![]() ![]() Weedy and raged, the property defied the expectations of garden-loving family and vista-loving neighbors. ![]() Not discounting the possibility that his father was a bit lazy, Pollan describes the tension that ensued from refashioning the common view into a statement of independence. In America, Pollan observes, the unfenced suburban front lawn serves as part of a communal vista. Part of the fallout was aesthetic, centered on his refusing to take up the quintessential bourgeois task of regular lawn care. A Jew in a primarily Catholic neighborhood, the man also lacked the green thumb of his father-in-law. Despite being a property owner, Pollan’s father was an outsider in this suburb. It wasn’t surprising, then, that he pushed Pollan’s parents to buy their first house, in a blue collar suburb of Farmingdale on New York’s Long Island. He then bought his own farmland and eventually became a real estate developer. 1 Pollan’s maternal grandfather, a Russian immigrant, entered the American work force selling vegetables. In the opening chapter of his book Second Nature, Michael Pollan, best known for writing about food, describes the mixed blessing of growing up near his mother’s grandparents. A Coalition too Small? Anabaptism and the New Calvinist Gospel
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