Hurricane Irene
August 30, 2011 
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My apologies to MTD readers for being somewhat out of touch. Carleen and I came back to New Jersey for what we thought would be a quiet and uneventful several weeks at our farm. Instead, we were greeted with day after day of rain, and an earthquake in Virginia that was felt as far West as Wisconsin and as far North as New Hampshire. You can imagine our surprise when our house began to shake!
By far the worst, though, has been Hurricane Irene which hit the East Coast over this past weekend. The impact for us was a few downed trees, a washed out driveway, a flooded basement, and the loss of electricity, which still has not been restored. I have to admit that I have been guilty of taking electric power for granted. At least I did, until the clocks, TV’s, radios and lights no longer worked, the well pump stopped sending us water and a router without power cut off our internet. It’s easy to forget how dependent we are on electricity until you have to do without.
We have been assured that power will be restored within a week, but who knows. About a million New Jersey residents are in the same situation, and the utilities are working overtime to clear downed power lines. In the meantime, I’ll find some other ways to get my observations on China to you.
Hang in there Jack. Sounds like on the whole things could have been a lot worse. It is amazing how the Internet has become like an indispensible public utility in the 21st Century. I changed jobs earlier this year and was without a cell phone, laptop, and Internet connection for a couple of days and it felt as though I lost my right arm.