False Spring (James Howard Kunstler)

[Tace]

Walton Street, Saratoga, on a Spring Day

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

Apr. 5, 2010 -- In a place like upstate New York, north of Albany, where April is more generally known as "mud season," and the wait for "ice-out" on the big lakes takes forever, and on frigid nights the windigos steal through the tops of the tall pines -- it would seem foolish to complain about perfectly beautiful weather.

We just had a week in the 70s, with more to come. The grass went from ochre to bright green in about thirty-six hours. The buds are popping like mad. This is usually what the first week of May is like around here, and that fact alone may explain New York state's relentless population drain over the past forty years.

I was out on my bicycle, naturally, taking it all in -- like, why sit inside and sulk because the weather is strange in a pleasant way? -- and I ventured into the outlands east of town, where an impressive number of gigantic new houses had landed like alien mother-ships in the former cow pastures and wood lots. Of course, the aesthetics were an issue apart from the socio-economics of it, but nonetheless interesting.

Each new, gigantic house seemed the result of a losing struggle to reinvent basic design principles that did not require re-invention. I doubt the spirit of joyous "creativity" among the star-architects has seeped down to the level of the provincial house-builders, who, after all, are just assemblers of modular materials like dimensional lumber and eight-foot sheet-rock. It's their inability to assemble these parts coherently that's really striking, so what you get is an endless variety of mistakes along with a complete absence of anything done really well -- which may be the essence of what the "diversity" craze has really meant to us, the ethos of current times.

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http://worldnewstrust.com/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=items&cid=134:commentary-wnt-reports&id=7635:false-spring-james-howard-kunstler

[BrklynLiberal]

1. thanks. I enjoy reading Kunstler's stuff.

[Demeter]

2. It's True--Most Modern Houses Are an Abomination

Impossible to maintain, paint, or reroof. Let alone heat or cool.