The folks next door practice with sabers.
I scoffed at their frivolous labors
'til they saved me from grief
when surprised by a thief.
Good fencers, I learned, make good neighbors.
A letter to the editor in the Daily News on June 3 pilloried former Gov. Sarah Palin for saying, "Fences make for good neighbors."
"Nobody says that," wrote the letter writer, who used the quote to argue that author Joe McGinnis' best-known new girl next door is uneducated. The letter continued, "Robert Frost immortalized the line, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' "
Literary references in newspapers excite me. But a little clarification is in order.
Frost's "immortalized" line is not original with him. He was citing or paraphrasing a folk proverb already ancient by the time he penned his poem "Mending Wall." Before then -- and since -- it has remained a common truism expressed in many different iterations.
The proverb is now associated with "Mending Wall" (not always exactly as it appears therein) to such an extent that many think Frost came up with it. That misunderstanding aside, unless a speaker identifies the quote as Frost's, it can be stated correctly and intelligently in any format that makes sense.
In "Good Fences Make Good Neighbours: History and Significance of an Ambiguous Proverb," the 2002 Katharine Briggs Memorial Lecture (published in the journal Folklore, Aug. 2003 and linked to this story at adn.com/artsnob), Wolfgang Mieder of the University of Vermont presents exhaustive research on the roots of the saying, going back to Latin. ("Bonum est erigere dumos cum vicinis." -- "It is good to erect hedges with the neighbors.")
Mieder presents analogous versions in Spanish, German, Norwegian, Japanese and Hindi. As to the claim that Frost's variant is "a line most Americans can quote verbatim," I doubt that a majority of Americans even know who Robert Frost is or recite his poetry unless by accident; after all, he has not appeared on "Dancing with the Stars," having died in 1963.
Mieder chases down diverse twists on the saying from authors ranging from George Herbert (1640) to Benjamin Franklin (1754) to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1832). None of these literati used words identical to the sentence used by Frost; that precise sequence first appeared in a North Carolina almanac dated 1850. From this Mieder surmises: "Doubtless the proverb was in oral circulation during the first half of the nineteenth century."
To suggest that the poem made the phrase immortal exaggerates. Such a robust and enduring apothegm was hardly on life support when Frost flashed his poetic license and appropriated it in 1914.
It's also an exaggeration to insist that "nobody says" what Palin said. When I searched the Web for the exact phrase attributed to her almost 8 million matches popped up. So somebody says it. Lots of somebodies.
Speaking of somebodies, there are Anchorage folks who make jokes depicting out-of-town Alaskans as illiterate. But Anchorage has no best-selling authors living here, as best as I can determine.
Right now the Mat-Su Borough boasts three. Palin, McGinnis and -- according to tax records -- three-time Newbery Honor winner Gary Paulsen, who maintains a spread near Willow. Since Paulsen is also an Iditarod veteran with a lot of dogs, we suspect that he has some really good fences.
Trash talk
Interviewing photographer Pam Longobardi this week, I was reminded of my childhood in Togiak. The beach there was always littered with junk, tin cans, weathered fabric, rotten rope, broken glass, busted lumber, etc.
For some reason this only happened in front of the village. Turn right toward Platinum or left toward the slough and the garbage soon vanished.
Of course there were benefits to having an ocean at your door. The trash piled up over the winter, especially at the school.
Just before breakup, we hauled everything onto the shore ice and burned whatever would combust. Then the ice went out, taking the trash with it. Dust to dust, ashes to ocean, out of sight, out of mind -- until the waves tossed it back.
A few years ago I revisited Togiak and discovered a miracle had taken place. The gravel beach was clean and free of discarded waste. Not a gum wrapper in sight. It was a delight to stroll along the waterfront.
What happened to the old, junk yard beach? I asked a friend. Did the tidal forces shift after the 1964 earthquake? Did the community organize litter patrols? Was everyone living a packaging-free lifestyle? Was Togiak the recipient of mega-buck federal toxic waste cleanup funds?
No, he said. "We got a land fill. We don't leave the trash on the ice any more."
Some miracles are within our control.
Gormley gets graffiti
It had to happen sooner or later. Antony Gormley's big outdoor "Habitat" statue, installed on April 28 at Sixth Avenue and C Street has been welcomed to Anchorage by another artist.
By the end of May, the statue's west side -- on the right at about eye level if you're facing that direction -- was marked with a yellow-orange "siktz" followed by three small dots in a triangle.
Maybe the graffitist was trying to rename the statue "Sitsky," which sort of makes sense, but didn't know how to spell it.
Art never forgets
To finish as we began, another letter to the editor, published on June 9, said the Daily News contained not one mention of D-Day in our June 6 issue.
Yes it did, however briefly, in this column, on page E-2 of Sunday's Life & Arts section.
Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332
By MIKE DUNHAM
mdunham@adn.com