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The frail 79-year-old in a pale brown shirt with close-cropped hair sitting at a fast-food restaurant table looks absolutely unremarkable. But Bao Tong has a lightness in his eyes, a confidence that speaks of a man whose conscience is clear, a man with nothing to fear.

"I have become my own person," he says. "When I was a Communist Party member, I had to follow party discipline. When they threw me out of the party, my brain was set free."

Before you brave the rain, wind and inevitable lines at the already depleted grocery store today in the Mid-Atlantic region, take a deep breath.

If you're a moderately good grocery shopper, you probably already have the food you need on hand to make it through the next few days if (when) we lose power because of Hurricane Sandy. (If not, best to find a shelter near you.) But you do need to take extra precautions that what you're preparing is safe.

Though Hurricane Sandy is the dominant news of the day, there are other stories, including:

"Personal income increased $48.1 billion, or 0.4 percent," in September from August, the Bureau of Economic Analysis says, while "personal consumption expenditures" — consumer spending — rose 0.8 percent.

While we continue to monitor Hurricane Sandy, we wanted to pass on some of the morning's other top headlines:

In the closely contested battleground state of Florida, the Obama campaign is trying to drive up the number of votes from its base. A key mechanism is the network of black churches throughout the state.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Key West, Florida has seen its share of hurricanes. But as Sandy passed well to the east, residents of the island completed their annual Fantasy Fest. The theme was A-Conch-Alypse, you know, the apocalypse but with conch shells. A parade included floats with alien invaders and a post-apocalyptic zombie ghost town. One float featured a zombie presidential election with advocates for zombie care and a candidate named Eaton D. Brains. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Coyotes have moved into the Boston suburb of Belmont, Mass. The Boston Globe says they've lost their fear of humans because people feed them. So, Belmont is training volunteers for coyote hazing. Their job is to harass coyotes — shouting at them, throwing objects their way, even squirting them with water hoses.