The New Yorker

Every so often, my roommates and I wonder whether we look like New Yorkers yet.  After all, we've lived in this city for nearly a year.  In that time, we've conquered the worst winter here in two decades, and we're well on our way to coasting through what I'm told is a relatively mild New York summer (and I'm reminded constantly of how mild this summer is when I still complain about the humidity or the thunderstorms and people tell me about how much worse "last year" was, as though I care).

Capturing the Mississippi

I am sometimes dismayed to learn that some things I count on as constants are not necessarily so.  Like Polaris being eternally set as the North Star, the June Gloom blanketing the skies of Los Angeles during the month of June, and Pixar inerrantly producing near-perfect films (well done, Cars 2).  Neither is something like the course of the Mississippi River as reliably fixed as I had thought.  It turns out that every thousand years or so since the end of the ice age, the Mississippi River overflows its riverbanks and stakes out a new course to the Gulf of Mexico.  And, according to a book I just read (don't ask me why I chose a book on this topic, I really couldn't tell you), the Mississippi is long overdue for a course change.