PLSO The Oregon Surveor September/October 2021

6 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 44, No. 5 From the Publications Committee Leo Litowich, PLS PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE FROM THE FIELD NOTES I hope your passion for surveying extends to the next generation. It’s a pretty fun job that I think is worth perpetuating. I don’t think anyone like Upton Sinclair or Ralph Nader will be writing anything to put our profession out of existence. I ’m new here. I recently saw a joke on the internet: “How come everyone in front of me at the self checkout seems like they have never used it before, every time?” Pat Gaylord has left me in charge of a well-oiledmachine, and I’ll domy best to keep it producing all the viral content and listicles you have come to expect. (For those of you over a certain age, a listicle can be where you take a quiz to see what weight of plumb bob you should be using. You can join me in this space next month for “Seven Signs He Doesn’t Know How to Obtain a Lunar Azimuth.”) I hope the readership is surveying because they are passionate about it. I have been working in the profession full-time for a whopping five years. In that time, I have kept certainsurveysonmy corkboard. They are surveys which are the exception to the rule: surveys someone was not passion- ate about. One has a narrative that reads: “No angles were turned...the location of the corners I set in no way depends on… any angles I might have turned.” I checked, and that survey was dated on a Thursday, even though it sounds like it was done on aMon- day. The other onewas hand-drafted using a fountain pen and it looks like someone made a mistake that upset them enough to spike their pen, then realized that they were far enough along to finish and turn it in with a big fan of ink on it. I hope your passion for surveying extends to the next generation. It’s a pretty fun job that I think is worth perpetuating. I don’t think anyone like Upton Sinclair or Ralph Nader will be writing anything to put our profession out of existence. Could you imagine a 60 Minutes exposé titled, “Un- safe at any speed: pulling out the rag tape too fast?” We just all need to pinky-swear that we won’t tell anyone new to the pro - fession about blackberries until they are already hired. Technology has consolidated our business. I think you can find chainmen on the shelf right next to the buggy whips and rotary telephones. Since less of us are carrying the load in the workplace, it goes to fol- low that less of us are carrying the load at PLSO, which makes each of us more important than ever. As we continue ex- iting our pandemic hibernation, please make an extra effort to get involved at the chapter level, at least. Where does this magazine end up every couple of months? Is it a coaster, or do you pass it around the office? Is what we produce worth your time? I don’t have any preconceived notions about what we should be creating for our members, as long as I get to write a few jokes here and there. Maybe we’ll include a serialized, hard-boiled, detective story: “With his dy- ing breath, he told me the microfilmwas in a Oblique Mercator Low-Distortion Pro- jection. ‘But Chet, is it on the Coast, or on the Columbia?’ It was too late — he was dead.”Maybewe all get together andmake one issue for our waiting rooms with play- along games like a Highlights magazine. We’ll have a plat with no crow’s feet that you can guess which segments of a line are being annotated, a matching section with found monuments and record sur- veys, and maybe even a MadLib: “I [verb] Monuments A, B, and D. I found Monu- ment C [adjective] and one [part of body] out of position.” I chair the publication of your magazine. Let us knowwhat would serve you best. x