Dave on Dan on Dams

Dave on Dan on Dams

by David Evans on Saturday, October 30, 2010 at 10:19pm

Dan Rodricks is a Baltimore Sun columnists ans television personality and is a nice guy. As some may know, I seem to like to tell people stuff and often come across as some kind of a blow bag. But this never stopped me before. So after he posted this to his Facebook:

I Googled for a poem about a dam, and found none, none of any quality or meaning, none that has remained on lips. So the good poem about the dam -- about dams and water and power and wonder -- has yet to be written, and it will be written.

I commented with this:

Sometimes I think you dream too much Dan. And that is good; dreams are what make the world go round and even forward.

It is awesome to behold a high damn gushing at full power spraying its foot with a perpetual mist that bathes the lower reaches of the river in a sun reflected fog.

If you have seen such a sight you are indeed lucky.

It is almost as magnificent as the cloud that arises from the singularity of a hydrogen bomb blast. What can compare with such a powerful sight? I am sure the big bang which spawned everything in existence including your intelligence and my intelligence dwarfs them all. But most all grand expressions, both man made and natural come with a cost, the beautiful atomic column swirling round and round under its ever expanding top of hot gasses are indeed beautiful to behold as an expression of the almighty power of man over nature. Even if your dam fits this definition, both come with a cost. We all know what the cost of the former is, what is the cost of the later?

In many places the cost is the expulsion of the native human population. And almost always the cost is the mass killing of the natural living population, and the disappearance forever of prior natural beauty.

I do not condemn atomic and hydro power out of hand. In these catastrophic times they may be the better alternatives.

Dan, you are a good writer. I am sure you could do verse, if you have not already tried. Kick the dam idea around and see what comes into your mind. You have the rest of your life to do it.

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