Notes From an Environmentalist; The Fault is not in our Dam, but in Our Damn Uncertainty.
The P
The Problem is Not in Our Dam,
But in Our Damn Uncertainty.
I couldn’t breathe, my blood pressure was soaring, my palms were sweating, I was sinking into the despair of the technologically challenged.
It was January 13th, I had spent the day before trying to make reservations on AB&B, and today I was spending my time trying to undue all the mistakes I had made the day before.
In Ipswich we have a wonderful therapist to deal with such existential crises. She is Debbie Jimenez the friendly overlord of our local computer shop.
Debbie is like the warm kindly mother you come home to after a day struggling with some undecipherable math problem. She offers you hot soothing cocoa and says, “Don’t worry my dear we can figure this out together”.
But as I said it was January 13th and nothing was working out right. Besides the shop was filling up with techno enthusiasts talking excitedly about their new Lenovos.
I drifted to the back of the room to remove myself from what I’m pretty sure were a gaggle of avatars from another virtual world, only to catch sight of the flooded waters of the Ipswich River. Small groups of real people were taking photos of a slightly bewildered but real seal cleverly hunting for fish below the Sylvania dam.
Now this was reality, something I could marvel at and understand.
The last time I had seen the river this high was during the 2006 Mother’s Day Floods. That was when the Ipswich cops thought they would have to dynamite Ipswich’s new footbridge before it was washed downstream.
It was also when the state spent weeks repairing the Choate Bridge and warned that if the two hundred year old bridge were damaged again, it would have to be replaced by a shiny new steel one.
The problem is that the river courses over the Sylvania dam and has a straight shot toward the Choate Pub and Choate Bridge. The only saving grace is that the dam breaks up the powerful laminar flow of the river into turbulent flow, which has less force to undermine the downstream bridge.
In 2006 the water was within 6 inches of the top of the arch of the Choate Bridge. This time it was more like two feet from the top, but it was enough to turn the Choate Bridge into a virtual dam, ripe for being undermined and damaged.
Prior to 2006 I had been all in favor of removing the Sylvania dam. But the Mother’s Day Floods had given me pause. This year's January 13th floods and now the closing of the County Street Bridge give me even more pause.
Oh, and about my technophobia? I finally made my reservations on a new computer and it worked. As William Shakespeare said, or perhaps it was William Shatner “The fault is not in our stars, dear Brutus, but in ourselves.”
You see the fault was not in me, but in my damn electronics, just as the fault is not now in the dam but in our damn uncertainty.
