Abandoned Church Becomes Skate Park
January 29, 2016
CAN THE skateboard mass be far behind? More here.
— Comments —
MK writes:
Got to stop coming here. This is SO depressing. Oh!
John Ruskin wrote a famous (what we would now call) rant in the 1860s expressing his total abhorrence and disgust of rowdy British tourists SKIING in the Alps. He had fallen in love with the Swiss alps some 20 years earlier well before they started to become “tourist” destinations. “They were God’s natural cathedrals;” “You wouldn’t use the grill of a Gothic cathedral as a gymnastic device. Why do that in the mountains?” … though, of course in far more elegant language. (It’s in a preface… got to look it up.)
Fast forward 150 years or so… and guess what?!
Well, enjoy it now kids (probably “kids” in their 20s and 30s with a 50% unemployment rate). Won’t be there for long. Re-re-conquest just ahead. New rulers will either destroy it, convert it or shut it down. Almost want to say “to their credit”… it’s that bad!
Feb. 1, 2016
MK writes:
I didn’t mangle my Ruskin “response” too badly. Ruskin’s remarks occur in “Sesame and Lilies.” In the Preface to the Second Edition 1865 he is discussing mountain climbing (not skiing) and says:
“All true lovers of natural beauty hold it [i.e. Switzerland, the Swiss Alps] in reverence so deep, that they would as soon think of climbing the pillars of the choir of Beauvais for a gymnastic exercise, as of making a playground of Alpine snow.”
Then, in the body of the work, he does include the just starting skiing craze among his indictments of contemporary English life and pastimes:
“You have despised Nature; that is to say, all the deep and sacred sensations of natural scenery … the Alps themselves, which your own poets used to love so reverently, you look upon as soaped poles in a bear-garden, which you set yourselves to climb and slide down again” (p. 35 of the Yale Univ Press ed).
In sum, it looks like we have passed beyond the “climbing the pillars” stage! Indeed we’ve even passed beyond the “climbing” stage! Even that has been dumbed down!
Enjoy your site.
Laura writes:
Thank you.
