Alisha Richardson- Arcadia

Throwing the discussion back to class presentations 2/26/07, we spent some time talking about Arcadia and "real country." Essentially, people are torn between the mountain and the tower because they want both simultaneously. This is tricky. Eden and Walmart can't coincide. As time passes, people insist on more and more modern conveniences, but the farther we stray from nature, the more we ache for the utopia of the garden. For example, although they were stranded on a tropical island, the characters in Gilligan's Island didn't have it all bad. The professor was generally able to manufacture any sort of device or appliance, as long as the construction of such item didn't lead to a rescue. The women were roughing it, but they were blemish-free and fashionable in the process.

Our society continues to grow larger, faster, and increasingly more technological, and everyone feels the pressure to hustle and keep up. Computers and ipods become obsolete and outdated almost as soon as they are introduced to the market. Grocery stores become more and more vast, to the point where a redistribution of inventory in the store leads to droves of lost shoppers- Kroger chaos and Harris teeter traffic jams.

The desires for convenience and the low prices of supermarkets are so great that many people go to extreme lengths to reach the stores. In Mexico, people living in border cities will often cross the US border with day passes or illegally just to buy cheap goods at Walmart. Basic items like milk and eggs are actually cheaper in the US, so many poverty-stricken parents have no choice. Obviously this is not a great system.

Anyway, back to Arcadia. We'd love to have our cake and eat it too, but it's hard to bake a cake in the forest. Plus, ants and bears also love to eat cake, and we're generally not fans of sharing resources with the wildlife.