Awash with Spring

© harrington

Hi! Thanks for dripping in. How's the icicle situation at your place? Here, some are dropping off, others are accreting, others (on the north side of the house) are sitting around minding their own business. The county finally got around to attacking the pot holes that have been attacking my car and my spine. The oversize puddles still sluicing the road will make short work of the county's repairs but I'm grateful for the effort. While walking Franco the Rescue dog this morning under a 97% waxing gibbous moon, I noticed the tree shadow patterns on the bright snow cover and thought of gray ghosts filling the space between the trees created by the space taken up by the trees. It reminds me of Minnesota's development. There's lots of places where we aren't compared to some places where we are. One of the issues that intrigues me these days is the way that city designers and planners seem to have forgotten about the concept of hinterland. We have viewsheds and foodsheds and energysheds and watersheds, all useful terms, but not focused on the urban-rural relationship. I've been thinking about this because I came across a reference that mentioned that the most appropriate human-scale travel boundaries are those established by bicycle. I think those bounds might be similar to bounds established by horse travel. Some day, sooner or later, we're going to run out of fossil fuels. If we haven't by then mastered renewable electricity transportation networks, our scale and range may well return to the horse and bikey days. How would that change your life? Are you doing anything to increase your families self-sufficiency? Do you have kids? Are you concerned about trying to prepare them for the future? Several of the folks I most admire have been quoted as saying some variation of "the best way to predict the future is to create it." What are you doing today to create a better future for our kids? Thanks for thinking about that. Stop back soon. Rants, raves and reflections served daily.