The River
**musical mood preference: Susan Tudeschi - Rock Me Right**
The Susquehanna River and how people respond and co-exist with it creates an amusing type of situational comedy for me.
A natural wonder, the river has been modified, polluted and re-directed to a point which leaves it unpredictable. The "crest" is never where they say it will be, and the "flood stage" is a farce. It's all tenuous at best, mostly because (in my own opinion) of what the people have done to the Susquehanna in the last four centuries. Damming, mining, dragging, dumping, filling... god knows what else.
People still choose to live next to this unpredictability and then act shocked when there is a threat of flood. It has happened or threatened to happen every 10 years or so, for the last century. On top of that, we get a valley-leveling flood averaging about once every 30-40 years. Oh, what the Wyoming Valley has to look forward to.
The Susquehanna River and how people respond and co-exist with it creates an amusing type of situational comedy for me.
A natural wonder, the river has been modified, polluted and re-directed to a point which leaves it unpredictable. The "crest" is never where they say it will be, and the "flood stage" is a farce. It's all tenuous at best, mostly because (in my own opinion) of what the people have done to the Susquehanna in the last four centuries. Damming, mining, dragging, dumping, filling... god knows what else.
People still choose to live next to this unpredictability and then act shocked when there is a threat of flood. It has happened or threatened to happen every 10 years or so, for the last century. On top of that, we get a valley-leveling flood averaging about once every 30-40 years. Oh, what the Wyoming Valley has to look forward to.
posted by Brian at 3:37 a.m.
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