A Lefse city

Your Lileks' quote of the day:
"...(Gnat's) at the age where she’d hear a mayor of a town insist that it should be a chocolate town, and she’d think it was sweet. You want to keep them innocent of idiocies of all stripes as long as possible. Remember Grand Forks? It was a town that had the unusual distinction of flooding, then catching on fire. I’m imagining the mayor, were he gripped with the same sort of impolitic idiocy that seized Mayor Nagin, insisting that Grand Forks was “a lefse city, and it would be a lefse city against, because that’s how God wants it.” I’m trying to imagine it, but I can’t. Ah well. Failure of imagination; happens. I also cannot imagine how a desire for monoculturalism will be explained away as an expression of multiculturalism, but I expect that will follow quickly. I need to spend more time in Room 101, perhaps.

Lileks is a master of Irony...

Wikipedia on the flood HERE

But I lived near Grand Forks at the time...

The pride of the city is the headline- the press building was under water, but they still put a paper out every day...LINK

And yes, it WAS a multicultural city...and the mayor was a "she"...

I worked Indian Health Service at the time, and the local Chippewa sent help to build the dikes, and later to clean up...and many locals had relatives and friends boarding with them, and many church groups collected supplies and sent help...which is why I was angry that after Katrina, when CNNI concentrated on complaining about FEMA (in order to bash Bush) and mainly reported on New Orleans (Rather than the more devestated areas of Mississippi)...

But the REAL story is that thousands of locals helped each other...fishermen and Coast Guard risked lives saving people, many peole boarded relatives and friends in their home, and hundreds of church groups sent in food, water, and shelter, and helped in the cleanup.... that stuff didn't get on CNN...

In Grand Forks, FEMA came in later, and Clinton arrived on day 4 to feel their pain...And notice, the rebuilding was helped by McDonalds..