Take Me Back to the Black Hills

Even if you, like me, have never been to South Dakota, an image will immediately spring to mind when I mention Mount Rushmore (which I just did) (look, left a bit).

We are all familiar with the image of the giant heads of the four former Presidents carved into the side of the mountain, otherwise known as the Mount Rushmore National Memorial. You might also be able to guess that two of the Presidents represented are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, although the other two are likely to prove more tricky, so I'll give you a hand - Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.

Just a little joke - a first, I accept, for this site - Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.

What you might not know, however, is that just 17 miles southwest of Mount Rushmore is another mountain-carving project so huge and ambitious that it will make the National Monument look like four blokes at a bus stop.

The Crazy Horse Memorial, depicting the revered Native American leader on his horse, will, when completed, be a massive 563 feet high (almost twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, including the pedestal) and 641 feet long. This will make it by far the largest sculpture or work of art on earth, a crown currently claimed by Mount Rushmore, where the heads of the four Presidents are each 60 feet high. Although Crazy Horse's head is 87 feet high, nothing beyond his head is finished, and that's where the story starts to get interesting.

Back in 1939, Korczak Ziolkowski, a Boston-born sculptor of Polish descent, who had been working as an assistant to Gutzon Borglum, the creator of Mount Rushmore, was invited to work on Crazy Horse. He evenutally began work at the site in 1948 and worked on it constantly for the next 35 years, always refusing to take a salary, until his death in 1982 at the age of 74. During that period, he also found time to get married and raise 10 children.

On Ziolowski's death, his family continued to work on the project. Crazy Horse's completed head was finally unveiled in 1998, at a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the project. Progress has been painfully slow and often dangerous, but the protagonists insist that they will continue working as quickly as funds and conditions will allow, until the memorial is finished. They decline to put a date on when that might be. For those familiar with the principles of project management, this is not so much a critical path as a yellow brick road.

I strongly recommend the official memorial website - www.crazyhorse.org - which has to be seen to be believed. Have a look at "The Story of Crazy Horse Memorial" to see recent progress and a painting of the vision for the finished article.

The penultimate word should go to Henry Standing Bear who said, in explaining the vision for the memorial in 1939, "My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes too".

Which leaves just one question: have they remembered to leave room for Neil Young?

The Tentacles of Doom

Have you noticed how many organisations there are with the name "[blank] Solutions"? Not "Blank Solutions", but "[---] Solutions". I think you know what I mean.

In which case, have you ever wondered whether there are enough problems to go round? Don't get me wrong, I know there are a lot of problems in the world, but I was starting to worry that they were in danger of being outnumbered by the exponential growth in the number of experts and consultants who could sort them out for us.

Until I arrived in America, that is. Over here, they know a thing or two about how to keep the problem plates spinning.

For example, how did we ever survive with "Urine Gone" (urinegone.com)? Currently heavily advertised on TV here, this essential new invention is billed as a "stain and odor eliminator - for pet or people accidents". Now there's a pleasant thought. "But" I hear you ask, albeit rhetorically, "how will I be able to find all that stray urine sloshing around my house"? A good question. But never fear, the good people at Urine Gone are ahead of you. Because, included in the very reasonable price of $19.99 (not including shipping & handling), is a "stain detector black light". So, rather like a detective taking fingerprints, you can turn out the light in the soiled room and use your black light to track down the offending puddle. Then, when the puddle least suspects it, you pull the trigger on your ergonomic-grip bottle of UG and the urine is completely, well, gone.

If that example is a little grubby and domestic for your tastes, which would be understandable, perhaps the product for you is the Roll Up Piano (inventionchannel.com). This, believe it or not, is a 37 key electric piano, with built-in speaker, which can be rolled up and carried under your arm, so you can "play piano anywhere!". The website warns sternly that "other roll up pianos can sell for as much as $250". Which other roll up pianos? I think it's safe to assume that this market is not exactly overcrowded.

But my current favourite solution to a non-existent problem is the astounding Doggy Steps (doggysteps.com). "Does your pet have difficulty climbing up to his favorite spot? The solution is Doggy Steps. Doggy Steps gives your pet freedom from the floor - and more companionship than ever before!"

Now, I don't for a minute want to be considered callous, or indifferent to the problems faced by the smaller or overweight canine. But, without returning in any detail to my favo(u)rite topic of the moment (see my messages of 25 November and 26 December), I like to think that, when God invented the evolution of species, He knew what He was doing. So, for example, giraffes are not 20 feet tall so we can gawp at them in the zoo, but because they happen to live in a place where the only vegetation worth eating is 20 feet off the ground. Extending the same rather basic principle, if little, fat dogs needed access to lofty locations, they wouldn't be little and fat, would they?

Problem solved.

Another Annus Horribilis

At this time of year, nothing fills one with dread like the arrival of a round-robin family newsletter. (If this statement doesn't apply to you, look away now.)

The various evils of these cheese-laden reviews of the family year are well documented and I don't intend to dwell on them all. But, just so we're on the same page, as they like to say here, I suggest that the two leading evils of round-robins are that they are (i) pointless; & (ii) designed to leave the reader feeling inferior.

They are pointless because the information they offer is either (a) important (births, deaths, new jobs, etc), in which case family and friends already know it, or (b) inconsequential (eg Veronica's grade 3 nose-flute exam), in which case they don't want to know it. Authors of round robins who are still with us please note - your family and friends love you very much, but this does not necessarily mean that they feel the need to know all the details of little Derek's post-modern reinterpretation of Bottom in St Kevin's end-of-term A Midsummer Night's Dream. Sorry.

But perhaps the greater evil of these upbeat summaries of blissful family life and "quality time" is their ability to leave the average reader feeling that his or her disfunctional and/or frustrated existence is somehow inadequate, rather than simply normal. And so, in an effort to redress this balance as we start a new year, The Referee would like to offer you an honest but heavily-edited review of his key failings and ongoing inadequacies during 2005:

1. For the second consecutive year (as far as I can remember), 2005 saw at least one day in which I bought the same newspaper twice on the same day, having forgotten I had bought it the first time.

2. My son's football team (see my message of 21 November) lost every game last season, with the exception of a 1-1 draw, thus ending the season with a solitary point.

3. For the ninth consecutive year, 2005 saw very few days on which I didn't lose patience with my children, and thus get into trouble with my wife, who is a much more patient and composed parent than I am.

4. Last year was also the third, or possibly fourth, year in which I have failed to meet one of my nieces for the first time. This is probably unforgivable. I used to live 300 miles from her and now live 3,000 miles away, so the situation is hardly improving.

5. Last year was yet another in a long line in which the large majority of birthday cards sent by me included the word "belated" and sent wishes in the past tense.

6. In the autumn/fall of 2005, on the way home from a work weekend away, I got lost trying to navigate to my own house, thus delaying a bus full of colleagues, most of whom consequently arrived at their own homes after 1am. This is true. As are all the others. And these are just the edited lowlights.

I hope you feel better now. I know I do.

Happy New Year's. (New Year's what?)