New York in mid-pandemic

I can't remember now when the heat wave began, but I was running my air conditioner most days and wishing that I were in Sointula this summer. This past weekend there was some respite, and I was able to open the windows. But today again it was hot and humid. Walk a block and you feel you are going to expire. But we will make it, right? That is the New York City spirit, always congratulating itself. In the days when it was cool, I walked around and took some pictures. (As always, click to view larger.)

In the first month or so of the pandemic, there was little car traffic. People laughed that you didn't have to look both ways when crossing the streets. No more. Vehicular traffic is back with a vengeance. Oddly, this presence does not align with people on the streets. The photo above of Sixth Avenue, shows what I mean. The avenue is a canyon of office buildings, and on any weekday the sidewalks would be packed. But the offices are now empty, and likewise the sidewalks. In the place of office workers, homeless folks set up their lodging next to stores that have gone out of business.

The big street activity is outdoor "dining." Here follow a few pictures from my neighborhood on the Upper West Side.

And, naturally, half the world is on a cell phones even a homeless gal.

The limits of civilization

World Trade Center 2020

 Two nights ago there was an electricity outage on the Upper West Side, which is where I live. From the short account in the newspaper, it seems to have been rather limited as these things go. In Sointula over the years I experienced several blackouts, one, as I remember, caused by some natural occurrence (a tree took out a power line?) on Vancouver Island, which likewise affected Malcolm Island. Looking back on those blackouts in Sointula, I don't recall being very disturbed or even inconvenienced, beyond being unable to read by candlelight.

When such an outage occurs in a big city, however, the effect is much different, although the time of day makes a difference. For instance, January 6, 2019 -- I later made note of the details in my diary -- happened to be the coldest day of the winter season thus far. It was on that cold day that, at 9 p.m., the electricity went out of my side of the West 87th Street. Across the street, my neighbors' apartment buildings were still lit up. I suspect that our bad luck had to do with the massive amount of road repair that was going on during those months on my street and others on the Upper West Side. Shortly after the lights went out, my cell phone rang -- that little flip phone that I own solely because I need it in Sointula -- and my neighbor Elaine (mentioned in previous post) was on the line, inviting me to come over and sit before the fireplace with her and her son Kieran. Which I promptly did. They had plenty of wood, and we sat until midnight, til every last stick of wood had been burnt, and drank wine and talked. It was a particularly good occasion. Elaine, too, is a widow, and I had known her husband, Peter, long before I knew Elaine, the way you know people who live on your street. Her son Kieran was with us, and he liked hearing my memories of Peter, since Kieran was only six years old when his father died. When I went home at midnight, there was still enough hot water in the pipes that I was able to fill a water bottle for bed. By daylight the power was back.

Upper West Side roadwork

Flash forward to power outage of August 2020. This one, according to the news item, took place around 5 a.m. In other words, I was in bed and asleep. Suddenly, I woke up. It was as if the lack of noise in my apartment -- the ceiling fans no longer rotating, the air conditioner off -- roused me from my sleep. It took only an instant for me to register what the lack of noise meant, and I was on my feet. Normally, in the middle of the night, when I go to the bathroom or get up for some water -- there is plenty of light. My apartment faces the street and my windows are very high, so that the lights of the buildings across the street, whether in apartments or from outdoor sources, send enough light into my apartment that I can make my way comfortably in the dark to the bathroom. On this occasion, however, it was dark, dark in my rooms and likewise across the street. I walked to the windows in the living room and looked out. It was very eerie, and it struck me forcibly how vulnerable a city is, dependent as it is on an immense infrastructure to "power" it. Powering, not only in the sense of electricity and water and fuel, but also its people, who are dependent on that infrastructure to go about their daily business. Although I have none of the skills of my Sointula friends -- fishing, farming, even growing herbs -- I did not feel endangered by the blackouts there. Unconsciously, I must have felt that the people of Malcolm Island would have come together to help one another in the event of a long period without electricity.

New York City is a different matter. Imagine the effect on me and my fellow New Yorkers had this blackout continued beyond half an hour. The heatwave is for the moment behind us -- yesterday I finally was able to open the windows and have fresh, almost cool air -- but the temperature of many people still runs high. I fear for what might have happened had it continued.

Sointula on my mind

The title of this post gives voice to what is going on with me in the fifth month of the pandemic. Instead of being in Sointula this summer, enjoying afternoon temperatures of 70 degrees, I am here in virus central, New York City, during an extended heat wave. It might be said that the lockdown has actually provided the conditions that attracted me every summer to Sointula: a place to work without the distractions that invariably exist in a big city. Indeed, the first two months were truly empty of distractions. When the extent of the hospital and medical overload in New York City became evident, it was easy to resist going outside. How wonderfully quiet the streets were! The constant sound of car horns was history, as well as construction noise. On the downside, the parks were packed, and New Yorkers are poor at social distancing, which was particularly irritating for me, since I do not wear a mask in public -- only in enclosed spaces, like stores and, now, the subways and busses -- and I had to put with dirty looks from people who think you can catch the virus from six feet away. I tried to turn my park-walking experience into a simulacrum of the Thursday morning rambles in Sointula: instead of following the paths, I would stomp through the more overgrown and also hilly parts of Riverside Park.

By the third month, noise was on the rise. Riverside Park abuts on the West Side Highway, with the traffic heading upstate and across the Hudson River to New Jersey returning to pre-lockdown levels. Mask-wearing also began to fall off, by which time I had started hooking a mask to my ears, but slung below my chin, when out in public. I wanted to give the impression, after all, that I was not ignoring the wisdom of the herd. Mask-wearing has come back with a vengeance lately on the Upper West Side -- even when people are driving their own cars! I trace the day when people who otherwise would not dream of voting for Donald Trump started wearing masks full time to the day the president recommended that people wear them in public. Go figure.

The heat wave that started about 20 days ago curtailed by daily walks, but, to compensate, I joined the Manhattan Kayak Company and have been doing some kayak tours and standup paddleboarding on the Hudson River. The past few days we are having a respite. Today, my windows are open!

While I truly miss the companionship of my friends in Sointula, I have been fortunate during the lockdown to have become better friends with several neighbors. One is Elaine, who lives two doors down and who has a small backyard. I am often welcomed there for a barbecue. That's me in the green jacket in the photo at the top, and Elaine in the flowered pants in the bottom photo.

I continue to go out shopping every day -- wearing a mask when inside a store, of course. I have eaten out a few times, in the new arrangement of outdoor (i.e., on the street) cafes, but have more or less got used to my own cooking and have had the pleasure of saving some money. It will go into my fund for Sointula 2021!

More New York news in the next post.