I have just been off the grid staying with my mother in West Virginia, USA. She has no internet access, so I couldnt go on line. I did, however, think about the Land and Home project while I was there. She lives in a university town, in a new house that her father and brothers built in the 1960s. It is on a hill, overlooking the town and the river below. In the 60s individual, wooden houses, filled the hillside, surrounded with spacious yards where people like my grandfather grew their own vegetables and had fruit trees. Now, developers have built extensive apartment complexes everywhere, and more are going up all the time. Valleys that used to be farmland are now full of parking lots and malls. My mothers view of the town is now almost obscured. Empty land is fast disappearing, even in this town where steep slopes make development difficult. Is this a good thing? The housing will provide spaces for more students to attend the university. That is good. The loss of connection to the land has been countered by new farmers markets that set up in town every Saturday with organic and local produce. Here are pictures of my mother visiting a smaller town, out in the country, where our family has its roots, far away from the development. It is still green and fresh, but not much of interest takes place here. Its grace is that it stays the same, decade after decade.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 16:16:48 +0000