Amita Guha wrote:
> So how did everyone fare in the blackout?
> ....
> Anyway, hope everyone in the Northeast is ok....
>
> Amita
Well, my 'hood was the last in the city to get the power back... (9 pm
EST). I was home, luckily,
when it hit. Had it occurred 30 minutes later I'd have been having to crawl
up out of the subway.
Here is what I wrote to that OTHER list I'm on (no no, not the darkside,
just the SCRABBLE list)
With a note or two in [ ] 's for you not in the know about the Scrabble
refs.
"The lights finally came back on in my neighborhood at 9:07 pm, yes pm, EST.
Today
August 15, 2003.
When the lights went out here at 4:11 , yesterday, August 14th,
I was mending a tile bag on my silly little Singer Tiny Tailor sewing
machine...
about to gather my gear to head for club [Scrabble club 56 of WORD FREAK
fame]
Never occurred to me the outage was more widespread than a few blocks.
Reason:
a transformer had caught on fire twice on the exact street where I live
twice in the
past year, and Im near the Con Ed 14th St plant that had a serious fire last
year as well. So
i was delighted to be headed out and uptown where, of course, there would be
no problems.
Hehe.
The previous outages this past year had oddly affected only part of my
apartment - so when ALL the rooms, the tv, the fridge,etc went out I figured
it was a bit
broader in scope. But it wasn't until I went outside and heard someone say
it was city wide did I
abandon the plan to go to club. Then I tried to use the cell phone. Forget
that.
Fortunately, I'm old fashioned enough to have a "real"phone that works
without
electricity. So I called friends I knew would be home and who didnt' live
in NY,
hoping to get news from somewhere the lights were still on.
They live south of Cleveland.
" The power is out here, can you tell me anything that is being said on tv?"
(I didn't have batteries in my boom box - that wont happen again.)
"The power is out here too" came the reply.
O dear.
And then it seemed like there would be a mini disaster in the midst of the
obvious
one, that had relevance only to our little [SCRABBLE} world. The curse of
the All Stars. Who wasn't
going to get there? Was it still on? {The Scrabble ALL STARS tourney being
held as I write in
PRovidence, RI with coverage by ESPN for an hour long broadcast in the fall
- it has been an
event plagued by nail-biting changes of dates and venues which was thrown
together back
when it looked like it would be a very bad idea for some to travel to
Malasia for the World
Championships]
Reached a friend north of Boston by phone he said eastern Mass and Rhode
Island were not
affected. Phew. I've since heard a couple of stories of how a few of the
participants had
paired up to travel by car.
It was a bit frustrating to hear Mayor (expletives deleted) Bloomberg going
on about how
everything was going to be fine real soon and hear the surprise in my
friend's voices from
outside of New York when they called and referred to the outage in the past
tense while I stumbled
around in the dark.
For those of you how don't know me or where I live, I have to say that I'm a
bit too close
geographically to ground zero and was here when it happened. So this little
outage
was (pardon me, Marlon) a cakewalk by comparison. [Marlon HIll, famous star
Scrabble player
who once boasted that after the 1996 Nationals (where he came in 2nd) that
the tournament
he was next to play in would be a "cakewalk" by comparison. It wasn't and
he has gotten teased
a lot about that statement ever since.] But it did give one pause.
Last night, after a comical turn that I wont go into now, I secured
batteries for my
radio so that at least I could listen to the dulcet tones of Melissa Block
discussing this
event on NPR and felt a bit more comforted because I was listening to
someone I knew and
liked, when I couldn't reach close friends by phone. I wondered if Stefan
[Stefan Fatsis, WORD
FREAK author, WSJ writer, NPR sports commentator and Melissa's husband]
had already departed for Providence for his stint as commentator of "our"
big event, and regretted
that Club 56 couldn't meet the night before fearless leader went off to the
fields of battle.[
[CLUB 56 director Joel Sherman is the reigning National Scrabble Champ]
HOpe all of you who are in the places that have had even worse are doing
ok.
I feel very lucky I don't live in a high rise and our building always had
water.
And I had a good excuse not to do any work. It wasn't as much fun as the
other two
famous power outs for me (1965 resulted in a wonderful romantic tryst and
1977 resulted in a satisfying photo shoot.) but it did serve as another
reminder of how lucky one is to just have the simple things in life. Ice,
AC, a roof over
ones head, light all night if you want it, connection with people all over
the world
by this machine in front of me, and friends who call the make sure you are
ok.
But I'll never be without extra batteries in the house and extra ice in the
fridge!
Now I eagerly await the reports from Providence, even if it is "only a game"
:)"
I loaded up my darkside camera yesterday but didn't click once... somehow I
just couldn't get into
it.
The neighborhood had a great spirit - everyone being so relieved to find
that it was ONLY a
power outage. Many of the young people coming in from out of town to attend
NYU close by
were taking it not only in stride but finding it an adventure. And the
'hood's older folk
always had tales to share of the _other_ blackouts.
Since there can never be enough light for me, the hardest part was the
darkness - so I
taped a small flashlight to my sunvisor and made an mining cap for myself.
And it was
nice to look up in the sky and see stars and Mars :)
But it awfully nice to be cool again!
annsan
annsan
