Fish Hook

TR met me for lunch at the pub. Then back to the museum, he was staff today, and I sorted my emails and pulled out 29 pages that I needed in hard copy. TR copied them to his computer and told me he'd have them for me when I next came to town, Tuesday or Wednesday. These are the post museum pages, and I want to read them closely because I think a couple of them are pretty good, and I might want them at Chautuaqua. The phone is still out, and I had, actually, hopes it would be restored when I got home. Now, they won't get to it until Monday or Tuesday. The crew down at the dam were all gone, the holy weekend and all, so I parked and walked over. The cores they've drilled out are beautiful, the only things I ever covet are always very heavy. They've brought in many tons of stone, medium sized pieces of limestone, maybe a cubic foot each (SG 2.61, 163 pounds), and I can only imagine that they're going to use it as rip-rap, below the curb, which breaks the flow of water over the spillway; and now, through these nine (not seven) holes, they intend to control the flow of water. I wish them well. My only attempts at controlling the flow of water failed miserably. Simply said, you can't do it. Water does what it wants to do. Drainage is a simple algorithm. It's strange, standing in the bed of a drained lake. Apocalyptic. They must have just released the fish, down Turkey creek into the Ohio. They've have to completely restock. There are a great many things on the bottom of a lake, and it's interesting to poke around. Quite a few sneakers, and in the middle, a very large tire, which may have been placed there, almost surely was, as a spawning bed. There are a lot of tires, a few stumps, car bumpers, a couple of refrigerators (I don't look inside them), and a uniform spread of silt. It's instructive to stand in a drained, man-made lake with a dam, and think about erosion. There it is in front of you. In the course of time, this silt will be deposited as a fan, in the Gulf Of Mexico. It might again see the light of day, but that might be 500,000 years in the future. In the mean time, what am I supposed to do? I could write some ugly notes, because there are people I don't like. Newt, for instance, and was there ever a better name? But I'd rather watch the greening. The poplar buds are opening, and those first red maple leaves that are yellow-green. In my fall line, you see a lot of that color.