Thursday Evening in Dumbo: Great Small Works 10th International Toy Theater Festival presents Jenny Romaine and Roberto Rossi's "Sandy Sandy Sandy" at St. Ann's Warehouse

(Video courtesy Trudi Cohen)

Thanksgiving Morning in Sunset Park: Occupy Sandy Relief at St. Jacobi Lutheran Church

Since we're useless at food prep or cooking, after we dropped off our donations for Occupy Sandy's Thanksgiving dinners at the kitchen at St. Johns Episcopal Church in Bay Ridge, we went up Fourth Avenue to Sunset Park to report for more suitable duty at one of the Occupy Sandy Recovery centers, St. Jacobi Lutheran Church, a beehive of frenetic activity.

It is a distribution and drop-off center,

and cars were lined up Fourth Avenue outside on both sides of the streets, getting loaded with food as Occupy Sandy volunteers in bright yellow vests skillfully directed the vehicles.

At the reception area, we filled our name, address, email, and phone; made a nametag with our first name;

and were told to report to the church sanctuary for new volunteer orientation

facilitated by Abraham, who explained a lot in a short period of time

in the spirit of the Occupy movement and an awareness of the needs of both volunteers (make sure you take care of yourself first, he said, and not overwork) and the people we will be working with.

There were lines outside for drivers and a shorter one for those of us who didn't have a car.

Four of us were assigned to go to Rockaway with Jordi from Bed-Stuy and we got into his car and were off,

our destination: Beach 113th Street in Rockaway.

We were excited to be going to a place we considered home but also a little afraid we'd be depressed at seeing destruction and devastation in an area where we spent so much of our life.

Early Thanksgiving Morning in Bay Ridge: Occupy Sandy Volunteers Making Thanksgiving Dinners at St. John's Episcopal Church on Fort Hamilton Parkway

Just a few blocks from our current home in Bay Ridge, very early this morning, the amazing volunteers from Occupy Sandy, which has done such wonderful work during the last few weeks since the hurricane, were busy preparing what seemed like zillions of Thanksgiving dinners for people in hard-hit areas.

The kitchen began prep work at 8 a.m. yesterday, was open all night, and volunteers were here even at 2 a.m.

We're really grateful for Occupy Sandy on this Thanksgiving.

Wednesday Night in Tribeca: At the Chambers Street Station, A Sign Announces the H Train Returns to Rockaway

After meeting with our wonderful Wednesday evening English 101 class at the Borough of Manhattan Community College's Murray Street building, we went down to wait for the A train at Chambers Street and found this sign, nostalgic to all those of us who remember the HH train in the Rockaways (and the CC to Rockaway Park before that).

To replace some of the service, since the Jamaica Bay tracks were destroyed by Superstorm Sandy, a free H train shuttle will run from Far Rockaway (the last stop, now served by a bus shuttle from Howard Beach/JFK) to Beach 90th Street along the rarely used Hammels Wye.

(Photo by the great Nathan Kensinger, whose amazing work we first came across in 2009 with "Abandoned Brooklyn.")

Saturday Afternoon in Park Slope: King Con III at the Brooklyn Lyceum

Lots of people are suffering badly in the aftermath of the devastation that was Hurricane Sandy, and like others in the area who were relatively unscathed, we've been doing stuff for relief efforts (and will not be posting any pics of the terrible damage we saw). King Con III, the third annual two-day Brooklyn comic book convention featuring panels, appearances by artists and writers, tables filled with terrific books and other artworks, screenings and different forms of entertainment, decided to soldier on today and tomorrow at the Brooklyn Lyceum on a reduced basis.

Thankfully, the historic old building, formerly Public Bath #7, survived the superstorm in good shape, although slightly damaged. The $7 admission fee was waived in favor of a suggested donation, or pay-what-you-can, to go to the unofficial Lyceum restoration fund.

All the panels were canceled and will be rescheduled quarterly between now and King Con IV in 2013. Like a number of the panelists from out of town or devastated areas nearby, some of the artists too could of course not make it.

But the screenings of animated movies like the 1993 Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and Heavy Metal (1981), as well as Max Fleischer shorts, were still going on as scheduled, as were kids' events and performances by the Puppet People (Legend of Sleepy Hollow) and juggler extraordinaire Will Shaw.

We paid our donation and went downstairs to see the artists and writers and publishers who managed to make it, and we took advantage of the relatively sparse crowds to talk with some of what King Con III's publicity called "the next generation of Comic Artists in a show dedicated to the underdog artists (aren't they all?)." Actually, there were some familiar older faces, too.

But we saw some terrific work by younger artists/writers like Victor Ochoa's Toxicity; Raphael Moran's Dream Reavers; First Law of Mad Science by Mike Isenberg & Oliver Mertz and drawn by Daniel Lapham; The Wonder City, by Justin Rivers and illustrated by Courtney Zell; Erich Fletschinger's comic, Brooklyn; Mindy Indy's The Misfortune Cookie; Emilio Velez Jr.'s kids' comic The Dodgeball Teens; and Erin Kavanaugh's Necromancer: A Boy and His...uh...Dog.

Also impressive was work like Hyper Toast by Justin DeCarlo; the amazing book one of The Secret Adventures of Houdini by Todd Hunt and Sean Von Gorman; Nate Bear's very funny Bear Brains; the unique designs of Bradford Johansen and Pirates of Brooklyn; and Ken Wong's work with Origami Comics, particularly the remarkable Schrodinger's Cat.

Some artists/writers do wonderful work with web comics, like Tom Eaton's The Bug Zapper; Joe and Keith Anthony-Brown's fine The Crime Machine; and Mark Delboy's audaciously brilliant Fanciest Lumps.

Also around King Con III were some folks whose work we were happily familiar with, like Bill Roundy, who does the beloved cartoon guide to local drinking spots, Bar Scrawl; Ian Randal Strock, whose Fantastic Books, publishes new and reprinted classics of speculative fiction; and Carren Strock, author of the new mystery In the Shadow of the Wonder Wheel, whose other books include the memoir Married Women who Love Women and A Writer's Journey: What to Know Before, During, and After Writing a Book.

As usual in a dark venue, our old dumb phone's ancient camera takes pretty horrible pics, but that's all we've got for now. We are grateful we got to take a post-superstorm disaster break for a couple of hours to get to King Comic III. Thanks to the artists and writers and the people who put the event together and kept it going despite Hurricane Sandy's devastation.

Thanks also to the great Brooklyn Lyceum. We bought a great Floyd Bennett Field T-shirt on our way out to remind us of our roots.