Today is mail day, and we have a special kind of event. Perhaps even a “special” event. This time we visit some old television shows, “The Rockford Files” meets “The Twilight Zone”.

I was watching an old “Rockford Files” DVD from netflix on Sunday, since season 4 only recently came out. In the middle of another wonderful story by Juanita Bartlett, the writer whose pacing and rhythm is matched only by her ability to get into her characters’ skin, I had a thought. It’s been months since I tried to track her down via the internet. Perhaps there is something new.

http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewblog.asp?authorid=55121&blogid=23589

Well, there was. She’s selling her house on Martha’s Vineyard, which is to say that she’s still alive and she’s not Martine Bartlett or any of the other strange possibilities I had come up with. She just likes to a bit outside of the hype of Hollywood, without a single webpage or picture.

A few minutes after finding this, imagine how strange it was to go to my mailbox and see this letter:

I noticed your blog about Juanita Bartlett being mysterious.
I have to agree with you. She has written some great shows!
Is she still alive? I haven’t been able to find her website.
What does she look like? What is she doing now?

I am so happy to be able to answer. She’s alive, apparently retired and not hurting for money. She just doesn’t want fans or wackos like me obsessing about her, so I’ll stop.

On to less strange letters:

I was surprised that you found something good to say about cars. A distributed network is very important, but cars really can’t do that. Roads get clogged very quickly, and people head for the nearest large and fast road to get somewhere quickly. That’s not the same thing at all.

I’ve spent a lot of mental energy trying to figure out what people really like about cars. That sounds stupid, I realize, but if we want a transportation system that meets people’s needs we have to understand just what needs have been expressed pretty damned clearly already.

The big deal is that a car takes you directly from origin to destination without changing. That’s the most basic aspect of a distributed network. Even the internet goes onto “superhighways” that bounce off of satellites and so on if it has to – but it takes you from where you are to where you want to go seamlessly.

Does the car totally work as a distributed network? Hell, no! It’s a matter of physical space taken up by a 7′ x 14′ (2m x 4m) thing that needs space for braking in front of it while it’s moving. The energy usage is another matter, and likely to be what really brings the car down. But it is distributed by nature, and that’s the main appeal.

The space that the thing takes up is what makes it not work in any kind of density. Using a car based transportation system means that cities have a built-in disadvantage because what the car demands, space, is more expensive. To correct this imbalance we don’t have to go directly to highly centralized systems; in fact, it would be a mistake to go so far to the other extreme. Sadly, that’s what is being proposed in Saint Paul and many other places. I think it’s very unimaginative and quite dim.

That’s my mailbag for the day. I’ll continue the series on the Urban Core tomorrow, unless I get a better idea for a blog topic. You can send me ideas, questions, comments, insults, or whatever else comes to your mind after reading my blog – I love getting mail! Send it to wabbitoid47 at yahoo.com and I promise you a response of some kind.

Thank you for reading!