Good morning.
Whitewater’s Monday will be cloudy, but mild, with a high of sixty-five. I’m sometimes asked why I lead with a simple weather prediction (from the National Weather Service). There are two reasons.
First, weather’s worth considering as the backdrop to the day, so to speak. For many, in this agricultural state, it’s directly and immediately important to their livelihood. For many more, it’s an unalterable truth beyond our reach: No matter what we do, or hope to do, during a day, the weather goes on all around and beyond our undertakings.
Second, though, thinking about the weather is a holdover from a comparison between the long-range forecasts of the Farmers’ Almanac and the more supple forecasting of the National Weather Service. Although one typically thinks of government agencies as more rigid and less supple than private actors, that’s not true in this case: the NWS can adjust in a way that a year-in-advance plan of the FA obviously cannot. Flexible typically wins, and that’s true of the NWS over the FA.
In 1864, quick and practical thinking saved the day for the a Union fleet, thanks to Joseph Bailey:
1864 – Joseph Bailey Saves Union Fleet
On this date Joseph Bailey began to direct the men of six regiments, including the 23rd Wisconsin, in a dramatic attempt to save the heart of the Union fleet during the Civil War. Bailey, who was from Wisconsin Dells and an experienced lumberjack, served as an engineer in the 4th Wisconsin Cavalry. In a doomed campaign against the Confederates on the Red River in Louisiana, Union warships found themselves trapped by low water and the rocky river bed. As Confederate soldiers approached, Bailey employed water control techniques used by loggers to construct a series of dams that successfully narrowed the river, raised the water level by six feet, and provided enough surge to free the trapped fleet of gunboats. For his role in this rescue, Bailey was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. He also received a Tiffany punch bowl from his fellow officers. [Wisconsin Lore and Legend, pg. 18.]
Source: Wisconsin Historical Society.
Google’s had lots of unusual daily puzzles, but none yet so odd as this one, I think: “After in utero cannibalization, what’s the maximum number of pups born at one time to the only shark that swims to the surface to gulp air for buoyancy?”