Flooding and Accomplishments

My heart goes out to the people who live along the Mississippi River downstream from us.  We had bad flooding here a few weeks ago, but everyone escaped unscathed.  However, downstream from us it seems to be a much different story.  When I was a young archaeologist, I was hired to be a supervisor on a dig in Illinois.  It was my first trip to the Midwest and I was amazed by the amount of green - it was so luscious that it looked as if you could cut it with a knife.  One of the places that I was in fairly often was the small city of Cairo (they pronounce it Kay-roh, not like the Egyptian city).  Cairo is in danger of getting innundated by the rising waters, in fact the Army Corp of Engineers blew up levees holding back the waters to allow the waters egress.  It is hoped that without the waters backing up behind the levee, Cairo might be spared.  They have done the same thing to other cities further down the river also.  It's not expected to hit maximum flood stage for another week.  My heart goes out to these people, it was a nice area of the country and the people were quite friendly. 

Cairo is located at the meeting of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.  Because

it is low-lying, it has always been susceptible to devastating floods. 

Yesterday's craft day was generally successful.  I have discovered that I can't do a lot of shaping by hand,, at least not enough for the central element that I was envisioning.  I need a ring saw for that, and they are expensive.  I phoned the local glass shop to see if they rented ring saws, but they don't.  I don't have the spare several hundred dollars, so I'll try phoning a few more places today in the hope that someone has a cutter that I can use.  It was abysmally slow, but I did get the four pieces I needed to continue working on this project completed and I flash fired them last night.  They turned out nice, and now I need to get going on the next part, pull out the beads again, and begin stitching things together.  I hope that my vision was a true one, otherwise I've wasted two weeks in an experiment on a project that I don't have any available time to waste.  I'll know by  next week.