Tuesday. Did not rise with the dawn, but with a knock on the door by one of the neighbors. The electricity and cell are still out and the radio is bringing news of all sorts of disasters. Of course those in the group that were fanatic TV watchers were completely deprived of all visuals that the rest of you no doubt were watching. The following was missed: the mangled crane hanging atop the building on 57th street, literally blowin’ in the wind; the ConEd transformer blowing up on E 14th Street, a most unexpected and impacting occurrence; the views of the Village from the air showing it all dark the previous night and now sparsely populated. From our view we watched what little traffic there was navigate without stop lights, the flower shop across the street opened and set up a card table in front of their door. They began selling candles, batteries, flashlights all for cash and were doing a land office business. As the morning turned to afternoon and more and more residents took to the street to walk, this was the only available place for tens-of-blocks to purchase anything. And strollers like to shop. It was obvious that the day was going to be a long one, but I found two things utterly amazing: 1. we all had water! I don’t know how or why, but the water continued to flow into each and every apartment. If one is in the country, the pump that moves the water from the well to the house, runs on electricity, and hence the need for a bathtub full of water in each bathroom. Not here. So if you have water, you are already way ahead of the game. The next thing, #2 is the gas stove in each apartment. One match-strike and you have hot pots with water, soup, popcorn, tea or coffee water; there is no limit to what can be cooked. And the more items in the now-not- functioning-refrigerator, the more interesting the choices. However, all of that in-house activity does begin to fade as time wears on. There is no theatre, no auditions, no classes, no mail, no laundry, and all the other things that take up everyone’s day in activities. So having reached my point of cabin fever, I went outside and cleaned the sidewalk for 40 feet from the building to the curb. I had seen street cleaning machines coming and going up the street and hoped they would do ours. Also it was clear that people are more respectful when the sidewalk is cleared. Otherwise it is too easy to drop that paper cup, plastic bag, dog poop, it all gets lost in the pile of debris. It felt good, that swinging motion of raking leaves, shoveling snow. Night fell quickly and when there is no ambient light, it is really dark. It is cloudy apparently and so no benefit from the apparently full moon. [the place where I am writing this is closing… so more to come]