And the Walls Come Tumbling Down . . .

So, as we were up and preparing for our trip, Janice happened to look out the window and called me over. There, at the school behind our place, some heavy machinery was at work, removing the sandbags surrounding the Neely-OBrien elementary school. These sandbags went up in '09, when the dam upstream of us on the Green River got leaky. Three years having passed, the dam having been repaired and tested, it's now time they came down. There have been articles in the local paper (The Kent Reporter) about plans to clear the levees and re-open the bike paths, but this is the first sign we've seen of something actually being done.

So, we're grateful for the sandbags -- the city government did the right thing to put them in place and protect all of us down on the Green River Valley from what could have been a catastrophic flood. Now it's time for them to go, and it's good to see the first step underway.

Pity there's no good use for the sand (which is actually more like fine gravel): too coarse for use in sandboxes or during snow emergencies. Apparently they're going to dump it all somewhere in a great big mound: maybe it'll be near at hand if they ever have to do all this again. Which, hopefully, won't be for a long, long time.

In the meantime, it's good to see things starting to revert to normal.

--John R.

current reading: THE EXPLOITS OF THE CHEVALIER DUPIN by Michael Harrison [1968] (third reading, II.3007), plus Edgar Poe's four detective stories [1840s]