smokerblog

Bird's Eye View

I've put together some aerial pictures (courtesy of the US Geological Survey) prior to the tornado and a picture of my own personal recollection of the aftermath of the tornado.

First is a the farm as it appeared it 1994. I've labelled some items of interest.

Second is my depiction of the tornado damage. The arrows show the direction of fallen trees where all of the trees appeared to have been blown down in the same direction. I've placed x's where there was defitnite twister action and where buildings were destroyed. The s's show where the remains of Justin's garage (his senior project) ended up and the c marks the final resting place of the family car (which started out next to the garage).

There is also a topographical map to give an idea of the lay of the land and an aerial view with the topo map overlaying it just for fun.

A couple of the newspaper links in the entry below look like they are outdated already, but the NWS site with it's maps and pictures still seems to work.

Tornado

For anyone who hasn't already heard, the Smoker homestead, aka Allegen Farms, was destroyed last Monday afternoon by an F3-category tornado. We are all thankful that no person was seriously injured and of course, our thoughts remain with both families as they start the rebuilding process.

Here are some of the various news accounts:

• Potter Leader-Enterprise (story1) (story2)
  
• Wellsville Daily Reporter
  
• Elmira Star-Gazette
  
• National Weather Service Storm Report
  

I'll try to put together a page of pictures sometime in the near future, although the pictures don't do justice to the scene. Nor do the pictures adequately capture the bonding and community spirit that surrounded the farm as friends, neighbors and family members converged to help with the cleanup. On Thursday, around 150-200 workers from the Mennonite Disaster Service arrived and cleaned up a majority of the remaining loose debris. It was quite a sight to behold (the variety of headwear that day was amazing in itself).

12 Angry Men

Okay, so jury duty isn't that bad. Last Monday I ended up getting picked to serve jury duty on a one-week trial. The charges were two counts of drug possession with intent to distribute and one count of "possesion of a firearm in the furtherance of the commision of a drug trafficking crime." We did't really see how the gun, which according to the evidence was lying on the floor two rooms away from where the drugs were found, furthered the commision of anything. So we convicted on the two drug counts, but not the gun count.

It was actually quite an interesting and positive experience. We had an equal number of men and women on the jury with two ethnic minorities represented and a fairly diverse mix of social backgrounds and income levels. There wasn't any bullying or browbeating of any kind in the jury room and everyone had an opportunity to speak and raise questions. I would hope that my experience was the norm for jury trials. It would give me great confidence in our criminal justice system if that were true.

Pretty Predictable

Mom writes:

Hope you decide to come to PA again soon. Seems to me your life is pretty predictable. You need some niece and nephew time to spice it up. We close the 16th [on Kay's house] and move the 19th.

Thanks, mom. My life's not that predictable... OK, maybe it is... Well anyway, it looks like I'll be getting some niece and nephew time sometime soon! I'll be taking the puppies down to my parents either next Thursday or Friday to see everyone and help with the move, depending, that is, on what happens with jury duty. Ugh, jury duty. I was informed that I may have to show up to Federal Court on Monday. Tonight I'll find out for sure.

OK, the site seems to be back

There are still some strange things going on, but at least the site is back and working. Let me know if you notice anything out of the ordinary.

blog was down

For a brief time, anyway. I've broken something in the layout now and am trying to fix it. Shouldn't affect the contents of the site, just the layout.

BBC at Wimbledon

I've been listening to the BBC internet broadcast of Wimbledon. Radio commentary of tennis can be much more exciting than it sounds. The British perspective is interesting as well. I've been somewhat frustrated by ESPN's coverage of tennis where non-American players hardly ever even make the highlight reel.

Plus, the BBC commentary is top-notch. The tennis experts, particularly Frew McMillan understand and can speak intellegently about all aspects of the game. The commentary in general is much more multi-dimensional than what you're likely to get from American coverage.

Among the things I've learned:

• Most public tennis courts in England must be rented by the hour. There was much discussion during one of the rain delays about the prospects of changing this and the American practice of free and open public tennis courts was held up as the model for the English Park Service.
  
  
• Those guys dressed up in rat-like costumes that you may have seen during ESPN highlights are paying tribute to the Wombles which was a series of children's books and a television series in England 20-some odd years ago.
  
  
• The term "grand slam" did not originate in baseball, but referred to the practice of taking all of the tricks in the card game bridge. The term was later applied to winning all the major tournaments in golf and tennis and hitting a bases-loaded home run in baseball.
  
  
• The Simpsons is big in England. During one of the early rounds, the commentators observed that one of the chair umpires sounded remarkably like Principal Skinner. Other observations included James Blake's resemblance to Sideshow Bob and Sven Goran Eriksson's resemblance to Mr. Burns. Ian Carter was referred to as "Smithers" by his fellow commentators for most of the rest of the afternoon.