Posted by: Baldwin
- [463571714] Wed, Apr 21, 2004, 20:44
The tornado that just killed over 4 people in Utica Illinois passed within 2 miles of my house.
It tore off the siding of the house of my computer buddy neo-adopted son in Granville. He was actually watching the tornado from the door in his community college. That town is without power so he's playing Legend of Mir day and night at my house while I am mostly away at resort.
It ran down the I&M canal just yards south of La Salle and on for ten miles to Utica. The tornado varied from shortlived multi-vortice fingers to a half mile wide at times. I have a friend who was driving back to her home near Utica and had to crawl under an overpass as a half-mile wide [at that point] tornado was throwing semis around. That should be good for some nightmares.
At that point the tornado was 3 miles west from the plant/HQ where the food we sell is cooked. Had it turned NE our resort was in the path but evidently it lifted, only to return to earth near Joliet.
Five hours later when the weather finally lifted to the point we felt safe returning to the resort all roads to Utica were blocked off by police and convoys of emergency vehicles were passing us every five minutes on Rt.80.
Sadly I hear the dead in the Utica restaurant were nearby trailer park residents who fled there for safety. The trailer park was not touched!
I'm not fishing for sympathy as this little piggy was safe in a brick house. I'll delete this thread later but thot it might be of interest.
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720
Pancho Villa
ID: 59645318 Tue, May 14, 2013, 08:45
You would have us believe farmers can grow crops in a desert, without water, pay their bills, make their land payments, their equipment payments...without water.
One can only imagine what possesses you to write such nonsense.
Can you believe I actually have to debate a guy who thinks you can grow food in a desert without irrigation? And that they all can pull this trick off, not a one of them losing their farms in the process!
Pancho Villa
ID: 59645318 Tue, May 14, 2013, 19:37
Can you believe I actually have to debate a guy who thinks you can grow food in a desert without irrigation? And that they all can pull this trick off, not a one of them losing their farms in the process!
Nobody believes you're debating anything. You've shown a complete ignorance concerning the contentious and complicated water rights in the region(which, btw, is not a desert)even though I went into great detail discussing them from all sides, in the thread linked to in #709.
I highly suggest you do some research before further embarrassing yourself with posts like 719 and 721, unless your masochistic tendencies are so strong and can't be ignored.
In the meantime, I'm off to Siskyou County, California in the morning, and will report back next week with youtubes of my performance, courtesy of
If you scroll to the last band, Holy Smoke, even though it's my picture in the ad(center, clean shaven, with slick-backed hair), this recording was done after I had left to play in Waikiki. My replacement on sax was my good friend Jerry Martini, a member of Sly and the Family Stone from day one to the end. Hoping Jerry makes it to this reunion, but I think he's retired in Hawaii.
Pancho Villa
ID: 59645318 Tue, May 14, 2013, 20:48
I met Jerry in Hawaii about 1981, long after the demise of Sly and the Family Stone. If I recollect, Larry Graham was the first to leave the Family Stone, formed Graham Central Station, then a fairly successful solo career with a hit single, "One In A Million."
But it was great listening to Jerry's stories. After all, they played Woodstock and were one of the world's top bands for about 5 years, until Sly slipped into a world of darkness.
Seattle Zen
ID: 4811181319 Thu, May 23, 2013, 10:03
Stop posting insulting, puerile dreck in the middle if the night in order to have your disgusting and vile views evade censure for a few hours. Stop creating threads no one else posts in. Failure to do so will cause threads like these to get deleted and NOT brought back.
Freddie's last video with the band. it's a great thing that in the 20+ years since he Freddie died of AIDS, science has helped make it not so much of a death sentence, and an accepting society has made those with AIDS not such pariahs.
i think it would please Freddie to know that now, intelligent society is much more accepting of his sexual orientation and of the awful disease that killed him.
Pancho Villa
ID: 59645318 Thu, May 30, 2013, 22:41
Strange. When I clink the link, the video comes up. Maybe because it's my Facebook page.
Those here who are my FB friends can go to my timeline and see it. Others might be able to find Robert Clements and see it, don't know. It's rather unique.
Three degrees above open water, clouds so thick the surface of the Illinois is barely visible, leaking rapidly over the roadway in places like a horizontal waterfall. The river is very broad here above the dam and blond reeds float far out in the middle above the cloud. Downed trees turned to driftwood are so heavily frosted they look like scattered bright white bleached bones. A pair of bald eagles wheel above the cloud only forty feet away.
In theory I am busy but in fact I have entered the land time forgot and I park to store up these riches for leaner times ahead.
There I was minding my own business, eyes bright and straight ahead, and along came life's randomizer, head a'kilter, giggling like a brook, a surprise around every corner, smiling at her secret.
Any great work of art … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world — the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air. - Leonard Bernstein
My son the banker hates 'Our House' by Madness, thinks it glorifies delinquency.
I explained what a precious gift it was to be able to so fully create an inhabitable world in only three and a half minutes.
I didn't change his mind I don't think, but I placed an asterisk.