lately my nomadic wanderings have brought me to sojourn in new england for a season. today i took a walk around the neighborhood here just as the first few flakes of a coming winter storm were falling. the area is suburban, but one with stately maples along the streets and sidewalks and pre-WWII colonial houses that manage to have individual character while maintaining a comfortable harmony. in short the kind of place you'd feel your kids would grow up with a sense of community, unlike the sterile bermuda-grass and concrete plantations of houston and phoenix and california. there's a fair amount of construction, some of which is promising both in terms of the local economy and the fact that the additions were consonant with the original house and the neighborhood ambience.
still, there were a few places where the original homes were being plucked out by the roots and replaced by faceless pre-fab mcmansions with no regard for harmony and proportion. frequently they looked like they had been pulled out of a catalog by back-country wanna-bes and stuffed into any lot they could physically fit onto, even if meant wedging it in on the diagonal or scraping the property lines on either side.
such a prospect i found depressing, and wondered what it would be like for the neighbors of such an abomination. what kind of opression would it inflict on your family's psyche? i started thinking about how one would combat mcmansionifaction in neighborhoods like this, and across america.
oblivious to the increasing flurry of snowflakes, i ducked into a woodlot and was composing my mental tirade in defense of community while walking among the trees. suddenly i was yanked out of my thoughts by distant high pitched screams floating across the woods from the nearby elementary school...
aieeee! it's snowing! eeeeeee! snow! the screams were the squeals of delight of children out at recess who were watching the beginnings of what promises to be a big snowstorm.
when i realized what was going on, and remembered my own childhood, my thoughts took a new direction. for all the nintendo and ritalin and advertising and general consumerist garbage we feed our children, these kids are still kids. they're still more excited about snow than a new video game. they're still growing, and have the capacity to grow into smart, creative and well-adjusted adults if we only give them the environment and nourishment they need.
even in a clearcut you'll see green shoots of plants and young trees sprout the next spring, eager to begin the work of rebuilding the forest from scratch. it takes long generations of trees to rebuild the forest, but eventually it happens.
brothers and sisters, we must do everything we can to stop the neo-con project that would clearcut america to make way for a hacienda-plantation society. next year will be the test, and if we succeed we are only beginning the true struggle to restore our republic. but take comfort that even if we fail there will be a new generation to take up the fight. even as the neo-cons try to torch the republic at its root and supplant it with empire, they sow the seeds of destruction for that empire. blinded by their own greed and ambition, they will erect the mcmansion of world empires. instead of taking the time to build a solid foundation and work with solid wood and stone, they'll be plopping down on rocky soil and shifting sands a flimsy construction of particleboard and thinnest drywall. i predict we would see the collapse of that empire in our lifetimes, just as we saw the collapse of the mighty soviet empire under the weight of its own internal contradictions.
and then those children screaming about snow today will be the ones rebuilding america from the ground up.