"Good fences make good neighbors."

You are probably familiar with Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall" and its familiar pro-fence catch-line "Good fences make good neighbors." But the poem is actually anti-fence. It begins "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall" and continues with what that something might be:

"That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast."

In the poem, the poet and his neighbor walk their common stone-wall fence in the spring, picking up and replacing rocks and stones that have fallen during the winter. After some time, the poet observes

"There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was liketo give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”

And the poem ends:

"He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

I was reminded of this when a fence was erected this week along the edge of part of Hamilton Lake.

The purpose of the fence, which is supposed to be temporary, is to protect the newly planted grass from the lake's geese population.

Now, if neighbors want to fence off their yards from the geese, more power to them, but I look forward to the public path being fence-free.

By the way, the collection of almost all the lake's geese population seen in the lower photo was because one family of juvenile goslings had gotten through the fence and couldn't figure out how to get back. They got very upset by dogs walking on the path, even though the dogs paid no attention to them. After several minutes they found a way under the fencing and back to the rest of the geese, and geese-life got back to normal on the lake.

New Neighbors

There is a new family in the neighborhood. This picture was take on June 13. When I first saw the new family on June 6, the little ones were half the size they are in this photo.

New Construction

A week or two ago, city councilman Tom Phillips blogged about the new construction at the airport and the FedEx site, including several photos.

Not to be outdone, I want to blog about new construction on the Lake Henderson walking trail, specifically the new Friendly Road bypass. Presently, only the rough grading has been done, but when completed, the new section will connect Lakewood Drive with the Starmount Drive path, bypassing the stone gates at Friendly Road. This will necessitate one new bridge construction. I'm guessing that even after Friendly Road is widened (the stone entrance gates are not supposed to be affected in the widening) the present path behind the stone wall will remain, and the new path will just be a short-cut. Here are some photos:


New Path

Path Construction


Bridge site


Path Behind Stone Wall

Another Small Pleasure Gone

One of life's small pleasures has bitten the dust. For as long as I can remember, folks have fed the ducks at Hamilton Lake. Here the McBride family partakes in the feeding ritual in 2000.


Now someone has decided that feeding is a bad idea and has posted signs asking people not to feed the ducks and geese.


I suspect this is to discourage the geese as much as it is for their long-term benefit, and I'm thinking the birds would not have supported this step had they be given a vote. I wonder if the folks who backed the Don't Feed The Geese movement would support a similar tough-love approach to human welfare programs?

Ain't It The Truth

Scrappleface strikes again! Excerpt:

"Men volunteer to fight, bleed and die for the United States of America because she is the last, best hope for peace and freedom on earth," he said. "They consider the evidence that America has pushed back the veil of tyranny and saved countless millions of men, women and children from imprisonment, torture, starvation, humiliation and brutal death. And they act on that evidence, knowing that the blood of free men is always the price of freedom. While critics jabber about global diplomacy, these men step into the breach to shield us all from the peril of our naiveté about the so-called 'basic goodness of humanity'."

Ultimate Scottish-Irish Golf Trip

In the current Sports Illustrated Golf Plus edition, there is a story by Alan Shipnuck (may require registration) about a four-day eight-golf-course trip he and three pals made to Pinehurst this spring to sample the octet of courses there. I was reminded of an earlier golfing trip.



When Brenda and I went on a golfing trip to Ireland in 1998 with Nikki and Bob Kober, two of the unforgettable characters we met were Dennis and Chris, two brothers-in-law from Texas. (They are the two guys on the left in the above photo--I didn't record their last names.) The one on the left, Dennis I think, was taking his medical software company public and was in the middle of the Quiet Time, so he and Chris were on a 14-day, 27-different-golf-course tour of Scotland and Ireland. They were playing (walking and carrying their bags) 36 holes each day and travelling each evening to the next location. They would have played 28 courses, but it took half a day to get from Scotland to Ireland.

We met them in the morning when Bob and I were paired with them at Tralee Golf Course, and we were all planning to play Ballybunion Golf Links that afternoon, so we arranged to be paired together again there. Also playing at Ballybunion that day were Tiger Woods, Mark O'Meara, and Payne Stewart, who were leaving just as we arrived about 3:30, and Ernie Els and friends, who played just in front of our group. When we caught up with the Els group on the 15th tee, we decided not to ask to play through, though they did have a good-sized gallery and were playing pretty slowly.


How the Big Boys travel!


15th Green

Els Group on 17th Fairway

The Geographic Solution

One of the lessons of AA (see below) is to beware of the Geographic Solution to problems we face. The Geographic Solution is when someone tries to solve a problem by physically leaving a situation (take a new job, move to different city, find a new spouse, etc.) when the real problem lies within the person making the move. Only by identifying and solving the basic problem can a true solution be found.

I was reminded of the Geographic Solution this morning when I heard this report on Morning Edition. It is surprisingly conservative and Bush-administration-friendly compared to many NPR reports. I had read this article by Heather MacDonald at NRO Online yesterday, and it seemes true that the sins of Gitmo are self-fulfilling prophecies. If Guantanamo were closed, administration critics would just carp about some other prison somewhere else. It's not the prison they are concerned about, it is the Bush Administration.

Happy 70th Anniversary

June 10, 2005 marks the 70th Anniversary of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. When my first marriage was going to Hell in 1976, AA and its sister group AlAnon (for families of alcoholics) saved my life--certainly figuratively if not literally. AlAnon helped me through two difficult years, and I was very impressed with the selfless devotion members of both groups had towards helping others in similar circumstances. If there is a better, more effective self-help group than AA, I don't know about it.

D-Day

What to write about D-Day.

At first, I was just going to post some photos made in and around the Normandy battlefields, (click for larger views):


Ste. Mere Eglise Church


Stained Glass Windows

Pont du Hoc

Pont du Hoc Battlefield


Pont du Hoc Monument


American Invader


"Crosses, Row on Row"

Crosses and Star of David

but that seemed a little bland.

So I thought I might comment on the overall level of casualties during the invasion, which was generally less than most people think. Overall, there were about 9,000 casualties (killed, wounded, missing, captured, some 3,000 killed) out of 156,000 troops landed that day--about a 6% casuality rate and a 2% killed rate. See here, here and here. A US Army website reports: "Although victorious against the first wave of invaders at OMAHA, the Germans could do little when the force on the beach began to renew itself. With many of their troops off in pursuit of the dummy paratroopers the Allies had dropped far to the rear, they could hold their own from fixed positions but lacked the numbers to drive the invaders back. Thus the Americans kept the ground they gained. Inch by inch they moved forward, up through the bluffs and onto the flatland above. In the absence of much room to maneuver, their attack had been unoriginal, a straightforward frontal assault, but the weight of their numbers and the enormous volume of supplies and equipment they began to bring to bear made the difference. By nightfall, 34,000 men were ashore on OMAHA. The beach itself was a shambles of burning and disabled vehicles, but almost all of the coastal villages located inland were in Allied hands."

Then, as I was checking the usual blogs, I realized that the battle is still going on. You can read about some recent engagements here and here.

Ah well, Blogger (the software, not the writer) is acting up and doesn't want to finish this post, so I'll quit here.

Did you know about this guy?

When I sent out the Dartmouth Final Quiz to friends, I noticed it had been administered at the Thayer Dining Hall. Thayer is an uncommon name, and besides a high school friend, the only other time I can recall the name is that it is the award Douglas MacArthur received when he gave his Duty, Honor, Country speech, one of the 20th century's greatest orations. A Googlesearch shows the connection. Had you heard of Sylvanus Thayer before?

I love the opening of the speech:

As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for, General?" And when I replied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place. Have you ever been there before?"

The Most Important Date in the Twentieth Century

Today, June 4, is the most important date in 20th century history. On this date, Japan lost World War II to the US, and Germany lost World War II. Without the events of June 4, we probably wouldn't be speaking Japanese in San Francisco, but it is likely that they would be speaking German in London.

On June 4, 1942, Japan lost WW2 in the battle of Midway. In the span of 20 minutes, a squadron of American dive bombers stumbled upon the Japanese fleet preparing to invade Midway Island and put three of four Japanese aircraft carriers out of commission. Later in the day, the fourth was destroyed. Japan couldn't recover. It took three more difficult years to drive Imperial Japan to surrender, including the worst of war on both sides (kamikazis, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, fire-bombing cities, the atomic bombs), but the fate of the Japanese was determined. With the sinking of the Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu, they could no longer win the war.

There wasn't a corresponding decisive battle in the European Theater. Some might argue that the first six hours of the Normandy Invasion signaled the end of the war, but by then the industrial might of the Allies (OK, "America") had already won the war. The European Theater was more a case of the Germans losing the war than the Allies winning.

In the spring of 1940, a large part of the British army was in Belgium to defend France from the expected invasion from Germany. The German attack began on May 11, and by May 22 it was evident the British were being overwhelmed. The British had been driven back to a small perimeter around the French port of Dunkirk, and they were hard-pressed to hold off the superiour German forces. The British began an evacuation that, for a variety of reasons, wasn't working. However, on May 29, Hitler stopped the German panzer attacks and gave the infantry and air force the job of destroying the British. This gave the English time to mobilize a "flotilla of fishing boats, lifeboats, paddle steamers, and yachts" to rescue the more than 300,000 British and French troops trapped around Dunkirk. By June 4, the evacuation was complete.

Interestingly, as Garrison Keillor points out in today's Writers' Almanac or (click here for written version), it was the decision of Winston Churchill to treat the returning servicemen as heros rather than as a defeated army that lead to the victory over Germany five years later.

Can we learn anything from these events 60+ years later?
-----------------------------------

If you listen to the the full reading of the Writer's Almanac, you'll hear the Poem of the Day. Some of us think that if it doesn't rhyme and isn't written in meter, it's just prose in very short paragraphs, but I'll cut the poem "Pulling Up Beside My Husband at the Stoplight" some slack.

Is That All There Is?

Please tell me there is more to the Koran Desecration scandle than this. This borders on trivial.

Reparations

I see by the paper that some folks are calling for companies like Wachovia, whose predecesor companies may have, in the dark past, owned slaves, to pay reparations for these dasterdly deeds. I feel I may be in the same boat as Wachovia. Though I don't know for sure, I have an ancestor (my grandfather's great-grandfather, I think) who may have owned slaves. I don't feel any responsibility to pay those slaves' decendents for any of the indignities they may have suffered. I owe them the respect all people deserve, but that's all. I think Wachovia is in the same position.

By the way, does anyone else share my concern about whether you could ever trust a bank that can't even tell the truth about its name?

Manhole Covers

I've always had a soft spot for manhole covers. For one thing, they are the subject of a two-part brain teaser. (Q: Why are manhole covers round? A: Because the manholes are round. Q: OK, then why are the manholes round? A: Because that's the only shape where the cover won't fall through the hole.) For another, they are so basic, just a piece of cast iron, yet have so much variation.

When Abby-the-Wonderdog came to live with me and we began our neighborhood walks, we saw a lot of different manhole cover designs. I don't know much about sewer systems, but I do know there are actually two different sewer systems in town. The sanitary system drains to the sewage treatment plant. It carries sewage from houses and other buildings. The stormwater system drains rain and surface water to creeks and lakes. I'm guessing you can identify the two by the manhole covers, marked S or SW.






(There is at least one unmarked cover in the neighborhood. Who knows where it goes.)


Because of the environmental effects of surface drains, many street drains are marked to remind citizens not to pollute.

Some of the street drains have manholes (and covers) in them. When I was growing up in the Westerwood neighborhood, my buddies and I often played ball (one o'cat, two o'cat, roll-a-bat) in the 300 block of Mimosa Drive. There was a ball-magnet street drain there that regularly attracted our ball. Then someone would have to go up to the Cribbins and borrow their coal-furnace-stoker (a long steel rod) so we could pry off the cover and send someone down to recover the ball.

Many manholes seem to be advertisements for the company that made them or installed them. (Click to enlarge.)

Some of these are self-evident; one took a little research from Google to find out that EJIW is the East Jordan Iron Works in East Jordan, Michigan. Also, I can remember Greensboro from about 1950 on, and I have no memory of the Pomona Foundry. Was it in the Pomona area, maybe near the old railroad roundhouse?

Some manhole covers are quite decorative.

Others combine the ecological reminder into the cover.

This cover points up another interesting point. Note that it is "Made in India". Upon further review, some of the other covers (Capital Foundry and Triad Masonery) are also from India.

Manhole covers seem to be a pretty low-tech item--a slab of cast iron and a little casting labor. It can't take much labor to make one, and there must be a fair amount of expense in shipping the finished product from India (and probably the raw scrap iron from which it's made to India). Just how much can the labor savings be??? This reminds me of the scene near the end of the movie "Battle of the Bulge" where the German tank commander finds a cake that has been shipped from the US as a Christmas present to an American soldier. He realizes the war must be lost if the Allies have the capability to ship this kind of thing across the Atlantic while the Germans are scrounging for gasoline. Is the World Trade Battle at a similar point?

One last observation. manholes seem to be very social. They are often near each other,

and along the Painter Boulevard section of the Hamilton Lakes walking trail, there is a congregation of three Sanitary manholes.


So much for manholes and their covers.