Making the Crooked Straight--or Trying To:

Something To Think About Straigtening, 5/23

Solomon observed that what is crooked cannot be straightened. Well, maybe, but it's hard, and it's still crooked a little bit, so  Solomon was right. There is a little privacy fence at the rear of my house.  We put it up years ago, when my mom lived in a little apartment that is part of my home.  It blocked some unsightly "stuff," and, especially after some vines covered part of it, adds a nice pleasant feel to the space.  The trouble is it had started leaning to the left.  Since I'm mostly conservative a left-leaning fence just wouldn't do.  It needed to be fixed. I had been thinking about it, and figured that if I attached a come-along to the top of the post on the left and then tied the other end off to the bottom of the post on the far right, that I'd be able to pull the skewed structure back into plumb.  My plan made sense from a geometric viewpoint, but I had failed to reckon on the fact that the fence had settled into its slouch.  Its old bones were stiff and didn't want to be stand erect.  So "crack, crash!" the barrier bowed in the middle, came loose from the post, and part of the fence no longer leaned; it was mostly lying down.  And the post I was trying to pull into uprightness just broke off at the ground. The job that I thought would take less than an hour ended up taking all day.  Lessons abound: The power of habit, The difficulty of reformation--especially when it is attempted toward the unwilling. The need to not only work on what is seen, but, especially, the underground foundations. But I'll let you mull on those, after all this isn't something thought about, it's  Something To ThinkAbout. It's STTA.