cc licensed image “life saver” by flickr user Didbygraham

Hey Commons — are we alright?

I can see from the blogs that it’s been a tough week for a lot us.  Sarah Morgano put together a great post with the many resources available to you through CUNY and NYC.  We’re encouraging folks to use the comments section to list other resources or information as they become available.  If you’re doing alright but you neighborhood is still flooded/powerless/wrecked/etc please note that if you plan on voting your poll location may have changed.  Gothamist has posted a list of relocated polls for the upcoming election.  You can check your address here.  Though many of you have your charity of choice, if you’d like you can easily donate to the Red Cross by texting ‘SANDY’ or ‘REDCROSS’ to 90999.

I posted a rather cavalier Footenotes early Monday before the storm truly hit.  I think many of us assumed this would be similar to Irene; menacing but mostly toothless.  It didn’t help that a lot forecasting maps looked as though Sandy might hook around the city, though it did admittedly spare us the brunt of the assault.  By the afternoon it was clear we were looking at something much different altogether.  There has been a lot written about New York’s structural problems in dealing with these kinds of storms.  The magnitude of Sandy prompted Mayor Bloomberg to endorse President Obama and sent Bloomberg Businessweek to the balcony shouting ‘It’s Global Warming, Stupid.‘  Andrew Boyarsky posted, sharing his sense of shock at the magnitude of the destruction.  Tony Picciano shared that he lost power, but was able to continue blogging and put up some heartbreaking photos of the aftermath. Cheryl Branche checked in with the community and marveled at the true heroism of folks like the NYU nurses who cared for newborns and those critically ill alike as they evacuated.  Tony found a great site where Hunter students shared their own experiences.  Bruce Rosenbloom took the opportunity to invite a discussion on academic continuity.  Many of us were on Twitter keeping each other company through it all.

And yet the day after the storm us lucky ones were back on the streets buying coffee and newspapers, surveying the damage, and wondering how to help.  From the horror of September 11th to general whimsy of the ’03 Summer Blackout we manage, if we’re fortunate, to get up and put our shoulder back to the wheel.  All over the East Coast folks looked around and went back to work.  Here on the Commons more than a few discussions broke out.   A.W. Strouse did some thinking and writing on Susan Sontag’s holy libido.  George Otte returned to Tributaries to discuss why it’s time for CUNY’s Institutional Repository (Spoiler: Because it’s the right thing to do).  In the spirit of that discussion Bill Ashton posted a great video on What is Open Access?  Tracy Robey even had some good news for History Ph.D’s

The beat goes on…

Till next week.