This time last week I was in New York City shepherding two first-timers around.  They’d never been there before, so we covered a lot of territory – mostly on foot – from 50th Street to Wall Street; the Brooklyn Bridge to the High Line.  They absolutely loved it, just as I’ve loved it from my first visit as a teenager in 1959.  Last Saturday everything seemed so completely normal as we wandered around, but 24 hours later the world was turned upside down.  We were already back in Canada when New York and New Jersey faced off against Sandy’s fury.  The flooding and destruction is staggering.  The response from the population and government has been totally impressive.  If such a calamity should occur in Canada (earthquake, a tsunami, oil spill, rising tides, etc.), with the Canadian government’s penchant for cost-cutting everything that isn’t nailed down, do we have the where-with-all to respond as the US is doing?  I wonder.

<PHOTOS ABOVE from the NY Times website: South Ferry subway station/Lenny Pridatko; and Flooding of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel/Dave Jones>