This is crazy. Mike fails to answer the pending questions and instead gives us a list of his beliefs and we start over again at square one? We have covered all this ground before!
I'm hopeful as well that my post above includes my responses to David's questions about the site. If there is anything I missed, please let me know and I'll try to give my best shot.
You haven't even begun to address my questions or analysis. For example, on multiple occasions I have set out for you a list of specific reasons why
the site described in the October articles is NOT the site described as the site "near the canal" in Scotland's Gift. I have repeatedly asked you to address each of my points, but despite repeated promises to do so and week after week supposedly considering my points, you have not even begun to address these points. There are other questions you ignored, but let's start there.
Rather than addressing my points, what you have again set out a series of a series paragraphs setting out "what [you] think happened." Such an exercise can be useful to the extent it helps you clarify your position to yourself and others, so thanks for that. That said, your list of beliefs doesn't really advance the conversation. Rather it seems to have reset the scoreboard and sent us back to go over everything again.
Meanwhile, the real issue here is whether or not your beliefs are actually reasonable interpretations of the totality of the source material, and whether they are the best interpretation. In my opinion there is no reason to get to the latter because in my opinion
your beliefs are unreasonable..
For example, for the reasons I have repeatedly provided, I think it is unreasonable for you to believe that your mystery site was actually the Canal site described in Scotland's Gift.
Will you please address each of my reasons and explain the reasonableness of your position given each of these reasons?Likewise, your interpretation of the land described in the October articles is unreasonable. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that if you can somehow jury-rig your mystery site to sort of fit with the description in the articles then the articles must have been referring to something other than the site CBM was considering on and under Sebonac Neck. You cannot. While you may refuse to accept it, the description fits the site CBM was considering on and under Sebonac Neck, and this would be so even if the site you keep manipulating also fit (it doesn't.) You wrote:
By contrast, do you think that the land of the existing NGLA golf course in any way had the 1906 Shinnecock GC adjoining to the east, skirted the Long Island Rail Tracks to the south, or has its most westerly point the inlet between Good Ground and Shinnecock Station?
This is the sort of cherry-picking and manipulation of the facts that leads to the use of the dreaded "D" word. You conveniently forgot the part about how the land stretched along Peconic Bay. And your focus on the other aspects of the description is hardly reasonable and objective. Let's go through the description once again . . .
1. The land stretched along Peconic Bay.
- Your various proposed sites do not stretch along Peconic Bay.
- The Sebonac Neck property obviously stretches along Peconic Bay.
2. The land "skirted" the RR to the South.
- This could mean either that the land was next to the RR or that it it was near the RR, but not next to it.
- Your various proposed sites are all either further away from the RR or not appreciably closer to the RR than the actual site.
3. The land adjoined Shinnecock Hills Golf Course to the east.
- I've produced source material indicating that by this point SHGC owned land to the east of a portion of the land currently occupied by NGLA. (Additionally the land being considered may have even extended further south.)
- While you have proclaimed this source material inaccurate, you have never produced anything supporting your proclamation.
- Even if you were correct on this point (you aren't) the very best you could do is to claim that SHGC was catty-corner to the southwest instead of west. Hardly reason to throw out the site.
- Most of your various sites do not even adjoin the land you claim was SHGC! Some miss it entirely to the north. Others are well west.
4. The westerly point was "near" the inlet.
- You change this by claiming the westerly point was the inlet, but the articles clearly claim it was NEAR the inlet, not at it or past it. Yet your various proposed sites actually put the westerly point at or past the inlet. Granted, out of context "near" could be past. But in the context of the description it seems nonsensical to read the passage as having the land stretch along Peconic Bay to westerly point "near the inlet" if the westerly point was actually past the inlet.)
- The definition of "inlet" is far from specific and it is unclear whether the author was referring to the opening of Cold Spring pond or the narrow section or all of it. The fact that "Inlet Road" on the 1907 land plan stretches about halfway along the waterway suggests that Inlet meant more than just the opening. Chances are that the author did not have any idea to what he was referring but was just doing his/her best with the description someone had given him.
- Regardless, the westerly border of the Sebonac Neck property is Cold Springs Harbor/Bay/Pond/Inlet, and as can be seen on the 1907 plan, stretched all the way to the opening. That is how CBM (in Scotland's Gift) and the various December articles described the larger parcel.
I am having trouble understanding how you can continue to ask us to throw out the most obvious interpretation of the article and replace with it a never before mentioned mystery site right through the heart of an ongoing development project. Like it or not, the description fits the Sebonac Neck property, by which I mean not only Sebonac Neck, but also the land CBM was considering below the actual Neck.
Which of the two properties more accurately fall into the parameters described in the article? Either?
First, the Sebonac Neck property - the land CBM described as the 450 acres out of which he chose his golf course - falls well within parameters described in the article.
Second, later descriptions of the 450 acres track the key points of the October article. For example, CBM in Scotland's Gift:
". . . 450 acres of land on Sebonack Neck, having a mile frontage on Peconic Bay lying between Cold Springs Harbor and Bull's Head Bay. . . . It adjoined Shinnecock Hills Golf Course." There it is.
- A mile along Peconic Bay is certainly stretching along Peconic Bay.
- And if Cold Springs Harbor is the landmark to the west then whatever "inlet" means the land in question was surely near it.
- It adjoined SHGC, and I have posted source material indicating that it adjoined to the east. You keep claiming it adjoined SHGC to the south, but the closest border was to the east unless you are claiming that CBM was considering land all the way down to St. Andrews road.
Third, as explained above, your various sites are by far the worse fit. While you constantly change the picture, generally your sites don't fit as well because . . .
- They do not stretch along Peconic Bay.
- They are not appreciably closer to the RR.
- They do not adjoin SHGC.
- They all end past the canal or at it, they don't stretch along the bay to a point near the canal.
There are many more problems with your long statement of belief, but rather that start all over again, I'd appreciate if you would finally address my reasons why your site is not the canal site.