the rix mix

Gotta kick the Repugs when they're down, because they'll get up again, & it'll be the same crap all over again. So slow them down.

I'm always a bit depressed, & more depressed this time of year with disappearing daylight,  & I haven't recovered mentally from the six days of no power after the big storm. Got something done today, a few things dropped in the mailbox. Tomorrow two loads of laundry.

I am desperately overdue for some shelving & a simple larger table for my PC. I need space for a new printer, which has been sitting there unused on a large box for a long time.  The printer will be a great creative boost for me, & I want  a creative boost.  I'm also trying to learn about modestly-priced tablets.  I think one would be very helpful for my poor eyesight, allowing me to  download library books & increase the font size. I just knocked off the 560 page Elvis bio, Last Train to Memphis, in hardcover, & it was not physically  easy to do.

<=

Instead of adding to the list of groups & types of people one detests as one gets older, how about subtracting from it?  One isn't affected by everything, one isn't required to have an  opinion on everything. One also doesn't need to identify oneself with all the  various demographics each of us are categorized as being part of.

Every time I vote, I remind myself that I am one vote. That is really all I am. One vote. I am not voting as three or five or ten different categories of people.

The odd phenomenon of Powerball lottery ticket sales: The higher the payout, the higher the number of tix sold & people playing, Putting aside the astronomical odds against winning, there's also the puzzling idea that winning $550 million would be a substantially different experience than than winning, say, $250 million.

For all except the very wealthy, one million would be a game-changer

When Jersey instituted a lottery, one of the initial winners was a young woman about 20 years old. She won $20,000. We considered it a great amount of money. She announced she was buying a yellow Ford Mustang convertible. We thought that was fabulous. She'd have money left over. I wonder what happened to her & the car?

Some rain today with snow on the grass as the temperature fell. Nothing unusual or serious; just a reminder that anything can happen from here on.

The period from mid-November through Christmas is a kind of fifth season in New Jersey. Drab, often damp, with declining daylight.  Temperatures can rise to sixty or fall well below freezing.  Substantial snowfalls in December are  uncommon but no surprise when they do occur. The season  is alleviated, made more bearable by holiday decorations. After New Year's  Day we hunker down for four weeks of dark & cold. Groundhog Day is an Event.

Labels: New Jersey, weather

I'd already surmised the most probable way Creeley received this 8 1/2 x 11 staple bound chapbook.  I was surprised he saved it, don't believe the great poet actually read it.  I wanted to brag about it on Facebook.  I met Creeley  only once, a few years later, properly introduced by Joel Oppenheimer.  He didn't know me.

Bob Rixon shared a link. Saturday Good heavens, how did this land in the Robert Creeley papers collection at Stanford?
The strand : poems / by Bob Rixon. - SearchWorks (SULAIR)
 Like · · Share Adele Kenny, Maggie McBride, Gail Thornton and 6 others like this.

 Bob Rixon: Poet Joel Oppenheimer [my mentor] had a large cardboard box of poetry books he was sent & never intended to read. He probably put it in the trash when he moved to New Hampshire. Saturday at 12:53 ·

Jim Sharpe: He knew something special when he saw it. Saturday at 12:35 ·

Bob Rixon: It did have a cool cover. The Strand: poetry chapbook published by Dave Cope, Grandville MI, 1983. Photo by Christine Dolinich. Seaside Heights NJ. by: Bob Rixon Saturday at 12:38 ·

 Bob Rixon: I constructed the poem using John Cage chance methods. When I sent it to Dave Cope, I thought he would think me mad. He liked it. Later I renovated & retitled it "Boardwalk." Saturday at 12:46 ·

 Jim Sharpe: I'm all for indeterminacy, chance and failure... as modes of operation... Saturday at 12:50 ·

 David Cope: Bobby, I mailed it to him. He was on my mailing list and sometimes commented on the things I sent him. His sign-off was always "Onward!" I wouldn't be surprised if your book was among Allen's archive stuff at Stanford, too. Beyond that, you're noted as correspondent in my archive at Michigan. Gutt knows where else. Saturday at 13:31 ·

 David Cope: I still think that group of poems is special. You oughta send the whole ms. to Jim Cohn for his postbeat longpoems project. DC Saturday at 13:32 ·
The poem, somewhat revised & retitled "Boardwalk" is linked in the blog sidebar.

I now have this at Stanford, plus correspondence in the Joel Oppenheimer Collection at the University of Connecticut & David Cope's papers at the University of Michigan. I have no idea what to with my stuff. Since the advent of e mail, I don't have archived letters anymore. I save a few to the old mail file.

Labels: boardwalks, jersey shore, postcard

Labels: holidays, music, video

I worked at a Stern's Dept. Store in a mall on a Black Friday before it was commonly called Black Friday, but it was still a memorable experience. The sales were mostly on lower priced items, but there were crowds outside the doors before opening, & they practically trampled each other (& me, although I had been warned) when the store opened.

At Pearl Arts & Crafts I always had Thursdays & Fridays off & the manager scheduled me for Black Friday only once. It wasn't necessary. The store was busier, mainly for holiday decoration sales. The real madness was next door at Toys R Us,  in the parking lot, & at the light on Route One; Woodbridge Mall was across the highway. I enjoyed Christmas season at Pearl because the store was busier, lots of decorations, & my dept sold a lot of books. I recall being very annoyed one year when a large order from Dover Books had not arrived by day before Thanksgiving. I loved Dover. Those orders could run to 16 large boxes of mostly thin, reasonably  priced  books including quality coloring books that sold really well. It usually took me a day & a half to check, price & put them in stock, a job I always enjoyed, especially after I gained some input into inventory & began sampling the full range of the wonderful Dover catalog. Dover sold very well during December.

When I first took over the Pearl Book Dept, the stockroom guys would electric jack whole pallets of boxes into the book area & drop them.  I hated that. During my second stint at Pearl (there were three), after management had upgraded & installed proper book shelving, I realized the backroom staff believed I had been rehired as a dept. supervisor, as "management." In fact, I was just an hourly "associate" directly "supervised" by whoever was running the paper & frame depts, who had the sense to leave me alone.  So I told the stockroom guys to stop doing it, I didn't care if the book order pallets  ended up behind other pallets in the stockroom, as long as I could get at them.  They stopped. I brought out boxes four to six at a time. Checking in & stocking books (or anything) required shifting shelf space, it had to be done with some forethought, packing list in hand, finding out what was coming in.

Pearl in Woodbridge was not a well-managed store. But when it was sold & renovated after I left for the final time,  made orderly, it became a very boring store & slowly died.

Some Thanksgiving graphic silliness on Facebook:




If she was not planning on shopping today anyway (probably the case), why turn it into a moral crusade? We all know the Black Friday thing is out of control. Lots of people work on Thanksgiving. Some of them have too. Some of them aren't paid enough money to do it. Some of them are. Some want to  work:  restaurant wait staff, bartenders & car valets - profitable day for them.

The upshot: People have to work in retail stores whether you shop or not. There are stores where the moral choice is not to shop at them ever, on any day.

(I worked at a large art supply store that closed on certain holidays not out of any concern for employees, but because there wouldn't be enough business to warrant calling in the 25 or so  minimum staff needed to open it.)

Labels: holidays, postcard

Crosstown to shrink today. I knew up when my cellphone acted up calling for a taxi that it would be day with delays & I should be patient. When the driver took a route I wished she hadn't,  we ran into a detour.  Doctor was 1/2 hour late. Driver on way back was doing her end of shift paperwork & sat at green lights until cars behind us honked. CVS filled only one of my meds, I had to sort that out then wait for the second.

I think I'll have the clinic receptionist do the taxi calls for me from now on. She's on a first name basis with the dispatcher,  ends the call with, "Take care bubbula."  My friend Edie calls me bubbula.

I could get insurance to cover cab to clinic (wish I knew that when I was traveling to Newark), but it involves a lot of paperwork, the taxi is six bucks plus dollar tip  each way every other month, & sometimes I only go one way & then walk & bus home.  I think I can handle the expense.

I have to get to the library.  I have books way overdue.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, mental health

by The Fugs

Do 72 "enemy" deaths for every 3 of their own give Israel enough of a tactical advantage? Why not go for 100 to 3, 500 to 3, 1,000 to 3?  Keep up the killing long enough & there won't be any "enemy" left to kill, but plenty of your own remaining. That would be a great strategic success.

While my natural sympathies tend to be with Israel, anything but blind support in America is suspected as anti-Semitic.  One may not even point out that Israel's conquest by gradual displacement   policies toward Palestinians are how we rid most of  our continent of the indigenous peoples & occupied their lands.     When they resisted, we sent armies & killed them. When they complained but didn't resist, we forced them off their land. They wandered off on the own or we arranged  Trails of Tears for them.  The entire continent is our West Bank.


Heaven forbid  if you're a United States President who actually tries to understand the predicament of the Palestinian people,  regarding both Israel & their own radical, rocket-shooting  factions.  Then you're either Jimmy Carter or perhaps  a secret Muslim educated in the fundamentalist  madrassahs of Indonesia.
The Israelis have no land to trade except for land it grabbed beyond the original UN mandated borders.  Also like Americans: We'll take  your land & give you back a little bit of it unless we decide we want that, too. They have no deadly, contagious diseases to spread among Palestinians; European  diseases probably rid the territory of the future United States of 75% of Indians before we even began to seriously spread out.

Labels: gin mill, jersey shore, New Jersey, postcard

I thought she was old over 45 years ago.
 I liked many of her songs; still, there was something odd in that era about a post-30 woman singing poppy songs with manic choruses, chastely wiggling  on TV for audiences of screaming kids mainly in the 10-13 year old range. Petula herself had been a child celebrity in England, & had hits in both England & France during the Fifties. But her career wasn't in very good shape when "Downtown" was released & became a worldwide hit, part of the "British Invasion" in America.  My favorite Pet Clark song is "Call Me, " like so many of her hits composed for her by Tony Hatch, but never released by her  as a single.

Labels: birthday, music, video

November 2, 2012 Iraq contractor to pay $85M for toxic exposure 

 PORTLAND, ORE. A jury on Friday ordered an American military contractor to pay $85 million after finding it guilty of negligence for illnesses suffered by a dozen Oregon soldiers who guarded an oilfield water plant during the Iraq war. 

After a three-week trial, the jury deliberated for just two days before reaching a decision against the contractor, Kellogg Brown and Root. 

The suit was the first concerning soldiers' exposure to a toxin at a water plant in southern Iraq. The soldiers said they suffer from respiratory ailments after their exposure to sodium dichromate, and they fear that a carcinogen the toxin contains, hexavalent chromium, could cause cancer later in life.

This is just the beginning. There are also suits over poisoning from garbage burn pits in Itaq & Afghanistan. I was thinking about this kind of tragic, long-lasting outcome of the Iraq War before the war began. Why weren't the loudest, most out-spoken pro-war veterans then looking out for these future veterans?

Labels: Iraq, war more war

Labels: culture, TV, video

Martinmas, World War One Armistice Day, Veterans Day.

A sad year in many ways.  I had to give my sister a hard shove I didn't feel like giving. But when I was sick for over year,  walking around with a  pre-surgery Foley catheter up my penis causing a series of bladder infections preventing me from having prostate surgery or finding out if I had cancer,  I received  nary a personal e mail or phone call from her asking after my health & situation. Didn't need her money, her home or even a personal visit.  Coping  with one health problem for so long caused a bunch of others I'm  still dealing with, or haven''t dealt with. I wasn't attending her contrived party / sibling reunion. I gave her a chance to say  "I understand you don't want to travel, it's o.k."

Then  the first girl I ever loved died, early onset dementia.  My  oldest brother Joe  reads the obituaries, remembered her & left a message on my machine. That allowed me to remember & grieve in my own way while her family was mourning her.

The man who brought me on to WFMU, & one of the most companionable  of friends until he moved away, also died.  He had colon cancer surgery, I had long phone chat with him prior to the operation, not a clue that the disease  might be terminal.   Bruce's death was a little easier to take because I was one friend among so many he had on the East & West coasts. I knew his last decade was probably the most contented of his life, part of a real community, making fine poems, & spending the solitary time outdoors observing nature  he has always loved. Not a flawless man, but he had more than integrity than I have.

Then my friend Carrie went down for awhile, too much shit going on in her life for the past few years. She has her own story, but I relate completely. You keep pushing the boulder up the hill & one day a part of you says, "Let it roll, baby." You've heard that voice before, but this time you do it.

Just recently, an historical  hurricane wrecking misery & destruction from the Jersey shore to  New York City to Long Island, some beloved boardwalk landmarks destroyed. The first time I had to get by with no electric power for more than 24 hours.

In the midst of the storm's terrible aftermath, America rejected bigotry by reelecting Barack Obama.  Not by enough to make me feel at ease. But it was an emphatic Electoral College victory, no disputing it.  Just the thought of how angry & dumbfounded  my few white male Republican friends were on Tuesday  night, so self-deluded were they, will keep a small smile in my heart through Inauguration Day. I don't need to rub it in.

Labels: birthday, boardwalks, jersey shore, postcard, weather

Maybe this map will help explain my neighborhood.  I am the red star, corner of Elm & Cherry. Next intersection up is Stiles & Cherry, then Lincoln & Cherry. Then Cherry meets the major road Morris Ave. (yellow road) at an angle.  The 7-11 is at Cherry & Morris. Gina lives on dead end Wilson Ter. The CVS is at  the 28 on Westfield Ave. The small market owned by Chinese people is at Stiles & Morris, the 2.   Broad St. lower right is downtown Elizabeth. There is no railroad along West Grand., just an abandoned track bed.  Branch library, a Dunkin' Donuts, ShopRite are all on West Grand off the left of the map. Another Dunkin'  near Orchard & Morris.

Wilson, Lincoln, Decker, Melrose & all the streets on the other side of Elmora Ave. are essentially old suburban, lots of single family.   My immediate area is apartment buildings & two family houses, with some single family homes mixed in. Around my corner some on the way up meet some on the way down.  My favorite street is Stiles between Chilton & Magie. Many old houses with wrap-around porches. There's a classic Victorian on Stiles between Chilton & Cherry, near the Russian Orthodox church.

There is a marked improvement in the quality of some apartment buildings  located on Cherry between Stiles & Morris Ave. I wouldn't mind moving up a block. Cherry rises up a slight incline at Stiles, then dips slightly. Enough incline for skateboarding.  The dotted line from Elizabeth River Park is Elizabeth River. It eventually becomes tidal.

On the far side of Elizabeth River, in the space across from Oakwood Place, is Oakwood Plaza, unpleasant projects, predominantly African-American. The river serves effectively as a moat. Yet the streets above, around Riverside, used to be upper middle class & are still pretty nice. The projects are boxed in, because this entire section of Elizabeth, including the Morris Ave. retail district,  is predominantly Hispanic, oriented toward Colombia, with some leftover Anglos,  African-American  middle class, Haitians, Nigerians, a few Indians & Balkan  Muslims, & many Orthodox Jews scattered throughout. You hear Spanish, but if you look closely it's quite diverse.

Elizabeth Fire Dept Headquarters are at the end of Prince St. I hear every fire engine that goes out of that large building.

The initial two day failure was large,.  Power came on from Morris at Orchard through downtown by Wednesday after Sandy. Mine came on overnight, very early Thursday AM,

My second power failure, Saturday AM,  encompassed at least the area from Cherry  at Stiles to Westfield Ave.  & over to Chilton. Came back on Wednesday night.

Power is now out on Wilson, & on Chilton from Stiles to Elmora Ave. The electric grids here are odd,  encompass partial blocks, seem to leap over streets. I heard a rumor that my grid wasn't even connected to an Elizabeth substation. Who could know around here?

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, weather

For the past week I've gotten more real information about power failures &  power company responses from Mike Francesa's afternoon sports talk show on WFAN than  I have from any other sources. Francesa,  who doesn't have much of a sense of humor to begin with, has been without power since the night of Hurricane Sandy.  He lives in the 'burbs & has partial power from a generator. His kids haven't returned to school yet. His power was out for days after Hurricane Irene & after a blizzard two winters ago. He is very angry. Francesa opens the  phones up & people call from all over, reporting if they have power or not, if they've seen repair crews sitting idle with no job  assignment or awaiting  authorization they never get to  begin work at a site. He's had calls from guys claiming to be on repair crews & wasting their time. He has calls from people who have lost everything. Francesa looks at power company websites & calls them out for "cooking" their maps of outage areas. I had to give Governor Christie credit (we shall see how he handles the situation over time), & I have to give Francesa credit for staying with the storm. He correctly says we can't "look back" at the disaster while the storm is still happening to hundreds of thousands of people.

It probably wouldn't have come out, buy  I should have tried to take a night photo from a block & 1/2 north on Cherry Street looking toward my corner. Beyond some lit buildings & a working traffic light there  wasa  black curtain or wall that swallowed anyone walking into it. It was penetrated only by the lights of oncoming cars  on the one way street, they had a ghostly quality. There was bright waning moon for several nights last week.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, media madness, weather

My final electoral map prediction, from about two weeks ago,  had Obama over Romney 284 to 254. I considered it sufficiently pessimistic. I  could not give Mitt Ohio. I thought the "Mitt momentum" was bogus, that he had stalled short of a winning tally. I gave Mitt Virginia, Florida & Iowa, although I had pretty good gut feeling about Virginia, nothing rational. If Mitt had won Ohio, he would have lost when Obama carried Virginia. I feared another messed up recount situation like 2000; I could see that potential in my map, likely focused on Ohio.

Obama had emphatic majorities in all the states he carried except Ohio & Virgina. Both of those states reelected Democratic senators.

Last I looked, Obama had run up a three million popular vote majority. It's not 2008, but Repugs never conceded that was any kind of mandate. I think a lot Americans wanted to send Obama home, with no real hard feelings. But Repugs, as currently constituted, cannot come up with candidate via primaries capable of cutting into a Democratic coalition that contains the vast majority of Hispanic voters, young voters, as well as women who do not want social safety nets eliminated or hear outrageous statements from men (&  some women) about rape, right to choose, & matters  intimately conditional on personal circumstances. The Repugs gave away two senate seats, in Missouri & Indiana, because of their misogynist   candidates.

The bad news is we still have a crazy right wing obstructionist House. The good news is Repugs can't do what they said they would do if they controlled the White House & senate. Obama made conciliatory overtures last night, but he no longer believes it is  really possible. He's  a tougher, more realistic  politician now.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, THE election

Amazingly, my power just returned during a nor'eastern storm, it's snowing. I'm hoping it stays on.

Sometime early last Saturday morning I lost electric power again after it had been on for two days following the hurricane, which had knocked it off for two days.  Apparently - never confirmed this - a tree had toppled a block west.  I was in a black hole. Yet,  power, thankfully, remained on up the block, at my friend Gina's house. I continued to sleep here but spent a few evenings there,  including last night, until we clicked glasses when President Obama gave his acceptance speech.

I know people in Rahway, six miles away,  who are still without power & do not know when it will return.

I threw out   $75 - $100 of groceries, since I keep a well-stocked fridge. I cook electric, so that became a big problem. Hot water was on, heat was off, & temps dropped. It got pretty miserable. PSE&G was uninformative. The Mayor  practically admitted he didn't have the juice to make PSE&G prioritize this city.  PSE&G & other power companies have been awful at managing their manpower & resources. Something is wrong when they have 10,000  repair personnel out, the number of problem locations falls, but the pace of power restoration doesn't pick up. That's happening all over, & there will be hearings, I'm certain,   Even the unprecedented magnitude of  the storm & damage cannot disguise that  that power companies did not heed the warnings  & learn the lessons of serious previous storms over the past few years, have workable contingency plans, or identify & upgrade known weaknesses in their systems.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, weather

Mantoloking NJ, at the head of Barnegat Bay. Notice that many of those houses are quite old & sturdy-looking. Some have been in families for generations. They testify to the capriciousness of coastal storms. The inlet isn't a strange thing. That inlet has wandered forty miles of barrier beach just during recorded history. Left to itself it eventually fills itself in, in days or weeks or a season.  It's strange only because development has prevented it from opening up more often during lesser storms.

There's the saying, "Only Nixon could go to China."  I think it would be great if our Republican governor acknowledged climate change & raised the issue of a gradual pullback, a retreat from the edge, which is not only long overdue here but would also begin to   settle the matter of public beach access. After a major storm is the best time to deal with this. Let's stop calling beach "land." As storms destroy them, let's slowly get rid of the first line of houses, the ones directly on the beachfront. Yes, they were owned by wealthy people. That's why it takes a Republican. Although I'm generally o.k. with rebuilding amusement boardwalks & maybe piers - just do it better, it's insane to replace all the ruined structures in Sea Bright, a narrow town  barely floating  between a tidal river & the ocean, &  wouldn't even exist but for a massive sea wall & dredged sand beach treated by residents as a private playground, & which floods from nearly every coastal storm now.

Labels: jersey shore, weather

Mayor Bloomberg, given generally good grades for his handling of the hurricane disaster,  was  being flayed on radio & in the press over  his insistence that the New York Marathon go forward as scheduled, & that no essential resources would be diverted. It was not going to be a "celebration" of anything, not at this time. Maybe two or three weeks from now.  It would have been a lie. "We're o.k. enough to do this."  Most New Yorkers don't want the rest of America & the world to believe New York is o.k.  Resilient, courageous, proud, yes, those. Even greatly self-sufficient.  But also deeply wounded. Power still out across large swaths of New York & Jersey.  Some areas have no clean water. Bodies still being found.  Thousands displaced or homeless.

If you go up the hill on Staten Island, away from the north shore,  the place is in pretty good shape. Likewise for most of the other boroughs.  Manhattan above 33rd - the city will be ready for the Christmas season,  a bonanza of  tourism dollars,  But right now, this week, there's utter ruin in many areas, other tasks. If the cops, EMS, sanitation workers can be spared from rescue, recovery & clean-up duties to attend to the Marathon, they can be given a day off to pump out their own basements.

There was a good deal of class resentment in this.   The race organizers, New York Road Racers, are correctly perceived as upper middle class with special connections to NY City Hall. Probably half of Bloomberg's inner staff belong to the club.  Elite international competitors, thousands of others affluent enough to fly into NYC, get an expensive hotel room for four nights.

Then there was the matter of how all these thousands of runners were getting to Staten Island. & why they were using dozens of generators, & running around the city tossing half-consumed plastic bottles of  water on the pavement.  Perhaps it was more about  logistics than any special concern Bloomberg had for the feelings of his constituents. Doesn't matter why he canceled it. The event would have broadcast a conflicted, baffling, ambiguous message.  I think most media covering the event would have looked at what was happening away from the race route & asked, "Why the hell are they doing this?" Blimps &  helicopters flying around overhead, runners underneath, but how about a look at Breezy Point?  All of the city, even north Jersey shore, only minutes away by air. Did  some of the cops  directing traffic  at the race route intersections lose their homes in the Breezy Point conflagration? The question would be asked, of that I am certain.

We may be on the verge of a breakdown in social order in Jersey. The irony is, it'll happen mainly in suburbia, over the unavailability of gasoline because gas stations have no power. There are enormous lines at the ones that do.  One radio commentator correctly noted it was a foreseeable problem  no one foresaw, correctable with gasoline-powered generators, fuel supplied by the gas  station. We've never had a storm that knocked out so much power for so long with no end in sight. If enough gas stations get power, soon enough, the problem will rapidly go away.

But people not only need cars to go to work, as the food spoils they  also have to forage. There's no point in going to my regular supermarket in Elizabeth. I have plenty of canned food. The market won't have any frozen or refrigerated food yet,  & whatever comes in I'm sure will be grabbed up right away.

There's much grumbling in New York City about the NY Marathon going forward this weekend, & increasing accusations that wealthy neighborhoods are getting better service. That's not true in Jersey. Here, many wealthy neighborhoods are low on the  list because they have so many downed trees, & a fallen tree  may affect power to one block or one home. It doesn't get priority.

The Boss with the real juice came to New Jersey yesterday. His name is Obama. FEMA is his agency.  Gov. Christie, like most of us who grew up here, was a boardwalk & shore kid. He showed the President the misery at the shore & filled him in on the misery elsewhere.

Aerial video of inlet the storm cut through Mantoloking from ocean to Barnegat Bay, on the barrier beach north of Seaside Heights. Some of these houses had withstood the worst the Atlantic had thrown at them for 70, 80 years. In the '62 storm, two inlets were cit through Long Beach Island. It's actually a natural, reoccurring phenomenon, good for the health of the bay, that development prevents. The inlet will bulldozed in quickly, if it doesn't close up itself.

Meanwhile, Mitt was holding a bogus "storm relief" event in Ohio. On Tuesday he compared disaster relief to cleaning up a football field after a game. He should have gone to Colorado, far away, said he was being briefed on the situation, wished everyone well, & deferred all other questions.

Back after the first debate, I noted the President couldn't come on stage & say he had been dealing with the real world all day: heading off a war between our NATO ally Turkey & Syria. I hope this reminds everyone Mitt has only one job: candidate.

The electric just came back on.

Elizabeth did not suffer greatly.

Three of my boardwalks are wrecked.

A friend on the phone mentioned that Gov. Chris Christie looked stunned & depressed on his tour of the Jersey Shore with President Obama.  I said he's a boardwalk kid, too. We all are.