Not So Fun If the Wave Washes The Kid Into The Gulf
Check Out the Background Waves
snoop through this post for some great sources for photos and video; scroll to previous posts for other links
While the above photo is pretty cool, it also shows the stupidity of people. The waves were breaking over the seawall and it made for a fun time in Galveston before Ike arrived. But, it is no fun getting washed off the seawall and into an angry ocean. That’s precisely what happened in Corpus Christi. I have not heard if the young man’s body was ever recovered. If you look at the LA Times slideshow, you will see one photo of a woman smiling after she terrorized her young child by taking her to the edge of the rough surf. Nuts. Check out the photo at the left where some folks were getting rescued before the storm hit….look at the size of the waves crashing on the beach behind them. That is pretty wild for Galveston which is normally a pretty tranquil beach. Not exactly a surfer’s paradise.
Here is an abolutely fabulous slide show from the Boston Globe (28 photos) some of the photos you have seen before but the clarity of these is just fantastic. i have reproduced one of the just to the right. It’s in a thumbnail but you have to open it. It shows Gilchrist, Texas which is on Bolivar Peninsula a few miles to the east of the Galveston Bay entrance. You can see that the houses have
Gilchrist, Texas-Wiped Clean
been wiped clean. It is obvious from these pictures and the gouges in the land from the water rushing back to sea that these guys got kicked in the teeth by the big storm surge, perhaps not just a rise of water but a rush. This is why I have said that I suspect that had Ike been about 20 miles farther west and just a little stronger, then it is very likely that Galveston would be facing a huge calamity. As it was, I am have seen published reports that parts of downtown Galveston (along the Strand) had 6 feet of water and I have been told that is some places it was 12 feet. That is water coming from the bay side, not the front side of the island with the sea wall. You need to install the HD program but this is a link to some GREAT HD images from Galveston, et al.
Anchorage Area of Louisville
I’m thinking that there must be power issues all up Ike’s path. From Houston to
Louisville Boat Club
Dayton, there are about 9 cities that are not being counted in the Nielson ratings because of a lack of data…the power is out so the meters have nothing to read. The Ohio Valley got it a little more than other areas because, as the storm came through near midday, the winds aloft were howling. The sun had broken out and we got heating up to the upper 80′s. That allowed the winds aloft to mix down to the surface. As of Tuesday, a little less than 200,000 customers are without power, most of it residential. Snow White and I walked about the neighborhood on Monday night and found that people didn’t sit around and wait for someone
Taylorsville Rd-Louisville
else to clean up their area. They got themselves out and cleared blocked streets and cut
Scottsburg Indiana
up downed trees on their own. Pretty remarkable but good to see self-reliance. I’ve posted some photos of Louisville-area damage via the NWS (more photos) that includes some sunken boats on the river. On the other hand, we still have reports of stupid fights over boxes of cereal at the store or fighting in gas lines…then there is the fight over a taco at Taco Bell. The mayor still insists that there is no looting. Aside from finding a way to eat, the power outage isn’t that much of a big deal. No TV or no computer. The phone company has my phone working again and our weather is great with lows in the 50′s and highs in the 70′s. We’ll move to the low to mid 80′s for the weekend and the Ryder Cup but humidity is low and will stay that way. Snow White made me a peanut butter sandwhich with that stuff that is a mixture of peanut butter and jelly. I’ve never had it before. I bet I won’t like it but one can’t complain. Meanwhile, the cats are dining on their Salmon and Tuna. Nit and Wit are eating better than I am. Here is a report with aerial video including Valhalla with some of the damage.
On This Date In History: Thomas Morton was an English lawyer who arrived in the Massachusetts Colony in 1625 as part of a number of people who settled about 25 miles from Plymouth near present day Quincy. The rather stern “Puritan Saints” had landed at Plymouth a few years earlier and thought of New England as a “hideous and desolate wildnerness full of wild beasts and wild men!” I’m sure that’s what some present day visitors from rural America might think about San Francisco. But really, I’m not sure what the Puritans expected to find…Ye Olde Malt Shoppe on every corner? Anyway, Morton wasn’t so dour as he thought the land was “paradise” and that he found the Indians to be “more full of humanity” than the Christians who had gotten there before him…in other words…the Puritan Saints.
Raising the Maypole
The leader of the group near Quincy left for the milder climate of Virginia and Morton and a dozen cohorts took advantage by throwing out the second in command, releasing the indentured servants and going about exploiting the fruits of their paradise. They renamed the place Merry Mount and in 1627 reintroduced “revels of merriment after the olde English cutom.” They put up a maypole and invited the neighboring Indians to join in a days-long fertility rite with lots of beer flowing, dancing and amenities of erotic nature. Perhaps not suprisingly, Merry Mount became quite popular with fur traders. Guess whose business suffered? The grumpy old puritans, who thought that such mingling with the natives and their “wickedness” would undermine their own resolve which was so rigid that “unseemly laughter” was prohibited, not to mention any sort of revelry. I guess their resolve wasn’t so resolute as they were afraid others having fun would spoil their grumpiness. So, in an attempt to revive their own flailing fur trade and make certain that everyone was grumpy, the Puritans sent a group of armed me to Merry Mount and make it not so merry. They captured Morton and left him on an island. They put him on a boat back to England to face charges of selling guns and spirits to the Indians but the Mother Country wouldn’t prosecute. So, in 1629 Morton went back to Merry Mount .
Chopping Down the Maypole
Puritan leaders John Winthrop and John Endicott hailed his return by cutting down his Maypole and on this date in 1630 put Morton in the stocks and seized his property. Then they exiled him to England and burned down his house. Again, the English courts refused to prosecute but Morton was thwarted at his attempt to get the charter for the Massachusetts Bay Colony revoked. For some stupid reason, Morton returned to where he was obviously not welcome and was thrown in irons without fire or blankets. Finally, when they determined that he was “old and crazy” Winthrop had Morton released. What a great guy. Morton died in 1646. The moral to this story is if you want to pursue a life of merriment in the face of great grumpiness, make certain that you and your merry makers are better armed than the grumps.
