Alkahest my heroes have always died at the end

Oh, on an entirely unrelated note, the U.S. Constitution was signed 221 years ago today – happy birthday!  Okay, it wasn’t ratified for a couple of years after that, but still…

If you’ve got some time, take a read.  It’s still the most impressive government document I’ve ever read.

A few years ago, I wanted to start a project that took the individual clauses of the constitution and traced the arguments for and against them back to the original sources or at least to the debates between the signing and ratification.  The Federalist Papers , Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison and many of the documents collected in the two volume Library of America’s Debate on the Consitution would have featured prominantly.  Never did have the time to kick that off.

So, one more update on Gustav in Baton Rouge and then I’ll return you to your regularly scheduled odd musings, rants and wildlife pictures.

First, the good news – I got a text message from my mother last week.  They got power back!  Only 10 days without power.  I suppose that’s not too bad.  No word from K’s parents, but they had moved into K’s sister’s condo that did have power, so I’m guessing they’re still there.

The bad news is that my parent’s 100+ year old pecan tree that was struck by lightening a few years ago (and dying) just couldn’t take the hurricane.  Too much concern that the root structure was loose and that it was going to fall on a house and completely crush it.  So, they had to have it taken down.  Three nice sized pecan trees in my parent’s yard – all gone, along with most of the limbs on an old magnolia and their Japanese magnolia.  🙁

The ironic news is that even though I knew they had power, I couldn’t get in touch with them on Monday to wish my father a happy birthday.  So last night, I called my mom’s cell which was answered by my dad.  Odd, but okay.  I wished him a happy birthday and told him that I was sorry that I couldn’t reach him the day before.  It turns out that I couldn’t reach him because their power was out again.  Apparently the tree service accidentally dropped a limb on the power lines and took out power for them and the 3 or 4 nearest houses.

Somehow I’m imagining that a self-inflicted power outage is not going to be too high on the power company’s list of priorities.  Fortunately, they are down to a manageable number of outages in Baton Rouge, so even with the majority of the power assistance now going to Houston/Galveston for Ike, my parents might still get power back soon.