atlantalarry

Tour of Sylvester Cemetery -- October 6,2012 11 AM

Historic Sylvester Cemetery is the final resting place of many of the pioneering families of Atlanta, and the resting place of the founders of East Atlanta Village in particular.

I'll be conducting a tour of this beautiful and historic cemetery on Saturday October 16, 2012 at 11 AM.  It will begin at the intersection of Nash Avenue and Braeburn Circle (map included below)

There will be a 10 per person donation collected to benefit the cleanup of the cemetery.

I'll talk about the history of East Atlanta and southwest Dekalb County, and the role of individuals and families buried in the cemetery in its history.

If you have questions email me at larryfeltonjohnson@gmail.com or phone me at 404-664-2034.

 

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Peachtree Creek at Peachtree Road

My interest in the Chattahoochee River, spurred by the fact that I'm currently living within walking distance, has spun off a similar interest in the tributaries to the River, particularly Peachtree Creek, Nickajack Creek, Proctor Creek, and Sandy Creek.  All of those creeks flow into the river reasonably near where I'm living, the closest being Nickajack, Proctor, and Sandy.

My 90 year old mother is in Piedmont Hospital with a blood clot (she's doing fine at the moment), so I've been periodically going on walks in the vicinity of the hospital. One of those walks took me over the bridge where Peachtree Creek runs under Peachtree Road.  Enough has been written about the name "Peachtree" that I'm not going to rehash it here, but despite the fog of its origin, the streets with variants of the name "Peachtree" were clearly named after the creek, even though many of them are nowhere near the creek.

On one of my walks I took a few photos of the bridge and the creek, including the plaques commemorating two Civil War events along the creek.

Peachtree Creek flows westward, and is 7.5 miles long.  It begins at the confluence of its two main tributaries, North Fork Peachtree Creek, and South Fork Peachtree Creek, which join near the intersection of GA 400 and I-85.  It runs parallel to both Paces Ferry Road and Peachtree Battle Road.  It meets the river across from Vinings.

The photos below were taken where the creek runs under Peachtree Road, next to E Rivers Elementary School.

 

Vegan night at Kasan Red

For about the past three weeks Kasan Red, a restaurant on the corner of Glenwood and Flat Shoals in East Atlanta, has been hosting a vegan night on Tuesdays.  In addition to the standard menu they have an assortment of vegan selections.  Here is a description I posted on a couple of East Atlanta forums:

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Tuesdays Kasan Red offers a vegan menu (along with the regular menu). You can get coupons at SOPO for five dollars off the starter/entree/dessert combo.  I went last night, and below is the mini-review I posted on another forum:

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I picked up one of the coupons from SOPO yesterday evening, and had dinner at Kasan Red.  Since I
don't generally eat out on weeknights and considered this a special exploratory expedition, I went all
out and ordered a starter, entree, and dessert.  It turned out pricey, but an overall good experience, and
one consolation is that there was so much food that I don't have to prepare lunch this morning.

My selections were the Veggie Panini, the Vegan Rosti, and a chocolate tart.

It was all delicious.  I particularly liked the Veggie Rosti.  Also the sweet potato chips were among
the best I've ever had.

The one thing I wish were done differently is the choice of bread for the Panini.  I love Panini, but wish
there were more availability of whole grain focaccia.  My motivation for my veganism is mixed
(compassion towards animals, environmental and ecological concerns, global economics, and health),
but the part of me which is focused on the health aspects much prefers whole grains to white flour, and
I'll bet there are many other vegans out there who agree with me.

All in all it was a great experience, and the folks there were really friendly.

Micropolis and SimCity

Some years back I was involved in a discussion in New Urbanist circles about the urban planning/urban policy simulation game SimCity.  I never really played the game, but it did intrigue me.

I recently read that the SimCity source code had been released under the GNU Public License (GPL), and that a version would be included in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).  The free and open source version has been named  Micropolis.   This is a very exciting development, as it opens up the code to improvements and extensions.  Since it's being included in the OLPC, it also has the potential to extend education on urban planning issues to a younger audience internationally.

I've been navigating through installation of the software over the past two evenings (not very successfully thus far).  When I get it running I'll post my notes about how I got it running, and my initial experiences with the game.

In the meantime here are a few links about Micropolis:

Micropolis Page on Wikipedia

Micropolis Source Code and Development Page on Google Code

Don Hopkins blog, with an article on the future of Micropolis

Glenwood Park photos for March 2008

Y'all may have noticed that I haven't posted a lot of photos of Atlanta neighborhoods lately.  My old digital camera bit the dust about ten months ago, and I've been shopping in my penny pinching and lethargic manner since then.  I finally settled on a camera and purchased it.

Since Glenwood Park is the neighborhood I cover which is of most general interest (as manifested by page clicks on my photo albums) near my house, I've tested the camera by doing a walkthrough of Glenwood Park. 

I haven't yet done editing or captioning of the photos, but there has been a great deal of new construction since my last album.  Also bear in mind that I took these photos at about three pm midweek, on a cool and drizzly day, so not many people were on the streets.

Click here to enter the photo album.

Most direct route to Inman Park/Reynoldstown Station

Efficient Route to Inman Park Reynoldstown MARTA station from East Atlanta Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

I mentioned in the previous post that the route to the Inman Park/Reynoldstown MARTA station I outlined which crossed over I-20 at  Bill Kennedy drive was not the most efficient route.  In fact the route I usually take is the one seen above.  I turn right onto Moreland Avenue off McPherson and immediately start merging to the left.  I turn left on Memorial Drive and take an immediate right onto Flat Shoals. Walthall Street provides a straight shot into the MARTA station.

The route isn't very daunting if you are accustomed to changing lanes in traffic, but it does require familiarity and comfort with cycling in reasonably heavy traffic, at least until the turn onto Flat Shoals off Memorial.  From that point on the route is on residential streets with low traffic volumes.
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A route to the Inman Park/Reynoldstown MARTA station

East Atlanta to Inman Park Reynoldstown MARTA station Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

Here's one more route I've devised, this time to the Inman Park/Reynoldstown Station from East Atlanta.  It isn't the most efficient route.  It's much faster to take Moreland across the I-20 bridge, left on Memorial Drive, and right on Flat Shoals.  But that entails a series of rapid lane changes on the bridge.  The crossing at Bill Kennedy Drive probably doesn't require any less interaction with motorists, but it's a more generally pleasant ride.

Remember that these maps are interactive, so you can drag the view around, zoom in and out with the plus and minus bar, and switch to a satellite or hybrid view to get more detailed information.  You can also go to bikely.com and search for these maps to get a larger view.  For instance searching on Inman Park Reynoldstown MARTA brings my map to the top, and you can then click on my name to get to other maps I've devised.

Utoy Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery

I received an email today inquiring  about the Utoy  Primitive  Baptist Church Cemetery.  I'd had checking out that old and overgrown cemetery,which is the final resting place of at least two revolutionary war soldiers, on my todo list for quite some time.  Below are some facts about the church I pulled from Atlanta and Environs, Volume I, by the late Franklin Garrett (who's buried about two miles from me in Oakland Cemetery).

Utoy Primitive Baptist Church was founded in 1824, making it the third church built on the land which until 1821 had been Creek Indian land.  It was originally about a half mile west of the site of the cemetery, and was moved in 1828.  The first elders were John Landers and James Hale.

Like many nineteenth century churches, the discipline was often harsh by today's standards, and members were expelled for a variety of offenses.  According to Franklin Garrett one member was excluded for "moving into the Indian country" (which wasn't difficult since the church was near the Chattahoochee, and the  west side of that river was still Cherokee territory).

One of the more notable residents of the cemetery is Dr. Joshua Gilbert, the first physician in the future city of Atlanta.

The plaque at the site reads as follows:

HISTORIC UTOY CHURCHUtoy Primitive Baptist Church,         the oldest Baptist Church in present Fulton County, was constituted         August 15, 1824, in a log house just west of here. The church         was moved to its present location in the summer of 1828.In 1864 the church was used as         a Confederate hospital. July 22, Col. James S. Boynton, 30th         Georgia, was wounded and brought to Utoy Church for medical care.         Boynton later became President of the Georgia Senate and on March         5, 1883, the day after the death of Governor Alexander H. Stephens,         he became of Governor of Georgia, to serve until a special election         could be held.In the cemetery at Utoy Church         lies buried Dr. Joshua Gilbert, Atlanta's first doctor. Born         in 1815 in South Carolina, Dr. Gilbert was graduated from old         Augusta Medical College in 1845 and came to Atlanta. At that         time Atlanta was called Marthasville and was located in DeKalb         County. Here he practiced medicine until his death in 1889.060-192 GEORGIA HISTORICAL         COMMISSION 1961

                               

Click here to go to the photos I've posted.  Clicking on the images enlarges them.

Roosevelt High School All Class Reunion

Over the past several years a network has developed of alumni from the various high schools in the Atlanta area.  This has been facilitated by the rise of the internet.  Delphi Forums has been a particularly active host to these forums, with sites for Roosevelt, Sylvan Hills, Murphy, Brown, Gordon, Fulton, and quite a few others.  One of the more active ones has been my alma mater Roosevelt High.  For those of you more recently arrived in the intown neighborhoods, Roosevelt is now that large set of brick condos with the green dome overlooking Southside High and Glenwood Park.  But it was Girl's High from the 1920s to 1947, then it became Roosevelt High until its closing in 1985.

Every year there is a general reunion for all the classes, which has lately been organized by Ford Chance of the Class of 1959.  This year it was at the Charles Eliot Wildlife Center near Mansfield.  We had around 230 people in attendance.  It's always a fascinating experience for me, not only catching up with old friends, but learning about the history of the neighborhoods comprising the Roosevelt area from various decades.

I was so busy talking in fact, that I did a really terrible job of photographing the event.   But click on this link to see some of my photos, such as they are.

I suspect that some much better photos of the event will appear on the website of James Stephens, another RHS alum who like me, still lives in the neighborhood, and like me, has a deep love of and interest in the history of the neighborhood.  Visit and browse his site from time to time.  There's a lot of interesting stuff there.

Tour of Sylvester Cemetery

I'll be conducting a tour of Sylvester Cemetery next Saturday, October 14th at 10 am.  The cost of the tour is $10.00, and the money will go to the ongoing work of cleaning and maintaining the cemetery.

The theme of the tour this month will be "Women of Sylvester Cemetery".  I'll be focusing on a number women who are buried at the cemetery.

I've written quite a bit about the cemetery, but for those of you not familiar with it, it's on the eastern edge of the East Atlanta neighborhood, near the corner of Clifton Road and Braeburn Circle .  Among the notable people buried there are early country musician "Fiddlin John" Carson, Jake Hall, who was the colorful former Dekalb County sheriff (who never learned to drive, and whose jail was in the basement of his house - if he needed to be driven he'd have one of the prisoners chauffeur him), and "Spanish Jim" Brown, the founder of East Atlanta.

More information about the cemetery, including directions to the cemetery and instructions on how to donate money and time to this enormous project can be found at the web page of the Sylvester Cemetery Foundation (click here to visit the web site)