everyone has their
pet theory but everyone
has different pet

When I work in the office I have to drive over the series of bridges that connect Hilton Head Island with the mainland of the South Carolina Low Country.

Between the mainland and Hilton Head Island is another piece of land known as Pinckney Island.

A bridge takes you over Mackay Creek between the main land and Pinckney and then over Skull Creek to Hilton Head.

There is a two lane bridge going out and another two lane bridge coming in for a total of four bridges.

3 of the four bridges were built in the 1980’s.

The oldest section, the first bridge going from the mainland to Pinckney Island was built in 1957.

While the bridge has passed its end-of-life service date there is no truth to the rumor that the United States Corps of Engineers has condemned the bridge.

There is no truth to the rumor that the United States Corps of Engineers issued an unsafe-to-use certificate for the bridge.

What is true is that since the high tides of Hurricane Matthew so severely undercut the mainland anchorage of the bridge, the United States Corps of Engineers has refused to issue a safe-to-use certificate for the bridge.

The City of Hilton Head, the Country of Beaufort and the State of South Carolina have been researching, planning and projecting a new bridge since 2018.

Everyone agrees they bridge needs to be replaced.

That is where the agreement stops.

And there has been little agreement since.

Somehow, the plan to create a six lane bridge with a bike and pedestrian lane is going to make Hilton Head Island look like Los Angeles.

Somehow the new bridge will scare the turtles.

Want to stop anything down here in the low country, play the turtle card.

Recently the Beaufort County announced it was their bridge and they were going ahead regardless of what the town of Hilton Head said.

The wheels are in motion.

Beaufort County announced they are taking bids on their time and traffic study and hope to have that in place soon and what the study is studied, final construction plans will be open for bidding.

I doubt this new bridge will be built in my lifetime.

I know Hilton Head is a special case and South Carolina is a special case.

What I mean by that is hard to explain if you don’t live here or haven’t been following the Murdaugh Murder case.

Still I read with interest the opinion piece, The Great Construction Mystery, By Ezra Klein (NYT 2/5/2023), that started:

Here’s something odd: We’re getting worse at construction. Think of the technology we have today that we didn’t in the 1970s. The new generations of power tools and computer modeling and teleconferencing and advanced machinery and prefab materials and global shipping. You’d think we could build much more, much faster, for less money, than in the past. But we can’t. Or, at least, we don’t.

Mr. Klien quoted a Mr. Ed Zarenski who runs the market analysis firm Construction Analytics.

Mr. Zarenski said:

And behind all that is paperwork, and paperwork, and more paperwork. “The work we do today takes hundreds more people in the office to track and bring to completion,” he told me. “The level of reporting that you have to send to the government, to the insurance companies, to the owner, to show you’re meeting all the requirements on the job site, all of that has increased. And so the number of people you need to produce that has increased.”

This, Syverson said, was closest to his view on the construction slowdown, though he didn’t know how to test it against the data. “There are a million veto points,” he said. “There are a lot of mouths at the trough that need to be fed to get anything started or done. So many people can gum up the works.”

I have a brother in law who is involved in all sorts of building projects.

At one time, he was part of the group that built that then Sears Tower in Chicago under the Richard Daley regime.

I asked him about the changes in building and he referenced Daley.

He claimed that for the Sears Tower, all it took was one meeting, a meeting with Daley, to get the OK on the project.

Once Daley said yes all other questions, issues and problems went away.

To put up a super market in Livonia, I had to go to 17 zoning meetings he told me.

There are a lot of mouths at the trough that need to be fed to get anything started or done.

So many people can gum up the works.

Everyone has their pet theory.

But everyone has a different pet.

And I get to drive on that bridge to get to work.

left our eyes untouched
but took our sight silently
song from our throats

Adapted from The Fog by E. J. Pratt (1882-1964) as it appeared in Collected Poems of E. J. Pratt (1944).

It stole in on us like a foot-pad,
Somewhere out of the sea and air,
Heavy with rifling Polaris
And the Seven Stars.

It left our eyes untouched,
But took our sight,
And then,
Silently,
It drew the song from our throats,
And the supple bend from our ash-blades;

For the bandit,
With occult fingering,
Had tangled up
The four threads of the compass,
And fouled the snarl around our dory.

Three Photos from about the same spot

there is another
sky ever serene fair and
another sunshine

Based on the sonnet, There is another sky, by Emily Dickinson

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields –
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!

If I am honest, I have to ask the question, did I like the sonnet or did I go looking for something that I could use with a picture from my lunchtime walk to show off that I walk along the ocean at lunch time.

I think we all know the answer.

I just happen to like Ms. Dickinson …

inefficiencies
stress fatigue impossible
unsustainable

As you knew, today’s haiku is based on an a newspaper article about the restaurant industry.

In the guest opinion essay, “Foodie Fever Dreams Can’t Keep Restaurants Afloat” by Vivian Howard, a chef and restaurateur, is the author of two cookbooks and the host of the PBS series “A Chef’s Life” and “Somewhere South.”

Ms. Howard writes:

Even so, Chef & the Farmer closed, in large part because the inefficiencies, stress and fatigue brought by an unsustainable business model became impossible to ignore. Our industry needs to evolve or else more full-service, cuisine-driven restaurants like mine will languish their way to extinction.

About being in the restaurant business, she write: “…perhaps why you so rarely hear a parent say: “You should get into the restaurant business. It looks like a nice life.“

As Anthony Bourdain once said, “I mean, I admire anyone who wants to cook and knowingly enters the field.

It’s a hard thing.

But, you know, look before you leap.

Because I’ve seen that so many times, kids coming out of cooking school and working in my kitchens, and literally two weeks in, you see it.

You look behind the line, and you can just see the dream die.

This terrible information sinking in, like, “Oh my God, this is nothing like they told me it was going to be.”

And I am thinking of going out to dinner tonight.

At least, as of right now.

I think I need a job that pays you to be on the beach.

Maybe the one I have that lets me on the beach at lunchtime is good enough.

But consider the beach.

Twice a day the tide comes in and wipes it clean.

Completely and efficiently.

No fatugue.

No stress.

Though I am sure that if I had the job to clean sweep the beach twice a day, I would make a mess of it and I would languish on my way to extinction.