LH> It was good to hear your heads are above water or at least were a fe
LH> days ago.  You folks have been in our prayers daily.  Not only are w
 
Things are looking up, the water is receeding slowly and everyone is 
starting to dry out.  We were extremely fortunate that we did not have 
our customary April rain, it's been 60ish and sunny for the last week 
and that's been great.
 
LH> getting this from the media, but we have friends whose son is in col
LH> up there and he calls home in between dike building projects.  He sa
LH> he hasn't had class in almost three weeks.  
 
It's amazing, I've lost track of how much school everyone has 
missed...it all kind of blends together after a while, between 
blizzards and the floods.  The three universities in our area took 
turns closing down to let faculty, staff and students off to sandbag, 
that way there was always a steady flow of university folks helping 
rather than a surge on one day.  
 
LH>  
LH> Are you and your family still all right?  Hope the surge two days ag
LH> 4/21 didn't reach you.  It is hard to fathom.  This is the worst I'v
LH> ever seen anywhere.  What misery for the animals and humans alike.  
LH> is taking so long, and we pray that everyone's reserve holds out.  W
LH> hear the telephones are still working thanks to many who are sleepin
LH> the job - literally.  
 
Yes, we're doing well--we had some seepage in the basement, but we're 
about 6 blocks from the river so we've been relying on the riverfront 
dikes to hold.  We worked hard down south (South Fargo) to prepare for 
the 50 square miles of water they projected for us...lots of diking 
over the weekend and some creative work on the part of the city 
engineers.  Everything seemed to come together real well and it wasn't 
as bad as some expected.
 
LH> What will the state do about school?  It will be interesting to watc
LH> how this is all handled and your community slowly rises about all th
 
The Govenor has encouraged superintendents to do their best to make up 
the days lost to diking and sandbagging activities.  Our oldest girls 
HS had a rotating plan where the school had several color coded teams.  
A different set of teams were deployed daily to fill sandbags or dike, 
each team working a 2 hour shift, this plan worked remarkably well as 
it provided for a steady workforce of eager teens without totally 
disrupting their class schedules.  
 
A couple of districts did come up with a real winner in that they added 
3 to 5 minutes of instructional time to each class period, effectively 
extending the day by a half hour or so.  This (a real winner in my 
mind--sadly shaking my head) is to make up the lost time due to 
blizzards and floods.  I saw this same plan implemented while in Guam 
when our kids lost days due to Typhoons...it's a joke, it makes up the 
time on paper.  As an instructor, 3-5 mins more in a class over a few 
weeks seems worthless.  There have been some schools who have chosen to 
make up their days on Saturdays (I like that one personally, a full day 
of normal instruction) and of course some of the days will simply be 
forgiven by the Govenor.  
 
The University of North Dakota in Grand Forks simply ended the semester 
on 21 April, period.  Schools out, students have the option of 1) 
taking the grade earned to date, or 2) requesting an incomplete from 
the professor and making up the remainder of the work.  Most (as you 
may imagine) have been celebrating an early end to the semester!
 
LH> The best to all of you up there.  Noah's Ark must look good by now.
 
Thanks, we really have some super souls up here, it is phenomenol to 
see how people come together to help one another.  Never in all my life 
have I seen anything like it...and I've now experienced every major 
natural disaster:  Hurricanes, Typhoons (including super typhoons), 
Tornado, Blizzards, an 8.2 Earthquake and now the worst flood in ND 
ever recorded.  The people of the upper midwest are great (this coming 
from a yankee born and raised in CT).  
 
I'm reminded of a neat editorial cartoon in last weekend's paper:  The 
sketch was of a teenager tossing sandbags to build a dike, the header 
"What is wrong with kids today"  ... at the bottom of the cartoon in 
big letters:  "ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!"  it was great. :)  Our young people 
have been super and what a host of lessons they've learned in the area 
of civics, helping each other out, community support, how to build a 
sand bag dike! and so much more.  I'm just so proud of them as a group, 
it just makes you feel good to see the way they've come together and 
been an integral part of the communities flood fighting efforts. 
 
Well, better wrap this up.  It was good to hear from you Lori and 
thanks for the kind words -- things are looking up, people in Grand 
Forks are starting to get back to their homes to assess the damage and 
may even be able to move back in a few weeks.  The helping agencies are 
in full gear and people are starting to talk of cleanup parties instead 
of diking parties!  That'll be a chore, over a couple million sandbags 
to take down and dispose of...but it'll happen, and it'll be a 
community effort just as it was when they went up.
 
Take care.
 
Dale
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