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08-19-08, 09:32 AM
I post this stanza of a poem by Walt Whitman from 100 years ago to remind us how much we have surrendered our right to the road to the automobile in the past century.
This passage reflects the egalitarian nature of the road that existed in America prior to the auto. Our road system is our public right of way- for all people, not just the powerful, the wealthy or the person who chooses to drive in the most massive powerful vehicle they can.
From "The Song of the Open Road", by Walt Whitman 1892.
You road I enter upon and look around! I believe you are not all that is here;
I believe that much unseen is also here.
Here the profound lesson of reception, neither preference or denial;
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town,
They pass—I also pass—anything passes—none can be interdicted;
None but are accepted—none but are dear to me.
http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s176/kencheeseman/gettingaticket.jpg
"don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."- Joni Mitchell.
This passage reflects the egalitarian nature of the road that existed in America prior to the auto. Our road system is our public right of way- for all people, not just the powerful, the wealthy or the person who chooses to drive in the most massive powerful vehicle they can.
From "The Song of the Open Road", by Walt Whitman 1892.
You road I enter upon and look around! I believe you are not all that is here;
I believe that much unseen is also here.
Here the profound lesson of reception, neither preference or denial;
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town,
They pass—I also pass—anything passes—none can be interdicted;
None but are accepted—none but are dear to me.
http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s176/kencheeseman/gettingaticket.jpg
"don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."- Joni Mitchell.