Sincerely, Miss Canada

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

If you build it, they will come

Phoenix should not, in real life, exist. It is a completely artificial city, carefully constructed for your enjoyment. A desert oasis.

Consider:

Phoenix is located in the middle of a desert. Deserts were not really made for inhabiting, especially not by humans. The desert climate is one of the least hospitable in the world (besides, perhaps, the arctic), and the flora and fauna living there are equipped with a number of evolutionary adaptations which allow them to exist under their rigorous living conditions.

Phoenix has cleverly overcome the obstacles to human desert survival (namely the heat and the no water) by artificial means:

To combat the extreme heat (which, by the way, is so extreme that they will shut down the airport about once a year because the equipment has not been tested at such extreme temperatures), air conditioning is installed in every public place, and 90% of Phoenix homes. Cars without a/c are virtually nonexistant in this city.

Furthermore, since Phoenix residents are sun-seekers, restaurants and cafes offer outdoor patios with misters to cool things down. Yeah, you know, misters. They spray water into the air where it almost instantly evaporates, cooling the air by a couple of degrees as it does so. Does this strike anyone else as strange? That in the middle of a desert, water should be used so frivolously?

Where does the water in the Valley of the Sun come from, anyway? Glad you asked. None of it comes from here, obviously. However, not only do we have ample water for consumption (and misters), but we also have lakes nearby for your recreational enjoyment. How? Well, we build dams in rivers, of course. Lack of water remained a problem until 1911 when the Roosevelt Dam, Arizona's first, was completed. They dammed (damned, truly) the Salt River, created Roosevelt Lake, and thus provided the water required to turn Phoenix into the sprawling metropolis it is today.

This is the Phoenix attitude: If we don't have it, we'll build it or steal it as long as you'll come use it. So we steal water from innocent rivers to feed our city's greedy need.

In order to fulfill its role as desert oasis, Phoenix should be green. And it should have palm trees. However, being in the middle of a desert, and not a natural oasis, Phoenecians must use still more water to nourish their imported grass. Palm trees are not native to the desert -- even oases -- and so have been imported into the city to contribute to its image as a city of sun-worshippers. They do surprisingly well here, despite our less-than-tropical climate.

So I wonder to myself, is anything truly native to Phoenix? Sure! We have a large selection of native cacti, plus an assortment of venomous reptiles and insects. The list is extensive: saguaro, barrel cacti (whose spines have to be surgically removed to prevent infection), cholla (among the numbers of these, jumping cholla), and prickly pears; rattlesnakes, coral snakes, and a variety of scorpions; tarantulas, black widow spiders, and brown recluses.

Phoenix doesn't really even have a reason for existing except to house, feed, employ, entertain and sustain Phoenecians. That may sound inane, but I have not found any evidence of native industry in Phoenix. Most of the oldest cities in America were built on some sort of central industry (farming, mining, fishing or ports, for example), and the accessory industries which accompany these (slaughterhouse, meat/fish packers, refineries, etc). Phoenix, from what I can tell, was built on commerce and consumerism. The only industries I have seen evidence of are service industries. We have restaurants to feed us, entertainment palaces to keep us entertained, stores to sell us food, stores to sell us goods, stores to sell us cars, stores to sell stuff to other stores. We also have education -- one huge state university (college, they call it here), one private medical school, and a number of other "for profit" business and trade schools. So the economy of Phoenix is literally based on the Phoenix economy -- we feed ourselves by selling ourselves food.

I have noticed that even Phoenecians are not native to Phoenix. No one is really from here -- everybody comes from away. I have met only a handful of people who were born and raised in Phoenix -- actually, in all of Arizona. Most people I have met have moved here from one place or another, mostly from the midwest, or from California.

So why does everyone move to Phoenix? Because if you build it, they will come.

This attitude is even more evident in the "Planned Communities" found just outside of the sprawl of Phoenix. Planned communities are small towns which spring up pretty much overnight, designed specifically to make people move there. There is usually nothing but open space around, and then a developper comes in, maps out a plan for stores, schools, community centres, and leisure activities, then drops cookie-cutter houses strategically around them. Then they advertise this community they plan to create, get people to buy into it, then they build it. I argue, you may be able to plan and "build" a neighbourhood, but you can't "build" a community.

And yet, I switch back and forth between "Phoenecians" and "we", at once adopting and disowning the city -- did you notice? This is what draws us in, this is what makes us stay: It's the weather.

I know I just finished telling you how the desert climate is inhospitable, but we choose Phoenix for its proximity to everything else. Think about it: Living in Phoenix, you have access to a Canadian summer, year-round.

Phoenix gets Canadian summer temperatures and rains in the winter. Flagstaff, 2 hours North, gets Canadian summer weather in the summer. It also gets snow in the winter, in case you like that sort of thing (which I do).

Furthermore, no matter what you're looking for in terms of terrain, you can find it: mountains? check; lakes? they're man-made, but we got 'em; ocean? only a few hours drive to Mexico, or to San Diego; forest? a number of deciduous and evergreen forests within a couple hours drive; desert? oh yeah, lots o' that.

Monday, June 06, 2005

Tie a yellow ribbon 'round your SUV

It started with yellow ribbons. Yellow ribbons from the old folk song, dating all the way back to 1981, showing support for the US troops abroad. Yeah, we all thought it was an older tradition than that (see essays here and here) -- some suggest dating back to the civil war. It turns out that the practice of tying a yellow ribbon 'round the old oak tree really only exploded with the Scud missiles during the first Gulf Storm.

If only it stopped with yellow ribbons. At one time it was a nice gesture -- a show of solidarity, support, faithfulness. Now Americans are ribbon-crazy. Next it was the AIDS awareness red ribbon. The pink breast cancer awareness ribbon. You want a list? There are millions! Black; Black and Blue; Black and Pink; Blue (Dark); Blue (Light); Blue and Yellow; Brown; Burgundy... Wait a minute, I'm not even out of the B's yet? Luckily there are kind souls willing to help us match a colour to a cause, and even sell us the ribbons to go with it.

Now, I don't want to seem unpatriotic or uncharitable. I support all sorts of good things -- just not by wearing ribbons. Or by wearing pins that look like ribbons. Or even by (my favourite) slapping a magnetic ribbon onto my vehicle.

Let's think about it: We put ribbons on our cars to tell the world that we support our troops. Our troops are in Iraq. They are fighting for oil. To fuel our gas-guzzling, irresponsible SUVs. Whereupon we paste ribbons to tell the world that we support our...

Natalie Dee said it best:

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