I am very pleased, this morning, to find that all the symptoms of an incoming cold, that I have been experiencing the last 48 hours, have abated. No headache, no sneezing, no stinging watery eyes.
I heard from Stenotrophomonas this morning, with a Tandy Hills Report, telling me that the heavy rains of the past couple days have predictably washed out the recently installed creek crossings and that on Thursday, around 4 in the afternoon, the Tandy Highway was a raging river, with some of the liquid provided by overflowing sanitary sewers, adding a special perfume to the water, as it flowed over the roaring Tandy Falls.
I forgot to watch last night's CNN Republican Debate. It re-ran at 10, so I set the DVR to record it, in case the morning news indicated I'd missed anything entertaining. The morning news indicated that, predictably, Newt and Mitt continued their cat fighting. With Newt ending up seeming subdued. A subdued Newt sounds depressing.
Speaking of depressing. This morning's Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on the shocking news that in a literacy ranking of America's Top 75 cities, of Texas towns, Austin was the only Texas town not to rank in the bottom half of America's most literate cities with a population of 250,000, or more.
Even though Seattle ranked #1 in various aspects of this literacy survey there was no mention made this morning, that I saw, in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, No article saying that towns far and wide are Green with Envy due to Seattle's literacy ranking.
I wonder if there is some correlation between a town's literacy level and a town's newspaper's tendency to use embarrassing verbiage like " Green with Envy ?"
I was surprised that the Star-Telegram printed the following, which is unusually accurate and not the usual phony, chamber of commerce boosterism, based on delusional nonsense, that the Star-Telegram is prone to....
"Quality tends to be associated with quality, and highly literate cities often rank high in other quality of life metrics: Cities ranked in the top 10 most literate tend to offer the most active singles' scenes (Boston, Seattle, Washington and Atlanta), are safer (Minneapolis, Boston, Seattle, Portland, Denver and Cincinnati), more walkable (Seattle, Washington, D.C., Portland, Boston and Denver), and healthier (Washington, D.C., and Denver)."
Perhaps Fort Worth should send out a task force to these other towns and find out what it is they are doing different than Fort Worth that makes them actual top notch cities, rather than make believe wannabes.
I've got a big hint for you. None of those top-ranked towns have any projects going on as goofy as the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle. None of those top-ranked towns would instigate a big public works program without the public voting on it.
But.
How can you have the public vote on public works projects, in a town, where, apparently, way too many people are illiterate?
I'm guessing there is a correlation between level of literacy and a town's mileage of roads without sidewalks.
I doubt any of the highly literate towns would get away with allowing gas drilling companies to take over their town and poke thousands of holes in the ground.
Most-literate cities
1. Washington, D.C.
2. Seattle
3. Minneapolis
4. Atlanta
5. Boston
6. Pittsburgh
7. Cincinnati
8. St. Louis
9. San Francisco
10. Denver
22. Austin
46. Plano
51. Dallas
54. Fort Worth
60. Houston
64. Arlington
66. San Antonio
73. El Paso
1 comment:
Well, I never did get motivated enough to swim upstream through the sewage, so I can't vouch for the creek crossings south of the Mt.Tandy trail.
I went down there again this afternoon. The Tandy Highway river was still flowing, with a little less current and a lot more stench. The creek crossing in Chesapeakistan just downstream of the blue pickup truck was about the same, with plenty of water flowing through the white rocks.
Later, I heard a Water Dept. sound truck mumbling something about the water being turned off south of Tandy Hills, so there may be some water works being done, and adding to the flooding.
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