NOT SO WIDE OPEN SPACES
by Alex McRae

We already knew humans were destroying the planet by driving SUVs, taking plane flights and using air-conditioning. Now word arrives that we're also taking up too much space.

Several recent articles blame the problem on single adults. According to press reports, young singles used to be content to live in high-density apartment buildings, sharing common walls, common laundry facilities and common social diseases.

Then, affluence swept over the globe, creating a tsunami of fat wallets. Young folks found themselves able to afford small single family homes or larger, less dense condos. As a result, humans have spread their evil influence over more and more acres of dirt that could be used to grow corn for ethanol.

Researchers say singles are much harder on the environment. For example, a pair of roommates use the same stove, shower, cable TV connection and garbage can. When they occupy separate dwellings, their combined carbon footprint swells like a road-killed deer. This is not good, especially if you're the deer. So environmentally-conscious architects and planners started looking at greener living arrangements for singles. At first they simply urged people to shack up. That one caught some heat, so they went back to their carbon-neutral drawing boards.

They came up with something called co-housing. Under this arrangement, singles live in close proximity in a large building divided into separate areas. Each resident gets a single small room big enough for a bed a TV and a video game console. Residents share bathrooms, kitchen areas, rec. rooms, laundry rooms and green spaces.

Green living advocates say this is the best idea to come along since Al Gore invented the carbon trading scam. I mean scheme.

And they may be right. But the concept isn't new.

A similar living arrangement was all the rage in late-1960s America. Back then, co-housing projects were called communes. They were favored by free-loving, dope-smoking hippies who thought Karl Marx had the right idea.

Today the communes not converted to hippie tourist attractions have been plowed under to make way for organic farms powered by huge, birdmurdering windmills.

And to be totally honest, Karl Marx wasn't really the father of the commune.

Think about it. A place where each person gets a private bunk and shares the rest of the facilities with others? I'll bet you have one of those in your hometown already. Around here, we call it the Coweta County Jail.

But if your taste doesn't run to jail-housing, there is another very real alternative. Each year American military bases are closed from coast to coast. Each is a co-housing gold mine. Military bases are already equipped with co-housing facilities featuring single bunks and shared kitchen, bath and recreational facilities.

They're called barracks. And thousands of them are just sitting there doing nothing.

We could turn unused barracks over to co-housing advocates and wait for the wonders to bloom. The barracks are already built, so converting them to civilian co-housing would save land, leaving more acreage available for ethanol corn farms.

Sounds swell to me. This could lead to a whole new way of thinking - at least about the military.

This year, pop culture fans are celebrating the 40th anniversary of America's socalled "Summer of Love." In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, it was common for protesters to confront soldiers with signs saying "Make Love, Not War." Today, thanks to Iraq, the anti-war sentiment is back. But things don't have to get ugly. Where the military is concerned, maybe the time has come for earth-lovers to tell the military to, "Make Housing, Not Hostilities."