{"id":1017,"date":"2005-07-29T00:52:59","date_gmt":"2005-07-29T08:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/07\/29\/everything-has-at-best\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:24:46","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:24:46","slug":"everything-has-at-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/07\/29\/everything-has-at-best\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything Has At Best"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"photopost\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mindfulone\/29339400\/\" title=\"Photo Sharing\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/photos23.flickr.com\/29339400_bb1c0e4159.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" alt=\"hearst castle garden path\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote><p>It struck me as odd and sad that man could for centuries have so effortlessly graced the landscape with structures that seemed made for it &#8212; little arched bridges and stone farmhouses, churches, windmills, winding roads, hedgerows &#8212; and now appeared quite unable to do anything to the countryside that wasn&#8217;t like a slap across the face. These days everything has at best a sleek utility, like the dully practical windmills slipping past with the scenery outside my train window, or else it looks cheap and temporary, like the tin sheds and concrete hangars that pass for superstores on the edge of every mid-sized town. We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Bill Bryson, <cite>Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It struck me as odd and sad that man could for centuries have so effortlessly graced the landscape with structures that seemed made for it &#8212; little arched bridges and stone farmhouses, churches, windmills, winding roads, hedgerows &#8212; and now appeared quite unable to do anything to the countryside that wasn&#8217;t like a slap across [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,16,30,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-nature","category-quotes","category-social-science"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12542,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions\/12542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}