Re: [lace-chat] Fiction books

[Martha Krieg]

Too true, blocks do vary in size. The block I live on has four houses 
on my side of it, each with a lot about 50 feet wide. That's the east 
side of the block. But it's an unusual block, because it's part of a 
sort of pie-wedge. One house south of me there's a "court", a short 
dead-end street with about four houses down the side, then a couple 
across the end. After the court, there's a curve, and some more 
houses. Across the west side, there are enough houses to cover the 
street from the end of the curved portion to the beginning of the 
straight street on the north of the block. Then the north side has 
maybe six or eight houses...

        .................
        .               .
        .               .
        .      ..       .
        .      ..       .
         .     ..       .
          .    ..       .
           .   ..       .
            .  ..       .
              ... . .....
Looking at a map of Ann Arbor, MI, some of the blocks are about .33 
miles around - but few of them are square. A lot depends on how the 
land was platted when the town was laid out. The grid in central Ann 
Arbor seems to be about 1/3 longer on the N/S axis than on the E/W 
axis. In downtown areas, the blocks tend to be smaller, because there 
are more cross streets. Out in the suburbs, they may be quite a lot 
longer. In Michigan (in newer suburbs where there are no back alleys 
between the back yards (back gardens) as is customary, say, in 
Dallas), the depth of the block depends on the depth of two lots back 
to back...which varies a great deal. The length of the block can be 
anything, depending on how many cross streets they decide to put in.

One thing you could do to get a clue is use mapquest.com and put in 
the name of a city and state (and ZIP/postal code if you have it--Ann 
Arbor has several ZIPs, one of which is 48103) that you happen to 
know, and keep zooming in until you can see all the cross streets. If 
you've gotten mail from a particular Arachnean, you could enter the 
street address, and see everything. One of those mapping things even 
has the option of an aerial photograph of the area (which can be 
helpful, in cases when the map reflects what was planned rather than 
what was built...I spent quite a while one night searching for a 
place where both maps I had showed a street connecting which 
didn't!!!)

Having been told not to sit for any length of time on an upright chair for
the first six weeks after me knee op to cut down on the risk of DVT, I
haven't been doing any lacemaking - it's not very easy in a recliner chair.
So I've been reading (6 books in 6 weeks). I finally got around to the
Monica Ferris books, and I'm currently half way through book 3, "A Stitch in
Time". I think I've asked this question before, but I can't remember the
answer - how far is a block? When you're used to distances in yards,
fractions of miles and miles, '3 blocks' gives no impression of how far
someone has walked or driven. The distance covered when "Taking the dog for
a walk round the block" (an area of ground covered with buildings that has a
road or path running around it) could vary from say 100 yards to a mile or
more depending on how big the 'block' of buildings is.
Jean in Poole

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Martha Krieg   [EMAIL PROTECTED]  in Michigan
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