A Public Outcry Against Fracking In New York

On Wednesday, January 9, nearly 2,000 people rallied against fracking outside of Governor Cuomo's State of the State Address, in Albany, New York.

Folks  danced, chanted, shouted, drummed, and waved signs.  Pete Seeger sang, the Reverend Billy Talen shook and shouted halleluyah, Sandra Steingraber, Debra Winger, and Natalie Merchant spoke.  Voices of the thousands rang out loudly for hours.

Activists called for a permanent ban on fracking in the state of New York.

Geologists, chemists, biologists, and medical doctors argue that fracking is a threat to public health, will produce hazardous air and water pollution, and will endanger the state’s food supply.  It will contribute negatively to Climate Change, according to Phil Aroneanu, campaign director of 350.org.  Of additional concern to many, as reported by Treehugger and the New York Times, among others, is the release of dangerous radiaoactive materials into the ecosystem through the fracking process.  As of now, the gas industry has no means or plan to contain such radioactive waste.

The rally was inspired and led by those who are concerned, in particular, about the revised DEC's fracking regulations, issued at the end of November, 2012, and before the completion of health and science studies called for by Governor Cuomo, to determine the safety of hydraulic fracturing in New York.

Katherine Nadeau of the Environmental Advocates of New York points out:

“Issuing revised regulations before the science or health studies are in is a reversal by the Governor, who once pledged to let the science drive decision-making on fracking. We’re calling on the Governor to put the public over the gas industry’s profits—let the health and environmental reviews proceed without artificial deadlines, and let the science guide the process.”

Here Sandra Steingraber, with Pete Seeger, explains her position on Fracking at the rally:

The public comment period on these regulations began on December 12, and ended on January 11, 2013.  This gave the public a very short period of time to read and digest these complex regulations--during the holidays, and after Hurricane Sandy.  Regardless, fracktivists jumped quickly to action, with a call to all New Yorkers to participate in a massive letter writing campaign-- Thirty Days of Fracking Regulations--led by Sandra Steingraber and Grassroots Environmental Education.  Many other grassroots fracktavist groups followed suit with their own fracking regulation letter-writing campaigns.

In total, 204,000 individual letters critiquing the regulations were hand delivered to the office of the DEC on January 11, by Sandra Steingraber, Sean Lennon, Yoko Ono and others.

On January, 10, following the rally, a public hearing to address the concerns of scientists, physicans, economists, environmentalists, and other citizens regarding the DEC's revised fracking regulations took place in Albany, New York.   Politicians were sympathetic to the many concerns of those who spoke.

Here is the text of Sandra Steingraber's words at the hearing:

My name is Sandra Steingraber. I am Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the Department of Environmental Studies at Ithaca College. My Ph.D. is in biology, and I have spent the last twenty years researching and writing in the field of environmental health. I have served as a science advisor at both the state and national level, working with the state of California on its research program to investigate the causes of breast cancer and with both the National Action Plan on Breast Cancer under the Clinton Administration and President’s Cancer Panel under George W. Bush.

I’m here to speak today as a founding member of Concerned Health Professionals of New York. This is a group of scientists, physicians, and nurses that came together last fall, in a spirit of shared alarm, when we learned that the DEC’s study of the health effects of fracking—which we had long asked for—was not going to be conducted using any normative protocols nor in an open manner, which is also normative for public health inquiries.

A normative protocol for a health study that attempts to forecast the public health risks of a polluting activity that has not yet been approved is called a comprehensive Health Impact Assessment. It was designed by our nation’s Centers for Disease Control and is endorsed by the World Health Organization. An HIA has, as one of its fundamental elements, democracy. It is scoped and carried out in a transparent manner and with the participation of the public at every stage. This participation takes the form of public hearings and periods of public commentary. It does so out of the recognition that when the public is being asked to endure possible risks to its health from a polluting industry, the public has the right to witness and participate in the study that will help determine the decision-making as to whether to permit or prohibit this industry.

In addition, when the lay public contributes its own local and historical knowledge to an environmental health study, the study design is better for it. Public participation makes for better science.

What is going on right now with the so-called health study underway at DEC and DOH is the very opposite of that public spiritedness. The DEC has, under the cover of secrecy, scoped and carried out a health review of some kind that no member of New York’s scientific community has seen. This review is itself being reviewed by DOH chief, Dr. Shah, and a team of three distinguished public health experts from out of state. We do not know what this team has been asked to review, but we do know that two of the three of them have signed contracts with non-disclosure agreements.

And we do know, from the introduction to the newly released regulations for hydraulic fracturing released by the DEC on November 29, that the decision whether or not to frack New York hangs on the results of these outside reviewers.

Thus does the health of 19.5 million New Yorkers depend on the results of a secret review of a secret review.

And thus, Concerned Health Professionals of New York came together. Not knowing what data the reviewers have been asked to comment on, we hastily created a website on which we uploaded all of the important reports and peer-review studies that we know of—from investigations of well casing failures to radioactivity in production brine (which is to be spread on our roadways). We also uploaded our many unanswered letters to DEC Commissioner Martens, DOC Commissioner Shah, and Governor Cuomo.

And I’d like to add here as an aside:  My 11-year-old son receives answers to his letters to the Governor. I never have. We share the same mailing address.

Concerned Health Professionals of New York also took the unusual step of creating an eight-minute video message to the three outside panelists in which we—doctors, nurses, and scientists—describe our long-standing, unaddressed concerns about fracking in New York State. We uploaded this as an embedded video. And then we emailed each of the reviewers to let them know that we had created this website repository of data for them, out of our concern that the document that they are reviewing—whatever it is—does not address itself to all the animating issues.

Can I just say how crazy this feels to us? These three outside experts are our colleagues. Two of the three are personal friends of mine. We have spoken together on panels and at conferences. They share data with me. I cite their research in my writings. And now a gag order prevents them from speaking to me about data that I as a New York scientist am not allowed to see.

The leak last week to the press of what looks to be an old draft of this health review turns our alarm into full-blown cynicism. This eight-page document contains no data. It is a series of assertions that seems to say that the health effects of fracking are unknown and unknowable by any future research. Therefore, regulations can mitigate them. Therefore, fracking is safe.

This is not sound scientific reasoning. The premises on which its logic rests cannot be evaluated because there are no citations or footnotes or references. Emerging evidence in the scientific literature flies in the face of its conclusions.

The DEC and DOH needs to be asked, “What is this document? Who wrote it? For what purpose? What are your sources?”

I’m aware that this Assembly has invited the DEC Commissioner to his hearing to explain himself—an invitation that he refused.  To justify the no-show, DEC spokesperson Emily DeSantis issued a statement pointing to the previous hearings attended by Commissioner Martens.

Concerned Health Professionals of New York condemns this statement. The refusal of the DEC to appear at this hearing and answer questions about the health review has not only broken Governor Cuomo’s promise of transparency, it has broken public trust itself.

Although New York citizens have been entirely cut out of the decision-making process on fracking, the public continues to have profound interest in participating in the inquiry and the decision-making process of fracking.

I know this because I designed a website to help people create comments on the revised draft regulations over the holidays. It’s called Thirty Days of Fracking Regs, and it takes an Advent calendar approach to public commentary. Each day, for the last 30 days, I have posted on this website one regulation, which I then translate into plainspoken English. I then provide some science relevant to that regulation. Because there is no final SGEIS to serve as the scientific basis for the regs, I did that research myself. I then invited the public to create a handcrafted comment about that regulation.

Tomorrow, I will be hand delivering all the comments that my readers and I created together. There are more than 20,000 of them. All are original and unique. As a metric of public commitment and concern, I would like to point out that 500 of them were written on Christmas Day. On New Year’s Day, more than 1000 comments came in. In addition, college students home on break devoted their free time to crafting comments as part of a group project called Homework Against Fracking.

These and other initiatives that have guided citizens through the comment-writing process means that we will hand-deliver to the DEC more than 200,000 comments tomorrow, January 11, which is the final day of comment delivery. We require a U-Haul to do so. And I understand that such a truck has already been rented.

I am asking you now to help ensure that each one of these comments is logged by the DEC, read, and considered.

Finally:  outside of Governor Cuomo’s State of the State address yesterday, more than 1,500 people protested against fracking. That event included a recitation of the Pledge to Resist Fracking in New York. The Pledge is a solemn commitment to engage in actions of non-violent protest and demonstration up to and including civil disobedience should the Governor greenlight fracking for New York under the undemocratic, fatally flawed decision-making process now underway. Prior to yesterday, more than 6,000 people had already signed this solemn pledge. I am one of them.

I dearly hope that we do not have to activate this pledge, that the signatures of thousands of New York citizens alone will have the power to move the Governor to the exit door.  But the very existence of the Pledge to Resist Fracking in New York is clear sign not only of loss of faith in the DEC but of loss of faith in government itself.

Governor Cuomo will make his decision regarding fracking in New York state in February, 2013.   New Yorkers hope he will do the right thing and put science, health and environmental safety before the economic profit of the gas industry.


Inspired by the many brave frackatvists in New York, I signed the Don't Frack New York pledge to "join with others to engage in non-violent acts of protest, including demonstrations and other non-violent actions, as my conscience leads me," if Governor Cuomo allows fracking to take place in the state.  As a mother, cancer survivor, and environmentalist, I pledge do my best to protect the land, water, air and food systems for the health and safety of present and future generations.

Pete Seeger Singing This Land Is Your Land at the Anti-Fracking Rally in Albany, New York

Here is Pete Seeger singing "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land," at Governor Cuomo's State of the State Address in Albany, New York, on January 9, 2013.  (Well, to be more accurate, not "at the address"--Pete was singing with the anti-fracking protesters right outside of where the Governor gave his speech).

Pete Seeger has spent his life working to save our water and earth.  He's 92 today, and still spreading his peaceful and environmental message.

Governor Cuomo, by contrast, forgot to talk about Fracking.  2,000 of us stood right outside where he gave his State of the State speech, with signs, songs, drums, and chants ablazing... We did not forget that our environment comes first.  Without clean water, soil, and air, even a good progressive agenda won't matter in the end. We cannot drink gas, or eat radioactive food, or survive global warming.   More to come in my next article on the full extent of this event and Fracking.  Stay tuned.

In the meantime, Good night Irene.  It was a long day and it's time for bed.

Dear Governor Cuomo: Won't you be an environmental Santa, too?

This morning I read Bill McKibben's article about the environmental Santa Claus, the Mayor of Seattle Mike McGinn, who has vowed to divest the city from fossil fuel investment.

What a lovely gift right before Christmas and New Year's!

I then received a holiday email letter from my very own Governor Cuomo.  Nothing personal, mind you, just the mass mailing to all New Yorkers.  

Still, how very nice to hear from him.

I took the opportunity to thank Governor Cuomo for thinking of me and all of us. 

So, call me greedy, but I also responded with my Christmas wish list (okay, I'm Jewish/Buddhist, and Santa doesn't come to my house, but I can dream, can't I?).  I'm not asking for gifts under the tree.  I'm asking for clean and safe air, water, food and products--free of toxic chemicals and radiation. I'm asking the Governor to fight climate change. I'm asking for a safe future for all children: a livable planet.  


Dear Governor Andrew Cuomo,

Thanks so much for your holiday letter.

You have an opportunity to do something really meaningful on this holiday.  Like the Mayor of Seattle, you can be an environmental Santa Claus, too.  Yes, you can help change the course of human and planetary history!  Yes, you can save us all!  

Here's my Christmas wish list.  Please:


1) Ban Fracking permanently in New York State.  Fracking pollutes, pollutes, pollutes--gas, chemicals, and uranium in our water.  No thanks!

2) Shut Down Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant (35 miles from NYC) before we have another Fukushima--this time, in a densely populated area of four million people.  Shut it down, please!

3) Divest all NY state funds from fossil fuel investment.  The ice caps are melting, the seas are rising, the weather is crazy.  Save NYC, NY State, and the world! 

4) Ban all assault weapons and hand guns in NY.  Gun control, now!

5) Support the Safe Chemicals Act and institute 'Safe Chemicals' legislation in NY.  Keep the toxins out of our products, air, water, and soil. Our bodies can't handle the burden of more poison.


Amen and thank you from all the children present and future. 

Yours truly,

Dr. Heidi Hutner


Feel free to copy my letter, or write your own.  If you live in a different state, adjust your letter as necessary to the needs of your location. Write to your own Governors and Mayors.  Their job is to protect, us, the citizens of the United States.  We have a right to clean and safe air, water, soil, products, and food.  Remind them!  Remind yourselves! Wouldn't it be nice to have a country full of environmental Santas protecting our safety and health? 

A Violent America, or The Hunger Games

The Northeast has suffered a lot this fall.  First there was Sandy, now the Newtown slaughter.  Many died in Sandy, and many continue to suffer from the storm.

This past week, in Connecticut, 27 people died violent deaths.  Twenty of these folks were small children.  It's inconceivable on the one hand, and yet children and innocent people are murdered every day throughout the U.S. Over 10, 000 human beings are killed yearly with handguns.

There have been 61 incidents of mass murder since Columbine in 1999.

I agree with Michael Moore, that the violence is about more than weak gun laws or mental health issues--although clearly both are problematic and I'm all for instating rigid gun regulations, and improving our mental health system.

Like Moore, I think the problem has to do with our culture.  We live in a land of glorified violence and meanness.  Turn on the TV, go to a Hollywood film, play a few internet games, listen closely to our language, and watch how our children do or don't play.  And, let's not forget our investment in wars and violence worldwide; we, the great American protectors, do a lot of killing on this planet.  Notice how much we spend on our weapons--including thousands of nuclear missiles set on hair trigger alert, even though the cold war is over.  We spend far more on the military than on education, the environment, and feeding and caring for the hungry and poor--all put together.

We are a violent nation.

Our culture of violence lives deeply in each and every one of us, and that is why our streets --even in "good" surburban neighborhoods--are empty of children playing.  We are all afraid.

Because of this fear, children have had the play taken out of them and this contributes to the cycle of violence.  We keep them inside, and/or busy with structured activities, because we're afraid for them, and yet, ironically, our children watch hours and hours of violent images on their computers, smart phones, and TVs.  We all know the statistics of how many deaths, rapes, and murders kids see each week on their screens.

Of course, there are the children of less privilege.  Shootings are nothing new to the kids from poorer neighborhoods.  They can't go outside without getting shot, every day, every hour.

No wonder our kids bully each other mercilessly.  And, no wonder the violence keeps escalating.  It's what popular culture represents as normal and acceptable.  Fear and violence are fun(ny) and entertaining.

A few examples:

Check out the popular reality show Dance Moms.  The entire drama centers around mothers and their shared dance teacher screaming at each other.  They have near-physical fights over dance parts for the girls.  The little girls sit quietly and watch their elders battle it out.

Harry Potter, everyone's favorite kid movie, is jam-packed with violence and edge- of-your-seat fear.

What about that other recent favorite --The Hunger Games--where children brutally and elaborately murder each other and only one--the most cleverly violent of all, survives?

I'm not just blaming Hollywood or the media, though.  I'm blaming all of us.

Maybe now, since Newtown and the murder of such young innocents, we'll wake up and work for effective change--legally and ideologically.  Obama and Congress, as well as all American citizens, must not ignore this issue anymore.  There's too much visible blood on everyone's hands.

Senator Richard Blumenthal says this is a "transformative moment."

President Obama says, "this violence must end" and, today, he pledges action.

As Van Jones points out regarding the climate crisis, change has to come from the top (politics and the legal system), the bottom (grassroots activism) and the inside (what I like to think of as the internal heart of our culture). The same goes for our crisis of violence.  We need our politicians to protect us from the weapons with gun laws and the elimination of imperialistic war-mongering.  We need activists to push for this change to happen.  And, the citizens of this nation need a change of attitude: from violence, hostility and anger, to tolerance, peace and love.  This might sound radical.  It is.

In the 1960s, a movement rose up, a movement of peace that drew on the work of Gandhi.  Peaceniks marched to end the Viet Nam war and advocated on behalf of widespread non-violence.  At the end of the war, they fought to eliminate nuclear weapons.  Peaceniks united with the Civil Rights movement to end racial violence as well.  They practiced non-violent methods of protest--if the police attacked them, they went limp.  Remember the famous photograph of the protester putting a flower in the nozzle of a weapon?

Their motto was: "Teach Peace."

They promoted love, tolerance, and understanding.  They said we must talk to each other, lay down our weapons, and learn effective and peaceful communication skills.

Parents stopped buying their children toy weapons.  They wanted to eliminate the idea of violence as acceptable even in play.

These folks stopped the Viet Nam War.  They helped to get rid of the Jim Crow and other racially discriminatory laws.

Isn't it about time we listened to their wisdom?

It's time to talk peace education in our schools, religious institutions and in our homes. It's time to rebuild our towns, cities, and nation, and re-envision what a truly "peaceful and sustainable community" might look like.

A terrific new student-lead peace project is the Teach Peace Initiative.  Get your kids, families, and schools involved in this one!

As David Roberts eloquently says in his piece at Grist about the Newtown massacre, we need to develop personal and cultural "empathy."  We must recognize that the children who were murdered in Newtown are "all of our children."

Ultimately, only when we hold each child on this earth in our hearts will deep and effective peaceful change arise.   In my mind, this also includes the ignored underprivileged children who are violated, raped, and killed every day across the globe.

If all children are all of our children, how can we think of building and selling weapons?  How can we start and fight wars?  How can we allow the poisoning and degradation of the biosphere?

So, as we bury and mourn the loss of these sweet innocents in Newtown, we must make our goal the widespread cultural development of compassion, empathy, and love-- and, finally, peace.

Leaf blowers

Next door: there are six men with leaf blowers. 

They have been blowing for two hours.   There were no leaves when they started.  There are no leaves when they are done.  They blew the all the leaves away several weeks ago after Sandy.  

Yet every week the men come and blow anyway.

I suppose they need the dollars to feed their families back home, but they're polluting the air and it is so loud.   

I want to cry for the earth, but I have no [more] tears.
I want to scream, but I don't.

The grass they walk on is new. 

A month ago the men pulled up the old grass and rolled out at a bright green carpet in its place and poured toxic liquid on top so it would be yet brighter.

Now I won't grow vegetables next summer, as the chemicals from next door will seep into my garden. 

What is to be done in America? 

We've lost our minds.

Disaster in Coney Island-Help is Needed Now

In the wake of writing my own Sandy story yesterday, I came upon a friend of a friend,  Eric Moed, and his work in Coney Island, post Hurricane.  What he speaks of echos the words of my students about elderly facilities they work at, and the town of Island Park, near Long Beach, which as been abandoned post Sandy.

This is an environmental justice story:  The poor, the elderly, the underprivileged, and the racially discriminated against are the hardest hit by such climate change disasters.  It is horrifying how our government turns a blind eye on the neediest.

They are receiving NO aid, food, or services.  NOTHING.

Bodies are piling up.

Occupy Sandy has come to the rescue, but they need our help, too.   Please share the following story far and wide.  The Occupy Sandy movement exhibits the very positive side of environmental and human rights activism:  love and caring.

Here are Eric Moed's chilling words:

I just graduated architecture school at Pratt Institute and go involved with Occupy Sandy when the hurricane hit. To be clear: I had absolutely nothing to do with Occupy Wall Street, nor did I even care for them too much. However Occupy Sandy has utilized the positive and successful aspects of OWS such as crowd-sourcing, press, and zero hierarchy/quick mobilization of people in line with one principal: to provide immediate and responsible mutual aid. Mutual aid differs from charity as it consists of community building- to help communities organize to help themselves.

I have been out in the Coney Island Housing Complexes (located at 2828 Neptune Avenue, Southern Coney Island) for a week now. Seven 18 hour work days with NO FEMA, NO Red Cross, No NYCHA, No NYC representatives.

There are ZERO agencies out in the Coney Island Housing, Odwire Gardens Housing or Surfside Houing right now. NO FEMA, NO RED CROSS, NO NYC HOUSING, NO AUTHORITIES WHATSOEVER. The FEMA tent is a 20 minute walk away. The Red Cross has BARELY been there [they sometimes send one truck for 15-20 buildings once or twice a day].

The only presence of bigger foundations/organizations is in the 'sexier' part of Coney Island, near the Cyclone, Nathans Famous and the Boardwalk- a 20+ minute walk from the NYCHA Housing Complexes.

Within the buildings there are:
There are elderly people stuck on the top floors in pitch-black conditions with NO FOOD AND WATER. Families with no food to feed their children. Mothers with no baby formula or wipes. Diabetics and asthmatics with no medicine. THERE HAS BEEN NO POWER, HEAT OR WATER FOR TWO WEEKS. Next to no one has flashlights and/or batteries.

My small crew of volunteers PERSONALLY gave out these goods to the above people in need and encouraged them with what little info and energy we had. We saw the issues first hand.

I am a coordinator for People's Relief- a group of normal citizens who saw a need and filled it. We are not Occupy Sandy but have been consistently working directly with them- using their amazing and organized resources.

More importantly People's Relief works DIRECTLY with the Presidents of the Coney Island Houses and the Odwire Houses. Today we used the community rooms in multiple buildings a relief sites- distribution for all necessities like food, water, batteries, baby supplies, feminine products ect. We expect to do this in more buildings.

All of the supermarkets and bodegas within a 15 minute walk of the above Housing have been flooded or looted. THERE IS NOWHERE NEAR THEM TO BUY FOOD.

We've seen the most traumatic things you can imagine: There are bodies being pulled out of buildings. Children sleeping on filthy flood-damaged floors. Resident's heating their homes using their stoves and poisoning themselves. Elderly people with no one to talk to living alone on an entire floor: nowhere to even defecate, let alone eat.

The staten Island Borough President said shortly after the storm: "The government is there to do for people what they cannot do for themselves." We pay our taxes- so WHERE ARE THEY?

Lastly, to state the severity of the absolute oversight of these tens-of-thousands of residents: An elderly woman said to me the other day- "Help! Are you from the Red Cross?"

I responded: "No, I'm from New York."


---

To get involved and help out, go to https://www.facebook.com/PeoplesRelief  for the latest information!  Your time and donations are deeply needed and appreciated.

Hurricane Sandy Diary

Hurricane Sandy Diary

Day 1.  I'm scared. The house is really dark. The phone no longer works. We light candles and I have a solar lamp if we need it.  This is the second storm like this in a year. It's my daughter and me. I'm texting my friends and family in California and they give me the news. I worry about the nuclear power plants along the east coast.  Will their generators hold out? What about flooding?  All through the night, the wind rages and we have no idea what's happening, where the storm is now. I hear more crashing outside. Earlier, I was saying my last words to my cousin in Brooklyn on the phone, and  there was a loud buzzing sound and a huge flash of light; that's when the power went out. A tree fell across a power line and the sky lit up.  No fire as far as I can tell from my windows. More texts from friends about Oyster Creek and Indian Point. My friend Stephen texts me from California and says it's the widest storm in history and we are at the center.  I imagine a white swirl covering us.  I wish there were more people in this house.  How many days will we be without power?  It could be a long time. Last time, it was 12 days.  What if it's longer?  How cold will we be?  I filled my car with gas today and the gas station was so busy I backed into something and broke my tail light.  We can leave, maybe, if we need to?  Where would we go? How far can one tank of gas take us? Long Island makes me feel claustrophobic. I hate when they close the bridges. I feel so stuck here.

Days 2, 3, 4. It's very cold here. Colder and colder and quiet. Nobody comes by except one friend. He inspects the house and says we are safe.  We walk around the outside.  It's such a mess.  Debris everywhere.  The air smells weird and damp.  The house smells damp.  We take cold showers.  It's too cold to wash our hair. We drive to a nearby store and see a hair salon that says "Hot water. free hair washing." The man washes our hair. The warm water on my head feels so wonderful.  I'm tired of cold food. We read under the covers.  My fireplace is useless.  It doesn't make real heat--not enough to make a difference.  I don't want to use the gas in my car so we stay home and the roads are covered with trees and wires.  No sign of LIPA. New York officials seem to have abandoned the suburbs. I miss hot coffee.

Day 5.  I dreamt last night about my three birds—a cockatiel, and two parrots-creatures from other lands, displaced and domesticated to live in cages in artificially constructed human-made environments. 

Two of these birds died over the past two years. In my dream, we are in my garage. The birdcage and the garage door are open. It's a dangerous combination. Only one bird (the living one), a bright yellow cockatiel, perches in an open cage. I fear he will fly out and away--into the cold and die.  Just then, my daughter runs past and opens and runs through a door that leads into the house. The cockatiel (still living) flies after my daughter and into safety. Relief. I turn back to the cage and see the other two birds who, in ‘waking life’, are dead. They perch on top of the open cage. They don’t fly away. Elated, I call out to my ex-husband: “They are here, they are here.” I go to the parrots—one bright green, and the other orange and yellow like the sun, and carry them back into the house, into safety.

Things are as they used to be. Before Sandy. Way before Sandy. 

I wake up in the very early morning confused. Where am I? We are not home, my ex-husband is not with us, and the two birds I just carried into safety are dead. 

It's five days post-Sandy.

Yes, as of last night, since we first moved to our friends' house (their electricity was restored, and ours was not), we have a warm place to stay.

I am grateful for the kindness of friends and warm place to sleep, but the world still feels scary and unpredictable.

We hear and see horror stories about homes, people, and cars washed away; about fires, floods, and trees falling and crushing houses, cars, and human beings.  Houses around mine have been crushed.  Down the block from my house, there is a river where there used to be a road.  Electrical wires dangle everywhere. Supermarket shelves are empty.  Gas is scarce and there are long lines and sometimes guns.  Communication is so difficult and information hard to gather if you don't have power.  We communicate via text and charge the phone in the car. Support from the outside world is not there. There are deaths and suffering. Travel is dangerous and impossible in many locations. Getting off Long Island is treacherous. The weather grows colder by the day, and a Nor’easter is on its way. Schools are closed. There is no sign of when things will return to normal. Nobody knows. 

Life imitates art. Life imitates scientific predictions.  We’ve been warned for years. 

This isn’t just one fluke hurricane.  It’s called climate change. I heard Heidi Cullen speak at my university less than a year ago about the wild weather patterns and tragedies to come. She said every other year. This is two years in a row.  I show the films Earth 2100 and Everything's Cool in my classroom, and teach books like Into the Forest, Year of the Flood, and Parable of the Sower.   

I feel like I'm inside the pages of these books.

They say everything changes. Everything.  Now the weather is changing. It's eerie. The air feels strange. I cannot find words to describe it.  Perhaps we'll need new words for weird weather, just the way the Eskimos have many words for snow.  Will they lose these words when the snow vanishes?  These thoughts make me sad.

In Buddhism they talk about “impermanence.”  Nothing lasts forever, everything changes moment to moment, and it is our attachment to things remaining the same, or operating as we think they should, that makes us unhappy. It’s how we deal with change, or loss, that defines our experience of life. Clinging to a particular outcome results in  “attachment.”  Attachment results in all kinds of problems and pain. By contrast, if we expect and accept change and loss—- “impermanence”-- we can be happy, peaceful, calm. 

This includes death, divorce, pets flying away or being devoured by predators.

It includes climate change.  How do I accept this?  How?

I find it difficult to accept what is happening to our earth. The sight of huge and majestic fallen trees makes me weep. These creatures are upended everywhere. Wild black birds come to perch on them, visiting their dying friends.  

Thoreau said the church bells should toll when a tree is cut down.  I hear many bells in my head and heart right now.

We are an island in mourning.

****

Day 6. We are still at our friends' house.  No news.  It's cold outside.  No sign of any trucks cutting down the fallen trees that block the roads, no fixing of fallen power lines.  Are they coming?  When?  Today we spent hours at a little cafe nearby where there was internet.  Small tables were packed with laptops and coffee cups.  There is nowhere to go.  I don't want to use up our tank of gas.  I don't know if we can fill up the car again once we do.  I hate gas. I hate what it's done to the planet, but here we are in the suburbs with no other viable way to get around. Buying food is a problem. The store near our friend's house has no food.  Trader Joe's, where I normally shop, is too far and I don't want to burn extra gas, and everyone says stay close.  My students on campus have electricity and internet.  I have not been teaching. I cannot get to campus without burning gas and there are no classes. I live an hour away. 

My daughter doesn't want to stay at our friends' house anymore. She wants her privacy. We're sleeping in the living room.  She's bored. They keep the heat up very high and it's too hot.  I say I prefer hot to cold, and she says she doesn't mind the cold. The bird, the cockatiel, would die in our home.

I like making dinner with our hosts and talking at night together.  It's quiet. There are no cars on the streets.


Day 7. Still at our friends' house. We don't want to waste gas, but I drive home to see if there have been any changes. Maybe the lights are on? Maybe the phones work. I miss my bed. Everything is the same. A tree remains crashed into my neighbor's house.  Other fallen trees have not been moved. The river down the street has drained.  I text my cousin in the city.  He says lower Manhattan is terribly flooded.  This still feels like science fiction. 


Day 8. Still at our friends' house.  My daughter is antsy to go home. My friends are very generous and allow my daughter to invite another teenager to sleep over. 

For me, the destruction of the planet, our human disconnection from the natural world, feel linked to my familial and human communal dis/connections.

Some days I feel okay with being a single mom and an orphan--a two-person family, mother and child. Some days, I am at peace with going it on my own. Other days—in the middle of a wild hurricane, for example, when the wind is howling, and the trees crash all around me--the worst fears erupt in my mind. In those moments, I long for an imaginary muscular dude, like my Dad, to save the day. A guy with an ax and good survival skills.  I imagine a big family sitting around the fire together, preparing for the storm and caring for one another. 

I miss my Dad. Or, some guy who is capable like my Dad was.  He was the old generation boy scout type. He fixed things. I was a girl scout. I learned nothing useful except how to sell cookies door to door. Oh, I did learn to sew an apron and a headscarf.  Sewing won't help me much now.

What kind of ecofeminist does this make me? Wanting a fix-it guy to save me?  Shouldn't I be happy wielding my ax alone? I don't actually have an ax. That's a metaphor.

I feel pathetic. I would not survive very long if/when the lights stay off, and this may happen permanently, and it certainly will happen like this more and more. Maybe the day will come when nothing gets turned back on? I'd better learn some skills fast and get myself into a sustainable community.  Right now we're sitting ducks. Waiting for someone to save us. There is no someone.

That community thing. Utopia. That's how I feel on this cold dark night as I write this--wondering what's going on in the world and how can I get off this island without running out of gas before I get someplace safe? Someplace safe?  Where would that be?

It’s a fantasy.  Maybe I’d want to run from my community members after living with them in close quarters after a year. I lived in a hippie artist co-op in Soho in the 1980s. There were fights. One co-op member deliberately set the building on fire. 

Sometimes it does work, though.  Look at Findhorn.  Look at the many sustainable communities springing up around the world.  I lived in such a community as a child in North Carolina. I spent time in a kibbutz.  I loved them both.

We really do need each other.  I realize it with Sandy now more than ever.  

If people were truly connected, how could we poison ourselves and the earth?  How could we doubt global warming and not do something about it?

How could we leave each other to die?

****

Day 10. After the Nor-Easter. I drive to the university to teach my classes.

We sit in a circle and I ask my students how they survived the storm. Their faces tell the story.  They look years older than they did a week ago--at our last meeting before the storm.

"It's not over," says Claire. "And what bothers me is that most students and people just care about themselves. Is my light on? Do I have gas in my car? Do I have to wait on a long line?"

One student, Melanie, tells a long story about several incomprehensible events.  Her grandfather, who uses an oxygen tank, was told by LIPA not to worry, they'd get him power within a few hours. But they didn't and he almost died.  Two houses belonging to her family members blew up- exploded.  A huge boat washed up in front of her house (that is not on water).  Neighborhoods have been destroyed and will never be visible again--they were washed away forever.  

Another student, Kimberly, tells of her job in a nursing home that lost power and was still unheated as of yesterday.  During this time, five elderly residents died.  Perhaps it was from the cold--Kimberly couldn't say for sure.  But she thought it was likely. "The saddest thing," she says, "is seeing these freezing and confused old people, bumping along the walls in the dark."

Anna, a chemistry student from Long Beach, who usually approaches things with much calm, opened her mouth to speak and burst into violent sobs. She had no words to share, but wrote to me the next day and sent photographs.  

Anna has this to say: "Long Beach has been getting a fair amount of press, not like New York City, but they are in the news. The bigger story, I think, comes from Island Park.  Island Park is a barrier island right next to Long Beach. It is a smaller community made up mostly of very poor people. Long Beach has gotten a lot of aid. Island Park got hit just as bad, has even more infrastructure damage, still has no power AND the people are socioeconomically disadvantaged so they don't even have the resources to help themselves. My mom is a public school teacher in Island Park, and apparently the situation there is really really bad right now."

Claire, who works as an RA in the dorms, says the stories she's hearing from students about their families are horrifying.

My students understand something is very wrong. 

They understand we are at war. It's a battle humans are waging against themselves and all living creatures.  It's a class war. It's an environmental war.

*****

Day 11.   I am back home.  We have power as of three days ago, but 160,000 households in Long Island still don't have electricity and it's getting colder.  As soon as we return home, we take in another family, and my house serves as a warming and dinner station for a second. 

I take a walk this afternoon with my friend, Bette. She's a German biologist. Bette can build a house, grow an impressive organic garden, or run a full-scale experiment in a world class biology laboratory.

Bette and her family just got their power back. She has one disabled child. Her house was blocked for days by large trees that crashed across her front yard and driveway. The family couldn't go anywhere by vehicle, but they could walk.  

The house across the street from Bette's caught on fire from its generator. 

Like the rest of us, she's in distress. 

We run into men on the street with "National Grid" on their white helmets and big white trucks. The trucks and men look like life-size toy figures that little boys like to play with. 

Bette rails at the men. She tells them about a street near her filled with several old and disabled people: "No one has been by to turn on their power or check on them. When I call LIPA, they don't answer. When I call the town, they tell me to tell the old folks to call LIPA. How can the old or sick folks call anyone when the phones are not working? The lines are down! Cell phones don't work either.  It's insane. Those people are going to die in there." 

FEMA is barely functioning. LIPA can't keep up--they were not "ready for a major storm."

There appears to have been no governmental planning, no foresight. 

Right now it's the survival of the fittest, and I'm not exaggerating.

Day 12. Tomorrow, I'll visit my neighbor, Micky, who came home, last Thursday, to a cold and dark house after her double mastectomy. 

I go to my meditation class.  Paul, who is sick with cancer and in chemotherapy treatment, sobs through the whole session.  After, he apologizes. "I just can't take the cold," he says."My body can't take it. My apartment is so cold." I feel so bad for him.  He says he's moving to his sister's tonight and she has heat. "I'm sorry for crying," he says.

It's so complicated and confusing. There is climate change and climate denial, pollution and cancer and over-consumption. There are not nearly enough (or any, in some cases) governmental environmental regulations or disaster relief precautions in place.  Communities and families are socially disconnected, and there is a lack of every-day and basic survival skills-- all the things our grandparents used to know how to do, that could get us through a power outage, we've forgotten.

I need to learn canning, heat making, basic repairs, electrical wiring, farming.  I can't do anything. I'm an idiot. I can't take care of my daughter, not really.  Like so many, I'm reliant on a system that is no longer reliable.  I need skills.   

Something is wrong with the way I/we live.

Day 13-15. Back to work. We have heat and lights.  Will I remember this?  The sense of confusion?  Will others remember?  The air still feels weird.  Are the molecules screaming out to me?  I met a mother who fled, as I was about to do, and she got stuck in New Jersey, without gas, on the side of the road in the dark of the night with three boys.   

This is America. This is suburbia.  What's going to happen?  We are not prepared.