The Gospel According to Harry Potter

The Boston Globe has an interesting story* about the growing acceptance of the Harry Potter mythology into the Library of Christian Allegory**. Initially enraging to evangelicals, the series has been grudgingly embraced by many as another pop culture picture of Jesus. Now i’ve heard it said that every narrative is the same narrative: Creation-Fall-Redemption. And every story lives somewhere on that continuum. (Except for those crazy Surrealists!) I’m no lit major, so maybe that point is arguable, but it seems true in most fiction i’ve read. Though that could be because i am drawn to that story for obvious reasons.

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More Sprawl Please.

My friend Nina dated this guy that we nicknamed The Sprawler. One day he just showed up with her and proceeded to sprawl out on the couch as if he was in his dorm room. Shoes on? Check. Arms over the back of the couch? Check. Sprawling.

Those of us in “the city” often lament sub/ex-urban sprawl. Like an uninvited guest parking lots and strip malls stretch across the landscape putting their gym shoes all over farmlands and creekbeds. With names like “Woodglen Rivers” and “Fieldstone Vistas” pre-fab communities spread out from freeway to freeway necessitating more cars and more wal-marts and less small towns and down towns. Milwaukee’s not too bad – drive in any direction for 20 minutes and you’re out of the suburbs and into the glacier-carved rural settings that make wisconsin such a beautiful state. It’s a losing battle though. Someday i imagine a mass of suburbs sprawled out from milwaukee to chicago and maybe even from milwaukee to madison. Maybe not in my lifetime, but perhaps in the next century many of the small farms and rural villages will be abandoned and absorbed into Chicawaukee and Milwadison.

Seems too glum? Thanks to news like this: A popular suburban restaurant petitions to the city to tear down a couple surrounding houses and put in more parking lots. Supposedly this will reduce, among other things, customers “urinating on people’s lawns.” I’ve got news for Wauwatosa: now you will have triple the amount of urinating. More congestion, more drunk drivers, more noise, more heat in the summer thanks to all that blacktop. It’ll be glorious. I’m including an artist’s rendition of the “ideal” parking situation for Mo’s Pub, and I think you’ll agree it’s pretty great — a boon to the community some might say.

My dear suburbs, it’s time to rethink sprawl. Instead of more parking lots and strip malls further and further out why not start rebuilding and reusing the stuff you put up 30 years ago? I know we can’t eliminate sprawl – there will always be sprawlers – but we can minimize it and slow it down a bit. Also: get your feet off the couch.