54 degrees here in Clarinda, IA at 12 Noon Monday, high to be 60 degrees. Reported 32 degrees this morning, but no sign of frost at all.
Phyllis had knitted a stocking cap for David and sewn a dress for Jessica and they posed for a picture with them.
DIARY OF A SNOW SHOVELER:
At left is the temp at 7;17 am when I went out to the hot tub. Not so bad getting into the tub, but getting out wet, those three steps to the doorway were quick ones. And think, 95 degrees last Saturday!
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75 degrees at 8:15 pm Saturday. To be a bit cooler. This 95 degrees was earlier this afternoon
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We went to the Clarinda Band Day parade this morning, after eating breakfast at the American Legion Club here in Clarinda at their Biscuits & Gravy fund raiser.
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This afternoon we watched Iowa get beat, but Nebraska won their fifth football game of the season!.
Yesterday we drove to Hiawatha, KS and spent lunch and afternoon with Harold & LaRhoda Neher. It was LaRhoda's 88th birthday. Harold will be 98 next March. They are getting along, but Harold is now on oxygen 24 hours a day and feeling his age
I drove their van which has a wheel-chair ramp for Harold to wheel into. He was able to wheel into the cafe where we had some delicious fish and tenderloin.
After I dropped the ladies off at home, Harold had me drive him several miles to where his son Tim was combining beans. Harold was able to see the progress Tim was making in the 300 acre field near his house. And we split 4 games of Pegs & Jokers before having a piece of pumpkin pie!
On the way to Hiawatha, we had stopped in St. Joe, MO to drop off the wire I cleaned out of our storage shed this last week. Was able to strip some, but much was with insulation. Also had some scrap iron.
At right is the yard where I unloaded the scrap iron.
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Have you ever wondered what the population would be if copulation was painful?
Later, LC
This is a wonderful true story. You will be glad that
you read it, and I hope you will pass it on.
It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail,
when the sun resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue
ocean.
Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favorite
pier.
Clutched in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed
walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to
himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now.
Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the
beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts...and
his bucket of shrimp.
Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the
sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way
toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.
Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him,
their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to
the hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with
a smile, 'Thank you. Thank you.'
In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed
doesn't leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to
another time and place .
When he finally turns around and begins to walk back
toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets
to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way
down to the end of the beach and on home.
If you were sitting there on the pier with your
fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like 'a funny old duck,' as my dad
used to say. Or, to onlookers, he's just another old codger, lost in his own
weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.
To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange
or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant .....maybe even a lot of
nonsense.
Old folks often do strange things, at least in the
eyes of Boomers and Millennials.
Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down
there in Florida ... That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better.
His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous
hero in World War I, and then he was in WWII. On one of his flying missions
across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all
of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.
Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on
the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most
of all, they fought hunger and thirst. By the eighth day their rations ran out.
No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where
they were or even if they were alive.
Every day across America millions wondered and prayed
that Eddie Rickenbacker might somehow be found alive.
The men adrift needed a miracle. That afternoon they
had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle.
They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his
military cap over his nose. Time dragged on. All he could hear was the slap of
the waves against the raft...suddenly Eddie felt something land on the top of
his cap. It was a seagull!
Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly
still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the
gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and
he and his starving crew made a meal of it - a very slight meal for eight men.
Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave
them food and more bait....and the cycle continued. With that simple survival
technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found
and rescued after 24 days at sea.
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that
ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first life-saving seagull...
And he never stopped saying, 'Thank you.' That's why almost every Friday night
he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart
full of gratitude.
Reference: (Max Lucado, "In the Eye of the
Storm", pp...221, 225-226)
PS: Eddie Rickenbacker was the founder of Eastern
Airlines. Before WWI he was race car driver. In WWI he was a pilot and became
America's first ace. In WWII he was an instructor and military adviser, and he
flew missions with the combat pilots. Eddie Rickenbacker is a true American
hero. And now you know another story about the trials and sacrifices that brave
men have endured for your freedom.
As you can see, I chose to pass this story along as it
was passed to me from my father. It is a great story that many don't know...I
think it exemplifies a couple of life's lessons to be remembered. You've got to
be careful with old guys, you just never know what they have done during their
lifetime. It also speaks to me about how we never know what we adversity we
might face, but when we put our talent both mentally and physically together,
we can overcome, but we must never forget what we learned and to remember to
thank those that helped pull us through even if it was as something seemingly
meaningless as a seagull and to pay it forward.
And now......the rest of the story.
Captain Edward Vernon Rickenbacker was just the first
American Ace of WW I, he was the highest scoring ace of WW I with 26 victories
against aircraft and 5 baloons, higher than any other American fighter pilot in
WW I. That made him a quintuple ace. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of
Honor for his heroism. He was also awarded the French Croix de Guerre. Eddie
Rickenbacker was the American version of the Germans’ Red Baron.
Rickenbacker left the military after WW I as a major,
but he preferred to keep the title of Captain. In his own words, “I felt that
my rank of captain was earned and deserved.”
In 1921 he founded the Rickenbacker Motor Company. The
company produced stylish, mid-priced cars with 6 and later, 8 cylinder engines.
He left the company in 1926 because of disagreements with his partners. The
company went bankrupt in 1927.
In 1933, Rickenbacker joined the General Motors
Aeronautics Division as its VP. The GM division included Eastern Air Transport
which would soon become Eastern Airlines. The airline became a success by 1938
and Rickenbacker raised $3.5 million to buy the airline from GM. He built the
airline into one of the biggest in the country.
In 1941, Rickenbacker was involved in a crash when the
Eastern Airlines plane he was in flew into the side of a hill. The pilots and
eleven passengers were killed, but Eddie survived which added to his legend.
Due to heavy injuries, he spent the next ten months recovering but was left
with a limp for the rest of his life.
Although he was a civilian, Rickenbacker spent a lot
of time raising money for Britain and the United States at the beginning of the
war. When the above related incident happened, he was on his way to New Guinea
to deliver a secret message to Ge. MacArthur. The story makes it sound like he
was a part of the flight crew, but in this case he was still a civilian
passenger. Nevertheless, he took command of the situation and all of the other
survivors credited his iron will for their survival.
In 1943 Eddie was again asked to help the war effort
by travelling to the Soviet Union to observe how the Soviets were using the
equipment the US had sent them and lend his expertise. That was his overt
mission. He also had a covert mission to observe the Soviet military and report
back on their readiness and training. Once again he fulfilled his mission.
Hurricane Helene: A note to friends outside of the South.
We live in Greene County, East Tennessee. Our county’s southern border is the Tennessee-North Carolina state line that runs along the heights of the Appalachian Mountains. We are within the hardest hit region of the U.S.
The questions I have been hearing a lot is why was this so bad, and why weren’t people prepared. I’ll try to answer those questions in the following post.
Hurricane Helene was the strongest hurricane (in recorded history) to hit Florida’s big bend region (on the eastern edge of the panhandle). It is the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The death toll is over 160 so far. We are still finding bodies, and there are still many, many people missing as I write this today six days after the hurricane hit land.
I work in the emergency department at Greeneville Community Hospital. The hospital itself has been evacuated because we have no water in the majority of the county. We are still running our emergency department as a critical access site for our community. Fortunately, I have a well and didn’t lose electricity for long. I was able to haul water in a 300 gallon tote in the back of my truck to the hospital for the first few days so we could flush toilets and wash hands. It took a few days, but we now have porta-potties and water tanks on trucks to keep the emergency department running.
Under an hour from our hospital to the east, Unicoi County Hospital was flooded requiring patients and providers to be rescued from the roof via helicopter.
Under an hour from our hospital to the south, over the mountains, Asheville, NC has been hit particularly hard.
But why was this region hit so hard?
First, we had a lot of rain before Hurricane Helene even showed up. Depending on the area, we had 7-11 inches of rain in the week before the first storm clouds of the hurricane arrived. This rain saturated the ground and filled ponds and streams.
Then the hurricane arrived. She barreled her way up through the panhandle of Florida, quickly shot through Georgia, and then slowed down and stalled over North Carolina and East Tennessee. And that’s right where we live.
The reason she stalled involves atmospheric pressure conditions that I don’t fully understand, but the result was that this hurricane dropped 20 inches to over 30 inches of rain in some areas… that’s an estimated 40 trillion gallons of rain.
How much is 40 trillion gallons of water?
40 trillion gallons of water is enough to fill the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium 51,000 times.
40 trillion gallons of water is enough to cover the entire state of North Carolina with 3.5 FEET of water.
40 trillion gallons of water is enough to fill 60 MILLION Olympic-sized swimming pools.
40 trillion gallons of water is 619 DAYS of water flowing over Niagara Falls.
So this is an unprecedented amount of rain already falling on an area that had just received ground-saturated rain.
But it wasn’t just the amount of rain, it was the geography of where that rain fell.
The southeastern slopes (of western North Carolina) and the northwestern slopes (of East Tennessee) acted as funnels or rain catchments that directed all this water downhill and concentrated it into streams and rivers running into the valleys. It overflowed these streams and rivers causing massive flooding.
How much flooding?
The French Broad River usually crests at 1.5 feet… but it reached 24.6 feet during the storm.
The Nolichuckey River rose to almost 22 feet. The Nolichuckey River Dam in Greene County, during the peak of the flooding, took on 1.2 MILLION gallons of water per SECOND. Compare that to Niagara Falls which peaks at 700,000 gallons per second. Fortunately, this dam held… but barely, with damage.
Consequences.
The flooding, and all the things the flooding carried with it (large trees, vehicles, buildings, etc.) caused widespread damage. It destroyed homes and businesses. It destroyed roads and bridges. It knocked out power.
This isolated many places for days and days from normal rescue efforts and evacuation plans.
Here in Greene County, the flooding destroyed the intake pump for the county’s primary water supply. We hope they will be able to bring in a temporary pump to bypass the damaged system, but that still may take a couple weeks. In the meantime, most people in the county have no clean water for drinking, washing hands, or bathing, and no water for sanitation.
I have taken care of people in the emergency department who had their homes literally washed away. Everything they own, other than the clothes on their back, has been lost. Many friends have had their homes almost destroyed by flooding and their houses are filled with mud and debris.
And this is just in my immediate area. Other places around us have unfortunately been hit harder.
Why weren’t people prepared?
No one in the mountains of North Carolina or East Tennessee prepares for a hurricane.
It’s kind of like asking why someone in Iowa doesn’t prepare for a tidal wave or why someone in Florida doesn’t prepare for a blizzard. It’s not what happens, like ever.
This was a combination of already rain-saturated ground before the hurricane hit, the hurricane/storm stalling over this region dumping unprecedented amounts of rainfall in a small area, and the geography of mountains channeling and concentrating all this water into the valleys below that created a perfect storm, so to speak, of conditions that caused this disaster.
It couldn’t have been prevented or prepared for.
Please feel free to share this. Hopefully it answers some questions and provides a better understanding of what has happened and why it is so devastating.
Yogi Berra Explains Jazz:
Interviewer: Can you explain jazz?
Yogi: I can't, but I will. 90% of all jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, its right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it's wrong.
Interviewer: I don't understand.
Yogi: Anyone who understands jazz knows that you can't understand it. It's too complicated. That's what's so simple about it.
Interviewer: Do you understand it?
Yogi: No. That's why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldn't know anything about it.
Interviewer: Are there any great jazz players alive today?
Yogi: No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead. Some would kill for it.
Interviewer: What is syncopation?
Yogi: That's when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don't hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be jazz, but only if they're the same as something different from those other kinds.
Interviewer: Now I really don't understand.
Yogi: I haven't taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well.
