Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the Uni (Hardcover)
by Stephen Daniels (Author) (1993)
The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments (Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography) (Paperback)
by Denis Cosgrove (Editor), Stephen Daniels (Editor)
Fred E.H. Schroeder, _Front Yard America: The Evolution and Meanings of a Vernacular Domestic Landscape. (1993)
Virginia Scott Jenkins, _The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession. (1994).
From Publishers Weekly
In the 18th-century English landscape, a folly was an extravagant building or ruin. In the 20th-century American landscape, the folly had to be the lawn. Jenkins's account gets off to a slightly slow start as she follows the lawn from its earliest beginnings as a simplified version of English romantic parks in the 19th century to the smooth fairway aesthetic fostered by the U.S. Golf Association (USGA) in the early 20th. But from then on, The Lawn is a quirky, thoroughly enjoyable look at man vs. nature, man vs. woman, and man vs. the Joneses. Despite the millions spent by both the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) and USGA to develop hardy disease- and pest-resistant turf for any climate, it did not obviate the need for tons of toxic herbicides and pesticides, gallons of water (even in the arid Southwest) and, as a 1952 article in Life said, the basics--"bamboo rake, grass shears, hand sprayer . . . wave sprinkler, a hoe, wheelbarrow, roller, iron rake, lawn mower and spade, an aerator, a weed knife." It was an arsenal, and Jenkins makes a convincing argument that the military metaphors used by advertisers and lawn-care experts alike were part of a male viewpoint that saw nature as something to be "controlled and mastered." It wasn't long before that controlled lawn, once a sign of affluence, became the strictly enforced norm of good citizenship and general moral rectitude. This summer could be much more fun if readers ignore their own lawns and stick to Jenkins's.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
posted by Lloyd at 6:33 PM
In his message to the Congress of the Confederate States of America. Davis says:
"private residences, in peaceful rural retreats"
Finally, they have repudiated the foolish conceit that the inhabitants of this Confederacy are still citizens of the United States, for they are waging an indiscriminate war upon them all, with a savage ferocity unknown to modern civilization. In this war, rapine is the rule; private residences, in peaceful rural retreats, are bombarded and burnt; grain crops in the field are consumed by the torch; and when the torch is not convenient, careful labor is bestowed to render complete the destruction of every article of use or ornament remaining in private dwellings, after their inhabitants have fled from the outrages of a brutal soldiery.
posted by Lloyd at 12:29 PM
Richards, John F. The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
posted by Lloyd at 6:57 AM
Reading the discussion by Jones (European Miracle, Afterward and pp. 147-149) where he couples the emergence of laissez-faire in the mid-18th century with the important role of public services (fire, lighthouses, water, street-cleaning), it strikes me that Taylor's point (Modernities) about Modernity being tied to creature comfort, is also related to the discussion in Gosling (Snoop) about mood regulation and behavioral residues. "Modern conveniences," are mood regulators, right? As are standardization, rationalization, and commodification -- all means of overcoming "place" by creating the generic universal that is "convenient" wherever you go.
posted by Lloyd at 2:38 PM 