.
Got my first (of three) shipments of mail-order tomato plants yesterday, so today it’s off to my favorite local garden center to pick up fresh potting mix. And maybe some annuals, if I can’t resist — it’s probably warm enough to fill the hanging baskets again. Should check out their tomatoes, too, see if they’ve got some of the varieties I couldn’t find online. See y’all tomorrow, probably…
***********
Apart from that, what’s on the agenda for the weekend?
raven
I’ve been asked to take photo’s of a community event today. We’re raising awareness of a stretch of street that changes from a highway into a pedestrian heavy neighborhood street in about 2 miles. It’s state highway all the way into town and people from the outlying counties haul ass on it on their way to work at the university all the time. Should be fun.
WereBear
@raven: Good luck!
We are going to a local adoption event because Mr WereBear saw a photo of this guy:
Meet Fudge
Got up early because I can’t sleep. And neither could the rest of our cats; I must have been broadcasting ESP waves or something.
raven
Oh yea, the city/county put out the bid for the sewer work that will allow us to build our addition. It’s been a year since we broke ground and broke the sewer line and were shut down. If the job bid is less than $200k they can start in a few weeks after the opening, If it’s more it has to go back to the mayor and commission for approval and that adds two months!
raven
@WereBear: Nice gato!
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Don’t get run over.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Oh, well, we all know the lowest bid will come in at $200,010 then.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: A number of people have, There has been an effort for a few years to incorporate some “traffic calming” measures but there are plenty of people, including the fossil of a mayor, that want nothing to do with it. The election is Tuesday but no one gives the hipster mayoral candidate much of a shot.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly:
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Oooopppss, my bad, at least $200,025 then.
@raven: What you need are some good old fashioned Mexican vibradores.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: There are no contractors around here without them!
Baud
@raven:
Sounds socialist to me. #OperationAthensSpring.
Tommy
Just to chime in on events in town, we’re having something today. Don’t even know why. Or what it is called. But 24 oz beers for two bucks and I bet somebody will cook something I want to eat.
Makes me think of my favorite event in my parents town, Corn Day. Yes Corn Day. At the 4H Center. You pay five bucks and get some chicken, ice tea, and all the corn you can eat. Folks walking around with buckets of it. Folks eat till they can’t stand. Corn.
Good luck Raven with that pic …..
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: What? They get them to lie down in the street? Isn’t that kind of abusive? ;-)
Tommy
@raven: I am all in for immigrants. Heck I am one from Scotland many years ago. When I lived in DC you drive by a 7/11 type store and there were just people in the parking lot, dozens of them, looking for work. Most time Hispanic. Here not so much. You know “white” people do those jobs and are proud of it.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I need to get so much done this weekend but this is the annual citywide garage sale. It started Friday evening and I scored 25 nice classical albums from a neighbor for $20. So I’m hooked and will spend 2 days strolling around flipping bins for vinyl.
The lawn and weeding can wait. There’s music out there!
Tommy
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I guess it is that time of the year. All the churches in town, well this weekend, host a huge garage sale. I don’t really need to buy anything but I am sure I will.
NotMax
I’ve got nothing, so a tribute to the lusty month of May.
@Tommy
Should you ever find yourself near Mitchell, South Dakota, there’s the Corn Palace, adorned annually with murals made of the stuff by a corn laureate artist.
@raven:
Well, it’s progress of a sort. May even get done before Obama leaves office.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Tommy:
Yeah, gone are the days when I would buy a nice couch on a whim and worry later where to put it.
I can afford the space for more records…somehow. I’m hooked on vinyl again after my latest writing project; a DIY device for digitizing records. That hits the news stands in about 6 weeks.
Tommy
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Oh I should note I never realized buying a house was going to be so much work. On my agenda for the next few weeks.
1. Clean my gutters.
2. Power wash and stain my deck.
3. Clean all my windows.
4. Trim back my trees.
Heck clean my garage which is clean in the summer, but alas somehow in the winter turns into a shit storm of unorganization, a place I just put “stuff” that should go in the trash but never seems to get there.
OzarkHillbilly
Somehow or other, I missed this. This is why America will die, not with a bang but a whimper:
“Getting rid of wasteful programs is never easy, but in 2012, Congress wisely passed reforms to require a gradual move toward market rates based on flood risk. But when rates began to rise constituents and real estate lobbyists complained. Congress quickly back-pedaled. Liberals and conservatives came together, and, on March 21, President Obama signed the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, reinstating many of the old costly flood insurance subsidies till at least 2017.”
“Almost everything the enemies of Obamacare say about health insurance is actually true about flood insurance. Below-cost flood insurance creates incentives to build in dangerous areas, encourages risky decisions, restrains the private market unnecessarily, expands the federal government, and adds to the deficit.”
“What’s the difference? Could it be the clout and economic privilege of the citizens with seaside homes – and the comparable lack of clout of Americans without health insurance?”
There is a reason I hate the rich.
Tommy
@NotMax: I’ve seen news reports on the Corn Palace. You can be sure if I am ever close, well I’d stop in. Where I live here in southern IL corn is kind of almost a way of life. It grows everywhere. How many folks make a living.
Heck I wish I could take everybody here to Corn Day. It is a small town experience like none other I know. Hundreds and hundreds of people just eating corn till they can’t stand. Oh and the politicians politicking, cause you can’t not be at Corn Day. I drive several hours across the state to attend it every year. A day well spent.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Tommy:
Yeah, it’s more than a home, it’s a career. Unless you can pay people to do your upkeep it’s never all done. We stole a march on spring and did our yard cleanup early but bigger projects are looming.
Mustang Bobby
I was planning on sleeping in a little until the neighbor down the street decided that 6:45 a.m. was the best time to mow the lawn and run the leaf blower.
Gonna do some housekeeping stuff this morning, listen to Carl Kasell’s last broadcast on “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me” at 11 (check local listings) and then go see a short opera tonight written by a couple of friends out on Miami Beach (and suck up to the producer who is considering one of my plays for production).
Tommy
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I pride myself on doing the work myself, even though I know I can hire somebody. I am not cheap, but alas I don’t see the sense in hiring somebody to do the work you can do yourself! Just use a little elbow grease. It is just a lot of work.
I am a single dude, no kids, with a five bedroom house. A little anal and just keeping the inside of the house clean takes some effort. Outside, a whole lot more. Heck this year I didn’t plant a garden, on purpose, cause the time I was spending with it, well I wasn’t doing other things. Just not the upkeep on the house that is needed.
Not putting in the garden, outside a few plants on my deck, was like punishment to myself.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: The Corn Palace is great, but Wall Drug is the sh!t! Especially the week after Sturgis. Then you get to wander around the most useless collection of eclectic kitsch in America with Mr. and Mrs. Modern Middle Class and their 2.2 kids and a bunch of bearded, beer bellied, leather clad, Harley Ridin’ bikers! Get your picture taken with the 6 foot tall rabbit! (I’m sure it’s name is Harvey) Buy souvenirs!
A great way to waste an afternoon. Absolutely the best of the worst of everything America has to offer.
Tommy
@Mustang Bobby: OK, who mows the lawn at 6:45 AM? Look the guy that lives next to me mows his lawn three times a week. I think he would make love to his lawn if he could. I’ve seen him out in the yard with scissors clipping it. He LOVES his lawn. He doesn’t mow it at 6:45 AM.
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
La Sueur Minnesota (home of the Jolly Green Giant) used to run “Corn On the Curb Day” every year when the corn was ready. They would have a parade and that sort of stuff but it was all you can eat corn on the cob. people would waddle around with the stuff coming out their ears
Its great fun
And, to make it a two-fer @NotMax: My brother went to college at Dakota Wesleyan right in Mitchel. I saw all of that place I ever wanted do. It cute & clever and all but really if you have seen it once.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Tommy:
I used to do all of my home maintenance but this is my 3rd summer of frequent business travel and if I don’t pay someone to do it it won’t get done. Or I’ll spend 85% of my time at home struggling to catch up. Other people don’t do the yard work the way I would but I’m getting used to that. It’s nice to fly home on a Friday and know I don’t have a long project list that I have to get through before hitting the airport on Monday. I can pick and choose what I feel like doing myself.
Unfortunately I picked up a new skill this week against my will. I needed some water fittings for a machine at work and the only way to make them was glued PVC pipe. That’s a job I used to hire out to a pro because I don’t want to look at a plumbing repair and see my weekend going down the drain. But there’s no going back now. I can work PVC and have to consider doing my own plumbing repairs in the future.
Tommy
@Schlemizel: I can’t recall the name of the town in southern Louisiana, but while at LSU I went there twice for their Strawberry Day. I just love little towns that do things like Corn Day or Strawberry Day. Embrace how folks make a living.
Schlemizel
NCAA softball regional play off is here. Saw North Dakota State beat Auburn 5-2 yesterday afternoon and Minnesota crush Green Bay 10-1 in the mercy rule shortened night cap. Will be going to MN/NDSU game but probably leaving during the Auburn/GreenBay elimination game as we have a previous commitment to attend a St. Paul Saints game – Z league ball but the club is owned by Bill Murray and Mike Veeck (Yes, of the Chicago Veecks) and the games are always entertaining. So I should be plenty wind burned by night fall.
Regional championship game is tomorrow afternoon.
NotMax
@Schlemizel
Corn on the cob is all well and good, but a few fresh, well-made corn fritters, drizzled with syrup or honey – yummy town.
Trick I learned from a very, very elderly cook at the summer camp where I was employed (she had been cooking there every summer since 1928, cooked at a frat house in Philly the rest of the year and was quite the character in her own right) for cooking tender corn on the cob is to add milk to the water the corn is boiled in.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
No you don’t. There is no plumbing repair I am incapable of doing. There is also no plumbing repair I will do. That is all.
Schlemizel
@Tommy: There used to be a town that did a big water melon fest around here too. You don’t see so much of those things any more. Part of it is everyone only raises corn, soy beans or sugar beets on their 2500 acre ‘family farm’ it seems and are much too busy for that nonsense. Then there are no small town businesses left to foot the bill as community advertisement and the Walmart out by the highway isn’t interested. Small town life is not what it used to be.
Tommy
@Schlemizel: I am jealous. In college at LSU, always a top five national team, games were freaking free for students. Regionals always hosted there. I went to most of them. My mom likes to joke that when I was in her womb she put headphones on her belly so I could hear Jack Buck call a Cardinals game. Fearful I might become a Cubs fan. Baseball runs deep in my family. I don’t have any children myself, but I have a niece I am very close with. My brother and his wife, well they don’t seem to like baseball/softball the way the rest of my family does. Heck I am not sure there was a single day, when I was her age, six, that I wasn’t in the backyard playing catch with either my mom or dad.
Mental Note: Get her a mitt in the next day or so ……
satby
After what seems like a week of rain, I will be mowing my acre of land with my push mower, because the riding mower isn’t working and I’m not a mechanic. I also don’t have the money to pay for fixing it either. I HATE mowing, even on the rider; and that’s the one task I always hired out when I worked. That should blow my entire day.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@OzarkHillbilly:
You cannot escape plumbing. I work on state of the art high tech welding lasers for a living, which ought to exempt me from cutting pipe and tightening hose clamps. At once a week I have a monkey wrench in my hand, then a mop.
Roman engineers had this stuff figured out 20 centuries ago but we still have stopped up sinks, leaky valves and flooded basements.
Chyron HR
@OzarkHillbilly:
What could have happened since 2012 to change the political dynamics of flood insurance? IT IS A MYSTERY.
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
The NCAA weekend cost $30 for tickets to 6 games, 7 if the 2-0 team loses the first game Sunday to the the 2-1 team in the championship set. The quality of play is so much better than it was even 5 years ago. Title 9 made softball viable for girls as a scholarship sport and many are working very hard to take advantage of it when they go to college.
I love the pace of baseball in the summer. Plus it seems like I often see something I have never seen before at a game. I am not a big fan of the Saints as the game is unimportant there, its all about the party. Major league ball is getting as bad it seems. People decide that 2 outs, 2 on and a 3-2 count is the perfect time to get up, fight their way out of the seats and get a snack.
Tommy
@Schlemizel: No you are right. Things like Corn Day are going away or have gone away. I find that sad. When I was at LSU, a “Yankee” from rural IL I don’t know how many miles I put on my car driving around to experience life. Food. You know things that were new to me.
I can’t put to words what it was like to go to Mardis Gras, not in the French Quarter, but in a small town where English wasn’t really the first language, I bought drinks out of the window of a house, and when people heard my accent and knew I wasn’t from there, I was embraced. Said something like Laissez les bons temps rouler (let the good times roll), grab me by the arm, and want to show me their culture.
Things like Corn Day are our culture. Like I said, wish I could take everybody here there. It would blow your mind in a very, very good way.
CaptMaggie
Ok. Shameless nutpicking from the Operation American Spring site, but this Patriot e-mailed Putin for help earlier this year. He has a source telling him that world leaders got together last night to halt ‘dealings in the dollar’. I think I found the best thing on the internet this morning. http://www.operationamericanspring.org/forum/showthread.php/3530-My-gift-to-you
NotMax
@Ultraviolet Thunder
Done more than my share of plumbing. It’s not really difficult, but does require patience and often a willingness to put up with sometimes having to work and maneuver in cramped spaces. And remembering to keep pipes, connectors and such retrieved from potable and non-potable systems separate if they are to be re-used.
Back when was working on copper piping, learned that instead of waiting for the pipe being repaired to fully dry, instead stuff a little ball of bread into the open end. That would absorb the water, and the heat of the torch used for repairs toasted it to tiny crumbs which the water flowing in the repaired pipe could flush away.
Probably doesn’t happen any more, but back in the 60s and 70s there would be a squib in the newspaper every other year or so about some street in NYC that being dug up for whatever reason where the workers would come across hollowed out log pipes for water, still in use.
Tommy
@Schlemizel: I may be a dude but Title 9 rocks. I went to college on a Division I Scholarship. Golf. No women’s team back in the late 80s. Women’s team now! I don’t have any kids myself, just a niece. I am even more forceful, cause she ought to have everything I had. More actually.
Heck to talk about softball, I was on a run the other day. Stopped at the high school to watch these young ladies pitching. This lady couldn’t have been more then say 15. Maybe 5 foot. Not more then a 100 pounds. I am not sure I could have hit anything she was pitching. I mean bringing the heat. That made me happy.
OzarkHillbilly
My New Favorite Joke:
Ayn Rand, Rand Paul and Paul Ryan walk into a bar. The bartender serves them tainted alcohol because there are no regulations. They die.
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: I saw that joke the other day and have to admit I laughed. About a year ago, somebody put together this email that went viral. I am sure you can find it if you Google it. But it started off with an alarm clock going off, and thank you government agency that keeps the exact time, and then recounted through an entire day, in amazing detail, how often government touches our lives. You know in a good way but in ways we might not know/think about. That we just forget how often government is pretty darn cool.
I am sure it would make the far rights head explode. It make me thankful.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Schlemizel:
Son of a friend played for the Saints last year—a taste of pro ball before starting real life.
I like that there is a team called the Wingnuts in the league.
gelfling545
Garden Party day – finally. It’s been put off twice due to weather. Our first order of business is to drain the pond. I lost fish for the first time in 20 years after this past winter & the liner is kind of beat up. My daughter gave me a new one for mother’s day. I’m off now to buy a chain say as a good chunk of the neighbor’s very annoying willow tree landed in my yard over the winter as well. I’ve cooked enough food for a regiment so, Excelsior!
Higgs Boson's Mate
Mary G, dog Leland, and I will be attending the Eco Expo Garden Show in in San Juan Capistrano in a few hours (it’s 5 AM here on the Left Coast). After that I’ll be on the home stretch of a raised planter box with arbor and trellis. This one was fun because I learned how to cut four foot wide arches in the trim panels – freehand with a circular saw.
We’re on the coast south of San Juan the smoke from the fires on Camp Pendleton has been choking thick all night. I’ve lived in CA for more than forty years now and I don’t remember fire season ever starting this early. This is normally the season when the Forest Service firefighters take their vacations. Not this year. Between the protracted drought, and the recent heat wave (100 F at the fricking beach?) which was accompanied by some very lively Santa Ana winds, the hills and mountains are a tinderbox.
OzarkHillbilly
@Chyron HR: Down here in the hills and hollers, everyone knows better than to build in the flood plains. When the creeks and rivers flood, and they do, roads go under, maybe some barns and an outbuilding or 2, and a day or 2 later they all return to normal. Usually. A couple years ago the Meramec came up and stayed up for almost 2 weeks but that is rare. When the Mississippi or the Missouri flood it is farm fields and poor folks that go under. The rich all build on top of the bluffs where they can have a “view.” All of which is to say, these people are not the reason for the federal flood insurance program.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@NotMax:
Yesterday our chillers and gas guy showed me how to braze copper pipe for nitrogen. and how to silver solder brass to copper with a torch. I like this stuff but strongly resist having to rely on the skills. I’ve done copper water pipe before but this was a new thing.
And yeah, basic rookie mistake is trying to solder a damp pipe. Water’s vaporization carries away a lot of energy until it’s all dry.
MomSense
Kids are running a race this morning in the pouring rain. Fortunately it is a short race for little kids and their families.
It is too wet too be in the garden so there is no good excuse not to do the house chores.
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
They have had things on TV where they bring major league ball players in & they can’t hit these girls. Part of that is that the guys have no experience watching them pitch and the swing required is a bit different. The skill is the same so I think if they were taught to shorten their swing they would pick it up. Same with the women, if they were taught to hit major league pitching the good ones would be good at it – eye-hand coordination and bat speed are everything. BUt the pitcher is right on top of you,the reaction time has to be so much quicker.
One of the biggest changes has been in hitting. 10 years ago you hoped to get a base runner, steal second then bunt them over and win 1-0. The women hit home runs now and despite improved defenses generate a lot of offense. Some tiny little thing from NDSU hit a ball yesterday that would have left any major league park. I have no idea how she generated that power but man that thing cleared the 215 sign still on the rise.
the Conster
“Sorry, we don’t see the spiders.”
I lol’ed.
Schlemizel
@Steeplejack (tablet):
Having seen AAA clubs play I have to say the Saints are not a bad club, better than some of the players we have seen in tripleA. I know the Saints have had players picked up – other than Darryl Strawberry – by MLB teams.
the Conster
@OzarkHillbilly:
Not that simple – in Maine, the Kennebec River floods frequently. There are small towns along it that have had commercial establishments in business for decades that are all now finding that the cost of flood insurance will put them out of business, cratering what little economy these towns have. They’re desperate.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
So the free market does work.
Schlemizel
@the Conster:
How did they manager before flood insurance? It seems like a bad idea, particularly given that we know flooding is going to become a worse problem in the coming decades to encourage people to build and stay in flood prone areas. It might be a much better idea to spend money helping the businesses move out of those places to higher ground. They did that a couple years ago in the Fargo-Moorhead area and it has helped.
I’m not saying you are wrong, only that it might be time to try a different solution.
MomSense
@CaptMaggie: Sweet, sweet wingnut delusion! That was fantastic!
Tommy
@Schlemizel: This Week In Baseball did that a few years ago. Brought in the really attractive lady that was all the rave for Team USA a few Olympics back. Five weeks. Five of the best MLB players. Only Albert Pujlos put bat to ball, and that was two foul balls. All struck out. Not a single ball even put into play.
Afterward they’d talk to the players and they were speechless. Said she was physically unhittable. One said I started to swing, but hear the ball hit the catchers mitt before I could do anything. I think they said, cause the mound is closer, that her pitches would have seemed like 138 MPH to a MLB player.
Joseph Nobles
Check out @harrisj’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/harrisj/status/467621757772636161
Funniest series of tweets I’ve read in a while.
Tommy
@Schlemizel: This is a huge problem and one of my many pet peeves. I live close to the Mississippi. It floods. Every year. Every 15 or so years (used to be the hundred year flood BTW) an epic flood. Everybody knows this.
But as there is less and less land, folks are building houses smack in the middle of areas anybody that has lived there a few decades KNOWS will flood. Not where they might get some water in their basement, but like over the roof of their houses.
So what do they do, they build bigger levees. I kid you not in some areas there are like levee wars. We’ll build ours higher then you and watch you flood. As you might guess lower incomes areas are getting the shaft.
UGH! Don’t get me started on this topic. You do not, you do not build your house in a flood plain. Period. End of conversation.
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
A 90 MPH fastball gives the hitter about .43 seconds to react, because the circle is only 40 feet away a fastpitch hitter has .38. To reach that time the baseball guy would have to hit 155 on the radar gun.
I still think if you trained a major leaguer to hit that he would do OK eventually. But then I also think if you took the best fast pitch hitters and trained them to hit MLB pitching they would do just as well as the guys.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@CaptMaggie:
Those people are nuttier than an almond orchard in September. I guess that today’s realities have left them so angry, confused, and shit-scared that they’ve found it necessary to live inside their heads – with the bats, the snakes, and the gd spiders.
Tommy
@Schlemizel: Very interesting numbers/stats. I an a St. Louis Cardinals fan. We have 3-4 young pitchers that throw 98 MPH fastballs. The movement on them is somewhat limited. Inches, which is a lot, but I watch some of the softball players and it seems to me the movement on a fastball might be more then a foot.
With that said I get your point about shorten the swing. I’ve played a lot of baseball. Small dude. Noway I was ever going to hit a home run unless there was an error to two and it was inside the park. I figured out early I had to put the ball in play and run really fast. More of “slap” hitting. Short swing. I look at a lot of the pro players and wonder how they can even have the swings they have. Seems over-the-top and complex. But what do I know :).
OzarkHillbilly
@the Conster: The towns you speak of were built where they were for a reason: Power. The power came from the river. Nowadays, our power comes from electrical transmission lines which can go anywhere. So, they could always do what Valmeyer IL did after the flood of ’93: Move.
Back in the late 70’s early 80’s the great metropolis of West Alton MO came under threat from the Mississippi 3 times in 5 years. The first 2 times I helped sand bag spending long nights plugging holes in soggy levees with sand and bags that the gov’t (you and I) supplied so that in a few years we could do it all again. The 3rd time, I said, “Screw it. Move.”
So sorry, in my opinion, it is that simple. Rebuilding where flood waters are going to go is even more stupid than building there in the first place.
ThresherK
@Tommy: I worry that a tanker truck of Mazola will crash into it, and then…popcorn everywhere.
Schlemizel
@CaptMaggie:
That is just sad. I wonder if BiP has been asking Putin for help in overthrowing the fascist regime here at Balloon Juice?
Plus I love the fact that his source (one ot the thousand voices in his head I’m sure) told him that ALL the world leaders decided they would stop trading dollars in February . . . ah, you may want to recheck that because it is now 3 months later and last I checked dollars are still the world unit of trade. That he can leave that there with no explanation indicates the level of bat shit crazy that should frighten normal people.
Tommy
@MomSense: Can I ask for some advice? I don’t have children myself. But close with my niece. She is 6. I’ve played sports my entire life. Went to college on a Division I sports scholarship. I’ve played about every sport there is. Well not football, even in the 70s and 80s when I was a kid, my parents realized getting hit in the head wasn’t a good thing :). I wanted to play organized football, parents would not let me.
With that said I am not sure my brother and his wife know how to catch a baseball, dribble a soccer ball, much less hit a tennis ball. I really want to turn Katie onto sports. Sports did and do bring me much joy. Like to pass that along to her, but unsure of how if her parents won’t embrace the idea.
An example I use is when she took a swimming class at the YMCA. I was asked if I wanted to attend. I was like sure. I kid you not, they didn’t get in the water with her. I am like (to my brother) “dude, I didn’t come here to watch her swim, I want to swim with her. What parent comes to just watch their kid swim and not actually get in the water. You know you won’t melt.”
So I guess what I am asking, is how to introduce her to sports. I feel at six (I started sports much earlier …. joke I had a golf club and tennis racket put into my crib) she is about the right age. But again, if they don’t embrace the concept, what can I do?
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
There is a lot less slap hitting going on these days, still quite a bit but not as much. Every player can bunt & does as needed, its still ‘small ball’ in most ways.
Consider this too. At the MN park the fence is 215 and that is not unusual. One of the consequences is that it is almost impossible to hit a ‘gapper’. The outfielders can cover every inch of that ground between them.
Balls don’t run like they do in baseball but the players sure do. With only 60 feet between bases it is almost mandatory to go from 1st to 3rd on any kind of single.
The ball itself has large stitches and I am sure that helps the movement they get. Throwing the way they do they can’t get the sort of curve on the ball that MLB guys get so they have invented pitches that do odd things like rise as they cross the plate. That has to be disconcerting to MLB hitters too.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy: When the Morch Levee broke in the flood of ’93 millions of dollars were lost. I would say close to $100,000,000. I remember when they rebuilt the Monarch levee, there was a billboard out by Hwy 40 where it drops down into the Gumbo basin. It said,
“Chesterfield of Dreams”
“Rebuild it, and they will come.”
I always wanted to spray paint over it, “Like lambs to the slaughter.”
Well, If the levee breaks now? A billion $’s will be lost.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@OzarkHillbilly:
Rivers were, and still are, transportation corridors as well.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tommy:
I’ve never been to Corn Day, but I have attended the National Cornbread Festival. If you ever get down to Tennessee in late April, it’s worth a visit.
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
Depending on where she lives the best sport to chose can be different. Its going to matter what her friends are doing in the beginning as she will want to be part of that. My kids got into hockey because we took them to games at an early age. Not so they would want to play but because its fun. They played because they want to have fun too. They played ball and soccer. I’m sure the soccer thing was about hanging out with friends.
I have no idea where you get a tiny driver but if you could find one take her to the range & just let her whack a bucket of balls & have fun doing it, no lessons just fun. Ask her about sports & see what she wants to do. If you ruin her life by addicting her to golf you can live with that shame scholarship or no.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy:
Teach her how to nag. Remember, it is her parents who are going to have to do most of the work.
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: I did not know you lived in Alton. Funny how close some things are between us. If you head to Alton, IL proper, and walk to downtown, which is a hop skip and fall from the Mississippi, there are marks on the buildings of the different flood levels. Often they are about head high to me, 5’4.
I am not remotely talking down to anybody here, but those of you that don’t know flooding, I mean floods, it is something that is hard to explain. A few years ago parts of Iowa were 12 feet underwater. Heck Nashville, the Grand Ole Opry mall was more then ten feet underwater. Not some rural area, a major metro area.
When I see the climate change reports, my region is marked for more and worse floods. Honestly I can’t really imagine that. I guess the only thing that is positive is I live on “high ground.” If it floods my house (and again I live in “flood land” only miles from the Mississippi), well then I will have to get all Noah and build an arc.
Citizen_X
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh, you’ll change your tune when Missouri becomes oceanfront property!
PurpleGirl
Re flood insurance: There are in-land sections of New Jersey that flood regularly. The land just doesn’t have the capacity to hold that much water. There are sections along the Brooklyn/Queens ocean front that flood and where people keep rebuilding houses. (I’m not talking about flooding from Sandy, but heavy rains and storms — i.e. sections like Seagate.)
Of course by the end of the century, all these area could be under water when the sea level rises 12 feet…
ETA: My section of Queens is about 11 feet above sea level (East River and LI Sound). A 12-foot rise will put water outside my building’s door.
debit
@WereBear: OMG, what a cutie. My possible MC mix was also born semi feral. I trapped him when he was about 10 weeks old. He’s such a charmer, but really needs to stop growing. This is him at about six months.
the Conster
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
This. The Kennebec has been the main artery of commerce and transportation in that area. It was the way the logs came down to the ocean from inland. The ice from the river was shipped in schooners to the Caribbean, earning large fortunes for the ice merchants. The river teems with smelt huts in the winter, sustaining another local economy. The Bath shipbuilding facility is another source of good paying jobs, and downtown Bath is a lovely little town with a tourist economy. It’s complicated and “just move” isn’t really the answer.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mustang Bobby:
Glad you mentioned Carl Kassell. Here’s a nice tribute from the WaPo written by Roxanne Roberts (a frequent guest panelist on WWDTM).
Edited to delete ugly link.
JPL
@PurpleGirl: No worry, they will cut food stamps in order to build sea walls.
raven
@the Conster: And fishing!
scuffletuffle
@Tommy: Play catch with her, kick a soccer ball with her, swim with her. Pay attention to what she likes and is successful at. Watch sports, live preferably, with her and explain the game, rules, etc. She will find something she likes in spite of her parent’s indifference. I learned to skate at the age of 16 so I could play ice hockey, fought my mother tooth and nail the entire way.
Tommy
@Schlemizel: I went to college on a golf scholarship. Clearly that is what I’d like to introduce her to. But that is an expense and a lot of time for her parents. I know what it took for my parents to embrace my love of the game and it was a lot of time and money. A ton of money. Playing golf, or tennis the other thing I was good at, isn’t cheap.
I don’t like to force things on people, and the first sports I was introduced to, much younger then her, was soccer and gymnastics. I’d say tumbling–wasn’t like I was on the uneven parallel bars trying to stick a dismount :).
I am just close with my niece. If I got her lessons to something, her parents would let me take her. But what I guess nobody here can solve, is if her parents are not behind it, then it won’t “take.”
Sports for me was like everything as a kid. Maybe she won’t care. Nothing wrong with that. But maybe if introduced ….. who knows.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tommy:
Probably Ponchatoula.
I do too — as witness my comment to you at #71. Your last sentence is wonderful!
Higgs Boson's Mate
@the Conster:
“Just move” is definitely not always the right answer. I’d read enough history to know intellectually about the importance of river transport. What brought it home to me was spending some months in Huntington, WV, on the banks of the Ohio. Seeing those long lines of barges being pushed up and down river was an eye opener.
Iowa Old Lady
Our neighborhood garage sale is today. We hauled a bike, an exercise bike, a desk chair, snow fencing and posts to the curb and marked them “free.” The bike and fencing are already gone. I hope those metal posts go because they’re heavy to haul back into the garage.
OzarkHillbilly
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Yes. St Louis is a hub. Years later I met one of the STL firemen who worked the flood of ’93. There was a propane…. farm down by the river because it all came up by barge. It went under and here were millions of gallons of propane bobbing around in the water in steel cylinders, bumping into each other, just begging to leak and spark. He was one the men sent in to secure the tanks and it was considered a suicide mission. Half of south STL (I exaggerate) was evacuated because if one blew, chances were good they would all go. They could move it upriver or down river, but nope, it is still there, in the heart of STL. Power plants are on the rivers too. They need the water for cooling and steam. There are many things that need to be near or next to a river.
But residences and luxury car dealers are not among them.
John O
@Schlemizel:
Hey now! Golf is one of the greatest sports there is! It’s just you against yourself and nature, and you can play it forever! I’m just glad someone else out here understands.
Used to be single-digit handicapper, but now don’t play enough to be any good. Middle age is grand.
(I know you were just being funny with that comment, and I laughed.)
Tommy
@scuffletuffle: That is very good advice I think. I took a soccer ball over the other day. I was playing with it. Bouncing it on my knees. Doing all kinds of things and she was wide eyed. I left the ball with her. Not sure if it is being used.
It just pains me. I noted in another comment here that everyday from like 3-12 there might not have been a night, right before dinner, where my dad and when he worked late, my mom didn’t play catch with me.
I guess I am just speaking to myself. Got to get her parents involved. Just not sure how.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Iowa Old Lady:
I scrappers don’t nab those, you live in a VERY nice neighborhood.
Today is our semiannual civic metal and electronics recycling drive. 6 months ago we donated 3 crammed carloads.
Annual city garage sale here today as well.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@OzarkHillbilly:
Agree completely. Wasting resources to maintain things that would be fine elsewhere is just foolish and it makes it that much more difficult to maintain those things that must be on the river bank.
SiubhanDuinne
@debit:
Awww. Big beautiful kitty is beautiful. And big.
Tommy
@SiubhanDuinne: Corn Day is like about my favorite day each year. More then my birthday or New Years. As I said I wish I could take all you that commented on this comment to Corn Day. It would blow your mind. People walking around with buckets of corn. People bring in their own butter. Or those “things” they need to put them on each end of a corn cob.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tommy:
I never understood about those things. Licking melted butter from your fingers is one of life’s pleasures.
Is your Corn Day in Carmi?
Tommy
@SiubhanDuinne: Never understood either. I don’t need two things to poke into something to eat it. I got this thing called my hands :).
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy:
I didn’t. At the time I was living in STL. Just trying to be a good neighbor. Then I realized I wasn’t helping. What is the definition of stupid? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
To clarify to all, there are many things that need the rivers, need to be by them, near them, etc. I have no difficulty with that simple fact or insuring those things. But to rebuild a town because back in the 1830’s they ran logs down the river and that was where the timber mills were? Or because back in the days before cars that is where the people who worked on the river lived? Or because it is picturesque?
There may well be good reasons for rebuilding a town in a flood plain and I am certainly open to hearing them, but those aren’t among them.
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
Actually I think it is more up to what she will want to do. If she decides she wants to be the greatest lacrosse player in the world there is little her folks could do to keep her from working out & practicing and studying th game. If she doesn’t really enjoy the toil of the ball field there is not much you or they are going to do to make her want to do it
. . .
Unless you want her to hit a home run, round the bases, climb the back stop and scream “IS THAT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU FATHER? IS THAT GOOD ENOUGH?”. And you really don’t want that.
Tommy
@SiubhanDuinne: Oh Mt. Carmel, IL.
Citizen_X
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Also, prime river bottom land is for farming, not developing into malls or McMansion-filled subdivisions.
debit
@SiubhanDuinne: And yet he still has a tiny kitten voice. It’s rather amusing when he lets out an indignant meow.
JPL
@debit: He’s going to need a bigger seat soon.
@SiubhanDuinne: I just broke down and put on the heat. It’s cold.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
It is cold! My feet were freezing, so I dug out a pair of wooly socks.
Citizen_X
@Ultraviolet Thunder: The Make video at the link gives us a very subtle rickrolling. Well played, Make, well played.
satby
@Tommy: god forbid someone not like something you do. Since the kid has one parent that’s a sibling of yours and was presumably exposed to sports the same way you were, why do you suppose they might not be that into it? Either way, you can offer, you can play with her, but it’s their kid, not yours.
Elizabelle
@WereBear:
Fudge has wise eyes.
Keep us posted. Lucky little guy, if he joins the WereBear family.
PsiFighter37
Sitting at the gate in Newark because someone who ‘has’ to catch this flight is showing up 40 minutes late.
What the hell is this? If I said I was running late, the flight crew would have a good laugh while rolling away from the gate. Total fucking bullshit
Ruckus
@JPL:
We got your heat right here. Although it is getting a bit cooler. Today supposed to only be 86. I may not even need the AC. That’s down 14-15 degrees from the last couple of days. As Higgs said up thread it’s been 100 or even more, 103 Wed. I don’t live near the current fires so haven’t had the smoke but experience tells me that’s not fun.
Ruckus
@PsiFighter37:
They’d laugh at you? That’s pretty good, I doubt I’d get a snicker. Although maybe a “Push the plane faster, we need to be sure we leave before he has a chance.”
scuffletuffle
@Tommy: Life is very different now from when we were kids, some bad some good. All you can do is what you can do. Give her the exposure and she’ll take it the rest of the way. I played ice hockey in spite of the fact that it wasn’t a girl’s sport and no one in my family was interested in athletics of any kind. I played because I wanted to play and was willling to work for it, and fight for it.
jeffreyw
Hank has a new family!
Schlemizel
@PsiFighter37: When I was traveling 100k a year I was something of a golden child for the airlines. If I was connecting & my current flight was going to be 10-15 minutes late they held the connecting at the gate till I got there. That happened a couple of times & was sort of uncomfortable because everyone on the plane wanted to see who was so damn important & it turns out it was just some dumpy schmuck not the Queen of France. But 40 minutes? nah, they would never have held a plane that long for a dumpy looking schmuck.
Not sure if anyone here remembers in the early 90’s when Letterman went to England. One of my, they held the plane for me stories involves me sitting next to the drunk Englishman Letterman met & dragged to the US for the show. That was an interesting flight.
J.D. Rhoades
Sad day around our place. My wife’s mother suffered a major stroke Monday and has been declining ever since. Won’t be long now.
debit
@J.D. Rhoades: I am so sorry.
Schlemizel
@scuffletuffle:
Where did you grow up? Hockey is huge in Minnesota but even here it was a challenge to get girls hockey started. Its been a high school sport for almost 20 years but not many schools have enough girls to get a team together. Before that there were a few brave souls that played with the boys. They had to be tougher because the boys ran them simply because they were female. The high school league tried to introduce ‘ringo’ (pronounced RING – oh) which is a weird skating based game, but nobody was interested.
You must be pretty determined to have fought through all that, good for you. I was a crappy athlete, not ability at all. The mrs. was a fine ball player and its a crying shame that fast pitch was not a thing when we were kids. She deserved the sort of competition that is more available today.
Schlemizel
@J.D. Rhoades:
Sorry to hear that. My dad had a series of strokes & each one took more of him away. Its a shitty way to go because you know whats happening to you.
I hope you can find peace, this must be particularly hard on your wife.
Certified Mutant Enemy
So how’d that whole “American Spring” thingy turn out?
the Conster
@raven:
You should see the size of some of the sturgeon that come out of that river – 6 feet or more. They jump out of the water and make these giant splashes that you can hear from the banks. There are bald eagles, osprey, and further down towards the ocean, seals. Thirty miles of the river rises and falls several feet with each tide, and the tide runs strong all the way up to the dam in Augusta. It’s really quite something.
Joel
@NotMax: Still used in places.
MomSense
@J.D. Rhoades:
I’m so sorry.
J.D. Rhoades
@Certified Mutant Enemy:
I’m having a lot of fun mocking the failed coup on Twitter and watching the wingnuts explode in rage. My favorite excuse so far: “some of the oppressed have to work a job.”
One would think if they’re all that oppressed, they’d take the time.
MomSense
@jeffreyw:
Good looking family for a good looking dog! Happy news!
J.D. Rhoades
@debit, @Schlemizel, @MomSense:
Thanks. Just pray she goes easier than my Dad.
JoyfulA
@OzarkHillbilly: I think market rates for flood insurance are good, too, but a lot of people in my area of PA were screaming. They had no idea they were living in an area requiring market flood insurance payments higher than their mortgage payments, and there had been no flooding where they live, even in Hurricane Agnes,* the worst flooding in this area’s living memory. There may be something off about the way flood zones are set.
FEMA (or some authority) did buy out a neighborhood that was getting frequent creek flooding, due in part to the parkinglotization uphill. Some other areas ought to be abandoned to uses like parks and playgrounds that flooding doesn’t much harm. But a lot of screaming went on here.
Me, I’m on the highest hill between two mountains, and any flood that affects me is Noah’s. High winds, though.
*My parents’ weekend vacation place a little too near the river got swamped by Agnes, and they had it raised above that level.
JoyfulA
@NotMax: Syrup or honey?
Corn fritters are a vegetable!
maya
@PsiFighter37: Same damn thing happened to me in 1979. One hour wait @SFO. Turned out to be Richard Milhouse Nixon returning from a trip to China (part of his personal redemption program) and needed to hook up with my flight to Orange County.
Two limos filled with SS guys in sunglasses -no shit – pull up and escort him into the plane. There was no 1st class on this PSA commuter flight so he sat towards front of plane. Many folk went forward to get autograph. I didn’t but when getting off I noticed how freakin’ old he looked. He got off last to a small cheering crowd outside who must have been tipped off about his arrival.
So, might be someone interesting getting on your flight. Or just some run of the mill 1% er.
Suffern ACE
@PsiFighter37: yeah, you’ll feel bad when it turn out they’re waiting for the liver that is going to save the life of the sweetest little five year old you’ve ever met.
J R in WV
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
We had relatives in Huntington back in the day, Great Aunts, who lived on the west end neat the flood wall, which was more like a levee on that end of town. Aunt Nora had marks on the edge of her house with dates of the floods, way over anyone’s head, until the year the floodwall was built.
Then years later, wife and I moved from downtown Charleston to rural Lincoln county, and I wound up going to Marshall to get a degree/career… small world, isn’t it?
To this day, I remember going to visit Great Aunts, and me going to sit by the river all alone to watch the barge traffic. There were still stern-wheelers doing commercial work back then, in the 50s and 60s. Still are little ones doing local work, moving a barge around the yard, but not doing the long distance freight delivery work.
Ruckus
@J.D. Rhoades:
Sorry.
Anoniminous
@J.D. Rhoades:
That sucks.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
Hopefully it will work out! I’m sure Olwyn would prefer to continue to be the only girl who gets to boss all of the boys around. And semi-ferals do seem to be more comfortable in households with other cats — apparently it makes them worry less that you’re planning to eat them for dinner.
@debit:
That’s one of the things that sealed the deal for us thinking Keaton is part Maine Coon. He’s 8 years old and people at the vet still assume he must be a kitten if they hear him but don’t see him.
WereBear
@jeffreyw: That was fast. Great!
Amir Khalid
@J.D. Rhoades:
That’s rough. Sending out good thoughts to you and your family.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@jeffreyw: Yippee for Hank! Nice brindle buddy there too.
@J.D. Rhoades: Sorry to hear that. It must be rough for all of you.
Frankensteinbeck
@J.D. Rhoades:
An important element in their being oppressed is their belief that THEY work, but minorities live in luxury without having to lift a finger. How anyone can believe this is beyond me.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
They believe it because they want to believe it. It’s far easier to blame others for your problems than to try to fix stuff that you probably can’t fix and just know won’t make a difference.
cckids
@Tommy:
Back 10 years ago or so, when my daughter was playing softball, her under 10-year old league had several pitchers who could throw 65-70 mph. It was a little scary, to tell the truth. We saw kids get broken fingers, wrists, etc. from getting hit by a pitch thrown by a 9-year old. It was somewhat of a badge of honor to have the bruises on your legs or shoulders where you could see the stitch marks from the ball in the bruise.
I don’t really agree with kids that age playing fast-pitch. It isn’t good for the shoulders of the pitchers, (especially now with more kids only playing one sport 9 months a year) few have good control so there are always lots of walks, few can hit the good pitches, so there are lots of boring games, with no-one learning to hit, field, etc.
Joel Hanes
@SiubhanDuinne:
I never understood about those things
it’s not about butter and salt, it’s about heat.
corn-state people eat corn on the cob hot —
it’s ready to eat when it’s still too hot to hold
also the cutesy corn-shaped dishes
solve the problem of bathing the ear in butter and salt
without wasting much
StringOnAStick
RE: FEMA flood mapping and federally subsidized flood insurance. The funding for all the work contracted out by FEMA to engineering firms to predict the 10, 25, 50, and 100 year flooding boundaries has been severely cut, so as building, paving, et. continues, the prior predicted flooding boundaries change as well. If the mapping isn’t updated (and congress is in no mood to fund “unnecessary” stuff like this or anything else lately) then, well, that is one aspect of the problem. Another is that a good deal of the subsidized insurance is indeed insuring rich people beach housing that indeed should not be there, but now that $ = free speech those people get to keep their low rates by yelling to their congressperson, who probably has a place next door. In general there is no one size fits all solution to the issue of rebuilding in the designated flood plain, but rebuilding rich people housing on that perfect spot on the beach is a lot less valuable to the community than trying to save the commercial center of a city.
Someone mentioned the 2013 Colorado floods as having an impact on the whole subsidized flood insurance stuff; well, maybe. Most of the homes that were wiped out in the higher elevations were not in designated food plains, they were along what are normally creeks. Heavy rain, the ground being mostly bedrock that can’t absorb much rainfall, and the canyons concentrating the flow in some areas did the damage with flood waters that carried huge volumes and large boulders in some places. The USGS estimated that in some localized areas these were 1,000 year events, so basically impossible to build or plan for. Shit happens, and in the mountains it can be serious shit indeed. These homeowners were not required to have flood insurance so of course their insurance companies are paying for none of the damage or even total loss of the structures or the bridges across the creeks to those homes. A few people even lost their land, because the river changed course and washed away what was their lot! And then just around the next bend, you’ll see no apparent damage at all. It was all due to exactly where that smaller, more intense storm cell was within the overall storm, and where your home was located in relation to it. Call it “hydrologic rou11ette”, mountain-style.
Comrade Mary
@raven: Good luck! How much time do people really save on a typical commute when they drive at high speeds?
There’s a major (hilly, winding) street in my neighbourhood that many drivers treat as an extended on-ramp to a high-speed (80 km/hr or 50 mph) road just to the north. This area is more residential than it was 10 years ago, and with a new shopping centre opening across the street, there is a lot more car/bike/pedestrian traffic crossing the busy street. From the way drivers seem to have increased their speed and cross yellow lights more aggressively, I think we will see at least one serious injury or fatality before the end of the summer.
Mnemosyne
@Joel Hanes:
Out here in So Cal, the corn stands at the farmer’s markets roast the corn inside the husk and then peel the husk back to form a convenient handle.
TriassicSands
Kevin Nealon, Republican, is clearly not amused by Bill Maher’s picking on Republicans. Look at the pained look on Nealon’s face when Maher says, “We can’t see the spiders….”
Nealon a Republican. Just sad.
kindness
My tomatoes are a month old now. I’ve got green ones on the vine already. N. Cal…only bummer is the ski season bit this year. Global warming in action.