David LaFerney

As I mentioned in my previous post my wife and I went to Nashville for the 4th of July. A guy in the Wolf Camera store mentioned a good place to watch the fireworks was Love Circle Park, so we used the GPS to find find it and drove up to check it out.  The park is really nothing more than a big round flat circle on top of a tall steep sided hill right in the middle of a nice neighborhood.  The parking area is 75 feet or so below the top of the park with a steep set of concrete steps going to the top.  At the top of the stairs is this little brick building with no windows and razor wire around it -

There to the right of the brick building you can see a big green box thing with chain link and razor wire around it too.  After looking closely I decided that the Big Green Boxes (three of them spaced out around the park) are really large type air vents like you see on top of buildings.  Of course this made me curious and I started looking around to figure out what this “hill” really is.  Well, I’m pretty sure that it’s some kind of structure, because in addition to the access building, and the air ducts the flat spot on top of the hill is perfectly round as you can see in this image from Google earth -

It also looks to me like there is only a relatively thin layer of dirt covering the top of this big round structure by the pattern of dry brown grass on top that turns green at the edge of the slope -

There were a couple of other clues that something is under there - 2 big steel access plates bolted down to the ground on opposite sides of the hill (you can just see them - at the top edge right of center and lower edge a bit more right of center - on the satellite view) and you can still see where the drive in access to the project was at the base of the structure in the point of the “egg” in the satellite view. Also the little building on top has electrical service and antennae on it.

Whatever it is it’s been there for quite a while, because there were the remains of tree stumps on the sides of the slope that were 20 inches or more in diameter when they were cut down.  So enough time went by after the dirt was mounded around the structure for some trees to grow pretty big before being cut down.

So when we got home I Googled for the Nashville public works department - which has a pretty good web site for a municipal division like that - and filled out their contact form and asked what’s buried under Love Circle Park.  The form promised that someone would reply within a couple of business days, but so far no news.

Anyway, after a good bit of thought I think that it’s most likely nothing more than a municipal water tank under there.  Of course it could also be a secret nuclear missile silo, or a CIA listening post, or the world headquarters of KAOS. Whatever it is, Love Circle park looks like a great place to hang out and look at the stars with some good company and a frosty beverage.

However if you know, or think that you know what’s under there let me know in the comments.

My lovely Wife and I went to Nashville for the 4th of July, and spent the day just messing around seeing the sights along with all of the other tourists. We live about an hour and a half from Nashville and it’s “the Big City” to us, so we go there every couple of months or so for one reason or another - store-bought shoes and whatnot - but we usually don’t just explore.

Anyway, after the excellent fireworks at river front park ended we were making our way back to our car along with about a zillion other sweaty sightseers, and we randomly found ourselves in Printer’s Alley - Nashville’s traditionally seedy area of strip clubs, and various vices committed under a neon glow.

As we were exiting I urged Shirley to turn around and take a picture back up the alley. We never even noticed the sign advertising Nude Karaoke until we were looking at the pictures later. Quite an interesting looking place I must say - a couple of blocks north of lower Broad and west of the Cumberland river just in case you ever want to visit.

The fire works at river front park

Centennial Park

The Parthenon - Nashville’s full sized replica of the temple of Athena in Athens Greece.

All photos by Shirley LaFerney

If you’re paying attention at all you’ve probably heard about T. Boone Pickins plan for replacing natural gas fueled electric generation with wind generation and using the surplus natural gas to fuel transportation. OK there wouldn’t really be wind powered cars, but you get the idea. One of the great thing about Pickens plan is that it should make sense to both the left and the right. Really the only group that loses out with his plan is foreign oil interest. Many excellent and long term American jobs would be created, trillions of American dollars would stay at home and even the environment would benefit - all feasible with mature off the shelf technology - no break through required.

Only the lunatic fringes and those with an ulterior motive should oppose this idea. I wonder why President Bush wasn’t interested?

Oil may be the most useful material ever discovered by mankind – in addition to its use as fuel, oil is in fertilizer, medicine, pesticides, plastics, cosmetics, lubricants, solvents, even food – it’s difficult to think of a consumer product that doesn’t contain a petroleum product, or rely on one for its production.

It’s currently being proposed that we lift the federal moratorium on off shore oil drilling. In my opinion sooner or later, we will drill off shore. Eventually, the oil under the ocean and Alaska’s ANWAR is going to be so valuable that the environmentalists will no longer be able to keep the wolves away from the door. It will only take one positive congressional vote to make it happen, and sooner or later it will. However, we shouldn’t do it yet.

There are a lot of reasons why we should reign in our depletion of petroleum resources and put off drilling in ANWAR and the continental shelf, but I think that the best one is this – Our generations have already used more than our share of the oil that exists in the world. Shouldn’t we leave some for our children and their children to use for fertilizer, medicine, pesticides, plastics, cosmetics, lubricants, solvents, etc that we’ve come to rely upon? Oil is eventually going to be too valuable to burn. Let us not be remembered as the ones who burned the last good source just because it was economically convenient.

Exploiting oil in these environmentally sensitive places is comparable to raiding your children’s college fund because you’re temporarily laid off from your job. It’s irresponsible because we still have other recourses and once it’s gone we can never get it back.

America has never really put much effort into developing renewable energy for the simple reason that the bean counters have always said that it would be more expensive than just using the oil and coal that is already available. Unfortunately a few beans didn’t get counted along the way. The constant outflow of American wealth to purchase foreign petroleum has diminished us financially while enriching people who hold their noses as they take our money, and of course there is the environmental damage that these fuels cause, and the cost of our oil motivated foreign policys.

Now it’s likely that we will finally start to seriously invest in other ways to fuel our energy intensive economy – and fortunately there is no way (that I can see) to outsource the development of solar, wind or other renewable energy resources, so this is going to mean lots of good paying jobs right here in America. Will our energy bills go up? They almost certainly shall. Will our homes and cars get smaller and more efficient? Of course they will. However, a lot more of that money will be staying in American pockets. These are not horrible sacrifices, but I hope we’re willing to make them before it’s too late.

America is addicted to oil. Drilling in ANWAR is like a junkie deciding that he will be better off if he cooks his own meth. We need to kick the habit, not make more of our own junk.