DOWN TO NATURE

Remember last weekend when the monsoons hit? This Sunday, while waiting for my allergy pill to kick in so I could enjoy the beautiful day, I was reading Dominique Browning’s critique of “House Thinking” by Winifred Gallagher. Though Dallas is not mentioned by name, Ms. Browning takes some Texas-sized jabs at Dallas’ home du jour, the McMansion:

“Underlying every discussion is a definite, if unstated, prejudice in favor of a certain kind of architecture and lifestyle. Why are so many suburbs filled with McMansions? Gallagher argues that their designers and owners haven’t engaged in proper house thinking. If they had, they would understand that by her standards, their great rooms can be overwhelming, their front halls intimidating and wasteful, their kitchens nothing but showcases for takeout. And yet people build these houses, live in them, and love them. Why?

“It would have been interesting to explore the McMansion problem, the design world’s correlative to the obesity epidemic. Is there something about a need for status that’s overshadowing a need for coziness? Is there a great insecurity about new money that leads to these enormous facades? Is it braggadocio or simply confidence that’s expressed in the McMansions size? Are we building mighty fortresses? Is the divorce rate falling because people can live separate lives in the same house, phoning from one wing to the other to negotiate bedroom visitation?”

I think she’s got a point. Not just in Dallas, I have to say, but everywhere – big homes to house three people are being born even in that most conservative bastion of my birthplace, suburban Chicago. (I’d say it appears big houses are a trademark of Republicans but Fred Baron’s house blows that theory.) Couple this reading with the cover of Time Magazine on global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps, and it almost makes me want me to tear down my McMansion and built a subterranean home to guard against global warming – an extra four degrees in August means what, 112 degrees every July?
Okay, subterranean is good for global warming — but last Sunday a subterranean house might well have become an aquarium. Almost everyone I knew was pumping water on Sunday and Monday – we were fine, but our pool is only looking presentable today after we dumped buckets of chlorine into her. And how great is chlorine for the environment? So we who cleaned our pools this week all contributed to global warming. It’s a vicious circle.