"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."
Joni Mitchell's trenchant lyrics have haunted me ever since I first heard them in a Stonkton's Supermarket, broadcast between announcements of daily meat specials via the store's muzak system while I was comparison shopping for brie cheese, which was quite popular back then but rather expensive.
How very true, I remember thinking, that what remains of Eden is in the sweaty hands of unscrupulous developers. Although, to be fair to them, these same developers would obviously also pave over the circles of Hell, if there were profits to be made from a circular, self-heating parking lot.
You win some and you lose some, I guess, when it comes to paving over theological landscapes.
If they paved paradise today, of course, the parking lot would be a subterranean pay facility burrowed beneath a congealment of luxury condos and high-visibility retail space.
Progress of a sort, I suppose.
