An Early Morning Bike Ride

Sunday morning, it was like an unexpected gift -- a cool morning in late June.  I woke up Tom, early, and told him that I was going to walk the dog,and then go for a bike ride.  He told me to wake him up when I was back from walking the dog and he'd go with me.  When I got back, he was already up, and dressed.

We rode to the Piedmont Park extension on the other side of Monroe, through the park, and on to the Eastside Trail of the Beltline to the end of the pavement on Irwin Street, and then on the way back stopped at Inman Perk for breakfast.  This is a ride we've done on several other recent weekend mornings; this is part of the reason I haven't posted anything in so long, as some of my early morning weekend time has gone to bicycle riding. It's best to get an early start, avoiding both heat and crowds, but the of course the fact that there are so many other people out doing exactly the same thing is part of what makes it so much fun.

On the Beltline, there are people on bikes and roller blades and skate boards.  There are people walking, jogging, and running. There are people with dogs and children.  There's a woman who walks the Beltline, playing the fiddle (we often see her there).  There are young people and older people, there are men and women, there are black people and brown people and white people, with all the diversity in every way that we see in Atlanta's intown neighborhoods.

Memorial Day weekend was the Atlanta Jazz Festival.  Last year Tom and I went for the first time.  Even though it's a free event in Piedmont Park and not very far away and we both enjoy jazz, somehow we'd never been to it.  Last year, we parked on Virginia Avenue and then walked to the park; Tom has bad arthritis in his ankle, and walking is painful for him.  Last year, I told him about the new traffic crossing light on Monroe, and how we could get to the park on bikes.  Of course, last year, neither of us had a bike.

Last fall, I bought a bicycle.  Soon afterwards, Iain got a bike, and he and I did a little riding together.  Then, a couple of months ago I was out of town for work and came back to learn that Tom had bought a bicycle too.  Even though he has arthritis, he can ride a bike without too much discomfort.  So we had planned on going to the festival by bike.  Friday night, there was someone playing that he wanted to hear, and he went by himself; Saturday, we went together, with a picnic, and Sunday, we went back with Pawel and Carolina.  It was a wonderful, glorious display of our city, and we never would have spent so much time there (or maybe even gone at all) if we hadn't ridden our bikes.

There is no doubt that biking -- even as little as we do it -- has made our lives better and made living in Atlanta more enjoyable.  And there is pretty much a direct sequence of cause and effect, from stumbling across Atlanta Streets Alive on North Highland in 2012 to finally buying a bicycle to our new weekend morning routine.  If somehow you've never made it to an Atlanta Streets Alive event, you're in luck -- the next one is September 27, with the same North Highland-Boulevard-North Avenue loop as last time.  Don't miss it.  You never know; it could change how you spend your weekend mornings, and how you see the city.

The Frog in the Dumpster

We have had a serious escalation at our house in the War on Stuff -- Tom got a dumpster which is now occupying our driveway.  He's been working on both the basement and the accessary stuff collection we have off site.  I have yet to make any substantive contribution to this but I do have good intentions.

The dumpster is inclined downward, like the driveway, and soon after we got it there was a foot or so of rainwater accumulated in the lowermost edge.  It became clear over the following days that the dumpster had become home to a really loud frog.  We only heard it in the evening, and I don't know for a fact that the frog was a permanent 24 hour resident or just showed up in the evening, like a musician in a subway station.  You can hear it -- but not see it -- in this video (I don't know how to make an audio recording on my phone, but I do know how to take video, which is what I did, even though it was dark).

One evening (when I had neither a camera nor my phone with me) I actually saw the frog.  It was grayish-green, and only about two inches long, immobile and silent on a nearly submerged cardboard box.  I ran to the door and called Iain to come out and see it, but of course it was no longer there when I got back.

Now this is not the only collection of water on our street that really isn't supposed to be there; where the basement of the apartments used to be, there's a deep depression that -- depending on the amount of rain we've had recently -- has more or less water in it.  At the moment there's lots of water there; I took the picture above yesterday afternoon.  This has been there ever since the apartments were demolished, and there's an equally noisy resident frog there, too.  I've never seen it, but I hear it often in the evening when I'm walking the dog.  It usually seems to be coming from the vegetation at the edge of the pond, rather than from the pond; that's outside the frame of this photo, on the left.  But it's the same sound as from our dumpster, and on a nice evening, I would hear the dumpster frog all the way to the middle of the block, and then -- like a pinging cell phone tower -- there would be a handoff to the pond frog.

A couple weeks ago Tom hooked up an aquarium pump and some plastic tubing and drained the dumpster. After that, we didn't hear the frog any more. I hoped it had just moved on to a wetter place and not become bird food.

The pond is likely to history, soon, too -- first the pile of rock and the utility locating markings appeared, and then the pile of large pipes, and then last weekend this piece of equipment. At least as of yesterday afternoon, nothing had happened yet but I am sure it will be soon, and then I expect the pond and the pond frog will be gone.

Since Tom drained the dumpster, it has rained more. And the frog is back.

Addendum from May 25:  Not a very good photo, but here he is.

Atlanta Streets Alive, Back in West End

It was a few weeks ago that the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition brought Atlanta Streets Alive - the Coalition's wonderful Open Streets event - back to the West End.  They had been there last spring for the first time.  That time, after I finished my volunteer shift in the information tent, and was walking around in my Atlanta Streets Alive logo T-shirt with "Volunteer" on the back, several people approached me to ask about the event.  What is this?  Why are the streets closed?  So I told them that it was an event to get all of us to experience our city on foot or on a bike, that it had taken place (thanks to the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition) over the last several years in other neighborhoods, but it was the first time it had come to the West End.  This time, my volunteer assignment was to be a greeter, so I approached people and asked them how they were doing.  Sometimes I asked if they lived in the neighborhood and if they said "yes," I asked if they participated last year.  I think every person I asked said "yes" to that. 

It had rained in the morning but the event was pretty much rain-free.  I suspect that the weather kept some people away who otherwise would have been there, but it didn't keep us away.  This was our first Atlanta Streets Alive on bicycles.  I had to work the first part of the event, so Iain took off on his own.  Early on he ran into Cole from Terminus Legion, and ended up riding with him around the route.  

The greeter business was slow, but I talked to the people I could talk to and got my picture taken many times by the Coalition's photographer, who once removed my backpack so the "Volunteer" would show on the back of my T-shirt.  I haven't seen any of his pictures, but here are some of mine.  Since the last Atlanta Streets Alive event, I bought a bicycle, so this was my first time to do the event on a bike.  As a result, almost all my pictures are from when I was working as a greeter.

Here's the group assembling before the bicycle parade.  I was glad to see the sousaphone players were back, but I didn't get to hear them play.

I told this woman she looked fabulous and asked if I could take her picture.  She graciously agreed.

Here's Chantelle Rytter on one of the famous phoenix bicycles.

And someone else on another one.

And someone on a three-wheeled bike without a phoenix.

This is the only picture I took after I finished my volunteer shift and headed off on my bike.  This area (near the Shrine of the Black Madonna) was very congested so I was walking my bike through the crowd and got to see these women playing drums, up close.

But mostly, once the volunteer shift was over, I rode my bike.  I traded my "thanks for volunteering" coupon for a can of Fat Tire beer and discovered that it's not that easy to ride a bike while drinking a can of anything, so I threw it out after a mile or so.  Somehow I missed the team from Free Poems on Demand who were there somewhere, but I didn't see them.

I was on my second loop around the route when I saw Iain seated at a picnic table having chicken and vegetables with Cole and some other people, including a couple of guys who used to live in the neighborhood.  This was  at the same community organization where we'd gotten food the last time, so I knew it would be good.  So I stopped and after I got my plate they made a place for me at the table and there was great conversation.  We had to leave before the others because Tom was going to pick us up soon.  

So it was another terrific Atlanta Streets Alive.  If it wasn't for this event, I probably would not have bought a bike.  And last week, while I was out of town, Tom bought one too.  So we'll be ready for the next Streets Alive event, which is September 27, on Highlnd.  Don't miss it.

Two Houses

There are two houses for sale now on our street.  Well, technically, there are three, and one of the two I'm writing about actually has a North Highland address; the Wessyngton house with a "For Sale" sign that I'm not counting is the brick dupex, still awaiting demolition; there's been a dumpster on the driveway for months, but not anything obvious going on since they removed the trees behind the house last fall.

The really large house that was built where Angela's house used to be -- the one that has really good views of all our back yards -- is now pretty much finished and there was an open house a couple of weeks ago. I was out of town and couldn't go.

The "text for information" sign has disappeared and the house is now listed as "active contingent," which I think means they are close to a deal to sell it.

The other house that still has a "For Sale" sign in front of it is the one at Wessyngton & North Highland, across the street from where the apartments used to be.  The house has been renovated and I've been wondering which one would sell first, this one or the new construction.  But when I checked the realtor's website a couple of weeks ago, they didn't even have information about the house posted., so I figured, no way it would sell before the other one did.

This morning when I went by, walking the dog, someone had just pulled up into the driveway.  He told me he was there to inspect the house.  For the buyer or the seller, I asked.  For the buyer, he told me.

Saving Fire Station No. 19

Fire Station No. 19 is part of our neighborhood.  We often see the firefighters sitting outside when the weather is nice and they are not out fighting a fire. They take the fire truck to neighborhood events - they came to National Night Out on Wessyngton a couple of years ago.  We've taken cookies to the station on Christmas Eve a few times, and been to lots of neighborhood 5K runs that have started there.

A few years ago a campaign was started by the firefighters to raise money to removate the station.   An architechural firm put together an plan, and we all bought Fire Station No. 19 T-shirts to support the cause (plus, they were really cool, although Tom sometimes got mistaken for a firefighter when he wore his).  This is from the flyer from years ago:

Built in 1925, Station 19 has served and protected the Virginia Higland community for 85 years. Standing proud at the heart of the neighborhood, the building is the oldest fire station in Atlanta still functioning as a firehouse.  Old buildings, like this firehouse, need to be preserved in order to continue to function and serve.  After years of deferred maintenance, the firemen of Station 19 led by Sargent Ian Allum, are initiating the restoration and renovation of the historic structure.  Company 19 is committed to the health and welfare of the neighborhood, offering car seat installation & safety check, blood pressure monitoring, being a safety shelter for women, and hosting monthly story time for the children.  Restoring the firehouse will allow Station 19 to serve the community for years to come.

Fast forward to 2015.  The Morningside Mile is tomorrow,  It's a nice neighborhood event that benefits the fire station,

There's a one mile run ("Dude, it's only a mile") and what they call a block party, although it's not what I would call a block party; I think of a block party as neighbors in lawn chairs, and this is more crowds in a parking lot - but it's still a nice neighborhood event.

This year, the rhetoric about the fire station has been racheted up several notches.

This reflects what is on the firefighters' website, which states that the City plans to close the station in 2016.  The Virginia Highland Civic Association has a subsidiary organization, the Virginia Highland Conservation League, that is accepting donations to save the station.  Here's what the VHCA says about this on their website:

The City of Atlanta has plans to close the station in 2016. This decision has not been announced to the community at large, though, and key constituents in the neighborhood are very concerned about the possible loss of this historic resource that is central to our safety and community life. Interested citizens can help protect the station by donating funds to help renovate it.

The fire station’s building is in good structural condition but needs basic repairs. A neighborhood committee – consisting of architects, historians, preservationists, community leaders, and contractors – has made recommendations to renovate and update the building in partnership with the Atlanta Fire Department and the City of Atlanta.

Protecting out station will require community support. To date, nearly $80,000 has been raised. Another $220,000 is needed to keep No. 19 operating in a safe and efficient manner for another 50 years. Our goal is to raise those funds by December 2015.

I saw this a couple of weeks ago and shared it with some neighbors,  one of whom asked if it could possibly be true, that the City would actually close a station because it was in need of a $300,000 renovation, or did the plan to close it have to do with reducing operating costs.  Those were good questions and I didn't know - I just knew that for years they've been trying to raise money for renovations, and now there seems to be some urgency to the matter because "the City of Atlanta has plans to close the station in 2016."

Monday night was the Morningside-Lenox Park Association Annual Meeting and there were presentations from several of our elected officials.  Alex Wan, who represents us on the City Council, talked about the infrastructure proposal that had been approved by voters on March 17. There's extra effort being made to be good fiscal stewards of that investment.  The final list of projects is still being finalized, he said, but it does include the needed repairs at Fire Station No. 19.

This seemed to be very good news, and I emailed him later to confirm.  Here's the reply I got:

We have confirmation from Interim Fire Chief Joel Baker that Fire Station #19, post renovation, will be taken off the "Replacement" list and put onto the "Renovation" list. That's the fire department's way of saying that it won't be slated to be closed.

Regarding the funding, the infrastructure bond amount should more than cover the renovation cost for the building. There is a group of citizens that would still like to do supplemental fundraising to help purchase other incidentals for the firefighters that might not be covered as part of the construction budget (I'm thinking things like accessories, decor, electronics, etc.).

So...if you want to sign up for the Morningside Mile, by all means head on down to Highland Runners today and do it, but I think the fire station is probably going to be fine.  I already donated to the Virginia Highland Conservation League, and hopefully that can go toward "accessories, decor, electronics, etc."

It actually would have been nice to have known this *before* the special election -- it might have gotten some neighbors out to vote who didn't -- but now, it would be good if both the firefighters and the VHCA could update their websites.  The station's been saved by the 17,791 citizens of the City of Atlanta voted "yes" on Question 2 on March 17.

On Learning History

Last week I started a new course on EdX on Reconstruction, the period after the American Civil War, taught by Eric Foner, at Columbia University.  (It's actually the third part of a three part series on the Civil War, but I didn't take the first two parts.)  Last week he talked about how even today many people, if they know anything at all about Reconstruction, have a very negative view of it that was influenced by the work of historians in an earlier era who in turn were influenced by what had been contemporary anti-Reconstruction propaganda.  As an example of how Reconstruction was portrayed in the early 20th century, he showed excerpts from the 1915 film "Birth of a Nation."  However significant the movie may be in the history of American film, as history it is not correct and reflects the racism of the era in which it was made.

The week's assignment on using primary sources included an editorial written by James Weldon Johnson, the Executive Director of the NAACP, which was published in the New York Age in May 1921 following the re-release of the film.  Mr. Johnson wrote,

"Whatever other reasons there may be for the revival of “The Birth of a Nation” at this particular time I believe that one of the reasons is a determination to offset the shocking revelations that have just come out of Georgia.  The whole country has been stirred by the accounts of barbarous brutalities committed in connection with the Jasper County peonage cases; now comes this picture to instill the idea that no matter how brutally the Negro in the South is treated, there are justifications for the treatment."

I had no idea, on reading this, what had happened in Jasper County, Georgia, and I was curious.  Google turned up several good summaries, including one by Marshall McCart.  A man named John Williams was keeping 11 African-American men as involuntary indentured workers (the law calls it peonage).  One man escaped and made his way to Atlanta and talked to the Bureau of Investigation (the forerunner of the FBI).  Federal agents visited Williams' farm and talked to workers, who knew they had to lie.  But the visit was enough to prompt Williams to order his African-American overseer, Clyde Manning, to kill the men, a few at a time.  Several were killed and their bodies dumped in the Yellow River, and it was the discovery of those bodies in Newton County that led to an investigation that ultimately resulted in the convictions of both Williams and Manning for murder.  The investigation and subsequent trial was followed by the national press; this headline is from the New York Times.

This is a piece of Georgia history I certainly didn't know, just like most of us don't know much about the lynchings that occurred throughout the South, except for a few of the most famous ones.  A group called the Equal Justice Initiative has documented almost 4,000 "racial terror lynchings in 12 southern states during the period 1877 to 1950.  There is an effort now to place historical markers or memorials to mark some of these sites.

I've been thinking about this just as there have been stories in the news about pushback by some state legislators, including in Georgia, about the revised AP History curriculum, which is described as being insufficiently pro-American, and overly focused on the negative aspects of our country's history, including slavery. This makes me glad that I no longer have children in public schools, who could be impacted by directives from state politicians to leave out the bad parts of our history, but I do worry about the kids who wil be impacted.

As I write this, President Obama is about to speak in Selma, at the commemoration of the attack on peaceful civil rights marchers by state police,fifty years ago.  Iain is there, right now, with a group from school, and Tom was there last night.  He said that he heard lots of moving stories from people in Selma, about the police chief who spent the night in his car outside a house where Martin Luther King was staying, about the editor of the local paper who opened up his office to international press who had come to Selma.  There were a lot of good people there, he said, and those are stories that you never hear.

Our history is tumultuous and full of contradictions.  We can't understand the present unless we understand the past.  Leaving out the parts that make us uncomfortable is not patriotic; it's a lie, and we under estimate our young people.  I just heard the President say this, in Selma:

What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this; what greater form of patriotism is there; than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?

Exactly.

A Prime Lot

They're back - the real estate people who want us to sell our houses, even though we are living in them and have no intention of going anywhere.  There was this:

And there was this:

These both came in the mail, maybe they didn't mean it; it was just a mass mailing, and John and Dan didn't really mean *my* house -- it was a mistake, they really just meant to send these to people who actually wanted to sell their houses.  There was no mistaking the intent for this one:

This was an interesting communication, with the handwritten note, and "Please" underlined three times.  "my client would like to purchase your home for her sister name your price" suggests that (1) there is a client with a sister, (2) the client is in the market for a house for her sister, (3) and the client specifically wants *my* house.  It's a sister who needs a place to live, and she wants to live in my house.  She's probably a lovely person who would come to block parties, pick up the neighbors' mail when they are out of town, and babysit in a pinch.  

Except I don't think she does want to live in my house.  I think she wants to buy my house, reduce it to rubble, and build a custom dream home, just like the card says.  On their website, Mikel Muffley describes the program as offering "Prime Lot Location & Acquisition." That's what my house is, it's a prime lot.  That's where Justin works, for the Lot Acquisition Team, not the Team That Finds Nice Houses for Clients' Sisters Team.

In the meantime, the incredibly large house with the nice views of the neighbors' back yards is nearing completion, there's not much obvious work going on at the duplex since they took the trees down, and the lots where the apartments used to be are still empty.  There's a small pond there.  When it gets warmer, maybe we should put some fish in it, to eat the mosquito larvae.  

If the sister really wants a house on my street, there are lots up the street.  It's not necessary to knock down any more houses and cut down more trees.  Really,