They Paved Paradise

I’ve been sort of struggling with what to write my post about. But I heard the song “Big Yellow Taxi” on the radio recently and it really sort of spoke to me. I feel like it should be our theme song to this project. Here are the lyrics:

They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Til it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees
And put ’em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half to seem ’em

Don’t it always seem to go,
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Til it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Hey farmer farmer
Put away the DDT
I don’t care about spots on my apples
Leave me the birds and the bees
Please!

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Til it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
Hey, now they paved paradise
To put up a parking lot
Why not?

Listenin’ late last night
I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi
Took my girl away
Now, don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Til it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Hey now, now
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got
Til it’s gone
They paved paradise
To put up a parking lot

I don’t want give it
Why you want give,
Why you want give it all away?
Hey hey hey
Now you want give it,
Ah she want to give it
Cause she givin’ it all away
Now now now

Parking Lot M

Hearing that song brought me back to the presentation our class had by Randy Kay. He talked about how McMaster has a lot of surplus parking. They created this all parking space back in the 60s I think it was because they thought they would need it in the future. But in reality, we actually don’t need it now. They really did pave paradise (Cootes Paradise) and put up a parking lot. There is promising talk of reclaiming this land and I really hope that happens. The idea that it could sort of gives me hope that all the nature we as humans have ruined may have a chance to be salvaged.

I don’t really know what this means for our project but I just felt like this is what I wanted to share.

Here is a link to Randy Kay’s “Restore Cootes” blog: http://restorecootes.blogspot.ca/
And here’s the song! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvtJPs8IDgU

– Kiara