We've got all the star stuff at home

Probably you devoted at least a little bit of your time on Monday to experiencing the solar eclipse. Maybe you scored a pair of free glasses before the stampeding hordes got them all. In New Orleans, it didn't matter anyway. Most of us here just tried to get a brief frustrated glimpse through the cloud cover. At least, that's what I did. I kind of saw it a little. Here, I got a picture. Would you like to see?

 

Maybe you managed to get a better view than this. Maybe you made elaborate  plans in advance to take a trip into the "path of totality" so that it could "touch your soul."

On April 8, the Stones will host a dozen-plus visitors from as far away as Sweden to experience this year’s event.

“It’s such an emotional event,” Stone said. “It touches your soul, it really does. Any time you realize there’s something bigger than you, it gives you perspective. Surely that power has a purpose.”

In Buffalo, Horowitz said the eclipse, an obvious reminder of nature’s beauty, offers a chance to reflect on nature’s fragility and to find hope amid worldly chaos and personal challenges.

“You can sometimes be clouded by all that darkness,” he said. “The natural world is trying to tell us that beyond the darkness, there is light.”

If this is you, then, that's great. The human mind's capacity to perceive its surroundings and color it in feeling is infinite in its variation.  Contemplation of the heavens is a popular vector for this.  So I get it. But it's just not where I get my good vibes.  The universe may be unfathomably vast. But most of it is also distant from and indifferent to us.  The way I see it, if we really are made of star stuff, then we've got all of it we need down here. And besides, we're the ones doing all the interesting shit with it. 

The music of the spheres is great and all but what really touches my soul is "truck stuck in flooded underpass appears to have Sewerage and Water Board logos." There is where we find the true face of God.

There is a white truck with what appears to be a Sewerage & Water Board logo stuck in a flooded Franklin Ave underpass.@WWLTV pic.twitter.com/WIvNQGUXx9

— Rachel Handley (@RachelHandleyTV) April 10, 2024

Not everyone is as impressed, of course. 

But as life in many parts of the city returned to normal, business owners there were still knee-deep in clean-up work — again. Krivjanick's business has been flooded during storms in December, January, February and again on Wednesday, she said.

She's had enough. 

"I love the city of New Orleans," said Krivjanick. "I love the culture. I love everything that we have. But I don't feel like I'm being respected as a property owner, as a taxpayer. I don't feel like I'm being heard."

Look I don't want to be here rooting for crumbling infrastructure and corrupt government. Not every time, anyway. But, "won't somebody respect the property owners for a change," isn't engendering a tremendous amount of sympathy.  On the other hand, neither is this, "help us find the real killers," bit. 

But in an update on Thursday, S&WB spokesperson Grace Birch said that the power supply was further hobbled while the rain pounded down. All three of the S&WB's available backup generators tripped offline, she said, and officials suspect vandalism to an electrical feeder was the cause. The New Orleans Police Department has been asked to investigate. Two other backup generators were already out of service because of mechanical issues.

The S&WB said more details would be forthcoming in an after-action report on its pumping, power and staffing levels during the storm, which is required by state law within 48 hours of National Weather Service advisories.

I don't think there's an update on the "investigation" but we do know there were multiple power supply issues in play that day and that they can't all have been the work of imaginary terrorists.  

The utility confronted a second major issue at about the same time, when it attempted to send power from another of its turbines — Turbine 6 — to Pump Station 6 as well as a series of stations along Broad Street.

Because that turbine is relatively new, installed after Hurricane Katrina, the power it produces needs to be converted by a frequency changer for use by the older pumps. 

But the frequency changer tripped offline, rendering that power source useless, too.

The utility finally began using Entergy power to bring the frequency changers back online, allowing the pumping stations to begin using power from the changers between 10:15 a.m. and 11:25 a.m.

Without all of the necessary power, the Sewerage & Water Board was forced to leave some pumps off during the storm.

So to bring this back to the original point, there are more engrossing mysteries in the affairs of humanity on Earth than there are, even in the unfathomable expanse of outer space. And anyway, space is boring. For example, we already know exactly when the next total solar eclipse will be visible over US territory. In 2045, you can drive right over to Pensacola and see it. Hang around until 2078 and you can take a boat out to where New Orleans used to be and see it there too. It's all very predictable. Like a clock, I think someone once said. 

But try and figure out when Turbine 4 is coming back online... well now there is a genuine challenge to demand every power of philosophy ever dreamed of. 

The S&WB says it needs 44 megawatts of 25-hz power to run the pumps during the heaviest storms, but has been forced to operate with a little more than 40 megawatts since T-4 went down.

That turbine is not expected to return until next month.

We can peg the exact position of the moon for the next.. well for millennia into the future. Turbines, though, are unknowable. All we can say right now is check back sometime in May.  Really puts things in perspective, doesn't it.