JULY 9, 2019 – In the grand scheme of human affairs, we’re deep into three colossal screw-ups: (a) devastation of the environment; (b) nuclear weapons; and (c) failure to address drug-resistant killer microbes and the next pandemic. If the sheer magnitude and complexity of those problems anesthetizes your brain so you no longer worry about them, go one level down. Read today’s (or yesterday’s or tomorrow’s) edition of The New York Times.
Or just show up for work, school, what have you; or call Comcast when your household internet connection isn’t working. Human dysfunctionality, alive and thriving, is all around us.
Thus, we must marvel at how much of the work of humankind actually works—some of it exceptionally well. Take for example, countless great artists who can perform perfectly a Mozart piano concerto composed perfectly; or more to the point, consider that globally every single day, well over 100,000 commercial aircraft take off from a “Point A” and land—land—at a “Point B.”
But of the many wonder works of humankind, there is one that I ponder every morning when I alight from my bus in downtown Minneapolis. Minneapolis, mind you, isn’t New York City, Chicago, L.A., or San Francisco. Nevertheless, it does have numerous tall buildings, and more are added every few months. What amazes me about all these buildings—every single one of them, in fact—is that they are absolutely plumb.
I know this, because one day several months ago . . .
I was strolling down the street during lunchtime with my brainiac friend, Steve, who shares many of my quirky, nerdy interests. As we waited for a corner traffic signal to change, I looked ahead, closed one eye, and lined up the outer edge of one office building a block away with the outer edge of another office building a block beyond the first building. I moved slightly so that the two edges “touched.”
“Steve,” I said. “Look how those buildings are perfectly plumb. Just line them up with each other and you can see.”
Squinting with one eye, Steve checked my assertion . . . and verified it. “That is amazing,” he said. “Think we can find any building that is not plumb?” Together we conducted a wide-ranging visual survey of all the buildings in the central business district. Ultimately we were surprised that we should be surprised to find that every damn one of them was as right plumb as plumb could be.
Lest I get too carried away with excitement over the plumbness of 30- , 40- , and 50- story buildings in downtown Minneapolis, I’ll acknowledge that damn near all the plate glass blew out of the John Hancock Building in Boston, and that the Millennium Tower in San Francisco is still sinking and leaning—definitely not plumb. But given the number of large commercial buildings all across this country, it’s downright miraculous that the vast majority of them stand tall and intact—and plumb.
Oh yeah of little faith—we manage to get some big things very right! Er . . . plumb!
© 2019 Eric Nilsson
