Two weeks ago I was on vacation, happily nested in a studio apartment in the East Village. I was vaguely aware of hurricane warnings, but the idea that they could impact me in New York City in late October seemed preposterous. As a jaded Floridian, I assumed the projected path would bounce around like a boiling spaghetti noodle before making landfall if ever.
I ignored granite-jawed Jim Cantore as his pronouncements from nearby Battery Park on The Weather Channel grew ever more hyperbolic. But by Saturday night there was clear evidence that my time off had been commandeered by dark and powerful forces.
I’d obtained tickets for The Book of Mormon from an online broker. As my friend, Mike, and I excitedly got dressed for the hit show he asked about the location of the theater. I looked closely at the tickets for the first time and they listed a Hollywood Blvd. address. I’d purchased seats for the Los Angeles touring production. They weren’t cheap.
Feeling like I’d been punched in the gut, I slumped down on the couch. On television, the Gators fumbled away a game to the hated Georgia Bulldogs. And on an embedded screen in the upper corner, Mayor Bloomberg held a press conference to announce the closing of mass transit in anticipation of flooding and power outages.
All of a sudden, I was in a very different New York state of mind.
On Sunday morning we were awakened by a call from Mike’s airline notifying him that his Monday flight had been cancelled. When we turned on the TV Mayor Bloomberg was back, this time ordering low-lying areas just blocks from us to evacuate. I called my always-calm mother to tell her we would have to ride out the storm, and she suggested we rent a car and drive home. Two hours later Mike and I were at an Alamo car rental on 42nd Street, then heading through the soon-to-close Holland Tunnel toward I-95.
We caught up with Hurricane Sandy’s outer bands in southern New Jersey. They remained as we drove through Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. With 16 hours to kill Mike and I talked about the election, but blue, red and swing states were indistinguishable in the wind and rain.
At home on Monday, I couldn’t resist turning on The Weather Channel and NY1 to watch Sandy’s arrival and devastating impact. Just two nights earlier, Mike and I had eaten pizza and watched a parade of costumed Halloween partiers in the East Village. The same vibrant streets were now underwater, in tragic darkness.
Our decision to leave the city was the right one. Eavesdropping from sunny Florida felt surreal.
With elections just a week away, one hurricane news story stood out. Due to global warming, climatologists are forecasting more punishing storms along the nation’s northeast shore. Scientists and engineers have proposed building a system of barriers like those in New Orleans and the Netherlands to protect population centers like New York City. It’s a huge project requiring further study. It would cost more than $15 billion, but the benefits would be enormous. Estimates of total damage caused by Sandy are upwards of $75 billion.
And here’s the footnote that got my attention: in addition to treasured lives, the combined cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq exceeds $1 trillion.
Make no mistake about it: the people we elect make decisions that have an enormous impact on our lives.
At a recent Orlando appearance, feminist icon Gloria Steinem shared a more microscopic example of the chain-of-events that can result from a single election and a few votes.
In 1982, Missouri Democrat Harriet Woods was favored to win a U.S. Senate race before a late infusion of cash pushed incumbent Republican John Danforth to victory by just 25,000 votes. The election could have gone either way, but because Danforth won he was able to sponsor his former legislative aid, Clarence Thomas, for appointment as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
At EEOC Thomas caught the attention of President George H.W. Bush, who nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court. As a justice, Thomas voted with the 5-4 majority that placed George W. Bush in the White House instead of Al Gore. The consequences, including the two aforementioned wars, are almost too profound to fathom.
It’s midnight on election night, and right now it appears that President Barack Obama has been reelected to a second term. Right or wrong, the outcome is meaningful in ways we will never fully comprehend.
