Are we a teardown or a fixer-upper?

Last week’s newsletter began: An out-of-town developer tore a house down at the end of my street and cut down every single tree on the lot. As I watched the big T-Rex excavator claw down the walls, a thought ran through my head: If it can be built, it can be torn down. True of houses, relationships, and civilizations. What got me the most was the smell of the big pile of demolished house. A smell of rot and death. And then the oxblood and rain lilies came up. Related: “Normal is what you can successfully ignore”