Word: basins
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...theater is a cozy space built right inside what used to be the basin of the pool. Old lecture hall seats, minus the fold-up desks, are placed neatly down a slope to the deep end. The entire theatre, including the stage, is elevated about four feet above the pool floor by a system of wooden beams (I peeked under a trap door); this hollow, thin stage helped four slim girls with tap shoes register a 6.0 on the Richter scale in the first scene. The remnants of the pool are beautiful: an old sloped roof gives the feeling...
...ever going to forget how the rains came in the summer for the first time, out of nowhere. And we will never feel the same about our place on earth." He is referring to the flood's menacing peculiarity. It is an anomaly in the Mississippi basin that it came in July, giving farmers less time to recover than previous inundations, which almost always came in late winter or early spring. Summers in the area are usually noted for searing heat and Saharan drought rather than for rains on which Noah's ark might float...
...ordinary human activity -- not just the Corps of Engineers -- that has robbed the Mississippi basin of its most precious resource: the wetlands and riparian forests that once absorbed excess rainwater like so many giant sponges. In fact, the displacement of this natural flood-control system by an artificial one may, over time, increase the number of record-busting floods...
...flood does not discriminate. Among its detritus are picnic tables and automobiles, tree stumps and deer. At least two children. Even the barges that usually command the waterway as they move the river basin's produce to the rest of the world have been rendered helpless. They are inert and tethered to a vanished shore. The high waters have made the river unnavigable; there is no longer enough clearance for large ships to pass under the Mississippi's bridges...
...Angeles basin, where I grew up, it's also a little disconcerting. Watching hockey played in the streets, parking lots and park rinks of L.A. is, I imagine, more than a little bit like finding a polar bear on the surface...