The Camera Lies

NEW PICTURES AND A NEW LINK ADDED

Pretty pictures! --You may say, looking at the photos of the abandoned shopping center not so far from my parents' home. ahhh, the color of the sky, the blue and the orange.....pretty....

But to say only that would be missing the point.

This was once a place to buy clothing and fruit and vegetables. It had a certain kind of life. But over the years, the owners found they could make larger profits by moving elsewhere. Today the nearest grocery store is not within reasonable walking distance and the nearest thing like a shopping center is a large mall fifteen or more miles away.

And then there is the abandoned asphalt, adding to the local weather.... making it less pleasant... Oddly it provides a place for people to park their cars, singly or in groups--and that too is part of a sad story of a society without adequate provision for public spaces... an anti-social society...

There is a story to be told here, of a society with deeply anti-social and egoistic concerns, the story of neo-liberalism.

And part of that story will also be the NEW LINK I have just posted, by a sociologist discussing the phenomenon of enormous beasts of glass and steel.... a.k.a. SUV'S---I hope to discuss that article some time in the near future. But anyone who reads this blog occasionally will know that I frequently comment upon the ugliness of those vehicles.