I may have run across the cause of the twisted relationship between Alpena Township and the city: their boundary line.

Have you ever looked at a map of the city? If you haven’t, you should.

Note especially the northern boundary, where the irregularity becomes pronounced. It’s so misshapen, people on either side can’t see their way forward. Is it any wonder they’re having trouble arriving at a smooth water/sewer flow?

Cooperative interaction is hard enough under ideal conditions, but when a couple small municipalities spend $2 million dollars of their residents’ money arguing with each other, you just know their relationship is not ideal. For too long, all along the boundary that divides them, there have been deficiencies in both orientation and balance.

In an earlier column, I described an inexpensive, locally available reorientation tool:

” If you have lost your bearings, your ability to determine north from south, east from west, left from right and no relief appears imminent from any quarter, get yourself to the center of town to City Hall to the old cannon enshrined on the lawn there. It’s a solution mounted on a carriage. The cannon has been a working reorientation tool since 1912.

“E.H. Furbush, teamster, set the cannon in a completely neutral position — dead solid perfect: 00 degrees, 00 minutes, 00 seconds due true north — not a degree, not a minute or a second of a degree to the left or to the right. Now, to obtain an accurate reorientation requires only you sight along the barrel of a cannon that can no longer fire.”

Clearly, here is an example of government working at its finest — quietly, efficiently, for the benefit of all.

What about balance? Balance requires achieving center. We’ll need the map.

Establishing center using the intersection of diagonal lines drawn from opposite corners is precluded here by the convoluted boundaries. I tried squaring them off, but the crossed diagonals put me in the middle of 7th Avenue.

So I closed my eyes and dropped a fingertip. This method indicated a spot adjacent to the new Blue Heron sculpture by the Chisholm Street bridge. I headed to that location, took a seat at a picnic table there.

Which makes the point that being centered doesn’t require you to be at the actual center of anything. In fact, recent observations by this observer indicate those who seek to always be the center of things seldom achieve centering. Furthermore, being the center of a Russian intelligence propaganda effort — as we conclusively were in the last election (Detroit News 4/18/19) and likely will be again — is a form of centering we need to avoid.

Here’s what my finger found.

The sun was shining, the river hurrying, the grass greening, trees and pussy willows budding, geese honking, birds chirping, traditional ducks ducking below the water’s surface, more progressive ones preening, their wings outstretched, drying.

The sculpture, “Departure of the Great Blue Herons” — uplifting.

Getting to center? I needed only pause for its awareness to catch up with me.

Let me leave you with one additional balancing/reorienting suggestion. When out and about seeking either or both, you may wish to pick up a finding aid kit recently made available: “The Best of Vignettes.” It’s a compilation of my columns that appeared in The Alpena News, primarily between 2015 and 2018.

Several guidance tools are included in each kit: Our Old Cannon, The Camp Tractor, #1 Kiln Room, Our River, The Train Whistle, Searching For Tony’s, Back in The First Grade, Deer Hunting’s Most Important Tool, A Presque Isle Hung Jury, Moving Through Time In Bolton, to name a few. There are 35 more in this 118-page collection.

Don’t need all that help? Could it provide guidance for a friend? A birthday gift, perhaps?

Copies can be purchased at The News office, 130 Park Place, Alpena, Mich., or by mail order from thealpenanews.com. The book is priced at $14.95. If you wish it mailed, add $3.50 for shipping.

I’m taking a break to spend time with my grandkids but will catch up with you again later this summer.

Have a great spring.

Doug Pugh’s “Vignettes” runs biweekly on Tuesdays. He can be reached at pughda@gmail.com.