I am writing this at a coffee shop, since we finally gave up on Earthlink a few days ago and now are internet-connection-less at home; we are in the progress of moving to AT&T and hopefully that will work better.
The big news is that Sunday is the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation's Race for Research. Last November, when the race occurred, Amy was newly diagnosed, and by chance I saw the flyer at Emory when I was having my mammogram. Amy couldn't walk with us, but she was there, and cheered us on; Lynsley made a sign, and we took pictures. Iain ran with Dan, and besides the neighbors, other friends of Amy and of Max were there. We weren't very organized, but I said to Lynsley, "Next year - T-shirts!"
So we actually have a team this year, and we sort of have T-shirts, thanks to a color inkjet printer and iron-on transfers from Office Depot - Amy is still waiting for a couple more, but I ran out and didn't have a chance to get to the store til now. But now I have them, and I'll print up more tonight.
At the Republican National Convention, Rudy Guiliani gave a talk in which he ridiculed Barack Obama's background as a community organizer. Setting aside how I feel about the two Presidential candidates, I was deeply disappointed that Mr. Guiliani chose to say what he did.
Community is really important. It's a ride to the doctor when your car breaks down, and someone to look after your kids when you can't get home from work on time. It's someone bringing you a meal when the doctor gives you really bad news and and going across the street late at night to ask someone for advice about whether or not your baby needs to go to the ER. It's the people who care about whether or not your street is safe from hazards, whether it is drug dealers or speeders or predatory lenders, and who can call 911 when you aren't home and can't. It's neighborhood watches and the Morningside Security Patrol. It's wine and cheese on a Sunday evening or a potluck at the end of summer or even guys playing guitars in the parking lot. Maybe in Rudy Guiliani's neighborhood no one does these things, but on my street we do. And it doesn't just happen.
And on Sunday, we'll be in the parking lot at Manuel's Tavern, and this year, we'll have T-shirts. They'll be hugs and photos, and this year, Amy will be walking with us. And when I'm dead, I would be honored to be identified as a community organizer.
See you Sunday. Let me know if you need a transfer for your T-shirt. Hot iron, no steam.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Hitting the Wall on North Highland
If you are driving north on North Highland, the road starts a curve to the right before you get to the intersection with Wessyngton Road. There are reflective yellow signs positioned to catch the headlight beam of northbound drivers headed straight to get their attention that the road is going off to the right, but still drivers miss the curve. This tends to happen at night, and speeding and alcohol may play a role (having no actual data, I have resorted to weasel language, but I am pretty sure that’s true).
There is a house on North Morningside just north of the intersection with Wessyngton Road that is set up from street level, with a nice front porch and a lawn that slopes down to a stone retaining wall that keeps the yard from falling on to the sidewalk. As I recall the retaining wall was rebuilt a few years ago; it’s a substantial wall, which is good (at least for the wall) because it is one of the places that cars that don’t make the curve end up.
We walk by this house regularly, and one of the things we do is to look for automotive debris scattered on the sidewalk or along the curb or even on nearby lawns. We regularly find the detritus of modern automobiles: hubcaps, chunks of fenders, unidentified black plastic gizmos with plastic-covered wires coming out of them, and shattered bits glass, mirrors, and plastic. I had thought if I lived in that house I would make a gigantic collage, with all this stuff embedded in mortar. Perhaps it could even be shaped like a car – a high tech, glittering vehicle covered with sparkles, a mosaic of glass and broken metal.
There was one particularly spectacular accident there several years ago. As longtime watchers of CSI we know how to investigate the scene and reconstruct what happened. The northbound car was traveling fast and the driver missed the curve, then lost control. The car tilted on to the two drivers’ side wheels and went up on to the sidewalk south of Wessyngton, squeezing between the retaining wall there and miraculously not crashing into anything but pushing a sign out of the way by a few inches. Still on the sidewalk, the car barreled into the stone retaining wall of this house north of the Wessyngton intersection, knocking stones out of place and ending up upside down in the street in front of the house.
The upside down part we know because one night soon after this happened we were talking to a woman who lived in the house. She said that there had been three people in the car. One of them went off in an ambulance, the driver got taken away by the police, and the remaining passenger called a taxi to get home that night. And before the wrecker came to take away the car, still upside down in the street, another intoxicated driver crashed into it.
I had thought what great sport it would be, if I were younger and didn’t have the kind of life I do and if I didn’t need to sleep, to spend weekend nights sitting on that porch, safe above the mayhem in the street below, drinking beer and watching the cars crash into my retaining wall. I’d have my phone out there on the porch with me – a cordless one, not the cell phone, so the 911 operator who know where I was calling from – and call in the accidents. A car just crashed in front of my house. Can you send someone? I think you need to send an ambulance too. They say someone’s hurt.
South of Wessyngton near the intersection of Highland and Morningside, there are now orange reflective barrels. They’ve been there a while now. I don’t know if they are there to try to keep the drunken and distracted drivers on the road or for some other reason, but I haven’t seen as much car debris scattered farther up the street recently. So maybe the barrels have helped.
We’ve been waiting for that stone retaining wall to get fixed; the stones that were knocked out never got mortared back in place. We thought it was an insurance thing or something. But we noticed a couple of weeks ago that the house looked vacant and there were notices posted on the door. Last night when Iain and I were walking to Caramba I walked up to the door and read them. The house has been winterized (“Don’t use the toilets!” a fluorescent orange notice screams), processed by some company, and a simple white notice provides a phone number and email address that the occupants need to contact urgently. And it looks like there are new locks on the door.
There is a house on North Morningside just north of the intersection with Wessyngton Road that is set up from street level, with a nice front porch and a lawn that slopes down to a stone retaining wall that keeps the yard from falling on to the sidewalk. As I recall the retaining wall was rebuilt a few years ago; it’s a substantial wall, which is good (at least for the wall) because it is one of the places that cars that don’t make the curve end up.
We walk by this house regularly, and one of the things we do is to look for automotive debris scattered on the sidewalk or along the curb or even on nearby lawns. We regularly find the detritus of modern automobiles: hubcaps, chunks of fenders, unidentified black plastic gizmos with plastic-covered wires coming out of them, and shattered bits glass, mirrors, and plastic. I had thought if I lived in that house I would make a gigantic collage, with all this stuff embedded in mortar. Perhaps it could even be shaped like a car – a high tech, glittering vehicle covered with sparkles, a mosaic of glass and broken metal.
There was one particularly spectacular accident there several years ago. As longtime watchers of CSI we know how to investigate the scene and reconstruct what happened. The northbound car was traveling fast and the driver missed the curve, then lost control. The car tilted on to the two drivers’ side wheels and went up on to the sidewalk south of Wessyngton, squeezing between the retaining wall there and miraculously not crashing into anything but pushing a sign out of the way by a few inches. Still on the sidewalk, the car barreled into the stone retaining wall of this house north of the Wessyngton intersection, knocking stones out of place and ending up upside down in the street in front of the house.
The upside down part we know because one night soon after this happened we were talking to a woman who lived in the house. She said that there had been three people in the car. One of them went off in an ambulance, the driver got taken away by the police, and the remaining passenger called a taxi to get home that night. And before the wrecker came to take away the car, still upside down in the street, another intoxicated driver crashed into it.
I had thought what great sport it would be, if I were younger and didn’t have the kind of life I do and if I didn’t need to sleep, to spend weekend nights sitting on that porch, safe above the mayhem in the street below, drinking beer and watching the cars crash into my retaining wall. I’d have my phone out there on the porch with me – a cordless one, not the cell phone, so the 911 operator who know where I was calling from – and call in the accidents. A car just crashed in front of my house. Can you send someone? I think you need to send an ambulance too. They say someone’s hurt.
South of Wessyngton near the intersection of Highland and Morningside, there are now orange reflective barrels. They’ve been there a while now. I don’t know if they are there to try to keep the drunken and distracted drivers on the road or for some other reason, but I haven’t seen as much car debris scattered farther up the street recently. So maybe the barrels have helped.
We’ve been waiting for that stone retaining wall to get fixed; the stones that were knocked out never got mortared back in place. We thought it was an insurance thing or something. But we noticed a couple of weeks ago that the house looked vacant and there were notices posted on the door. Last night when Iain and I were walking to Caramba I walked up to the door and read them. The house has been winterized (“Don’t use the toilets!” a fluorescent orange notice screams), processed by some company, and a simple white notice provides a phone number and email address that the occupants need to contact urgently. And it looks like there are new locks on the door.
Monday, October 13, 2008
The Trees of Wessyngton Road
My understanding of neighborhood history is that our street, Wessyngton Road, was a late addition to Morningside. Much of the neighborhood dates to the 1920s, but not Wessyngton Road – our street was built around 1950, and that’s when the older homes on the street were built. There’s been some newer construction too, and of course now some of the 1950s houses are being purchased, torn down, and replaced with Large Houses that are Architecturally Different from Adjacent Houses (LHADAHs).
I am not sure when the oak trees – the tall, massive oaks that still stand in a few places on our street – were planted, but they are old, and many of them are at the end of their life. They might have died anyway, but the unfriendly urban environment and drought are definitely taking their toll. One fell over, blocking the street, a couple of months ago; others have been removed to make way for LHADAHs. There briefly was a stop work order, over tree issues, at one of the LHADAHs up the street, but they ended up removing the trees and continuing the construction. Now there’s an orange sign in front of another house, announcing that trees are going to be removed – presumably to allow another LHADAH to be built.
When I bought this house, there was one oak tree in the front yard, and a stump where another one had been cut down by the former owner. It was 13 or 14 years ago that one day half the leaves on the remaining one just turned brown. The tree was dying and the only question was would we get it taken down before it fell over.
Tom wanted to replace it with a gingko, and we went to a large tree farm and picked one out. This was when Sarah was a baby, and I remember that Tom had her in a backpack – it was there that she said her first word, or at least the first one we understood (“duck” – the noun, as opposed to the verb). Tom wanted a gingko because an arborist had recommended it, as a tree that could stand the tough life in the city. It was supposed to be a male tree, since female gingkos make fruit (“the fruit smells like cat vomit,” Tom told me helpfully).
I guess determining the gender of gingko trees is an inexact art, because a few years later our tree started making fruit (surprise!) but it really doesn’t smell like cat vomit; the only real problem is that we have to continually clear out the small gingko trees from underneath, or otherwise our front yard will become a gingko forest. It is now a tall tree, as tall as our house, and in the fall the leaves turn bright yellow. But it doesn’t make shade the way the old oak tree did; I wish we still had an oak tree that would shade the house and the asphalt and help keep things cooler in the summer.
Some of the houses on Wessyngton have no trees at all. The LHADAH that is on the market now – the one that they are asking $1.3 million for – has two small maple trees in the tiny front yard. They may grow to be beautiful trees, and provide wonderful scarlet color in the fall, but they will never shade the street. They took trees out to build the LHADAH next to it, and on the other side is that orange sign.
When we were walking the dog this morning, Tom said we need more trees on our street. A few weeks ago, Trees Atlanta hosted a workshop to teach people how to plan a neighborhood tree planting event; I would have liked to have gone, but that was the weekend of the Great Atlanta Gasoline Shortage, and I didn't go *anywhere.* Maybe next year.
I am not sure when the oak trees – the tall, massive oaks that still stand in a few places on our street – were planted, but they are old, and many of them are at the end of their life. They might have died anyway, but the unfriendly urban environment and drought are definitely taking their toll. One fell over, blocking the street, a couple of months ago; others have been removed to make way for LHADAHs. There briefly was a stop work order, over tree issues, at one of the LHADAHs up the street, but they ended up removing the trees and continuing the construction. Now there’s an orange sign in front of another house, announcing that trees are going to be removed – presumably to allow another LHADAH to be built.
When I bought this house, there was one oak tree in the front yard, and a stump where another one had been cut down by the former owner. It was 13 or 14 years ago that one day half the leaves on the remaining one just turned brown. The tree was dying and the only question was would we get it taken down before it fell over.
Tom wanted to replace it with a gingko, and we went to a large tree farm and picked one out. This was when Sarah was a baby, and I remember that Tom had her in a backpack – it was there that she said her first word, or at least the first one we understood (“duck” – the noun, as opposed to the verb). Tom wanted a gingko because an arborist had recommended it, as a tree that could stand the tough life in the city. It was supposed to be a male tree, since female gingkos make fruit (“the fruit smells like cat vomit,” Tom told me helpfully).
I guess determining the gender of gingko trees is an inexact art, because a few years later our tree started making fruit (surprise!) but it really doesn’t smell like cat vomit; the only real problem is that we have to continually clear out the small gingko trees from underneath, or otherwise our front yard will become a gingko forest. It is now a tall tree, as tall as our house, and in the fall the leaves turn bright yellow. But it doesn’t make shade the way the old oak tree did; I wish we still had an oak tree that would shade the house and the asphalt and help keep things cooler in the summer.
Some of the houses on Wessyngton have no trees at all. The LHADAH that is on the market now – the one that they are asking $1.3 million for – has two small maple trees in the tiny front yard. They may grow to be beautiful trees, and provide wonderful scarlet color in the fall, but they will never shade the street. They took trees out to build the LHADAH next to it, and on the other side is that orange sign.
When we were walking the dog this morning, Tom said we need more trees on our street. A few weeks ago, Trees Atlanta hosted a workshop to teach people how to plan a neighborhood tree planting event; I would have liked to have gone, but that was the weekend of the Great Atlanta Gasoline Shortage, and I didn't go *anywhere.* Maybe next year.
Columbus Day Update
Our internet connection has been intermittent (thank you, Earthlink) so I haven't posted in a while. Let's see - where were we when I last wrote something here?
The dishwasher had stopped working. Since then, the repairman has been to the house twice and the second time it was fixed. However, yesterday it started making a noise that was Clearly Abnormal for a Dishwasher, and we have stopped using it again.
We also didn't have internet access, because Earthlink had told us we could no longer have a DSL line. I am not sure what their current thinking is on that (Tom is the one who talks to them regularly) but we now have intermittent access. It will be on for a while, then it's off.
That also was the weekend of the Great Atlanta Gasoline Shortage. Although they said that things might not be completely back to normal until Columbus Day Weekend (which is now), the plastic bags covering the pumps disappeared pretty quickly - no thanks to Governor Perdue, whose response was to ask for oil to be released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; I guess no one told him that the problem was the refineries, not oil, but oh well - he was in Spain at the time when all this was happening.
That also was before the $700 billion dollar bailout proposal went through that was supposed to get the credit markets unfrozen. So Congress passed it last week, including giving the Treasury Department authority they didn't want to directly recapitalize banks, and the stock market kept going down all week and now the new Idea that Will Get the Economy out of the Toilet is directly recapitalizing banks.
Speaking of banks - our bank, Wachovia, is/was the fourth largest bank in the United States, and they went under sometime within the last week or two. CitiBank and Wells Fargo got into a tussle over the parts that were left that they wanted but Wells Fargo won. I was afraid we had more money in Wachovia than was covered by the FDIC (my mom's house in Oklahoma sold recently, and we had just deposited that check a couple of months ago) so right around the time Wachovia went under, I transferred some money to another bank.
I saw a patient on Friday who I hadn't seen before. The chart said he had significant mental health and substance abuse problems, and it looked from the chart like he had been homeless. But when I talked to him, he clearly described his symptoms and could tell me when he had had similar symptoms before, and what he had been treated with the last time. I told him his blood pressure was a little up, and he said it was because of all the stuff going on. What stuff?, I asked. Those guys running that company who got billions of dollars from the government, and then went on that week long spa vacation, he said. Oh, AIG, I said. Yes, he said, and went on to enumerate how much they spent on food and on spa treatments and whatever else they did.
In the meantime, the presidential candidates are arguing about who will cut taxes the most. It's not clear that anyone is prepared to ask us to do anything hard - if we just drill for more oil and keep those "Support Our Troops" magnets on our cars, it'll all be okay.
It's not okay, and doing more of the same is not going to make it okay. It would be nice if someone running for something would be willing to say that.
The dishwasher had stopped working. Since then, the repairman has been to the house twice and the second time it was fixed. However, yesterday it started making a noise that was Clearly Abnormal for a Dishwasher, and we have stopped using it again.
We also didn't have internet access, because Earthlink had told us we could no longer have a DSL line. I am not sure what their current thinking is on that (Tom is the one who talks to them regularly) but we now have intermittent access. It will be on for a while, then it's off.
That also was the weekend of the Great Atlanta Gasoline Shortage. Although they said that things might not be completely back to normal until Columbus Day Weekend (which is now), the plastic bags covering the pumps disappeared pretty quickly - no thanks to Governor Perdue, whose response was to ask for oil to be released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; I guess no one told him that the problem was the refineries, not oil, but oh well - he was in Spain at the time when all this was happening.
That also was before the $700 billion dollar bailout proposal went through that was supposed to get the credit markets unfrozen. So Congress passed it last week, including giving the Treasury Department authority they didn't want to directly recapitalize banks, and the stock market kept going down all week and now the new Idea that Will Get the Economy out of the Toilet is directly recapitalizing banks.
Speaking of banks - our bank, Wachovia, is/was the fourth largest bank in the United States, and they went under sometime within the last week or two. CitiBank and Wells Fargo got into a tussle over the parts that were left that they wanted but Wells Fargo won. I was afraid we had more money in Wachovia than was covered by the FDIC (my mom's house in Oklahoma sold recently, and we had just deposited that check a couple of months ago) so right around the time Wachovia went under, I transferred some money to another bank.
I saw a patient on Friday who I hadn't seen before. The chart said he had significant mental health and substance abuse problems, and it looked from the chart like he had been homeless. But when I talked to him, he clearly described his symptoms and could tell me when he had had similar symptoms before, and what he had been treated with the last time. I told him his blood pressure was a little up, and he said it was because of all the stuff going on. What stuff?, I asked. Those guys running that company who got billions of dollars from the government, and then went on that week long spa vacation, he said. Oh, AIG, I said. Yes, he said, and went on to enumerate how much they spent on food and on spa treatments and whatever else they did.
In the meantime, the presidential candidates are arguing about who will cut taxes the most. It's not clear that anyone is prepared to ask us to do anything hard - if we just drill for more oil and keep those "Support Our Troops" magnets on our cars, it'll all be okay.
It's not okay, and doing more of the same is not going to make it okay. It would be nice if someone running for something would be willing to say that.
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