Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
“New York is as beautiful and diverse and glorious as an old-growth forest. It’s as grand, in its unplanned tumble, as anything ever devised by man or nature. And now, I fear its roots are being severed.” – Climate change journalist Bill McKibben, writing for the Guardian.
Chilling.
911 is receiving 20k calls an hour; normal is 2k/hr.
The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel is flooded.
The Gowanus Canal flooded its banks (that’s a Superfund site, folks, hugely toxic).
Much of Manhattan has no power. More than a quarter of a million people don’t.
The Carousel in DUMBO was breached.
Long Island is under several feet of water, as is the Jersey Shore. My niece reports 42″ on the ground floor of my sister’s house in Bellmore.
Five people have already died.
The NYC Subways may be closed for a week or longer; there’s 4′ of sea water in the tunnels.
On the other side of the world, a storm has killed 30 people in Viet Nam and the Philippines.
People gathered in Times Square with a massive sign that said END CLIMATE SILENCE.
Mayor Bloomberg’s Spanish is really, really terrible.
Love to you all on the East Coast. Stay safe.
Stay safe, East Coast. Please do all report in as often as possible, please.
The NYT is posting a new photo every minute.
The most extraordinary description of this storm – from a weatherman who claims not to be prone to hyperbole – is here.
There’s this messed up news about the possibility of the Gowanus Canal flooding into Brooklyn.
You can even watch various live feeds in & around NYC.
And NCTE has put out a great guide (pdf) for trans people in the midst of these kinds of storms – basic information on emergency shelters, contact numbers, and lists of supplies that wouldn’t be on most guides for hurricane preparedness.
Love to all my friends & family on the East Coast. I hope this doesn’t suck half so much as it sounds like it’s going to.
Sorry I didn’t post this past week: I went to NYC for a few days to see my mom in the hospital & to go see this guy:
It’s been 20 years since the last time I saw him live, and it was amazing.
Just go ahead & bite me if you have a problem with NYC being the best place in the world.
(Thanks to my colleague Monica Rico for the suggestion.)
Starting the drive home tomorrow, and know I’m going to cry for the first hour we’re driving away. I’ve had an absolutely amazing time, managed to run into one person completely accidentally whom I’d lost touch with, and saw so many others who have renewed my love for humankind.
Thank you, New York. You may not be the same city I’ve always loved, but you’re still goddamned amazing, for the sights, but mostly for the people in it.
Bowie, Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias on SNL back in ’79. This was one of the first live performances I ever saw on SNL – I think a sibling let me stay up when mom & dad were out – and it blew my 10 year old mind.
Ah, the late 70s. I’m still not really a Bowie fan, but I do of course appreciate his genderiness back in the day. Klaus Nomi is still a loss, as far as I’m concerned, & I’ve seen Joey Arias perform quite a lot of times.
It’s a rare thing for me to post anything about kids, but I keep going back to my friend Jill’s blog Supergoodybag because it’s so pretty. It’s fashion for kids and Jill has a really great eye for gender neutral clothes that are still cool.
She’s also styled Beyonce, if you need more recommendation.
She is on Facebook as well, of course.
It’s now the tallest building in NYC. & About fucking time.