Via Flickr, A winter’s drive:
I don’t often find myself driving out of town much during the winter, but yesterday’s trip from Fergus Falls to Wahpeton was interesting. It’s disheartening that we’ve let the farmers who own this land along the highway get away with what amounts to scorched-earth farming to maximize their take, with very little consideration of what the lack of windbreaks does to the drivers who are forced to use the road that runs through it.
Other problems with this approach include topsoil loss, a dearth of wildlife, and, when combined with the advanced drainage systems installed in the past few years by many of the farmers, a lack of meltwater retention, which means more severe spring river flooding for those at the receiving end of the drainage ditch system.
Tree hugging
Add the above-pictured tree to the list of things coming down in Fergus Falls. Courtesy of our new police station, it appears that this magnificent specimen is slated to fall in the name of increased parking capacity.
And unless I’m misreading the plans, just to add insult to injury, it appears that there will be a new tree planted only a few feet to the west of where this one will be cut down. To better accommodate our cars, you know. “X” marks the spot:
Check back in 100 years to see how it turns out.
As we continue to demean our city’s history, the environment, and the passing of time itself, don’t be surprised to see the trees starting to talk back:
Gus and I are checking on the tree daily. His next suggestion for a sign was the slightly terroristic “If you cut me down, there will be consequences.” I’m pleased to see that he’s mastering the fine art of the threat.
Comment and a link
I’ve laid off the blog scene, both reading and writing, for the past couple of months. But I’m slowly starting to come back out of my shell and reassert myself as the local curmudgeon-in-residence:
New Subway could open by late summer
Plans for a new Subway on Pebble Lake Road are moving along, according to current Fergus Falls franchisee Lee Fowler. If work continues as expected, he hopes to have the building open by late August or early September of this year.
…
Why do we continue to assume that this sort of activity is good for the city in which it takes place? And by “activity,” I mean the construction of yet another restaurant/clinic/store on the edge of town, whose lifeblood is the presumed willingness of the consumer to motor on out at the tune of $3.60+ per gallon, not to mention the literally millions in road-related infrastructure that must be maintained in order to make this sort of development feasible. There are also numerous unaccounted-for externalities: the environmental (and even geopolitical) harm caused by our search for oil and the consumption thereof, the degradation of our urban environment by suburban trappings and the roads needed to service them, and the erosion of our public health caused by the placement of things that people want to go to in a location where it is neither convenient nor pleasant to do so in anything but a car. (More)
Oh yes, we’ve got problems.
Book of note: Deep Economy
I just finished reading “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.” As part of my new strategy of doing more and talking less, I won’t comment too much on it except to say that this book helped inspire that strategy and is worth a read by anyone with a passing interest in (sub)urban development, food issues, growth, economics, peak energy, environmentalism, and localism/globalism. Our modern condition, basically. It’s a Venn diagram of all of this stuff and more.
