Tuesday afternoon I saw my eye doctor, who gave me good news and bad news. Good news is my retina is healing fine from the laser ZAP! last week. The bad news is, it’s still healing, so I can’t go running for at least another two weeks. Running on the road, that is. I can get on a treadmill, so that’s what I’ll do, at the gym at work.
Driving back to work after the appointment, I went over the Zakim Bridge and past whatever Boston Garden is being called these days where, minutes ago, the Boston Celtics won the NBA championship. The last time they did that, 22 years ago, I was living in a one bedroom apartment in Melrose, Massachusetts, and Carol was a couple of months away from moving in with me. That was a very long time ago.
But I want to at least mention Iowa, because I feel so sorry for those people. They have a lot more to worry about now than $4.15 gasoline. What a mess out there. So many lives disrupted, and an entire region’s economy devastated. The Boston Globe has an excellent set of photos of the flooding in Iowa at this link. The first one, of a tornado, is terrifying, and looks as though it could almost be a special effect in a movie.
My buddy Dennis made some noteworthy comments about what’s happening in the midwest.
When bad things happened in New Orleans, those on the religious right proclaimed that it was “God’s Wrath on Sinful New Orleans.” So, what is this? “The Heartland” is facing the same wrath now. Maybe because Iowa voted for Obama? Where is the “They had it coming” and “Well, they built the city below water level” stuff? I’m sure that 50 years ago, most of the land flooded in this disaster was farmland and absorbed the water in time. Today, houses and buildings sit there, awash in a toxic sludge. Would someone say “They had it coming”?
Good question. Why is the flooding of Cedar Rapids and Des Moines different from the punishment that Hurricane Katrina was supposed to be for the sinfulness of New Orleans? I would add the question, why are so many who claim to feel the forgiveness of Christ so full of judgment, and lacking in forgiveness themselves?
I’ve made a point to pay closer attention to some of the specific details of this MONSTER flooding since I wrote my comments above, instead of just catching the generalities. I really haven’t ever had any personal contact with the Midwest. Ever since I was an East Coast kid, I’ve been used to hearing about the spring flooding every year in the Midwest. But this flood is mind-boggling, for the farmers as well as the homeowners. What makes it even worse is that for all the successful sand-bagging of levees that hold, I’m hearing on CNN today that the towns and cities downstream will just get an even worse inundation.
It’s really a dilemma in so many complicated ways. Naturally, aterways were our highways when this country was first being settled by immigrants to the “New World.” So of course so many cities sprang up around the rivers. If this is a 500 year flood, then we would have to go back to 1508 to find its counterpart!!! At which time nomadic native Americans would simply relocate. People are not nearly so mobile now, of course!
I still think that there are areas prone to havoc caused by Mother Nature on a chronic basis, where people should not be living. While residing in Puerto Rico for 4 years, there was a small rural mountainside community called Mameyes which was repeatedly plagued with mudslides after seasonal heavy rains. Yet the residents simply wanted to rebuild over and over again in the very same place, despite losses of life and destruction of their houses.
I think that if the government is going to provide assistance to disaster victims, in some cases, there may have to be some rules attached to the money, regarding exactly where rebuilding is to take place, and specifically what quality of materials are to be used. (Such as the durability of roof-rebuilding reconstruction in hurricane-prone Florida.)
Today on CNN I am hearing talk of the government backing the construction of buffer zones by farmers, along rivers. Instead of planting food crops right up to the river, a buffer strip of grasses and/or bushes would line the riverbanks. Besides absorbing more water, these buffer zones would also absorb more pesticide and fertilizer run-off from the farmland into the rivers. It’s not nearly a total cure, of course, but at least it’s something as a start.
My words exactly, D.J. An the mayor of New Orleans wasn’t much help, either. It took Ho’ boys like Harry Connick, Jr. to go in and get their hands dirty. He had the money and the clout. I heard one report on NPR where you heard a man screaming, “Somebody help us! This is OUR Katrina!” Gave me the chills, and there are still mroe makeshift levees about the break. “Ole black water, keep on rolling … ”
Gas is $3.99 here and I have to fill the tank once a week. It’s breaking me just to go the YMCA!
Glad to hear your eye is healing properly!
This is a hard truth to swallow for an American population which wants to live and make money running tourist-related businesses where ever it wants, without government intervention of prohibitions regarding the use of private land, BUT…
There are lots of flood-prone areas by rivers, and barrier islands, which have always been risky to build upon. So the more populated they get, the worse the disasters can become. Barrier islands, and mangrove swamps (many of which we have drained, in order to develop the land!) are meant to blunt the force of hurricanes striking the mainland, and the swamps serve to absorb and slow down the raging ground water from storm surges. Areas along river banks are better suited for certain types of farmland, since flood waters can help fertilize them with soil deposits.
An argument can be made in tornado-prone or earthquake-prone areas that although your home MIGHT be hit, the exact path of a tornado or the epi-center of an earthquake is not possible to predict. You might live your entire life in such areas, and not suffer any losses.
But we certainly do know which rivers have a repeated history of flooding problems, and we know how often particular barrier islands have been ravaged by hurricanes.
I’m not a Tucson native, but after moving here, I learned of “hundred-year flood plains,” where nobody is allowed to build if the area has flooded in a 100 year time span. We only average 12 inches of rain a year, but much of it falls in daily summer thunderstorms that can turn our dry “washes” into streams or rivers for several weeks. Builders aren’t allowed to erect condos or housing developments in the washes!!!
I do feel badly for people who have been hit by these natural disasters, especially the poor who may have had to make do with living in a flood-prone area, as a place they could afford. It is not a wise place for the poor to settle in, nor persist in staying, but I understand how it happens, and I feel compassion for their plight.
As for those self-righteous religious windbags who are quick to condemn in their pomposity, there’s a label for them: modern day Pharisees. Jesus wasn’t especially fond of them, 2000 years ago.
Hi Doug! Comments from both sides of the fence: First the good-I’m glad the retina is healing! That’s good news! And the Celtics beat the Lakers-Thank Goodness! No Kobe krap to hear-about his “greatness” from Kobe himself 😡 …YUCK! Now the other side: 2 more levees failed and just heard a third may fail in the Illinois/Iowa areas of record flooding. Dennis and you are right on target in that so much development has caused problems due to farmland/flood plain loss. In southeast PA they won’t build new houses in many areas without sump pumps. In Iowa and other states, this being a 500-year flood is unimaginable! It’s awful and you feel so bad for people . The religion aspect came to me though when I heard a mayor say “God will provide…”, “We’ve been praying…”, “Pray for us…”. I wondered about why my evangelical neighbor says God makes beautiful weather days, but I never hear her or any very religious person credit God for a flood, tornado, earthquake, or fire!