Saturday, October 29, 2016

Stuck In The Middle

Just last month I was in Rugby, North Dakota, the geographical center of North America. If I had wanted to, I could have perched on one foot with my arms out and felt the slim tug of Florida to my southeast and the steady pull of the Yukon to my north and the delicate to-and-fro of Mexico and Greenland duking it out to a draw. I'd be able to sway to a position of perfect balance, assuming I didn't tip over for some other reason, but I would have, so I didn't.

There's a stone obelisk in the center of Rugby to mark the spot. It was erected in 1932 with the help of a Boy Scout troop, although not in its current location. Years later the highway was widened and the obelisk had to be walked across the street, and where were those Boy Scouts then?

All of which does shed a bit of doubt over the whole enterprise, because if the center of the continent can just be casually carted across the street, how accurate can it be? Well. It's not an easy thing to reckon. If North America was a nice geometrical shape, even I could come up with a center for it, eventually, given enough erasers. But it's not. It's squiggly as hell on the edges. And there are all those islandy numbers floating around, especially up north where there aren't enough people to keep tabs on them, and who knows how they're supposed to figure in the calculation? If there's one thing I do know, squiggly means that Calculus is going to be involved, and since Calculus was the last math course I took (twice), it was last in, first out.

Rumor has it that a mathematician did the calculation by cutting out a cardboard copy of North America and seeing where it balanced on the point of a pin, which is depressing, because that's exactly how I would have done it. I would have slaved over cutting the sucker out, with my tongue sticking out a little, but I would have expected more from a genuine mathematician.

Anyway, the result came out somewhere near Rugby, North Dakota, and some enterprising soul took out a trademark declaring Rugby the center of North America and planned the obelisk and prepared to rake in tourist dollars, because, no offense to beautiful North Dakota, there isn't a whole lot else  happening out there. Problem was, Rugby is merely close to the center, which is actually in a lake six miles west of Balta, but they didn't think to nab the trademark.

And now some guys hanging out in a tavern in nearby Robinson, North Dakota got to talking, and after five or six drinks they concluded that Robinson was a much better contender for the title, and someone checked it out, and discovered that Rugby's trademark had expired decades ago. And they thought about it a little more, and after ten or twelve drinks they decided that their actual tavern, Hanson's Bar, was really the most likely center of North America, by golly, and they ponied up $350 in cash to buy the trademark. So.

Which just goes to show that these days the truth isn't something immutable or sacred. It's something you can purchase. Just last week Donald Trump declared himself the center of the universe ("or even the solar system," he's said to have boasted), and he's willing to pay for the title, although if I were the Trademark Office I'd wait for the check to clear. I don't know. I'm no mathematician, but I'm willing to stick a big pin in him to make sure.

21 comments:

  1. There's only one way to solve this, Murr: YOU must cut out a cardboard copy of North America and balance it on the point of a pin. For all we know, it may not even be in North Dakota, let alone in Rugby. It obviously involves Higher Math, as it took a mathematician to come up with this way of finding it, but I'm sure that you are up to the challenge!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeahbut...no sooner will I get it all cut out than half of Florida will be gone from sea rising, and...so many questions.

      Delete
  2. I'm liking the idea of a big pin being stuck into DT, perhaps he'd deflate like a big balloon?
    Did you drop in last Tuesday (my Tuesday) to see the cartoon I put up for you?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm heading right over! Shoot! And hey--if you get Tuesday before I do, could you tell me who won the World Series?

      Delete
    2. And ruin your anticipation? No way Jose, besides, I don't watch sports. I don't know if we get the World Series here, but it would likely be on very late at night or in the very early am hours.

      Delete
    3. Nevertheless, if you could get a scoop on us, you could make some BIG BUCKS.

      Delete
  3. Or bury him under a pile of rocks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Beer, lots of beer must have been necessary for all this calculation. I now have this place on my bucket list, why I do not know. The problem with DT is that he is the center of his own mind. Oh, and I figured out my linkback avatar thing...I think.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you have it on your bucket list, you might have had too much beer.

      Delete
  5. I am pretty certain that I would have cut off whole states while doing the tongue-sticking out cutting exercise.
    I am glad someone did, and sad that it isn't final. All that work should be respected.
    A pin in DT? A pitchfork would suit me better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Something tells me it's about to be boom times for the pitchfork industry.

      Delete
  6. If this post were a Yukon stream, we wouldn't have to pan for gold nuggets -- we'd have to work to miss seeing them. So many good lines! And an excellent conclusion, too ...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Man, lookit you gettin' all metaphory on our asses!

      Delete
  7. I happen to love Robinson ND's main street more than any other main street I know. The thought that you have stood on it and looked east and west, seeing only prairie and pothole to either end, thrills my heart. But have you stopped in the cafe and had Carol's rhubarb pie? This is what I need to know, Murrbaby. xoxo jz ps the "Sign Out" button, right where the Publish button ought to be, got me again. Signed myself out of Google, lost my comment...had to sleep on it and write it again. I'm back.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You gots stamina! I apologize to one and all for my antique template. I'm sure it causes all sorts of problems but I don't like to mess with things that sort of work for me. Carol's rhubarb pie? No. I was in a terrific cafe in Rugby but I never went to Robinson. Now I need to go back.

      Delete
  8. In some ways you remind me of Diogenes, out there with a lantern. You may be looking for a quality not present, m'dear. But, As a fourth gen Oregonion I bestow upon you full Oregonionship, with all rights and etc, etc...
    For verification stand anywhere on Charnelton Ave. in Eugene and direct traffic, or go to Charnel Mulligan park, and take peoples lunches.
    Cheers,
    Mike

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm hunkering down for the winter--can I just get my cousin Jerry to do the Eugene thing, since he's there? And thanks for the honor!

      Delete
  9. Murr, with due regard for Rugby, ND, according to the USGS and the National Geographic Service the center of the 50 states is 20 miles north of Belle Fourche, South Dakota, latitude 44 58 02.07622 (N) and longitude 103 46 17.60283 (W).
    https://www.geolounge.com/what-is-the-geographic-center-of-the-united-states/

    I can't imagine living in a place called Beautiful Fork, but the presence of the plaque marking the center of the US may make up for the residents' chronic embarrassment.

    Btw, I belong to Ditty Nicolaides, who sent me your blog address. Are you named after the bird, the river in Germany or Bill Murray's nickname?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'd feel so much calmer about life if I belonged to Ditty! My name is Mary, pronounced in Slovenly. It slid to Murry, and then to Murr, and when I moved from New England to Oregon I began introducing myself that way, because it was different. I didn't know about the bird at the time or I would've stuck an E on it. My birder friends already do. Interestingly enough, my mother-in-law was a Mary who was called Murry by her friends.

      Delete