Last Friday I needed to travel across the state to visit an old friend whose husband is seriously ill. Used to be that such short daytrips were no big deal. I always enjoyed escaping from the city into the rolling hills north of Orlando and the pasturelands beyond. Google Maps said the trip to Inverness would only require an hour an 10 minutes by Turnpike. That’s pretty consistent with my experience in the past.
But it wasn’t what happened Friday.
The Turnpike was almost at a standstill from the moment I got onto it at the terminus of the East-West Expressway coming out of Orlando. From there traffic was stop and go the entire 42 miles to Wildwood yesterday.
There were no accidents and no road construction in process
to account for this. There was major construction in the areas beyond the
right of way on both sides of the highway. But this was simply heavy traffic at
10 AM on a Friday. And increasingly, it is the norm for highways across our
state.
It reminded me of my first visit to California in 1965. I
had won a trip through the local IGA grocery store to visit Los Angeles. It was
my first time on an airplane and the first visit to a major city.
I’d never seen traffic on freeways like that before. And I’d
never experienced an acrid smog that caused tears to run down the faces of the young
boys from Florida most of whom were experiencing a big city for the first time.
Friday’s 42 mile crawling parking lot up the middle of our state could easily
have been just one more day in the life of the LA metro area.
But it wasn’t. It was here.
Reminiscent of the Amazon Basin
If the traffic itself was troubling, the scarred scenery
along the route made that stop and go journey sheer torture for this sixth
generation Floridian. South of the US 27 interchange between Clermont and
Leesburg, everything on both sides was under construction. The Orlando metro
area, now approaching 3 million strong, continues to spill out into lands once
covered by citrus groves whose rolling hills have now sprouted tract housing.
Similarly, everything north of the SR 475 exit - which
takes one to the Coleman Federal Correctional Institute to the west or the once
small village of Okahumpka to the east – is being subjected to a bizarre
terraforming. The images along the highway are reminiscent of the deep scars on
the rainforests of the Amazon Basin, the lungs of our world, that one sees
emerging from a corporatist Brasil these days. But this is not Brasil. It is a
Florida in which the Villages and the “developments” like it have spread out with
abandon choking a state many people once called paradise.
“Development” – a Self-Serving Deception
The use of the term “development” to rationalize this slash
and burn destruction is questionable on a good day. An online etymology
dictionary reports the following for the word “development”:
development (n.)
(1756)
"a gradual unfolding, a full working out or disclosure of the details of something;"
see develop + -ment.
Meaning
"the internal process of expanding and growing" (1796); sense of "advancement through
progressive stages" (1836).
Of
property, with a sense of "a bringing out of the latent
possibilities" for use or profit (from 1885 Pickering's
glossary of Americanisms);
(1816) betterments
"The improvements made on new lands, by cultivation, and the erection of buildings, etc.").
Meaning
"state of economic advancement" (1902).
Clearly the “development” occurring in places like The
Villages and the Clermont area to its south is not “a gradual unfolding.” The Earth
itself is being ripped asunder there by bulldozers and all living things are
being scraped from its surface in the process. This is more akin to a rape than
an “unfolding.” There is a name for uncontrolled growth that occurs in a manner
endangering its host. That name is cancer.
Moreover, whether this is an “advancement through progressive stages” is highly questionable. More tract housing with increased traffic and demands on the watershed and air quality and more chemicals used to maintain golf courses and manicured lawns running down storm sewers into the aquifer are not by definition “advancements.” This vision of “progress” comes at enormous costs to the Earth and its existing inhabitants.
What is most telling in the etymology is the final definitive aspects of the word as it came to be understood in the 19th CE mid-Industrial Revolution. “Development” is used here as “bringing out latent possibilities…for profit.” By the turn of the 20th CE, the use of this term finally becomes candid – development is reduced to simply “a state of economic advancements.”
But advancements for whom? At whose expense? And at what
cost to the biosphere?
Frankly, whether there is any “improvement” on land that
once housed ancient live oaks, birds and other fauna, lakes full of fish and
fields full of grazing animals that has been converted to strip shopping malls
and soulless subdivisions is also highly debatable. The builders of these nearly
identical tract houses with ever so slightly different color schemes to provide
a façade of individuality add insult to injury as they seek to escape the
banality of their endeavors by giving their projects noble names like “Osprey
Landing.” These are places where every tree that an osprey could possibly have
landed has long since been mowed down by a bulldozer. The only place one might
spot an osprey in these middle-class housing projects is on their satellite dishes.
The loss of the lay of the land in these places is simply the first of several losses. The demands on the aquifer cause sinkholes to develop which swallow up the houses and businesses that have replaced the swamps and pastureland that preceded them. The addition of ever more traffic to an already overloaded highway system whose designers never anticipated this level of use guarantees that the parade-paced passage through the heart of our state that Friday’s turnpike required will soon become the rule and not the exception.
The Costs of Selling Your Soul
Florida was a state with enormous unrealized potential in those days. But even then the changes that would produce today’s state bloated with white retirees and run by white demagogues were already underway.
I also readily confess that while I will always be
appreciative of the lessons I learned living in the country for 11 years of my childhood
and for the farmers among whom we lived who produce our daily bread there, they
knew and I knew even then I could not live there and I left the day I graduated
from high school. One of the lessons they impressed upon me, however, was how
to appreciate the incredible natural beauty of this place and to recognize its
fragility in the face of a mindless juggernaut of profit driven “developers”
armed with bulldozers and draglines.
Finally, I need to be clear that I do not begrudge anyone a place to live who actually needs one. I am hardly oblivious to the fact that affordable housing is a real problem in this urban blue island called Orlando where I reside. But I am also clear that Florida does not owe a place to everyone who wants to live here anywhere they wish to live regardless of its impact on the social and natural ecologies. That is particularly true of those who came not only seeking to escape cold winters but also any kind of social responsibility in a state with no income or inheritance taxes as well.
Mexico Beach, FL after Hurricane Michael, 2018
Florida is under no obligation to accommodate ever more
residents regardless of the impact their presence might make on this state and
everyone already present. That includes state subsidized insurance to rebuild beach
homes along our coasts in places that should never have been built upon in the
first place and it includes permits with no restrictions for ever more tract
housing and strip malls that threatens to clog up the very heart of our state
with congestion and overpopulation. A state with conscious, effective leadership
would have realized that long ago. Alas, such has rarely been the case in this
state I have loved for 68 years now.
Florida has always had those willing to sell their souls
for profit. It’s hardly an accident that the legends around our first Spanish
explorers spoke of their ruthless pursuit of gold and a fountain of youth,
pursuits that would within a century insure the end of all of the aboriginal
peoples who first encountered the European conquistadors. And from post Civil
War carpetbaggers to 20th CE theme park builders, Florida has been
the destination for an endless flow of those seeking their fortunes in a state
to which they would hold no allegiance and for whose natural beauty they exercised
no consideration.
“Developers” and the state and local governments their
money commands long ago sold their souls to profit. But there is a price to pay
here that far exceeds whatever profits that sellers of land and sellers of real
estate might have recouped in this process. It is a cost extracted from the Earth
itself and the people closest to that land who produce our daily bread. In the
end, it is a price on the very soul of our state. None of that is calculated in
these transactions.
You can hear a version of this song at this location:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm_l_jnFyjg
When I was a child in elementary school, we learned an adaptation of the 1917 Richard Whiting song, “Where the Morning Glories Grow.” The version we learned praised the citrus industry, then still king in a largely agricultural Florida. We sang, “I want to wake up in the morning where the orange blossoms grow…” ending with the words, “So make my home in Flo-ri-da…where the or-ange blossoms grow.”
Even today, singing that song can bring tears of joy as I remember those more innocent times. But the tears that welled up Friday while crawling up a Florida Turnpike jammed with cars through a countryside scarred by bulldozers were very real. The very soul of this homeland where my family has lived for seven generations cried out in pain.
Desecration
It would be easy to dismiss this
lamentation as merely the anguish of a 68 year old native Floridian watching
his state change. All things change and as the Buddhists have taught me, life
is a series of lessons on letting go. The last thing we let go of is our Self. But
there is more here than mere nostalgia.
As I saved this document to
begin its workup for the blogsite, I needed a title for my file. What came to
mind completely unbidden was “Desecration.” At its most fundamental level, that
is what I lament here - the loss of what
is sacred – the land itself.
In Jesus Christ Superstar, the lyricists place these words in Jesus’ mouth:
“If every tongue was still, the noise would still continue….the rocks and stones themselves would start to sing…”
I think I understand those words today. The cries from
a desecrated land in the heart of Florida can be heard by those with ears to
hear. For those who don’t, I offer my words this day, speaking for this land that
formed my soul, this land I love. These words erupt from the heart of a land desecrated by those who do not recognize its soul, voiced by one with a broken heart that can no longer be endured in silence.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Harry Scott
Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the
unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it
religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do
not come in sound bites.
Those
who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi
For
what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to
walk humbly with your G-d? - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do not
be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy,
now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither
are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi
Rami Shapiro, Wisdom
of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston, 2021
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3 comments:
Consider the sloth. He hangs in a tree, sleeping and eating and seemingly having no concerns except getting back in the tree as fast as possible when he has to come to the ground to poop.
They seem not to be concerned with exploration or conquering new territories like the snake in the prairie dog village or the cowbird who parasitically encroaches upon other birds' nests... or homo sapiens.
Since our granddaddies started leaving the Horn of Africa a couple of hundred thousand years ago, and as they continued their ever-expanding northern trek; there have been countless reasons for those who moved on to new destinations.
Some of the travelers would have been small groups or individuals moving on to look for lands to farm or hunt, or hoping to leave unpleasant conditions with their current neighbors, or perhaps there simply was not space for more condos on Somalia beaches.
Other migrations have been mass invasions by the likes of Khan, Hannibal, Alexander, the Caesars, etc.
But throughout recorded time we know that there has been an uncontrollable urge to explore. The other side of the hill, the bottom of the cave, the top of the mountain, new continents, the bottom of the ocean; and of course, up: atmosphere, stratosphere, the moon, the solar system, where does it end? Of course it does not.
More often than not on Earth, these explorations and migrations led to areas which were already populated by cousins, other homo sapiens who had arrived there first and had developed in their own unique ways. The new arrivees generally believed that their own ways were superior and frequently conflicts arose. Cleverness, strength, technology and sometimes happenstance usually determined which society earned the "right" to take over the territory.
By and large the Native Americans lost. Later and concurrently, the pro-slavery advocates lost. And then the Florida invasion began. In some ways it was a result of our huge civil conflict, which brought soldiers and merchants and farmers and cowboys into the northern reaches, and then Kissimmee, Tampa, Miami and Key West.
Quite frequently it was welcomed. New roads and railroads and businesses and agricultural development of what was seen by many as wasteland, tourism, and tourists and more tourists and some tourists who stayed.
The inevitable outcome was that pristine territory became leveled and scoured; and natural resources, including the aquifer, have become threatened or endangered.
So now to turn a bit hypothetical: If the great Lifeguard in the Sky were to give you a mulligan a do-over to change one decision that was made in post-bellum Florida history, What would that be?
Is it fair, is it right, is it legal to put a giant Do Not Enter sign from Pensacola to Jacksonville Beach?
"I'm here - just like my granddaddies before me - And I've got my piece of the Florida dream, but you can't have any! Go back to New Yawk, and Quebec, and Moscow and South America and China. Cuz this is mine all mine."
How does one foresee and forestall the giant sunshine snowball?
Thank you for taking the time to read the blog entry and to compose this thoughtful response. There is almost a lyrical quality about the beginning portion that resembles the cosmological myths that all cultures have created to answer the question “Where did we come from?” I appreciate the time and the consideration this reflects.
I do have a couple of responses. To wit:
“The inevitable outcome was that pristine territory became leveled and scoured; and natural resources, including the aquifer, have become threatened or endangered.”
Actually, there is nothing inevitable about any of these outcomes. All of the events you elaborate here were the result of human decision making. If decisions can be made in one manner, they can be made in other manners. The question then becomes why those particular decisions were made. Whose interests were served by them? At whose expense? Cui bono?
The argument of inevitability here is unfounded. To suggest this is to assume that the human agents making these decisions had no other possible directions they could have taken. Why would that be so?
There is also an implicit argument here that suggests that the patterns my blog entry laments are somehow expectable and thus acceptable given the history upon which they lie. This is an attempt to legitimate wrongdoing with appeals to tradition:
It’s always been like this, therefore this is OK.
That is one possible understanding and commonly offered. But it’s not terribly convincing. Our Mothers did not let us get away with the rationalization that “Everyone else was doing it.” We don’t get a pass on that, either.
I think a more critical interpretation would see this less as a justification for more harmful behaviors than a tacit confession of a failure to learn our lessons from the first rounds of the same.
The question I am raising that your comments seek to dodge is more basic. What is lost when a thoughtless approach to life on this planet is engaged, albeit under self-serving rationalizations like “development” or “progress?” What was lost when the Native American peoples were nearly annihilated by European settlers? What could we have learned from them that we failed to recognize? What was lost when the land was “scoured” (great description, BTW!) by peoples moving from one place to another? What is lost if human behavior causes as sixth mass extinction as scientists currently fear? What was the result of the early 20th CE German philosophy of “lebensraum,” the belief that the self-proclaimed superior German people need more room to live and thus needed to “scour” the land of its occupants?
Nothing is inevitable. And appeals to inevitability and its malignant cousin, social Darwinism, are inevitably thinly veiled attempts to avoid critical self-reflection and rationalize harmful behaviors.
[Continued in a second response post]
You raise a couple of good questions at the end. Let me attempt to answer them here.
“So now to turn a bit hypothetical: If the great Lifeguard in the Sky were to give you a mulligan a do-over to change one decision that was made in post-bellum Florida history, What would that be?”
If Florida could be given a reprieve from the self-destructive runaway train into which it has devolved, I think two changes could have made a difference. First, Florida would never have created a constitutional prohibition on income taxes and inheritance taxes. That would have two effects. 1. It would eliminate freeloaders from coming into our state and demanding services they were unwilling to pay for. People tend to be more considerate of places in which they have some investment.
2. It would insure Florida had enough revenue to fund the public schools, police, road systems, et al that is necessary to provide the services necessary to keep a population of nearly 22 million healthy and secure.
Second, Florida would have created an independent agency whose only responsibility was to protect the interests of the land and its inhabitants starting with the amoebas in the lakes to the Brahman cattle roaming the ranges. A number of countries around the world are talking about recognizing ecocentric rights in their constitutions. Florida’s history provides a good argument why such are necessary. Who else speaks for the Earth and its non-human life forms? There is a reason the land itself cries out in the scarred heart of Florida.
And then there’s this question:
“Is it fair, is it right, is it legal to put a giant Do Not Enter sign from Pensacola to Jacksonville Beach?”
Clearly, it is not legal. Our US Constitution insures the right to move about the country in several provisions. Nor would I say it is right. Unlike those who have bought into the moral panics about our national borders, I am a believer in the ability of human beings to travel freely regardless of socially constructed notions of borders.
That said, I do believe that an orderly regulated process of immigration into this country is needed. Such needs to consider all kinds of factors in that process including the contexts from which asylum seekers are fleeing (including our own role in creating those hell holes) and the history of racism that has marked our immigration policy historically.
As for migration into Florida, contrary to the IGMFY projection you assert in your response, I am clear that one of the strengths of Florida is the diversity of population that has been a direct result from immigration and migration. I do not wish to see that stop. But you’ll notice the caveat I place on that:
“Finally, I need to be clear that I do not begrudge anyone a place to live who actually needs one… But I am also clear that Florida does not owe a place to everyone who wants to live here anywhere they wish to live regardless of its impact on the social and natural ecologies.”
Our federal courts have long recognized that any of the rights Americans might exercise is tempered by the impact such exercise have on others. As a result, federal caselaw speaks to the right of local and state governments to limit such exercise in terms of “time, place and manner.” That is what I am advocating here. We need no walls at our borders. But we also don’t need drained and poisoned aquifers, sink holes and 42 mile traffic jams. What we need is responsible governments. That begins by taking developer money out of the equation.
The land has no voice that can be heard by most of us. That leaves it to those of us who love her to speak out. I appreciate your willingness to hear those words and the time and effort you took to respond. That said, you have been heard now. I hope the same will be true in reverse.
Blessings.
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