On Over-Development

by Mrs.C

A few weeks ago I had a sit-in to protect an oak tree.  This wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill oak tree.  This was an oak (now over eight feet tall) that Mr. C had raised from when it was just an acorn.  Yet this beautiful tree was in danger from developers who were pulling up trees and turning up the fields behind our house.  Their plan is to build an ‘empty-nesters’ housing complex along with several office buildings and a shopping center.

When Mr. C and I first moved into the neighborhood there was empty space all around us.  The field behind, a golf course around the block, and another field right across the street.  Now all these areas have been built upon and paved over.  The suburbs just continue to get bigger and more sprawling.

And I am forced to ask; what is my generation doing?  Weren’t we the ones who are supposed to save America from this commercialized fate?  Didn’t we all feel passionately when Joni Mitchell sang about ‘plowing over paradise to put in a parking lot?’

We have turned into our worst nightmares.  We thought our parents’ generation was out of touch with social issues.  We thought they were blinded by greed, but it is us baby boomers who turned out to be.  We once fought for world peace and civil rights, now the only thing we fight for is money.

Melvina Reynolds once spoke of ‘little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky, and they all look the same.’  We no longer build little boxes but great big ones, and I feel like I’m the only one left still heeding our old battle cry by protecting a tree.