The suburban dream rests on the social and environmental nightmares that haunt the inner cities and the harrowed countryside. Weston, Massachusetts, is a suburb. What suburbia needs does not lend itself to bumper sticker or T-shirt environmentalism. The suburbs exist because there have been and still are industrial vandals in our land, people we never seem to nab precisely because we are addicted to what they have to sell or offer. The industrial mind has promoted the idea that a sufficiency of capital should take precedence over a sufficiency of people.
Work is one of the most natural things to do if it is of the right kind.
At the end of his two-day visit he rewarded my effort by declaring me his best buddy. It made me feel good even though I know that anyone else in my place would have been declared his best buddy. The sandpile and his toys were far less interesting to him those two days than what amounted to a harvest of contemporary sunlight and resultant health. Our evolution shaped that predisposition in him, and the context of those June days allowed its playing out. It was a stunning and, I believe, accurate statement.