California Blogging Has Temporary Shifted

to my university blog, and will be there until further notice.

Dinner Pictures on Line

see the Dinner Pictures link below. It's on Snapfish, and they ask you to register - sorry! - but it's free.

The Lawn/Micheal Pollan

I was looking through my notes for another class and saw a quotation given out in the context of the pastoral/urban pastoral:

"Lawns are purged of sex and death. No wonder Americans like them so much."

From Michael Pollan's book Why Mow?. (excerpt at http://www.history.vt.edu/Barrow/Hist3144/readings/pollan.html)

I know we are almost at the end of our discussions, but I think it would have been interesting to discuss the lawn/garden and how it can be both liberating and confining. It also would have been interesting to add the lawn into our discussions of the artifice of the suburb--another space where aesthetic overrides utility (a rigidly maintained lawn as a space where the suburbanite can enjoy nature is acceptable while allowing the lawn to grow naturally and "out of control" is shunned and even made illegal).

There is also some interesting stuff about American's "democratized" the lawn (in comparison to the enormous lawns of English estates) by breaking them up into surburan sized, supposedly affordable plots.

Anyway, this book/selection from it may be a good source for anyone writing a paper/memoir focused on suburbs--and even if you aren't its a pretty interesting read.

Suburbanites Censored

This is hilarious...and so true. Enjoy.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcC66gEtBLo

Conditional Happiness

I realized today that although last class-time I told everybody what I was going to talk about, I never actually posted my topic online. So here it is, for archival purposes. =)

For me, the idea of suburbia is on the whole a positive one. However, I also believe it is a completely unrealistic and impossible way for people to behave. Just like the ideals of communism, utopia, and the hippy movement, I think the suburbia concept is doomed to failure due to the inescapable reality of human nature. Chiefly, I find that on the whole people validate their existence by how much they must struggle to achieve something. Once they achieve it however, discomfort sets in and they become unhappy. Imagine you've toiled and saved your paychecks for the past five years in order to put a down payment on a nice house in a nice neighborhood. When the day finally comes that that house is yours, you feel elated. Unfortunately, inevitably you look at you neighbor's house and realize his patio is bigger, or his front yard is better landscaped, or his lawn is lusher. (The phrase "the grass is always greener on the other side" exists for a reason...) Eventually, after their "big struggle" to achieve the suburban middle-class dream is over, most people begin to quantify their happiness not by what they do or what they have, but by comparing themselves to what their neighbors do and what their neighbors have.
I had a friend in middle school who lived in a very nice brand new neighborhood, the epitome of suburbia, where all the houses where painted in the same color family and everybody's driveway had a minivan in it. When we were younger (and I suppose more innocent to the ways of the world), we both defined out happiness by what we had. She had a favorite doll, and playing with it made her happy. However, and we started to grow up, I noticed that she would increasingly define her happiness by how happy her friends were- if one of them got a new doll or a new dress, she seemed to suddenly feel inferior. It was almost as if she liked it when a friend was down about something because then in comparison she was doing much better than them, and that brought her happiness up. But when something went right for someone else, but not so much for her, that brought her down because now when she compared herself to that person, she was doing worse. This competitiveness in her eventually made our friendship a little cold, but I do think it's a good example of the contradicting nature of suburbia. Suburbia stands for harmony and equality and peace, but people need to struggle to feel alive and in such a setting, this translates to hyper-competitiveness and jealousy. We've all heard the stories of suburban mothers and the way they compete for power in their school's PTA.
Unfortunately, I have not escaped being touched by all this. I do sometimes catch myself becoming slightly depressed when on of my friends' life is suddenly coming together and I'm kind of just coasting along in mine. I am trying to be a better person though, and be happy for other people instead of constantly comparing my achievements to their own.

Carpooling and Videocameras

It seems that a lot of us have cars, but in the interest of minimizing pollution, gas consumption, automobile traffic, and lack of parking, as well as in the interest of promoting a more social method of transportation, I propose that we strive to use as few automobiles as possible tonight. Let's try to have at least 3 people per 4-5 seat car. I have 1 car with 4 extra seats, and I live 5 minutes by foot from Embarcadero Hall.

Also, I'm borrowing a videocamera from one of my housemates, but the more cameras, the merrier...

The image of success

For our video, I want to talk about how the suburbs can be so highly image oriented. As we've talked about in section, it is often the appearance of wealth and success that matters. I had a friend in high school who drove a nice SUV as soon as she turned 16 and who's mom made sure to be driving a practically brand new Mercedes (thank goodness for short term car leases). However, this same girl lived in a small 3 bedroom townhouse with her 5 younger siblings that barely had enough room for all of them. Her mom often slept at her office because she had to work so much just to keep the family going. It was confusing to see such a misallocation of resources, yet it all focuses around presenting an image of success. While this may be an extreme example, I have also been guilty of wanting more than I have, simply to be viewed as something different (maybe something "more") than I am. This type of image obsession is manifested throughout suburban lifestyle, as I can even remember looking at model homes, as the developers put fake smiling family photos throughout the house, and make sure to have cookies baking in the oven so that it smells like a home. From the time a family moves into the suburbs they are highly aware that sometimes life can be all about presentation and nothing about substance. As we all know, the difference between what you see and what you get can be substantial.