When I imagined the exciting life in New York I didn’t count on it including an earthquake and a hurricane in the same week!
To be fair, the earth didn’t move for me the way it obviously did for others. I was strolling along a street at lunchtime and watching people stream out of buildings, all looking upward, and I just thought it was a coordinated fire alarm exercise. So I was stunned when I returned to the office to learn that there’d just been an earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale.
I wish the impact of the hurricane was as mild.
After work on Friday I headed to Lincoln Center for an early session of a new film called Higher Ground
So now, 24 hours later, I’m typing this letter while holed up in my apartment on a Saturday evening, bracing for the hurricane to hit. I’ve got my water, food, candles, torch and ABC radio as the television here has no signal at present. Over a million people have been evacuated from New York in areas close to the water and the entire transport system has been shut down for the first time in New York history, including the airports being closed.
For the past 24 hours the common refrain when leaving a cab or saying goodbye to someone is ‘Be safe’. It’s said with a solemnity that in other circumstances would make me laugh out loud at the irony; this being the city where New York taxis drivers weave kamikaze style, where shootings are a daily occurrence, so too shooting up, sleeping rough and losing your job. I saw a man earlier in the week sitting on a bench with his head in his hands, holding on to his briefcase. He’d just been made redundant and had not a clue what to do, or what he would tell his family. The number of people sleeping on the streets seems higher each week and still… ‘Be safe’, people say. ‘Be safe’ people caution. ‘Be safe’, people whisper as they walk past the man sleeping in the corner of a hurricane zone.
Yet for some there is clearly a sense of ‘we’re in this together’. This morning a storm hit suddenly in the streets and I was drenched at the markets trying to wave down a cab. A gorgeous couple stopped and gave me a lift to my apartment. They were Japanese and their impeccable manners, responsiveness and generosity reminded me of a tea ceremony in motion. They both bowed to me as I got out of their car and I struggled to do their kindness justice as I did my own clumsy curtsy in the streets before skidding to shelter.
So, here I am…it’s night,…and literally the calm before the storm. I went out briefly, hoping to get an early copy of the weekend New York Times, returning empty handed and slightly sodden as the rains came. From now it will steadily build to a tropical storm and then the hurricane will hit early morn, due to last some 12 hours. Already 4 people have died in North Carolina and the radio is full of conjecture about the hurricane itself and the aftermath. Most shops are shut and most businesses will stay closed tomorrow and maybe Monday. Josh is in Chicago playing with some friends and so I guess he won’t now get back till later in the week. The other friends I have here are all out of New York and so I feel happy to have the radio for company and news.
We had a good week at work this week. We confirmed a substantial amount in grants and with the promise of more to come. I’ve been working with staff to write more proposals and I’m hoping now for some deeper engagement in terms of correlating the investment by donors to the increased number of poor and low-income women who are able to access savings funds in order to improve the quality of their lives. This will happen increasingly through women using alternative delivery channels including mobile phones and ‘mom and pop’ cafes, as they call them (essentially delis) allowing more women to not only sign up for, but retain their own savings account rather than deferring to their husbands and opting out due to not being mobile for a range of cultural and economic reasons. Mobile phones will increase women’s independence, confidence and self-reliance and thus allow them to save – including for their children’s education, to cover their health needs and to support their own potential.
In the hope of having a wider voice, I’ve signed up for an OpEd course here in New York in September. This is something organized by US senior editors (from New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune et al) as a one day program being offered in three US cities. The intention is to get more women who are involved in addressing social issues to learn the skills to write effective pieces for the Opinion pages and to get these articles published.
So, now it’s Sunday. I’ve slept through the hurricane and when I wake and look outside I can see water flowing along the empty streets below. The lifts aren’t working and so I walk down six floors to get my copy of the Times. We’ve been warned to return to our homes for the second round of the hurricane, due soon. There seems to be only one other occupant in my apartment building and New York is like a ghost city, nary a person around. It’s peaceful eating breakfast and reading the Times and I can feel some of my energy rushing back from the reprieve of stopping and staying in one place for a while. News reports of 14 dead, over a million evacuated and wide-spread flooding. No transit system fully operational until Tuesday and most workplaces shut down till then.
Later, I wander down to the streets again. There’s a woman of indeterminate age with a blanket in her arms and a scarf around her head. She’s kneeling on the pavement and at first I think she’s praying, then I think she’s keeling over in pain…I move closer…she’s got chalk in her hand and is scratching out a word…it’s so close to Arthur Stace’s iconic chalk-marked ‘Eternity’ from 60s Sydney that I think I’m dreaming…and yet the word ends up being closer to that indomitable belief that the spirit of New York, and of New Yorkers, will endure no matter what kind of disaster strikes…she finishes writing ‘Eternal’ then slowly, painfully, she gets up, fist holding chalk, and walks on.
Jane Sloane