The Center for Land Use Interpretation Gives Lay of the Land

The Center for Land Use Interpretation Gives Lay of the Land The Center for Land Use Interpretation Located in Culver City , California Takes a Curious Interest in the Real Non Romanticized Use of the Landscape in America Lex Loeb Contributor Network . The Center for Land Use Interpretation located in Culver City California studies the real non-romantic, non romanticized American landscape and land use patterns. For those curious about open pit mines, oil fields, drainage and water system projects, ghost towns, road side attractions, and various less than famous American landscape icons, this is the place to go. The Center for Land Use Interpretation has a journal one can subscribe to and also prints out interesting postcards of areas and landscape features studied. The Center maintains a website at http://www.clui.org if interested in direct information. The latest spring 2009 Center for Land Use Interpretation Newsletter carries a quote that maybe their motto: "We shall not cease from exploration , and the end of all exploring will be to arrive where we stared and know the place for the first time."--T.S. Eliot. That may explain their interest in the ordinary mundane uncelebrated American landscape? Most people don't seem to be too interested in exploring old smokestacks or the Trans-Alaska Pipeline or Houston Oil storage / West Texas oil fields, they want the real American landscape out of mind, ignored, because they consider it blight. This is not the case with the Center For Land Use Interpretation. It is not that they are celebrating environmental degradation but rather that they are taking a basic interest in the real non romanticized American landscape because it is curious and is real / real estate that is worthy of exploration. The Center does not celebrate what it finds but rather says that it is as it is. That is a cause for fascination. The most mysterious structures in the American landscape like grain silos can be defined as ugly and unsightly or ignored as blight but many were very carefully engineered and represented a large investment or an ongoing business operation. The causes and effects leave lasting effects that can long remain important characteristics in the landscape. Rock quarries were excavated out of necessity to build American Cities. Some of them leave behind stunningly transformed landscape features that should not be ignored and are worthy of more than a little exploration. In Illinois and Indiana, Lime stone quarries are cut out of the landscape leaving shear drop offs into big open square pits down to though various strata of rock to what become lakes at the ground water level. Few people pay any attention to these landscape features. These particular old quarries , some still active, are substantial landscape features that could draw tourists just because of their oddity. The same can be true of land fills. The Center For Land Use Interpretation newsletter is called The Lay of the Land. A copy can be requested by going to the website listed above or by writing to: The Center For Land Use Interpretation 9331 Venice Blvd. Culver City, CA 90232 Put down the rose or green colored glasses and have a real look at An America worthy of exploration. .