******* Tuesday

In certain circles, there is a phenomenon known as "Suicide Tuesday." Suicide Tuesday has to do with Saturday night. You see, the joy of Saturday night can keep you going through Sunday and Monday...but when Tuesday hits, you realize that you are no longer "walking on slippery bowling balls" in one of the planet's most spectacular natural cathedrals. So you conveniently "forget" to write a blog post, hoping instead that your loyal readers will understand your irrational attachment to rocks and green things.

I still have things to say that I'm not saying, as our time potentially runs out, but the weather on this particular Suicide Tuesday helps me come closer than I have been able to in the recent past.

The time comes when the fodder is delivered from the Universe, and Selene and Yishay and Mr. Boldt post these photos on their facebook walls. (They ripped these photos off from local news sites.)

For sure the second photo is UNLV (pronounced "un-love").
I am grateful that I didn't have it anywhere near that bad. I don't understand this. I distinctly remember two resplendent days of constant rain that didn't leave the roads in this kind of shape. My theory is that the previous rain was inadequately absorbed into the desert pavement and the drainage systems suffered an unfortunate overload.

Bless James Wesley Rawles for putting an index in the back of his nonfiction book. Curse James Wesley Rawles for not including an entry on "floods" or "flooding" in said index. Curse the author of The Zombie Combat Manual for not including an index OR any info on flooding. Curse the Doomsday Dashboard (and the twitter feed that inspires it) for not even reflecting the remote possibility of flood.

So, tonight's glimpse into the earthly afterworld comes to us from author Erik Larson. He is describing the last days of Isaac Monroe Cline.

"He retired in 1935," Larson reports, "at the bureau's request, and opened a small art shop on Peter Street in New Orleans. He never remarried. He mourned the passing of slower days before cars and aircraft, but he filled his time to the maximum. He filled it with burnt umber and cerulean blue, linseed oil and turpentine, and the cold caress of ancient bronze."

Before I leave you with Isaac's own words, allow me to post a third image that came out of UNLV today.
Sure, it *may* be photoshopped. But still.

Now, reported speech from Isaac Cline:

"'Time lost can never be recovered,' he said, 'and this should be written in flaming letters everywhere.'"

Rocks and Green Things

That's what this post is:

Another set of slides for my presentation-in-progress, entitled, "Why We Should All Retire To Springdale."
Wait, what?
That's not what this blog is about.
This blog is about the fact that none of us is going to get to retire. Because the world is coming to an end. Right. I nearly forgot. And, so I suppose this is what this post is:
Life is too short to wait.

Other things happened. A ROCK. RAINED. On my head. It was resplendent!

But the life goal that I accomplished over Labor Day weekend was the goal of walking in The Narrows in Zion National Park, a feat I discovered was possible in the fall semester of 2006, when a then-aspiring member of the class of 2011 informed me that he'd done just that. That day, as students' pencils flew toward my head with reckless abandon, I decided that before the world ended, I, too, would take a walk inside these "Narrows" of which my student spoke.

We couldn't go into the Narrows on Saturday due to a flash flood warning. But after walking to all three Emerald Pools and enjoying outsized ice cream cones at the lodge, we were happy to see that the flash flood warning for Sunday was LOW. So, on Sunday, in we went!

Most of the photos of me in the Narrows are not fit for human consumption. In the one you'll see below, that's my, "I'm smiling so hard my face is about to crack" face. I wish I was a better photographer. Next time, my cousin Josh or my friend Krista (who has hiked Angel's Landing, by the way, and I'm not jealous. I'm happy to see the world end while judiciously avoiding Angel's Landing!) will have to fold themselves into the back seat. I'm just glad the disposable camera was in my waterproof pouch when I bit it on the way back out to the Riverside Walk trail. (Out of respect for my perennial travel companion, Miss Gokey, I will let her go through all the shots before I go tagging her on the internet.) Enjoy!

Practice Run

Flotsam:

wool socks
hoodies
sundry unders
toothbrush
toothpaste
FLOSS
tevas
lint
magnesium
flannel jeans

I might wake up all sweaty, but at least I'll be cozy?

water clothes
poles
wood
coffee pot
blankets
more blankets
bedroll
neosporin
t-shirts
chair

I am utterly unprepared.

And still...doing things.

A Poem

Ok, kids.

I have things to do.

I also have things to say, but I need time for them to gel inside my mind. If you're thinking I had every day since Thursday to gel, remember that school started this week, and please cut me some slack.

To tide you over, I leave you this poem, which I studied back at IU.

Cornelius Eady:

THE DANCE

When the world ends,
I will be in a red dress.
When the world ends,
I will be in a smoky bar
.....on Friday night.
When the world ends,
I will be a thought-cloud.
When the world ends,
I will be steam in a tea kettle.
When the world ends,
I will be a sunbeam through
.....a lead window,
And I will shake like the
.....semis on the interstate,
And I will shake like the tree
.....kissed by lightning,
And I will move; the earth will move
.....too,
And I will move; the cities will move
.....too,
And I will move, with the remains of
.....my last paycheck in my pocket.
It will be Friday night
And I will be in a red dress,
My feet relieved of duty,
My body in free-fall,
Loose as a ballerina
.....in zero gravity,
Equal at last with feathers
.....and dust,
As the world faints and tumbles
.....down the stairs,
The jukebox is overtaken at last,
And the cicadas, under the eaves,
.....warm up their legs.

http://washingtonart.com/beltway/eady.html

Certified Dental Patient

That's me.
In this post, you'll receive more information about what to include in your kit. Read on.

I have the benefit of four free teeth cleanings per year, and boy howdy I intend to use them up until the world ends or until I leave the great state of Nevada to return to my roots.

When your dentist has, in the past, actively yelled at you, you get the fear of dentures in your heart and you floss like you've never flossed before in your natural life.

So yesterday, when I peeled myself up from the Island of Couch, where I lounged airing the house and listening to no other soundtrack but the rain (it was a glorious day, what with the rain), it was with apprehension. I feared that Steve would make me bleed and lecture me about the floss.

When, as a teacher, I stand up in front of a group of thirteen-year-olds and tell them a classic story about my life ("Kids, as I sat in the NBC studios and watched Mike give a weather report in front of the green screen, I couldn't help but be reminded of the horse I rode up the slope of Cotopaxi in Quito..."), I am well aware that my audience is captive, and I am glad of it.

I wonder if Steve feels the same. In the past three months, he has become, in my opinion, a kinder, gentler, dentist. He used the word, "healthy" and revealed to me part of the plot of his novel-in-progress. He also writes and illustrates children's books. "If he ever takes the suction thingie out of my mouth," I thought, "I will mention that I remember that he has a son, what little crumb snatcher was running around in here playing a video game back in June." However, before I had the chance, he used the words, "court" and "custody battle," and I decided not to mention any memory of the child. The child is seven years old and enjoys the movie Wild Hogs.

When I revealed that I blog about the Impending Apocalypse, Steve admitted that he has guns and food storage. I therefore felt comfortable enough to ask him what supplies are most important for our teeth in the event there's no longer a dentist's office.

1. Start swishing with fluoride rinse now, kids, before it's too late! After Listerine and other brands like it are no longer available, rinsing with water will also go a long way towards allowing us to continue to chew our food and therefore stay alive.
2. Steve recommends a dental scaler. He says it helps to have some training in order to avoid scraping enamel off of the teeth, which would make your post-apocalypse problems worse instead of better.
3. "Ugh!" I said. "Imagine having to pull a tooth!" He said that as long as they were well-boiled...in a real pinch...and remember you have NO EXCUSE to do it before the apocalypse...pliers would do the trick.
BUT! The real trick would be to prevent needing to go to such drastic extremes by...
4. you guessed it: brushing and flossing. Brushing can be done without toothpaste.
Finally, as an afterthought as I was paying my bill, Steve mentioned that it would be good to have one of those little
5. dental mirrors.

So there you have it. Five more things with which to stock your bag.

That Time Again

This short post is merely to affirm what we already knew: the Mojave Desert is not a place ideally suited for human habitation.

We learned this late last night when, upon walking into Miss Gokey's dwelling, we discovered the AC blowing wildly in an attempt to cool the house to a pre-set 85. It was blowing hot air, and the internal temperature of the house was...99.

The poor thing had to sleep over here, on the lone couch which is an island in a sea of school-paper.

I told Krista today that in the event of catastrophe, we must surely just curl up on the ground and wait to perish.

I told her that when she stopped by to sit on the Island of Lone Couch and behold the sea of school-paper. I've long been a fan of the drop-by, ever since my first one back in October 2000. Today, I got some souvenirs (I typed "swag" first but deleted it because let's face it, I'm not that cool) from the Harry S. Truman museum and library in Independence, MO.

Now that I as a human have become spoiled to air conditioning, it is necessary to my survival in the Mojave.

You know what state doesn't have this problem? Indiana! At least, that's what my mind tells me as I RUN back to the house from the mailbox half a block away, because I forgot to bring my Nalgene bottle with me. Last week, when I received ice trays in the mail from Wisconsin, I decided to make meals out of ice cubes made of juice.

In conclusion, I am ready to go back to school tomorrow. There's nothing like walking into a house where the air is nearly boiling to make a person appreciate the nice cool recirculated air in a building jointly supported by taxpayer and casino money. This year, I resolve to give the people what they pay for. Power to the people. And freon. Power and freon for us all.

Just so you know, loyal readers...

you are welcome to come visit, any time.

Water.

Now that the glorious seven-day weekend is drawing to a close, it's time to turn my teacher-mind toward maps.

I found a map for today's topic, but it had no key. 

How utterly useless, and still somehow poetically Jakob Dylan-ish! 

No map for you, readers. 

If there was a map, it would have been for water use. 

I returned to what Diane Raines describes in Water Wars as a "water-sucking desert nightmare" a week and a day ago. Every day since, I have averaged 96 oz of H2O. It's not sustainable. Once school starts, I will be accountable to a very strict schedule for when I can use the facilities. A first-hour prep makes this an even more glaring problem. In addition, it can't be good for the bathtub ring (image available on 'Location...' post).

Because the place where I'm currently living is what I consider to be an untenable walking distance from the lake, especially if I don't have enough water to get me there (and let's be honest kids, 64 oz. wasn't enough to get me the 1.5 miles up to Mary Jane falls, so...), water is the thing I worry about the MOST in the event of a major catastrophe. 

Water is important. So, while I was gathering provisions and passed the September issue of Backpacker magazine with the teaser, "Dying of Thirst! How to find water anywhere," on the cover, I just had to buy it.

APPARENTLY, a Backpacker staff writer who calls himself Drop Dead Ted field-tested various methods of conjuring water. I had never heard of these methods. Maybe you haven't, either. I'll pass them along. 

The first method Ted discusses is self-explanatory: dew harvesting. He says, "sopping up dew yielded the most water for the least effort." Done! Except...oh, wait. Mojave Desert. Right. 

Method #2 is a solar still, whereby you still need a "motley source of moist earth (darn!)" in which to bury your bottle, which after about 4.5 hours the sun will condense into 1/4 cup of water. Even if I had access to moist earth, 1/4 cup of water = 2 oz. 

Method #3:  Transpiration bag. This way consists of tying a plastic bag around the branch of a tree (wait, branch of...what?), waiting 4.5 hours and then drinking your 3 teaspoons of water out of the corner of your Ziplock. 

Two other gems from this one-page text-and-graphic:

- Keep your clothes on and 

- Do NOT drink your pee. 

But, because hope springs eternal in the human breast (thank you, Alexander Pope), I refuse to believe that I will simply lay down and die a dehydrated death. 

Plan B: Hope that disaster strikes at SCHOOL. Use whatever gas remains in my car to drive to Valley of Fire and jump into Mouse's Tank. It's a pretty good plan, if I do say so myself. Mostly hidden from predators (excepting snakes and scorpions) and such. 

What's your "plan B?"

A basic tenet of preparedness is to have physical, not just digital copies, of the reading material that you will need to build your life anew. So...do I recommend that you run out and get Backpacker's September issue? Nah. Mostly the magazine is ads and product reviews.

Pardon me while I attempt to navigate the synaptic pathways back into teacherspeak: you won't need recall for the information in this article. Recognition will suffice. You'll see a tree (a what?), and because you are in survival mode, your brain will whisper, "plastic bag." Like Tai Chi with the automaticity &tc. 

That "nah" answer changes, however, as most answers do, if you're a geography teacher. 

Page 55 features a map called Chart of Death: Animal Attacks, which is going under my document camera here in just a few short days. If you want one, let me know.