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New York, 11:53 PM
Fri Dec 4
54 posts in the last 24 hours
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03/28/09
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We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile
For they say you are taking the sunshine
That has brightened our pathways awhile
CHORUS:
Come and sit by my side, if you love me
Do not hasten to bid me adieu
Just remember the Red River Valley
And the cowboy who loved you so true
I've been thinking a long time, my darling
Of the sweet words you never would say
Now, alas, must my fond hopes all vanish
For they say you are gong away
Do you think of the valley you're leaving
O how lonely and how dreary it will be
And do you think of the kind hearts you're breaking
And the pain you are causing to me
CHORUS
They will bury me where you have wandered
Near the hills where the daffodils grow
When you're gone from the Red River Valley
For I can't live without you I know
CHORUS
03/27/09
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03/27/09
three-car garage = gearhead. Not to say he isn't a sick bastard, but he's probably a sick bastard who builds cars from scratch in his spare time.
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03/27/09
Y'all.
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03/27/09
I'm having horrifying flashbacks to the sandbag days of my youth.
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But if the fields don't dry out by late april, then go hoard your bread. Or learn to like rice and oats.
BTW, the red river valley is one of the freaking flattest places in the world. Once the water tops those dikes (isn't dykes the original spelling?) you're filling up a gigantic wading pool---there's nothing stopping you for about 20 miles either side.
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A large flat surface, like where I was raised, 12 miles from another Red River, will sap an overflow, same as milk spilled on your table will run out of milk often before it runs out of table. That's why we never had a flood, although the river rose often.
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This isn't just a city getting flooded. This is a major agricultural disaster about to happen, and it's going to cause ALL KINDS of problems later if it's not addressed.
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Former GF resident here. Good gracious almighty the floods that happen along that river suck ass. I got in and out of there as quickly as possible and (luckily) avoided any major flooding, but I worried the whole town. Still have friends who live there. My heart goes out to them.
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That's why. The water has to go somewhere. The bigger dikes only postpone where the water dumps.
Which is why Manitoba hates us.
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It is a radical solution with a worth hanging on how bad the flood is really going to get. But if the possibility of flooding is so high as to be practically certain, it could be cheaper to choose where it's gonna happen.
03/27/09
I'm not sure you understand the geography, or what the fuck you're talking about: Fargo and the Red River Valley are flat. Flat like a table. The dikes that do confine the river (which, under normal circumstances, are quite a ways above it) are all man-made -- mounds of dirt that were piled up more than thirty years ago.
To reroute the river would mean piling even more dirt up, even higher, often in places that are hard to reach because there are houses all around -- many of which have never been in serious danger of flooding until this week. (There used to be a number of homes that were simply built too close to the river, for aesthetic reasons; after the flood of '97, the city told a lot of those owners that no, they couldn't rebuild there, which was a blessing because everyone was sick of devoting dozens of man-hours to sandbagging so that a few people could have scenic backyards.) Things are also complicated by the fact that, as others have noted, the river runs north and Fargo has a large set of sewage holding pools just north of town.
Anyway, "cheaper" is not the pertinent issue here. It's time. If dirt could be piled up quickly instead of HESCO barriers and sandbags, I'm sure they'd do it.
03/27/09
03/27/09
And if you think that photo sucks, it's always good to look back on the one of GF in 1997.
[www.palaydisplay.com]
Yeah, that's NOT photoshopped. Yes, that is a flooded city... on fire.
Winnipeg built flood control systems years ago... upriver, Grand Forks got flooded. Grand Forks built flood control systems, Fargo floods. Fargo never built a system like GF has because they didn't have the millions and millions in Federal disaster aid post-flood in 1997.
03/27/09
You guys got it bad back then. From what I'm hearing from back home, there aren't a lot of worries of fires and the like yet, but the weather is just making everything absolutely miserable.
03/27/09
But also, we were hearing the flood warning back in Dec. when we had record snowfall levels already AND more importantly a very wet ground from fall rains. Alot of people in GF are especially the more... independent NDers... living in the countryside kind of roll their eyes at Fargo and in the very straight-forward ND way think they're getting what they deserve for ignoring early warnings. Not that that's totally the case. Because the flood peak targets keep getting higher and higher. There was a great deal of local celebration when the dikes hit like 41 feet and then the projects came at "maybe 43" and everyone was crushed.
For great coverage of this Grand Forks Herald's Tu-Uyen Tran blogs at [www.areavoices.com]
Check him out especially for the note he got from the westboro baptist church: "God sent the flood waters to cover the evil people of Bismarck and Fargo, ND, where you flipped off God and raised you.." If you're a ND native, you'll recognize the type.
[www.areavoices.com]
03/27/09
I didn't realize there had been so much warning that it could be this bad, but then, that's people in general for you and, yes, cheap North Dakotans in particular: "Oh, it won't be that bad." Besides, the hard work just builds character, right?
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03/28/09
@SigSauer: Oh, yes -- my high school girlfriend's father's dream (yes, dream) was for his kids to graduate so he could move to West Fargo and not pay property taxes.
(Why, some of you may ask, didn't he just go ahead and move while the kids were still in school? Because he had daughters, and everyone knows that West Fargo girls are huge sluts. Bigger sluts than Moorhead girls, even, if you can believe that.)