Atlanta’s Streetcar Facebook page posted this “sneak peek” of the city’s new streetcars on the back of a flatbed truck.  According to the overly excited text of Thomas Wheatley…

…the vehicles are scheduled to be delivered in September to Siemens’ Cumming facility where they’ll be fitted with their propulsion systems.

Here are all the details from a recent press release…

Decatur’s 12th Annual Decatur Barbeque, Blues & Bluegrass Festival is brought to you by three non-profit groups the Community Center of South Decatur, the Oakhurst Neighborhood Association and Decatur Active Living. All proceeds of the festival will be invested directly into the Decatu community.Featured music- Mama’s Blue Dress, Dejablue Grass Band, Heather Luttrell, Roxy Watson and the Electromatics.  For more information visit http://decaturbbqfestival.com/and purchase tickets at www.ticketalternative.com

Location: Harmony Park

Time: 4-10pm

Cost: $9 in advance, $10 day of the event

Kids11-20: $5

Kids 10 and under- Free

Decatur Book Festival Newsbrief – DBF’s online auction site is now up and running. You can bid on Book the Brick where the winner spends an hour with an author at a coveted outdoor table at Brick Store Pub. DBF includes a signed copy of the author’s book and buys the first round! Also being auctioned are Little Free Libraries, hand painted by local artists (including James Dean). Bid early, bid often. This is not only a great fundraiser, but guaranteed to make you the cool person on your street.

Life Changing Writers

Presumptive Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan once claimed: “the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.” And on another occasion: “I give out [Rand’s] Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well… I try to make my interns read it.”

While Ryan does not wholly subscribe to Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism (which embraces atheism — Ryan is a practicing Catholic), Rand’s work rather clearly has had an impact on his political development. Others who have cited the importance of Ayn Rand’s writings include Senator Rand Paul — Ayn Rand, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan; is Ryan Seacrest next in this sequence? — and Ronald Reagan. (For a criticism of Objectivism, see the Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlewaite’s Washington Post columns here and here.)

While in college I read The Fountainhead, Rand’s novel whose main character is the uncompromising architect Howard Roark. Back in the 1970s this was read by just about everyone in my architecture program. It was inspirational, but not terribly good writing. As far as being a philosophical manifesto of any sort, it struck me as incredibly simplistic. (The film adaptation, with Gary Cooper and the great Patricia Neal, was even worse. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who never asked my opinion nor that of the New York Times, screens this annually for his new law clerks.)

Six and seven decades later, both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead evoke strong feelings, pro and con, from readers.

Around the same time I read The Fountainhead I also discovered Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM), became thoroughly enamored, and reread it at least twice.

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