Could the Dust Bowl Happen Again?

The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains region devastated by drought in 1930s depression-ridden America. The 150,000-square-mile area, encompassing the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, has little rainfall, light soil, and high winds, a potentially destructive combination. When drought struck from 1934 to 1937, the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” Recurrent dust storms wreaked havoc, choking cattle and pasture lands and driving 60 percent of the population from the region. Most of these “exodusters” went to agricultural areas first and then to cities, especially in the Far West.

The American agricultural system came close to ruin during those perilous years; in fact, some contemporary experts began warning that the American family would soon have to start spending nearly 40% of their income just to get enough to eat. Fortunately, they were wrong; today the average American family spends only 7% of their income on food.

But even so, there are many scenarios in which your food budget could skyrocket, either temporarily or for a long time -- such as natural disasters or civil disturbances that disrupt the food supply chain. Hikingware.com suggests that you should keep on hand a full supply of nutritious and long-lasting emergency rations for your family.

Can the Dust Bowl happen again? Historians tell us that, to a lesser extent, it can happen again at any time:

In response to the original emergency, the federal government mobilized several New Deal agencies, principally the Soil Conservation Service formed in 1935, to promote farm rehabilitation. Working on the local level, the government instructed farmers to plant trees and grass to anchor the soil, to plow and terrace in contour patterns to hold rainwater, and to allow portions of farmland to lie fallow each year so the soil could regenerate. The government also purchased 11.3 million acres of submarginal land to keep it out of production. By 1941 much of the land was rehabilitated, but the region repeated its mistakes during World War II as farmers again plowed up grassland to plant wheat when grain prices rose. Drought threatened another disaster in the 1950s, prompting Congress to subsidize farmers in restoring millions of acres of wheat back to grassland.

With global warming and continuing drought in many parts of the United States, the day may come sooner than expected when your food budget will double or even triple.

So having an ample supply of basic food stuffs on hand, as well as emergency rations for the whole family just makes sense.

As Groucho Marx once said: "Food for thought doesn't do you much good when you're hungry for a hamburger!"

The Critic

The critic likes to pick apart

anything that shows some heart.

When he's dissected, by and by,

I hope he's sterilized with lye.

Con Game

When public officials declaim
about their parsimonious fame,
please check out the fittings
where they hold their sittings
to see if it's just a con game.

fast food fiddle faddle

Fast food with a country-style beat
is not any better to eat.
Despite dulcet fiddle,
it widens my middle
and I'm never sure what's in the meat. 

The newspaper's going extinct

From TechCrunch:

The Pew Research Center’s latest annual State of the News Media report underlines how successful technology giants continue to be at creaming off digital ad profits, even as traditional news media faces ever intensifying pressure to find a way to sustainably fund journalism.

Pew’s 2016 report notes that total US digital ad spending, covering any digital ads on social media, search engines, or any other kind of website, grew another 20 per cent in 2015, to almost $60 billion — a higher growth rate than in the two preceding years. And this at a time when in the newspaper industry it’s been a story of shrinking budgets and substantial job losses.

The newspaper's going extinct;

their obituary's already been inked.

But like Mark Twain said,

"The rumors I'm dead"

are not as true as you have thinked. 

The Walleye

A wonderful perciform fish,
the walleye's a succulent dish.
Damn catch-and-release;
a dab of hot grease,
and taste buds are granted their wish. 

The Great Boston Molasses Flood

Life throws many curve balls at us. Disasters and emergencies are a part of our existence, no matter where we live or what our financial condition might be. A wise person prepares for these things, not only to protect himself or herself, but also to gain some peace of mind.
Hikingware.com here presents one of the oddest catastrophes in American history. It was sudden, and deadly, and no one had ever predicted that such a thing could occur:

On January 15th, 1919, in what was probably the most bizarre disaster in United States' history, a storage tank burst on Boston's waterfront releasing two million gallons of molasses in a 15 ft-high, 160 ft-wide wave that raced through the city's north end at 35 mph destroying everything it touched.

At 529 Commercial Street in North Boston, the 2.3 million gallon Purity Distilling Co. storage tank was filled to capacity with molasses awaiting transfer to the company's distillery in Cambridge. The weather was mild for January, a relief from the cold snap that had been biting the area for several days. The 50 ft-high tank, which was 90 ft in diameter, dominated the neighbourhood where Commercial Street and the elevated railway tracks made 90-degree turns as they approached the harbour, a congested area densely populated with Italian immigrants and interspersed with pockets of Irish people, who would come to dominate the city. Eighteenth-century American patriot Paul Revere 's house and the home of colonial governor Thomas Hutchinson were in the neighborhood, along with an area of blacksmith shops, a slaughterhouse, modest homes and the trolley company's freight sheds. 

The wave killed young Pasquale Iantosca, smashing a railroad car into the ten-year-old. It pinned Walter Merrithew, a railroad clerk on the Commercial Street wharf, against the wall of a freight shed, his feet 3 ft off the floor. He hung there as he watched a horse drowning nearby. The wave broke steel girders of the Boston Elevated Railway, almost swept a train off its tracks, knocked buildings off their foundations, and toppled electrical poles, the wires hissing and sparking as they fell into the brown flood. The Boston Globe reported that people 'were picked up and hurled many feet. Rivets popping from the tank scourged the neighborhood like machine gun bullets, and a small boat was found slammed through a wooden fence like an artillery shell. By the time it passed, the wave had killed 21 people, injured 150, and caused damage worth $100 million in today's money. All caused by molasses.

It was around 12.30 pm, lunchtime for many workers, when the tank broke. Buildings of the nearby Northend Paving Yard were instantly reduced to kindling as the molasses cascaded out. The three story Engine 31 Fire House was torn from its foundations, trapping three firefighters who fought to keep their heads above the rising tide. A piece of the tank was blown into the elevated railway tracks, breaking girders and almost forcing a northbound train off its tracks. Seeing a brown mass surging towards him, Royal Albert Leeman, a brakeman for the Boston Elevated, stopped his train and ran up the tracks to stop a second train.

The clean-up eventually took some 87,000 man hours. Fire department pumps groaned as they removed thousands of gallons of molasses from cellars. Workers used chisels, brooms and saws to break up the hardening gunk. The harbor water, used to flush the streets clean, was brown until the summer. Meanwhile, rescue workers, sightseers and residents carried the gooey brown residue on their clothes and boots to other parts of the city, making streetcar seats, trolley platforms and public phones sticky. The whole city smelled of molasses.

The tank was never rebuilt. The site where it stood is now a public park with bocce (Italian boules) courts and Little League baseball fields, slides and swings. All that remains of that sticky disaster is a small plaque at the entrance of the recreational complex. Yet local residents insist a faint smell lingers to this day. They say that on warm summer days the air is still tinged with the sweet, cloying scent of molasses.

There are surely more unpredictable disasters ahead. We shouldn't let that certainty fill us with dread, but with the determination to be prepared as best we can. As Benjamin Franklin said: "Only the prepared man can dare to hope." 

Titian

There once was a painter named Titian
who seemed to have only ambition
to get in the mood
to paint a pink nude;
his customers all were patrician. 

Indoor Farming

When lettuce is grown in a crate
and boxes my leeks propagate,
there isn't the charm
that comes from a farm;
my appetite don't germinate. 

Paul Ryan

There was a young pol named Paul Ryan
who didn't find Trump very tryin'.
He said "Even bigots
can turn on the spigots
and money just keep on supplyin'!"