Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- The past week has brought torrential rains to New York. A week ago, last Saturday night, some 11 inches of rain fell on Manhattan within about 6 hours. At 3:30 am Sunday, I decided to go to my studio to see what the damage would be. I’d had major floods in the studio, and have sandbags permanently greeting guests at the front door. Usually, the sandbags work to keep the water out. However, the pounding rain let me know that things had gotten serious. I wasn’t as much concerned for the studio as I was for the cat within the studio, Robbie. He’d never seen floods within his home before.

Sure enough there were four inches of water troughout the space, when I got there. I propped open the door and went to work. There’s a subpump within the studio that never seems to kick in on its own. I jiggled it until it started, and it took up a lot of the water and spat it outside to the drain. Within two hours, the water was down to a mopping chore. I decided to lie down for an hour or so; the cat was hiding in a high space, and wouldn’t come out after initially greeting me with lots of purring. In two hours, I began the big mop and finished that another two hours later. Chore complete.

To get rid of the moldy smell within the studio, I mopped again two days later using bleach within the washing water. It did the trick. I’m sorry I didn’t take some pictures. Seeing the cat food floating would have made a good photo.

You can understand why Heidi continually calls me Noah. A drop of rain falls, and I worry about the possiblity of flooding within the studio. Fortunately, I think the space well worth the problems.

Here are some shots Steve Fisher took of a tennis court in Queens.

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It looks pretty in the photograph.

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But it’d be annoying if you wanted to play tennis.

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Or if you owned the court and had to clean out the water.

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Aside from the flooding coming in the front door, we’ve also had some coming in the back door through the bathroom. It’s not as pervasive, but it’s been MUCH more frequent these days. However, some arduous work by a plumber found the pipe line with a lining of grease about two inches thick, not letting the water move through it. Someone in the building’s been dumping grease in their toilet, and it’s been building. They finally cleaned that out and everything seems to be fine now.

The tiling in the bathroom has plucked up from the floor, and the builiding management is going to lay some marble tiles for me. So it’s an upgrade. However, the uplifted tiles have left an interesting pattern on the floor in the bathroom. I did take some pictures of that.

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These abstractions led me to look outdoors, and voila I found a nearby billboard about to be replaced.

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Meanwhile, just outside my front door, the sandbags remain and the bricks are ever deteriorating.

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The sandbags, made to step over.

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The plaster fades away revealing the disintegrating brickwork.

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These bricks are still wet.

Enough said. I just hope the rain coming tonight won’t compare to last weekend’s deluge. There seems to be proof positive of Global Warming everywhere we look, but the Republilcans and the Tea Party refute science. We’re in a sad state.

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