Lines

This is sort of a vertical wide angle because I broke my best wide angle lens when I fell on it the other day. As I thought about this challenge today and looked through some of the other entries, it occurred to me that most of us seem to automatically assume that lines are straight, but there are lines everywhere. An art teacher of mine used to say that there are no such things as straight lines in nature and, in fact in our garden this is true. The steps up to our arbor  were put in by humans...

I've put a picture of another kind of lines in the extras. There are controversies in several forms being discussed about these lines as well as telephone and internet cables. 

After almost eight months, the California Fire Department has released its findings on the cause of our disastrous fires in October. As has been suspected from the beginning, Pacific Gas and Electric, our main provider of power, has been found negligent in maintaining their power lines and the growth around them. It is believed that a tree falling on a power line sparked the devastating Tubbs Fire which burned more than 5,000 houses to the ground. There will be lawsuits....

A further controversy is now being caused by the unsightliness of power lines as  it begins to dawn on people that all manner of things...cctv cameras, cell phone transmitters, sirens and transformers...are also covering many of these poles, and neither the city or homeowners much jurisdiction because they belong to PG&E. 

PG&E put up not one but four poles with huge boxes atop them on the frontage of a lot on the street behind us. We already have an AT&T cell phone tower 'disguised' as a tree at the bottom of the road, and Verizon is putting in a huge metal box and another pole just a few hundred feet away. Why does every television and cable provider have to put up a separate network? 

Some newer neighborhoods are putting all this unsightly and potentially dangerous equipment underground. It's undeniably expensive to do it retroactively, but a lot cheaper than rebuilding 5,000 houses.