SWCAMBORNE

On Thursday night we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner at Dahlia and Joel’s.  Later that night after we dropped him at home Jack, my father-in-law, had a major heart attack.  Fortunately Eva called 911 and double fortune they lived close enough to Huntington Hospital that he was saved.  Yesterday he came home from the hospital and except for the residual scare it appears that all of our lives are going to return to normal.

A few weeks ago I wrote on these pages about Preparedness. I’d like to add to that list: Live near your family.  Without willing and able family or community nearby getting old is a daunting prospect.

Welcome home Jack.  We will help all we can.

“Tough times don’t last, Tough people do.”

Gregory Peck

Actor (1916 - 2003)

Thanksgiving is one of my two favorite holidays.  It is not mixed up with any particular religion, there is no requirement to buy gifts and most stores are closed.

Have a wonderful day.  Focus on positive things.  We live in a meritocracy.  Most of us have enough to eat.  In our country civilians are safe and opportunities are abundant.

My Thanksgiving wish is that you are surrounded by family and friends and that you can argue with them without animosity.

Here are two more examples of mysterious structure.

Flotsam and jetsam (I don’t know the difference and neither do you) have been been put on a piece of driftwood in the middle of a beautiful Caribbean beach.

Stone piles have been built in Eaton Canyon Park in Pasadena.  These piles are near where the trail that leads to the waterfall and Henninger Flats crosses the stream

and are being built by school groups.  I admit to building some of them a few weeks ago when I first had this idea  just to see if they would become self perpetuating.  Within a week of my building four or five piles there were a dozen more.  Last week I observed a school group on a tour from the nature center.  The leader of the group asked the students to help build the “guiding stones.” And they did.

Building monuments like henges, pyramids and totem poles is the penultimate example of the harnessing of this human instinct to create mysterious structures.  The fairy homes, rock piles and driftwood collections I have shown are evidence that this instinct is common in people and can be harnessed by group leaders.  So if you are leading a group and are charged with keeping them busy, make up a story about ancient peoples or fairies and have the group use found materials to build homes or trees or stone piles.  It sounds crazy but it will work.

OOMS is the acronym for On the Origin of Mysterious Structures. It is a story that started on swcamborne.com yesterday.  BTW the name is a takeoff on Darwin’s classic “On the Origin of Species.”  I expect that, in the fullness of time, OOMS will be as significant a work as Darwin’s.

We went on a walking tour in Maine in September and while walking on Monhegan Island between the harbor

and the high cliff

we passed through a wooded glade.

Nestled in the roots of the trees were some mysterious little houses.

Our guide called them “fairy houses” and we stopped for a few minutes to admire them.  She explained that this was an enchanted wood that was the home of a forgotten group of faries.  Before long she suggested that we might like to help build some new houses for the fairies to replace the ones that had been destroyed by the long winter or some such malarkey. We took the bait and for a short while we were busy building little fairy houses.

It was only a few days ago that I realized that this event in Maine offered a solution to the puzzle of the Mysterious rock piles on Maui.  The answer is tour guides.  They distract their groups and help them to bond with each other and the area by allowing them to participate in what becomes a self perpetuating mystery.  Everybody benefits from this tiny subterfuge.  Tourism is slightly enhanced.  The tourists are entertained at no cost.  A little mystery is good in every-one’s life and we all connect a bit more.

Tomorrow two more examples that provide more evidence to support my brilliant solution to the mysterious structures mystery.