Complex Numbers

Revisited: "60 More Years!"

For anyone coming in new here, I like to highlight random past blog entries on Sundays. Why Sundays? Well, why not? I like to talk about how things, their context, my opinions, etc. have changed since I wrote the original entries.

Today's comes from a very long time ago indeed: June 3, 2008. "60 More Years!"  For context, as the entry notes, we here in the US were in the middle of the chaos of an election year.

I don't talk about politics much in here. I used to mention it more, in that time period, but at least I wasn't overtly taking sides in that entry.

Me: In other words, five more months of whose hair is better-groomed and which candidate's grandmother or great-grandmother was a flapper during the Roaring Twenties, because, of course, that makes a huge difference in who should be president.

Turns out that my grandmother, who was around 30 years old at the time, was a flapper during the Roaring Twenties. I don't remember if I discovered this fun fact before or after I wrote that blog entry.

But enough about politics. Let's take a closer look at one of those flyover states: South Dakota, land of... land of... um. What the hell is in South Dakota?

At the time, I'd never set foot in South Dakota. Between then and now, I've visited maybe three times? I don't mean "drove through," though I did, but I also sightsaw. Last time, I was stranded there for three days, but I covered that fun incident when it happened in 2021. However, during none of my trips have I visited the main subject of that 2008 entry. Not yet.

Ah, yes. The Crazy Horse Memorial which, as it happens, was begun sixty years ago today

I question my grammatical choices at the time, but whatever. From math, I deduce that the onset of construction of the memorial was over 75 years ago now.

There follows a raw link which, not surprisingly for a 15-year-old link on the internet, is well and thoroughly broken. Apparently, it was a retrospective on the 60th anniversary of the monument's official beginning. If you're not familiar with this enormous project, here's the Wikipedia link.  

There's not much else to the blog entry, but I will say this: upon re-reading this today, it was too easy to interpret the last lines as a tribute to General Custer. While it's difficult to remember much about something I wrote a decade and a half ago, I'm certain that wasn't my intention. I should have phrased that better.

I'm tentatively planning another one of my cross-country road trips for the end of the month and on into December. Maybe, if the weather works in my favor, I'll pay a visit to the Crazy Horse Memorial.