From the years 1998 to 2008 engineers in Switzerland built the Large Hadron Collider – a structure created to allow physicists to test predictions relating to theories about particle physics and high-energy physics and whether or not the Higgs boson hypothesis is true or not.
Absolutely none of that interests me (perhaps it might if I knew what any of it meant). What does interest me, however, is that this huge laboratory (17 miles in circumference) was built below ground – 300 feet beneath homes, farms and other structures belonging to people just like you and me.
This prompted several immediate questions in my non-scientific mind:
What right had they to build something beneath someone else’s property? If a scientist wanted to build something beneath my house, even so far down, I’d not only want to know about it – I’d want to be part of the group of neighbors trying to stop it.
Because after all, we own our land all the way to the core of the earth, right? My husband said I’m not the only American to wonder about this, but evidently that’s not how Europeans feel about their land so rich in history. Perhaps they realize they’re temporary caretakers, whereas we young and brash Americans have different ideas about the depth of our freedom – and our ownership.
Prompting yet another question. What in the world did they do with all that displaced dirt? Which of course inspired the title of today’s blog post. So is there a new Alp in Switzerland? Is that what they did with all that dirt they removed from underneath those miles of other people’s property?
There is no real reason for this week’s topic, except that it seemed a fascinating discussion between my husband and I one day last week.
And now for those of you who remember me talking about the dress I couldn’t stop myself from buying for my daughter’s wedding. I’m pasting below several snapshots we took here at home. As you can see, the color looks a bit different depending on the light, which is part of the reason I was drawn to it in the first place. Isn’t it pretty? I only wish the photos could have captured the sparkle on the bolero the way the candlelight did at the reception!
The dress is beautiful, Maureen, as are you! I hope you had a wonderful celebration of your daughter's marriage. Congrats to all!
Thanks so much, Anne! It really was a great wedding – everyone raved about the food, which was spectacular. Lots of variety with different food stations like sushi and an Indian selection and fun stuff like little hamburgers, too. 29 different choices! It represented my daughter and new son-in-law so well with their eclectic tastes. 🙂 I'd share more pictures except the photographer hasn't offered them yet!
Yes to the dress!
And you are so right about European vs. American sensibilities. Once, after an earthquake hit Italy and damaged some medieval churches, I spoke of it in tones of horror to a friend from Italy. She shrugged. "We have so many old things." As if it were no loss at all!
Gorgeous dress. And no, I don't want the government digging under my house. Seems wrong.
Thanks for the comments on the dress!
And Carol, I totally agree with you about it just seems wrong to dig under anybody's house. Isn't it amazing that this wasn't a big deal over there?
Blythe – you're so right about the attitude of history over there. There's is so much longer than ours! When we were in Brugge, Belgium, we sat next to the "new" belfry. The old one had burned down in 1240 then rebuilt, and the new tower added in the 1400s. That's the way they talked about it, as if anything that old could be new – but at least they remember their history!
The dress is beautiful! In the states, we had Yucca Mountain, though it wasn't under anyone's house, it was so dangerous that they had people working on how to not only get toxic waste there secretly, but also working on how to identify it as dangerous to anyone without stating what it was. It was eventually scraped but I feel sure that they made a couple of new mountains digging it out.
I've heard of Yucca Mountain! It's amazing to me that our inquisitive our press would let a plan like that get by without more general knowledge revealed about it – that's their job, right? Perhaps they played a role in getting it scrapped!