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The Vicksburg Post Sunday, September 13, 2009 A7
THE VICKSBURG POST
THE SOUTH
Karen Gamble, managing editor | E-mail: newsreleases@vicksburgpost.com | Tel: 601.636.4545 ext 137
SEAN MURPHY
POST WEB EDITOR
The answer
is on the tip
... of my GPS
Everyone has had
that moment, talking
with friends about this,
that and everything in
between.
“Your know Richard
Gere and the actress who
played the prostitute ...”
one said speaking (for
some reason) about the
movie “Pretty Woman.”
“What was her name?”
Everyone went blank.
Sandra, umm, Sandra
Bullock. No, not her. It
starts with a B — or a C?
It’s right on the tip of the
tongue.
The tip of the tongue
holds more information
than any other part of
your body. One cannot
sneeze out an answer
leaving the end of the nose
out of the question. But
that tip of the tongue is
amazing.
Time passes, but each
person’s brain is furiously
working. Everyone had
seen the movie and knew
the name of the actress.
Arrrggh. How frustrating.
A stumble hits as the
answer nears the tip of
the tongue. “Roger, Rocky,
Robert... Roberts... Julia
Roberts!”
The frustration is overwhelmed
by the sense of
accomplishment at finding
the answer to a completely
mundane and ridiculous
question, but it sure feels
good.
With the world now
at our fingertips, those
moments are fleeting. A
few clicks on the iPhone
and the answer arrives
instantly.
Are modern gadgets
making us smarter or
dumber?
Technically, it should
make us smarter because
the world is right there
for the taking. But do we
learn that way? Or do we
simply find the answer,
then move on?
Agonizing over something
so stupid as the
name of an actress at least
forces the brain waves to
function and fluctuate.
When the brain is forced
to work, only then do we
really learn.
Can anyone read a map
anymore? Why should
they? All it takes is a few
blips of the Global Positioning
Satellite to tell you
where to go.
A man in New York followed
his GPS directions,
then wondered why his
car straddled train tracks
with a diesel locomotive
barreling toward him.
Having never driven
onto railroad tracks —
not a crossing, the actual
tracks — is it possible
to not realize the car
thumped over the rails?
GPS vetoed the brain.
In the future, a gadget
might be produced that
will answer questions by
reading thoughts. Time,
though, will prove that no
gadget is as powerful as a
functioning brain — and
the tip of the tongue.
•
Sean P. Murphy is Web editor. He
can be reached at smurphy@
vicksburgpost.com.
AmeriCorps volunteer Juan Amezquita, 22, of Coral Springs,
Fla., clears the Al Scheller Boy Scouts Trail at the Vicksburg
National Military Park. He and 11 other AmeriCorps members
began the project Tuesday and expect to continue for
several weeks. By week’s end, they had cleared about a
mile of the 13-mile trail. The team will be removing debris,
cutting branches, painting fresh markers and widening
BROOKSVILLE (AP) —
The worst case of soybean
rust found in Mississippi —
and the first yield losses to
the disease — is in a Noxubee
county field, the Mississippi
State University Extension
Service said.
The 100-acre field near
Brooksville was not treated
with a fungicide, and plant
pathologist Tom Allen estimated
it is likely to lose 5
percent to 10 percent of its
yield to rust.
It has a half-dozen circles
of dead plants, up to an acre
across, said Dennis Reginelli,
Extension agronomic crops
agent in Noxubee County.
Soybean rust was first
found in Mississippi in
November 2004. The field
in question probably has
been infected for eight to 10
Clearing a path
weeks, and July’s warm, wet
weather helped it spread.
Though most of the soybeans
in Noxubee County
were planted in mid-April
and are no longer vulnerable
to soybean rust, many fields
farther north were planted
after wheat harvests and
remain vulnerable.
“When you spray a fungicide
application, you’re
trying to prevent diseases
from robbing energy from
the plant,” Reginelli said.
“Diseases appear at different
times, and if the plant has a
layer of fungicide that can
KATIE CARTER•The Vicksburg PosT
the trail. Rick Martin, VNMP chief of operations, said trail
upkeep is not part of the park budget, so he’s glad AmeriCorps
could pitch in. The trail is named for a former park
employee. AmeriCorps volunteers arrived in Vicksburg earlier
this summer and are operating out of the former All
Saints’ Episcopal School.
SOyBEAn RUST
State’s worst case shows up in Noxubee
By The Associated Press
CRySTAL BEACH, Texas
— Anne Willis, a lifelong
resident of Bolivar Peninsula,
moved back to her hometown
of Crystal Beach nearly three
months after Hurricane Ike.
The storm had shattered
homes, leaving only concrete
slabs and splintered wooden
beams. Electricity had just
returned, but at night it was
so dark that paper bags floating
in the sea breezes resembled
ghosts. Services at one
church were held for six
months under a white tent
along a highway.
“There were only 100
people here. Our grocery
store had been reopened in
an RV,” said Willis, a real
estate agent. “I thought it
was terrible. How are we
going to get through this?”
But a year after the devastation,
Willis and other
southeast Texas residents
are surprised and grateful
for the progress they’ve
made in coming back from
Ike, the costliest natural
disaster in Texas history.
Ike’s powerful storm surge,
as high as 20 feet, and its
110 mph winds caused more
than $29 billion in damage,
Soybean rust was first found in Mississippi in November
2004. The field in question probably has been infected
for eight to 10 weeks, and July’s warm, wet weather
helped it spread.
destroying thousands of
homes and fouling farmland
and ranches with saltwater
from the Gulf Coast through
Houston, 50 miles inland.
Ike made landfall near the
island city of Galveston in
the early morning hours of
Sept. 13, 2008. While power
outages temporarily crippled
Houston, the nation’s fourthlargest
city and the center of
the U.S. energy industry, it
wreaked havoc on the Gulf
Coast.
Three-fourths of Galveston’s
homes were damaged.
The working-class city suffered
more than $3.2 billion
in damage and temporarily
lost its largest employer, the
University of Texas Medical
prevent those diseases from
getting established, then
they normally don’t rob the
plant of yield.”
Mississippi State will hold a
soybean rust in-field training
day Monday at the infected
field in Noxubee County.
Area agronomists, Extension
personnel, producers, seed
distributors, consultants and
all interested individuals are
invited.
Allen said neighboring
fields are not threatened
because they got fungicides
on schedule and have grown
past the stage that would be
Branch.
Some 3,600 homes and
other structures on Bolivar
Peninsula were washed
away to the mainland or
were severely damaged. In
Bridge City, a community of
mostly petrochemical workers
northeast of Bolivar with
about 8,700 residents, fewer
than 20 of the town’s 3,300
homes were left unscathed.
And a year later, the
rebuilding work continues in
cities such as Crystal Beach,
the tiny fishing village of Oak
Island to the north in Chambers
County, and Bridge City.
“People here are very, very
resilient. Neighbors helped
neighbors. They are willing
to do it themselves,” said
at risk.
He said rust has defoliated
many plants in large areas,
and a secondary root disease
continues to injure plants
that initially lost leaves to
rust.
He said that once the rust
weakened the plants, other
diseases defoliated them.
In places, Reginelli said,
shaking the leaves sends a
visible cloud of spores flying
out. Reginelli said the crop
could have had a great yield.
“For this season, this particular
field doesn’t change
any of the fungicide suggestions,”
Allen said. “However,
this field situation will allow
us to gain important information
regarding the impact of
soybean rust on Mississippi
soybean production for the
future.”
Willis, who has lived on Bolivar
for 50 years and heads
the peninsula’s Chamber of
Commerce. “This speaks
highly of our community.”
A year after Ike, a “building
boom” of residential and
vacation homes is under
way on the peninsula where
many Texans get their beach
time.
Driving through Crystal
Beach and surrounding communities,
Willis points to
survey sticks with red flags
sticking out of empty lots,
signifying where new homes
will be built.
“That one’s new. That’s
new,” she said. “New. New.
New. Everywhere you look,
it’s a new house.”
By The Associated Press
TUPELO — New
income, such as a 5-centper-gallon
increase in
the state gasoline tax, is
“absolutely critical” for
the Mississippi Department
of Transportation,
Executive
Director
Larry
“Butch”
Brown
says.
“If we
don’t get
new taxes,
we’re
going to
be in trouble,” Brown told
the Community Development
Foundation in
Tupelo.
Without new income,
he said, the department
won’t be able to build
any new roads or bridges
in three years — its
money will all be going to
maintenance.
The department gets
about $300 million a year
from an 18.4-cent-per-gallon
tax on gas and diesel.
Brown has said that tax
has been in place since
1987, when gasoline cost
$1 a gallon. A gallon of
gasoline in Vicksburg
over the weekend was
about $2.30.
He told the business
group that a nickel tax
would pay for state road
maintenance, bridge
improvements other
projects.
“You’re going to get all
the benefits of a safe infrastructure
program for
your nickel — or you can
keep your money going to
the oil and gas men,” he
said. “It’s got to change.
Think about that.”
Brown said he strongly
favors working with a
grass roots group known
as GetSMART to use
money from local governments
and the private
sector to support the
state’s road projects.
Southeast Texas bouncing back year after Hurricane Ike
Tom LeCroy, left, walks through the flooded
streets of Galveston, Texas, the day Hur-
The associaTed Press
ricane Ike hit, Sept. 13, 2008. At right, he
stands in the same spot a year later.
MDOT’s
chief calls
for hike
in gas tax
Larry “Butch”
Brown
Willis estimates about half
of Bolivar’s 4,000 residents
have returned and between
400 and 500 new homes have
been constructed. But the
houses aren’t going up fast
enough for the rest of the
population to return.
Mayor Kirk Roccaforte said
65 percent to 70 percent of
Bridge City’s housing is back
up, as well as 95 percent of its
businesses. But there are still
around 600 Federal Emergency
Management Agencyprovided
mobile homes in
the city, down from a peak of
1,700. Roccaforte himself has
been living in a FEMA trailer
since November.
After seeing how Ike’s
storm surge ransacked her
three-bedroom Bridge City
home and covered all her
belongings in mud and mold,
LaWanda Sorrels, 39, said
she wanted to run away and
never return.
But today, she, her husband
and 16-year-old disabled son
have moved back after 11
months of living in a relative’s
home and in a FEMA
trailer.
The year hasn’t been easy.
Sorrels’ family didn’t have
See Ike, Page A8.