Word: grassed
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...Amazing, really, what a brief scrutiny of the grass replacement ritual reveals lurking just below the topsoil. The superficial concerns about our Yard are, of course, both abundant and well founded. Everyone can see that it's ugly. Some people have found that it smells bad. At 10 minutes past the hour, the impossibility of running in a straight line over it to Sever Hall is cursed by all and sundry. But now the inner as well as the outer blemishes on our lawns can be shown. Now the grass can be understood. We may still sigh in resignation when...
...underway. The squadron of landscape-artists has been unleashed; like Stravinsky, they aspire to create a magnum opus of the season's rituals. With ardor, with bags of dirt, they have already begun to transform the Yard from a relatively pleasant, serene meadow into a confusion of cordons, chemical grass simulacra and bare patches of earth hideous to behold. Harvard subsists on tradition: the Yard is made repellent each spring and this one is no different. Why bother, one is compelled to wonder. Why go to all the time and expense for a lawn destined for a life so nasty...
...might agree, and so should this year's Commencement speaker, Alan Greenspan. Unless, that is, this superficial cost-benefit analysis is wrong, and the grasseous benefits do outweigh the pain-in-the-asseous costs. Giving Harvard the benefit of the doubt, there must be some intangible attributes of the grass not captured in the it's-a-pain, what's-the-point model...
...There are. A closer glance at the lawn reveals that the grass ritual is not borne of practical necessity, but that Harvard nonetheless has a vested interest in maintaining the perfect condition of the Yard...
...could be plain old vanity. But maybe, just maybe, it's something even more sinister. Maybe there's a deep dark secret hiding in the grass...