North, South, and Entropy

I've been shuttling from North to South and back again recently, a process which will slow when I retransplant to my native kudzu-choked climes later in the summer. In doing so, a number of things jump out at me.

• The breeze. A little-appreciated virtue of the NorthEast, even as far inland as Princeton, which is largely lacking in the South, where stasis hangs languidly over the land as we stare out at it from within our air-conditioned homes. Rob confirms that the renewable energy community has measured the South in aggregate as being low on wind and (surprisingly) solar resources.
  
  
• Decay. I love my compost pile as much as the next guy. Probably more so. But the heat and humidity of the south mean that outdoor wood furniture turns disturbingly quickly into breeding ground for lichens and moss. Hence the plastic lawnwear.
  
  Cold preserves things better. This at least partially explains why the South seems to have more of a tear-down culture than the North, where structures abide for longer and people pile cash into o.
  
  
• Place. The South therefore renews its physical infrastructure more rapidly than the North does. The social infrastructure of the south, however, sticks around longer than that of the north. Because they can, people don't move, and people's sense of home is rooted in an absolute sense of place which tolerates physical change rather than a relative sense of place which roots itself in simulacra of the past (Martha Stewart, the apple cider donut industry, etc.)