Southern Bookman

AJC steps up editorial campaign for Atlanta police training center

The dispute over Atlanta's police training center heated up this week.

After nearly 300 training center protesters packed an Atlanta City Council meeting, AJC columnist Bill Torpy derided the group. Torpy's been a consistent proponent of the training center, which has received funding from the newspaper's ownership.

The newspaper gave muted coverage to the massive protest, running a story inside, with limited quotes from the large number of speakers. The article emphasized Council President Doug Shipman's exasperation with the unruly group.

Defying the protesters' threats of electoral defeat, the city council again approved spending $30 million for the training center. The rest of the $90 million cost would be covered by the nonprofit Atlanta Police Foundation.

Plans to build the training center in a wooded area in South DeKalb County has drawn heated opposition from environmentalists and anti-police groups, who for months camped out at the site. A young protester was killed in a shootout with police, and a number of protesters have been charged with "domestic terrorism."

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens stepped up the campaign in support of the training center with an AJC op-ed piece. Dickens again argued that the Atlanta police and fire departments desperately need a state-of-the art training center, which the city now lacks. Dickens said the training center would improve the police department's interactions with the public.

Answering environmentalists who say that the training center would ruin the South River's wilderness, Dickens said 300 acres would be preserved. The city over the years has used the site as a prison farm and firing range.

While the Atlanta newspaper has given the training center uproar adequate if fitful news coverage, Torpy and the AJC's intermittent editorial department have staunchly supported the plan. Training center opponents have not been granted space to express their views.

The Guardian, the Intercept and other news sites have been largely sympathetic to the protesters and critical of the police crackdown that ended the encampment at the site. Locally, the Saporta Report's John Ruch has given more complete coverage to the controversy than the AJC.

It's regrettable that Atlanta's monopoly newspaper hasn't given its readers a full range of views on the training center.

 

Atlanta Beltline should follow MARTA and commit to rail construction

The Atlanta streetcar extension will bring a small portion of the Beltline's long-promised rail transit line.

That raises the question of when a decision will be made to complete rail transit along the Beltline.

Beltline originator Ryan Gravel envisioned light rail connecting Atlanta's neighborhoods as the centerpiece of his original idea to refurbish abandoned train lines circling the city.

Gravel and Atlanta Beltline say they remain committed to rail along the Beltline. But the popularity of portions completed so far raise doubts about whether the rail lines will ever be built.

The MARTA board recently approved extending the low-ridership downtown streetcar line to the Beltline. Under the plan, a rail line would run a short distance along the Beltline from Irwin Street to the Ponce City Market.

Gravel told business columnist Maria Saporta that he foresees the Beltline rail line as embedded upon grass, and running alongside the popular paved trail, crowded with walkers, bikers and skateboard riders. An artist's conception shows a rail car running upon a track laid upon grass beside a bucolic grassy embankment.

Work is continuing to complete the Beltline, with agreement not yet reached on Norfolk Southern's still active train lines near Buckhead.

The Beltline nonprofit organization is beginning construction on a new portion of the trail that will extend through Piedmont Park, connecting to the busy segment that goes through Virginia-Highland, Poncey Highland and the Old Fourth Ward.

MARTA's streetcar extension, supported by Mayor Andre Dickens, gives a starting stub for Beltline rail transit.

Beltline planners can accelerate the process by coming up with their own rail construction plan in conjunction with MARTA's project. A more extensive Beltline segment could even begin sooner, eventually linking with the streetcar line at Ponce City Market.

Such a decision by Atlanta Beltline Inc. would be a major step toward making Gravel's conception a reality.

Biden administration's stringent tailpipe emissions proposals to boost electric vehicle production

A Rivian SUV rolled down my street the other day.

That was my first sighting of a vehicle manufactured by the electric truck company, seeking to build a huge factory east of Atlanta.

Electric vehicles will receive a huge boost from the EPA's proposed new tailpipe emissions standards, which could lead to EVs comprising 67 percent of the U.S. auto market by 2032.

The stringent Biden administration proposal announced Wednesday clashes with his recent approval of Conoco-Phillips' Willow oil drilling project in the Alaskan wilderness. The petroleum company plans to keep drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve for 30 years.

If electric vehicles increasingly dominate the auto industry, Conoco-Phillips will find its Alaskan venture unprofitable. But the company is already gearing up to produce more petroleum, according to a recent New York Times story.

Biden's EPA rules likely will be reversed if a Republican is elected president in 2024, or if the GOP takes control of Congress.

Auto companies were already planning to boost electric vehicle production, and California has imposed strict emissions rules that are pushing the shift to EVs.

The EPA proposals signal a major move toward the United States reducing emissions to meet global climate-change goals.

Biden's actions have set into motion competing futures for the U.S. economy, one of continued  fossil fuel domination, the other a shift toward alternative energy sources.

If the new economy develops, Rivians and other electric vehicles will be a common sight on streets and highways.

 

Atlanta Beltline creator Ryan Gravel's "Where We Want to Live" presents inspiring urban vision

Intown communities along the Atlanta Beltline's eastside trail now boom with new development, restaurants, supermarkets and young residents walking, biking, and riding scooters along the corridor.

As work moves forward to complete the ambitious project, the original ideals of affordable housing and rail transit linking neighborhoods around the city look more and more elusive.

Ryan Gravel, whose 1999 Georgia Tech master's thesis called for the redevelopment of the abandoned railroad tracks that generated Atlanta's first industrial growth, remains committed to his affordable housing and mass transit goals, as does Atlanta Beltline Inc., the nonprofit developing the trails.

I recently discovered Gravel's 2016 book "Where We Want to Live, Reclaiming Infrastructure for a New Generation of Cities" at the Museum of Design Atlanta, one of the city's little known treasures.

Located on Peachtree Street across from the Woodruff Arts Center, the design museum offers imaginative exhibits such as the current display on hip-hop architecture and a shop full of distinctive books and gifts.

Gravel in the book presents an invaluable history of Atlanta's early days, when several railroad companies built tracks that circled the city, bringing materials to factories that once dominated its economy. Over the years, trucks and highways supplanted rail, and the abandoned tracks turned into overgrown sites of urban squalor.

Giving credit to earlier proposals to redevelop the Beltline, Gravel gives a detailed account of the political process that led to the transformational undertaking. He credits former Atlanta City Council President Cathy Woolard for bringing the plan to reality.

Partially a memoir, "Where We Want to Live" recalls Gravel's visits to other cities, beginning with a sojourn in Paris that inspired his Beltline concept.

Gravel examines projects such as New York City's High Line, Los Angeles' Los Angeles River reclamation, Houston's Bufffalo Bayou Greenway and projects in New Orleans, Detroit and Minneapolis.

While he has pleasant memories of his childhood in an Atlanta suburb, he censures the uncontrolled sprawl of urban areas like Atlanta. He advocates for the development of inner city neighborhoods through reclamation of older infrastructure, such as the Beltline project.

Gravel sees the danger of the Beltline causing "gentrification" and driving out lower-income residents, a process that has accelerated since publication of his book. In a mystifying shortcoming, he here and throughout the book avoids Atlanta's racial history.

Nor does he discuss Atlanta's airport and its importance to Atlanta's economy, or the role played by Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola and other Fortune 500 companies.

Gravel's call for political action to develop vital city neighborhoods drifts into theoretical generalizations rather than concrete proposals. Conservative politicians will castigate him as a spokesman for city elites over rural voters.

Rail transit, the major proponent of Gravel's original thesis, appears more and more unlikely. The popularity of the trails leaves little room for rail lines, and MARTA has recently turned away from rail to rapid buses.

A proposal to extend MARTA's under-used downtown streetcar line to the Beltline's Ponce City Market is supported by Mayor Andre Dickens, but neighborhood opposition is brewing.

As the Beltline brings a new era to Atlanta, Gravel will be there to fight for his conception's highest ideals.

Biden harms environmental legacy with approval of Alaskan oil drilling project

Joe Biden, who passed landmark climate change legislation early in his presidency, has betrayed the environmental movement by approving a massive oil drilling project in the Alaskan Arctic.

The ConocoPhillips Willow Project, approved by Biden's Interior Department Monday, will drill 180,000 barrels of oil a day. That will lock in an estimated 9.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, equivalent to driving nearly 2 million gas-powered cars, for potentially 30 years, according to the Washington Post.

Environmentalists including former Vice President Al Gore vehemently opposed the project on nearly pristine land in the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve. Biden claimed that ConocoPhillips, which holds permits for the project, would prevail in court.

When the globe desperately needs to reduce emissions, the action will boost the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Already carbon emissions have risen to record amounts, endangering the world's commitment to limit temperatures.

As HBO's formerly funny Bill Maher points out, even committed environmentalists refuse to make personal sacrifices to reduce emissions. Hollywood leftists keep flying private planes across the world. People continue buying huge gas-guzzling SUVs.

In approving the Willow Project, the Biden administration gained concessions from Conoco Phillips, reducing the project from five sections to three. Biden also took steps to stop further oil projects in the Alaskan Arctic. But the Willow Project is a major reversal of the world's commitment to reduce carbon emissions.

Along with the oil company's legal challenges, the political fallout from rising gas prices also influenced Biden's decision, outweighing the support Biden received from young environmental voters.

When the world must take immediate action to slash emissions, Biden has set the stage for environmental disaster.

 

 

 

 

Hunter-gatherer societies lived in ancient Europe for thousands of years, DNA shows

Our human ancestors emerged in Africa and migrated to Europe 60,000 years ago, branching into a bewildering web of hunter-gathering groups.

DNA extracted from the remains of 357 ancient Europeans gives tantalizing views of their life, which lasted for thousands of years.

New York Times science writer Carl Zimmer in an article in Tuesday's Science Times section traces the perilous existence of groups called the Fournol, the Vestonice, the GoyettQ2, the Villabruna, the Oberkassel and the Sidelkino.

Researchers analyzing the DNA data have identified even more groups, according to papers that originally appeared in Nature.

When the hunter-gatherers came to Europe, they encountered and interbred with the Neanderthals, who had lived on the continent for 100,0000 years.

The Neanderthals disappeared about 40,000 years ago, losing out to the competition from the more advanced humans and their superior tools. The Neanderthals live on in our DNA.

Several of the hunter-gatherer groups also disappeared, especially with the arrival of the Ice Age 26,000 to 19,000 years ago. The battle for survival brought the emergence of the new Gravettian culture, which spread across Europe when the earth warmed up again.

The Gravettians made spears to kill woolly mammoths and other big game and made Venus figurines that might have represented fertility, according to Zimmer's article.

The oldest human culture in Europe is known as the Aurignacians, named for the oldest figurative cave paintings and sculptures.

Hunting and gathering people lived and died out across Europe until the emergence of agriculture about 8,000 years ago. The old way of life was supplanted by farming, which led to the rise of cities, kingdoms and empires.

We would recognize those ancient ancestors if they would appear among us. Their eyes, faces and bodies were like ours.

How did they talk? Did they feel sadness and joy? They must have loved their children, grown old, and felt grief. They created the first art, and must have played music and told stories.

For thousands of years, they saw mornings, afternoons, and nights, believing their world would last forever.

 

 

 

Climate change brings early arrival of spring blossoms

The white azaleas have blossomed in our yard, and February's not yet gone.

Each year, I welcome these heralds of spring.

Once the delicate blooms arrived in April. Now, with mild winters from global warming, the flowers' natural clocks are out of balance.

My joy at the azaleas' return now comes with uneasiness at changes in seasonal rhythms that were constant for centuries.

The early arrival of spring blossoms is as ominous a sign of climate change as extreme weather.

Andrea Barrett's "Natural History" revisits enthralling family saga

Andrea Barrett's "Natural History" rekindled my enchantment with fiction.

Barrett's collection of linked stories tells the histories of several interconnected families from the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the present.

"Natural History," published in 2022, extends the family saga she's examined in nine previous books, including the National Book Award-winning collection "Ship Fever." She's won the MacArthur "genius" award, and Guggenheim and NEA fellowships.

The characters live in Hammondsport, a village in central New York state's Finger Lakes region. Barrett is one of those writers who find universality in a small fictional place.

Barrett's predominantly female characters share a consuming interest in science and technology. Henrietta Atkins, a 19th century teacher and botanist who gives her students immersive lessons in insect and plant life, is the main character of the first stories in "Natural History," which follow her life from the American Civil War to after World War I.

Henrietta, who never marries and has a close friendship with another female scientist, Daphne Bannister, is an influential figure for generations of Hammondsport's children. She also plays a formative role in the lives of her nieces, Marion, Caroline and Elaine Cummings and their younger twin sisters, Agnes and Alice Cummings.

The book traces Henrietta's life from a child working for a local family through old age. Along with her teaching and scientific career in the village, she makes several momentous trips with Daphne, who becomes a famed author. 

How Henrietta inspires her nieces and students carries forth an intricate narrative of village life. Barrett gives each family member and acquaintance a distinctive personality.

Henrietta's childhood is haunted by a wounded Civil War veteran who returns to the village. One of her work duties was writing letters to him while he was away, and she was consumed by his returned letters describing camp life and different battles.

Later, she participates in the veteran's contributions to a regimental history, seeking to atone for accusations of its cowardice during the battle of Chancellorsville.

Her teaching gives the adventure of knowledge to several gifted students who go on to successful artistic and scientific careers. Henrietta's quiet life is full of intellectual and emotional excitement.

In the daring and adventuresome story "The Accident," her niece Caroline Cummings' career as an early aviation barnstormer takes center stage. 

Also appearing are a wealthy aristocratic family who owns a winery in the area, threatened by the passage of the Volstead Act in 1919. A family heir, Charles Durand, marries the lower class Alice Cummings, joining the two families.

Rose Marburg, the present-day central character of the concluding story that gives the book its title, is the granddaughter of Charles and Alice. Rose's life uncannily replicates that of her distant ancestor, Henrietta. Both love scientific exploration, writing and natural beauty. Each mourns brief, tragic love affairs, and unfulfilled careers.

Along with her impressive knowledge of American history and the country's golden age of inventions and intellectual discovery, Barrett gives lessons in cellular biology, botany and scientific literature.

Barrett's deeply imagined characters follow their destinies against the unfolding of history. Their small-town stories reflect that of the nation at large.

 

 

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, DeKalb CEO Michael Thurmond launch police training site

The Atlanta Way lives.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and DeKalb CEO Michael Thurmond on Tuesday announced an agreement that will start construction on Atlanta's embattled police and fire training center, a $90 million, 85-acre mini-city of urban landscapes, fire towers, meeting rooms and firearm shooting ranges.

The extensive training center is to be built on a wooded site in south DeKalb Country, where neighborhood opposition resulted in Dickens agreeing to Thurmond's demands for buffers from firing ranges and fire towers, preservation of wooded areas and the planting of hardwood trees. The site is part of the proposed South River Forest conservation area.

After months of violent battles between protesters and police, the agreement pushes the training center forward, the latest manifestation of the ages-old "Atlanta Way" partnership of white business leaders and black politicians.

The private, non-profit Atlanta Police Foundation is funding much of center, staunchly supported by The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Alex Taylor, the CEO of AJC owner Cox Enterprises, has raised money for the police foundation and the training center, sometimes noted in AJC articles.

A gun battle between state troopers and protesters led to the shooting death of protester Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, an avowed pacifist whom police claimed wounded a police officer who has not been named.

Police wouldn't release the wounded officer's name because of possible retribution by protesters. Yet he should be identified in the interest of transparency in the case.

Environmental activists dispute the police account. State police involved in the gunfight say they were not wearing body cameras during the battle, so the required GBI investigation will depend on conflicting eye-witness accounts and forensic evidence.

Unlike national media including The Washington Post, the AJC has not complied with Terán's preference to use the trans pronouns "they" and "them,"  instead of "he" and "him."

Terán's death led to a violent protest in downtown Atlanta in which Peachtree Street high-rises were damaged and a police car burned. One of the damaged buildings is the Philip Johnson-designed 191 Peachtree Tower, where the Atlanta Police Foundation's offices are located.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared an emergency, allowing for him to call out 1,000 members of the Georgia National Guard. A number of protesters have been charged with "domestic terrorism" under a constitutionally dubious Georgia law enacted in 2017.

I've been following the story through the AJC and national media, and haven't formed a clear judgment.

It sounds as if the wooded area is not as pristine as the protesters claim - one absurdly called it "the lungs of Atlanta" in a Washington Post story. Dickens said the site doesn't encompass original hard-wood trees, and is overgrown with invasive species.

The Dickens-Thurmond deal will preserve the most environmentally sensitive forest areas. The South River and a creek are seriously polluted, according to an Atlanta magazine piece by former AJC reporter Timothy Pratt, the most comprehensive article on the center conflict I've read.

Over the years, a work camp and other operations have been located at the city-owned site, originally the home of the Muscogee Indians before they were forced to leave. For years, the area served as a trash dump. The nearby predominantly black neigbhorhoods already hear gunfire from an existing police firing range.

Ryan Gravel, the originator of the Atlanta Beltline, did a comprehensive study that called for making the area an extensive nature park. The Atlanta City Council agreed to the plan, before former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms surprised residents, local officials and Gravel with plans for the training center, according to Pratt's article. The council subsequently approved allocating $30 million for the center.

Overall, the training center appears needed, but other options could be considered. The removal of trees should be limited, but thousands of trees are destroyed in the metro area each week as development relentlessly progresses.

While protesters vow to fight on to stop the training center, its building appears inevitable. That's the Atlanta Way.

 

 

 

 

Biltmore Estate a bucolic counterpoint to nearby Asheville

The Biltmore Estate's fantasy of Southern gentility contrasts sharply with the gritty urban reality of downtown Asheville.

George Vanderbilit's gargantuan gilded-age palace, completed in 1895, crowns rolling pastures and walking trails leading to a commercial center of two hotels, a winery, restaurants and museums trumpeting the brief, dilettantish life of Cornelius Vanderbilt's grandson.

The Biltmore baron died in 1914 from complications of an appendectomy, leaving his widow and descendants to visualize his estate as a lucrative tourist venture.

The big house was the crowning achievement of now forgotten architect Richard Morris Hunt, who designed many of the long demolished Fifth Avenue mansions of New York City's robber barons.

Biltmore's lavish  gardens were the final masterpiece of Frederick Law Olmsted, the famed designer of Central Park, who also wrote perceptive accounts of his tours through the antebellum, slave-owning South.

Vanderbilt's fine art collection displayed at the house include two marvelous portraits of Hunt and Olmsted by John Singer Sargent, along with several other works by the artist. Three Belgian tapestries from the 16th century are also captivating.

The house, visited by Henry James, Edith Wharton and others, entertained guests with a billiards room, bowling alley, library and conversation enclaves. Roaring fireplaces heated the sumptuous parlors.

A short drive away, downtown Asheville presents a raucous scene of young hipsters, aging art tourists, young families and Jesus cheerleaders. Reclaimed buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries house music clubs, restaurants, craft shops and the excellent Malaprop's bookstore.

On the other side of downtown lies the sumptuous Grove Park Inn, another landmark of Southern elegance.

The municipal plaza at the center of downtown is a popular gathering spot close to the memorial angel sculpture honoring native son Thomas Wolfe. Wolfe, author of the once-lauded "Look Homeward Angel" and "You Can't Go Home Again," grew up in his family's boarding house, now a tourist attraction.

As we traveled down the estate's winding road leading to the exit for downtown Asheville, I heard the voice of F. Scott Fitzgerald whispering "I left my capacity for hoping on the little roads that led to Zelda's sanatorium."

Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of Wolfe's fellow Scribner's author Fitzgerald, died in a fire at an Asheville hospital. At Malaprop's Bookstore, I paid silent homage to the doomed couple.

Visiting my filmmaker sister, who was completing a Hallmark Christmas movie shot at the big house, we stayed at the Biltmore Estate's charming Village Hotel amid a younger generation of wine-lovers and gilded age voyeurs.

On a walk, I passed meadow lands where goats and cattle grazed. Once the estate ran a dairy, but now the cows are beef cattle, raised to produce steaks and hamburgers for the estate's restaurants. The cattle are humanely raised, the estate assures visitors. Nearing the banks of the French Broad River, I heard volleys of gunfire from skeet shooters.

At the estate's Antler Hill Village Deerpark theater, a high-tech audiovisual show and exhibit explored Leonardo da Vinci's brilliant, erratic career.The exhibit features models of Leonardo's futuristic inventions and copies of some of his famous paintings.

The dramatic video show gave flashing psychedelic images of his work. For some reason, galloping horses were a recurrent motif, perhaps signifying the frequent wars of Leonardo's era.

Driving from Atlanta to Asheville along the booming I-85 corridor also revealed striking contrasts. Greenville, home of Furman and Bob Jones universities, and nearby Spartanburg flourish from the sprawling BMW plant between them. Signs announce nearby Clemson University's various automotive-engineering ventures.

After we passed through these successes of the new international economy, Donald Trump was launching his presidential campaign with a speech at Columbia, South Carolina's capital and home of the University of South Carolina. The anti-globalist Trump  appeared with the unctuous Lindsay Graham, the state's long-serving senator, once a fairly progressive ally of the late Sen. John McCain but now a Trump sycophant.

Seeing the young middle-class families at Biltmore, I wondered about their political leanings. They packed the Biltmore wine store, with its rows of vintage whites and reds, and the pretentious shops and restaurants. Republicans, I assumed. But perhaps not.

Beyond a few patches of undeveloped forest, the I-85 corridor from Atlanta to Greenville and beyond is now one metro area. Too bad America turned to automobile transportation rather than the high-speed trains of other developed nations. Electric vehicles might take over one day, but the gasoline-powered SUVs, trucks and sedans will rule for the next several decades at least. Or until climate change brings societal collapse and the new dark ages.

Gilded age scions like George Vanderbilt have been overtaken by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Vanderbilt's heirs claim he possessed a sense of noblesse oblige lacking today, but his monstrous house proves America's wealthy have always yearned for an American feudalism.