Hello, All.  Four more days till the election.  I will be so glad when it is done.  Then all we will have to endure will be the usual ads trying to sell me something instead of all of the ads trying to sell me (for or against) someone.  I disconnected the garden hose, drained it, and rewound it on the reel for the winter.  Took a closer look at the plants that will spend the winter in the gardens and all appear to be doing well.  The mints and lemon balm are actually doing very well.  They are all growing like the weeds they once were.  The blueberries look better with the cooler weather.  If we get the same kind of heat next year I may have to rig some kind of shade for them.  I still have to sweep up the leaves for the compost bin but that can wait until later when the temperature is a bit warmer.

NBC.com has some astonishing before and after satellite pictures of damaged areas post-superstorm Sandy.  Anyone who thinks that these areas will get back to a pre-storm normality any time soon (if ever) is living in a fantasy world.  Unfortunately, from the news coverage, a number of people in the disaster zone expect exactly that.  The news media love drama and those simply coping patiently don't provide that drama.

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism is the second blogger to post on the theme of Sandy, the aftermath, and the fragility of complex systems of which our cities are a prime example.  The problem with complex systems is they will fail--it isn't a question of if but of when.  And then we have to figure out how we will get buy till something like normal conditions can be reestablished.  As I watch and read accounts of disaster aftermaths (Katrina, Snowmageddon, Irene, the tornadoes) I get the feeling that too many of us are oblivious to the possibilities.  We are so immersed in our complex environments we are like fish in water--absolutely unable to imagine what would happen if that environment failed us.  At least until we are facing an immediate threat.  I am always amazed to see all of the people out filling grocery carts, buying snowblowers or generators, etc. in the few days before a major storm hits.  I visited the Ready.gov site to check it out after reading about it on one of the blogs.  They recommend at least three days of food and water on hand in each household.  Why do I emphasize that?  Because if you had stayed in New Orleans or parts of the east coast or parts of New England after Irene and had only 3 days of supplies on hand you were, to use a technical term, shit out of luck.  You ran out.  I was totally surprised when the ABC national evening news did a small segment on how much food (and of what kind) and water someone should keep on hand.  I had never seen any such discussion at all, ever on national news.  But I rather expect that we will see similar images next time--and there will be a next time.