Member Contributions

This page shares images and text that members wish to share. The SWI has written permission for all postings. We have not included many of the things sent to us, simply due of lack of time.

MYSTERY FEATURE

Below is one of the most informative photos regarding the stone wall phenomenon that I have ever seen. Sent to me by Colin Harty who took the photo in December 2007.

"Linear landfill" of disposed tires along a property boundary in Middlesex, Vermont. The disposal stretches through the woods for hundreds of yards in the vicinity of what had been a vast auto junk yard, now cleaned up for a rough horse pasture. This is a 20th century stand-in for the early stone walls of New England during the pioneering stage, when the disposal of stone refuse was the dominant rationale for construction. In the historic case, a wooden fence along a property boundary (now decomposed) nucleated the dumping of stone. In the 20th century, a wire fence along a property boundary (now collapsed) nucleated the dumping of tires.

PHOTO

PHOTO BY Greg Swift, taken November 04, Guilford, CT. Note "bite" wherea tree likely fell over the wall and has since rotted away.

POEM

OF WALLS AND MEN

Contributed by Charles Churchill (...thanks).

Stark monuments to toil, the old stone walls

Convey uncertain words from ancient deeds

And by their very width of rock proclaim

The strength of man's eternal will to own

What he can never hope to hold for long.

Some great grandfather's younger eyes surveyed

This ponderous fruit of centuries that filled

His farm and he and others bent their backs

To lift, to place in balaqnce for a wall,

These scattered orphans from the glacier's womb.

You come across them deep in pines and oaks,

Mute sentinels that guard forgotten fields.

These solid links of hard necessity

Still seem a barrieir set against the world,

A rural handiwork of ancient gods.

PROSE

Writer on the Rocks: Moving the Impossible

By Linda Taatelbaum

About Time Press, Appleton, Maine, 1050 Guinea Ridge Road, Appleton, ME 04862 (207-785-4634)

The SWI does not review books. However, this nice personal tale of stonework was sent to the office. You may want to check it out.