For TDC413, we were supposed to write an ode to an under-appreciated object.  In my Environment and Society course, we recently went over character-object networks, and one of the examples we were provided with was a railing.  Granted, in the example, the railing was a player in a system in which at zoos with enclosed spaces for elephants where there were stairs, the guidelines required the stairs to have a railing (as there was no wall on one side of them).  Shortly after installing the railings, they quickly found that the elephants were strong enough to rip the railings out of the concrete with their trunks and fling them around, endangering themselves and the zookeepers.

My ode to railings has NOTHING to do with that.