Our Culture, or a Politically-correct Shopping Mall?

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has put out its annual list of most endangered places in the U.S. Along with various churches and downtown buildings some stick out at me. The BLM's Clinton-era administrative fantasy, the National Landscape Conservation System is probably the most important natural space left in the American West, and the most at risk from off-road vehicles and other criminals, along with "mismanaged grazing, mineral exploration, unauthorized land use, theft and vandalism." That the corrupt Department of Interior gives away our National birthright of native places to its coporate buddies is old hat to a conservationist, but two other threatened places make me wonder if we want to be a culture at all.

Finca Vigia, Hemingway's house near Havana, deteriorates and dies of neglect while Bush and Castro work out ideological conflicts that are, shall we say, so Twentieth Century. Castro should be given an award for keeping OUR literary heritage alive while we fiddle with economic paradigms and demand that he make his country safe for shopping malls. It's a huge political issue, but what really is at stake here is our literary culture, a thing that is priceless and goes beyond the capitalist/communist conflict, which is already history.

But here at home, a historical place important to our shared memory is about to become just another set of ticky-tacky suburban homes--artless, sterile, cultural phenomenon that preserve nothing but the profit that lasts only a single lifetime. Daniel Webster's farm, which he used as a retreat, model farm, and meeting house until his death in 1852 and which was used as an orphanage for New Hampshire's children until 1925, is set to be developed into 130 homes, part of the surburban sprawl that turns our culture into an empty gesture of mindless selfishness.

Call someone.