Memorial Day - Losing Money and Gaining Fabric

Memorial Day is not the day to thank a soldier.  It is the day we spend remembering those who gave their lives in the service of this great country.  We used to go to the cemetery in Pearlington, MS and clean up the graves for the summer.  We went again the week before Halloween to clean up the graves for the annual All Saint's Day Visit in November.

On that side of my family they were Danish shipbuilders.  Just down from Logtown and Kiln, both of which they owned, they had a shipyard and would sail into the Gulf of Mexico to bring lumber down to Cuba.  And sugar would be brought back to be assayed by my (Great) Aunt Annie, the chemist.

I remember sitting in her side of the double shotgun house in New Orleans and folding the filters she used.  They were similar to what we now use as coffee filters.  I have pleated many a filter paper in my day.  And although it was forced labor, it didn't seem like work.  Unlike my other German Grandmother who forced me to sew sequins and beads on fancy dresses for the rich ladies who came to be fitted.  Aunt Annie was fun, and she had all those cats. 

It was the generation between me and them who saw their battle weary brothers brought home in flag draped caskets.  And Frank's brother Gene, who did three tours in Viet Nam.  He saw those too.

Those are the ones we remember this Memorial Day.  For without men like them, we would be in a very different place today.

Whew.

Now for fabrics.

I won the collection of hand dyes from Vicki Welsh this month!  Oh, is that marvelously incredible!

And I received a bit of COW  (and we all know how I do love me some cow) fabric from Joe Tulips.   She had a tiny scrap left from her fabulous barn you saw two weeks ago, and pulled my name from the group.  I think I know how these babies will be used.

An I received my box from the Cotton Robin.  Christa in Virginia must have been really inspired and finished up early!  I cannot show you this one, I won't open the box until they start to come home over at Cotton Robin.

But it will be interesting.  I sent a similar block around with my Modern Robin group and I can't wait to see how the two compare. 

We went with some friends down to the USS Kidd on the Mississippi River levee to walk.  And gamble our retirement away.  The Kidd is the 651st destroyer build by the US.  It was launched on Feb 28 1943 and served in WWII in the Pacific Fleet at places like Wake Island and Gilbert Islands.  the same places my dad was on the aircraft carrier the USS Saratoga.

My dad would talk about the kamikaze bombers he had seen, like the one that hit the Kidd off Okinawa.  38 men were killed. 

One of the duties of a destroyer was to pick up downed pilots.  The crew of the Kidd earned the nickname "Pirate Ship of the Seas" because they would "ransom" the pilots back to their ships for Ice Cream mix and fresh vegetables.

Kidd in 2010

At the museum there are two planes used in the war, this one is a
Ranger.  The Kidd is held in place by a structure, now submerged, that allows it to float in a cradle of sorts when the river is higher.  When the river is low, the Kidd sits in the cradle out of the water.

In Louisiana we cannot have land based casinos, unless you are Harrah's and make a special deal with New Orleans politicians.  Or are Native American.  But in the rest of the state, we have Riverboat Casinos.  The idea was originally that they would be in port and board people for 90 minutes.  Then they would cruise up and down the river for a few hours and then be in port for another 90 minutes.

That quickly changed when the advocates for not cruising convinced the legislature that rogue barges would break loose and hit unsuspecting gamblers, killing all involved.  So now they are just floating casinos.  I am here to tell you that if the barges break loose, it is no safer being moored than cruising!

There are two Riverboats in Baton Rouge, The Belle and Hollywood. You can see Hollywood up the river a bit on the right.

I lost my $20-ish in the Belle.

The levee wall in this area is designed so you can walk down to the water, or sit on it and sun.  We do have fireworks displays on the river since fireworks are illegal here too.

We have a lot of rules!



Here is a nice piece of driftwood, a tree really, caught in the piles of the structure we are standing on. 

And we can see the Greater Mississippi River Bridge just beyond the Riverboat. 
Hope you have enjoyed my little history lesson about my town.

Maye we can all get together and do a coordinated set of blog posts about something in our towns.  Like our favorite quilt shop!

AMAZING! Mississippi River footage

This is a link to the news broadcast that I appeared on talking about the Amazing Mississippi River.  My amazing friend Caroline and I went to lunch and checked out the Amazing Mississippi River.  On top of the amazing levee, there were lots of people who had come to see the amazing water.  And there were amazing news reporters from just about every station down there interviewing the amazing people.  And of course, they chose to interview Caroline and I.  The interview was about 15 minutes and I had some really amazing facts and incredible information to dispense.  But you see what they chose to put on the news.  Later Caroline said that it was amazing that we were on TV because there were a lot of amazing looking "younger" women out there who may have been more camera worthy. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFI1A_Ere5M

It was a good thing we went when we did because as the newscast aired the levee board stated they were closing the levee to pedestrian and bike people.  Signs and police everywhere threatened.  But like my amazing husband says, there is always a way around the rules.  So we took our money in hand and went to the casino!

You can see how much higher the water has gotten even since last week.  This is from the Casino parking.

This morning we parked in the casino parking lot, crossed the levee on the floating walkway to the casino boat you saw in the last post and sat down at some slot machines.  After about 20 minutes, our respective $20 is usually gone, but this Friday the 13th was lucky for us.  I left with $25 and Frank closed his machine out at $36 ahead.  So they paid us to look at the river from their boat.

We drove down the River Road toward LSU.  Word yesterday was that even if Morganza is opened LSU would receive some flooding.  Not good since the Vet School is the first building off the levee and in the basement they keep their infectious diseases.  Bad news I would suppose.  That is why there are no other basements in Louisiana, too much water pressure on the walls.  Do you see the leak in the Tiger Dam?  Scary?  LOL.  They are putting out these huge orangeTiger Dams along the top of the levees.  Just in the Baton Rouge area.  They have a pump on a golf cart thing and they fill the Tiger Dams with river water, drill holes in the levee walkway, lash the Tiger Dam down and pack sandbags around it to keep it from rolling.

 Driving down the levee, you could see the sand boils.  These are places where the river water is undercutting the levee and coming up on the dry side.  The Levee Board is monitoring all of these places.  And they have asked people to report new ones as they see them. 

They have appropriated prisoners from Dept. of Correctional Institutions (see the DCI emblazoned on the shirts of some of them?) to fill the sandbags at designated stations.  I guess it gives them useful busy work but they are right out there with not much supervision.  I am thinking they probably know NOT to run to the levee with all the policemen up there waiting to arrest citizens who might wander up there.  Just saying.

We drove further down the levee and I was able to go on top of it at a Diving place.  Their road is underwater and they are boating out to their office.  You can see in one of these pictures that the River Road is much lower than the level of the water.  And keep in mind that the Mississippi river is actually out beyond the Inland Diving office.