Kentucky Maguires

The past few weeks have just flown by. We spent a long weekend in Kentucky a few weeks ago, reunioning with the Maguires. (See the pacifier-loving captain of our boat above.) Steve's cousin, Ann, rounded up the family for a first-ever Maguire reunion unrelated to a wedding. We met lots of new additions to the family, as well as some older cousins she found in Tennessee and New Jersey. The latter included part of Graeme and Steve's namesake, Royce Flippin. (Both Graeme and Steve have Royce as a middle name.) Mr. Flippin and his wife are fabulous 70-somethings who love to drink wine, dispense worldly advice, and laugh frequently. They have a rich family and work history and it was great to spend time with them. We spent the weekend at Cumberland Lake State Park, a somewhat picturesque dammed lake that is rapidly losing steam due to a deteriorating dam. The Army Corps of Engineers has lowered the water level in the lake by about 60 feet to avoid a potential Katrina-like disaster in Nashville, the recipient of Lake Cumberland's water should the dam fail. It was disturbing to think about the ecosystem that was destroyed when the dam was created, and now the one that is being destroyed while the lake is lowered to dangerously low levels. I suppose this kind of foresight was ignored in the economic analysis that likely accompanied the project years ago.