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Beginning the eleventh month -- 11/01/09 |
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Hmmm, the clock is ticking away for 2009. It seems strange to think that most of the year has already passed into history. Time flies, indeed it does. In amongst the various chores and tasks of the day (primarily grocery shopping), I stopped by Old Mountain Field, a South Kingstown town park in the village of Wakefield. (No, I do not know whence its name... there is no mountain anywhere near here, neither old nor new. In fact, there is no mountain anywhere in Rhode Island... the highest point in the state is Jerimoth Hill, a mere 812 feet above sea level.) But I digress... the reason I stopped there on my way to a supermarket was because the South Kingstown Parks & Recreation Department was sponsoring a pumpkin launch. They had arranged for a trebuchet to be set up in the park to launch pumpkins. See the trebuchet in the photo below...
I took some video and I will try to edit it into a watchable piece and put it on YouTube (or Vimeo or both) later this week. Right now I have homework to do for a course I am taking (and the same homework obligation will probably keep me from finding time on Monday or Tuesday night as well... especially Monday because Nancy and I are taking swim lessons on Mondays... yeah, we do keep busy) When I started to write this entry it was bothering me that I did not know the origin of the name Old Mountain Field. Almost fourteen years living in this town and I've never known why there is a park with that name (there is a hill behind it, but it probably only goes up fifty or sixty feet higher than the street in front of the park... and, besides which, everyone calls that Tower Hill not Old Mountain Hill). So I fired up Google... Heh! You know how people tell you that Wikipedia and similar sites are very handy for a quick look-up of something, but not to depend on its correctness or accuracy for any important purpose (such as for a citation in a term paper). I like to point out that a few years ago there seemed to be a popular game that involved updating biographical entries for living people to add a date of death. The game was to see how long it would take to be noticed and corrected. Well, apparently there are still clowns having fun editing entries. Here is the beginning of the Wikitravel entry for Wakefield, Rhode Island:
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