Missing a trend
Mass Marrier taunts me out of silence.
My excuse for giving storm coverage a pass is that I spent the weekend in Ithaca, NY, watching my offspring become a doctor. The occasion included the floppy velvet hat, velvet striped gown, hood... and mostly sunny skies with temps between 65 and 75.
It also included the discovery of a potation called Racer 5, from the Bear Republic Brewery. It is a bit of good fortune that I was able to remember my name after one of those: an aggressive IPA...uh huh.
Another observation from the weekend. There can be fun for faculty in these annual ceremonies if you pop for custom-made regalia. One of the deans at this ceremony was sporting a floor-length red robe with pale green velvet trimming, enormous bell sleeves that reached the floor, matching red shoes, and a very large floppy velvet hat. The voting was evenly divided. Was she Mrs. Claus in her day job, or did she earn her degree at Hogwarts? Damn, I should have done that for a living.
About the weather. As usual, I had to find a New Hampshire news site to find out that anything had happened north of the commuter zone. The vicinity of my hometown, Concord, has been well and truly hammered by the late amusements.
Just west of Concord, if you're on Route 9, you'll pass through a zone of artificial lakes and canals collectively called the Hopkinton-Everett Flood Control Project. It was completed in my teens, and was part of a system intended to mitigate the worst effects of catastrophic floods, such as the 1936 disaster.
It worked.
I remember as a boy seeing houses in the Merrimack flood plain, all the way down the valley, whose signature decoration was an ineradicable stain at the high water mark of the 1936 flood.
The stain was at the second storey level. The worst that has happened this time was about half that height.
It is sobering to think what this might have become without the flood control projects that followed the 1936 flood. But that was the New Deal, when politicians seemed to pay some real attention to human needs. Those flood projects took nearly 30 years to finish, and the payback is right now, with probably thousands of lives saved by the legacy of pinko liberalism.
Today, all we get are photo ops for Captain Brylcreem. Now we'll see whether Republican sound bites measure up any better here than they did in the Gulf Coast.
My excuse for giving storm coverage a pass is that I spent the weekend in Ithaca, NY, watching my offspring become a doctor. The occasion included the floppy velvet hat, velvet striped gown, hood... and mostly sunny skies with temps between 65 and 75.
It also included the discovery of a potation called Racer 5, from the Bear Republic Brewery. It is a bit of good fortune that I was able to remember my name after one of those: an aggressive IPA...uh huh.
Another observation from the weekend. There can be fun for faculty in these annual ceremonies if you pop for custom-made regalia. One of the deans at this ceremony was sporting a floor-length red robe with pale green velvet trimming, enormous bell sleeves that reached the floor, matching red shoes, and a very large floppy velvet hat. The voting was evenly divided. Was she Mrs. Claus in her day job, or did she earn her degree at Hogwarts? Damn, I should have done that for a living.
About the weather. As usual, I had to find a New Hampshire news site to find out that anything had happened north of the commuter zone. The vicinity of my hometown, Concord, has been well and truly hammered by the late amusements.
Just west of Concord, if you're on Route 9, you'll pass through a zone of artificial lakes and canals collectively called the Hopkinton-Everett Flood Control Project. It was completed in my teens, and was part of a system intended to mitigate the worst effects of catastrophic floods, such as the 1936 disaster.
It worked.
I remember as a boy seeing houses in the Merrimack flood plain, all the way down the valley, whose signature decoration was an ineradicable stain at the high water mark of the 1936 flood.
The stain was at the second storey level. The worst that has happened this time was about half that height.
It is sobering to think what this might have become without the flood control projects that followed the 1936 flood. But that was the New Deal, when politicians seemed to pay some real attention to human needs. Those flood projects took nearly 30 years to finish, and the payback is right now, with probably thousands of lives saved by the legacy of pinko liberalism.
Today, all we get are photo ops for Captain Brylcreem. Now we'll see whether Republican sound bites measure up any better here than they did in the Gulf Coast.
posted by Uncle | 22:29
2 Comments:
And while you were whiling in Odysseus land, the Chuck held its banks too. Granted, we in Boston got fewer inches, but the rivers crested high. The word is that the flood plain constructed from state-purchased marsh leached the system pretty well.
Did you bring us a growler?
More on the floods in the next missive.
Alas, This bar (Blue Stone) only had Racer 5 in 24 oz. bottles, a size which was rather sadistic, considering.
I have to try it sometime when I haven't already had a Boulder Beer Mojo IPA. The Mojo hops may have clouded my judgment.
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