You are what you eat.

Davidson’s success in the NCAA tournament means that they will receive more applications, and that their admissions will go up next year.  These two facts remind us of the main reason why most American students go to college — brand name recognition.  Choosing a college is more like choosing a breakfast cereal than choosing a religion or a political ideology, yet it is supposed to, or at least reputed to, change not only the mind, but the soul.   

Springfield in the news

I think The Office is a rerun tonight, but I’m going to watch it anyway, but before I do here’s a link to an article in the New York Times about my hometown, Springfield, and my dad’s hometown, Clifton Heights. Most Springfield readers probably already know this, but I should also mention that the Rocco Polidoro quoted in the first paragraph is a family friend. I haven’t read the article yet myself, in toto, so I don’t really have any further comment on it, but it’s certainly an interesting piece of Springfield trivia. Don’t ya think?

Suburban Flanerie, Vol. 1

Today I want to begin a series of posts under the subheading “Suburban Flanerie.” For better or worse, better socially and spiritually, worse morally, I returned to my home suburb this weekend for a friend’s wedding. (I’ve mentioned this three times now.) On Friday afternoon, I strolled around my old suburb, Springfield, and this was something I saw. Each instance of suburban flanerie on the blog will record something I saw in the suburbs and what it meant to me or made me think about.

On Friday I was looking at lawns, or more specifically, at the trees, bushes, and other shrubs that populate suburban lawns in Springfield. My eye was drawn, particularly, to a bunch of inverse, truncated cones of greenery along Brookside Road nearer the library, across from the police station. I also took note of the various plastic animals, windchimes, flowerpots, and the like residing on the porches leading to or concluding these lawns, depending on which way you look at them.

The thought has often occurred to me, when I see people doing yardwork in the suburbs, that certain segments of our society have devolved into a nearly feudalistic way of being. I use of ‘way of being’ here, because I cannot accuse them of being feudalistic in the economic sense. Most of these weedpullers and lawnmowers are firmly entrenched in the bourgeoisie, or at least what has become of it. But over the weekend, during their leisure time, when they should be enjoying the finer things in life (whatever they are), they instead rekindle and reaffirm, confirm, their connection to the soil.

What this confirmation, this weekendly sacrament, means, socially and morally, I am reluctant to accuse. I suspect that it means something different to the tillers than it does to me. I am instructed by an example, my parents, who thoroughly enjoy yardwork. It might indeed be one of their only non-workweek pleasures. And I recall a high school public speaking project by an old friend of mine on the art of a well cut lawn, manicured up and down in contrasting grains to resemble a freshly cut baseball diamond. There is beauty in that that I do not deny.

But there is no beauty to me in the social silence one settles for when cutting the lawn, nevermind trimming the bush or hanging the windchime. I realize here that many suburban propertyholders hire others to complete these tasks. They respond, in this way, to my lesser accusation, that the cutting of the lawn, the trimming of the bush, the hanging of the windchime is a waste of time, however suburban. Suburban time is empty, and thus hated by the suburbanite, but it is also sacred to the suburbanite, because it is all the suburbanite has earned, all the suburbanite has wanted, all that the suburbanite really has. But it is utopian time, however degraded. It should not be wasted. Those who hire out their lawncare at least have this figured out.

Those who have chosen to live in the suburbs should live up to it. Let your lawn grow wild. The bush cut into a truncated inverse cone no longer deserves its Latin name. Its species is now, simply, truncated inverse bush. When this bush is placed in the field of vision, the picture of nature, it upsets this picture. So the lawn problem is not merely one of time, but of space, too. Ultimately, this space controls suburban consciousness and the bush that pollutes it is but one of the elements that has whittled that consciousness down to a point.