My world is a flood / slowly I become one with the mud

The predictions for the next few weeks are absolutely, terrifyingly, heartbreaking. I've been avoiding the news coverage at all costs, hoping to avoid any bad news. Last I checked, we were doing well - a second crest was expected, but it would be manageable. Now I'm looking forward to the end of the school year with a bit of hesitation and apprehension. Will I be sitting in my music theory class working on what now seems a silly composition? Or will I be out fighting the flood, filling sandbag after sandbag?

I came across this clip on CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/weather/03/30/fargo.slideshow/index.html. It is fascinating, curious, and intriguing. I really appreciate the description of dike building and the intricate details of filling a sandbag.

Each sandbag goes through a long life process. Here are the steps.

1) Person One brings sandbags, sand, shovels, cones, workbenches, etc. to sites.
2) Everyone sets up the site, creating all sorts of nifty tools.
3) Person Two takes an empty sandbag from a pile, opens it, hands it to Person Three.
4) Person Three holds the sandbag below a traffic cone.
5) Person Four shovels two large shovel-fuls or three small shovel-fuls of sand into the bag.
6) Person Three hands the sandbag to Person Five.
7) Person Five ties the bag and hands to Person Six.
8) Person Six stacks the bag in a huge pile.

From here, the sandbag goes elsewhere:
1) Directly to a zipper-line, straight to a dike.
2) On a semi or in the back of a truck to be taken to a zipper-line and then to a dike.
3) Etc.

There you g0 - the first few steps in the creation of a sandbag. Stay tuned - you never know, maybe I'll post the steps of the creation of a dike. Goodness knows how riveting that would be...