I heard Bobby Kennedy Jr. speak in Savannah a year or so ago. One of the things that stuck with me from his talk is the fact that we can power the entire country with wind and solar, if we had a means of transmitting the electricity generated. In other words, we can invest deeply in wind and solar, but that’s not enough. We also need to build out the infrastructure.
Regulators in Texas are doing something about it. According to The New York Times, Texas regulators have approved a $4.93 billion wind-power transmission project.
The planned web of transmission lines will carry electricity from remote western parts of the state to major population centers like Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The lines can handle 18,500 megawatts of power, enough for 3.7 million homes on a hot day when air-conditioners are running.
Transmission companies will pay the upfront costs of the project. They will recoup the money from power users, at a rate of about $4 a month for residential customers.
The transmission problem is so acute in Texas that turbines are sometimes shut off even when the wind is blowing.
“When the amount of generation exceeds the export capacity, you have to start turning off wind generators†to keep things in balance, said Hunter Armistead, head of the renewable energy division in North America at Babcock & Brown, a large wind developer and transmission provider.
Other states may find the Texas model difficult to emulate. The state is unique in having its own electricity grid. All other states fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, adding an extra layer of bureaucracy to any transmission proposals.
We had a nice time exploring the country outside of Atlanta this weekend, first at Etowah Mounds State Historic Site and Red Top State Park, both near Cartersville. Then on Sunday, we checked out the LEED Platinum visitor’s center at Sweetwater Creek State Conservation Park, before taking back roads to the outer reaches of Fulton County, where the people of Serenbe Inn–a beautiful organic farm off Hutcheson Ferry Road–welcomed us in.
When it was time for dinner, we strolled through the farm, passing donkeys, goats, llamas, sheep, rabbits and chickens before coming to an expansive wildflower meadow. The sun was beating down as we emerged from the shaded woods into the open expanse. On the other side we entered the Hamlet, a new urbanism project rising from the ground half a mile from The Inn. We strolled by retail shops and sharp looking homes, before reaching The Hil. Named for chef, Hillary White, who runs the restaurant with her husband Jim, The Hil is a refined, yet informal, neighborhood restaurant, with a dedication to serving simple, farm-fresh cuisine.
I ordered Pan-Roasted All Natural Chicken with Smashed Potatoes and Shiitake Mushroom Gravy. Every bite was delicious. Darby had Wood Grilled Harris Ranch Hangar Steak with Sernebe Farm Crispy Onions. I ordered a side of Serenbe Farm Broccoli and was glad I did. We started out in the bar with Hornitos Margs on the rocks, no salt and an order of Carmelized Vidalia Onion Dip with Potato Chips. For dessert—Riccotta Fritters with Strawberry Jam.
In our bathroom at Magnolia Cottage I found the Nov. 2007 issue of Atlanta Magazine, wherein a feature on nearby community, Rico, describes Serenbe as irrelevant to members of the local community.
“I’m not sure if I can say this right,†Donna Bailey, a pastor at the United Methodist Church in Rico said, “but people with large or unlimited incomes envision community different than the rest of us. For the people who’ve lived here a long time, they don’t have much of an interest in living in condos, or eating fancy desserts. That’s not community to them. [Serenbe] is an urban concept brought to the country. There’s no question, what you have here is tasteful, it’s sculpted, and in places it’s even beautiful. But somehow it seems irrelevant.â€
I find it interesting that this is bathroom reading the The Inn. I love the concept of new urbanism on paper, but I have to admit seeing it up close as I’ve done at Serenbe Hamlet and also closer to home at Palmetto Bluff and Habersham, I do tend to stand back a little, pause and ask, “Is this some kind of Stepford?” These places do have a dreamy quality to them.
Serenbe, though, strikes a unique balance thanks to being grounded by the historic farmhouse and the animal husbandry and food production that makes for a real farm. Maybe not as real as some, but real in its own right.
A good friend described his time in Chile like this: California 100 years ago. That is, it’s uncrowded and it’s natural beauty is unspoiled. I’ve wanted to go for an extended visit ever since.
Now, I’m reading Yvon Chouinard’s classic business book, Let My People Go Surfing. In it, he mentions that his good friend and fellow adventurer Doug Tompkins married former Patagonia CEO Kris McDivitt and moved to Chile, where the couple is using their money to buy up vast stretches of wild land in effort to create national parks. That piqued my curiosity, so I Googled them to learn more.
Over the past decade and a half, the Tompkinses have spent about $150 million to buy two dozen properties covering 2.2 million acres of Chile and Argentina, in what collectively amounts to the world’s largest privately run land conservation project.
At stake throughout the region is a historic opportunity much like the North American West in the 19th century — an underpopulated vastness of prairie, glacier-capped mountains and majestic forests that can still be grabbed by anyone with money and ambition.
“In the States, we can only protect small areas, but here, for $10 million you can buy a million-acre ranch,” said Chouinard, chairman of Patagonia Inc., who purchased 8,000 acres next to Valle Chacabuco and has donated funds to the park project. “There are tons of opportunities for creating parks, and now is the time,” Chouinard said. “Everything’s for sale. Sheep ranching is finished.”
The Tompkinses are among the most prominent individual donors to ecological and anti-globalization groups. Last year, two Sausalito foundations that they fund and control — Foundation for Deep Ecology and Conservation Land Trust — spent $15.7 million on conservation projects and grants to environmental and anti-free-trade groups.
I love writing that gets inside a place, whatever place that might be. In today’s Sunday Styles section, New York Times writer Lynn Harris gets inside Park Slope, the fast-changing Brooklyn neighborhood that’s become a point of derision for some.
When I moved to the neighborhood in 1994, I promise you, Manhattanites did not think about Park Slope any longer than it took them to blow off a party invitation. But today, you mention Park Slope on a blog or even in conversation and, especially if the reference involves the word “stroller,†the haters lunge like sharks at chum.
“Park Slope is a perfect storm of stereotypes that provoke derision,†said Steven Johnson, a local writer and a father of three. “Since Park Slope is the neighborhood most explicitly associated with urban parenting, it attracts the wrath of people who think parents have gone way overboard.”
How did it come to this? Most of the above could be said of just about any other neighborhood in our tidied-up, child-rearing-friendly New York City. Doesn’t the East Village have a Whole Foods? Hasn’t the Upper West Side become Short Hills?
How did Slope Rage become a meme unto itself, even among people who won’t take the F train below East Broadway?
Near the end of the article, Harris lets Jose Sanchez, chairman of urban studies at Long Island University, Brooklyn explains the tension. “There’s the feeling that yuppies in Park Slope are washing away Brooklyn’s grittiness and making it more like Manhattan. Brooklyn was supposed to be different. Park Slope, to some, now represents everything that Brooklyn was not supposed to be.â€
Chris Corrigan of Bowen Island, British Columbia, makes a great point about the world becoming large again (and what our response might be).
When airline travel becomes prohibitive and fuel costs make transporting goods too expensive, the world will begin to unshrink, find its real size again. And in that moment, I had a strong image of the world uncrumpling and in the folds and cracks, new local creativity, food, sustenance, culture and life will unfold.
It makes sense to take a stand for a place now. To have a place where you can contribute to the local resources and the local life.
Spend any time in Austin today and you’ll see sharp looking modern homes popping up in historic neighborhoods every direction from the Capitol. With their funny shapes and bold colors, they are hard to miss.
Austin culture ‘zine, Odic Force, is reporting on the action.
Nobody said living in modernity was easy. Even so, more and more people in Austin are taking the plunge. The trend is noticeable all over the city. Scattered along streets like North Loop and Live Oak between South 1st Street and South 5th Street, Woodrow Avenue north of Koenig Lane, and in various parts of neighborhoods like Bouldin Creek and Hyde Park, houses have materialized that may as well been teleported there by aliens bent on taking over the real estate market. These structures tend to throw conventional home design out the energy-efficient window. They have angles where traditional homes have straight lines. They have straight lines where normal homes have curves. They hoard light where other homes collect shadows.
Modern Austin kindly offers page after page of modernist imagery and links to listings.
As I was clicking around, I also stumbled upon this Lake Flatomodernist masterpiece on 17 acres in Kyle, TX, which one can rent for the night.
German, Dutch and British retirees looking for some southern sunny weather are finding it in Puglia, at the heel of the Italian boot.
According to The Wall Street Journal, one of the draws is the trulli — the cone-roofed structures that dot the countryside. The most basic trulli are one-room, round huts constructed of stacked, dry stones, which form walls and a simple vaulted cone roof. They date back to as early as the 14th century, and most housed peasants or livestock — or both.
The recent trulli boom is partly a continuation of the foreign-fueled real-estate speculation that began in Tuscany several decades ago, where so many British began buying second homes that it was given the nickname Chiantishire. As the values of country homes in Tuscany soared, the more adventurous wandered into nearby regions such as Umbria, and then farther south to the Marche and Abruzzo, buying up abandoned farmhouses or run-down villas. Puglia is the end of the line.
Port Royal is a charming community tucked into the marsh between Paris Island and Beaufort. It has an historic downtown like Beaufort, Bluffton and Savannah. Hilton Head doesn’t offer this, and it’s a flaw in their carefully-crafted design, in my opinion.
One of our favorite restaurants in the area, Bateaux, recently relocated to historic Port Royal from Lady’s Island. Today, we ventured over to try Old Towne Coffehaus and McPhearson’s Serious BBQ, both of which were excellent.
We walked around a bit and saw lots of For Sale signs on homes and business properties. We also saw a new development going in, and evidence of others. Port Royal, like Bluffton, is being discovered. Marshfront living is alluring, there’s no doubt about that.
Before heading back to this side of the Broad we motored up to Boundary Street to find Higher Ground in its new location. Of course, my shoe radar went off and it brought me in direct contact with a pair of Keen’s in my size at 50% off retail. Who can resist a bargain?
Interestingly, there’s a new microbrewery in town in the next retail bay over from Higher Ground. Brewer’s Brewing Co. is a 7 bbl, 90 seat brewpub and claims to be a green operator. I ordered a Brickyard IPA and was impressed with the intense hop profile. Brewer’s says it’s one “for all you hop heads out there” and it is.
p.s. While drinking iced espresso at the Coffeehaus, I picked up the front page of today’s Charleston Post & Courier and smiled when I saw my friend Phil Sellers there. The paper is interested in his CityTrex startup, as well they should be.
Chris Corrigan walks some pretty literary streets–the kind that don’t exist in strip malls.
A few months ago as I was walking in Government Street in Victoria I met a woman standing beneath a tree outside Munro’s Books. The tree had small pieces of paper attached to them and when I looked closer I saw that they were poems, hanging on a “poet tree.†The poet turned out to be Yvonne Blomer and she asked me if she could read me a poem. When I said, with delight, “of course!†she asked whether I preferred any particular subject. I replied that I wished her to read me a poem about the territory of the open heart. She looked at me for a second and then reached into a file folder and pulled out this one:
To watch over the vineyards
O carrion crow, pulpy skull of scarecrow
going soft in your black bill,
in this fetish-orange field lies worship:
the sweep of glossed plumage over glistening
membrane; lies the sweet blood of purple skinned grape
cut on your sharp edged tomia,
shimmering there; sun-light on wet earth.
You too sweet to ripe; you black in the shadows, calling when you’re calling – –
the herds fly in dust gone crow, gone scare,
gone trill in clicks and shouts of krrrkrrr.
It seems to me that poetry belongs outside, in the town square or on the street, like this. It’s a spoken form that doesn’t always translate well from the page, nor make the kind of impact it might otherwise.
