the land of the free(way)
My mother was hoping that I'd write a blog post about the recent G20 in Toronto, but I don't feel that I'm in the best position to do so. Not living in Canada right now, I feel removed from the whole debacle. I don't think that it got as much media coverage here. That said, I get most of my news from the Daily Show and Q so I can't say for sure. While Jon Stewart covered the G20, I don't think his comedic perspective can aid me in formulating an insightful blog post:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| OMG-20 | ||||
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Jian Ghomeshi's Q monologue about the event seems more fitting, even though he doesn't address the police response to peaceful protestors (the piece was recorded at the CBC building inside the G20 security perimeter in advance of the summit). I'll include Jian's take here because I think he articulated the issues intelligently and veraciously:
I'll say amen to Jian's remarks... that's it from me on the G20 front.
In other, less worldly, news, Kevin and I just returned from a long weekend in LA. The main activity of the trip was driving. People aren't joking when they say that you need a car to get around LA. While most of our time was spent driving along the scenic 101 highway from cool and foggy NoCal to warm and sunny SoCal and back, we did find ourselves navigating LA's web of freeways to do some sightseeing and find fish tacos (thank you, Twitter).
Yesterday, Independence Day, I contemplated the etymology of the word freeway as we sped from Long Beach to Beverly Hills. Was coining the word freeway some genius way of rebranding confining networks of concrete as roads to freedom? The paths to the American dream? The word freeway sounds positive, and might make one temporarily forget about the gridlock, urban decay, displacement, and alienation created by the watersheds of the concrete jungle.
According to Wikipedia, the concept of free is inherent in the origins of the word, albeit in a manner different than I had speculated:
The word freeway was coined by the "Father of American Zoning," Edward M. Bassett, in an influential article published in February 1930. Bassett argued that roads should be classified into three basic types: highways, parkways, and freeways. In Bassett's zoning and property law-based system (he was a Columbia-trained lawyer), abutting property owners have the rights of light, air, and access to highways, but not parkways and freeways; the latter two are distinguished in that the purpose of a parkway is recreation, while the purpose of a freeway is movement. Thus, as originally conceived, a freeway is simply a strip of public land devoted to movement to which abutting property owners do not have rights of light, air, or access.
If Bassett had predicted the lack of movement that is rush hour gridlock, I think he might have chosen a different name.
