Thursday, April 26, 2007

In the news

From the Tonawanda News [Click here for the article]

"By Jake PalmateerThe Daily Star (Oneonta, N.Y.)
MARGARETVILLE, N.Y. — Doug Brady Sr. and Jr. were among two dozen local residents who took up a perch on a hillside rock pile Wednesday along the side of county Route 38.Roughly 400 yards away, across a valley, a two-story yellow house was surrounded by state police vehicles...."

Sounds like a pretty large rock pile. Anyone live nearby with a camera?

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From the New Haven Register [Click here for the article]

"GUILFORD — An upscale shopping center slated for the Rock Pile property near Interstate 95 was voted down Wednesday night in a marathon meeting of the Inland Wetlands Commission.
Commissioners voted 4-3 to reject a motion that would have granted Diversified Development Realty permission to build near wetlands and watercourses, as well as install a sewage treatment and discharge system...."

Here the comment is: sounds like no-one even noticed there were rock piles involved. I am just guessing from the name of the property.

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From the Providence Journal - but behind their firewall, I was only able to read a snippet online:

"The simplest thing would be to just pile them up, ideally on a big rock that would have been difficult to move. Those settlers who were careful would have ..."

Here the comment is that it sounds like someone is theorizing about what would be "ideal". An authority? Wish I could read the article.

4 comments :

JimP said...

The Pro-Jo article you quote is from a letter to the editor in response to the April 15th Nipsachuk article titled, "Stones left unturned." The writer, a Pete Carlson from Foster, dismisses rock piles as nothing but farmers clearing the land.

He cites Parker-Woodland cairns as some that, "have been examined quite thoroughly with no conclusive explanation as to their purpose."

Of course, anyone who has ever spent any time actually examining the cairns at Parker Woodland would fully understand that their purpose was most certainly not related in any way to field-clearing.

The writer simply doesn't know what he's talking about. Sad.

pwax said...

"Sad" is exactly the word that came to my mind also. Here is someone who is a sloppy observer with no imagination. To be fair, the problem is perhaps that Mr. Carlson has not seen enough sites. Here are facts which he does not comprise. Sometimes rock piles are:
- well made
- from sorted rocks
- within larger patterns of piles
- at prominent locations on hills and by water.

Take your pick, any of that implies a design effort inconsistent with simply getting rid of rocks.

pwax said...

It is especially true when the piles are at the top of a hill or in the middle of a wetland.

Geophile said...

I'll be up near Maragaretville in June. That whole area up there around the Catskills is full of rock piles! "The place where the stones are gathered together."