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Tuesday, May 18, 2004 Language Falters There are times when phrases refuse to form themselves into cohesive paragraphs, when thoughts that seem vitally important cannot manifest themselves on the page, when even a wordsmith finds himself inarticulate. Such a time is now, and such a smith am I. As I try to coalesce my faltering language to write even this short post, I am frustrated by my brain's refusal to condense my scattered musings on suburban sprawl into an intelligible piece. This is crucial: this is an issue of community, of beauty, of stewardship, not merely preference or style. We allowed suburbia to exist because we allowed standards and values to erode, because we lost the ability to define beauty. We have allowed the mediocre to reign supreme on our radios, in our books, on our screens, in our communities. And its continued reign comes at a spiritual price. I daresay many Americans don't care what their own houses or their neighbors' houses look like. We chalk this off to good old American pragmatism, or patriotic individualism, but the consequences are rather serious: a world outside the confining walls of the home that nobody cares about, a country made up of places that are not worth caring about, and a nation that is not worth defending. --James Howard Kunstler, Home from Nowhere ^ Top | 6:46 PM | | | 
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