tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21825814.post115823209369882311..comments2023-09-30T04:12:28.281-07:00Comments on Finding Fair Hope: A Storybook TownMary Loishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21825814.post-1158419767610597622006-09-16T08:16:00.000-07:002006-09-16T08:16:00.000-07:00Benedict, you didn't say "ordinary people who woul...Benedict, you didn't say "ordinary people who would like to be homeowners." I assume from what you write that you think the basis of the Utopia that Mr. Gaston and others founded was worse than the alternative, which is the ability to "trade up" for one's own gain with no thought to the collective individualism of the whole. <BR/><BR/>No doubt about it, millions are being made at this very moment by owners of historical cottages who are bettering themselves by blighting the landscape of a one-time paradise with unsightly structures where the funky cottages once stood. This is truly valuable in the eyes of some, this money-grubbing that has made affordable little Fairhope a relic of the almost-forgotten past. Fairhope today is priced out of the range of the very people it was created to serve because of the assumption that owning the land was man's god-given right.<BR/><BR/>And look at the rest of the planet! It's ours to destroy, isn't it? What's wrong with that?Mary Loishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21825814.post-1158417106410217562006-09-16T07:31:00.000-07:002006-09-16T07:31:00.000-07:00Anon & Miss FF: I'll stick with my characterizatio...<B>Anon & Miss FF</B>: I'll stick with my characterization of ordinary people as those who would like to be homeowners. Miss FF may recall that the original draft of this (circa 1992) did not include the qualifier "...and the land it stands on." She pointed out to me that the colony's rules permitted one to own the home, but not "the ground it stood on." Hence, the change.<BR/><BR/>I will not argue that there may be something "unenlightened" about the countless millions who own their home "and the ground it stands on," but there does seem to be a defensible logic to their condidtion. <BR/><BR/>Taken to its economic extreme -- as Henry George did -- ownership of land can become a sticky wicket. But like all "problems" that grow out of assumptions of the Malthusian sort, the solutions are usually worse than the problem they "solve."Benedict S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/18319073770437347659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21825814.post-1158354755991633992006-09-15T14:12:00.000-07:002006-09-15T14:12:00.000-07:00I agree with Anonymous here, as benedict predicted...I agree with Anonymous here, as benedict predicted I might, that the sarcastic characterization of "unenlightened" property owners (meaning those who might object to being asked to contribute to the common good of the community by participating in the Single Tax experiment) is not only condescending but unfair. "Something truly valuable to work for" is the description, in fact, of the work the Colony was trying to achieve, and the opposite of that of the self-absorbed interlopers who have successfully won bey breaking the promise of the Utopians. The latter were truly committed to the betterment of the world rather than the self-aggrandizement implied in "owning a home and the land it stands on." <BR/><BR/>I would see those who were working to preserve the original intention in the period of benedict's book as noble rather than stupid, or blind, or whatever the writer is looking down on with his unenlightened prose. <BR/><BR/>The fact that eccentrics were attracted to the town was probably because it always was a home for ideas, brave and challenging, and not for the ordinary or the expected. Moreover, the real eccentrics were teachers, writers, readers, artists, and craftsmen and directors of amateur theatre. Not so colorful as designers of mail-order primal screams, perhaps, but more real and more to the point of what Fairhope used to be.Mary Loishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21825814.post-1158307251949561872006-09-15T01:00:00.000-07:002006-09-15T01:00:00.000-07:00Link didn't work and I think I found out why but h...Link didn't work and I think I found out why but have no way to correct it. It seems that a string of five digits and symbols are added to the begining of the web address just ahead of the www in the process of going to the site. This makes the address invalid. If you remove them in the invalid address notice and click go you will get to the article.<BR/><BR/>How do we solve this problem all you computer savy bloggers?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21825814.post-1158306725085257862006-09-15T00:52:00.000-07:002006-09-15T00:52:00.000-07:00“….unenlightened property owners who still held to...“….unenlightened property owners who still held to the reactionary idea that working wouldn't be worth much without something truly valuable to work for, like owning a home and the land it stands on.” Unenlightened is the key word here both for the author and those whom he describes. 80% percent of Americans chose to live in the rich and invigorating social environment of cities and consider their fruits of their labor to valuable to waste on living out romantic fantasies of, “Little House on the Prairie” and “Fourth an Acre and A 40 Mule Power Lawn Mower”.<BR/><BR/>FF: An interesting insight into the expansion of the “American Dream” in terms of house expansion. Try comparing the homes in beginning episodes of “Extreme Home Makeover” and the giant behemoths now being constructed on the program. Incidentally the only “Family” not get their own home on this tear jerking, feel good, program was a homeless family, whose five year old kids were forced to sleep on public transportation to keep warm. <BR/><BR/>Here’s an article of support for your blogging efforts.<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://> www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=4&ItemID=10953" REL="nofollow"> WHY BLOG</A>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21825814.post-1158249869480782322006-09-14T09:04:00.000-07:002006-09-14T09:04:00.000-07:00"Paradise" is less bothersome to us old Fairho's t..."Paradise" is less bothersome to us old Fairho's than "Storybook Town," I suppose because it implies something deeper than the surface, a town with a heart and a soul rather than a lot of cute houses. I can live with "paradise." Especially when talking of the Fairhope of the past...Mary Loishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21825814.post-1158245546684809752006-09-14T07:52:00.000-07:002006-09-14T07:52:00.000-07:00It seemed like paradise to me, but then maybe I'd ...It seemed like paradise to me, but then maybe I'd seen a bit more of Hell than you had ... at the time.Benedict S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/18319073770437347659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21825814.post-1158241324379971882006-09-14T06:42:00.000-07:002006-09-14T06:42:00.000-07:00Some of the occupants were themselves fictional, t...Some of the occupants were themselves fictional, too. In <I>Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree</I> I dealt with the real ones, who I think you'll agree were more interesting than these flights of fancy. <BR/><BR/>I might quibble with "paradise-come-to-earth" if I were in a curmudgeonly mood, but it's the kind of storybook image Fairhope has always had to shrug off. I like the idea that those who quibbled were the real crazies.Mary Loishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01515655542270431289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21825814.post-1158237108957923582006-09-14T05:31:00.000-07:002006-09-14T05:31:00.000-07:00[I feel reasonably certain that Miss FF will not s...[I feel reasonably certain that Miss FF will not share the view of Fairhope that I saw when I arrived there in 1957. Maybe she will like it that it's not quite so purple as Bob Bell's, but in either case, here it is. (Excerpted from my book, "The Invisible Substance of Horses and Men.")<BR/><BR/><I>When I showed up in Fairhope, 74 years into its history, the Colony was still in business, but now it functioned primarily as a gathering place for the nostalgic residue of "old Fairhope," within which the idea of a free people freely choosing their own form of government could find repose. Unlike the peonry produced by other socialist schemes -- which appear to have been based on shared misery -- the Fairhope colonists lived a life of relative ease. Maybe we have to overlook that the lands controlled by the Colony had been severely gerrymandered by unenlightened property owners who still held to the reactionary idea that working wouldn't be worth much without something truly valuable to work for, like owning a home and the land it stands on. <BR/><BR/>Nevertheless, the Colony still retained its identity, its coterie of true believers ignoring that Fairhope's endearing image traced in large part to a slightly out-of-phase magnetism that had attracted several other brands of eccentricity. Even the town's famous Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education (where I took up "summer residence") based its curriculum on the strange notion that, in a proper atmosphere, children might actually enjoy learning; that field trips into the town's gullies and to its beaches might be fun ways to learn geology; that building bookshelves and lamps, while training the children's hands to work in a coordinated way, might also teach them basic arithmetic; and that fun things like folk dancing and tie-dying parties might actually provide a setting for development of the children's social instincts. Like I say, a strange idea.<BR/><BR/>But there was also genuine strangeness: a mail order house that specialized in home-made primal screams; a two-legged dog; a cross-dressing lady writer living in a streetcar who costumed her cats in tutus and taught them ballet (their</I> pas de chats <I>were the cat's meow). There was an architect who went barefoot year round; another lady who lived in a tree house; an artist who painted animal anuses; two self-employed numerologists (both doing quite well); and even one or two crazy people who, in this paradise-come-to-earth, still found something to complain about.</I><BR/><BR/>[Some of the "occupations" I gave the F'hope denizens were fictitious.]Benedict S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/18319073770437347659noreply@blogger.com