Language

Had an interesting meeting yesterday. Met with a group of folks who actually have to administer the rules and regulations that urban planners write. Interesting.

When we use the term "front yard," for example, what does that mean?" If we say someone can't park a travel trailer in the front yard, what does it mean? What if they have a large estate and it's 200 feet from the front property line to the front facade of the house, does it mean they can't park a trailer 150 feet back?

Things like this make my wrinkles disappear and my gray hair turn brown again, or something like that.

English is a pretty concise language at times. I remember reading a science-fiction novel, A Canticle for Liebowitz when in my teens. A character who had grown up speaking and reading Latin had trouble, for example, understand why, in our English tongue, the term "house cat" didn't have the same meaning when the words were reversed, as it would in Latin.

The meeting included what my old legal mentor Argumento de Minimus, the Harvard-bred lawyer, calls "say a man" questions.  He says lawyers get them a lot as in, "Say a man (not me of course) was to … ." We, urban planners, get them as in, "I know you can't run a manufacturing business in a residential neighborhood, but, say a man was to makes cutting boards in his garage woodworking shop, maybe once or twice a year, and give them away as holiday gifts, but may ever once't in a while sell one at cost, mind you, for a friend to give away as a gift, and, maybe park a truck in his driveway with the name of his shop on it and … ."

Oh well. It turned out to be an edifying meeting, seeing things from different eyes. Maybe we all ought to try that at times.