jolomo

I think they finally went out of business but last year I was able to get an old 1910s-era Corona typewriter repaired in Decatur and they did a fantastic job. It was awesome that I caught them in time, but I wonder about a bunch of older-fashioned-type businesses that have been hurting the last 30 years or so. Lately with a new grill I've been severely dissatisfied with grocery meat: Whole Foods, Publix and Kroger are all hit or miss. So, I returned to an old Decatur Square stalwart that had to move to Emory Village a few years back: Shields. You pick your cut, you pick the thickness, you pick the size of some delicious aged beef plus they make their own sausages and meatloafs. Yeah, it's about 40% more expensive but damn good and, while it's four miles away, it's probably the only real butcher within 30 miles of the house.

An article by Seth Brown from two years ago had some interesting points about the high-tech industry, outsourcing and suburbia. He posits that places like Tyson's Corner and Alpharetta could quickly become Flint, Michigan. I.E. places where there's nothing to do since what was there happened to leave. I hear from people hiring in places like that who can't find folks who want to deal with the drive and avoid the gig -- no matter how cool it might be. To me this doesn't seem to be related to the death of suburbia but what do I know?

I've been trying to unload paper magazines for about 15 years now and some of the most beautiful artifacts I've had to part with are those old Omni mags from the 1980s. They did fiction (Gibson, Stirling, etc) and science tidbits and interviews with scientists and various other thinkers. In March 1985 was an interview with Edward de Bono who had an provacative suggestion: that "workers and unions, instead of retreating before robots, should take the initiative and get to own the robots, then lease them to the factory. I suggest a trinity concept betweeen finance companies, management and suppliers of labor or robots." Now this is a very bold idea which obviously never took hold: abstract the physical action applied to mass-produced sequences. But De Bono had another idea that can now be found in many a "wish it had happened thus" text, including for example Cradle to Cradle , where a factory's inputs should be downstream of its outputs and that lends t...

Caught a lecture tonight from Mayflower author, Nathaniel Philbrick at the Carter Center in the hopes of not needing to buy the book but frankly I was enthralled. The period from 1620 to 1675 was almost idyllic, sure plenty of intrigue but not much civ-threatening violence. Then all hell breaks loose with King Philip's War. The losses were stupendous! Of 70,000 total people in New England they lose a higher percentage than were lost in the American Civil War. The English settlers were more than "decimated", most villages burnt, and survived by the luck of Benjamin Church who had been living happily with the Indians in today's Rhode Island. Fascinating stuff and like Philbrick said, I didn't know much between "The First Thanksgiving" and 1776. So, anyways, I guess I'll have to get the book!

I don't get to look at blogs much anymore: funny how having everything blocked at the work desktop can change things :) So I happen to check Boing Boing today for the first time in months and what's at the top but a strange story about a back yard in Grant Park! http://www.boingboing.net/2006/06/05/the_demon_fish_of_so.html Not sure what this means for the future, but hopefully it's not one of my old houses! [that post is long gone, here's a copy] Dr. Paul J. Camp at Spelman College's Department of Physics in Atlanta, wrote about a Fortean-style mystery involving fish that seemingly teleport in his ponds.  THE DEMON FISH OF SOUTH ATLANTA  By Paul J. Camp So we bought this 105 year old Victorian in Grant Park, and moved in December 2.5 years ago. It is a pretty awesome house, and the guys that owned it before were inveterate gardeners so the back yard is full of flowers. It also has two ponds, connected by a recirculating pump and a short creek-like thingy. Wh...