The
April 17, 2013
Countryy Editor Just good reading
Welcome to the premier edition of ‘The Country Editor’ — a weekly paper filled with interesting, entertaining stories and family fun. Enjoy!
In the Grow: Question & Answer ~ Page 9
Volume 1 Number 1
South Dartmouth farm helps animals with special needs ~ Page 13
A monumental job by Kelly Gates When Blaine Kortemeyer was offered his current job 12 years ago, he had no idea the position would eventually require him to repel down the face of former presidents, monitor sophisticated string gauge and fiber optic equipment, and use geometry to teach students about art. But as Assistant Chief of Interpretation for the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Rapid City, SD Kortemeyer does all of these things — and more. “I am part of a group that delivers educational and interpretive programs to visitors throughout the property. But I am also one of the founding members of a preservation team here at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial that routinely ascends the mountain and repels down the façade of the sculpture to check for flaws and cracks,” Kortemeyer told Country Editor. “We also check the status of monitoring equipment that helps us track any changes in the rock blocks
that make up the monument.” The individual rock blocks in the sculpture were singled out thanks to the use of a 3-dimensional photogeometric picture taking technology used on Mount Rushmore in the 1990s. Photogeometric contractors were hired to take photos of the sculpture from many different angles, merging them into a single “granite outcropping” photograph that enabled them to deduce that the entire structure is made up of 22 separate rock blocks. This sophisticated process was then one-upped with an even more complex laser-scanning project in 2010, a job completed by an organization called Cyark. “Cyark is a heritage preservation organization that travels around the world laser scanning heritage assets like Mount Rushmore,” Kortemeyer explained. “They shoot millions of lasers onto an object and the information registers as a mathematical equation that is decoded using a computer,
Members of the preservation team lower the tripod with scanner (laser camera) on to the face of President Roosevelt.
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creating a single, high definition image.” The laser-scanning established a baseline image of Mount Rushmore. In the future, the preservation team hopes to have additional laser scans completed to reveal any variance in
the sculpture that might need to be corrected in order to keep it looking the same. In the meantime, the ‘strike’ and ‘dip’ of each crack and crevice in Mount Rushmore is being monitored using a series of string gauges that are stretched across the cracks. The strings are outfitted with metal Job page 2
Preservation team member and Park Ranger Duane Grego on the side of President Lincoln's nose, above him is preservation team member and Maintenance Mechanic Jim Manwell attaching fiber optic line to the sculpture.
Odors speak volumes to insects by Tom Turpin, Professor of Entomology, Purdue University Animals learn about the environment through their senses. These are touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing. The relative importance of each sense varies among animal species. Which of the five basic senses is most important to the human animal is up for debate.
If I had to vote, I would opt for sight. After all, without sight we couldn’t do all of the purely human things, such as watch TV, stargaze, drive a car, peruse old photo albums or read a newspaper. In the early 1900s, a newspaper editor named Arthur Brisbane wrote, “a picture speaks a thousand words.” No doubt Brisbane was referring
to the printed word in the newspaper, not the spoken word. Nonetheless, the comment underscores the role of sight in human lives. Unlike humans, insects can’t use the printed word to communicate. But both humans and insects can use sound to send messages.
Odors page 3