Author Archives: eflaherty

Walkable Neighborhoods

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As The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling might have said: …a street in any town…

My two cents worth… What is at the heart of a comfortably walkable neighborhood?

1. Public ways that have human scale. Like the above.

Comment: Originally built before autos—but still able to accommodate wagons and animals. How can these be built today and meet your local and regional health and safety requirements? Maybe it is time to rethink health and safety requirements?

2. Social communities where people are truly respectful of neighbors. Like the above.

Comment: Where true respect exists, people do not worry about personal effects (see lower right above) being defaced or stolen. Or covered with graffiti and tags which often these days are the first signs of disrespectful neighbors.

Care for a walk?

Coniferous Infrastructure

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The snowfall on the branches tells me the story of coniferous infrastructure.

Water, flowing up and down the trunk road interstate, branches off to the regional limited-access freeway, then via highways to cities and on to local neighborhoods until arriving at each needle, each home…pausing at the stomata, before finally exiting to begin its mystical cycle again.

Water supply infrastructure for these conifers.

Big time flows.

Big time pipes.

Ground water.

Rain.

Snow.

Energy.

I love the feel.

Beautiful.

Northern Hemisphere Only

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The end of the day, the beginning of tomorrow.

The end of the old year, the beginning of the new year.

The end of the winter, the beginning of spring.

In the Northern Hemisphere all of these have resonant overlays.

The last weeks have been cold. The ground has frozen but not covered with snow. Winter is heavily just around the corner. It has its beauties, its discoveries; but it inevitably drags before it finishes. That is when I kling to the hopes of spring.

Kenneth Grahame—consummate observer of nature and seasonal changes in ‘The Wind in the Willows’—captures those spring hopes in reality through his character ‘Mole’. In the attached audio file, I read 90 seconds of Kenneth Grahame’s work wherein he describes how Mole becomes overwhelmed by excessive joy in the arrival of spring.

Mole embodies how we all endure the long winter—endure the hard life without the warmth and light of the sun. And, how we all feel such joy and relief in those first warm days of spring, when, in the meadow, hopes come true.

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Trees…

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…and green meadows…who can not love them?

Oscar Hammerstein II, said that in the 1950s when he wrote the lyrics for the musical, The Sound of Music.

The title song has these simple lyrics. “The hills are alive.” Think about it. The hills are alive…with what?

He wrote, “with the sound of music.”

No, not the music written by Richard Rodgers…but their own music. “The songs they have sung for thousands of years.”

Think about that because that is what anyone can feel when they visit these hills. These hills are alive with the sound of music. These hills will let you ride on the sound of their music. It is real.

And Hammerstein finished with:

“I go to the hills when my heart is lonely,

I know I will hear what I’ve heard before

My heart will be blessed with the sound of music

And I´ll sing once more.”

Happy New Year, all. 🙂

Sky, water…

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…earth…

…and humans.

Please remind me–the humans are powerful enough to have done what to this earth?

Fear, uncertainty and dread…all built upon imagined human hubris.

Just take care of your stuff. That should be what humans do. That’s what I see in the above photo where humans have been living for at least a millennium.