September '19

„I confess that throughout my youth, September was not my favorite month. As I matured, however, my approach has changed. The change partially occurred because I no longer enjoy two-month vacations. I still take September as a new beginning and an opportunity to set new goals. And from whom else could I draw inspiration than from the greatest construction pioneer history has ever seen?

The pioneer’s favorite color is red. Not the revolutionary crimson red, but rather an orange-tinged shade of red. The champion we are talking about is the brick. Thanks to its immense practicality, this basic building block appeared independently in several advanced cultures from the biblical Babylon, through ancient Rome, all the way to the right shore of the Moldau river. By the way, one renowned Prague brick factory, which used to produce many bricks, once stood in the place of today’s National Theater. All this to say, history really does have a fiery sense of humor.

The reason behind the brick’s universal popularity is mostly the same as with socks: Compatibility with human limbs. In order to ensure comfortable manipulation, the size of a brick is derived from the size of a human hand.  Efforts to ensure universality in construction dictate that the length of a brick should be about twice its width, which in turn should be twice its height.

While both a sock and a brick enable humankind to rise higher and higher, both of these epic icons of progress carry an important warning. Even the strong Babylonians with bricks in their hands could not build a tower that reaches the sky. As the bricks fell on their bare feet, they all began swearing as they knew best. Afterwards, they were unable to find a common language again. The lesson here is that even a man equipped with a brick needs appropriate footwear in order to achieve his goals."

Hubert Ponožka,
The Sock Secretary