Changes

I know you have been wondering, as I have, who invented that wonderful white line that marks the right hand side of the highway that helps you drive blithely along. Years ago Jean and I were on a road trip, can't remember where, probably headed to Colorado when we remarked on how much that new-ish white line helped when driving. How it improved night time safety, awareness, visibility. I never gave it another thought until recently. Driving in the dark every morning to work, in the rain, in the fog, in the drizzle, in the sleet, in the mist, I somehow became cognizant of it again. I asked Lynn what she knew about it during our Olympic Peninsular road trip.

Lynn was as educated as I on the origins and inventor. Lynn didn't know the who, what, or when, but she was confident who ever suggested it to the city council was booed off the stage. "You want tax money to pay for WHAT?" I wanted a name, somebody to personally remember and thank for improving my life. Somebody had to discover that, think of that, lobby for that. I did the inevitable Google search and learned quite a bit about Road Surface Markings. And now you will know also.

Three states came up with center line markings simultaneously and seemingly independently. This is the center line, not the right side. One Mr Edward Hines of the Board of Roads after following a leaky milk truck in 1911. Trenton River Road/Dead Man's Curve in Wayne County MI. Part of the Columbia River Highway in OR, and Indio/Riverside CA, never quite sorted that one out, some lady doctor paid for it herself after she was forced off the road.

Mr Hines was inducted into the MI Transportation Hall of Fame in 1972. I'll bet you didn't know that! 1972? Oh, yeah and he won the first Paul Mijksenaar Design for Function award in 2011. 2011! Better late than never I suppose. What's a hundred years more or less.

The fight over color, yellow or white, went on until white was finally standardized in 1971 and then it wasn't completed until 1975. The gears of government move ever cautiously.

I still don't know who invented the right marking but learned it is called the "fog line." The weeks of heavy fog here around Mukilteo is one of the reasons I love that silly line. They were used in England during WWII where people could use a small torch to toddle their way home during blackouts.

Ancient Roman roads had center markings. Change? Ain't it something?

Now the change that worries folks is social media; here to ruin. Children don't play outside, don't interact, can't spell. The whole fabric of society is disintegrating as we sit here and look at Facebook. The ones I talk to that are upset over LOL and TY, or for the more colorful, WTF, are only concerned with the spellings that they are familiar with and don't take into account that spellings have changed before and will change again. I don't think they are objecting that old English is dead or that we don't write in Latin. Spelling has changed as has homes, clothing, entertainment, mores, the social fabric of a community, but apparently not center line road markings. Anyone want to go back to the social mores of Puritan America?

We drive instead of walk. We use flush toilets. Our books are electronic, at least mine is finally. No one takes a chariot to work, to my knowledge. How is everyone's Kurig or comparable machine today? Was that a change worth making?

Thinking about social media changing America made my mind hearken back to some of my childhood activities, button tins, ants in a jar, raw potato snacks. Connor has more that a few electronic type toys. Toys that need batteries or plugged in. Toys that are changing the social fabric of society. Yet at my house he still loves to cut paper, open envelopes with a letter opener, pour liquid out of his very own pitcher, sharpen pencils, or play with boxes and button tins.

Change is inevitable, slowly or with lightening speed, change will happen. Just ask the past.

Quote: Heidegger

"Thinking does not bring knowledge as do the sciences.
Thinking does not produce usable practical wisdom.
Thinking does not solve the riddle of the universe.
Thinking does not endow us with the power to act.
We live because we are alive,
and we think because we are thinking beings"

Now I'm thinking where did the phrase "straight dope" originate from.