Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

28 Jun 2005, 9:03 a.m.

Eminem Domain

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2005 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

More John on Kelo!

I'm glad y'all got a good price for the land. (I thought "arable" meant "good for farming.") But maybe your uncles were, you know, attached to the land. Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth taught me a little about that. The investments people make in land are not just monetary, just as a job is not just an exchange of time for money. We're humans and we make social and emotional attachments to pets, careers, neighbors, possessions, co-workers, and land. Cemeteries, places of worship, and awe-inspiring natural beauties are sacred land publicly, but each man's home is just as sacred to him.