tiredMidwest Levee Breaks, Corn Price at New High
Carey Gillam of Reuters reports: "The Mississippi River on Friday burst through an earthen levee that may have been weakened by burrowing muskrats, swamping a Missouri town and adding to billion-dollar losses in US Midwest flooding that has fueled fears of soaring world food prices."
Well, of course a levee broke.
1) America's infrastructure is in lousy shape because little of it has been funded.
2) The Mississippi never did like two-legs anyway. Doesn't take much to rile it up, and nothing holds that River when it decides to stretch.
Anybody with a levee that hasn't broken yet might want to take a look and see if it needs maintenance. While there's still time.
June 29 2008, 17:33:27 UTC 12 years ago
1) When the waters began to rise, everyone packed up and went camping in the desert for a few weeks. Ceremonies honored the rise and fall of the floodwaters as the priests kept careful track.
2) When the waters subsided, everyone moved back and proceeded to plant the newly enriched fields with crops suited to that environment.
3) They had two kinds of buildings: permanent stone ones that merely needed to have the mud washed off, and temporary wooden ones that were swept away and rebuilt every year.
Sensible people work WITH nature, not against it. There are even Midwest-native edibles that are flood-friendly: arrowleaf has a starchy root similar to a potato, and several parts of cattail are edible. Both grow wild in ditches and floodplains around here. Rice is a great domesticated crop for floodplains, but takes a lot more fussing over to yield.
June 29 2008, 18:37:32 UTC 12 years ago
*taps forehead* Ah, right. You can see just how much I retained from the courses I took in World History, way back in the day. Thanks for reminding me! ;-)