conversation.  It was her first trip on the Auto Train, and, since I had ridden it several times, she started to ask me some questions.

We were chatting as the train began to move.  We were about five minutes out, maybe even less.

Suddenly she started to yell, "Did you see that? Did you see that?"

Not what we saw on the Auto Train- Riverbanks Zoo, Columbia, South Carolina August 2017

"I saw giraffes!  They were just there, walking alongside the tracks!"

I thought about it for a minute, wondering if she was hallucinating, but then remembered that there is a zoo near Sanford, Florida (The Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Gardens). 

I've always loved zoos - I know not everyone does, for various reasons.

I was born in the Rockaways, in Queens, one of the boroughs of New York City, but grew up in the Bronx, another borough.  An aunt used to take me, several times a year, to the Bronx Zoo.  I loved being with her, and loved visiting the zoo.  I had my favorite exhibits, she had hers, and we always had a good time.

Hearing my train friend's accent, I suspected my train mate was from New York City, too.

I asked my seat mate (one row ahead of me) where she lived.  And she said "in Queens, in a development called Arverne by the Sea."

What were the chances?

 My first home, as a baby, was located blocks from Arverne by the Sea.  What were the odds, out of everyone who travels on the Auto Train, to find someone who lived in my birth neighborhood? 

The zoo was far in the past by now. We were on our way back home.

Lake Myra, Florida

The train traveled on, as the sun started to set in Satsuma, Florida.

The rising sun tinted the eastern sky red as we passed through Richmond, Virginia the next morning.
Truly homeward bound, as visions of Bok Gardens, Lake Wales, January flowers, St. Petersburg, Madeira Beach, manatees, seabirds, gulf sunsets, Ybor City, and now giraffes, danced through my memory.

But I'm not done yet.  After all, this is Monday and it's time for #MusicMovesMe, a Musical Train that leaves the station every Monday.

Who are the 4Mers who participate?

The Head 4M'er (Engineer) is XmasDolly.  Her co-conductors are:  Callie of JAmerican Spice, (who is on hiatus but is always welcome back once she is able to conduct once again) and ♥Stacy of Stacy Uncorked♥   Also,  Cathy from Curious as a Cathy.  And, ahem...a special announcement - guess who is the newest conductor?

Yours truly - me! (Thank you, fellow conductors!)  So...with thank you's out of the way....
Time for songs beginning with "Z".

Scorpions - The Zoo

OK, technically, this 1967 song by one of my all time favorites, Simon and Garfunkel, is called At the Zoo, but I am counting it as a "Z" song.

Zoot Suit Riot by the Cherry Poppin' Daddies.  I have to admit, I am also partial to the satiric version by Weird Al Yankovic called Grapefruit Diet.

Zombie - a current song by Bad Wolves.

And now, once more, thank YOU, 4Mers, for voting me the latest conductor for Music Moves Me.  will strive to carry out my conducting responsibilities.

On that note I end the April 2018 Ultimate Blog Challenge #blogboost, and the Blogging from #AtoZChallenge.  On May 7 we are supposed to blog a retrospective post, but since that is a Monday, I will do it sooner. 

Thank you for taking the train ride with me, and joining me on the trip through Florida - Outside the Theme Parks that was my A to Z theme.

Why not join me daily, and enjoy my other offerings?

Thank you for reading!

Queens (My First Home) #AtoZChallenge

I was born in Queens, a borough of New York City.  I moved to the Bronx when I was five months old, and have only been back to Queens a handful of times. 

From where I grew up in the Bronx, in a family without a car (common back then), it was a long ride on the subway.

Some of our visits were during the New York World's Fair in 1964, which I will blog about in my "W" post.

March 2014

I had one memory of my babyhood - the name of the housing project I lived in and the street it was on (from something my parents told me growing up).  So I decided I would do a search, traveling through time and space, for my first home.

Let's take a little virtual trip.

First, here are some pictures of my native borough (not where I lived).

There is a large Asian population in Queens.

Where the New York Times is printed.

Jacob Riis Park - one day I will visit it.  There is plenty of water recreation in New York City - New York City is so much more than skyscrapers and museums.  I am not sure, but this may not be that far away (as a bird would fly) from where I was born in the Rockaways.

And now, we arrive at our destination.  I am seeing this, with you, for the first time.

I was able to find pictures of the housing project where I lived the first five months of my life in the Library of Congress online.  There were no known restrictions on the rights, so I am taking a chance in posting it.  This picture was taken about five months before I was born.  Who knows, perhaps my pregnant mother was in one of those buildings at the time.

I was able to find, on You Tube, videos of what the housing development has become.  It is not a happy thing.  I can be grateful I escaped more than 60 years ago.

Again, some journeys do not end well, but all it did was confirm something I had suspected.

Once again, traveling through time and space for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

The Pigeon Commuters

As I blogged about over two years ago, I have never seen the neighborhood of my birth in the Queens borough of New York City.  And now, I never may.


Many of us have seen the "after" pictures of the Rockaways.  The wrecked buildings, the people still without power, the neighborhood that neither the City, the State nor FEMA quite know what to do about.

But, thanks to a MSNBC commentator, I got to see the "before", of families frolicking on the beach, of surfers riding the subway, of pigeons that have learned to ride the A train over Jamaica Bay.  The pigeons commute, the easy way, from the Rockaways to the mainland.

I wanted to share this with you, because this is another New York City the tourist will never know.

And, sadly, perhaps, I will never know it either.
Arverne, on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens, suffered its share of damage from Hurricane Sandy.  And now, it is starting to develop sinkholes.  Part of the neighborhood may end up in a sinkhole.  The other part may mold away.  Sounds pretty grim, doesn't it.


Not exactly. What ever happened to the Arverne by the Sea development I mentioned in my 2010 blog post?

You may not believe it, and this gives a lot of us hope.  Perhaps there is hope for the Rockaways. Arverne, one of the grittier parts of this pennisula, may help show the way.

Destruction or hope?  I don't envy the residents of the Rockaways, but I am glad that I was, in a very small way, part of their neighborhoods once upon a time.

Tomorrow - whatever happened to Red Hook?