His Name was Mudd

As Abraham Lincoln lay at death’s door, wrapped in the darkness of Ford’s Theater, his assassin was departing Washington, DC with as much haste as he could muster, making like the wind atop his trusty steed. 

Perhaps “trusty” would not be the best adjective to apply to John Wilkes Booth’s horse.  Call it stupidity, ineptness, or simply a streak of patriotism, but as Booth was fleeing the city, his horse tripped and fell on the luckless killer, snapping his leg like kindling.

Somehow Booth crawled to the doorstep of Dr. Samuel Mudd, a simple country doctor.  Dr. Mudd set, splinted, and bandaged Booth’s broken leg, and as a reward, the doctor was presented with a conviction charge for conspiring to murder Abraham Lincoln.  It wasn’t long before he found himself packing his bags for Fort Jefferson, a military prison on a tiny island in the Caribbean.  He had been kindly invited to stay for the rest of his life.

This past week, on a trip to the Florida Keys, my wife and I paid a visit to Dr. Mudd’s old stomping grounds.  Fort Jefferson is now part of the Dry Tortugas National Park, often hailed as the most remote national park in the country.  The islands lie seventy miles west of Key West and are only accessible by boat or seaplane.

The old fort is truly a remarkable feat of engineering.  The huge masonry structure, one of the largest of its kind in the world, occupies almost the entire island and spills over into the sea on three sides.  It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen – perfect crystal-clear blue water, crumbling red bricks, and white coral sands.

Fort Jefferson is so majestic, so regal on its sandy throne, that historians argue that this structure may have single-handedly inspired the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.  In the early 1960’s, the fort was a National Monument, administered by the National Parks Service.  After a fire consumed the old soldier barracks in the early 1960’s, park officials decided to simply raze the old buildings.  The destruction of the fort’s physical memory sparked a conflagration of discussion, eventually setting Congress aflame.  The National Historic Preservation Act proved to be the extinguisher needed to quench the fires.     

And yes, I know what you’re saying.  The National Historic Preservation Act is all well and good, but whatever happened to Dr. Mudd?

Well, sit back and I’ll tell you.  A few years after Dr. Mudd arrived at Fort Jefferson, an officer returned to the Dry Tortugas from a trip to Havana.  Tagging along in the officer’s bloodstream was an unwelcome guest: yellow fever.  The fever raged through the island, killing off the Army doctor, his team of nurses, and scores of soldiers.  Seeing the carnage blossom around him, Dr. Mudd volunteered his services.  Yellow fever proved to be no match for the arts of Dr. Mudd; in no time at all the fever had fled from the island, its tail between its legs.

With a presidential pardon from Andrew Johnson tucked in his pocket, Dr. Mudd left the fort and returned to his home in Maryland. 

“Hell of a vacation,” he told his wife, kissing his children on the tops of their heads.  “Honey, next time a stranger comes to the door and asks me to fix his broken leg, just tell him I’m not home.”

Old School

Mother Nature was never what you might call a scholar.  While the rest of her elementary school class was diligently fingerpainting, she was busy chasing butterflies.  In middle school, her algebra grades were nothing short of a mess; she would much rather watch spiders spin silk than attempt to unravel the mysteries of x and y.  And don’t even mention high school chemistry to Mother Nature.  She’d probably never forgive you.

She spent a year in community college before she finally threw in the academic towel.  “I guess I’m just not cut out for this world,” she confessed to her tear-stained pillows.  “I’ve got no credentials, no skills, nothing – all I’ve got is this silly imagination.”

So she decided to create her own world.

Turns out she’s got some chops.  Without even the tiniest smidgen of an education in architecture, engineering, physics, biology, or geology, Mother Nature was able to roll up her sleeves and build the Earth from the ground up.  Not bad for a college dropout.

Meanwhile, the rest of us seem to think that we’re the bee’s knees, what with our fancy degrees and professional licenses.  We’d like to imagine that we could improve on Mother Nature’s design methods.  A dash of genetic engineering here, a bit of petrochemical-based asphalt over there, and voila – a more perfect world!  After all, look at Mother Nature’s track record.  It took her what, three billion years to develop flight?  And God knows how many pterodactyls and dragonflies she went through before she got it right.  We, on the other hand, did it in just a few years.  And all it took was two kids and a few old bicycles that just happened to be lying around.

It’s true that Mother Nature does things a bit slower than the rest of us.  Some might say she’s got a few loose screws rolling around in that earthy skull of hers.  But she’s got time on her side, and she’s never had an idle moment in over 4.6 billion years.  She might not be a thinker, but she’s anything but a slacker, and she’s performed some pretty incredible miracles over the millennia.  Feats we could only dream of accomplishing.

A few of us have begun to understand that perhaps we could take a cue from Mother Nature.  What would our cities, our communities, our homes look like if swallowed our pride and took a note from Mother Nature’s book?  What if we designed with nature in mind?

Take these root bridges in India, for instance.  While they might take almost fifteen years to become usable, they only grow stronger with age.  Some of these bridges are over five hundred years old and could easily support a freight train.  Imagine what our highways might look like if we incorporated a few of these jolly green giants into our civil engineering projects.

In these difficult times, with growing unrest in the oil-rich lands of the Middle East and whispers of climate change floating on the winds, biomimicry should be the word on everyone’s lips.  Mother Nature’s been molding this world for eons, and it’s high time that we buckled down and took her sculpture class.  After all, a poor stonecutter named Michelangelo did, and look how he turned out.

Because while Mother Nature may have been an abominable student, as a teacher, she is unparalleled.

But again, whatever you do, don’t talk about chemistry.  It’s kind of a sore subject.

Stardust, Geology, and Cheese

Choice.  Such a beautiful thing.

A portrait artist once told me that great skill in the act of painting does not define a true master.  With a little practice, anyone can wield a paintbrush with poise and dignity.  No, it’s the creation of the paint itself, the careful mixing of pigments and dyes, that separates the adept from the amateur.  It’s the choice of paint that makes the painter.  You can bet that when Van Gogh painted La nuit étoilée, his mixture of pigments was almost identical in composition to a blend of stardust and moonbeam.

One of the best things about earning a degree in urban planning is the sheer variety of classes I can take to put toward my diploma.  Since planning is such an interdisciplinary field, I can choose from among literally hundreds of courses at the University of Virginia.

For example, this semester I’ve decided to fly the architectural coop, at least for an hour and a half on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and take a course in the Department of Environmental Sciences.  Called Geology of Virginia and taught by Professor Thomas Biggs, the course is nothing short of an exercise in time travel.  We’re trekking through Virginia’s geological history, through time and space, from the shores of the Iapetus Ocean at the dawn of the Cambrian Period to the present.  What a rush!  (Although, regrettably, it’s a very slow rush.)

But never fear – I’m not going to allow myself to be enchanted by the soft lull of geological discourse, even if it does happen to be oh so soothing to the ear.  On the contrary, I’m constantly relating my burgeoning knowledge of geology to my understanding of planning.  An education in geology, for example, can provide the bedrock for a career in foundational planning, which involves making land use decisions based on the underlying geological and hydrological features of urban areas.  If I’m to be wooed by anything this semester, it would be foundational planning’s charming entreaties.

Indeed, I’m already showing signs of succumbing to a love of foundational planning.  For my term paper in Geology of Virginia, I’ll be researching the historical effects of Richmond’s development on the geology of the James River.  With any luck, my research will allow Richmond’s planners to better assess the risks of development along the banks of the river.

Now is the time that you might imagine I’d make some clever metaphor.  You might imagine I’d compare my choice of classes to an artist’s choice of pigments, and my eventual career as a planner to the act of painting.  You might imagine I’d say something along these lines: if I want my planning career to be limited only by the reach of the heavens, then I’ll need a little stardust in my educational palette.

But I’ve made a choice.  I’ve chosen to spare you the pain that might result from my cheesiness.

So go ahead.  Breathe a sigh of relief.

I told you choice was beautiful, didn’t I?

Independence Day

Wondrous things are afoot in Sudan.

The breakout of massive protests in Tunisia and Egypt may lead you to believe that all is quiet and peaceful on the rest of the African continent.  But don’t be fooled.  While the eye of the media has remained firmly fixed on Egypt for the past week, the Nile Republic’s husky neighbor to the south has been recently experimenting with a weight loss program the likes of which the world has never seen.

After decades of civil war between north and south Sudan, peace broke out between these former combatants in 2005.  At that time, North Sudan agreed to allow its southern brothers and sisters to hold elections to determine whether Southern Sudan would be able to finally divorce itself from northern rule.

And finally, the votes are in.  On Monday, the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission announced that 99% of voters in Southern Sudan have voted to declare independence from the nation of Sudan.  Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has accepted the outcome of the vote.

On July 9, 2011, the world will witness the birth of Africa’s youngest nation.  Incredibly, despite years of bitter war, the Republic of South Sudan will take its first baby steps not on a battlefield, but on the bright savannas of peace.

Not to say that independence will be an easy process.  Come Independence Day, Southern Sudan will be the world’s poorest and least developed country.  More than 90 percent of the population of Southern Sudan lives on less than one dollar a day.  The country’s infant mortality rate hovers around 11 percent.  Less than 5 percent of the country’s children complete primary school and less than 5 percent of the country has access to clean water.

But in spite of these disheartening figures, development will come swiftly to Southern Sudan.  Some of the world’s richest oil deposits call Southern Sudan home, and fossil fuel exploitation has led to a complete saturation of the country’s urban areas.  Since the civil war came to an end five years ago, the population of Juba, the country’s capital, has doubled in size.

And so Southern Sudan finds itself at a crossroads.  How will this fledgling nation respond to these development pressures?  How will this nation plan for the future?

Two things are certain.  Poverty and the pressure to develop are a toxic mix, and poor planning will inevitably lead to disaster.  But good planning can go a long way in ensuring a better tomorrow for the people of Southern Sudan.

In other words, Southern Sudan needs urban planners.  And it needs them now.

I just checked Orbitz.  A one-way ticket to Juba will set you back a mere 1299 dollars.  Any takers?

The Rising Tide

There’s no doubt about it. The train has arrived. The spring semester has come roaring into the station, with such speed and ferocity that I’d swear its rails have been greased with angel dust. I’m just hoping it will stop long enough so we can catch a ride without the door slamming on our fingers.

Oh, but that was a close one. Still have all your digits? Looks like we’re a little late; all these seats are crammed with architecture students. Better grab that railing before it’s too late – I imagine our lives might depend on it. Do you have a good handhold? Good. Alright, hang on…here we go!

That was some vicious acceleration, wasn’t it? Can’t imagine what might have happened without that handrail. Now that our speed has leveled off, I’d say it’s probably safe to explore this train. Let’s see what sorts of secrets this semester holds in store.

My, but this is a strange railroad car. Interesting upholstery; I see they’ve chosen to go with a beach theme. And what’s this? There’s three feet of water on the floor! Check that placard across the door. “PLAC 5880: Coastal Planning Issues.” Hmm…this must be one of those Planning Application cars. Well, I hope you’ve got your hip waders with you.

What’s that floating in the water? It’s a bottle – grab it before it floats away. Looks like there’s a message inside. Let’s see what it says.

I have embarked on a journey from which I fear I may not return. The seas are rising; my fate is uncertain. If this is to be the case, let these words be my last eulogy to a life well spent.

I set out not long ago with a number of companions, led by the illustrious Professor Tim Beatley. Our task? To help the City of Virginia Beach cope with the ill tidings of climate change. We will take stock of the city’s current situation and draft coastal resilience policies that will help the city adapt to a changing coastline. We will consider the diverse range of coastal planning issues faced at the urban, suburban, and rural/agricultural levels of development. But we must make haste: the water level is steadily increasing, and the coast has already eroded beyond repair. Our fearless leader tells us that Virginia Beach is listed among the top 20 cities in the world to be most affected by climate change. And scientists have determined that if our carbon emissions proceed in their current unswerving course, sea levels may rise by as much as six feet over the course of the next century.

Yet although the fate of this city looks grim, there is always hope. By renourishing our beaches, planning a slow retreat from the coast, and using building materials designed to be left behind, we can save this city for future generations. May fortune smile upon us as we continue upon our perilous journey.

Wow, that sounds like a doozy of a class. The writer of this message is certainly slinging some heavy language around. But I suppose he or she must be speaking the truth. Our coasts are magical places, and we must protect them. Seems to me that a bit of coastal planning might be just what the doctor ordered for cities such as Virginia Beach.

I just hope that poor class doesn’t get whisked out to sea by the rising tide.

A Letter

My dear friend 2010,     

Excuse me, but there seems to be a problem.  My life seems to be stuck on fast forward.  I keep mashing down the PLAY button, but in spite of my best efforts, everything continues to go speeding by. 

I’m sure you’re mighty busy this time of year, what with getting ready for the changing of the annual guard and everything (I hear 2011 is really champing at the bit to have his turn at leading the March of Times) but I’m getting a little fed up with your shenanigans.  Remember when I wrote to you over the summer?  Didn’t I mention that I wanted this sticky fast forward button fixed?  Well, here we are in December and my weeks are still feeling like seconds.

Not to say that my days since my last letter haven’t been filled with wonder.  This Architecture School life has been a dream.  Thinking back on my first semester as a planning student, let’s see what some of the highlights have been:

Community History Workshop:  I wrote my first blog entry about this class, and have not since said much on the subject.  This is probably because I am rendered speechless every time I think about it.  Delving into the story of Richmond’s East End and piecing together a narrative linking together the people, buildings, and landscapes of this community have been more rewarding than I ever could have imagined.

100-Mile Thanksgiving: Every year the Urban and Environmental Planning program sponsors a potluck dinner consisting of local, organic food.  I’m not an expert in food systems, but I’m fairly certain I’m an expert in food eating.  And let me tell you, this dinner was DELICIOUS.  Oh, and socially responsible, too.  (Although the chance to subvert the 100-mile theme was just too good to pass up: I contributed to the potluck a bag of rocks, which I labeled as “asteroid fragments.”)

The Architecture School Building: At first, this building taunted me at every turn.  Its design and its function seemed completely at odds with one another.  But after a semester of following circuitous paths through a maze-like building, Mr. A School and I are the best of friends.  Whimsy comes in all flavors, it appears, and it seems I have a taste for the architectural variety.  Plus, if you’ve ever been in studio on a fall afternoon, you’ll know that the way light races through the windows and illuminates the dust particles cavorting through the air is nothing short of magical.    

Pitying Architecture Students: Final reviews are sneaking up faster than a panther tearing into its prey, and these days the atmosphere in the A School is charged with a poignant mix of destiny and doom.  As I write these words, the school is filled with sleeping architects catching a few elusive Zs before resuming their labors this afternoon.  Peace and mercy be upon them, for theirs is a trying existence.

Oh dear, look how time does fly.  I seem to be rambling, 2010.  Perhaps this problem with time’s speed setting is my fault, after all…I’m just having way too much fun. 

Anyway, give my regards to 2011.  After the show you’ve given me this year, tell him he’s got a lot to live up to.

Always,

Adam

Parkour! Parkour!

The course I charted through my undergraduate years at the University of Virginia was a weird one.  Some might say that while my peers distinguished themselves as scholars, athletes, and leaders, I frittered away my time doing silly things.  For example, during my fourth year, I helped start a club whose sole purpose was to build a giant, amphibious pineapple.  What did we do with this pineapple, you might ask?  We raced it through the streets of Baltimore, of course.

But although I had some fairly outstanding crack-brained schemes in my day, none of them could hold a candle to my magnum opus: the founding of the Virginia Parkour Association.

I imagine that most of you have seen the YouTube videos, images of men careening off the sides of buildings and contorting their bodies into circus sideshow-worthy shapes.  Like most people, when I discovered parkour, these bold and reckless stunts were what first inspired me.

But as I soon found out, there’s more to it than that.  After a few months of practicing parkour, a broken wrist, and a bit of contemplation, I began to see the light.

Sebastian Foucan, one of parkour’s founders, once said, “And really the whole town was there for us, there for parkour. You just have to look, you just have to think, like children.  This is the vision of parkour.”  I agree completely.  Once I had finally tuned into the parkour state of mind, I was suddenly able to view the city as it was meant to be seen: as an enormous schoolyard playground.

Think back to your elementary school days.  Picture yourself in your childhood self’s kids’ size 11 OshKosh B’gosh sneakers.  Where in school did you learn the most?  If you’re anything like me, you got your most vital life lessons on the playground.  Recess is where we made our first friends, where we had our first crushes.  Recess is where we first began to test our limits, both physically and mentally.  And after grueling days of fingerpainting and basic shapes, recess is where we learned to appreciate the sweetness of life.

Neuropsychologists tell us that the basic difference between the mind of a child and the mind of an adult is enhanced plasticity.  As we learn about what we can and can’t do, we build walls in our minds, cordoning off the possible from what we consider to be the impossible.  A child’s mind has no conception of such barriers.  A child’s mind is free.

It’s very difficult to be an urban planner.  To view urban space as a whole, planners must be able to see through walls, to see through buildings.  This, unfortunately, is impossible without x-ray goggles (and without being extremely creepy).  But parkour, at the very least, allows us to climb over those walls and over the tops of those buildings.  It sets our minds free to imagine the infinite possibilities of our cities.

And until we get x-ray vision, this is a pretty good start.

Check out this two-part documentary of the Virginia Parkour Association:

Trick or Treat

Last Sunday, thousands of pint-sized ghouls, goblins and Harry Potters stormed UVA’s Academical Village for the annual Trick or Treating on the Lawn.  It was a distressingly adorable picture.

If you’re new to UVA, you may be asking, “What is this Academical Village of which you speak?”  If you don’t know the answer to this question, well, it’s about time you found out.

When UVA was first built, students lived in small rooms facing a large, grassy expanse known as the Lawn.  Interspersed with the students’ rooms were ten pavilions, where students went to class and where their professors lived.  At the north end of the Lawn was the library, also known as the Rotunda.  Together, these elements composed the Academical Village.  The Academical Village is truly the original University of Virginia, the place where the University took its first baby steps.

Jefferson designed the Rotunda and the ten pavilions in very different ways; his intent was to embody the buildings themselves with lessons in architecture.  The Academical Village has been impeccably preserved by UVA’s Historic Preservation team, and today, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of the few in North America.

“Ah, so it’s a museum now, is it?” you may ask.  “What’s the admissions fee?”

But ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you the best part of the story.  Rather than entombing the original University in red satin ropes and DO NOT TOUCH signs, UVA’s administration continues to maintain Jefferson’s original vision of the Lawn: a place in which students and faculty could live, work, and learn together.  Yes, a few things have changed in the last two hundred years, but the Academical Village still pulses with life and energy.  Students still live in those little rooms along the Lawn, and professors still live in the old pavilions.

And I can prove it.  Just two years ago, I was living in 6 East Lawn, a room I shared (in space if not time) with the one and only Ralph Sampson.  What an experience!  Even if I didn’t leave the Lawn with preternatural basketball abilities, I did leave with an undergraduate diploma, some unbelievable memories, and a beautiful fiancée (who, it just so happened, had lived on the Lawn as well).

We can talk for days about the Academical Village’s architectural qualities, but for me, the true genius of the Lawn lies in its plan.  Mixed-use developments are all the rage today, but New Urbanism ain’t got nothing on the Academical Village.  Jefferson had considered everything in his plan for the Lawn; the University was almost entirely self-contained.  Students, professors, and administrators had everything they needed, right at their fingertips.

Which brings us back to the most important part of this entry: trick or treating.  Every kid knows that the best places to trick or treat are those in which the houses are closest together.  The higher the density, the more the sugar saturation.  What better place to trick or treat than the Lawn, where the houses are no more than ten feet apart?  If I had known about Trick or Treating on the Lawn when I was a child, my mind would have exploded from sheer sugar anticipation.

So please, come and visit our Academical Village.  And parents, please bring your kids to Trick or Treating on the Lawn.  But be discreet about it: the minds of our future scholars must be preserved.

Transcontinental Fate

I believe there is a time in every man’s life when Fate comes to call.  He’s really not a very nice guest.  Rather than ringing the doorbell and waiting patiently for you to open the door, he’ll bust through your window, plop himself down on the couch, and scream at you like an angry in-law.  But he usually has important things to say, so you’d better listen.

Let me tell you about my experience with Fate.  Let me tell you about why I decided to be an urban planner.

A few years ago, my brother and I resolved to take a road trip from the fir-shrouded coasts of Puget Sound to the Chesapeake Bay.  Those heady Pacific breezes must have muddled our brains, because not long after we had set out on our journey, we realized something dreadful.  Rather than driving across the country in style, we found that we were slogging from coast to coast on a pair of beat-up bicycles.

“It seems we’ve messed up big time, Ian.  I think we’ve forgotten our car,” I said to my brother.

He only shook his head in dismay and replied, “We’ve been on this trip for over three days.  We’ve covered over three hundred miles.  Why did it take so long to notice these lousy bikes?”

Our bicycles, God bless them, simply gazed up at us like little lost lambs.

Nevertheless, like the fools we were, we decided to make the most of an unfortunate situation and continue trekking inexorably onward.  But you know what?  As Fate would have it, we did not perish on the side of a godforsaken highway in the middle of Montana, our minds and bodies turned to mush by a pitiless sun.  No, for better or worse, we endured.  After sleeping in town parks and baseball dugouts across 3350 miles of America, we somehow scraped our way into Virginia, alive and (mostly) well.

As you might imagine, seeing the United States from the sweaty seat of a bicycle gives you quite a different perspective of this country.  We quickly learned that America was made specifically for the automobile.  Sometimes it seemed as if every manmade object we passed was no more than a sacrifice to appease the almighty car.  My brother and I, riding our poor little bikes, felt like heretics standing against the tide of a great and all-consuming religion.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with cars.  They make our lives easier.  They allow us, as Edward Abbey once said, to annihilate the distance between two points.  But after a month of dueling with cars, my brother and I began to feel a bit slighted.  Where were all the bike paths?  If we’re willing to spend billions of dollars every year on transportation, why can’t we can’t afford the infrastructure for a couple of measly bikes?  My thinker began to think.  And let me tell you, when you’re riding a bike ten hours a day, your thinker has plenty of time to think.

It didn’t take me long to realize what I wanted to do with my life.  Fate had spoken.

Teacher

This semester I’m taking a class called “Urban Theory and Public Policy,” taught by Professor Daphne Spain.  The class, much to my delight, has been a rollercoaster ride through the urban theory of the 20^th century.  Throughout this fall, we’ve been rolling through topics such as the Chicago School of urban sociology, the Los Angeles School of urbanism, theories of political economy, regime theory, the growth machine, and onwards through so much more.

It’s been a fantastic journey, and unlike your typical, run-of-the-mill Disney thrill machine, this ride never seems to stop picking up speed.  But as I trek through page upon page of urban theory, I can’t help but think back to my days as an undergraduate, days when my love of urban planning was no more than a faint whisper on the horizon.

In my final year as an undergraduate, I took a class with Mark Edmundson, an English professor at the University of Virginia.  The class was entitled “How to Read a Poem” and I, having never ventured far into those sparkling, twilight lands of poetry, fell flat on my face.  I spent a great deal of my time in the class feeling much as I imagine the American buffalo might have felt on the Great Plains in the mid-19^th century (wander around, wander around a bit more, and finally get shot down).  Fortunately, it was most often a bullet of reason that felled me, but it hurt like hell just the same.

In any case, about ten years ago Professor Edmundson wrote a wonderful book about his high school philosophy teacher, Frank Lears.  Over the course of Edmundson’s senior year, Lears completely alters the course of Edmundson’s life, propelling him out of the sweat-drenched, testosterone-fueled serfdom of high school football and into, eventually, the halls of academia.  The book, as is only fair, is called Teacher.

Teacher has a vast supply of beautiful passages, but here is one of my favorites (condensed to fit here):

In America today we treasure a long-standing myth of the great teacher.  The teacher of this myth is infinitely kind, infinitely benevolent; he loves his students first and last, almost more than he loves himself.  But one of my motives for writing this book is to remind readers that great teachers—and perhaps the great teachers who matter most—do not always come in this all-benevolent mode.  Our mythologies make us forget that the great teacher is not always just a bringer of sweetness and light.  A great teacher is not necessarily a friend, much less a “facilitator.”  He can be a spiritual antagonist and goad as much as an ally.  Of such provocation Frank Lears gave us plenty.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my days as a fledgling urban theorist, it’s that the city is, unmistakably, a teacher of Frank Lears’ vintage.  The city is not in the business of making friends.  The city teaches lessons, lessons harder even than the cement and asphalt of which it’s made – but if we allow ourselves to learn from these lessons, to humble ourselves before this great mentor of streets and skyscrapers and crush of humanity, imagine the miracles that would come to pass.