Hurricane Sandy

[BettyO]

You can send me the snow, Herb! Love it!

Asplundh also has a large presence in Virginia -- may God watch over all of these who offer assistance as well as the residents and victims -

[Laurie Verge]

I apologize for a rude response to one of my best friends, but.... Betty, please hush up about the snow! I hate every nasty little flake.

[BettyO]

Laurie -- perhaps Herb can just send RICHMOND the snow! We'll confine it to the Old Dominion! HA!

[HerbS]

BettyO-Richmond in the spring is beautiful as always.We would always see our first blooms in Richmond.But,I will promise you that you will be sent snow from me! All 111"of it!

[BettyO]

Yippee!! I turn into a kid when it snows!!

My sister sent me this link --

Believe me you, we have MUCH to be thankful for --
and please remember everyone in these devastated areas in your prayers!

http://www.weather.com/news/weather-hurr...2-20121025

[HerbS]

Great but sad photos!

[BettyO]

Thanks Goodness! I just heard from Richard Sloan!! He and Irene are FINE --

He went home to find that his basement had over 2 feet of water in it -- the upper floors are fine as is his extensive Lincoln Theatre collection - but some of his 45mm Lincoln films which were stored downstairs in the den were destroyed, but he has DVDs of that. His furniture and all else downstairs was ruined. Right now he has no electricity - like most others - Long Island was hit hard.

Thank God we're now ALL accounted for!

[Linda Anderson]

Thank you all for your concern. Our power came back on Wednesday and the cable service this evening.

The beach area suffered the most damage with the floodwater surging through the nearby streets. One house on the beach floated away and many others were badly damaged.

We took a walk the day after the storm and found many large trees uprooted, most of them falling into electrical wires and across roads and yards. Some of the trees had fallen on roofs without breaking through but then we saw a huge tree that had crashed into the second floor of a house. Thank God no one was injured.

My thoughts and prayers are with all those who are still suffering so much from this terrible storm.

[emma1231]

Thanx to all of you who expressed your good wishes and prayers to anyone who might be in "Sandy" 's path. I am just getting back into the groove (altho I still have hundreds of things to put away but don't yet have the appropriate places for them). Many of my Lincoln friends have asked how we are and how we are managing. So if you don't mind the space here, I'll fill you in. .
We live in a flood zone, smack in between two canals - ea. one 5 blocks from me -- one to the east and one to the west. We had 9" of salt water in the house and lost everything on the first floor, unless it lived at least two feet from the floor and we were able to retreive it within the first two days of the hurricane. We live in an expanded ranch, meaning that a second floor was added on (many years before we bought the house), with 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. My Lincoln collection (except for some of my 16 mm. Lincoln movies) is in one of those two upper bedrooms, and thus unaffected! (Whew!) ABout ten of those movies were damaged, and I have yet to attempot to restore them. However, I had previously transferred some of them to either VHS or DVD, and others have since been commercially released on DVD -- some as recently as two months ago (as in the wonderful -- altho sometimes ponderous -- "Agee's Lincoln."). So that loss is not too bad.
We have had to restore the house with mold treatment, rip out the lower half of all walls and all floors, and then dry and replace them. It was a long process, but thanx to our great contractor (who was our "angel"), we are all restored and back in the house, as of 12/21. We have had to order all new furniture (except for a 3-panel sojhi screen, and one antique chair -- which miraculously needed only bleach on its wooden legs and Old English furniture polish). We also had to order new kitchen appliances (exc. for the wall mounted microwave). In order to restore downstairs, everything higher than 3 feet had to be boxed and tossed upstairs into the Lincoln room, a second upstairs bedroom, and our garage. Little by little I am emptying out the items in my Lincoln room that belong elsewhere. I am gaining on it. We lost two large pieces of furniture (such as a breakfront, or china cabinet, that was painful for us, but it was time for new flooring and some new furniture, anyway. If we didn't have the storm, it would have been very costly to go ahead and replace the old stuff. So, looking at the bright side of things, a.) We were more fortunate than many, many people, in that we did have a house to come home to -- albeit after two months - b.) we are still alive, and c.) thanks to homeowner's and flood insurance, we were able to replace our old furniture and flooring without spending too much money out of pocket. I have just ordered some new books from Amazon related to Spielberg's "Lincoln," and hopefully, by the time they arrive, I'll be able to walk into my Lincoln room and find a place in my bookcases for them (after first getting Tony Kushner to autograph them for me on 2/28 at the upcoming dinner meetring of the Lincoln Group of NY!) So thanx for your concerns. We got lucky --- this time.

[HerbS]

emma1231,Thanks for your update-God's Speed !!!!!!!