Hurricane Sandy - Good Night Irene

Path of the storm

No reporting to work today, or tomorrow. Lots of wind and rain, but doesn't seem any worse than a summer rain storm - just cooler, wetter, and lots of wind with really roaring gusts of wind. It is not the same as a year ago September when Irene stormed through. We went to bed the Saturday night Irene was to hit - that was a new experience. Tonight will probably be the same: I fall asleep right away - Jan records the blow-by-blow in her memory wide awake.

This afternoon around the 5:00, the wind gusts were picking up. The funny thing was the only activity on the street was the U.S. Postal Service delivery truck making its rounds through the neighborhood. The old Postal Service saying goes: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. Our carrier was not daunted - carrying out the spirit of his creed while Sandy makes her way to landfall.

I wasn't able to find a song about Sandy, but there is the old Grateful Dead tune, Good Night Irene - that can set the mood for a stormy night - watching the news updates, and reading a little Walt Whitman - the World Series over so quickly, with the Giants sweeping Detroit in four games.

Walt Whitman - No Baseball Tonight

No baseball tonight - it's the travel day from SF to Detroit. The West Coast games get over between 11:30 and midnight - that's too late when having to get up at 5:45 AM. But the games have been great - Sandoval record-tying home runs in Game 1, and Small-ball last night for Game 2. Reading the news accounts on-line; hearing some of the NPR Morning Edition short report this morning before getting out of my car before an appointment, and then listening to the whole thing this evening on my computer. I think I will read some my new book of Walt Whitman poems - he liked baseball: "it's our game: that's the chief fact in connection with it: America's game."

True Conquerors

Old farmers, travelers, workmen (no matter how crippled or bent,)
Old sailors, out of many a perilous voyage, storm and wreck,
Old soldiers from campaigns, with all their wounds, defeats and scars;
Enough that they've survived at all - long life's unflinching ones!
Forth from their struggles, trials, fights, to have emerged at all - in that alone,
True conquerors o-er all the rest.

(1888-1889)