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No.288 SIM音読用英文

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It's Get-Off-the-Couch Time in America
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It's spring,

when young men's - and some women's - fancies

turn to . . . lawns!


Older people's fancies, too.


For some American homeowners,

a perfect lawn is an obsession,

for others an obligation,

and for some -

who'd rather look at green, weed-free expanses of grass

than mow them -

a triumph of landscape architecture.


A couple of years ago,

we reported that old-fashioned push-style lawn mowers

were making a big comeback.


The so-called green revolution was in full thrall,

and seven times the number of muscle-powered mowers were being sold

than in the 1980s,

when power mowers were king.


Even so, millions of sales are still rung up

for electric, gas-powered, self-propelled and riding mowers as well.


Ted Steinberg, a history professor

at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland,

has even written a book

about lawns and mowers.


He comes down on the obsession side of things,

asserting that the quest for the perfect lawn

has changed the American landscape

as profoundly

as did tree-clearing in earlier centuries,

as the nation spread westward.


Steinberg notes

that Americans have 16th-century British aristocracy,

with its legions of scythe-wielding gardeners,

to blame for the idea

that grassy glades should be trimmed

with manicured precision.


Showplace lawns became such a status symbol

at tract developments in the American suburbs

that, as Steinberg points out, the first words

that a neighbor had for comedian Alan King

when he moved into a subdivision were,

Whaddya gonna do about the crabgrass?


Then came garden shows

and televised golf tournaments,

with their immaculate greens,

and the stampede

for new lawn mowers, trimmers, fertilizers, watering systems and
weed-killers

was on.


For some Americans, Steinberg points out,

lawn care represents

the single most important engagement

with the natural world.


An engagement

that, as often as not, the crabgrass wins!


I'm Ted Landphair.
by danueno | 2009-04-15 17:14 | SIM音読用英文


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