I want to begin today with an observation relevant only to those who read (and took seriously) what I said yesterday about assets, liabilities and threats. The news overnight served up an illustration of how assessing one’s environment can come into play.
I’m pretty familiar with Baltimore, Maryland, having had in-laws there in a former life and traveling through (or skirting it) when my own family lived in Virginia. I know enough about the place that, were I resident taking stock of what’s around me, I’d account for the considerable ship traffic into and out of the harbor, choke-points like the Francis Scott Key Bridge, notoriously poor traffic flow on the Beltway, and urban neighborhoods with high rates of carjackings and violent crime — among many other things, of course.
During the wee hours this morning, a thousand-foot-long cargo ship plowed into one of the Key Bridge’s massive piers. The impact triggered a collapse, snapping the 1,200-foot center span and sending the engineering marvel into the water 185 feet below.
I’m not here to talk about what happened, how it happened or why. Right now that’s of no immediate concern to the people of Baltimore and the surrounding area. What matters is adjusting to the effect that the absence of that bridge will have on daily life.
If I were one of the few who (in advance) evaluated threats present in that area, I considered what might happen if the Key Bridge was closed, suffered damage or even collapsed. I plotted alternate routes. I recognized that some of those routes take me into high-crime neighborhoods, exacerbated by the fact that Maryland is downright hostile to law-abiding armed citizens.
No one who lives there or who travels I-695 will have an easy time of it for the next few years. (It took five years to build that bridge originally in the 1970s.) But anyone who did their homework will have an advantage.
(Honestly, anyone who does a thorough analysis of Baltimore will realize how fucked up it is and get the hell out.)
As I’ve said before, vigilance is not fear. Vigilance is taking an active interest in what’s around us, rationally predicting what could happen, and preparing for it. It’s essential to living our best American Life.
If that doesn’t make sense to you, you’re just another hamster on a wheel.
We got a good bit of rain in a relatively short time yesterday. As usual, the homestead handled it with grace — except for some surprise ponding in the back yard. That’s easily explained and (probably) easily corrected.
Hammering at the rock last year left a depression above and behind the cabin. We noticed that it collected water when it rained, and our happy Heeler loved to splash in it — and so we christened it, “The Smudge Pond.”
Recently, the divot has taken on a different role. I’ve referred to it here as “the burn pit.”
Yesterday was the first time it’s overflowed, sending a steady stream of runoff down the rock face and into the back yard. The impromptu pond covered about 50 square feet, a few inches deep.
By this morning, it all had percolated into the gravel.
We could divert the runoff coming from the burn pit, I suppose. We also could bury a length of perforated pipe at the base of the rock wall. Or we may do nothing at all. We’ll see.
A total solar eclipse will pass over The Mountain on April 8th no matter what the weather does that day. Right now the forecast doesn’t look promising for us being able to see the actual eclipse — cloudy, 40% chance of rain.
It’ll still get dark, of course, for three minutes in the middle of the day. And hey, it’s still almost two weeks away, so things could change. Whatever happens, this is where we’ll be.
We have precisely zero interest in traveling for this.
Other folks do. Recently I saw an interesting graphic about that — some Brigadoon outfit called “Great American Eclipse” calculated the shortest drive from every county seat in the contiguous US to the center of the path of totality, resulting in what looks like a map of watersheds. Indeed, they call it a “driveshed map.” Pretty slick.
I found a version highlighting specifically the Arkansas driveshed. Sure, I understand how it was done, but that doesn’t mean I’m not surprised so see that The Natural State is the shortest trip for a huge slice of the country, stretching from the Florida panhandle to the Pacific Northwest.
The same organization is putting out estimates of “eclipse tourism.” Predictably, those numbers are much lower than hyper-optimistic convention-and-visitors types have projected — 20%, at best, of the post-2017 analysis.
Our state tourism agency has tossed around an estimate of “1.5 million.” I think that’s a bit silly, really. Great American Eclipse says “84,000 to 337,000” for Arkansas. I don’t know about that, either.
If the weather sucks for viewing anywhere along the path of totality, all bets are off.
We won’t know ’til after it’s over. And given the inevitable spin, we won’t know then.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB