Lorelei

I can't help myself - I must post these.  Yes, I am a proud Father and infinitely thankful to my wife for our baby girl.  She is about seven months old in the pictures.  Click for a larger view.

Think - Do

In theory I am much more a thinker than a doer.
In reality I do much more than I think.

Mass Transit Link

Q: What makes the United States look like a third world country? 
A: Our lack of national and regional mass transit. 
Some metro areas should be acknowledged for their success: San Francisco, New York City and Washington D.C.  It is a pitty that people keep protesting against mass transit.  In Europe it is possible to get to almost every corner of a nation by using mass transit.

Article: Mass transit can change lives
http://dailyreporter.com/blog/2009/09/14/report-mass-transit-can-change-lives/

Note: Some third world countries do have mass transit.

Remember that not all Americans are physically and financially fit enough to own a well maintained automobile.  There also many Americans that will feel financially liberated if they could sell their car and live car free.  I remember my first visit to San Francisco and asking the hotel what parking accomodations they had.  Their response was "none" and he proceeded to tell me that I should not rent a car because it is a big hassle and easier to use the city's transit system.  I thank him for the advise (and cost saving) as we had no problem getting around, including going out to the wine country.

Lorelei says...

General Motors will suffer! They hired this guy named Fritz "Big Ed (the Texan)" Henderson and you know one of the first things he tells the press is that he doesn't know anything about cars. Well my daddy got a good laugh out of that! Cause my daddy knows cars, all kinds of them and he even knows how to fix them and sell them too. After all that's how he paid to get through college. Now my daddy says we need to get the U.S. great cars with the little turbo diesel engines that get 50 to 60 miles to the gallon and pollute a tiny little bit - he said they use low sulfur fuel too like his turbo diesel car.

But now that Big Ed is running the show there is no talk of that kind of good stuff. Instead he's just released the new Camaro which isn't a family sized fuel sipper and now my daddy's read that Big Ed is going to redesign the Chevy Suburban and some other trucks (also called crossovers and formerly SUV's, ed.). You know how big the 'Burb is? It's big enough to fit 100 babies like me! Oh, and let me tell you! He read this article in the British magazine Car that tested that new Chevy Cruze which Big Ed says is "gonna turn around GM!". My daddy said the magazine said it was worse than its Korean made competitors and they said a better alternative would be public transport. And from what my daddy's heard the car is designed by Korean car company Daewoo and will be made in North America (that could be the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Haiti, etc., ed.). Funny thing - Big Ed says it will be a premium compact car for the U.S. capable of competing with Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen. But I am confused because in the European market the critics say it is not as good as a Hyundai or a Kia. Hmmmm, I got a lot to learn in the next eighteen years!

Oh and by the way, Big Ed's resume includes being the executive that is responsible for the merger of AT&T and Bell South. From what my daddy says, AT&T was a good company with great costumer service before that and Bell South was a great company with low rates. Now my daddy keeps complaining about how bad the customer service is and that the phone service is not cheap. Is this the success we can hope for from Big Ed the Texan when he achieves something significant at GM?

I just want to tell Big Ed this: put the trolley cars back on the streets! You know, back in the 1950's, the ones that GM bought from all the major cities and scrapped.

Definition: Cul-de-Sac or Cul de Sac

Cul-de-Sac - kul*de*sak; Arbitrary residential street, placed in well marketted residential subdivision (a.k.a. Community), that leads to nowhere often lined on both sides with garages and their attached homes; dead end street generally without sidewalks; confusion alley. Used in sentenance: ex. A: Where the f^*k is your sister's d*mn house, I know it is down one these stupid motherf$%*ing cul-de-sacs. ex. B: I'm sorry I got the fire truck stuck in this cul-de-sac, I know, I see the fire is in the next cul-de-sac and I'm sorry ma'm but were trying to get there as fast as possible - now let me repeat, you are Highland Court North not Highland Lane East? Synomymns: unfreindly, suburban nightmare, inefficient, huge infrastructure and maintenance expense, suburban sprawl. Opposites: Walkable Community, Urban Flow, feeder street, efficiency.

Cute little trees, where are the rest of them?

Healthy Living and Working 1

Today’s media has picked up on the new term “Green”. In the 1980’s the word green was always associated with a color. Now when someone mentions green people usually think about things that are good for the environment. It is seems that the marketing gurus all over the nation have decided that it is trendy to be “Green”. You can now buy such things as eco friendly “Green” disposable plates. Or you can buy “Green” (partially recycled) PVC decking for your back porch.

Being “Green” does not mean going to the store to buy anything labeled “green” just because some marketing team decided that it had recycled content in it. Being green is all about lifestyle. If you are truly concerned about the environment you will never buy disposable dinnerware. You will also not purchase PVC anything for your house. Going back to those first days of environmentalism of the 1970’s, I remember all those little things I learned in school and I have built upon that with all my life decisions. In the future I hope to write topics that will enlighten everyone on how to be environmentally responsible in the built environment. Keep checking back…

Walkable Neighborhoods 1

The automobile is perhaps mankind’s greatest invention. The personal computer is a nice invention but let’s face it, modern man can live without it. Most humans across the world still don’t have a personal computer. I can design any building with a pencil, paper and an eraser – it just might take me a bit longer than if I did it on a computer. But, in the metro area I live in, I can not go to work without a car. The electric light bulb is a great invention but with out it we might still have bigger windows, shorter working hours and beautiful oil lamps. Just think how technologically advanced candles could be if the light bulb was never invented or what other inventions we would use for artificial light.

Savannah, Georgia near Jones Street - August 2009

The automobile, for many people, has destroyed their quality of life. A few years back I worked in an office building with an underground parking lot. I didn’t think much more of it than it was a place to park my car. It was also nice because my car wouldn’t get snow on it in the winter. When the outside temperature fell below zero degrees (Fahrenheit) it was nice to be sheltered on my way to the elevator and to the office. In a discussion I had with a coworker I discovered he had an attached garage with his suburban house. It was possible for him to never go “outside” Monday through Friday; whether the weather was nice or bad. He, as well as the majority of my coworkers, lived similarly in suburban homes with attached garages in subdivisions with no sidewalks. They had no stores to walk to, no entertainment to walk to and their single entrance subdivisions (ironically called “communities”) were filled with cul-de-sacs. A trained rat knows that it should avoid a path full of dead ends. In Wisconsin, we have more good weather days than bad ones so it is usually nice to be exposed to the external elements. It is a known fact that exposure to the sun is required for human health yet so many of these people unintentionally avoid it.

The automobile has contributed to the freedom of the individual human to freely roam the world. And we can roam the world only encumbered by huge bodies of water, impassable mountains, other extreme geological features, and extreme weather conditions. This freedom is one of the great advantages to driving a car. The unfortunate downside to driving a car is the unsocial aspect it has. We rarely meet the other people we see driving. We often get upset at them for occasionally good reasons but mostly just because we don’t like their “driving style”. Old movies often show the social aspects of taking the train, bus or boat; even romanticizing the dramatic scenes. It’s true, in generations previous to us, many people met their spouses on the bus, did business networking on the train, etc. For some of us lucky enough to have lived in very walkable neighborhoods we have experienced the great social aspect of walking to the store. It can be extremely enjoyable to see and “stop for a moment” to chat. For me it became a way to meet my neighbors when you both discover you’re going to the same store together. It was also faster to walk than drive to some of neighborhood stores. It actually took more time to get into the car, unpark it, drive, find a parking space, get out and walk to the store and of course repeat again for the way home.

The automobile is also an incredible personal statement. We can all agree that a person that drives a small sporty British roadster with a four cylinder engine has a vastly different personality than someone that chooses to drive a huge pick-up truck with oversize tires, V-8 (or V-10) engine, bull bar and has the mufflers removed. I believe that I have placed enough adjectives there for your imagination to produce the different images. The majority of us agree that the image of the person that drives the little roadster is six foot tall and the image of the monster truck driver is five and a half feet tall (and they are both presumed to be male and have very different I.Q. levels). I am guilty, I love cars. I have several of them, each one very different from the other. One makes an eighteen inch snow fall look like child’s play. Another is so incredibly beautiful that it was one of the most sought after cars in its day and is now a timeless classic. Yet another is low to the ground, fun to drive and sounds incredible with its engine neatly tucked behind the front seats and in front of the rear trunk; its sound sneaking through a vent near my left ear – surprisingly it returns 35 miles to the gallon. But I will leave all my cars parked whenever I can walk to my destination because I love the exposure to the weather, the chance opportunity of a surprise conversation with someone, and the opportunity to see or learn something new.

Debut

Tonight I start to blog. How much I blog and if I can find the time to blog can only be revealed in the future...