Now Is Not The Time To Visit Atlanta, Georgia

The big fire that collapsed a major Interstate 85 bridge
in Atlanta Thursday.

That was bizarre, wasn't it?

In case you haven't seen the news, a major Interstate highway caught fire in Atlanta, Georgia Thursday and the spectacular blaze caused a bridge to collapse.

Luckily, nobody was seriously hurt, but I didn't know Interstate highways could burn.

They're saying there was a lot of PVC piping under the bridges and road bed, and that's what burned. I guess PVC was inexpensive and efficient, but in hindsight, maybe not the best material in the world.

Here's the trouble: Atlanta is the Los Angeles of the South in terms of highways. The Atlanta metro area is laced with freeways, all of them congested most of the time.

The Interstate 85 fire, including the bridge collapse, is going to be a stunner.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has wisely declared a state of emergency, since nobody is going to get anywhere in the Atlanta area until this is fixed. You can imagine the economic impacts.

Plus, you can't rebuild a major Interstate bridge in an urban area in a day. It's going to take a lot of time.

I also love and am frightened by this detail of the fire from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: The fire was near a bunch of popular adult entertainment businesses, which had to close because of the dense smoke hanging over the region. The fire was also near the headquarters of the Orkin pesticide company.

Lovely.

Politicians from Donald Trump on down keep saying we have to sink a lot of investments into infrastructure, but they never do it.

This weird fire is one indication that maybe all these leaders should put their money - or, more accurately, taxpayer money -  where their mouths are.

I wouldn't mind seeing some of my tax money going toward road construction instead of the president's golf trips, no?

Videos:

There were some technical hiccups with this news chopper view of the Interstate 85 bridge collapsing in Atlanta, but it's still pretty dramatic:



A brief, scary view of driving by the raging fire:

 

Sweet Local News Story: Elderly Embrace Old Songs; Make Us Feel Good

A 99-year-old woman enjoys some music
and memories at an Atlanta, Georiga assisting
living facility in a WXIA-TV news piece.  

Often, on a slow new day, local TV stations fill time with stories that aren't all that important, just fluff.  Sometimes these stories are kinda boring, frankly.

Sometimes, though, when they're done right, those "fluff" stories are actually pretty amazing.

WXIA in Atlanta recently put together a feature on a music therapist who works with the elderly in an assisted living facility.

That doesn't sound like a big deal, but the producers edited and reported the piece in such a way that it was quite moving.

You'll see in the video at the bottom of this post how WXIA mixed interviews, images of the elderly enjoying the music, and flashes of the mementos they cling onto as they remember these old songs.

"Music memories last longer than other memories," said John Abel, the music therapist featured in the WXIA piece.

It's true. I bet you agree with me that some songs you heard in your youth, even tunes that aren't even really that good, evoke strong memories. Usually they're memories that have nothing to do with the song, but that's OK.

For some reason, the song "Rhiannon"by Fleetwood Mac  is my current earworm and it makes me think of a glorious spring hike I took in 1976, when the song was a hit. No rhyme or reason to the memory, it just is.

I'm sure everyone reading has this experience.

As the WXIA piece shows, sometimes these musical memories are absolutely poignant and beautiful.

At WXIA, one of the news anchors actually started weeping a bit when the piece ended (this is included in the video below), because it reminded him of his own father.

Without further ado, watch the piece. It's very nice: