Notes From The Front Table (begun 8-23, 9:47 AM)

Cape Girardeau, Missouri was where the land once began and the Gulf of Mexico ended. John Barry takes it from there and emphasizes that, geologically, the land that developed into what is now the Mississippi delta is a young land. Through man's damming of the shores of the Mississippi River, sediment running through the waters from the Missouri River has quit depositing itself into the edge of Louisiana's wetlands and instead flows right into the bottom of the Gulf.

Rising Tide was not originally Barry's title for his book on the 1927 flood, but he thinks a great one these days for the issues he deals with is"You Still Don't Know About Katrina". Daaaaamn right.

OMG! I shook hands with Christian Roselund! Okay, end of squee...

Barry emphasizes in the Q & A that darn near every international port is below sea level. Death Valley doesn't make a good port because it apparently has a pretty good levee system.

Some facts: In 1927, then-President Calvin Coolidge didn't care to come to the flooded regions of the Mississippi delta or even lend a hand to fundraise for relief for the victims of the flood, but Herbert Hoover, that "brilliant fool" of an engineer, reacted faster to the crisis that Mike "Heckuva Job, Brownie" Brown did to the aftermath of the levee breaches in 2005.

"Sooner or later a hurricane is gonna come along that will wipe New Orleans off the face of the earth...it is possible to protect it, but you've got to make the investment."

Shortly after I began this, I got tied up in the minutiae of registrations and sales of swag, and then I shuffled off for a bit to the education panel...and things snowballed far, far away from my CompUSA Special. Time flies when you're having fun at Rising Tide. Just head over to Maitri's for your up-to-the-moments fixes. I'm NOT done with this yet, however. More to come.