sleepyThe Lower Ninth Ward is full of water again. It's hard to maintain hope and increasingly easy to realize that things will never be the same in our lifetimes. Do you know that the effects of these storms might have been prevented or lessened by things that could have been done years and years ago? The improvement of the levees, of course. The building of levees in some areas. The closing of the enormously destructive MR-GO (Mississippi River Gulf Outlet) that runs through St. Bernard Parish. The controlled diversion of the Mississippi River to replenish wetlands destroyed by erosion and industry.
Nothing I didn't already know, but still, her words took the adrenaline edge off the slick barrage of news footage of Galveston and all the other places in Rita's path. I'm not sure what I felt, something that passed through me like a flash and left me sick and disoriented. And I kept thinking, It's only September 23rd, and hurricane season doesn't end until November 30th. And what about next year?
I didn't exactly write yesterday. But the frustration was lessened by some genuine progress. I'll work on one of those Other Things today. I have some faint hope of getting back to Chapter Nine tomorrow. Oh, and there's another round of Hollywood weirdness that may or may not come to anything. As usual, I hope it does, but expect that it won't. The fact that I can't actually talk about any of these things I'm talking about...well, that's frustrating, too. I spoke with Neil very briefly. It was sort of by accident. I called to leave a message, and he answered. Immediately, a car alarm went off. It sounded like it was about two feet from wherever he was standing. So, workwise, that was yesterday.
Spooky and I dressed up (we do that less and less often) and made a 5:15 matinee of Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, and it was quite nice. Later, we watched Hammer's Curse of the Werewolf.
There's a new Boschen and Nesuko online (actually, I think there may be two or three, as I've been lax).
This morning, somewhere between hurricane dreams, I dreamt that I'd found a wonderful fossil locality somewhere in southern Georgia, a road cut exposing weathered, red-brown beds of a sandy clay in the Eutaw Formation (Upper Cretaceous). There were scads of oval jet-black Anomeodus teeth (or the palatal teeth of some other pycnodontid fish) and tiny light brown bones, and then I woke up, disappointed.
Congratulations to the winner of Monster Doodle Sculpture #3. And please have a look at the eBay auctions. Books, books, books. Now, it's time to work.
