David Siskind | Sunday, 12 July 2026
Beams and Columns are in the news - The Pfizer building in midtown Manhattan was purchased by an enormous consortium of financial and real estate players. A historically large project is in progress to convert the office building into residences. Everywhere, on every construction project in NY, air rights are key. They intend to build upward on the existing structure. There’s a shit-ton of money involved but apparently not enough to do a proper survey, analysis and design and the original columns are buckling. There should also have been an independent review of the design. I’m not sure how this stuff happens. I suspect that it’s due to an underfunded public sector. You can’t blame the city for the greed of developers nor for all the see-through office space - they don’t seem to be able to get enough people to return to offices and sky-high housing prices are driving these conversions in NY and LA. But developers are the kings in big cities and there’s not much they do right - witness the Great American State Fair and the Reflecting Pool reno. And those shitty condos in Florida. I’m amazed they don’t all fall down. And now Trump is going after the columns in front of the White House, now tarped but I bet soon to be unveiled festooned with golden cherubs and other kitchy slop.
All the news I see about this describes the Pfizer problem as failing beams when they are clearly columns. Completely different function and mode of failure. And it got me thinking about something Paul said to me a year or three ago. I paraphrase, “try to minimize rod bend as you cast.” Could he really have said that? WTF did he mean? At the time I interpreted it as “use the rod as a lever, moving as a column under eccentric load.” I had been practicing a cast where I rotated a little early and pushed up and forward forming the loop. Loops were tight and progressed quickly. I’ve pretty much left that in the dust but maybe it’s time to pick it up again as a concept. As the fly-leg gets longer and the stroke increases in length and angular degree of rotation the angle between the fly-leg at release (when the loop forms) gets smaller, more acute. Feeling this is difficult when casting in the horizontal plane or in the 170 casts. I feel it the most in my closed stance-overhead backcasts. No matter how much I want to imagine the symmetry these strokes just work differently to and fro. Maxine McCormick said her backcast mantra is “Stab the elephant in the eye....” (I forget what comes next). The stab implies, to me anyway, a loaded column. I’m not sure there’s any advantage here. It may just be a “swing thought,” a label with minimal differences in physical outcomes. I don’t really know but here’s something grooved and disciplined about that stroke. For me a deeply bent rod asks a lot of my wrist. And here we’re back to heavy club training.
Due to my lack of personal discipline, I’ve been practicing with my lighter club against medical advice. I think it’s ok. Jackie said so. The interesting thing about clubs is the difficulty of holding them in any position but vertical. Once you start to move them around in the three basic moves - inside circle, outside circle and shield cast, energy husbandry is enforced. I can boss around a light five pound club a bit, but go up to ten and more efficient postures and limb movements are strongly reinforced. All in the service of throwing an object with force - against a load. I want to see my carry and distance improve before I give a full endorsement. Jackie left for NY so I’ll be back fishing next week. Full on training (for what?) the week after!
Maxine Stabbing an Elephant
Cheers,
David Siskind