In every life a little rain must fall . . . Right?

I grew up in Denver, which is in a desert, except they've learned how to tap a gigantic aquifer beneath the surface. People from back east scoff at the Platte River. Actually, we all scoff at the Platte, but I digress.

Since I left Denver the population has doubled? tripled? And that's too many people for the environment to contain. The difference between places like Denver and Los Angeles and places in the developing world is money. The water flows where the money goes. It was the same for Roman communities with aqueducts.

And now I hang my hat outside of Austin, one of the fastest growing regions in the country. And the spring hasn't been utterly dry, but after the nearly apocalyptic summer of 2011, the region is still saddled with a huge water deficit. But Austin is rich so don't look for babies to start suffering soon.

However, the link to these terrifying pictures from The Atlantic magazine of where I do live and of where I used to live are reminders that man is smaller than he thinks, that the earth is bigger than people think, and when the sky is full of fire, there's only so much that can be done. And money which maintains the normal flow of life on the mundane days only goes so far when the unthinkable happens.

Think wet thoughts.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/04/texas-wildfires/100050/

Tim O'Brien's true war story

At least once a year, I reread Tim O'Brien's How to Tell a True War Story. I read it when it was first published as a short story in Esquire magazine. I reread it every year because it is so beautiful and awful and, well, true.

I'm so tempted to copy the best paragraph for us here. It belongs to the ages every bit as much as Fitzgerald's rowing against the waves of time again and again or however it goes. But I don't want to spoil this beautiful prose for anyone, but I risk this much:

"It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do."

For a guy whose rivers and mountains have almost always been figurative, it makes me think I understand it. It makes me wonder, and inspect myself, and do the 'fearless moral inventory' and all and allows me to conclude whether, figurative or literal, I'm the sort of man who could 'march into the mountains and do things I'm afraid to do.'

I have my answer, but that's another ending I don't care to spoil.