Back in business

(Nov. 12, 2012) More than two weeks ago, at the start of Superstorm Sandy, Jack and I moved to son John's house in Chester. Our area had lots of high winds, but thankfully not much rain, so no flooding. Then before the nor'easter snowstorm, we came back home to no electricity, no phones, no Internet. We're in a dead zone for cell service too. Dozens of trees are down and tangled in power lines so we didn't expect power to be restored until this weekend. And last night, wow, everything was restored. So we're back in business.

By the way, in our neighborhood the tree workers from Ohio and the power company personnel from North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia were top-notch. A big thank you to them for coming here to help.

Our generator, which which we used conservatively because of the gas shortage, is stored back in the garage, hopefully not to come out for a long while. We still have lots of cleanup, but first two weeks' of laundry, insurance notifications, telephone messages, e-mails, etc. The weather has calmed down, actually rather pleasant and unseasonably warm.

Our prayers go out to the shore communities who faced much greater challenges and water destruction, in fact still have a long recovery ahead.

Through it all, Recorder Community Newspapers has been keeping readers abreast of what's happening in their local areas, despite power outages. In addition to Sandy's hit, Halloween was canceled, standard time resumed, Veterans Day was observed. Check out your newspaper online, including the 60-plus bloggers who share their personal stories and community bloggers who write about their organizations. Anyone interested in joining the group is invited to contact me at panderson@recordernewspapers.com or (908) 832-7420.