It's hard to quite believe that it has been a year since that awful day and terrible storm. As disasters go Superstorm Sandy was reasonably kind to my family and friends --- they were inconvenienced, mostly with power failures for a couple of days, but the only actual tangible damage was my parents' Wii getting fried in a power surge --- and the losses were more to trees and landscape than to, well, the people I know. The destruction at Seaside Heights was horrible, and compounded with the insult of the fire nearly a year later, but it would be horrible of me to wish that me and my family and friends would have got off lighter considering the storm's extent. (Indeed, professionally it was even good: the storm required some unusual demands from work, that I was able to meet much faster and better than anyone anticipated, and it raised everyone's esteem for my ability; and I got a bit of humorous writing actually published from it. I feel uneasy about that.)
But I'm sentimental, and prone to an almost crippling nostalgia, and the storm seems now like the starting point for a twelvemonth in which nearly all my links to where I grew up were smashed. Casino Pier was smashed but is already partly restored; FunTown Pier was wholly destroyed and I don't know if it can come back. The Regent Diner's burned out and I can only hope it's actually being restored. My brother and his wife have moved out of state; my parents are moving. All things change and develop and it's only coincidence that everything came in this short while after my own leaving (for a life I wouldn't trade back, I should note), but I'm still unsatisfied that it had to happen at all.
Sad thoughts come like raindrops. In our pond we haven't seen the baby goldfish in several days, and we're scared that they've died in the first cold snaps. Goldfish are reasonably hearty in above-freezing temperatures, but goldfish aren't supposed to be babies in October. It's hard making out the fish through the net and the leaves gathered on it and the reflections of the leaves in the water, but several of the baby fish were large and they should be larger yet. That it's so hard to prove unambiguously that I've seen one is one more grim thought for a grave day.
Trivia: Mud from the Pennsauken Creek (or its vicinity; the owners of Lena Blackburne's Baseball Rubbing Mud keep its exact origin secret), a tributary to the Delaware River in southwestern New Jersey, is used to take the shine off new baseballs before they are put into major league games. Source: It Happend In New Jersey, Fran Capo.
Currently Reading: The American Newsreel, 1911 - 1967, Raymond Fielding.
PS: Reading the Comics, October 26, 2013, for the mathematics comics fan.