Yesterday, six months later, a reader sent Gossips this picture of the view from Partition Street now that all the trees are gone.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Six Months Later
Yesterday, six months later, a reader sent Gossips this picture of the view from Partition Street now that all the trees are gone.
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What amounts to Galloway's tree-clearing instinct should be seen in its proper moral-historical context.
ReplyDeleteWe all know about the fear that gripped our puritanical forebears regarding woods, trees and uncontrolled nature.
Throughout the 18th century, new habits of hygiene and morality sprung up, keeping pace with the various Great Awakenings.
In the more "scientific" 19th century, controlling dampness and moisture by tree clearing was understood in the context of hygiene. Uncontrolled tree growth was fantasized as a hygiene nightmare by foresters on both sides of the Atlantic, although in retrospect it's not too difficult to understand the phenomenon in the older context of a Harrowing of Hell.
The same sorts of quasi-moral/hygienic fantasies attended the expansion of canal building, which coincided with the first overall mapping of the country, with all its connotations of national unity and centralized control.
All of these efforts were aimed at the moral control of impurity.
Yesterday we read the GalVan foundation's reaction to those aldermen who did not vote their way.
To account for the inconceivable lack of cooperation with GalVan's plans, the unsigned editorial posits a conspiracy traceable to a "real agenda," the source of which they suggest is "a prejudice against the idea of permanent housing for people in need."
(On a parallel subject, expect to hear the same sorts of arguments against the US Supreme Court and the GOP in the event that the Obamacare legislation is struck down. It can't be anything wrong with such a wonderful idea, so those who oppose it must be morally inferior.)
All of this relates back to the morality of tree clearing. The same instinct that removes old trees from Hudson showed its cards yesterday when leveraging class guilt against Common Council representatives in the GalVan editorial. Each case is justified by GalVan's moral superiority; the self-righteous editorialist believes he/they enjoy a monopoly on the moral solutions to Hudson's problems.
The obstreperous aldermen are just more trees to clear on the way to the moral control of impurity by the GalVan/Lantern people.
Give thanks and praise!
how sad - blind unconscious ego gets to rule our town
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