You know how real estate developers tend to name new subdivisions after the nature that was wiped out in order to build on the site? The Oaks, with new saplings only; Fox Hollow, with no more foxes; Deer Crossing without deer. Well, now there's a subdivision called The Shire, and I can't help but wonder where the hobbits and elves are buried.
Oh, wait. We know where they're buried—in the adjacent landfill, an EPA Superfund site. You'll note the developer's site mentions only the wooded environs, and not the landfill. But it would fit right in! "Kids, don't ride your bikes past Lorien Court. Don't go to Mount Doom—I don't care if your friends are going there, I don't care if the fate of the earth depends on it, just don't go near Mount Doom." The neighborhood kids will be split into two school districts, so they won't all ride the schoolbus in the same direction. I just don't see how that's going to bind the residents of Middle Earth toward a common purpose—but I don't know which school district is the orc one.
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Near where I'm from a developer decided to build a subdivision of manufactured housing on top of a landfill. They barely put a little topsoil over the surface and started selling the lots.
Within weeks garbage started attending people's backyard bbqs. Residents were becoming ill from decomp fumes. The company had to pay to move all those manufactured homes out of there and recompense the owners.
Now there is a strip mall on the site. It's been blacktopped over on the most part. I still wonder about those fumes.
Perhaps vinyl chloride is what makes the hobbits' feet hairy? Btw, I looked at some of the records for the site... They are on EPAs website, totally hidden.... Thanks for nothing, POTUS... I have seen worse its capped and the gas extractor is in place so it is unlikely to explode, but it is creepy... and personally, I would never move in next to it... but then I can tell a landfill when I see one... no matter what they call it afterward... But people are stupid.. there are people who went back to Love Canal too
A Great Room, Emma, is where you display your hobbit artifacts that washed up in your back yard the last time a poisonous gas bubble errupted in your new back yard and spewed dirt and tidbits everywhere.
You know, broken tobacco pipes, chunks of volcanic rock, and mummified hobbit fingers. That sort of conversation-starter stuff.
A great room has giant windows that look out on all the other houses in the land, but you will never notice, because inevitably all the furniture in the room is directed inward toward a giant tv screen on the back wall.
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