Short pants. . .

. . . are people's response, often, to high water.  They are, in fact, referred to as high water pants.  We will be wearing high water pants if we venture toward downtown Cedar Rapids tonight, and I dare say these hybrid pants are currently appropriate in Iowa City.

Most of us are hill dwellers.  We are safe.  We visit but don't live close by.

Jeff went down last night and helped with the sandbagging.    There is a general sense that it will breach.  City is turning off the gas in Czech Village, and contiguous lower-lying neighborhoods.  The river is as high as the top of the levee, which is high as the roofs of the houses across the street from it.  If the dike goes, Jeff is concerned that his basement might fill. Woulda been nice if it'd done that before we sheet-rocked it.  He's probably in the worst shape, because of his neighborhood, so close to the river and Ellis Park.

I love rivers.  They don't care a damn about us, though.  They just roll on by, high or low, taking with them what they can, what will shake loose, always leaving us behind and always going by us and always right next to us.  The river's indifferent paradoxes fascinate.

Sometimes I live in the country

Sometimes I live in the town

Sometimes I get a great notion

To jump in the river and drown.

--Leadbelly