The AH Coffee Shop and Reading Room 02: A Comma (is a Restful Pause)

voluptuary_manque said:

Given the storms the North Sea is capable of, I would adjudge the difference between them and most hurricanes to be minimal. But as you say, much of the problem is human.

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It ain't just Texans either. How many Californian's live on top of earthquake zones the will eventually produce violent destruction?

Popping in to say hello.

NotWise said:

It ain't just Texans either. How many Californian's live on top of earthquake zones the will eventually produce violent destruction?

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Houston is built on a flood plain and people wonder why they have water in their house. I think the highest ground in Houston is 300 feet and it is a very small area. The drop from north Houston to the Gulf is less than 50 feet in most places. Add to that historical rainfall amounts and you have the ultimate recipe for disaster.

More work has been done in the last few years to help the water flow than had been done in the previous twenty. The city has grown like mad. More roads, wider roads, more streets and homes, more people, less and less land to soak up water. The runoff is cumulative.

Widening the bayous is underway. More retention ponds are being added. Space and money are both problems. Building one foot over the hundred year flood mark doesn't help when you have five feet of rain. Old problems keep haunting the picture. Old views of it's not my problem are taking a beating this time around as places that have never flooded are knee deep in water.

Ok, I'll put my soapbox away and make fresh coffee.

_Lynn_ said:

Popping in to say hello.

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Hello, Good Morning and welcome.

TxRad said:

Houston is built on a flood plain and people wonder why they have water in their house. I think the highest ground in Houston is 300 feet and it is a very small area. The drop from north Houston to the Gulf is less than 50 feet in most places. Add to that historical rainfall amounts and you have the ultimate recipe for disaster.

More work has been done in the last few years to help the water flow than had been done in the previous twenty. The city has grown like mad. More roads, wider roads, more streets and homes, more people, less and less land to soak up water. The runoff is cumulative.

Widening the bayous is underway. More retention ponds are being added. Space and money are both problems. Building one foot over the hundred year flood mark doesn't help when you have five feet of rain. Old problems keep haunting the picture. Old views of it's not my problem are taking a beating this time around as places that have never flooded are knee deep in water.

Ok, I'll put my soapbox away and make fresh coffee.

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It always strikes me as 'unfortunate' that places with loads of water cannot export it to places where there's chronic shortage. If industry can put miles of oil-pipes in various places, why not some pipes for water ?

Ah well, the coffee is very tasty.
Thank you

NotWise said:

It ain't just Texans either. How many Californian's live on top of earthquake zones the will eventually produce violent destruction?

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California has a bad quake maybe every decade or so. The East and South get scads of storms EVERY YEAR that do more damage. And some of us on the Left Coast pay attention to geology maps, and pick solid locations. We've not lived in a seismic zone for quite awhile.

(Western Oregon and Washington will be devastated when the Cascadia Fault slips, sometime soon. You couldn't pay us to move Northwest. We'ii avoid Tsunami Zones too.)

Brushfires are more problematic out West. More and more housing extends into the edge of wilderness. Various nasties are killing-off millions of conifers -- pine forests become brown tinderboxes. We all know the stuff around us can burn, but when? And can USFS and CalFire save our homes?

Out here it's usually either drought or deluge. This year was deluge. Hey, a hight tide and another Pineapple Express could take out some Delta levees and flood central California. It's been a lake before; it'll be a lake again.

Geology is risky all over. Earth does not like us. The Yellowstone supervolcano could pop disconcertingly at any time, smothering everything downwind / easterly. The Cascadia Fault WILL go, nastily. The New Madrid Fault below St Louis could level much of the Midwest. I'm upwind of impending volcanos in my backyard almost. What, me worry?

Where is the safest place to live re: possible natural disasters? I dunno. It's too late for coffee and too early for eye surgery. Play slow jazz and unlax...

Handley_Page said:

Hello, Good Morning and welcome.





It always strikes me as 'unfortunate' that places with loads of water cannot export it to places where there's chronic shortage. If industry can put miles of oil-pipes in various places, why not some pipes for water ?

Ah well, the coffee is very tasty.
Thank you

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There are water pipes running from the Colorado River to Southern California and from Northern California to the south. Lots of aqueducts carrying water in California and Arizona's farming areas. There are just too many people using too much water to keep up with supply. This land was not meant to support so many millions of people.

sharingfantasies said:

There are water pipes running from the Colorado River to Southern California and from Northern California to the south. Lots of aqueducts carrying water in California and Arizona's farming areas. There are just too many people using too much water to keep up with supply. This land was not meant to support so many millions of people.

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A very interesting thought.
But while I ponder that , I think another coffee is indicated.

Ok, ok, the forums are back up. I was starting to get withdrawals.

The story side is still down or was the last i checked.

The water is starting to receed in most places in Houston but river flooding id still a problem in areas to the east and west. 59 north and I10 East are still closed and limiting travel. Sunny and mild otherwise.

We ended up with almost four times the normal monthly rainfall for August in five days.

Fresh coffee is now available and there are ribs and potato salad for lunch.

I was waiting to see what happened to my newly posted poem.

I shouldn't have bothered. One vote - a 1 !

Edited:

I should have waited a bit longer for anonymous:

this poem/ballad is a real pice of shit

boring, dumb, not exciting, poor rhymes, not even singable

Please stop writing stuff like this! Stick this stuff up your ass and go back to writing stories.

oggbashan said:

I was waiting to see what happened to my newly posted poem.

I shouldn't have bothered. One vote - a 1 !

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I feel for ya Ogg. The trolls are playing hell with the Contest scores also.

TxRad said:

I feel for ya Ogg. The trolls are playing hell with the Contest scores also.

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Anon's now left a comment - see edit above.

oggbashan said:

Anon's now left a comment - see edit above.

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You do seem to draw the best of the lot.

At least that one can spell.

yeah, the poetry crowd here is a hard lot. I'm trying to be generous by calling them hard. I must say I've never seen any other corner of the poetry world so taken with rhyme. It seems so ... old fashioned.

HuckPilgrim said:

yeah, the poetry crowd here is a hard lot. I'm trying to be generous by calling them hard. I must say I've never seen any other corner of the poetry world so taken with rhyme. It seems so ... old fashioned.

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To my mind, poetry SHOULD rhyme.
I cannot stand this "declamatory" style at all. Cannot get a rhythm going, somehow.

I think I need a cup of Tea.
Anyone else whilst I'm here ?

PS.
Those authors for whom a "gradient" of swearwords (English) might be of use
may care to find something useful HERE.

I'm with you Handley_Page. Declamatory is when you shout the poem out, or say it with gusto. Like the thing Clint Eastwood did with the chair? If so, I'm with you. It's hard for me to recall even a single example of a declamatory poem, much less an example of one I like.

HuckPilgrim said:

I'm with you Handley_Page. Declamatory is when you shout the poem out, or say it with gusto. Like the thing Clint Eastwood did with the chair? If so, I'm with you. It's hard for me to recall even a single example of a declamatory poem, much less an example of one I like.

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You mean like in a poetry slam? I've heard some pretty cool stuff coming from slams.

NotWise said:

You mean like in a poetry slam? I've heard some pretty cool stuff coming from slams.

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I haven't been to all that many slams, but I enjoyed the ones I've made it to.

I'm not 100% on declamatory means for poetry means, to be honest. I haven't really heard that one before.

HuckPilgrim said:

yeah, the poetry crowd here is a hard lot. I'm trying to be generous by calling them hard. I must say I've never seen any other corner of the poetry world so taken with rhyme. It seems so ... old fashioned.

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Perhaps you take too much notice of the comments/ratings posted to particular poems. The comments on the Poetry Board threads are as well thought through and informed as any on the whole Board. There is a core of poets on Lit maybe half a dozen to a dozen, who are very good to occasionally exceptional - and they offer useful analysis to each other. Green Mountaineer, Angeline and Guilty Pleasure are examples of the more than occasionally exceptional - well worth reading.

However, those gentle poet souls can play rough; a gentleman? from Florida known in these parts paid the Poets a visit for a few weeks a couple of years back. He got a comprehensive shellacking for his pains before retreating in disorder. And they did it without reciprocating the usual insults.

Having said that, 90% of the poetry submitted here is dire, usually grossly sentimentalized (and rhyming!) pap from occasional contributors - best forgotten.

voluptuary_manque said:

Given the storms the North Sea is capable of, I would adjudge the difference between them and most hurricanes to be minimal. But as you say, much of the problem is human.

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Sunday 1st February 1953. Massive storm surge + high tides, 1,800 people drowned in Netherlands alone, many more in UK, 50,000 homes badly damaged 10,000 washed away. UK's greatest Peacetime disaster since a tidal wave in 1607 was estimated to have killed 20,000 in the Severn estuary lowlands.

There is a brass marker of the 30th January 1607 flood on the tower of Frampton on Severn Church, about 16 feet above the ground and more than 20 feet above the normal high tide mark.

The Earl of Berkeley, a local Landowner regretted the tragedy(briefly) but recorded that it was most useful in enabling the consolidation of tenancies (of the deceased)

ishtat said:

Sunday 1st February 1953. Massive storm surge + high tides, 1,800 people drowned in Netherlands alone, many more in UK, 50,000 homes badly damaged 10,000 washed away. UK's greatest Peacetime disaster since a tidal wave in 1607 was estimated to have killed 20,000 in the Severn estuary lowlands.

There is a brass marker of the 30th January 1607 flood on the tower of Frampton on Severn Church, about 16 feet above the ground and more than 20 feet above the normal high tide mark.

The Earl of Berkeley, a local Landowner regretted the tragedy(briefly) but recorded that it was most useful in enabling the consolidation of tenancies (of the deceased)

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I was only a kid when this happened.
A decade or two later, the family & I were in Norfolk. The great sloping banks marking the difference between sea & land were still there against the time when another great surge would flood the land.
There's a small brass marker high on the outside wall of the pub, marking where the highest of tides got to. It's about 8 foot up, as I recall.
This is a couple of hundred miles further north than Kent.

Handley_Page said:

I was only a kid when this happened.
A decade or two later, the family & I were in Norfolk. The great sloping banks marking the difference between sea & land were still there against the time when another great surge would flood the land.
There's a small brass marker high on the outside wall of the pub, marking where the highest of tides got to. It's about 8 foot up, as I recall.
This is a couple of hundred miles further north than Kent.

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I was in South London during the 1953 floods. The town I live in now had its railway line cut both East and West of the town. The link East was restored within weeks, the link West took months. The sea surge came in after dark and in the centre of the town came a mile inland. The house my son-in-law lives in now is still damp downstairs after all these years despite the plaster having been replaced throughout the whole ground floor. The sea level stopped six inches below the top of the stairs.

In Kent, Whitstable and Sheerness were the worst affected. The old part of Whitstable is still several feet below Spring tide levels and there are at least 30 gates in the sea wall that have to be shut to prevent flooding. Forget one gate? Whitstable will flood again.

Canvey Island in Essex was the worst affected nearby. The North Kent coast knew that the storm surge was coming and had some time to prepare. Canvey Island didn't know. It was before telephones were universal and radio programmes stopped broadcasting at night. People on Canvey Island died in the beds, unaware that there would be a flood.

HuckPilgrim said:

yeah, the poetry crowd here is a hard lot. I'm trying to be generous by calling them hard. I must say I've never seen any other corner of the poetry world so taken with rhyme. It seems so ... old fashioned.

Click to expand...

HuckPilgrim said:

I'm with you Handley_Page. Declamatory is when you shout the poem out, or say it with gusto. Like the thing Clint Eastwood did with the chair? If so, I'm with you. It's hard for me to recall even a single example of a declamatory poem, much less an example of one I like.

Click to expand...

HuckPilgrim said:

I haven't been to all that many slams, but I enjoyed the ones I've made it to.

I'm not 100% on declamatory means for poetry means, to be honest. I haven't really heard that one before.

Click to expand...

My abused doggerel The Ballad of Little Plum was just a piece of fun, not to be taken seriously.

Declamatory poetry? I attended a course at our local university theatre on how to present poetry to an audience. I was involved only because the university and local council had applied for and got finance for the week long course without working out WHO would attend it. Most of those attending the course were like me, reluctant volunteers dragged out of remote corners. But we enjoyed ourselves. Presenting Dylan Thomas's Do not go gentle into that good night was the most effective.

I have a couple of declamatory poems in my postings and have declaimed them to selected audiences:

https://www.literotica.com/p/encouragements-to-an-author
https://www.literotica.com/p/boadicea

And the longest and best received by an audience:
https://www.literotica.com/p/the-garderobe

It was somewhere around 1969. I'm not exactly sure when, for Robin Williams' reason ("If you can remember the sixties, you weren't really there.") I was part of a hippy-dippy encampment under the redwoods along the Navarro River just inset from the rocky Mendocino coast some few hours north of San Francisco. The free-form camp area, owned by an absent lumber company, would later be donated as a state park.

A number of us City hippies had great fun smoking pot, drinking cheapest wine, eating magic mushrooms and welfare food, skinnydipping, fucking in the woods, et cetera. Some of the more 'adventurous' (and poorer) talked of staying over for autumn and winter. Bad idea.

I pointed at a roadside sign showing the flood height from the 1963 tsunami, product of an Aleutian quake, that had scoured-away various coastal towns. Even here, almost ten miles inland in the Coast Range, the high-water mark was about 33 feet / 10 meters above the road, which was higher than the camp area.

"You gonna be here for the next of these?" I asked. Realizations flickered.

The West doesn't get near as many oceanic storms as the East and South, but Pacific hurricanes occasionally sweep up from Mexico, and winter storms bear down on us from Alaska. We get the Pineapple Express, the atmospheric river pouring from Hawai'i. One of those will return central California to a lake. We get flooding from tsunamis triggered by quakes in Hawai'i, Japan, Aleutians. Coastal slopes get mucky. I've watched fancy clifftop mansions slide down to the sea.

We get weather. We get fires. We don't get many bad earthquakes. Whew.

Hey, morning approaches! I'll espresso-grind some cinnamon-tainted beans and throw in a good splash of spiced rum.I need a good dose. My retinologist poked hardware into my eyeball again yesterday, and I'll likely see (or not see) more surgery in a few days. Hey, if we squirt coffee into eyeballs, do they see faster?

Morning all,

Floods, bad poetry, and back to floods is fine but i draw the line at pouring coffee in eyeballs. Drink it straight like the gods intended.

After all that rain, I can hear my grass growing from inside the house. I may have to bale some hay by the time it is dry enough to mow.

Fresh coffee is ready while the rest of you contemplate the upcoming weekend.

It's Labor Day weekend--summer's last hurrah. The Fiestas de Santa Fe start tonight with the burning of Zozobra (Old Man Gloom) at sunset. Time to party!

We've had lots of balloons up this week, until today. Maybe I just couldn't see them.