NO INCOMING TODAY

Once again there is no Incoming this week.  I seem to be doing fairly well with reducing the amount of books I purchase.  No more weeks with dozens (or hundred) of new books.

This week our thoughts are with the people of Texas and Louisiana who are struggling with the aftereffects of Hurricane Harvey.  

Before Harvey, there was Galveston.  The category 4 hurricane that hit that Texas city on September 8, 1900 took from 6,000 to 12,000 lives and cost some $850,000,000 in damages (in 2016 figures), making it the worst natural disaster ever to hit America.  With Harvey, the death count of 39 is sure to rise and the cost of the devastation will be in the billions of dollars.  Harvey could have been much worse.  (Short-sighted politics actually made Harvey worse than it could have been.)

Instead of Incoming this week, here's a look at the Galveston Flood as filmed by Albert Smith for Thomas Edison Films on September 24, 1900.

Nature can be a bitch.  Let us hope that common sense and advance warnings will greatly reduce her impact in the future.

https://archive.org/details/GalvestonHurricaneAndTidalWaveOf1900