Doomsday Procrastination

Here's a letter I submitted to our local newspaper regarding the on-again-off-again shopping mall project on the edge of town. The developers bulldozed scores of acres of beautiful mature forest and let it sit barren and unused for a few years now as the reality of our current economic condition remorselessly plays havoc with their plans. I've ranted about this development a few times before on my Moose Hill Journal in September 2008 and November 2009. This letter was published in the April 22, 2011 Sharon Advocate.


It is with perplexed sadness that I watch community television coverage of ongoing meetings regarding the Sharon Commons development. It's like watching slick presentations about the exact style and placement of deck chairs on the Titanic. Developers of yet more unnecessary big box stores try to perpetuate the illusion that we are still getting the “lifestyle mall” originally promised so many years ago now. They present drawings of fake facades and sloping roofs and talk as if a few more windows will change the fact that they are building just another mall with acres of asphalt, no residential component, and no public transportation.

This plan is based on 20th century thinking with no one pausing to consider where the 21st century may be headed. It was $4 per gallon gas and a deep recession that brought this project to a screeching halt a few years ago and prompted a cheapening and down-scaling of the project. Guess what? $4 a gallon gas is on the way back and, as recent debate in Washington shows, we are broke and the days of happy motoring and buying ever more cheap junk from China are over.

This project is never going to happen. It's unlikely it will be built, and if it is, stores will sit unoccupied. Consider the real state of our economy and then look at the local malls we already have (Plainville, Dedham, Avon, Stoughton, Easton). I understand that we residents of Sharon are desperate for tax relief, but this mall is not the answer. We have raped scores of acres of beautiful forest for an obsolete idea that is doomed to failure. We need a new plan and a new project. We need new vision for a future that that is not based on personal automobiles and mindless consumption. We are on the doorstep of a new age where it will be the real things that matter: clean air, clean water, clean energy, local food and community. This project provides none of these things.

Read more: Sharon opinions: Mall not part of future lifestyle - Sharon, MA - Sharon Advocate http://www.wickedlocal.com/sharon/news/opinions/letters/x128430227/Sharon-opinions-Mall-not-part-of-future-lifestyle#ixzz1LnpPAMOt

Survival of the Fittest

I saw a garbage picker this morning. When I went out to throw some last-minute stuff into our spiffy new single-stream recycling bin, I saw a guy with his old station wagon, rubber gloves and little poking stick going through the neighbors' trash picking out anything he thought might have value. I'm all for it - better to have something reused than to have it dumped, burned or even recycled.

Seeing this made me think of genetic variation and evolution. OK, maybe I'll burn in Hell, but I believe in evolution and that the world is quite a bit older than 5770 years. I can't help it. I was forced to take 10th grade biology by those godless secularists that ran the public schools back in the Sixties. A little education is a horrible thing. But I digress.

Anyway...as I understand it, any population has a little genetic variation. The vast majority of individuals are adapted perfectly well to life under the current conditions. But every now and then an individual is born that's a little different, either through some genetic mutation or some statistically rare combination of genes from its parents. If this individual is too different, they simply die. If they are a little different, they may survive but not thrive. But, if conditions in the environment suddenly shift, maybe - just maybe - that rare individual will be better suited to survival under the new set of conditions and everyone will struggle or die. That lucky oddball will go on to pass along his/her genes and the population will being to evolve into something new and better suited to their new world.

I saw the garbage picker as that oddball. Today, most of us here in the U.S. have adapted to a life of comfort where we don't have to think much about things like where our next meal will come from and how we will clothe the kids next winter. Everything we really need - things like food, water, clothing, basic shelter - are widely available and cheap. But what if conditions were to change? Let's say the climate really was warming, the oil was really running out and political turmoil was right around the corner. Who would be the fittest then - the pampered pretty boy who spent the last two generations in an air-conditioned cocoon, or the guy who new something about picking through garbage?


I put this here on the Moose Hill Notebook rather than Facebook because I get too much static over there about how boring and gloomy I am. I maintain that while I might be boring, I'm not gloomy. I observe our current state of affairs with much interest and take great pleasure in dreaming about those valleys on the other side of the mountains.

Snow in August

Or: Where is Gary Larson when you need him?

So, on a recent Friday morning I'm riding along Route 1 South in Foxboro, right near Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, on my way to make a delivery with my bicycle and trailer. I'm minding my own business and am riding well out of traffic in the breakdown lane. I was lost in a reverie about dreams that do indeed come true when, from the passenger-side window of a speeding pickup truck, a skinny, shirtless tanned twenty-something hangs his head out, looks at me and yells "BLAAAAAAAH!" at the top of his lungs.

He was loud, but not very articulate, so I have no idea what his message might have been or what he was thinking. I'm pretty sure he didn't do that to every car they passed, so I'm assuming that my being there on bicycle somehow prompted his utterance. Was he trying to startle me? Did he think he was being funny? Was I annoying him? Was he feeling superior? I suppose trying to plumb the depths of a post-adolescent male mind is a pointless exercise, but I had to wonder.

One thing I'm quite sure of is that he wasn't upset because seeing a guy doing work on a bike suddenly made him realize that the power and joy he was feeling in a pickup today might be only a distant memory when he is an old man like me. He probably didn't suddenly understand that the world of his parents and grandparents would not much longer be his. He most likely didn't see that he had better get busy planning for a future world much different than the world of rock music, football and internal combustion that he now takes for granted.

A favorite old Gary Larson cartoon immediately came to mind.

Two long-necked dinosaurs are standing amid the prehistoric tropical plants. A small furry animal, looking something like a scruffy hedgehog, is passing by. One dinosaur is pointing at the proto-mammal with his dinosaur foot and laughing heartily at the silly little thing while the other dinosaur is looking at the sky with a puzzled and worried look on his face and is holding out his stubby foot to catch a snowflake.

Unfettered Polygamy

I walked by a TV today and a story about the recent raid on a polygamist community in Texas was on. It made me think how in the Long Emergency, after gasoline has become very scarce, there will likely be lots of communities doing odd things out in the boondocks. Law enforcement authorities will no longer have the resources to patrol and investigate out in the vast backcountry of places like West Texas and Utah. Charismatic leaders of all kinds will be able to establish compounds and communities and no one will bother them. Lets hope there is more good than evil among these leaders.

Glowing in the Dark

Signs of the impending Long Emergency are everywhere I look. In the Boston Globe this morning, two articles caught my eye.

In one story it was reported that mining claims for uranium have increased exponentially in the past few years as the price of uranium has skyrocketed. Most claims are in the western U.S., particularly around the Grand Canyon National Park. Needless to say, environmentalists are concerned, but as threats to the American Lifestyle increase quaint notions like environmental protection will be brushed aside. (Watch as they authorize drilling in ANWR in the next few years.) As the oil runs out, our reliance on nuclear power can only increase.

In another piece, we learn that Amish salvage stores are doing a booming business. These little shops in Amish communities in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana sell items such as packaged food and medicines that have been discarded by big stores because of damage or expired use-by dates. Americans from all walks of life are looking for ways to tighten their belts as energy prices go up and home values fall. Heaven knows, we throw away enough stuff in this society and I like to think that some of it is getting used by somebody. It has also occurred to me that cultures such as the Amish and Mennonites may have a lot to teach the rest of us about how to survive and thrive in a world without fossil fuel. Come to think of it, when the stuff really hits the fan, it might not be a bad idea to settle near some of these folks and watch how they tie their shoes.