atlantalarry

A plug for my daughter's blog

My daughter is a much better writer than I've ever dreamed of being.  Yet somehow she was never blessed with the self-promotional ego I somehow inherited (through nature or nurture).

She's started a blog, at Berni Johnson

and I'd love for you to take a look.

I'd love to be the Johnny Appleseed of Solar Energy

I suspect that most people younger than me have no idea who Johnny Appleseed was, and that most people of my generation, or older generations,  are well aware of at least the outlines of his legend.

He was the person responsible for spreading apple cultivation into Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.  His name was John Chapman, and you can read a pretty good sysnopsis of his activites on this  Wikipedia page.

I've long been convinced that solar technology has reached the point that it's the best prospect for powering our future, but that the advantages are so remote from the experiences of people's daily lives, that it's fodder for becoming little more than a political football.

I've written an article about my decision-making process  about what to sell on my e-store at http://larryfeltonjohnson.typepad.com/larrystore/2012/01/theyll-all-be-ground-to-sausage-meat-in-dunderbecks-machine-or-what-product-do-i-market-.html

Read it, and tell me what you think.  If a practical system for capturing enough solar power to run a refrigerator could be marketed in the $200 range, it could be the start of more widespread interest in the possibilities of solar energy.  I haven't found that perfect system (or a manufacturer who can pull it off) yet.  There is a popular system marketed which nearly gets there, but it doesn't quite make it.  But that's my goal.

I'd love to be the Johnny Appleseed of that movement.

My internet store for people of interests similar to mine

I'm not going to often spam my readers here with references to my new business, but I've set up a separate blog to shamelessly promote my internet retailing business, focused on my various interests, including cycling, sustainability, cooking, New Urbanism, simple living, organic gardening, and many other things of interest to me.  

If you'd like to read the initial post, it's at    http://larryfeltonjohnson.typepad.com/larrystore/2011/12/larrys-store-for-the-human-environment.html

Tire Dumping on the Chattahoochee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I periodically walk around the access road to a pond adjoining the Chattahoochee River, and often take a few photographs.  The pond is off Riverview Road, on the border of Mableton and Smyrna.  It's part of the Riverline Historic District, where Confederate general Johnston set up fortifications in the days leading to the Battle of Atlanta.   I've been told the pond was a clay dredging pond for the brick company which operated on the east side of the river.  Normally it's a really nice walk.  The area is peaceful and beautiful despite it's location on the most polluted section of the river.

Yesterday, though, I was met with a demoralizing sight.  Someone had dumped what appears to be over a hundred tires along the banks of the pond, with some of them in the pond itself.   I suspect when I return to take more photos and a rough count that my estimate of the number of tires will climb.   I took a few photos, and returned home to figure out what to do about it.  The likelihood of catching the perpetrators in the act is very low, and to discover the culprits by investigating the existing tires would require forensics reserved for high profile murder cases, not for catching dumpers.

But still, something had to be done, so I got in touch with the person who handles issues involving the Riverline Historic District with the Mableton Improvement Coalition.  She forwarded a few of my photos and notes to the Cobb County government, who evidently have jurisdiction over the access road.

I then filed an online report with the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeepers, the non-profit which advocates for the river and does various cleanup. educational, and other projects related to  the river.

I'm generally pessimistic about these guys being caught, but if they are they should be fined to the max.  That section of river is only in the tentative first stages of healing, and stuff like this is a setback to the Chattahoochee's health.

On wooden bicycles and peak oil

I've written a post on Off the Beaten Path in Technology which may be of interest to those of you into cycling, New Urbanism, or peak oil.  It's called Wooden bicycles and peak oil.

The idea came to me when I saw a slide show of a wooden bicycle on Inhabitat.  The photos caused me to think about alternative transportation, then peak oil.  Then I end it with an interesting question.

I hope y'all enjoy it.

New URL for Off the Beaten Path in Technology

I've changed the URL (web address) of Off the Beaten Path in Technology.  It's now being hosted at http://otbeatenpath.wordpress.com.   As usual, I'll be covering a wide range of topics, including Linux and other free software, programming languages, internet political and regulatory issues, etc.  But one particular focus I have at the moment is the technology of energy (both oil and alternative energy).

Goodbye to my East Atlanta house

After years of false starts, procrastination, and dead-ends, I'm closing on the sale of my East Atlanta house this afternoon.  At the moment I only feel a sense of relief, but I suspect a bit of sadness and remorse will kick in later.

After years of neglect during and in the wake of my late wife's illness, the number of renovations and repairs necessary to get the house into really liveable shape had become overwhelming.  In the meantime, I had remarried, and was spending less and less time and attention on the East Atlanta house, and for the most part really lived in my wife's house in Mableton.

The plan at this point is to sell the Mableton house, and get back into southeast Atlanta (East Atlanta, Grant Park, Ormewood Park, Reynoldstown, Kirkwood, or Edgewood).  I'm not too worried about the speed with which this happens, though.  Greenstreet Properties has begun a New Urbanist development a few blocks from me at Riverview Road along the Chattahoochee (I seem to attract Greenstreet), so if I'm stuck here for a few years at least I have the prospect of a coffee shop, restaurants, and maybe a nice river path within walking distance.

The Chattahoochee River at Nickajack Creek on a Cloudy Day

I'm a firm believer in small victories, and in narrowing one's focus to tangible and measurable goals.  That doesn't mean I think those goals need to be easy.  A goal I've recently taken on is to do whatever I realistically can to help make the stretch of the Chattahoochee between Proctor Creek and Utoy Creek clean and wonderful.  It's not that I don't want to help save the entire Chattahoochee.  It's that I live, at least for the time being, within walking distance of that stretch of the river.  As an added challenge it's the most polluted section of the river, so it presents some unique opportunities for people dedicated to problem-solving.

This morning I wandered down to the edge of the river accessable from Riverview Road in south Cobb County and took a few photos.  This section of the river is north of 278 and south of the I-285 bridge. Judging from the platte maps I've seen it's on the border between the south edge of Smyrna and the western edge of unicorporated Mableton.

When I left my intent was to drive down to the crossing of 278 (formerly Bankhead Highway, now Donald Hollowell on the Atlanta side, Veteran's Memorial on the Mableton side) over the river, and take some photos.  Instead, on impulse,  I decided to go down to the Discovery Boulevard bridge over Nickajack Creek.

There I discovered something wonderful.

I walked over the bridge, and started getting serious vertigo.  Despite the presence of a sidewalk over the bridge, the railing was very short, and was obviously there for the benefit of cars, not pedestrians.  In addition to this the view of the creek was very limited, so I walked back to the edge of the bridge, and noticed that a nice pathway on the southeastern corner led down to the creek itself.  I saw no signs restricting access, so I followed the path.

There were obvious signs of overnight stays by the homeless (blankets, old mattresses, etc.), but all-in-all the path along the creek was wide and really quite beautiful.  Some sort of concrete water management utility devices dotted the path, so I suspect the path was intended to provide access to the workers maintaining those devices.

I walked for a few hundred feet, until I came to the spot where Nickajack Creek merges with the Chattahoochee.  The shoreline was sandy, and the river was relatively wide.  The scenery was really awesome.  There was little to indicate that I was viewing the most polluted and debauched section of one of the most polluted rivers in the United States.

Rivers are to some extent self-healing, but in order to get a river to really heal we have to stop continuing (much less accelerating) the damage.  As a nation, as a state, as counties and municipalities, and as involved citizens, we have to work out a quick and realistic solution to bringing this, the most scandalous section of the Chattahoochee, back to full health.

The Chattahoochee River

I've been living on the western edge of the City of Atlanta and Mableton's border with the Chattahoochee River while my wife and I get both our houses ready for sale.  Consequently I've spent a great deal of time looking at the river at its most polluted and trash-and-debris filled spot.  Despite the damage done to the river south of Peachtree Creek, it's a very beautiful stretch of river, and it's heartbreaking and absolutely unacceptable that so much damage has ensued over the time period since the turn of the last century.

I'm going to be photographing and writing about the river, primarily the stretch from Peachtree Creek to Nickajack Creek.

I'm frankly not interested in assigning blame for the state of the river along that stretch.  I suspect that the responsibility and the solution lies with all levels of government (federal, state, county, and municipal), the various community and business organizations, landowners along the river, and the advocacy organizations who have a stake in the state of the river.  

I intend to research and write about the issue over the next few months.  If anyone reading this has an interest in the issue, useful information, or strong opinions, leave comments here or email me at larryfeltonjohnson@gmail.com 

My writing (outside blogging)

I've developed a clear love/hate relationship with blogging lately.  Most of the blogging I've done has been on technology issues over at my Off the Beaten Path in Technology site.  But even there, I'm often unclear on what I'm doing.

The hate part of my relationship with blogging is that it encourages me to write in an undisciplined manner.  Since I'm not under any editorial scrutiny I can fire off a half baked post at 10:30 at night and only be embarrassed about it in the morning.  I can also start series articles which I never finish, and bounce from topic to topic without any particular end in mind.

The love part of the relationship springs from the same source as the hate part.  There are no editors to tamper with, place deadlines on, or reject my work.  I have complete control.  If I wake up one morning and decide to write about some random neighborhood issue, or the weather, or go off on an Andy Rooney screed about the little square plastic things which hold bread packages closed I can do so.

Frankly, blogging isn't the worst waste of keystrokes in which to indulge myself.  For several months I was an active participant on the various political banter forums and comment sections of websites.  If I'd maintained the average daily word count working on my short fiction that I did in pointless circular arguments on Politico or the Huffington post, I'd have dozens of stories in various stages of the editorial pipes.

Which brings me to my point.  I'm going to write a bit about my writing.  I'll be retiring from my "day job" very soon.  I'd always assumed that my primary source of income after leaving Dilbert World would be freelance computer programming.  But a few months ago I asked myself the question, "What do you really enjoy at this point in your life?"  The clear answer was writing.  To some extent this has always been true.

Over the past few weeks I've prepared two works of short fiction.  One is a sci-fi piece which I've submitted to Isaac Asimov Science Fiction Magazine.  If it gets rejected by that publication I have a list of other publications queued up.

The second story I wrote specifically for a rather gimmicky contest in a writer's publication.  The publication provides a fragmentary first line, and the writer prepares a very short story (1500 words) with that line as the beginning. 

My story is about a deserter from the Roman army during the second Punic War, who steals one of Hannibal's elephants to escape across the Alps.  His theory is that Hannibal and Fabius Maximus primarily care about where Hannibal is going, not where he's already been.  It's funnier than it sounds in summary.

My goal is to submit one work per week, year round.  That work might consist of a short story or a query letter to an editor proposing a non-fiction article.  The nature of the work depends on the muse, but each week, either by mail or electronically I intend to officially shove something in the pipe for consideration.  I'll post my progress here.