American all the way down
Michael Pollan attempts to explain the American front yard and gets everything wrong.

He starts:

"We like grassland. It reminds us of the savannah. We evolved on the savannah. We came down out of the trees and we like open land. Open land is safe. So there may be a genetic proclivity..."

Every sentence is nonsense. Some of us like grassland, some don't. It doesn't remind us of the savannah because there's no reason to assume we ever lived there. We didn't evolve. All the evidence shows that we were designed. We didn't come down out of the trees; it's more likely that the apes went up into the trees because trees are safe. Open land is NOT safe. That's why the apes went into the trees and the humans went into caves and holes and huts. Huts are safe.

"Your front yard belongs to the community."

The only firmly correct statement. Most front yard area is legally street, effectively owned by the city. You can't use it freely but you have to maintain it to city standards. If the city wants to plant a killer in "your" front yard you can't cut it down.

"It's so exposed that nobody spends any time there. ... They all stay in the back yard."

Sorta halfway right, in some places and times. Looking back at my own life... The first place I remember is Sooner City, a wartime company town that was all commons with no streets. I played everywhere. Parents then moved to a small town where I continued to play everywhere, from the river to downtown. From age 6 to 16 we lived in the usual suburbia, and in those situations the front yards were off limits as Pollan describes. I continued to play everywhere, from the creek to the zoo to Cranky Old Lady Goodnow's farm to the cemetery, but not in the front yard.

Right now, in this Deplorable neighborhood, the kids play everywhere just as I did at that age. They're mainly in the street because that's where the basketball goal is, and they slop over** into front yards.

"If you were a Martian, you'd ask.."

Fuck Martians. No need to go that far. If you were a South American or an Englishman or a New Yorker you'd ask. All of those aliens are accustomed to houses or walled compounds packed tightly together and jammed directly against the street. The North American plan is unfamiliar to all of those aliens.

Pollan attributes the front yard to the suburban dream. Nope, it came LONG before suburbia. It was already typical in 1813, as described in Brackenridge's Views of Louisiana, here talking about the St Louis area:



Who else would be familiar with the plan? Injuns. Here's a reconstructed Osage village. Common area with paths, front yards on each hut. Just like Sooner City, or rather vice versa.

In other words, the North American front yard isn't "evolved", it isn't fucking Sabertooth Tiger, it isn't British, it isn't South American, it isn't Martian, it isn't Suburban. It's North American all the way down.

Pollan's title calls the front yard "Odd and completely unnatural". To a NYC Martian like Pollan it's odd. To a North American of any era it's COMPLETELY NATURAL.


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** Now I understand why Cranky Old Lady Goodnow was cranky. But I ask myself which is better for the kids. Better to run around all day in the sun and fresh air, shouting and slopping into yards? Or better to sit in a dark room hard-wired to the iPhone? The answer is easy, so I restrain the Cranky.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Heimatkunde

  ¶ 8:40 AM