Two Words, One Answer.
antediluvian
 Flash Floods: Deadly Downpour DVD $9.99 Localized and often ignored, they are the deadliest natural disasters in America. Flash floods are often overlooked or dismissed as nuisances--flooded roads mean long commutes and tiresome cleanups. But these sudden rises in the water level of brooks, streams and rivers are extremely deadly---killing more people in an average year than any other type of natural disaster. THE WRATH OF GOD talks with scientists and engineers to understand the forces that combine to create these deadly swells, and find out what can be done to contain them. Then, through interviews with survivors and extraordinary footage, FLASH FLOODS relives two of the worst such events in American history. In June of 1903, a flash flood claimed nearly a quarter of the population of Heppner, Oregon in less than an hour. 73 years later, 140 people died in Big Thompson Canyon, Colorado, when the swollen waters of a river swept through. They are stealthy killers which often arrive with little warning, delivering destruction and deadly fury.  Antediluvian Tales $25.00 The stories in the book are short and the entire set can easily be digested on a lazy Saturday sipping sweet spearmint tea in ones backyard hammock(which is precisely what I did). The stories are snapshots into the lives of the Stubbs family and to a lesser extent into the author's alter ego Dr. Brite a character as transgendered and special as any Second Life avatar. Each one is also a snapshot into the life of the city from the 60's and 70's until right before Katrina. The best to me is "Four Flies and a Swatter". I vividly remember staying up all night in the French Quarter following an Ole Miss/LSU or Ole Miss/Tulane football game trying to make our way back to the hotel without being ravaged as bartenders hosed downed the sidewalks in front of their establishments. The story takes place in a bourbon street bar early one morning and reads like the telling of an Urban Legend. Its very enjoyable and ends like an M. Night Shalayman movie. The stories about the Stubbs-Bonnanos remind me of my own family down in New Orleans. My Big Daddy's big Italian Catholic family on my Mother's side (he was her step dad) and my Dad's own Irish/French family. The New Orleans of the 70's in these stories is the New Orleans I most vividly remember from visits to my Grandmere's shotgun duplex on Frenchman's Street and to my Aunts' homes in Kenner and River Ridge. Brite accurately describes how the neighborhoods deteriorated over the years. Some of the stories have a supernatural content just like the city itself. I used to get a chill as a child going into certain areas of the city. I don't know if there were really spirits lurking about or if it was leftovers from the stories of Marie Laveau my sisters, my cousins, and I would tell in the dark at sleepovers. Brite's epilogue on her last visit overseas before the storm is very touching. Her visit to Australia seems so humdrum until you realize how much suffering she and her family will soon endure. You completely understand her reluctance to be so far away again. It's very touching for me as my friend Rondo lives down in the Garden District and survived Katrina and her fiance EC who I adopted as my sister is from Gold Coast Australia. Rondo is about 15 years younger than me and it seemed like everytime I mentioned a thing or a place I liked, she'd say they don't make that anymore (Dixie Beer) or they went out of Business (Antoine's). I've come to realize my New Orleans is that of Tennessee Williams, John Kennedy Toole, and William Faulkner; Rondo's is that of John Grisham, Anne Rice, and Poppy Z. Brite. Mine is gone forever. |
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