Year in Review 2008

I see a lot of year end lists but none of them seem to document what's happened in my life. I revisited my posts throughout the year, which I admit have been thin, to review what went on in our lives this year and to fill in some gaps. We started the year in Atlanta, with Chad visiting from Santa Barbara, but just days later we received another visitor who stayed for six months. Jorge lived with us from January to July and was a member of the family. January 2008 also brought Atlanta some snow that actually stayed on the ground. We first experienced it while at a mountain cabin with my fellow and lady city planning students but got another taste upon our return home.

In February school at Emory was in full swing and a routine for the next several months began to take shape. Unfortunately, there were a few bits of bad news for the month. First, Lauren was badly shaken up by the stunning defeat of the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. Then she had her 30th birthday. We had a sports-themed surprise party where everyone dressed up in sports gear they had lying around the house.




In March, Lauren jetted off to Brooklyn to see here sister for the weekend. Jorge and I stayed home and started construction of the garden and the cleaning up of the back yard. Also, in March 2008 Lauren and I went to the wedding of our friends Michelle and Alex. It was one of the first times I visited and stayed in downtown LA. The wedding was great but the national news that weekend focused on Atlanta and the tornado that had ripped through downtown. We returned home to find our own neighborhood particularly hard-hit.

April was a busy month. First I turned 29. Next Jorge and I set off to DC for a conference and some sightseeing. I was presenting at the Active Living Research Conference and he wanted to see the city. We stayed with Gill and Mikey but I remember hardly getting to see them and thinking that we were all pretty busy. It was also my first chance to meet Purvi. The pleasure was all mine. On the way home from DC we took a long layover in Detroit to see the family, but April doesn't stop there. Later in the month I headed to Montreal for Paul's Bachelor Party. Here I got to see more of Gill and Mikey in an environment that I'm more accustomed too. Also got to see Bilski, Chad, Jesse, Peter, Rob, Freeman, Michael, Brian, Scotty, Jake, Matt, and of course Rico. That's all I'm going to say about that.

In May 2008 Lauren's dad and sister visited independently for work within a week of each other. We visited the Museum of Natural History and saw a Braves' game, respectively. Then Lauren and I spent the rest of month in the islands, sort of. We headed to Jekyll Island with John, Shannon, Mike and Hannah. It was our first time there and our last time camping with children (kidding). It was great to ride our bike around the island but I also remember the ticks and the raccoons. In between our island trips, Lauren and I drove up to Blowing Rock, NC to pick up a table that had been made for us in Hampton, CT. We met her mom and Mack at a family house there and spent the weekend listening to and learning mountain dulcimer. The next weekend we were back to the islands. We went with Dave and Liza and stayed in a condo on Folly Island near Charleston. We walked to the beach and played of lot of surf football catch. May ended with Lauren and I back in the mountains. She headed to Yellowstone for work and I went with Jorge to North Georgia.


June was comparatively low key. Matt and Priya held a wedding-warm-up-weekend in ATL for their friends. We did take one trip to Raburn County to visit with Sam at her house up there. Not much else went on. Jorge grew a mustache.







July started with a trip to San Francisco for the wedding of our good friends Paul and Hilary. The wedding was in the Presidio. We stayed in an officer's quarters and could walk home from the reception and the bowling that followed. It was a great time. Sadly, in July we also bid farewell to Jorge and to Dave and Liza. Jorge returned home and D+L moved out to Salt Lake City. At the end of July I also set off. I went out west again to hike the west coast trial. There are a number of posts detailing the trip which was quite the experience.

I returned from Seattle in August and proceeded to attend my first ever used car give-away night at a minor league baseball game. Matt, Miguel, Ben and I headed up to Chattanooga for some climbing and then went to a Lookout's game where they gave away a used car every inning. August also saw us back up in northeast Georgia for a camping trip along the Chattooga, 'The Deliverance River'.

In September Lauren and I celebrated our second anniversary by going to the Chattahoochee Hill Country in South West Fulton County to a place called Serenbe. We spent two days there walking around the grounds and enjoying the beautiful fall weather and each other. Lauren got the chance to go to Rhode Island and celebrate another wedding that month. Her Aunt Laurie was married in September 08.
The first weekend ofOctober Ben and I headed back to Blowing Rock, NC for a bouldering competition at Hound Ears. This is the first stage of the Triple Crown which is held each year in the Southeast. Shortly after that my family came into town to visit with us. We went apple picking in North GA and visited the local drive-in movie theater. One of the most fun things we did was to go to the climbing gym and get my sister and my dad up on a rope. Later that month I attended another bachelor party, this time in Nashville for Jason Chernock. Finally I got to go out to San Diego for the American Public Health Conference. I stayed in a hostel in the Gas Lamp District and Chad came down to hang out for a couple days. I liked it there mostly because of the weather and the ocean.
In November, we once again headed up to the mountains of North Carolina (it seems like that's all we do). This time to Asheville, NC to stay in a cottage for the weekend with Ben, Katy, Ariel and Chad. Ben and I got away for a day to do some climbing and we all spent our nights in town with delicious food and beverage. I can't forget to mention the exciting election night that this November brought with it. For the holiday, we returned the favor to my parents when we drove up to Detroit for Thanksgiving. I was a good trip: got to see family and friends, eat well and visit some favorite spots. One thing I have done the last few ties up there is drive around Detrit with my dad and take pictures. The saddest thing I saw on this trip was Tiger Stadium literally cut in half and in the process of being demolished.

We rounded out the year like we do every year, with December. This Year we decided to get a Christmas tree for the house. We went south to a farm where we could cut down our own. This was the first real tree I have ever had, let alone actually cut down. The Chernock wedding that we preemptively celebrated in Nashville went off in December 2008 without flaws. Then Lauren and I took a trip up to Brooklyn to visit Susan and attend Stash Bash 08. Next we headed to New England to spend the holidays with her family. We ran back and forth between CT and RI and managed to spend some time in Providence and see a motion picture. We closed out out 2008 back up in the north GA mountains at a cabin with Liz, Derek, Derek, Mellisa and Aly. It might seem a bit low-key for New Years but felt good to us.
2009 has started off very busy. On Monday of last week (2008) I spent hours trying to return a dog that was loose on campus back to its frat house. Then on the first day of the new year I was bit by a dog while trying to break up a fight. If that's not twisted karma... Everything is fine, I just need some recovery time for some bruising. One thing I learned, break up dog fights from behind the dogs, not by going between them. Lauren leaves for Bangladesh this week, I (surprise) am heading back to the mountains for the CRP cabin trip, and we have other trips planned to DC for inauguration, Phoenix for a bachelor party and Matt and Priya's wedding in March. Plus I'm sure we'll throw in many more camping and climbing trips along the way.

Lastly, you may recall a post last January about resolutions. This year I would like to reduce my sugar consumption, reduce overall consumption and waste, and increase water intake. How I will increase water intake and reduce water usage remains to be seen. But I was particularly proud of the fact that we did not have to turn on the municipal water once this year to water the garden AND that we have been composting food scraps at our house now for over a year. Also, I would like to improve on my resolution from one year ago and, as always, be nicer. Thanks for reading, Happy New Year!

Beer Club

For about one half of one year now I have been included in a group of beer fans called Beer Club. We currently hold meetings every third Thursday, most often in Decatur. Though it started sparse and disorganized it has gained some semblance of purpose indicative of its members' fervor. Now we have themes and homework. Last month was a beers of the Southeast extravaganza and overlapped with this article's release in the New Yorker. There was even a quiz on items in the article and the winner walked away with a one-of-a-kind pretzel and dental floss necklace (pictured). Conveniently, the November meeting also fell just after a trip to Asheville and their local beer haven Bruisin' Ales. We stocked up on some of new favorite and anti-favorite North Carolina beers.

The idea, as I know it, is the brainchild of Ben and Katy Lovehardstein. Everyone involved brings one or two beers (one large bottle or two 12 oz of each) for everyone to try. Ben usually determines the order of tasting but based on the theme of the meeting this may vary. Everyone drinks the same beer at the same time and then votes on it. The scoring system is our own thumb down (-1), thumb level (0), thumb up (1) and then you total that beer's score. Also everyone gets one double thumbs up (2) for the evening. I think we have tasting notes for all of our meetings somewhere but by the end of it they get lost.

Tonight is the December meeting of beer club and we're focusing on seasonals (my suggestion for a festival of light[beer]s was offered a bit too late). Here's the lineup so far.

Great Divide Hibernation
St. Bernardus' Christmas Ale
Birolla Malthus Chestnut Ale
Highland Cold Mountain Winter Ale
Rogue Santa's Private Reserve
Sammy Smith Winter Welcome
Brouwerij Huyghe - Delirium Noël
Dogfish Head Chicory Stout

Winter Lip Warmer

Over the weekend Lauren and I went to Brooklyn to visit Susan. While we were there we got caught up in a flurry of mustaches, otherwise known as Mustaches for Kids (perhaps the most disturbing name for a fundraiser ever invented). Susan's boyfriend Jason was one of the 'growers' and raised money for public education. The competition extended for a month and had some strict guidelines about where and when you must shave. The Atlanta Chapter follows similar rules but donates money to a fund for childhood cancer research and prevention. In Brooklyn it culminated in a Stache Bash on Saturday with judges determining who would be king of the mustaches. They had to drink Guinness to see how much foam their mustaches could retain and also recite (or read) a haiku which they had written for the winter lip warmers or fox's eyebrows, as it were, that now donned their faces. All in all it seems a good way to raise money while drawing attention to your cause. We'll see if I decide to get involved next year at 'the close of the growing season.'

Blowing it

I have an ongoing and growing beef with leaf blowers, particularly gas powered leaf blowers. One look at my yard and you'll know that I do not have a blower, however I have used them and I have cleared my own driveway without one. My distaste for the machines stems from a belief that they cause more harm than good. When I mention the devices I get a similar reaction from most people.

The most common complaint is that the machines seem pointless. "They just move things around," people often say. While it is true that blowing leaves will only move them from one place to another, this season I have also seen vacuum trucks moving with teams of blowers to suck up the leaves. This was on Georgia Tech's Campus and I wondered where the leaves went. The Georgia Tech 2005 Landscape Master Plan the concepts of sustainability, eco-mimicry, and ecological succession are emphasized as objectives. As best I can tell, this would include leaving fallen leaf masses to decompose among the diverse understory shrubs promoted in the plan. Among the action items for ecological succession are

Allow under-utilized mowed areas to revert to more complex plant communities to improve the composition of the soil increase its capacity to infiltrate and manage stormwater. It will also save maintenance dollars.

and

Adjust landscape management to address ecological succession.

Allowing leaves to remain under trees and decompose in place, seems in line with those goals. Even if the vacuumed leaves are taken to a larger composting operation this doesn't necessarily help the areas where the leaves fell. There are a number of ways to manage leaves (see link below). We were planning on mulching ours with our mower.

Recall this whole rant started in a discussion about "just moving leaves around." This is, in fact, the case in many locations around the city; the leaves get pushed into the streets. With the leaves also goes trash and gravel and with traffic's assistance most of it ends up sitting around the road's outer edges. This is exactly the part of the road that bikers are confined to and the type of debris that make riding a bike less comfortable and convenient (not to mention flat tires). As a bike rider this is another reason I dislike blowers.

Their use with trash is disturbing and raises new questions about the definitions of litter. Though not the generators of the trash, should the landscapers be held responsible for the trash they blow from the sidewalk and into the streets? Regardless of who absorbs the blame this point begins to get at their many levels of wastefulness. If landscapers are being paid to clean up sidewalks, patios, and lawns but are only moving the debris to another location (in some cases less than 10 feet away) should they receive payment for a job well done? A more direct example of the waste the machines are responsible for is in fuel. Both gas-powered and electric blowers require some fuel inputs. Most of these are fossil fuels (gasoline, coal or natural gas power from power plants) and generate pollutants including carbon dioxide, elemental carbon and particulate matter (as well as the dust they kick up into the air). (Maybe they're not as bad as I make it sound) The real waste of such fuel use comes from the fact that the work could also be done using a broom or rake. It must be that the cost of fuels have not gone high enough to offset the 'efficiency' gains in speed and volume cleared... yet. But if we're paying people to go out and blow in settings like the one in the photo below (taken last week in the morning, there are no leaves and hardly trees anywhere) than how efficient are blowers?

Finally, how safe are the machines? Most of us who have seen blowers in action have seen operators armed with personal protective equipment (PPE). These accessories include headphones, facemasks and goggles to protect the operators from the hazard of using the machines. However, these machines operate in public spaces in close proximity to people without such PPE. Some of the hazards are obvious, debris and fumes in the respiratory tract, debris to the eyes and hearing damage. Others are less apparent but real for example the nuisance and obtrusiveness of the machines. Some may say that we'll get used to them and learn to ignore them but I take the fact that operators will try to stop when people are walking by as proof that we have not. I think they get social pressures like dirty looks and direct instructions from bosses (landscape company owners who have received complaints) to use such caution around people.

I have raised several questions about blowers here to which I assume you know how I would answer. I am interested to hear your comments and thought about blowers. Bans on blowers represent a possible slippery slope and could take away mowers and things that I use but could be a step in the right direction. It's also important to consider that there are much bigger problems on which to devote our time and energy.

Leaf Management Suggestions

A California town's blower opposition

California Air Resources Board Report on Blowers

Some people (landscapers) hate blower bans

For Best Results

I have one more final to finish and then I can move on to other things (like more blogging). This last final is in Regional Economic Foundations of Planning which is roughly about spatial economics. A main theme of the course is the interpretation of growth vs. development. Stereotypically, the semantics of economics are fairly stringent. Costs and benefits refer only to those things on which you can put a price or which the market puts a price on. I mention it to introduce this brief post and say that semantics are a funny, subjective thing. (and, I guess, thus economics could be subjective and funny, maybe)

Anyway, this is my toothpaste. Excuse the poor quality of the photo. I looked at it the other morning and noticed that it said "For best results, squeeze tube from the bottom and flatten as you go up." Lauren and I have been doing this accordion style for weeks and our teeth have never been cleaner.