Alive and Dry.

Thanks to all who have inquired about my well-being after hearing that the town of Rushford, MN (my home town) was flooded just over a week ago.

I was away on vacation to the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota and returned to a town that isn't, and never will be, the same. So many friends have lost their homes or businesses. Some, both.

The town has looked like a war zone these last few days. Debris in the streets everywhere. Homes gutted. People walking around absolutely filthy and with a slight glaze to their eyes.

Still, this community is just that ... a community. I've never seen people rally behind others to this extent. It's really impressive, but then I knew that about this town before. It's part of the reason I moved here.

As I write this, we've just gotten sewage working for most of the town. We can stop using the port-a-potty in the neighbor's yard (sadly, humorously, I cannot say that it's the first time my kids have pee'd in their yard). We won't be able to use the running water for anything but flushing toilets for a couple of weeks while they load the town water supply with chlorine in order to kill the e-coli bacteria that's been found in two of the city wells.

The photo above is from one of the local newspapers. You can see more of their photos on their web page: Fillmore County Journal.

Wait.... Did you hear that?

Out with some friends last night and the discussion turned briefly to ipods and iphones and the amount of music stored on the devices. Then this morning I read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the loss of music through compression in making MP3s. It is compared as the fast food of music and "like hearing through a screen door."

(You can read the article yourself HERE.)

I imagine that most people don't realize quite how MP3s are made, but it only makes sense that certain sounds and aspects are "tossed out" to make room for the compression. Most of the time I can't tell the difference, but as I enjoy some of the intricacies of jazz and classical music, there are times that I've felt that I wasn't enjoying something quite as much when listening to it in MP3 format. Perhaps some of the subtleties are things which can be "felt" but not necessarily identified in any hard and fast way.

The medium is changing rapidly and I doubt that MP3s are going to be the standard for very long. Something new, and hopefully better, will come out.

One thing that the SFChronicle does not point out is the dispose-ability of music these days. I know I've written about it before, so I won't spend much time on it, but gone are the days when friends would sit around in someone's living room, listening to an album (or even a CD) and pass around the dust jacket or jewel case and admire the cover art and read who played on the album and maybe even check out the lyrics. Today it's about how many gigs or storage your device holds and how much you've got on there already.

*sigh*

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