Life Goes On In Brooklyn Heights, But So Many Remain In Need

Such a feeling of helplessness... even guilt... is overtaking me, as so many friends continue to try and put their lives back together in Manhattan. Below 39th Street, they are still without electricity, water, often cut off from news about public transportation and the most important: when power will return (ConEd has offered assurances that the majority will have electric by the weekend).

Here in Brooklyn Heights, life is resuming... Kids were out last night for Halloween, businesses are again open, restaurants are packed with locals and people are out and about... relieved, thankful... We are so very fortunate.

Neighborhoods on both sides of me—DUMBO and Red Hook—were decimated by flooding, with businesses suffering millions of dollars in losses and faced with the time-consuming and painful process of rebuilding... Residential buildings were also flooded, cutting folks off from being able to navigate their way to food, shelter... to get out.

And of course there's the devastation in Hoboken and Jersey City and so much of New Jersey... and the 80 homes leveled to their foundations by fire in Breezy Point, Queens. Never has so much of the tri-state area been so impacted by a natural disaster.

Thank god for our strong and capable New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and for President Obama's swift and capable leadership. God, where would we be if Romney were Prez? The very notion makes me shutter...

Back here at home, because of my ongoing living room renovation, which has turned my home upside down, I can't even invite my friends in need to stay with me, where they might recharge their phones, their laptops... and their lives. I have to say, even though I live a mere 10 minutes from Manhattan here in Brooklyn Heights, I have never felt so far away. *