Week 3 – Central Time Zone

In the Central time zone I went from early summer back to late winter somehow missing spring.
The weather in New Orleans was delightful, great for walking and even a little biking around the French Quarter. This section of town must have been nice to live in in its heyday but many of the historic houses now seem empty. I love the tall windows and shutters to let breezes in on those hot muggy days. It is now touristy and Bourbon Street pubs seem somewhat seedy. I accidentally walked onto a street scene that was being filmed for a Selma Hayek film. I’m sure I didn’t make the cut.
The Garden District has many lovely large houses under old oak trees. This district was for the rich. Many poor sections ravaged by the hurricane are visible coming into town. Also visible were many adjacent new apartment developments. So was there money available for developers to build anew but not for residents to rebuild? Hmmm?
Natchez, Mississippi was a very wealthy town in the early to mid 1800s, home to many of the plantation owners who built their wealth on the back of slaves. A small US National Historical Park site there, chronicles the life of a black barber who was a financially successful free slave slave owner.
Leaving Natchez I traveled about 20 miles on the beautiful 444 mile long National Park Service Natchez Trace Parkway (http://www.nps.gov/natr/ ) which runs to Nashville, TN. I saw only trees and meadows with wild turkeys and raccoons playing in the meadows.
In Hot Springs, Arkansas I was the guest of former APLer Dave and his wife Dianne. Dave showed me the remnants and glory of the hot spring days of yore when the rich, famous and infamous, came to town for “the cure”. A nice hike and much pleasant conversation was a welcome change from solitary driving.
In Kansas City, Missouri, I visited with old high school buddy, Charlie. Now known to his over 100 admirers by his “nom de pub”, Capt. Hoohah, he is a local savant and daily philosphical e-mail chronicler of nightly events at Mike’s Pub (http://mikestavernkc.com/) and the world beyond. The Capt. showed me the finer points of KC.
On Earth Day, I visited the eco-village Dancing Rabbit located in north-east Missouri (http://www.dancingrabbit.org). One of the founders of this village is the son of former neighbors in Columbia. My purpose for visiting was to get a feel for this type of community. Although much information is given on the website, which I’ve followed with some interest over the last ten years, one must be there to get a good feel for the people, their interactions, and their daily routine.
In my one day there I observed beautiful, committed, single and partnered individuals enjoying themselves communally, eating well, laughing, working the houses and gardens and spending time teaching and interacting with about half dozen potential new members.
The community consists of about 40, mostly young, adults and 12 children. The children seemed happy, friendly, and smart. The village is located on about 240 acres of former agricultural land and contains 3 lakes. The soil is rich for good gardening. The difficult concept of sustainability is practiced, as best as possible, in everyday life. The village produces all of its own electricity and water and organically manages its wastes. Interactions with the outside world are largely by internet and bicycle to the nearby Mennonite community.
The community’s mission statement, significantly to me, recognizes the importance of a sustainable human population, achievable peaceably worldwide through negative population growth by furthering the one child per couple concept.
In Omaha I had a “farewell to Omaha” dinner with sister-in-law Beth and her daughter Loren who will be joining her husband in a new home in Sheboygan, Wisconsin after school finishes.
From Omaha I headed west, preferring the secondary roads to the interstate for getting a feel of the real Nebraska. The roads were good and empty making it easy to observe the decaying old farm communities, the many large, muddy, and stinking cattle feed lots and the long coal trains traveling east. These “unit trains” are over 100 cars and over a mile long. Every 20 miles or so another one came down the track. A little research showed that about 80 unit trains come from the Powder River Basin area every day. Each of the hopper cars holds 100 tons of coal which contains enough energy to produce 20 minutes of electricity (http://smtc.uwyo.edu/coal/trains/unit.asp). Doing a little computation shows that the coal in each unit train will eventually contribute around 36,000 tons of CO2 toward global warming. This is definitely not a sustainable process.
Several unit trains of container cars stopped on the tracks in close proximity to each other was due to a derailment. It is amazing how much heavy equipment it takes to lift the cars back onto the tracks and to repair the damaged track.