Fencing

We put in a fence this weekend. And when I say "we put in a fence this weekend" I mean, some dudes we paid a bunch of money to put in a fence last Friday. As a public intellectual (self-proclaimed) I frown on someone who would embark on a project like building a fence when they could be spending quality time thinking liberal thoughts and pushing social democracy and the like. This despite the fact that I read in Harper's (a classic sort of text for a public intellectual) that we don't value kinesthetic learning enough and that people show measurably more satisfaction at something they have built than in something they have read or written. Ergo; as a public intellectual I should be out working on fixing our failing infrastructure. I jest of course, all government spending is evil and shouldn't be done, we don't need things like roads, better trains or schools because we'll all be filthy rich!!!

The point is that we now have a fence and have engendered a great deal of support from our neighbors.

Exhibit a) As the fence was going up and our neighbor walked outside she wanted to make sure that we knew that DC had a maximum allowable fence height of seven feet. This was largely due to the fact that the posts are put in first and they are ten high. Thus, it made it look as though we were building some sort of urban fortress. Anyhow, S let her know that we weren't building a fortress to allay her fears.

Exhibit b) A wadded up ball of tin foil tossed into our backyard after the fence was completed. Why? Because apparently people feel that a fence provides nice security from someone knowing who is tossing trash into the yard.

Exhibit c) A letter from our neighbor claiming that we had bent their fence (we actually removed a portion of the chain link fence between our yards and replaced it with a much nicer looking wooden one) and piled up a bunch of dirt making their gate unusable. A great point, except that it was the city, in the process of paving our alley, who raised the level of the dirt outside of all our back gates making them obsolete in terms of opening out into the back. This entire dialog left me feeling nothing short of thrilled I can tell you. And I look forward to blogging tomorrow, in my preferred method, because the internet is for ranting.