{"id":14813,"date":"2012-11-04T16:21:12","date_gmt":"2012-11-04T21:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=14813"},"modified":"2012-12-03T18:10:28","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T23:10:28","slug":"hurricane-sandy-postlude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2012\/11\/04\/hurricane-sandy-postlude\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Sandy: Postlude (1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A.<\/a>To those who’ve called and emailed (and those who haven’t): Thanks for your queries, and your concern.<\/p>\n

First of all, we \u2014 myself, my wife Anna, her son\/my stepson Jacky, and our two cats, Billie and Mini \u2014 survived this hurricane unscathed, and are all fine.<\/p>\n

Second, our house, on a small hill, sustained no damage at all, nor did most of our immediate neighbors suffer a major hit \u2014 though we’re not far from the coastline of Staten Island. A missing storm window here, a few shingles ripped off there. More good luck.<\/p>\n

However, for reasons known only to our electrical power provider, Con Edison, the houses on the odd-numbered side of the street for a three-block stretch that includes us remains without power, and thus without heat. Our lights went out at 7:15 p.m. on Monday, October 29. As of this writing, they’re still out. Unofficial word is that they may come on today, Sunday, 11\/4. Officially, that may not happen till 11\/9 \u2014 next Friday.<\/p>\n

So the houses across the street have power and heat, as do the houses behind us on the other side of our block. But not us. We have running water, and a gas stove, so we can cook, boil hot water for washing and hot water bottles, and make do.<\/p>\n

Five blocks away, down at the Stapleton shoreline (and all along the cusp called the North Shore), there was great devastation. A surge of water flooded the homes, stores, and park down there. And the eastern coast of the island, the area called South Beach, got hit by a major surge, a mini-tsunami, that did terrible damage. Of the 41 reported deaths in NYC attributed to Sandy so far, 19 happened on Staten Island.<\/p>\n

\"Faking<\/a>We managed to get into Manhattan via a circuitous route on Thursday for a symposium Friday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for which I delivered the keynote. Titled “Truth, Lies, and Photographs,”<\/a> the symposium was organized by curator Mia Fineman in conjunction with two concurrent exhibitions there, “Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop”<\/a> and “After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age.”<\/a> (The Met will post videos of all the talks sometime soon.) Courtesy of a friend of the museum, we had two warm nights in a lovely apartment on East 79th St., coming home Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, we’re coping. I’m writing this at, and sending it from, our local internet caf\u00e9, since without electricity I can’t get online from our home office, or use our landline phone. (Our local public library also has free wifi, and Anna has a cellphone; thus we’re not entirely incommunicado.) So we’re chilly at home, and dealing with some inconvenience, but not in danger.<\/p>\n

Thanks again for worrying about us. It could have been much worse for us \u2014 and was for many. So we count our blessings.<\/p>\n

I’ll likely do a longer report on the hurricane and our experiences next week, after the election.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

This post\u00a0supported by a donation from\u00a0the Estate of Lyle Bong\u00e9<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First of all, we \u2014 myself, my wife Anna, her son\/my stepson Jacky, and our two cats, Billie and Mini \u2014 survived this hurricane unscathed and are all fine. Second, our house, on a small hill, sustained no damage at all, nor did most of our immediate neighbors \u2014 though we’re not far from the coastline of Staten Island. A missing storm window here, a few shingles ripped off there. More good luck. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[693],"class_list":["post-14813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-history","tag-hurricane-sandy","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}