people who dream know special happiness which world of the day holds not
People who dream when they sleep at night, know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue.
They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom.
It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will.
The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control.
Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views, rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of.
Strangers appear and are friends or enemies, although the person who dreams has never done anything about them.
The ideas of flight and pursuit are recurrent in dreams and are equally enrapturing.
Excellent witty things are said by everybody.
It is true that if remembered in the day-time they will fade and lose their sense, because they belong to a different plane, but as soon as the one who dreams lies down at night, the current is again closed and he remembers their excellency.
All the time the feeling of immense freedom is surrounding him and running through him like air and light, an unearthly bliss.
From the book, Out of Africa (1937) by Karen Blixen (1885-1962).
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.
pickleball convince spectators that game is as fun to watch as play
How many sewers could you hit?
The Sportswriter Joe Falls tells the story of interviewing a baseball player when he was just starting out on the Tigers Beat for the Detroit Free Press.
I cannot remember the player in question but the great Rocky Colavito stands out as a possibility as the sports star in the story as Falls was a young kid, fresh on the job, approaching a big star.
Falls also mentioned that the star, like Falls, was a native New Yorker from New York City.
Falls tells how he had a pad and pencil and walked into the locker room and joined the queue around the star who was describing his performance on the field that day.
There was a pause in the question and Falls asked the first question that popped into his head on meeting a big league baseball player from New York City.
“How many sewers could you hit?” Falls asked.
Falls remembered that in the bouquet of sportswriters clustered around Colavito, there was more than one smirk, more than one person rolling their eyes.
But not Colavito.
He look at Falls for a second and said, “Three, on a good day. How many COULD YOU HIT?”
Falls wrote that with that, he was allowed entrance in the brotherhood of sportswriters.
It also seems that Falls said it led to a lifelong relationship with Rocky.
How many sewers could you hit?
What they were talking about was the sport of stick ball.
The game kids played when they wanted to play baseball but they didn’t have a baseball, baseball mitts and gloves, baseball bats or, maybe most importantly, a baseball field.
They got what they could, a sawed off broom stick and a rubber spaulding (spaul DEEN) ball and they played in the street and measured the field by the number of sewers the City of New York spaced down the street.
To hit three sewers was the marque d’excellence.
The point is, they made do and had a great time.
Kids were allowed to be kids and play.
And most those stick ball games went on all day and kids played and played.
Then along came the adults who looked at the lack of equipment and the lack of organization and lack of rules and they asked how can this be allowed to happen?
The asked, how can they be having any fun?
And along came little league.
Orgnaization.
Uniforms, leagues, fields and RULES.
Now the fun can start said the adults.
And kids sat and watched from the dugout and waited.
Oh boy.
Now these kids are older.
Seeing empty tennis courts all over the place they came up with a little game that uses these un-used courts.
Seems that tennis and golf need a big marquee name to justify anyone else spending time on the sport and the big names in tennis and golf are all retiring as is interest … or so some say, but I digress.
Anyway, these empty tennis courts are being used as this simple game that picked up the name, pickleball, is in and being played everywhere.
As might be expected, someone starts asking about equipment and leagues and RULES.
As might be expected there are some people who excel at pickleball.
Say that out loud please.
Some people think they just might be the best pickleball player ever.
Which just leads you to think that there should be PRO pickleball.
This morning in the New York Times is the story headlined, “Will Pickleball Be as Fun to Watch as It Is to Play?“
The sub header states: “Pickleball had no problem attracting millions of amateur players. Now, as the sport looks to grow at the professional level, it must convince spectators that the game is as fun to watch as it is to play.“
Did you catch the key word here?
Might be FUN but nope.
Must.
Must!
The sport must convince spectators that the game is as fun to watch as it is to play
Boy howdy can’t we just once do something for fun anymore?
the work was simple bobbins emptied rapidly no idle moments
In the factory quarter, doors were opening everywhere, and he was soon one of a multitude that pressed onward through the dark. As he entered the factory gate the whistle blew again. He glanced at the east. Across a ragged sky-line of housetops a pale light was beginning to creep. This much he saw of the day as he turned his back upon it and joined his work gang.
He took his place in one of many long rows of machines. Before him, above a bin filled with small bobbins, were large bobbins revolving rapidly. Upon these he wound the jute-twine of the small bobbins. The work was simple. All that was required was celerity. The small bobbins were emptied so rapidly, and there were so many large bobbins that did the emptying, that there were no idle moments.
He worked mechanically. When a small bobbin ran out, he used his left hand for a brake, stopping the large bobbin and at the same time, with thumb and forefinger, catching the flying end of twine. Also, at the same time, with his right hand, he caught up the loose twine-end of a small bobbin. These various acts with both hands were performed simultaneously and swiftly. Then there would come a flash of his hands as he looped the weaver’s knot and released the bobbin. There was nothing difficult about weaver’s knots. He once boasted he could tie them in his sleep. And for that matter, he sometimes did, toiling centuries long in a single night at tying an endless succession of weaver’s knots.
… “Now, my boy, I want you to tell me the truth,” the inspector said, or shouted, bending close to the boy’s ear to make him hear. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen,” Johnny lied, and he lied with the full force of his lungs. So loudly did he lie that it started him off in a dry, hacking cough that lifted the lint which had been settling in his lungs all morning.
From The Apostate, a short story by Jack London that first appeared in the September, 1906 Issue of Woman’s Home Companion with the subtitle, A Child Labor Parable.
