Advance planning

[besilarius]

Gregory Bateson's (currently being recycled by Wes Jackson): "New College, Oxford, is of rather late foundation, hence the name. It was probably founded around the late 16th century. It has, like other colleges, a great dining hall with big oak beams across the top. These might be eighteen inched square, and twenty feet long.

"Some five to ten years ago, so I am told, a busy entomologist went up into the roof of the dining hall with a penknife and poked at the beams, and found that they were full of beetles. This was reported to the College Council, who met in some dismay, because where would they get beams of that caliber nowadays?

"One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might be on College lands some oak. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land scattered across the country. So they called the College Forester, who of course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked him about oaks.

"And he pulled his forelock and said, "Well sirs, we was wondering when you'd be askin'."

"Upon further inquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for four hundred years. "You don't cut them oaks. Them's for the College Hall."

"A nice story. That's the way to run a culture."

[LongBlade]

Sheesh. Would that our leaders could plan 40 years ahead rather than two or four.

[LongBlade]

Myth confirmed: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-oxford