cascades through the decades

woodfield

Today I scooped up my cream sugars and headed to Blendz CafĂ© for an 8AM breakfast. And it was glorious. Bagels, bialy, fruit, toasters, mini jams, three varieties of cream cheese, coffee, and (of course) a tank of Crystal Light. Free, daily, to residents. Blendz is a meeting/eating station within a building referred to within Woodfield Country Club as “Cascades.” The building houses a game room (think Dance Dance Revolution and Air Hockey), Kid’s Korner (aka Kids In Paradise with babysitters), a spa and salon (where they offer teeth whitening, spray tanning, and eyelash extensions), Blendz Cafe, and the Fitness Center, with truly state of the art exercise equipment, spinning studios, Pilates classes, and all things meant to make the fittest of survivors fitter. Though I imagine the pastel suits who named the destination didn’t quite have ecology in mind…

An ecological cascade effect is a series of secondary extinctions that is triggered by the primary extinction of a key species in an ecosystem. Secondary extinctions are likely to occur when the threatened species are: dependent on a few specific food sources, mutualistic(dependent on the key species in some way), or forced to coexist with an invasive species that is introduced to the ecosystem. Species introductions to a foreign ecosystem can often devastate entire communities, and even entire ecosystems.

It’s probably bad business naming a Boca establishment anything even hinting at extinction—or more pointedly to the self-centered like myself, death. Though I will give them this: a family of Texans in Boca is indeed an invasive species. Lucky for them we’re only half Texan.

I’m not entirely sure where this parable is heading, but there’s something to this that interests me. I immediately think of Mean Girls when reading the definition above. Think of the world of popular and read again. This is what happens when I have time on my hands.

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COMMENTS:

  1. LOOOVE IT!!! Hope to cross over with you there one of these days. Peanut butter pods, anyone??

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