New conservatory?

Mount Rushmore

The shrine of democracy was created by Gutzon Borglum, carving started in 1927, took 14 years to complete and cost only 1 million dollars. Borglum was a political activist in the 1920s when America was prospering and he wanted to make Mount Rushmore a tourist attraction with national focus.

The four presidents were chosen because Borglum wanted the theme of the carving to span approximately 150 years.

1. George Washington is associated with the birth of a nation and the father of America.

2. Thomas Jefferson is know for a period of expansion in America with the Louisiana territory purchase.

3. Abraham Lincoln preserved the union after the civil war when America was torn apart.

4. Theodore Roosevelt was credited with economic development, taking America into a new century and making the country a world power.

If you've read my past blogs, I'm hoping you remember me discussing "The American Dream"? During a recent conversation, again with someone who I'd consider an average American family man, he made some very interesting statements.

Firstly, and excuse my "french". "Free society is fucking chaos".

This crude but maybe accurate sentence really got me thinking. Given the freedom to do whatever you want doesn't always lead to the best results. Whether that be the freedom to drive down the road in a car with 3 worn tyres, the freedom to publish slanderous or inflammatory material, the freedom to purchase fragmentation grenades from your local supermarket, or the freedom to sculpt something monumental from raw granite into the side of a mountain?

Is Mount Rushmore the epitome of being able to do as you will but within reason? Is this another example of how the, "within reason" part of the "American Dream", means different things to people from different countries, cultures or backgrounds?

What I do know is, it's hard enough to get planning permission for a 10 by 10 conservatory in the UK, but just imagine the uproar you'd create by trying to carve Tony Blairs face into a picture post card mountain scape in the Lake District.

The second thing he said during our conversation, and this is absolute poetry.  

"We went from Led Zeppelin to Justin Beiber, man, there's a problem".

There is no come back to this inspirational stroke of genius. 

He used this as an analogy to describe how kids growing up don't talk to each other anymore and rely on social media to communicate. Essentially, it's people in a room sharing pictures, messages and points of view with people in a room else where, who would do that...