Todd Fine

Hurricane Sandy Hits Little Syria: Worrying about Buildings and Brothers

The cliché always reasserts itself as a truth: “as long as you are safe, that is all that matters.” In the wake of a disaster, material things – buildings, possessions, money – fade away in importance, and we first worry about the safety of our friends and loved ones. Yet, as Hurricane Sandy approached New York City, my initial, frenzied concern was for things material, yet valued in symbolic abstraction: the last historic structures of Washington Street in Lower Manhattan, ...