Suburban Sprawl: California destroyed

An impressive web site with photos by Matt Jalbert shows the way that suburban sprawl is gobbling up the paradise know as California, my former home. The picture of San Ramon 2006 is especially striking: McMansions crammed together as far as the eye can see, each one a "dream house." Looking at the photos, I was reminded of a poem by Emily Dickinson:

I LIKE to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains ....

Dickinson was writing about the railroad locomotive, but her words apply just as well to the frantic sprawl the "Golden State."