Drought comment

Here in the South we are experiencing drought. Low levels of rainfall have resulted in water shortages stretching from the Carolinas to Mississippi. Lake Lanier, Atlanta's reserve, has been used to the point that if nothing changes, we are told, barges will be installed with giant pipes by which water can be sucked up to the dam's lowest drain elevation to supply Atlanta with water.

Lots of development. Going on for decades. I think they call it progress.

My recreational reading is a fat tome by William Least Heat-Moon, Prairie Erth. It tells you more about the prairie and Chase County, Kansas than you ever imagined.

THE LAST DEFENSE

The third-greatest enemy of the tallgrass is not fire, disease, herbivores, high wind, heat, cold, ice , freezing, or flood -- it is drought, the force that shapes the prairie, the power that grasses roll their leaves against and counter by treating the world above ground as a treacherous place to be only tolerated, as if they understood the prepotency of drought over their second great enemies, trees. Against the biggest enemy, Western man, they have a lone defense of waiting him out, surviving in neglected pockets like those World War Two Japanese soldiers who were still creeping out of jungles a quarter of a centruy after the surrender.

Prairie Erth, p. 199