Late Thanksgiving Morning in Rockaway Beach: At the YANA (You Are Never Alone) Community Center on Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Beach 113th Street

The ride from St. Jacobi to Rockaway was a quick one, and we witnessed a lot of destruction and debris driving past Riis Park, Neponsit and Belle Harbor before we arrived at the YANA (You Are Never Alone) community center, a storefront on the north side of Rockaway Beach Boulevard at Beach 113th Street, where we volunteers gathered to await assignments.

We were told to go over to St. Camillus Roman Catholic Church on Beach 100th Street, a place we know well,

and with our driver being sent to search the peninsula for diesel fuel, our group joined others walking along Rockaway Beach Boulevard.

Rite-Aid at Beach 108th was open, we noticed, as we went along that familiar boulevard, passing the apartment buildings where our Grandma Sylvia and Grandpa Nat, our Grandma Ethel and Grandpa Herb lived, our great-aunt and great-uncle Tillie and Morris lived, and where we ourselves spent months and months of lives.

until we got to St. Camillus.

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.")

Sunday Morning in Soho: The Start of Day Three of the "Moby Dick" Marathon Reading at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe

While we know some hardy sailors were aboard for the full three-day, 25-hour voyage of this weekend's marathon reading of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, at our age we didn't have the endurance or sea legs for that.

We were teaching at FIT on Friday night and so entirely missed the start of the reading with Paul Dano starting off with "Call me Ishmael" at Greenpoint's wonderful WORD Bookstore, and we were at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe yesterday only for about chapters 41-47, entirely and regrettably missed being at Molasses Books in Bushwick from 4 p.m. to midnight yesterday, but we were back at Housing Works when the reading of Melville's masterpiece began anew at 10 a.m. today with Ryan Davidson starting on chapter 100.

More coming . . .