Of chicago and the south side cultural sent, thank you for having us. [ applause ] thanks for joining us tonight, happy friday. Nice to have you with us. Look at this awesome picture from 1968. I love every single thing about this picture. This is the Central Middle School band from orville, california. This is the majorettes part of the band and they are marching through downtown orville, california, on may 1, 1968. This picture is perfec and this picture the property of the California Department of Water Resources. The reason the California Department of Water Resources had a photographer on site taking pictures that day of the majorettes in orville is because that day the governor of california and his wife came too orville, california, to tour a really big awesome new piece of Water Structure the california
governor at the time was Ronald Reagan. He and his wife nancy went to orville for the dedication of the brand new orville dam. It looks kind of fun. They got to go inside the da
broken sinkhole concrete gutter and see how long it holds. it started off as a 300 foot long gash, it s kept on spreading and spreading, look. they say presumably it will split down to the bed rook. but what are you going to do? they have to keep running water down that thing. they don t have a choice so they re running the destroyed spillway. they re running it to complete failure. hope for the best, the best option. pray for dry days. this happened to be the drinking water source for more than 20 million people in the state of california. now, the dam itself, they say the dam itself is safe. the dam they say is built into bedrock, even if that whole hillside gets scoured out, continues to get blown apart, they say the dam will hold, they re confident of that, that s good, because it s almost an 800 foot tall dam, tallest
bedro bedrock, even if that whole hillside gets scoured out, continues to get blown apart, they say the dam will hold, they re confident of that, that s good, because it s almost an 800 foot tall dam, tallest dam in the country. but i feel like grasp ago story like this is almost a test of perspective, a test of whether or not you can appreciate the size of large objects in the ne news. my dad, my dear old dad, worked in the california water system for years in various capacities and he s been texting and e-mailing me about this all week so i ve been looking at news coverage all week, looking at pictures on the california department of water resources web site all week and i could tell when i saw the pictures of the spillway something dramatic was wrong. i will confess to you, dad, i will confess to you right now, i do not truly appreciate what a literally big deal it was. what a large deal it was until i saw this one particular picture and at first glance it looks like the same old pi