“Florida is certainly the poorest country that ever two people quarreled for,” one Army surgeon wrote [in the 1830s]. “It was the most dreary and pandemonium-like region I ever visited, nothing but barren wastes.” An officer summarized it as “swampy, low, excessively hot, sickly and repulsive in all its features.” The future president Zachary Taylor, who commanded U.S. troops there for two years, groused that he wouldn’t trade a square foot of Michigan or Ohio for a square mile of Florida. The consensus among the soldiers was that the U.S. should just leave the area to the Indians and the mosquitoes; as one general put it, “I could not wish them all a worse place.” Or as one lieutenant complained: “Millions of money has been expended to gain this most barren, swampy, and good-for-nothing peninsula.”Please use this post to talk about Hurricane Irma. Are you/were you in the path of the hurricane?
AND: "'There are no rules': Desperate stranded tourists tweet out of St Maarten as looters with 'guns and machetes' raid hotel rooms and stores" (Daily Mail).
पोस्ट्स
११९ टिप्पण्या:
Mother Nature's judgement is confirmed by Dave Berry, Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey, and Edna Buchanan.
Looters during a disaster should be shot on sight. And I'm not kidding.
My father retired in 1973 with a severe inoperable heart condition. Doctors gave him a few years to live. He and my mother moved to Punta Gorda, FL in October of that year. He died 37 years later in 2010.
How did he live so long? Medical advances and the sunny Florida climate. I suspect there may be a few more like him.
If it's such a horrible place why do so many New Yorkers retire there?
If it's such a horrible place why do so many New Yorkers retire there?
Maybe that's why it's such a horrible place?
Same applies to Houston and New Orleans. Dang flood plains they are built on and one wonders why they flood?
And then air conditioning was invented.
That can't be right. Several Native American tribes were living there when the Europeans arrived, and everything I was taught in school said that the Native Americans were incredibly wise and lived in perfect harmony with nature.
The hurricane-related reporting from New Orleans during Katrina, such as the sniper attacks on rescue helicopters that never happened, the slaughter and even cannibalism in the Superdome that never happened, etc., that I will hold off on believing the reports from Sint Maarten until there is a lot more corroboration.
Mother nature is indifferent and Irma isn't preparing to do anything.
"And then air conditioning was invented."
I spoke with Floridian sister this morning and she that will be a big problem if the power is out for any length of time. It will be sweltering for the (old) people who are accustomed to having it.
I just got word that one of my Ft. Lauderdale friends has made it up to North Carolina. So far as I know, all the rest are going to ride it out. If we were still living where we used to live, on the mainland in a solid house, I think that we'd stay through the storm, to do what we could to protect our property, and then go north until the electricity and water were restored. I pray for all those who have made the decision to stay, and for all those that have decided to leave their homes.
Hey, I live in California. If Florida didn't exist all those elderly folks would be in California and driving into 7-11's and Target stores. So I'm happy, happy, happy right now.
Good lord, we are humans. we can live anywhere in the world that we damn want. We adapt.
Still waiting for the first "Florida Man"-themed hurricane story.
Bartram's Travels is worth reading by anyone who wants to know what Florida was like in the early days. It was as wondrous a place as any on this continent--and in many ways it still is, if you know where to look.
"Hey, I live in California. If Florida didn't exist all those elderly folks would be in California and driving into 7-11's and Target stores. So I'm happy, happy, happy right now. "
Your comment made me laugh. My parents retirement park was comprised of immigrants primarily from PA and MI. Apparently the developer targeted his advertising in those two states. Nearby is a community called Maple Leaf Estates .... immigrants from Canada.
So where do the California immigrants come from? *cough*
Moved to Orlando 4.5 years ago with my family and this is our first hurricane. (Matthew missed us.)
We are hunkering down and hoping for the best.
^^^^ Of course I am taking poetic license with the word "immigrant".
I heard a phrase on the weather channel today: "Hide from wind, run from water". Had not heard that before.
LA really shouldn't exist either.
nor denver.
"An officer summarized it as “swampy, low, excessively hot, sickly and repulsive in all its features.”
I've never understood people's love of Florida.
I live just west of Tampa, less than a mile from the Bay. Mostly just low brush between me and all that water. I'm 9' above high tide, and it looks like Irma (cursed be her name forever) will pass over us very near high tide.
I'm packed and ready to move in with friends early tomorrow morning, just as the wind will be picking up, putting another 10' or 15' between me and the tide.
Two days ago I was commiserating with relatives down in W. Palm Beach, and now they're worried for me. Time and tide, man, time and tide.
I think of how I watched Katrina, and then Harvey, and thought 'How terrible for them, I'll have to contribute something, I wonder what's on TV", and now it's me, and I'm terrified, just like they were.
BTW, I read that article about "we weren't meant to live there", and even now, in this mess, I still believe we can live anywhere we want.
Humans make the world adapt to us.
Ah well ... see you all on the other side.
> Mother Nature never intended us to live here.
Show me a climate alarmist, I'll show you a Gaia worshiping neo-Luddite.
On an earlier post I commented briefly about the Grunwald article (a commenter quoted from it). Having read the whole thing, I’ll say he’s got his history fairly right. South Florida was a pretty challenging environment until the invention of air conditioning. Shortly after the Civil War, Harriet Beecher Stowe (of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” fame) wrote a series of magazine articles about how attractive Florida was as a winter vacation destination, but she was talking about the area around Jacksonville.
Fort Lauderdale (where I would later live for 6 years) began in the 1890’s around a ferry crossing of the New River, on the state road from Palm Beach to (what is now) Miami; the ferryman, Frank Stranahan, built a trading post to do business with the local Seminoles. Gov. Broward proposed to drain the Everglades to provide cheap farm land for poor folks (he didn’t understand the ecological problems that would cause). The post WWI south Florida land boom was not just a bunch of Marx Brothers fraudsters selling under water lots to rubes (although it did include that); some folks moved there and stayed, but growth was slow after the 1926 hurricane.
During WWII a lot of military training facilities were built in south Florida, particular for pilots, because training could go on 12 months a year. After the war, young families began moving to the land of eternal summer, and by then air conditioning made even the subtropical summers tolerable. And the rest is history. When I first went to Fort Lauderdale, for Spring Break in 1963, Frank Stranahan’s widow, Ivy, was still around and still living in the house that Frank built.
Grunwald says that south Florida is an “artificial civilization, engineered and air-conditioned to insulate its residents and tourists from the realities of its natural landscape.” Indeed it is. The vast majority of us live in artificial, engineered environments. If you live in a city or a suburb, of course it’s engineered and artificial, whether it’s in Florida or Illinois. Even if you live on a farm in Iowa you are in an artificial environment – where are the buffalo? Is south Florida uniquely subject to the whims of Mother Nature? Unlike, say New York City where a storm, no longer even a hurricane, hit when the leaders were unprepared? Unlike, say San Francisco which has been hit repeatedly by earthquakes? Unlike towns and cities throughout the Midwest that are ravaged by tornados?
It’s a tough world we live in. We try to meet its challenges. Sometimes we lose. I pray for those who are facing the Hurricane Irma challenge and all others facing challenges.
My buddy from Savannah has already driven up to NC. I offered him a bedroom at my place (in Atlanta) but as of Fri. it looked like we might get 60mph winds here. I have a biiig oak tree I do not want subjected to 60mph wind! They're predicting 30mph now, with maybe 40mph gusts, which seems more reasonable.
Lots of places are selling out of gas. I already filled up,having imagined that with the continued LA pipeline backup, possible FL pipeline problems, and lots of people coming from FL there might be shortages. Regular is up to $2.80 at the station that still has reg.
Looters --
My sister and brother-in-law boarded up their house a few blocks from the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast and moved to ride it out with some friends in-land. Her entire neighborhood is now deserted.
I don't think it really will happen, but the place is ripe for someone to come along and break into the houses and steal stuff. I can also understand why "looters will be shot." Whatever the law regarding usual burglary, I think that anyone who does this in disaster times like these should get a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison. People should not be made to be concerned about leaving their homes for fear of looters coming and breaking in and taking their stuff.
. Regular is up to $2.80 at the station that still has reg.
I've been paying $2.95 for weeks out here in SoCal.
Go Dawgs!!
Hell of a game; absolutely nuts how much red there was in South Bend.
Whew!
Here in Northern NV gas just passed the $3.00 mark, having gone down to $2.75 or so during the year. Then again, like cursed Florida, NO STATE INCOME TAX. We did have 240 inches of snow last winter, and I'm hoping for a repeat this 2017-2018. We can use the water. Keep the propane breathers uncovered and go back inside.
Sorry for your CA-based gas price troubles, Gahrie.
Pre-hurricanes reg was just over $2 here, I think.
Why doesn't anyone say Mother Nature didn't intend anyone to live in Bangladesh?
Floridians turned it into a great place to live. Anti humanist progs never miss a chance to bash their fellow man, particularly those in red states. That'll get u more trump, politiziing everything.
Gas just passed in Northern NV
Mother Nature prefers we humans live in states with a progressive income tax and an estate tax. Florida has neither.
Blogger glenn said...
Hey, I live in California. If Florida didn't exist all those elderly folks would be in California and driving into 7-11's and Target stores. So I'm happy, happy, happy right now.
The income taxes, cost of living, and high gas prices make it hard for middle class people on fixed income to retire in California. By hard I mean impossible.
The population of Florida was about 4 million right after WW 2. Without air conditioning - it wouldn't be anywhere near as crowded as it is now. BTW, like California the vast majority of the growth in FLA over the last 25 years has come from immigration not from snowbirds coming South.
I was in Florida on Business last August and I can't see how anyone could live in that high humidity and high temperature without air conditioning.
"anyone who wants to know what Florida was like in the early days."
Thereis a cery good, but pretty racist, movie called "Wind Across the Everglades" made about 1956 with Burl Ives.
I saw it in a theater near the USC campus when it came out and I was one of about a half dozen whites in the place.
Still, it's a good history of Florida about 1900 when women used big bird feathers on hats.
We have a sister in law and family of four plus two dogs from Jacksonville staying with us in Alabama while Irma makes up her mind which side of Florida she will ravage along with the looters. SIL's husband carries a Sig Sauer P380 but he shouldn't need it with us; our boarding prices are totally reasonable.
Background info: The Northern third of Florida from The Panhandle across to Jax was settled by Georgia and Alabama farmers and is still politically deep south. We call that area Porkchop Florida.
But starting in WWII the Navy in Pensacola and the Army Air Force in Eglin AFB began drawing in many Military Officers and educated Northern folks who work for civilian Weapon Contractors. Many retired there. And they manage to spawn intelligent children and demanded excellent schools for them. Tallahassee is part of that area. And surprisingly, this area is 80% Trump voters.
Jacksonville is a major Atlantic Ocean seaport with all that implies. But is well run, and is politically the same as coastal Georgia counties.
And going the East Coast from Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Center in Melbourne, south to Miami, there is a dense area of New Yorkers and a small section of Cubans. On the gulf side, many wealthy Midwesterners have made Naples and Marco Island their special second residences in rich areas reached primarily by air travel.
Metro Tampa is a unique area being another Seaport with its problems that doubles as a wealthy South American's favorite border town. And it is home to Centcom's Command Center.
The rest of Florida is poor and mainly agricultural and fishing areas. But you can only pick so many oranges and catch so many fish, so the local people also tend to work in Tourist Resort areas where they can catch and pick money from the tourists and retirees new to the area.
But the State leadership does good, because the whole mess works. The Catholic leaders are strong in the Italian and Portugese communities, and of course the Jews from NYC are excellent in business and finance.
The real problem with Florida is that it has a strong pull of HEDONISM which makes life there seem banal and boring. As a result, Florida communities probably attend more church of every sect than any other place on earth, per capita.
Also the Bankruptcy special entire home exemption with no limit on value has attracted the risk taking men and crooks who took other's money, from all over the USA.
I've been paying $2.95 for weeks out here in SoCal.
9/9/17, 10:19 PM
Holy crap, I just filled up my tank for $2.35 a gallon in Wisconsin.
Jacksonville is a major Atlantic Ocean seaport with all that implies. But is well run, and is politically the same as coastal Georgia counties.
I've always said Jacksonville is a great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit there.
J. Farmer told us the other day he's a 4th generation Floridian. So his people lived there before AC and apparently survived a few hurricanes.
Florida is too humid for me. I am thinking I'll move to Arizona when I retire - maybe Phoenix, perhaps Tuscon. I can handle heat better than cold, and I imagine getting though August in Arizona is like getting through January in Wisconsin, except I won't have to worry about slipping on ice. Ideally, I'd like to keep my place in Door County and spend summers in Wisconsin - love summers and early fall here - but I don't know if I'll be able to swing it.
Millions could die.
No skin in the game in FL now, but for many years in the late 70s/early 80s we vacationed on Sanibel Island every Christmas. Not sure how much of it (and Captiva) will be left post-Irma. Nor do I even know whether my parents still own a timeshare there. I think not, but I haven't checked.
Three pairs of friends or relatives of mine, within the last year, built or bought a home or condo in the Irma strike zone. None of them are there now, thank goodness. In my circle, it seems to be a popular place.
I have visited Florida several times in my life, and in January it is glorious- not so much in July.
>>I was in Florida on Business last August and I can't see how anyone could live in that high humidity and high temperature without air conditioning.
I grew up in Miami, without AC. Mom washed the sheets every day during the summer, since they got soaked with sweat every night.
People adapt.
Irma is crawling at 6mph, which puts her way behind the forecasts when she was barreling along at 16mph. Not only that, she's now a far cry from a Cat-5 storm. And here in Palm Beach County the hurricane shelters are packed to the rafters - waiting. We're also under a curfew until further notice, so you're stuck wherever you are. Like in a jam-packed shelter, lying on the floor, praying the a/c doesn't go out. Because there's nothing like the smell of a sweltering high school gymnasium in the morning.
Meanwhile, a few drops of rain, a gentle breeze, and that's it.
Update:
They're getting significant wind and rain north (Ft. Pierce) and south (Boca Raton) of here (Greater WPB). And the radio is reporting with youthful exuberance that the "feeder bans" are incredibly long, even mind-boggling. They're yelling over each other in their sleep-deprived enthusiasm to alert listeners...
So, it really depends on precisely where you're located, even from neighborhood to neighborhood. Also, the 5:00am update shows Irma picking up steam, now clocking along at 8mph. Not exactly breakneck, but enough to maybe get this thing over with.
...In fact, they're now reporting "massive flooding" in Ft. Pierce, this apparently based on on the one street they found covered with water.
Ft. Pierce, by the way, is mostly known for hosting two Waffle Houses. For years Ft. Pierce acted as a way-station by the confluence of Route #95 and the Florida Turnpike. It wasn't that long ago that #95-northbound ended (or began southbound) in Ft. Pierce. And in between; WAFFLE HOUSE!
have visited Florida several times in my life, and in January it is glorious- not so much in July.
September is the worst, not because of the hurricanes, but because you think the heat and humidity should have moderated by then, and it doesn't, it just continues relentlessly until late October.
This is Wilbur, hunkered in my house in Hollywood, just south of Ft. Lauderdale. Amazingly we still have power here; that can't last much longer. We are very lucky the path of this storm turned west. We're still going to get hammered, but not like it would've been. I'm thinking of the people on the west coast ... those poor pilgrims.
Pray for them. I'll be fine.
Well, two days to go until S. GA is sure of our fate. Right now they are projecting low-end hurricane winds still. I am hoping Irma veers a little more to the west, although it may not help us much. More over water, less over land means the storm will be stronger as it passes over the Panhandle and now it is certain that we will be in the worst quadrant.
What sucks about this is that people evacuated from the East Coast to the West Coast (the standard Miami-to-Tampa run). Trying to evacuate a state like FL is extremely problematic and requires more lead time/forecast accuracy than we often have.
I am glad we got out. Now they have announced a voluntary evacuation, but there is nowhere to go and all the normal local shelter areas are already filled up by FL escapees. It is common for some to load up RVs and go to parking lots/truck stops. Those people need to move on further north - if they have fuel. It is going to be very unsafe for them.
And now the wait until we find out whether the house is severely damaged. It's not fun. More fun to be safely away, but the worry over friends/neighbors is pretty gnawing.
If Florida is so god awful it is a good measure of the power of no property taxes in attracting new home owners!
Yes I was, but am not now.
Mother Nature "never intended" us to live in damn near all the places we do live. And btw, Inuit and Northern Europeans and NE Asians and Tibetans and Andean people and...well, at least half the human race...are no longer adapted to live in the place "Mother Nature" "intended" for us. Grunwald's Mother Nature seems an oddly static deity, deeply at odds with...nature.
I saw a comment somewhere saying the storm has brought Jennifer Lawrence, Kirk Cameron and Politico into agreement. It's payment for sins. Pretty funny
Where did "Mother Nature" intend for us to live?
Pics of the devastation aren't very impressive. There are too many sturdy buildings, I guess.
The NYT is screaming hurricane script. Maybe it plays longer in NYC.
Perception of hype is beginning to separate from perception of news.
The latter has a more Fine I'll read about it tomorrow feel.
I grew up in Florida, pre-AC. As an adult, I loathe tropical and sub-tropical climates to the bottom of my soul. Heat, bugs, sun, it's hell to me.
Still, I had an idyllic childhood in "the Old Florida". Lousy climate can't put a dent into the joy of living in a healthy child. (Liberal use of DDT for mosquito control in those days probably helped a lot, too, and easily made up for the lack of AC. For a kid, that is.)
I have kinfolk in the same neighborhood still, which was smack in the center of the current probability cone as of last night. I noted that the cone has shifted a notch to the west this morning, which may not be an improvement for their property, flooding-wise. (They've all evacuated to higher ground.)
As Hurricane Irma prepares to strike, it’s worth remembering that Mother Nature never intended us to live here.
Here being Mars.
Checking the computer models this AM, it appears there is a consensus (ha) that Irma will run right up the west coast.
Earlier this morning, the weather channel admitted the models haven't been very good.
Great Great Gramdma Cosmos was Hell-bent determined that we live here.
Either that or it was an accident. Oops...
The future president Zachary Taylor, who commanded U.S. troops there for two years, groused that he wouldn’t trade a square foot of Michigan or Ohio for a square mile of Florida.
Ironic, then, that hundreds of thousands of Michiganders and Ohioans have moved there!
Meanwhile in Missoula, the smoke cleared for the night and I opened all the windows. The air has been worse than the worst smog days in Cali circa 1970. I do think LA is much better now.
Rain coming Thurs.
"Mother Nature never intended..." There's a reason that's called the "Pathetic Fallacy," y'know.
I'm in Milwaukee. Looks like Irma will miss us.
@exiledonmainstreet:
J. Farmer told us the other day he's a 4th generation Floridian. So his people lived there before AC and apparently survived a few hurricanes.
My family first arrived in the Tampa Bay area in the late 19th century. Railroads came to Tampa in the 1880s, and the cigar industry and phosphate mining became booming local industries. The population of Tampa was under 1,000 in 1880 and around 15,000 by 1900. When Tampa Theatre, a John Eberson-designed movie palace, was opened in 1926, it was the first commercial building in the city to offer A/C. This was also the era of illegal bolita lotteries, liquor distribution, speakeasies, and prostitution, mostly centered in the cigar-producing region of Tampa known as Ybor City by Charlie Wall, a member of a prominent Tampa family. Though by the 1930s, Wall was pushed out by the organized crime activities of Santo Trafficante. Local elections were pretty much mob decided from the 1930s through the 1950s. My maternal grandfather, also of Italian extraction and member of Tampa's L'Unione Italiana (The Italian Club), loved regaling us with stories of purported mafioso who knew from "the club." The sense of anything goes lawlessness, of a separate world mostly detached from the larger, more mainstream cities of the north, was mostly gone by the 1960s. Desegregation and related social reforms brought race riots to the streets in the late 1960s, and by the time I arrived in the world in the early 1980s, my family joined thousands of others fleeing the city for the safety and security of the suburbs.
Katrina was cat 3 storm by the time it hit land. But it hit the Mississippi coast square on at high tide and pushed nine feet of water up the streets of coastal Mississippi towns like Bay St Louis. Those people had minutes to get to the roof of their houses and then stayed up there a long time. That's what they are afraid of with Irma. I have a relative trapped in Tampa - by the time he knew Irma was coming up the west coast there was no gas left, no way out. There weren't evacuation orders for his area. And probably he is high enough and inland enough so he'll be OK. We're hoping and praying.
The US weather service hurricane model was revised recently. After revision, they noticed it couldn't predict as well as before so they stayed with it, I don't know why. The European model has worked better.
"The sense of anything goes lawlessness, of a separate world mostly detached ....."
Hello DC.
My fanily has been in North Florida since the 1750's. We are/were "Beach Crackers" My grandfather once told me: Never buy peoperty God stll has an active hand in - beachfront, eathquake faultlne or at the foot of a volcano." Sagacious advice.
Some of us were born in Florida, and didn't know any better until we became adults and got to see other parts of the country. It is home still. I do think Willis Carrier is a god. His birthday, Nov. 26, should be a day of speeches and parades in the South.
Baptist churches have what is known as a testimony time, especially at Thanksgiving. People stand and talk about what they give thanks for. This year, I will say, " I am thankful God let Willis Carrier be born and that he was a brilliant engineer. " People will attribute this to my oddball sense of humor, but I am as serious as I am about Fender Stratocasters and Ford trucks.
"Blogger Curious George said...I'm in Milwaukee. Looks like Irma will miss us."
Just wait until winter storms start setting in; aren't below freezing windy days up north 'named storms' these days?
"The US weather service hurricane model was revised recently. After revision, they noticed it couldn't predict as well as before so they stayed with it, I don't know why. The European model has worked better."
Unfortunately, they are never good enough, and never will be. You only need one hurricane to not follow a predicted path. This is why everyone in the south should have hurricane supplies on hand, always. The vast majority of people, thankfully, only suffer minor damage but could be without power or water for days or even weeks.
In this case, all of Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, and South Carolina were at risk with this storm.
I lived in the Tampa area as a child in the late 60's/early 70's and it left me with no fear of heat or bugs or pricklers.
Not that I don't seek to avoid all three!
But it also left me with no fear of hurricanes, just a lot of respect. So when we moved back we bought a sturdy house and have prepped it well and feel pretty good about where we are.
Luckily my wife put her foot down on the canal house else we'd be in NC right now wondering if we were gonna be able to go home.
-XC
Actually human beings have always tended to settle near major bodies of water, and probably would have never left Africa or even reached the Americas 15,000 years ago had it not been for coastal migration patterns.
American conservatives want to carry out a genocide/democide directed at killing off the majority of humanity that lives at/on the coasts - including the coasts of North America.
Sounds like the entire North American continent. Or Africa.
Nature doesn't intend anything.
RNB said...
"Mother Nature never intended..." There's a reason that's called the "Pathetic Fallacy," y'know.
And hurricanes don't "prepare".
American conservatives want to carry out a genocide/democide directed at killing off the majority of humanity that lives at/on the coasts - including the coasts of North America.
9/10/17, 9:11 AM
So says the one who was wishing death on Texans last week.
Don't project your sadistic fantasies onto others.
Don't project your sadistic fantasies onto others.
That's interesting. Wasn't Ted Cruz and the rest of his Texas Government Chain Saw Massacre Squad responsible for finding ways to deny Hurricane Sandy relief? Talk about projection!
So you don't think there's a difference between failing to prepare for oneself and mandating that the rest of the nation not be able to prepare for something? Apparently so. You are after all a partisan cheerleader for an administration that is not only denying America the ability to do anything about how it impacts climate patterns, but to deny further funding to even research it scientifically!
Of course. It would be one thing if we had evidence of what your policies are doing to America. But like any good criminal, your leaders are making sure that there's an effective cover-up on the forensics of said policies. No research, no evidence. Ergo, no crime.
Pretty diabolical. You must be so proud.
Mother Nature is a harsh mistress.
It's a beautiful, sunny day here in Pennsylvania. I think gas is now about $2.80 per gallon but haven't had to buy any for a week or so.
I see hateful, rage-filled Ritmo has woken and can't resist making everything into a story about our national politics.
Mother Nature is a harsh mistress.
I imagine this was also the thinking of those who couldn't manage to tame fire over a million years ago.
The water's getting sucked out into the Gulf along the beaches, rivers and canals here in southwest Florida. It's down about six feet at the pier at Fort Myers Beach. This looks really, really bad for storm surge when it all comes back with interest.
Expat(ish):
But it also left me with no fear of hurricanes, just a lot of respect. So when we moved back we bought a sturdy house and have prepped it well and feel pretty good about where we are.
If you don't mind me asking (and you don't mind disclosing), about where in the city do you live?
It's a beautiful, sunny day here in Pennsylvania. I think gas is now about $2.80 per gallon but haven't had to buy any for a week or so.
I see hateful, rage-filled Ritmo has woken and can't resist making everything into a story about our national politics.
Translation: "My name is AJ Lynch and I say it's horribly miserable to care about whether people are allowed to mitigate man-made disasters when I got my $2.80 gasoline! Fuck everyone else and celebrate for ME! (Or else you must be rage-filled. Obviously!)."
Screw everyone else and give all glory to AJ Lynch, Master of the Simple Pleasure of cheap petrol for himself. Hundreds of thousands of ruined properties don't matter - his cheap energy does! His happiness is the only happiness that matters!
Your sacrifice is subsidizing AJ Lynch's cheap fuel, ruined homeowners! Rejoice!
Speaking of inhospitable climate and air conditioning:
Phoenix surpasses Philadelphia as 5th largest city
Ritmo- I didn't offer my opinion on $2.80 gas but I now know you think it is way too low. I guess you probably favor increasing the price by $5 per gallon and bestowing that extra money on the feds so our betters like Nancy Pelosi can spend it on a bunch of other stuff.
Now I have to go and spend the money [which I shouldn't have saved on $2.80 gas] on my Fan Duel lineup for today's games.
Hoodlum: Go Dawgs!!
Hell of a game; absolutely nuts how much red there was in South Bend.
Whew!
My niece and her father flew up for the game (she is a Georgia graduate but her dad is a die hard Tech fan). The photos she posted on Facebook show so much red & black I wondered if any Notre Dame folks were even there.
Gas is $2.75 where I live, out in the northern suburbs. I haven't noticed any unusually long lines.
I have many fond memories of vacations in Florida when I was very young: driving down before interstates in my father's old Studebaker must have taken forever. We usually stayed in Daytona Beach at a place I recall was called Elinor Village.
I hope folks got out while they could, and those that are staying behind make it through. I hope all the evacuees have been welcomed and found shelter here in Georgia. It looks like we'll get some of the storm. It's beautiful so far today, but very windy.
Local TV has all the hotties. To hell with TWC.
"Actually human beings have always tended to settle near major bodies of water, and probably would have never left Africa or even reached the Americas 15,000 years ago had it not been for coastal migration patterns."
Not so sure about the latter, though no expert. But I was under the impression that that influx of Native Americans came out of maybe Siberia (while the much later influx came out of Mongolia - giving us the Inuit, and I believe Navajo, etc). Yes, there was immigration along the Asian coast, but there was also a lot of east/west traffic from the Middle East through to China. This was also the main highway for crops, livestock domestication, and technology. And, interestingly to me, the early American Indians got stuck for maybe a millennium in Alaska, before the ice sheet retreated enough to allow them to colonize the continent - through central Canada east of the Rockies, and not along the Pacific coast.
I hope the Democrats run on $10 gas.
Weird how global warming caused this hurricane, but not the beasts of the past.
It's almost as if it's mostly propaganda, but we know how carefully the press hews to the truth on climate change.
"Your comment made me laugh. My parents retirement park was comprised of immigrants primarily from PA and MI. Apparently the developer targeted his advertising in those two states. Nearby is a community called Maple Leaf Estates .... immigrants from Canada."
Grandfather, G-grand lived in northern LP MI, and wintered in and died in FL. GG-grand wintered in and died in S CA. CO being much milder in the winter, my parents stayed put. But we are snowbirds - officially Montanans, but wintering in AZ, where we now have the bigger house. Works nicely except for the cost of air conditioning a house 1200 miles away all summer when we aren't there. My partner visited her sister in FL maybe a quarter century up ago, saw the huge roaches and experienced the humidity, and never has been back - but her sister's kid is graduating from LS this spring, so will have to.
@J Farmer - no worries. We live in North Naples, right near the I75/Immokalee intersection.
We are 12-17' above sea level, depending, and all our power is buried in this part of Naples.
I am, however, seeing some good wind driven waves in the lake inside our neighborhood. Mostly I keep seeing the lanai screens I cut for wind flow and thinking ($40 there, and $50 there, and $25 there, ....)
You in the SWF?
-XC
On the gulf side, many wealthy Midwesterners have made Naples and Marco Island their special second residences in rich areas reached primarily by air travel.
Oh so that's why there's no culture around Naples, those guys don't want that stuff. My parents have been flirting with the idea of the West Coast (fl) to retire to. But they can't live anywhere you can't get dim sum.
Or else you must be rage-filled. Obviously!
Ritmo, you are kind of rage filled and you're better off owning it, but I agree that waterfront property is the only desirable kind. Everything else is something you have to put up with. Like the crust, or rather the non-crusty part, on brownies. That said, you can't whine about floods, because there will be floods ...with or without Daniel Day-Lewis.
I'm in Broward County but on the swamp side. Winds are high with intermittent heavy reain here. Our house is relatively new and up to the post-Andrew building code and we have a generator. Honestly, I'd rather wait out a big storm a couple of times a year than suffer NY winters. Better governance and nicer people makes storm recovery better than on Long Island where we went 3 weeks without power after Sandy. That was just before we decided to make the move. No ice, no snow.
My normal routine includes a morning walk and swimming outside every day. The shopping and restaurants are at least as good and the traffic is no worse.
@Bad - When we moved to Naples I felt like we'd reached a food and culture desert. Over the last few years we've found some good places to eat (we don't eat out much anyway, my wife can cook and I'm cheap) and some people to paddle with.
Oddly the thing I am *most* missing is people to sail with. Oddly enough.
-XC
"This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man's garden, but the unhandseled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor wasteland…Man was not to be associated with it. It was Matter, vast, terrific…rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact!" Henry David Thoreau, writing about his trek up Mt. Katahdin, in Maine.
We live on an almost bare rock, most of which is covered in water, surrounded by the void.
Off topic: It has become an embarrassment to read the comments section of Althouse. Why she allows (unnamed) to post is beyond me, like sitting next to a drunk on a subway the only response is to move to another spot in the car. I follow this advice daily. I sometimes miss Althouse.
@Expat(ish):
You in the SWF?
Born, raised, and live in Tampa, Florida, though I am currently spending the fall in East Tennessee. My immediate and extended family all still live in the Tampa Bay area, mostly Hillsborough and Pasco Counties.
Our house (SW of Atlanta) had a big, wet, sloppy bull's eye on it until this morning when they shifted the expected track westward. We're still looking at 3+ inches of rain and sustained winds around 45 mph, and "widespread" power outages, mainly because the track shifted the wrong way for us.
I'm looking around at all the tall trees on our property, many of them pines, and wishing I'd gone crazy and called in a tree service to cut it all down last month.
Ritmo, you are kind of rage filled -
Leave it to reactionary Republicans to ascribe emotions to basic observations and facts.
Here's another objective observation: Perhaps you people are so good at lying to yourselves and denying facts because you apparently feel you must first weigh their social/economic/political impact before deciding whether or not they are worth admitting to.
In any event, I take your deflection to my emotional state to have all the credibility of an Alzheimer's patient accusing his son of being mean to him when reminding him of what he really did with the keys.
You're right Bruce but in all likelihood the Siberians moving east were following their caribou to wherever the food was. The land bridge of Beringia only lasted long enough to allow a few small bands into the new continent but it was apparently enough. There are places for humans to follow besides the coasts themselves, but the coasts are one of the only certain paths where continued migration/settlement will also continue.
Perhaps you people are so good at lying to yourselves and denying facts because you apparently feel you must first weigh their social/economic/political impact before deciding whether or not they are worth admitting to.
The professionals call your behavior "projection."
The professionals...
A professional steer hand waxing psychoanalytic. Hilarious. I'd stick to psychoanalyzing the bovines, Captain Brokeback.
'Just wait until winter storms start setting in; aren't below freezing windy days up north 'named storms' these days?"
Yep. They're called, "cold", "cold as shit", and "Holy shit! Where did my balls go?".
Yep. They're called, "cold", "cold as shit", and "Holy shit! Where did my balls go?".
In Minnesota we spoke of the Proverbial Witch's Tit. Or snow being asshole deep to a tall Indian.
In any event, I take your deflection to my emotional state to have all the credibility of an Alzheimer's patient accusing his son of being mean to him when reminding him of what he really did with the keys.
9/10/17, 2:03 PM
Lighten up Francis, I made no reference to your arguments except to agree with you on the superiority of waterfront property.
I say with kindness that you do, in fact, seem to have an anger management problem. Really, you do. Or you are faking it maybe, which would be hard to envision, but not impossible. (I wouldn't like you any better for faking it, but I understand that's not important to you.)
When one guy at a party tells you you're drunk, you call him a jerk. When dozens of people, including the hostess, tell you you're drunk, you are best off if you stop drinking the punch, start on the coffee, and call a cab.
If Ann held a blog-intervention for you-if she made a poll on whether you have a rage thing going or if you are admirably normally passionate about your beliefs (or some other choices), how do you think the numbers would go? I haven't got a grand to comission a poll, but if you agree, Ann might comp this one.
Incidentally, I take it you have no actual experience with dementia patients. Good for you and long may it last. It's sadder than anything on this blog.
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