Here’s Why Joni Mitchell Keeps Singing in My Head

As of Saturday, July 16, 2011

It’s hard to leave off Obama and the rest of Washington for the day. Have you been following these incompetents trying to figure out the budget and debt? The message about cutting spending that we sent in Novem-ber 2010 seems to have gone unheard. Guess we’ll have to send it again in 2012.

But let’s instead turn our attention homeward this week and focus on the bucolic little slice of heaven we call Pinehurst, Southern Pines and Aberdeen.

Every day, I see contractors I don’t recognize shredding the Sandhills’ fabled longleaf pine for another development, apartment complex, wider road or new golf community. Then Joni Mitchell starts singing in my head.

They took all the trees and put ’em in a tree museum,

And then they charged all the people a dollar and a half just to see ’em.

Don’t it always seem to go

That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone?

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

I’m told by those who know a lot more on the subject of development than I do that you can’t stop growth. They must be right, because there are more bulldozers and logging trucks around these parts than I’ve ever seen before.

Seems strange because the country’s broke, the state is broke, every other house seems to be for sale, and job growth is stagnant at best. Who are these developers? Where’s the money coming from, and where are all the people not living in all our empty houses who are going to move into all the new living space?

The theory must be that if you build it they will come. They certainly came to the place my family moved out of, and we fled because the bucolic suburb of quaint tree-lined streets and family-owned businesses became a sprawling rat race of malls and double-lane gridlock. It’s gotten 10 times worse since we left in 1995.

All they talk about back there is how long it takes to get from point A to point B, and no one wants to get in their car because they know they’re just headed off to sit at idle in a traffic jam.

When I visit, a brother or sister will pick me up at the airport and off we’ll go on an odyssey of lefts, rights and U-turns that run through neighborhoods I never saw when I lived there. I ask, where the hell are we going? They tell me it’s a shortcut to avoid traffic. These poor buggers drive countless miles away from their intended destination because they know that 20 miles out of the way is better than not moving at all.

Is this a picture of our future? It sure looks like it, and the kicker is, it doesn’t seem to be what the majority of the people in this community have said they want.

They aren’t the most scientific polls ever taken, but have you seen the two poll questions asked by The Pilot on its website having to do with the proposed Tyler’s Ridge development? They went 5-1 and 4-1 against, respectively. Those are big margins.

And what of the Southern Pines Long-Range Plan? A lot of effort, money and time went into this important document, and residents played a key role in its development. Even a cursory read of it, and you’ll gather that there is deep public concern about preserving the historic, rural charm and quality of life that we’ve come to love about our community, even as it recognizes the pressures of growth.

You will read over and over again words like sustainability, esthetic quality, responsible growth, limiting sprawl, low density, open spaces, protect, enhance, natural environment, compatibility, historic, stewardship, sensitive development.

With respect for our Town Council and the pressures it faces regarding growth, our Long-Range Plan is a wonderful and comprehensive piece of literature that outlines the way our community wants to manage growth in a sustainable and controlled way. I hope attention is being paid to the intent of this document when votes are cast on controversial developments.

Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone?

Geoff Cutler is owner of Cutler Tree LLC in Southern Pines and is a regular contributor to The Pilot and PineStraw magazine. Contact him at geoffcutler@embarqmail.com.

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JER 1 year, 10 months ago

Maybe you have the same "curse" I had Geoff. Everywhere I lived during my business career exploded in size within a few years of my arriving. I was a small town kind of person and tried to pick areas that I thought would not grow very fast, but they all did. I picked this area for retirement, so you can blame me for the unwanted growth. Come to think of it, you can also blame you, since you moved here in 1995 wanting peace and tranquility. I also have a theory about why a lot of big new developments are being planned and going up while we have "every other house... for sale" and the city, county, state and federal government are all broke. As you are aware, this is a pretty nice place to live. A lot of the folks who live here have lots of money (you and I being the exceptions). The people wanting to live here also have plenty of money and those houses for sale, well, there "used" houses. Rich folks want nice big "new" houses at nice new country clubs. Not everybody is out of work and on welfare. There is that small percentage at the top of the food chain that have got gobs of disposable income. And these folks are not limited to the captains of industry. Retired military can fall into that catagory as well and we have a good source for them nearby. That's why the developers are here.

jimt 1 year, 10 months ago

Interesting article, especially so considering the writer makes his living, in part, pulling down trees, and is politically aligned with a Party that denies climate change is influenced by man-made pollutants and, in keeping with it's icon, Ronald Reagan, apparently still believes that trees cause air pollution. Reagan famously said that trees caused more air pollution than automobiles. Now we have Dana Rohrabacher saying the following:

"Looking for a solution to global warming? Maybe start clear-cutting many of the world's forests, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher says.

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs oversight subcommittee made it clear during a Wednesday hearing that he doesn't believe in man-made global warming.

But if it were true — and most of the world's scientists agree it is — Rohrabacher said he's hit on an answer by tackling the 80 to 90 percent of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions "generated by nature itself": Namely, yank down old trees and get rid of the rotting wood in rainforests.

"Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rainforests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?" the California Republican asked Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate diplomat and lead witness at the hearing. "Or would people be supportive of cutting down older trees in order to plant younger trees as a means to prevent this disaster from happening?"

Stern promised to deliver a technical expert from the State Department to get at the heart of Rohrabacher's questions. But he also tried to correct the record by pointing out that the focus of global warming policy actually centers on keeping the world's trees standing, especially in places like the Amazon, Congo and Indonesia.

He didn't bite on the merits of Rohrabacher's argument that trees cause global warming, which was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's much-lampooned statement that trees cause pollution.

"I didn't want to be commenting on stuff I'm not expert on," Stern said afterward, adding: "If he wants to talk about the effect of rotting wood or whatever, we're happy to have someone come up who knows about it. I don't."

Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said Rohrabacher is correct that 80 to 90 percent of gross greenhouse gas emissions do come from nature, with humans producing the rest. But it's that small percentage that is changing the Earth's climate — not to mention that trees help absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in huge quantities.

"How he's using it is totally off the wall," Gulledge said. "It's beyond the pale. It makes no sense."

Politico, DARREN SAMUELSOHN | 5/25/11

Reagan's comment lead to someone dressing up like a tree at his next speaking engagement with a sign that read, "Cut me down before I kill again." Any suggestions for signs at Rohrabacher's next rally?

geoffcutler 1 year, 10 months ago

Jimt, most of my clients are surprised that in most cases when they want to remove a tree, I urge them not to, especially if it is a Longleaf Pine. Ask them.

Zippy 1 year, 10 months ago

I rarely see things the way Geoff Cutler does, but in this case and politics aside, I agree with hm on the growth issue. More than once I've attended Southern Pines Town Council meetings and heard a select council member say something like, "If we don't grow we'll die." When the truth is that growth, the unmanaged, unsustainable kind will surely kill us just like all the places we left did. And the chance that we can manage change is unlikely because that will slow things up and there's too much money to be made from development so plan to leave here as well. I love to ride through all the undeveloped country in North Carolina and if I was willing to live a hermetic existence I'd move to the country. The problem is keeping a happy medium, a small town that respects itself enough to know what growth will do to it. The problem is that there are plenty of NC towns that are dying for lack of growth and others like this one, unfortunately a resort town, that won't be able to stem the tide of money.