by Shaker rowmyboat, a New York/New England transplant weathering storms in Nashville, Tennessee.
On the far right of this photo is the football stadium, and then in front of that is the river. In the middle there is a green-roofed building that is mostly obscured by trees, and that's where the river usually stops, but here the river has overflowed the bank and is well into the first couple blocks of the city. On the far left, people on a pedestrian bridge overlook the scene.
You may have heard that we've got a bit of a situation here in Nashville, Tennessee, and surrounding areas. Or maybe you haven't heard; my mother, who has been an assiduous follower of Nashville weather and news since I've lived here, hadn't heard that there had been about a dozen weather-related fatalities. Many of my far-flung friends in New York, Massachusetts, and elsewhere hadn't heard anything about it at all, aside from what I've been putting up on Facebook. The MSM is only slowly catching up, with the New York Times and the major TV news channels only starting to do some minor reporting of the whole thing on Monday.
First, let me say that I'm fine. My apartment had a small leak in the living room ceiling and the hot water heater has turned off for seemingly unrelated reasons. My neighborhood is on the side of a hill, so the water all went right past us. We only lost power for a couple minutes here and there – once Saturday night, and again Sunday afternoon and Monday evening.
Just fifteen blocks west of me a creek ran over. Some houses were flooded there, and on Monday afternoon the bodies of an elderly couple who went missing on Sunday were retrieved. I drove past the creek late Monday morning and there was a truck in it; the waters were so strong even in that little stream that it tore up parking lots and moved cars and trucks.
The long and short of it is that we're having what the Army Corps of Engineers has called a "once in a thousand years event." Between last Friday night and Sunday night over a foot (30.5) of rain fell in Nashville, with up to fifteen inches (38 cm) in some areas. It broke the one day and two day rainfall records for the area, and though it is only May 3 it has already been the rainiest May on record. It is also about a quarter of the average yearly rainfall for this area.
As a result, every river, pond, lake, stream, and creek in the area burst its banks, and there has been wide-spread flooding. The interstate highways around Nashville started flooding late Saturday afternoon and yesterday the TN Department of Transportation's website indicated that every highway in the Nashville metro area was flooded. The most dramatic instance of this can be seen in video and photographs of route 24 south of the city, where the waters were up over the jersey barriers, cars and trucks were submerged, and a portable classroom trailer floated down the highway and smashed to pieces against a semi truck. A great many local roads were also flooded, making it virtually impossible to leave some areas by car or foot.
Most of the damage was done Sunday while the rain was still falling and smaller waterways were over their banks. The Bellvue area of Nashville was particularly hard-hit, as were out-lying towns of Franklin and Lebanon. Lebanon's town square is underwater and the commuter rail is torn up. My landlords apparently "swam" out of their house in Bellvue yesterday. There have been over a thousand water rescues in the last two days, including people from the roofs of homes and businesses, and police officers whose squad cars had floated away.
Some areas have been evacuated, including a complete evacuation of the area of downtown by the river. Even as I write this on Monday night, more areas are evacuating. A few towns, such as Clarkesville, have instituted overnight curfews. All the school are closed, and finals were postponed and some classes canceled at the colleges in the area. The MTA buses are "suspended indefinitely." Many home and business owners do not have flood insurance because they never thought they'd need it.
The biggest of these rivers is the Cumberland, which flows past the center of the city. The football stadium that the Tennessee Titans play in sits right on the east bank, and the financial and government hub sits on the west bank, with First Avenue close up against the river. Right now (8:30 pm Monday) the river is 51.63 feet (15.74 m) deep. It seems to have crested around 6 PM at 51.86 feet (15.81 m).
Even after the rain stopped, the water in the river has kept rising, as the tributaries and everything else empties into it. The Cumberland's flood stage is 40 feet (12.19 m), and that was reached some time around 10 AM Sunday morning. Before the rain started, the river had been sitting around 19 or 20 feet (about 6 m).
51.86 feet is the tenth highest the Cumberland River has ever been measured at. The highest in the last 200 years or so (since they've been measuring it) was on January 1, 1929 at 56.2 feet (17.13 m). In the 1950s and '60s flood control infrastructure was built to help control the level of the Cumberland. Without that, we'd be well above the 1929 levels by now and the situation would be absolutely catastrophic.
Yesterday the power went down in some areas, so that thousands of residents are without electricity and some radio stations (including the NPR affiliate) aren't broadcasting. Power will be slow coming back because many of the Nashville Electric Service trucks were flooded. There have been water main breaks here and there, so that some communities have been told to boil their water (joining the club with Boston, MA). A state of emergency was declared yesterday and the National Guard came in to help, and today FEMA has gotten in on the action. Fifty-two of the ninety-five counties in the state have been declared disaster areas.
Here, in by the middle of the city, the water is still good, but we're running low. One of the two water treatment plants shut down yesterday after it flooded, so we are at half capacity, and we were ordered to start conserving water Monday morning – drinking and food prep only. On Monday afternoon, the other plant was in danger of flooding, so volunteers were called in to sandbag it and at 9 PM they are still working.
Despite efforts at conservation, as of 5:30 Monday evening Metro Water Director Scott Potter has said we aren't doing very well, and that we are very much in danger of the city's water supply being contaminated. As I understand it, once the pressure within the pipes drops below a certain level (due to us having used it up and one plant being off), groundwater my seep in and dirty it up. There would be hundreds of thousands of people without water or without clean water. Hopefully this will turn around soon, as I think it's the thing most threatening to general well-being at the moment.
As of Monday, most areas were starting to clean up as water subsided. The exception is the banks of the Cumberland. With waters continuing to rise there, more and more things have been submerged. On the east bank, LP Field, where the Titans play, is flooded. On the west bank, things are quite dire. First and Second Avenues are underwater, nearly up to the top of the first story in places. Many famous or historic buildings are flooded, including the Grand Ole Opry, the Opryland Hotel, the Schermerhorn Symphony Center where the Nashville Symphony Orchestra plays (their $2.5 million organ is ruined), the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Bridgestone Arena where the Predators hockey team plays. Of the landmarks I can think of, the Ryman Auditorium is still dry.
Things aren't all bad, though. We've gotten a lot of lolz out of it, most notable the weather penis (which has it's own Facebook page!) that Liss posted about. There's a song. There was also the GIANT CARP that someone caught ON A ROAD. And Naomi Judd's buffalo, which got loose in Leipers Fork. Or the Tennessee State University president paddling a canoe out to rescue a faculty member from atop a haystack. You heard me right – college president, canoe, faculty member, haystack.
And then there's the Twitter hashtag: #othersituation2010. Ok, so, back in February, there was a snow storm on the way, and all the news and weather people kept talking about the situation. They said it so many times that it became a proper noun, The Situation. Washington, D.C. had Snowpocalypse, Nashville had The Situation. When this great big storm was being forecast last week, it harkened back to February's storm and quickly became The Other Situation. Some folks are a little disgruntled, because future researchers looking for information about the May Day Flood, or whatever it ends up being called on places that aren't Twitter, won't be able to find it because OtherSituation2010 is not a very good descriptive title. As a librarian/archivist, I definitely see their point, but I also think they need to chill out.
So, if you're looking for information about what's going on down here, try Twitter. Other tags include #NashvilleFlood, #flood2010, #splashville, #tennflood, #theothersituation2010, and #nashlantis. Twitter has really been key during the last few days. Other information sources include the Nashvillest blog and the various newspaper and TV news stations, such as The Tennessean and WSMV/Channel 4. You can also keep tabs on the height of the Cumberland River.
I was out Monday bringing supplies to the shelter set up at the Gordon Jewish Community Center and to a group at Trevecca Nazarine University that is bringing relief to the low-lying Chestnut Hill neighborhood around their campus. Most of the official shelters are good on supplies, but the kids at Trevecca are still taking stuff for their neighbors – in particular, "socks, underwear, dry food, and water" according to a Monday night tweet. For those both in and out of Nashville, here is a roundup of ways to help.
The Situation in Nashville
Sad But Not Surprising
Bullies Target Obese Kids.
Yep, that's pretty how much I remember things, too. Not much has changed, huh?
Question of the Day
We've done this one before, but it's always fun: Who's the most overrated actor of all time?
He might not be my #1 answer if I thought about it long and hard, but, off the top of my head, I gotta go with Al Pacino.
Hoo-ah! this.
BADD: One Year Out of the Closet
I've been trying all day to figure out what, exactly, I wanted to say one year on from publicly identifying as disabled. And the truth is, there isn't much to say. My disability is still in approximately the same place as it was last year, with a few additional coping strategies that I'm guessing wouldn't be of any particular interest to anyone.
What there is to say is this: Identifying myself as disabled, instead of my old stand-by "fucked up," has brought me a sort of peace with my post-traumatic stress disorder that I didn't have a year ago. I am more reconciled to the idea of existing with it, rather than suffering from it.
Which, in what is decidedly not a coincidence, makes me feel less like I'm suffering and more like I'm surviving.
I've worked through a lot of internalized disblism (mostly directed at my own disability and how it relates to my sense of self; I hold myself to standards I would never hold another disabled person) over the past year, in tandem with dealing with the secondary trauma of silence, which I have imposed on myself as much as others imposed on me.
My voice remains, as ever and more so every day, my most important tool.
And so I will say again, in a clear voice: I have post-traumatic stress disorder. It is a chronic mental illness. I am disabled.
Seven-Day Forecast
Paraphrase provided by Gabe: "Local weather forecaster tracks weather system's movement in relation to potential storms in area with common broadcasters' light pen technique used most often in weather reporting and sports reporting, but in this particular evening's broadcast the weather forecaster inadvertently draws shapes that when viewed together appear to be male genitalia."
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
[Background.]
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
In Which I Share Some (Re)Sources
I'm prepping for my Construction of Femininity class and one of the things I want to explore is, what happens to women who don't meet the definition of feminine? How do they negotiate femininity, masculinity, the pressure to be either/or and external and internal pressures? What social sanctions are imposed upon them? Tomboy from Barb Taylor on Vimeo.
As one source for these kinds of reflections and life experiences, I wanted to read what butch/stud/aggressive lesbians had to say about their experiences as children and adolescents. I wanted information shared by these women, not written about them. I didn't find a lot with my own (probably clueless) searches or in academic databases. So, I wrote the organizers of the Butch Voices regional conferences and pleaded for help. They responded quickly and wonderfully. I have a few books to begin with--a number of them seem to be fiction, but historians can use that (and my class is a multi-disciplinary topics course)!
I also was given a link to a website about the Kicked Out Anthology. A description: In the U.S., 40% of homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ). Kicked Out published by Homofactus Press brings together the voices of current and former homeless LGBTQ youth and tells these forgotten stories of some of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Diverse contributors share stories of survival and abuse with poignant accounts of the sanctuary of community and the power of creating chosen families.
And I really want to share the video below, called "Tomboy" with y'all. It's geared towards kids, based on the book Are You a Boy or a Girl? by Karleen Pendleton Jimenez, but I will use it in my college classroom to prompt my students to talk about what they saw/experienced as youth and how they see the same lessons being perpetuated today.
Because it is for kids, it has some simple, generalized language and characters we'd probably question: "boy things" and "girl things," for example, and the girl who is "traditionally feminine" is a villain of sorts, a complete tool of the patriarchy. That in particular reminded me of the questions Gwen at Sociological Images asked here:How do you reject the trappings of that socially-approved version of femininity without devaluing femininity, girls, and women themselves?
That being said, here is the video:
(snip)
My students who are trying to distance themselves from ideas of passive femininity often disparage “girly-girls,” those they see as unambiguously accepting pink culture. Thus, wearing a sparkly barrette or painting your nails pink becomes inherently problematic, a sign that you must be boy-obsessed, dumb, superficial, and so on.
And if you have more suggestions for resources, please drop them in comments. I am looking now for non-fiction adn film. The discovery of this video led me to another book by Pendleton Jimenez, "Unleashing the Unpopular": Talking About Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity in Education. I am about to beg the history department (I'm exaggerating--no begging required) to get me an exam copy as it looks as if it could be really useful to me as a professor.
Yet More Today In Fat Hatred!
Why do I have the feeling that this article isn't going to have the effect the generals wanted?
Hmm...let's see, I can put myself into a malnutritive space regularly, to stay within the ridiculous restrictions of the BMI, and my reward for this will be "being eligible to go colonise another country against its will, and maybe being shot at or blown up in the bargain".
Or I can live a comfortable life, exercising, playing soccer at least once a week, refereeing another couple of times, and be ineligible for all that fun.
Hmm, choices, choices.
Tip of the CaitieCap to MzR.
"Take My Wife—Please! But Hands Off My Daughters!"
While I was admittedly thrilled to hear that Jay Leno bombed so badly at the White House Correspondents' Dinner that President Obama (whose set was reportedly padded by Daily Show writers) got more laughs than he did, I was less thrilled to read some of the jokes with which Obama regaled the audience, in particular this one:
The Jonas Brothers are here ... Sasha and Malia are huge fans. But, boys, don't get any ideas. I have two words for you—predator drones. You will never see it coming. You think I'm joking.Har har har. Hands off the presidential daughters, or you'll BE KILLED! Har har har.
While I'm never a fan of violence as a punchline under any circumstances, I'm frankly more annoyed that the President of the United States, in the year 2010, is still making "jokes" about how his daughters' virginity is something he must ferociously guard, that their unsullied cunts are a precious commodity owned by one man who must endeavor to protect them from the men who seek to plunder his valuables.
This is not the message I would like to see my president communicating about women and girls, especially not a president who ostensibly understands the urgent need for gender equality.
Especially not a president who has so many little girls looking up to him. They need to hear better from their president; they deserve better from their president than this.
Great News, Everyone!
Congressman Gene Taylor (D-Ipshit), who is a genius, said this weekend that people shouldn't be so worried about the enormous oil spill in the Gulf because he flew over it and "it's not as bad as I thought."
Taylor told a group of reporters waiting at Atlantic Aviation he was less concerned about the spill after witnessing its movement firsthand.That sounds not only like no big deal, but also DELICIOUS!
"This isn't Katrina. It's not Armageddon," Taylor said. "A lot of people are scared and I don't think they should be."
He described the spill as a light, rainbow sheen with patches that look like chocolate milk.
"It's breaking up naturally; that's a good thing. The fact that it's a long way from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, that's a great thing, because it gives it time to break up naturally," he said.Oh, good. Someone tell BP they needn't worry about paying for the clean-up (and buying off coastal residents). It's going to break up naturally.
Monday Blogaround: BADD Edition
Saturday was Blogging Against Disablism Day, and the blogswarm is still ongoing. Since BADD fell on a weekend, I thought I'd bring more attention to it with a BADD-themed blogaround today. The links you leave in comments here need not be about disability or disablism. However, it is not too late to contribute to the BADD blogswarm if you have the time, energy, and interest.
This blogaround is brought to you by my rheumatologist, my mother's orthopedic surgeons, and my father's neurologist, without all of whom I would surely not be online right now to type this.
Here is just a selection of the great posts over at Diary of a Goldfish:
Tasha Fierce: Full Disclosure
Pendulum Tech: Accessibility and Ubuntu
Kaz's Scribblings: The self-pity model
Black Telephone: Morning of A Successful Communicator
A Crippled Carnival: "My Own Disablism" Or "The Self-Hating Crip"
Cara: Addressing Ableist Language (at Feministe); Ableism and Abuse (at The Curvature)
Almost Normal: Hands off my Codeine
Feminists With Female Sexual Dysfunction: BADD 2k10 – sexual dysfunction as disability
the f word: Blogging Against Disablism Day: on being a disabled blogger
this ain’t livin’: Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010:Do You Need Assistance?
The View From Room 7609: Not visible doesn't mean not there.
Do check out the whole blogswarm if you can, and leave your links in comments.
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning re: Polanski and sexual assault.]
"I have had my share of dramas and joys, as we all have, and I am not going to try to ask you to pity my lot in life. I ask only to be treated fairly like anyone else."—Roman Polanski, in a statement he released yesterday, in which he repeatedly exclaims "I can remain silent no longer!"
You hear that, everyone? Mr. Polanski wants to be treated fairly, just like anyone else—so let's build a time machine and go back 30 years and, instead of letting him spend three decades as a fugitive getting rich from making highly-acclaimed movies with an endless stream of willing movie stars and attending celebrity parties and getting fancy awards and complaining about having to await possible extradition in a Swiss fucking chateau, we'll THROW HIS ASS IN THE CLINK like anyone else who admitted drugging and raping a 13-year-old child would have been.
Fucking asshole.
Assvertising
Shaker FilthyGrandeur sent me the link to the below advert for Miller Lite. It's quite an amazing feat of bigotry. In 30 seconds, they managed to pack in nearly as much sexism, transphobia, and racism ("We don't have to cast any people of color in speaking roles as long as there's a black guy in the background, right?") as the average 22-minute network sitcom.
[Transcript below.]
Contact MillerCoors, who assert to value diversity, here to politely let them know what you think of their advertising content.[White dudebro walks up to bar, at which a beautiful, thin, young white woman bathed in light is bartending.][Assvertising: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105.]
Dudebro: Can I get a light beer?
Bartender: Sure. Do you care how it tastes?
Dudebro: No, I don't really care. [He smiles, and makes a "How you doin'?" face at the woman sitting next to him at the bar.]
Bartender: Okay. [She opens a generic bottle of beer and hands it to him.] Well, when you start caring, take off your skirt and I'll give you a Miller Lite.
[Dudebro looks embarrassed; he looks at the woman sitting next to him, who looks disgusted. As he walks away, it is revealed he is wearing an orange skirt.]
Male Voiceover: Man up. 'Cause if you're drinking a light beer without great pilsner taste, you're missing the point of drinking beer. [Dudebro looks back; the women are paying no attention to him; he turns back around, dejected.] Grab a triple hops brew Miller Lite. Taste greatness.
[Dudebro walks up to a table of two other white dudebros. He is now wearing jeans and drinking a Miller Lite.]
Dudebro: Check it out. I lost the skirt and got a Miller Lite. [He holds his hands up, like, "Ta-daaaa!"]
Woman walking by: Your fly's open.
Good Morning, Fellow Mastodons!
In an article titled "Our Big Problem," and accompanied by an image of an anthropomorphized stack of doughnuts, the Wall Street Journal's resident pseudonymous British doctor ("Theodore Dalrymple is the pen name of Anthony Daniels, a British physician. His latest book is "The New Vichy Syndrome.") explains how fatties are antisocial, irresponsible drains on society (who are also threatening the very planet by eating fast food off polystyrene dishes) and can only be helped via "prohibition," because encouraging fatties to exercise would be "extremely irresponsible," since "If the obese were suddenly to start exercising, emergency rooms would not be able to cope. For the sake of our health, let us have no sports."
So: No sport, and government-regulated diets. Got it.
Oh, and, I'm pretty sure the good doctor prescribes shame, too. Lots and lots of shame:
Never have so many human mastodons bestridden the earth as now. At one time, not so very long ago, such mastodons were rare enough to be curiosities, charitably thought by others to be the victims of their "glands." We had such a fat boy at school: His cheeks were so adipose that his eyes had become mere slits. We thought that he was ill rather than a member of a cultural avant garde.Wow.
And once again I'd like to note how the Us v. Them anti-fat rhetoric in a major news outlet is framed with violent, eliminationist rhetoric. The subtitle of the piece is: "Obesity is spreading—and eating away at America's economy and health. Theodore Dalrymple on how society can bite back." Literally: Fatties are threatening America's way of life; society (of which fatties exist outside) must "bite back" before they take everyone else down with them.
It's really frightening how frequently I'm now seeing articles that position fat people outside of society, as an external threat. Separating a group to scapegoat them as a responsible party for the nation's "economy and health" failures is how Very Ugly Things can happen.
[H/T to Shaker Abra.]
Doctor Who Open Thread
Open Thread for discussion of the latest (as per worldwide schedules: Season 5, Episode 3, "Victory of the Daleks") episode of Doctor Who.
Please do not give spoilers from episodes after Episode 3, Season 5. Spoiling comments will be edited by the moderator, who will also be annoyed, because she hasn't seen Episode 4 or later yet.
Discussion of episodes from earlier in the season, from previous seasons, or from other media, are explicitly on-topic. Discussion may contain spoilers for these older media.
Hosted by an Ikea catalogue page I made up.
Open Thread
Hosted by a double harpischord.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by musical instruments.
Massive Medicine Recall
McNeil Consumer Healthcare has recalled ALL non-expired lots of:
Children's & Infants' TYLENOL, Children's ZYRTEC, Children's & Infants' MOTRIN, and Children's BENEDRYL (all liquid medications)
McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Division of McNEIL-PPC, Inc., in consultation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is voluntarily recalling all lots that have not yet expired of certain over-the-counter (OTC) Children’s and Infants’ liquid products manufactured in the United States and distributed in the United States, Canada, Dominican Republic, Dubai (UAE), Fiji, Guam, Guatemala, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Panama, Trinidad & Tobago, and Kuwait.
McNeil Consumer Healthcare is initiating this voluntary recall because some of these products may not meet required quality standards. This recall is not being undertaken on the basis of adverse medical events. However, as a precautionary measure, parents and caregivers should not administer these products to their children. Some of the products included in the recall may contain a higher concentration of active ingredient than is specified; others may contain inactive ingredients that may not meet internal testing requirements; and others may contain tiny particles. While the potential for serious medical events is remote, the company advises consumers who have purchased these recalled products to discontinue use.
