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Two weeks without an entry. That's bad.
I've just been busy. That busy? Well... yes and no... I'm doing two presentations
at a technical conference in a few weeks (well, co-presenting with a colleague)
and we had to have our PowerPoint presentations submitted by the end of
the day on the 23rd. That kind of ate up a lot of time, and then had to
play catch-up on some projects at work, plus trying to be a little better
about not skipping workouts, and being tired at night and choosing to grab
a book at ten or ten-thirty and go to bed and read instead of staring at
a computer screen for another hour or two while writing an entry...and,
of course, I'd promise myself that I would write an entry "tomorrow"
night... (oh, and please don't mention taxes.. I've got almost two weeks
left)...
The pictures that follow were taken on the South Kingstown Town Beach --
but they weren't taken yesterday -- they were taken a week earlier.
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| Looking east from what remains of the boardwalk at the beach. Those buildings
that start after the end of the beach are the western end of about three
quarters of a mile of trailers, small cottages, a couple of bars, some
summer rentals, some condos, and a few more substantial (and pricier) houses.
See, for example, the 1896 house I showed when writing about a walk on another beach earlier in March. |
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I'd said the "remains" of the boardwalk. What is left now is
a pavilion and a nice deck overlooking the beach, but the boardwalk used
to extend three or four hundred feet along the inland edge of the beach
in this direction. Some fierce winter storms smashed it a couple of years
ago and the town decided that it would be foolish to rebuild it.
So, walking westward along the beach... |
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| There are a lot of vacation homes -- mostly very small cottages -- inland
from the beach. And, as you can see in the distance, also some more substantial
homes closer to the beach. And some years each major winter storm brings
them a little bit closer to the beach (or, rather, brings the beach a little
closer to them). |
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| And, just as the boardwalk was taken, the homes along the beach are also
threatened by winter storms. The slight rise of ground where many of these
homes were build is being eaten away despite attempts to lessen the damage. |
It's not just people's beach houses and vacation homes that are in danger.
Sometimes nature can be pretty rough on nature.
Most of the ground where this tree had spread its roots was washed away
this winter.
This is not some kind of global warming phenomenon -- this is the kind
of thing that happens year after year. Some areas find land being eaten
away; other areas find sand being added. |
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Here's some of the damage nature can do to a house. Yes, that was one house
-- split in half. I think the half that is closer to the camera had actually
slid forward (or had its foundation swept away) and was tilted onto the
beach but was hauled back up to level ground. The openings have been boarded
up with sheets of plywood and wrapped in plastic. Nancy says she read a
story in the local paper indicating that the owner hoped to have his house
restored.
[Note: I was wrong about the house having been split the ocean eating away
the foundation -- in order to prevent that from happening, the owner had
a contractor split the house and he hopes to be able to move it back to
a safer location. See my next entry for further details.] |
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| I turned my back to the ocean as I took this picture of tranquility, ducks
floating on Cards Ponds, an interconnecting series of salt ponds just a
few hundred feet further down the beach from those damaged and threatened
houses. (In fact, parts of these salt ponds extend to behind those houses.) |
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But if I turn again to face the ocean, I see its relentless power.
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