4/4/08: Vicksburg Flooding near 1973 Level!

[Delta Planter]

I got these pics yesterday from a friend in North MS, thought I'd post them here. When you build inside the levee, expect the worst from time-to-time! Sorry, no date(s) available, but recent.

[delusianne]

Thanks for the great (awful!) pictures of Benoit, DeltaPlanter. And for remembering the real flood season coming in May - had forgotten about that!

This article is interesting, about the AC of Engineers maintaining the river channels, nowadays taking Nature into consideration (opens with a nice quote from Life on the Mississippi )
seMissourian.com: Story: Engineering for man: Shaping the Mississippi River

[Delta Planter]

Originally Posted by delusianne

Thanks for the great (awful!) pictures of Benoit, DeltaPlanter. And for remembering the real flood season coming in May - had forgotten about that!

This article is interesting, about the AC of Engineers maintaining the river channels, nowadays taking Nature into consideration (opens with a nice quote from Life on the Mississippi )
seMissourian.com: Story: Engineering for man: Shaping the Mississippi River

I've saved your link for a later read, today.

To "control" Old Man River is a monumental task, needless to say/write. I remember going to the Waterways Experimental Station below Vicksburg on a grade-school trip. I was very impressed with that presentation, even at such a young and innocent age. I would really like to return there for a 50-year-later visit, but as my trips to and from home are usually weekends, I'd really have to make a special effort to get there during the week. Shoot, that same trip was to the civil war park/cemetery in V'burg, and I've never returned there, either!

Where are YOU located, if I may ask?

[delusianne]

Originally Posted by Delta Planter

Where are YOU located, if I may ask?

I dont live in MS but I do love it - at least the Delta stretch from Memphis to Vicksburg - and a dip east to include (only) Rowan Oak and the library at Ole Miss. Mostly the MS I love is in my head, and in the physical landscapes related to the river - I dont even really know anyone there, just fictional characters and dead people, but that's the way I like it Still havent picked out a place to retire to - something wrong with everywhere - but Ive thought seriously about Vicksburg as a sort of base if I were to settle in a town and not the countryside. However, I pretty much need the mountains to live and they aint none in the Delta as perhaps you too have noted

MS has such a strong flavor that I get the feeling it's one of those places that you have to be from to really ever feel at home there. So that's a consideration.

Short answer is, Im a fan

Not sure I put enough emoticons in this post

[Delta Planter]

Originally Posted by delusianne

I dont live in MS but I do love it - at least the Delta stretch from Memphis to Vicksburg - and a dip east to include (only) Rowan Oak and the library at Ole Miss. Mostly the MS I love is in my head, and in the physical landscapes related to the river - I dont even really know anyone there, just fictional characters and dead people, but that's the way I like it Still havent picked out a place to retire to - something wrong with everywhere - but Ive thought seriously about Vicksburg as a sort of base if I were to settle in a town and not the countryside. However, I pretty much need the mountains to live and they aint none in the Delta as perhaps you too have noted

MS has such a strong flavor that I get the feeling it's one of those places that you have to be from to really ever feel at home there. So that's a consideration.

Short answer is, Im a fan

Not sure I put enough emoticons in this post

Well, yeah, I've noticed the paucity of "hills" in the Delta, unless you count the Indian mounds, and those are slowly eroding away with nature. Usta be a railroad overpass on US 61 at Rolling Fork, the only bump in the road from Leland to V'burg, now that's gone, too. As it's been well over 10 years since I drove 61 from Memphis south to my home in Cleveland, I really don't know what the countryside even looks like anymore.

Like any other place you may settle for the final act, yes, it would help to be "from" the Delta to truly appreciate it, to know the feel of/for the land in the farmers' views, to see the degradation of the community as a whole, and yet the uplifting of the same community by its citizenry. When I retired from the Navy in '95, I thought passionately about "going home" to MS, but it's hard to do once one is exposed to things outside the homeland of childhood and young adulthood. There's nothing there for me, anymore. I don't hunt, I don't fish, heck, I hardly ride anymore, and that was BEFORE the rising fuel prices. But it IS neat to ride the levee, even if there is nothing to see.

And the Delta, yes, the Delta. I wrote a little article about that place once upon a time, I'll see if I can run it down, send it to you PM. You might, MIGHT enjoy it, and then again...

Like James C. Cobb wrote several years ago, there ain't no other place like the Delta on the face of the earth. All the writers and pundits can rant and rave about what is right/what is wrong with the Delta, but if they ain't from there, they don't have a clue, not a single one. I really didn't like (don't like, if he's still alive) Hodding Carter, from Greenville, but he wrote about what he knew about, plain, pure and simple. As did Faulkner (I'm not a fan, though I've read a few of his works, and some of his history), as have many others from the area, and I'd rather read them and disagree with them than some clown from Noo Yawk City or Los Angeles, or some twit actor like sean penn.

Ah, I'm spinning my own self up. I need/want some pipe tobacco to placate my emotions, I'll be back in a little. Find that story, send it to ya.

[Delta Planter]

can be found here: http://www.ddtonline.com/shared-cont...d=7&mediaid=56

The Delta Democrat Times hails out of Greenville, MS, BTW, so most of the pics are in that locale.

Strange thing: The Mississippi River floods every year, without fail. It's amazing, to me, that folks from other parts of the world think it's so traumatic, so unnerving. It would be if the levees were to break again, as happened in 1927. I've personally seen the water as close as 5' from the tops of the levees, that that has been a long, long time ago.