The indefensible Aztek

The Pontiac Aztek, you may remember, was one of the worst-reviewed, worst-selling, worst-resale-value vehicles in modern history. In fact, the phrase “Pontiac Aztek ugly” has entered the vernacular. (From a review at about.com, of the 2007 Subaru Tribeca SUV: “It’s not slipshod, design-by-committee, Pontiac Aztek ugly, but it is ugly nonetheless.”)

Yet the Slate article, which appears in its sister publication, The Big Money, says we should reconsider our mockery of the Aztek and view it instead as representative of ahead-of-the-curve thinking. “With the Aztek,” writes Matthew DeBord, “GM created something that had SUV size, minus the SUV stigma.” It created, in other words, the crossover category - one that today includes the Toyota Highlander, Honda CR-V, and the GMC Terrain (a hit for General Motors today). Indeed, the Terrain “recalls” the Aztek, writes DeBord.

Me, I don’t see it. I think I’ll stick with the c.w. on display, for example, in a 2005 Washington Post article about GM’s woes. “ ‘The Aztek was a turning point because it did articulate everything that was wrong with the system,’ said one GM official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job.”

But in 1853, when the Reverend Horace Bushnell led a movement to set aside green space - “an outdoor parlor,” he called it - in the industrializing city for the enjoyment of its citizens, the resulting Bushnell Park became the first municipally funded public park in the United States, according to the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a Washington-based advocacy group.

By the 1930s, Hartford had one of the most extensive parks systems in the country, one that had been worked on by Frederick Law Olmsted (who is, in fact, buried in the Old North Cemetery, part of the Hartford parks network) and other leading architectural figures.

Today, however, the “economic downturn threatens the very survival of Hartford’s park system,” according to the foundation. “Disinvestment and deferred maintenance starting in the 1960s has eroded and weakened the historic landscape.” Responsibility for the parks is unproductively split among various city entities, it adds, none of which has a vision for how to make use of the rich inheritance.

Which explains why the Hartford Parks System finds itself on the Cultural Landscape Foundation’s “Landslide 2009” list of endangered American spaces. The list includes threatened urban locales, such as Denver’s outdoor 16th Street Mall (designed in part by I.M. Pei’s firm) and Manhattan’s Washington Square Village, as well as traditional landscapes like Chicago’s Washington Park and the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. Hartford’s parks are the lone New England representatives on the 2009 list.

Gizmodo dubbed the medical innovation, produced by Organogenesis, which is based in Canton, “meat Band-Aids.” But Dr. Damien Bates, chief medical officer at Organogenesis, detests the phrase: “It’s living,” he objects. “Meat isn’t living.” (We could quibble, but won’t.)

Organogenesis’s flagship product is Apligraf, “a matrix of cow collagen, human fibroblasts and keratinocyte stem cells (from discarded circumcisions),” approved by the FDA to treat certain leg ulcers and diabetic foot ulcers. It has already been applied to some 250,000 patients. Organogenesis is working on a similar product that would help heal gums.

Christopher Shea is a weekly columnist for Ideas. He can be reached at brainiac.email@gmail.com.