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In August 1991 I and everybody else in America received a personal emergency communication of the highest priority from the Sierra Club, with Bulk Rate postage affixed to Officially recycled paper. Their multi-million dollar headquarters in Washington, DC had been destroyed by (an insurance) fire. The building and the totality of its contents were beyond salvage. All the good works they would ever accomplish were on the edge of completion, and only I could donate a generous portion of my annual income (all of it) to save the Sierra Club and my planet. I could either pay my rent or Save The Earth. Would I condemn 6.8 thousand million fellow human beings to ecological apocalypse, or fork over the cash?
What did posterity ever do for me?
I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. When a Brooklyn office building absolutely loaded with comprehensive records and old office equipment catches fire at about four in the morning, and is totally consumed to the last brick despite the best efforts of the Fire Department, the only tears usually shed are by a company with the word "insurance" in their corporate name. Nevertheless, the Sierra Club was mysteriously and desperately dependent upon my financial support for its very survival. I ruminated upon the process by which my money would rebuild their building and replace the water coolers, executive washrooms, and Trixie the Swedish masseuse.
The Sierra Club is fanatically opposed to logging, mining, quarrying, petroleum drilling, and industrial processes that emit carbon dioxide gas or chlorofluorocarbon fumes. The Sierra Club is therefore fanatically opposed to wood, glass, concrete, plaster, steel, aluminum, copper, stone, plastic, the entire semiconductor industry, possibly Super Glue; refrigeration and air conditioning. I suppose it reserves its benedictions for adobe, cowhide, activated sludge, and compressed urban(e) rubbish. The building grew in my mind.
Using structural steel, stone, brick, concrete, glass, or even a single pine 2x4 would be a violation of Sierra Club ethics. The unconscionable rape of Mother Earth will not be tolerated! Their beautiful new multi-story headquarters will undoubtedly be fashioned out of adobe brick, a mixture of sun-hardened straw and mud. This avails wonderful opportunities for interior decoration as what otherwise would be potted plants may now be directly grown from the walls. Washington, DC is renowned for its wet weather, a problem that does not obtain in the arid West where adobe was commonly used. The exterior facade evidently will be upholstered in protective leather. Each business quarter thousands of volunteers will be recruited to saddlesoap the fascia, meticulously hand rub neetsfoot oil into the exterior ramparts, and salvage this nation's disrupted economy through massive purchases of Shinola.
I expect the thatched roof will become a rich breeding ground for Washington, DC's majority population - mosquitoes. No problem! The mud walls will provide a wonderful breeding site for mud swallows, with their voracious appetite for flying insects and extraordinary reproductive rate. As anyone who has had a mud sparrow nest under their eaves can attest, interior linoleum will be rendered unnecessary. Each night the janitorial staff will spread the voluminous white droppings, allowing them to harden to an indestructible ivory surface by morning. The plants in the walls will thrive in such an ecologically balanced environment!
Porcelain sanitary appliances are made of glazed ceramic prepared in an oil- or gas-fired kiln. Naughty, naughty! Sierra Club employees will be encouraged to pack out whatever they bring in with(in) them. Given the social agenda of rustic inner city Washington, DC, gift wrapping the parcels and leaving them in an open car ought to do the trick, the first day. Thereafter, special dispensation will have to be levied for Kevlar underwear. Is large caliber automatic weaponry ecologically unsound? Want to make something of it? Better still, the employees will just do with their semi-solid wastes what the venerable sages of India do to this day with their sacred cows' exhaust. Plaster it on the walls and let it dry. The plants and the swallows will love it! The executives will have their secretaries do the dirty work, no modification to those secretaries' current job descriptions being necessary.
The tragedy of an utterly destructive office fire will lead to bright new days in a wonderfully innovative, ecologically sound office building made of mud and straw, covered with leather, and roofed with thatch. Mud swallows will be eating and breeding amidst employees daubing the walls after lunch. The Sierra Club will be immersed in that of which they are so deserving: Nature as Nature was meant to be before the taint of high technology.
Would you like to buy a part ownership of the Brooklyn Bridge?
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