As I write this I am a world away from the City I love. A City whose devastating storm has dominated global headlines.
I am in Sydney. Its TV news telecasts, all 24 hours of it, have been dedicated to New York City. Travel two days to Earth’s end, turn on your wall-size flat screen HD in Australia, and Sky News is wall-to-wall New York’s WABC Channel 7, and you’re watching Chris Christie, Diane Sawyer and other familiar faces talking about Queens, New Jersey and Manhattan streets.
As this gets printed, I am hoping to be on a two-day flight back. Hoping. That is, if the stacked-up canceled planes are allowed their previously assigned departure times and landing slots.
Minus getting to the airport here, it’s another 15 hours to LA. Then three hours between Customs and changing LAX terminals from international to domestic. Then the ride home. If there’s a ride home.
The driver scheduled to pick me up at Newark can’t. A friend with connections to an out-of-town car service promised to organize my ride home. That is, if my scheduled ETA is permitted to keep its schedule.
By the time you read this I, hopefully, shall be in NYC.
On this journey with me is Geoffrey Weill, the international travel p.r. man, whose little children are in New Jersey. They’re without power. In my immediate circle, many lack all electricity, including cells. I can’t reach them. They can’t connect to me.
On his own, with a super-key, the building’s superintendent unlocked my apartment. His worry was to remove outdoor furniture — tables, chairs, pots, trees — from crashing into glass doors and windows or from tumbling over the parapet onto those below. A nearby friend had outdoor chairs smash right into her living room.
Opening my door triggered its alarm system and routed Central Security’s police station. Doormen, elevator men, housekeepers were called.
Everyone tried to reach everyone. However, no one could immediately get to me. In apparent sympathy with the problem, my e-mail laid down altogether and stopped work.
Helpless, panicked, obsessing about my hometown and those close to me while monitoring it on television 11,000 miles away was painful.
A lone salvation was prayer for everyone’s survival everywhere. Psalm 139: “If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me.”
New York is the ultimate survivor. The Aussies talk to me about coming to our City. To visit. To see. To live. To do business. Our killer storm dominated its TV news. They say New York survived 9/11. We say New York always survives.
2003, Staten Island ferry crash. 2009, US Airways plane into the Hudson drink.
1996, Second Avenue Deli’s Abe Lebewohl shooting. 1984, Bernie Goetz subway gunman shooting. 1980, John Lennon shooting. 1976, Son of Sam terrorizing the city. 1975, America’s historic Fraunces Tavern bombed.
De Niro survived his apartment fire. Manhattan survived Conan leaving Manhattan. So far the verdict’s still out on whether we can live through that mall which turned Broadway into Rockaway.
Not sure either about our glorious gorgeous once-gracious Plaza turning into a crappy hotel/rooming house.
But we got through losing Checker cabs, hackies who speak a little English, the Madison Square Garden renovation and the St. Vincent’s Hospital desecration.
Anybody remember back to when the Second Avenue Subway was announced???
1993, let no one forget the WTC bombing. The 2003 blackout.
Listen, the Dodgers we lost permanently, and the Yankees we just lost temporarily. About A-Rod better we shouldn’t speak.
Also about the forever to be forgotten non “Rebecca” musical, nobody should talk. About Pedro Espada going up the river, not even his family’s little Espadalets should talk.
Tavern on the Green going into the toilet? The Pan Am building’s name going poop? Forget it. Excuse the expression “Spider-man: Turn Off the Show,” even they should forget it.
Anybody remember the 1977 blackout? Times Square minus bike lanes? And whateverthehell happened to Shea Stadium?
We had the Times Square car bomber. The attempted Federal Reserve Building bomber.
How about when the Second Avenue Subway project began?
OK, I missed the Titanic sinking and 1911’s Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, but did we not so far survive Bloomberg’s ban on smoking and salt and sugar? And his giving the kosher sign to dinky-sized sodas?
There’s the Russell Crowe telephone-throwing caper. The Naomi Campbell housekeeper-smacking operation. Lindsay Lohan Stickyfinger, who’s a native New Yorker. Fellow New Yorker Paris Hilton, who deserves an Oscar because she already had Tom, Dick and Harry.
And there’s always the Second Avenue Subway.
New York, I love you. Please let me get home.