The Mark Sanford scandal is a bit off topic for Streetsblog but Sean Roche at the Newton Streets & Sidewalks blog points us to this incredible passage from one of the e-mails between the South Carolina governor and his mistress in Argentina. Sanford writes:
Tome, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderfulabout listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditionerrunning, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the background, thetranquility that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees andmarsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morningclouds — and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt.
How romantic!
And as if this story weren't weird enough already, a profile of Sanford in American Conservative magazine provides another sordid tidbit about the governor's diesel-powered meditation technique:
During Sanford's first gubernatorial campaign in 2002, an 8-year-oldAfrican-American girl wandered onto a Sanford family property on Lady'sIsland and drowned. A source close to the governor said she fell into a"retaining pond." Her family's lawyer, Manning Smith, called it a"pit." Other sources claim that Sanford, who owned a hydraulicexcavator at the time, digs holes on his property to unwind.
