Dorothy, From watching how the jetstream, I think it has persistently come close enough to your end of Oklahoma that you get the gray, gloomy clouds on the edge of the cold fronts that are dropping snow and ice north of you. Way down here in southern OK we've had more sun than last year, but in the last week or so, the sun has become increasingly rare. Keith, You're welcome. I'm getting pretty concerned about y'all up there in central OK. This is the driest I remember seeing your part of the state in winter in several years. I understand exactly what you did and why. I'd probably do exactly the same thing if I was a dry as you are. When my soil gets so dry in drought periods that rainfall or sprinkler irrigation rolls downhill on the surface of the ground and isn't even absorbed, I know I've waited too late to start watering. I think it is always better, even (maybe especially) in winter to water the dry ground. If it gets too, too dry and planting time is approaching, it can be hard to keep the soil moist enough for seeds to sprout. The big mistake I made in one dry spring (may have been 2003 or 2005) is that I planted and watered sparingly waiting for rain to fall to give the seeds and plants more water. Well, rain never fell and by the time I realized that I should have been watering more heavily to get them off to a good start, the were pretty stunted and pathetic. It was a hard lesson to learn, but it made me a better gardener in succeeding dry years. Don't even mention those photos of those big old black clouds. They are fascinating but in a horrifying and very scarey type of way. I hope and pray we've learned enough about conservation and no-till commercial farming that we never put ourselves in that predicament again. Can you imagine the mass hysteria, especially on the part of the media with its 24-hour-news-cycle nowadays if we had something like that occurring? If you haven't read the book about the Dust Bowl days that I've linked below, I highly recommend it. I reread it once every 2 or 3 years to remind myself of how bad it was and what all those folks went through. We throw the word "diaster" and "catastophe" around pretty loosely nowadays, but those people who endured the Dust Bowl years really lived through a catastrophe and it lasted for years. Some of the old-timers here have told me stories about what it was like here in our county, and it wasn't pretty. One of them lived on land adjacent to ours and she tried to explain what it was like to have the big clouds of dust ruin the laundry you'd just washed, or blow through the cracks in walls, etc. into the house and cover everything with a fine layer of dust. She was a very small child then so I'm not sure how much she remembers directly and how much she remembers from hearing her folks talk about it later on their lives. I just can't imagine what it was like to endure 8 long years of catastrophe. My dad did tell me about the pure agony of watching crops fail over and over, which was a disaster for folks who essentially raised all their own food. So, if couldn't grow a crop, you couldn't eat. One thing that sticks in my memory from photos of those days is just how painfully thin everybody was. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: The Worst Hard Time

Hello again friends. I continue to be amazed by your kindness and concern. Paulines and Elizabeth10029 - if you are back in here reading, yes by all means please feel free to save these posts. ALL OF YOU have my permission (and gratitude) to keep or share what I have written. I am humbled by the thought that my words have meant so much. There are so many more stories here that need to be told. The political firestorms have been whipped up to a frenzy over the past few weeks. I am sure many of you have heard on the national news the statements our mayor, Ray Nagin, made this week during his MLK celebratory speech about making the city of New Orleans "chocolate". Well, of course, the whole city is now in an uproar. I really think he is suffering from "Katrina fatigue". This mayor was very, very well liked by the most of the city - all different races. Now, he has become a symbol of division. And this comes at a time, when we must really pull together and present a rational, unified front. I am embarrassed and concerned about the damage he has done - the whole world is watching us. And I think the image he put forth is so misleading. While to the outside world it appears that there is a huge racial divide - in reality, New Orleans incorporates her diversity far better than many other cities. One of my dearest friends of 30+ years is african american - and she has spent the past few months living in my home. Our families vacation together every year. My other best friends are indonesian, hispanic, and greek - I am the "token wasp!" I have wonderful friends from as far away as Syria and VietNam. And I am not uncommon. Most New Orleanians work with, laugh and play with, cry and mourn with the many diverse people here. The problem arises when poverty and crime are added to the equation. I have no answers, only more questions. As do the other good people (of all races) who live here. We shake our heads in dismay and write letters to the editor! We are in dire need of effective leadership - and it is sadly lacking. The initial rebuilding plans for the city were just released and are being evaluated now. There is just no way possible to make everyone happy. We have to choose safety over everything else. Some people are simply not going to be allowed to rebuild their neighborhoods. It is so sad, tragic. But it would be insane to allow these people to live in harms way - even if they really WANT to! Desperate times make for desperate decisions, and some people just cannot believe or trust that the engineers and experts are telling the truth about where to rebuild or not. The next few months are going to be critical ones - will the city of New Orleans succeed in creating a plan for rebuilding better and stronger and wiser than before? Or will history repeat itself? Can we get congress to give us Netherlands-quality category 5 hurricane levees? Are we valued? President Bush visited last week and commented that "this is looking like the New ORleans I remember". Well, that was voted as the most ridiculous statement of last week. He saw the French Quarter (which did not flood at all) and the Garden District (which did not flood at all). It's just unbelievable. Only 30% of New Orleans has lights. That's right. It is pitch black at night. And cold. No heat, no lights, no phones. My friend's neighborhood - about half a mile from me - still has no working phone lines. Not one single person I know, who lived in the areas of New Orleans that flooded, has been able to move back into their house. People in Jefferson Parish (suburb of New Orleans, where I live) are able to rebuild now and some have been able to move back. It is absolutely still a disaster zone. And it will remain so until the city institutes a viable rebuilding plan - which appears to be months away yet. I am leaving tomorrow to visit DD back in Michigan for a week. It will be wonderful to get away from the daily bombardment of Katrina news. Of course, she calls almost daily (and usually right after the 6pm news) and at the top of her list is "Mom, why don't you sell your house and move up here?" Honestly, I do think about it. But, I have decided to give it one year here and if we cannot see a light at the end of the tunnel by then...well, I will have to make some very hard decisions. Meanwhile, I will play with precious grandson, enjoy the clean beautiful snow of Michigan, and my beautiful DD, and leave the troubles of New Orleans behind for a while.

Melissa, I totally agree that if we want to encourage community responses to the hardships that will result from climate change, we can't call it climate change. I am an optimist but I'm cynical enough to predict that when food prices rise or access to services is unavailable or too expensive, the blame will be attributed to business or other more short-term effects. I'm afraid that when food costs rise, the ones that will feel the brunt of the pain will be the farmers and the distributors and other processors in the middle will still get their cuts. I don't think we appreciate farmers and their workers enough since we don't usually directly see their contributions to the food on our table. Summers, I agree that we need to be very cautious about building on flood plains but for most of Nebraska there simply aren't flood plains. We're a pretty arid state, particularly when you get out to the rural west and north parts of the state that are the worst affected. There are only three substantial rivers in the whole state, and the Missouri only skirts the right side of the state without much contribution to this flooding. The Platte is more often dry than flooded even in an above average rainfall year, and the Niobrara hasn't flooded in the 30 years or so I've lived here. I grew up in Michigan and spent 10 years in Wisconsin where there's natural water nearly everywhere, and it has been a real culture shock to move to a place where natural water is almost nowhere. A vast majority of the lakes in the state (and there aren't many) are created lakes, and they're too small for boating except for one lake in the far west. What created this flooding was record amounts of snow this winter that lasted till early March, then a rapid warm up that had it melting within a week and there simply wasn't anywhere for that much water to go. Rae, that's a good question about which agencies are better at getting aid to the affected communities. Most of the local aid that I've heard of has come through churches and food banks that ferry the supplies up to the communities. A lot of the aid is also needed in labor to clean up affected communities, so that is also regional individuals driving up to help out. Our regional chain of HyVee grocery stores has been collecting money to send to communities, and I've been donating food and supplies and money through our church and the Lincoln Food Bank. Thanks for all your good wishes and prayers. Cynthia

The area where our cabin was is at 3,500 ft in the "Trinity Alps" , a very mountainous part of Northern CA. It snows there most winters, even at that lower elevation. The nearby mountain peaks are 7,000 high. It was an area which was part of the 1849 gold rush, and the area had a population in the second half of the 19th century which was MUCH larger than it is now. So, all over you can see garden plants like vinca, peas, etc. which have naturalized. Also a plant which looks related to carnations, and smells just like carnations, which I have been told was used as gentle washing stuff for delicate laundry. I have not heard of any sort of program to try and re-plant natives - it was a pine forest basically. Rifis - thanks for the info about the madrone trees - I will tell the debris removal folks not to mess with them. Right now the county and the state are spending a lot of effort trying to figure out how to save the one road (which runs along next to the creek for 10+ miles) from being undercut by the creek, as there was a massive landslide about a month after the fire when the first rain since April happened - a huge storm which put about 5-6 inches of rain on that area in 24 hours. That created an enormous landslide in one area. The landslide dumped tons and tons of rocks and huge trees right into the middle of the creek bed. So, the creek did what they do, and moved over about 30 feet, washed away all of the land which had been there, and created itself a new bed just a few feet away from the road. Never a dull moment... Jackie