Heavy rains, beginning on September 19th, dumped between 15 and 20 inches of rain over three days on parts of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. The deluge overwhelmed natural and man made systems, and the record-breaking downpour turned streams into rivers, swamping neighborhoods, washing out roads and, unfortunately, taking at least nine lives. Damage costs are estimated at $250 million, the cleanup just now beginning. Georgia’s Republican Governor Sonny Perdue recently announced that President Obama has issued a Federal Disaster Declaration for individual assistance to aid residents of five affected counties. Collected here are a few recent photos around the area, largely centered on Atlanta, Georgia. (30 photos total)
Assinine line of the day
“I don’t need maternity care. So requiring that on my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive.”
And of course, if Senator Kyl has federal employee health insurance, as most congress persons do, he has maternity coverage.
Why would any woman in Arizona ever vote for that man?
TPM has the video (link above).
I don’t even want to think about it line of the day
“So, have you enjoyed the debate over health care reform? Have you been impressed by the civility of the discussion and the intellectual honesty of reform opponents?
“If so, you’ll love the next big debate: the fight over climate change.”
Today is the birthday
… of Barbara Walters. She’s 80. Damn, that’s old enough to be on 60 Minutes.
… of SecDef Robert Gates. He’s 66.
… of Michael Douglas. He’s 65. And of Mrs. Douglas. Catherine Zeta-Jones is 40 today.
… of Cheryl Tiegs. She’s 62.
… Anson Williams of “Happy Days.” He’s 60.
… of Mark Hamill. Luke is 58.
… of Heather Locklear. She’s 48.
… of Scottie Pippen. He’s 44.
… of Will Smith. The Man-in-Black is 41.
… of Matt Hasselbeck, 34. Hasselbeck’s broken rib probably cost me a loss in Fantasy Football last weekend.
The Shakespeare of sportswriters was born on this date 104 years ago. That’s Red Smith. Here he is on the 1951 World Series (after the Giants’ miraculous playoff win to be there):
Magic and sorcery and incantation and spells had taken the Giants to the championship of the National League and put them into the World Series … But you don’t beat the Yankees with a witch’s broomstick. Not the Yankees, when there’s hard money to be won.
And on sports fans:
I’ve always had the notion that people go to spectator sports to have fun and then they grab the paper to read about it and have fun again.
And: “Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein.”
William Faulkner was born on this date 112 years ago.
He liked to get up early, eat a breakfast of eggs and broiled steak and lots of coffee, and then take his tobacco and pipe and go to his study. He took off the doorknob and carried it inside with him. There he wrote his novels by hand on large sheets of paper, and then typed them out with two fingers on an old Underwood portable. He was prolific this way — in a four-year span, he published some of his best novels: Sartoris (1929), The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), and Light in August (1932). In 1949, he won the Nobel Prize in literature.
The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor (There’s more.)
Shel Silverstein was born on September 25th in 1930. He died in 1999. Glenn Gould was born on September 25th in 1932. He died in 1982.
Idle thought turns into rant
In a comment Jill said, “[W]e drove by this [Crazy Horse] memorial in 2002 and again in 2007, and now I see your photos from 2009 – and it looks exactly the same every time.”
I went to the closet and dug out a photograph I took there in 1995. Guess what? It looked the same 14 years ago, too.
So I plugged in the scanner to copy the photo, only to learn that HP (the Comcast of computer products) doesn’t have scanner drivers to support the new Mac operating system. HP didn’t have drivers for Mac Leopard either, but one could use a work around. Now that’s not even doable. And HP has no intention of updating these drivers.
This is the second time I have bought a high-end HP scanner specifically to scan photos and had it become a brick in a very short period of time. I will never, ever buy an HP product again.
Can anyone suggest a good long-lived photo scanner? Canon 8800? Epson V500?
Best line of the morning
“I used to work with a couple of Notre Dame graduates who took turns throwing parties for football games. I haven’t got a lot of use for Notre Dame, myself, but I’d even put up with soccer for a crack at the kinds of wine they stocked.”
Louisville Juice on wine and football.
Justice Sotomayor
SCOTUSblog has an excerpt from the transcript of an interview with Justice Sotomayor.
Below is a transcript excerpt from C-SPAN’s one-on-one interview with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, which will air during its “Supreme Court Week.” Justice Sotomayor described her anxiety in waiting for the president’s call and the frantic drive from New York to Washington the night before her nomination was announced…
It’s fun to read. She puts her robe on one leg at a time just like the rest of us.
What if
… the world’s newest tallest building was in Manhattan?
Kottke has an image picturing Burj Dubai in midtown Manhattan.
(This is the building that this year surpassed that TV tower in North Dakota as the world’s tallest manmade structure.)
Misaligned floor mat may have caused calamity
On August 28, 2009, off-duty California Highway Patrol officer Mark Saylor and three members of his family were killed when the 2009 Lexus ES they were riding in sped out of control, crashed into another vehicle, rolled over, and burned. News reports stated that someone in the Lexus called 911 and reported that the car was speeding out of control and that the brakes weren’t working. Initial police reports said that the driver’s floor mat had interfered with the pedals.
It was a dealer loaner. What I don’t understand is why they didn’t turn off the ignition. But make certain your floor mats are not getting all crumbled under the pedals (one of mine does!).
And be careful out there.
Mount Rushmore
“The purpose of the memorial is to communicate the founding, expansion, preservation, and unification of the United States with colossal statues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.”
— Gutzon Borglum
The mountain was carved from 1927-1941, if carved is the word for dynamite. The last 3-6 inches was removed by drilling sufficient holes to crumble the granite away.
Click any of the photos for larger versions of all.
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The heads are approximately 60 feet tall; the noses about 20 feet, Washington’s slightly larger.
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Around 400 men and women worked on the project. The time-clock was at the top of 700 stairs.
All photos taken August 31, 2009. I’ve already written about Custer State Park and Fort Laramie, although we visited them after Mount Rushmore. This is the last of the road trip reports.
Equinox sunset
Click image for larger version and to learn more.
The Badlands
The bizarre landforms called badlands are, despite the uninviting name, a masterpiece of water and wind sculpture. They are near deserts of a special kind, where rain is infrequent, the bare rocks are poorly consolidated and relatively uniform in their resistance to erosion, and runoff water washes away large amounts of sediment. On average, the White River Badlands of South Dakota erode one inch per year. They are formidable redoubts of stark beauty where the delicate balance between creation and decay, that distinguishes so much geologic art, is manifested in improbable landscapes – near moonscapes – whose individual elements seem to defy gravity. Erosion is so rapid that the landforms can change perceptibly overnight as a result of a single thunderstorm.
Photos taken Sunday, August 30, 2009. Click any image for larger versions.
Word
Tom has found a great new word. He wants to apply it to wine, which is fine with me.
But I just like knowing the word. It is a particularly useful word when one lives on the desert. According to Wikipedia, “The term was coined in 1964 by two Australian researchers, Bear and Thomas, for an article in the journal Nature.”
The Black Hills
I know you’ll be disappointed to read that I have just three more installments of road trip photos.
We spent the night in Deadwood, South Dakota, looking for Joanie’s place but to no avail. They discovered gold in the Black Hills in 1874, and from the rush came the town of Deadwood. They discovered modern gambling in Deadwood in 1989 and from that rush came the preservation of an interesting little town, though one that looks nothing like it did in the TV series. Still, better than most tourist communities, and some amenities including this pretty good restaurant. Several places in Deadwood take the name No. 10 because the original No. 10 was the location of Wild Bill Hickok’s death.
Just three or four miles from Deadwood is Lead (pronounced Leed), South Dakota. That’s where the serious gold was. Fred and Moses Manuel and Hank Harney staked their claim called Homestake on April 9, 1876. George Hearst, father of William Randolph Hearst, bought the claim in 1877 for $70,000. The mine closed in 2002 after nearly 40 million ounces of gold and 9 million ounces of silver had been extracted. We tend to think of gold mining as something one does in a cold stream with a flat pan. The real ore came from big industrial mines run by big industrial mining companies.
The Crazy Horse Memorial is the world’s largest mountain carving. It is carved with explosives. The work began in 1948. When finished the front part of the mountain will be a horse’s head. The long strait line will be the Oglala Lakota warrior’s arm pointing to the distance. You can see the face. Note the vehicles in the photo at the base of the rock to get some idea of the scale.
Click any of the images for larger versions.
Head Shots
An excerpt from a short post on capital punishment by Hendrik Hertzberg:
Now that we are learning more about what “lethal injection” sometimes entails, it doesn’t look so nice. Perhaps this is an area where we could learn from our Chinese friends. Their method of execution, I’m convinced, is the kindest of all: a pistol shot to the back of the head. It’s quick, it’s inexpensive, and it’s not as messy as you might assume.
Go if only to read what he reveals about the guillotine method.
And, if this is a topic that interests you, read: In our country, if a death sentence were pronounced honestly, it would sound like this.
Redux post of the day
First published four years ago today.
For some reason earlier today NewMexiKen got to thinking about his very first day of work. It was Thanksgiving 1960. The place was the Cliff House restaurant in Tucson. At the time, the Cliff House was considered one of the best restaurants in town — great menu plus a wonderful view of the city from its foothill location on Oracle Road. The chef was known simply by his first name, Otto.
Thanksgiving was a very busy day at the Cliff House. I started at noon and got off sometime around 10:30. I was the dishwasher’s second assistant. The dishwasher, who on a regular shift worked just by himself, needed all the help he could get on Thanksgiving. He sprayed the loose residue off the plates and out of the cups and glasses and loaded the racks to go into the machine. The first assistant took the clean dishes out of the machine and got them back into circulation. My job was to clear the trays as the busboys brought them in, scraping the uneaten turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes off the plates into the garbage pail. For more than 10 hours. For $1 an hour.
I did well for my first day of work, being reprimanded only once — by Otto himself, no less. I was throwing out the uneaten dinner rolls instead of returning them to the bread warmer. In chefly like fashion he blew his top, but calmed down when he realized no one had told me differently (and I was a nice deferential kid whose mom was a waitress).
As the day went on into evening, however, this fine restaurant developed a mini-crisis. The Cliff House ran out of cranberries. Now there is one thing a restaurant must have on Thanksgiving and that is turkey. And there is one thing a restaurant must serve with turkey and that is cranberries (or cranberry sauce). And someone had miscalculated and none was left.
It was the dishwasher’s second assistant who saved the day. As the dirty dishes came in from the dining room I not only rescued the dinner rolls, I now also recycled the cranberries. From each plate I corralled the dark red glob and scraped it into a bowl. Periodically Otto would come over and switch out my trove with an empty new bowl. He’d take the cranberries I had reclaimed and scoop them (not so generously as earlier) onto some eager gourmand’s plate.
Amazingly I still love cranberries (especially cranberry relish).
Never bored
Several of my former co-workers have asked what retired people, like me, do to make their days interesting.
I went to the store the other day. I was only in there for about 5 minutes. When I came out there was a cop writing out a parking ticket.
I went up to him and said, “Come on, buddy, how about giving a senior a break?”
He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. I called him a Nazi.
He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires.
So I called him a piece of shit. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket.
This went on for about 20 minutes…the more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote.
I didn’t give a damn. My car was parked around the corner.
I try to have a little fun each day now that I’m retired. It’s important at my age.
First posted here five years ago; Ralph had it first.
America’s First National Monument
President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower a national monument 103 years ago today. It was the first landmark set aside under the Antiquities Act.
The nearly vertical monolith known as Devils Tower rises 1,267 feet above the meandering Belle Fourche River. Once hidden below the earth’s surface, erosion has stripped away the softer rock layers revealing Devils Tower.
Known by several northern plains tribes as Bears Lodge, it is a sacred site of worship for many American Indians. The rolling hills of this 1,347 acre park are covered with pine forests, deciduous woodlands, and prairie grasslands. Deer, prairie dogs, and other wildlife are abundant.
Source: National Park Service
NewMexiKen, who has circumnavigated Devils Tower, thinks it should be renamed Bears Lodge.
Roosevelt added several more monuments after Devils Tower, including El Morro, Montezuma Castle, Petrified Forest, and Chaco Canyon within the first year of the Act.
The Pinwheel Galaxy Captured in Dazzling Color
Behold one of the wonders of the universe. A photo at Wired.com well worth a click.
Where the Buffalo Roamed
There, in a patch of rolling grassland, loosely hemmed in by Bismarck, Dickinson, Pierre, and the greater Rapid City-Spearfish-Sturgis metropolitan area, we find our answer.
Between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley lies the McFarthest Spot: 107 miles distant from the nearest McDonald’s, as the crow flies, and 145 miles by car!
Weather Sealed has a map of the lower 48 showing the density of Mickey Dees. More interesting than you’d think.
During our recent 6-day trip from Michigan to Denver we did not eat at a national chain restaurant even once.
Catch some Zs if you don’t want to sneeze
“Studies have demonstrated that poor sleep and susceptibility to colds go hand in hand, and scientists think it could be a reflection of the role sleep plays in maintaining the body’s defenses.”
Whoa!
I’ve been putting seed out for the birdies and a whole flock of sparrows was chowing down when I noticed something swoop down that was noticeably larger. Damn, if it wasn’t a big ol’ hawk come to see what the noise was about.
Alas, he didn’t stay long enough for me to snap a photo — he/she was less than 10 feet from this keyboard
And now a jay has arrived. Much smaller, but even more of a bully than the hawk.
Reality line of the day
“A few of the less-discussed downsides to Jerry Jones’s new palace: Parking costs $40, a 20-inch pizza really costs $60, and the tax burden placed on the community by construction overruns is a whopping $933 million.”
Should you be unaware, the reference is to the new stadium for the Dallas Cowboys.
Custer State Park
In my visits there, no place exceeds Custer State Park in the South Dakota Black Hills for wildlife viewing. These photos were taken August 31st. Click for larger versions.
Fort Laramie
We arrived at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, around 6:30 and had the place to ourselves — well there were a bunch of bunnies and one ranger who left his lair long enough to give us each a brochure. (Jill visited Fort Laramie two years ago and says that they too had it to themselves except for a ranger or two.)
It may be quiet now but Fort Laramie was once one of the crucial outposts on the frontier. It was founded as a fur-trading center in 1834 near the confluence of the Laramie and North Platte rivers. In the 1840s it became an important stop on the Oregon Trail.
As the Oregon boom and California gold rush escalated traffic on the Trail, relations with Indians became stressed. The army purchased the outpost in 1849. Fort Laramie was a stop on the short-lived Pony Express. After the Civil War, it became increasingly a military staging area in the Indian wars and a safe haven for travelers on the Deadwood-Cheyenne stagecoach route.
Fort Laramie was abandoned as a military post in 1890. It seems pretty well abandoned by everyone else today.
Click photos for larger versions.