Day 220: Madison Gets It!; Red River Valley Floods Again

While Pandora and Loki are reviled as mischief makers for sticking their noses where they didn’t belong, opening doors to reveal discrepancies and bringing light and knowledge to mere mortals, I find them the muses of enlightened societies. Someone has got to reveal and deal with the problem sooner or later and with a well-equipped toolkit.

Madisonians, whether conservative or liberal, religious or not, openly voice their opinions and champion justice and other causes everyday. From letters to the editor to all-out protests, these people will not leave good enough alone. Because it’s not good enough. They epitomize John Schaar’s words, “The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.”

This morning, I learned that Many Wisconsin Voters Demand Troop Pullout.

With public support for the Iraq war ebbing and President George W. Bush’s popularity skidding, voters across Wisconsin approved measures calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

“Out now” measures passed 68 percent to 31 percent in liberal-leaning Madison and 55 percent to 45 percent in La Crosse. With populations of 219,000 and 51,000 respectively, they were the two largest cities voting on the question Tuesday … but the 22,000 residents of Watertown, located between Madison and Milwaukee, rejected a similar measure 75 percent to 25 percent.

Whether for Out Now or for Vote No to Cut and Run, Wisconsin spoke out. And while they crusaded for or against their nation’s involvement in a foreign war, they took the time to volunteer in New Orleans and write their local paper about what they saw in our city. Mark of Wet Bank Guide just emailed me, “Thought you might find that a chain of We Are Not Ok sort of letters are apparently making it into the Madison paper.” On returning home from a volunteer effort in the Pontilly neighborhood, Sarah White wrote The Capital Times:

[Joanne Hilton] is right that the world-class city is ready for visitors not just for the pleasures New Orleans has always offered, but for the opportunity to see the nobility of regular people rebuilding their lives and city … I saw very little evidence of outside help. The Bush administration is criminally negligent in its handling of the post-Katrina recovery.

Every little thing any one of us can do, be it visiting and spending tourist dollars, bringing professional expertise to facilitate recovery, or simply calling on our congressmen to push for financial aid for the thousands of families and businesses affected by this disaster. I urge your readers to do it … Please act now to help our neighbors way down the river.

Our neighbors way down the river. This is the spirit of compassion and patriotism. Go Madison!

What Ms. White expressed is exactly what I meant in yesterday’s post. The activist potential of a great nation is needed by its own. Mardi Gras was a much-needed but brief respite during our recovery, and not an end to this city’s tough break. But, we are by no means done. There are miles and miles (of levees) to go before we sleep.

At this time, I want New Orleanians to extend our positive thoughts and whatever help we can muster to our neighbors way up the river. At this time when the Red River Valley has flooded again, the residents of Fargo, North Dakota need America’s full support, too.

The Edmonton Sun reports that “the river was already at 11 metres [~36 feet] in Fargo early yesterday, well above the six-metre [~20 feet] flood stage. It was expected to crest last night around 11.5 metres [~38 feet], just a half-metre shy of the 1997 flood, the city’s worst in a century.”

Courtesy Weather Underground

Update: Mark reports from near the scene, “It’s actually not that bad this year. They’re a couple of feet under the flood protection system and, most importantly, there’s no overland flooding … Some of the rivers south of us (remember the Red River of the North drains to Hudson Bay) will sometime overflow their banks, and the water move cross country looking for alternate routes. This is what really troubled Fargo in 1997.”