"Look to the animals," our dear departed mother always counseled, and Darwinian libertarian that we are -- not to mention worshipper of Bast, the Egyptian Goddess and protector of cats, women and children -- we couldn't agree more. But throughout most if not all of the history of our species, our forebears' need to feel special has favored placing ourselves above the rest of the creatures of the earth. The children of God however defined vs. the "lower animals." We've never bought into that, of course, but it's still big among perhaps a majority of our fellow homo sapiens. Baby Cakes, above, caught in the camera's eye during a crazy-hour moment this afternoon atop the shower stall, is not amused.
Royal Crescent ha-ha in Bath. What's a ha-ha? A "walled ditch or sunken obstacle, such as a hedge, serving especially as a barrier to livestock without impairing the view or scenic appeal."
"The glories of my home town, created by speculators in the 1700s, [were] almost destroyed by well-meaning planners in the 1970s," writes Clive Davis, calling our attention to a new must-read book, John Eglin's The Imaginary Autocrat: Beau Nash and the Invention of Bath, now on order for Father's Day. Well-meaning planners of the 1970s . . . The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Royal gardener Charles Bridgeman (1690 to 1738) was the first to use the ha-ha, "a hidden ditch which created a subtle divide between landscape where animals roamed freely [left] and the cultivated landscape [right]. He's regarded as the key link between the geometric formality of London and Wise and the informal landscaping of [William] Kent and [Lancelot 'Capability'] Brown."
Speaking of the road to Hell, what metaphorical equivalent does the ha-ha suggest for our times? Red state vs. blue state comes to mind. The blue staters are the aristocrats on the cultivated terraces (above right), enjoying the view of the scenic landscape while safely walled off by a sunken ditch from the great unwashed red staters roaming freely beyond. Or is it our everyday fellow Americans on the terrace, desperately digging the sunken ditch to keep the "wretched refuse" of illegal immigration from our "teeming shore."
The question comes to mind why does the road of good intentions lead to Hell. Could it be that selfish motives are cloaked as good intentions?
Posted by: goomp | April 09, 2006 at 09:16 AM