La historia social del prado, cesped, pasto...

Escribe Patrick Appel en el blog de Andrew Sullivan en referencia a la historia del cesped en Estados Unidos:

Elizabeth Kolbert gives a brief history of the American lawn:

What began as a symbol of privilege and evolved into an expression of shared values has now come to represent expedience. We no longer choose to keep lawns; we just keep on keeping them. In the meantime, the familiar image of Dad cutting the grass and then, beer in hand, sitting back to admire his work, is, in many communities, a fiction: increasingly, lawn care has become another one of those jobs, like cooking dinner or playing with the kids, that’s outsourced to someone else.

(Imagen de Flikr por great sea.)

Y en Inglaterra el Partido Conservador piensa hacer un sacrilegio: permitir la tala del cinturón verde de árboles que rodean a las principales ciudades del Reino Unido para construir casas. Sacrilegio digo que es conociendo la antigua filia británica por los jardines. Parece que Tolkien veía algo cuando Mordor se aprestaba a talar el bosque sagrado...