A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late November, 1985 | Thought Catalog

A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late November, 1985 | Thought Catalog

A 29-Year-Old’s Diary Entries From Late November, 1980 | Thought Catalog

A 29-Year-Old’s Diary Entries From Late November, 1980 | Thought Catalog

Tuesday Morning in Downtown Brooklyn: Borough President Eric Adams Gives Out Turkeys, Vegetables and MetroCards to Brooklynites In Need at Borough Hall

(Video courtesy Brooklyn Daily Eagle)

Wednesday Afternoon in Midtown: Pre-Thanksgiving Bustle at Bryant Park

(Video courtesy A Random Minute)

A 24-Year-Old’s Diary Entries From Late November, 1975 | Thought Catalog

A 24-Year-Old’s Diary Entries From Late November, 1975 | Thought Catalog

A 23-Year-Old’s Diary Entries From Late November, 1974 | Thought Catalog

A 23-Year-Old’s Diary Entries From Late November, 1974 | Thought Catalog

A 22-Year-Old’s Diary Entries From Late November, 1973 | Thought Catalog

A 22-Year-Old’s Diary Entries From Late November, 1973 | Thought Catalog

A 21-Year-Old’s Diary Entries From Late November, 1972 | Thought Catalog

A 21-Year-Old’s Diary Entries From Late November, 1972 | Thought Catalog

Wall Street Journal Front Page Features Photo of Occupy Sandy's Thanksgiving Dinner at St. Camillus in Rockaway (with us included)

The front page of The Wall Street Journal today, Friday, November 23, 2012, features an above the fold photo of yesterday's wonderful Occupy Sandy Thanksgiving dinner outside St. Camillus in Rockaway with the headline: "A Sunny Thanksgiving Feast for Storm's Victims."

At least one person pictured was a volunteer taking a break to eat a delicious apple muffin.

We're a little embarrassed (but not that much) to be pictured when so many of our fellow volunteers and the regular crew at Occupy Sandy in Rockaway aren't. But we are proud of being a tiny part of such a good effort. And we also like that at the extreme left of the photo you can just make out the Dayton Towers West building at 102-00 Shore Front Parkway.

For thirty years our beloved Aunt Tillie -- our grandfather's sister -- and Uncle Morris Metz, had an apartment there on the second floor, where we spent several holiday dinners (Thanksgiving, Rosh Hashona) with them and our Grandma Ethel back in the 1980s. That was the last time we were featured on the front page, albeit of the second section, of The Wall Street Journal. A story by Brooks Jackson about our presidential campaign was published on November 28, 1983, just about 29 years ago.

It ran with the headline "This Presidential Candidate Wants Jane Wyman as His Running Mate," It ended:

So what's next for Mr. Grayson?

He's running for President as a Democratic candidate and accepting public financing, sort of.

"When I go down to the unemployment office, I have to prove that I'm looking for work," he says. "I figure that the presidency is a good job."

He would like Jane Wyman to be his running mate. "She has experience dumping Reagan," he says. The president's ex-wife hasn't accepted yet."

Thanksgiving Afternoon in Rockaway Park: Occupy Sandy Community Thanksgiving Dinner at St. Camillus R.C. Church

After working inside sorting,

stacking,

but mostly dealing with garbage and gratefully getting answers and taking orders from a 10-year-old boy much more experienced at Occupy Sandy Recovery efforts than we are,

we went outside to help with Thanksgiving dinner outdoors in the St. Camillus Church parking lot, facing the beach and ocean and what was the boardwalk that we loved so much. At one point we were manning dessert table #2 with Elliot, serving pumpkin pie and other pastries and giving out coloring books, crayons and playing cards.

We did some other stuff like serving drinks and cleaning up, but we also had time to talk with the incredibly hard-working people from Occupy Sandy -- people like Miguel and Christine and Diego and Kristina and many others -- and to enjoy our own dinner on a beautiful day at the beach.

Father Richard gave a nice toast after a number of Occupy Sandy people spoke.

It was a beautiful Thanksgiving day, and we are very grateful for all the people who worked hard to make it possible.

Before we returned to Brooklyn, we had some time to walk to the beach amid the ruins of the boardwalk. We spent so much of our lives on the Rockaway boardwalk going back to the early 1950s, it's hard to see it destroyed.

This is what our poor old block, Beach 118th Street, where we got our first apartment back in 1979, looked like after Sandy hit:

But in Rockaway, the ocean waves still roll in, and we're hopeful that in some form, the boardwalk will be rebuilt so that young kids can have memories of it the way we did. (Here is a photo our grandfather took of us 43 years ago in November 1969 when we were 18.)