Presidents' Day News Flash: Mount Rushmore is Mother Nature's Masterpiece

Ian was doing his homework tonight and, because today is "Presidents' Day" (even though it's not a holiday in our state), his Math homework was a puzzle which, for the diligent mathematician-and-colorer - yieleded the likeness of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Specifically, the assignment was a color-by-numbers exercise, where you do all the math problems, each set in its own little puzzle piece, and then color the pieces with odd totals red, color the pieces with even totals blue, and then write about the profiles that this complicated process turns up. Sure enough, the coloring showed a profile of Washington and Lincoln, and the final exercise was to write a fact about each president on the back of the paper.

Lincoln was a no-brainer: He "helped with no slavery".

But with Washington, Ian had to think a bit more. Suddenly he saw the light: Washington's profile is on Mount Rushmore.

But Daniel quickly pointed out that "he is - but he was carved from water" - or something to that effect. I think what he meant was that Washington's stately profile emerged on the cliffs of mighty Rushmore through a natural profess of erosion, much like the "man in the mountain," of fond memory, much closer to home.

Ian was surprised to hear this. So was I.

(February 20, 2012)