Karma

Ever since I've resumed blogging, I've been meaning to write a "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" post about my activities during the little hiatus. While this isn't that post, I do want to share a brief account of one of those activities, and describe how today's news relates to yesterday's post.

Longtime readers of this blog will recall that I had long been doing volunteer work on behalf of several Atlanta neighborhoods to preserve a local park. The City wanted to pave a bicycle trail through the park, and while I and most of my neighbors were all for bicycle mobility and the recreational opportunities the trail would provide, we didn't want to have to give up our park and the little greenspace remaining in the area, especially when viable alternative routes were available.

Tanyard Creek Park is a beloved neighborhood amenity for recreation and socialization. It's also a green buffer for seriously impaired Tanyard Creek, which suffers greatly from all of the upstream urbanization. The park is also the last remaining undeveloped field from the Battle of Peachtree Creek. Almost 6,500 casualties resulted from one day of fighting there (compared to 4,200 coalition losses over almost five years of fighting in Iraq), leading Union Major General J.D. Cox to state, "Few battlefields of the war have been strewn so thickly with dead and wounded as they lay that evening around Collier's Mill."

So I was quite pleased that after several contentious meetings, after all of the differences between the City's plans and the neighborhood's vision was noisily articulated and amplified, we finally found a common ground for a trail route that met both the City's requirements and the community's acceptance.

The problem was getting all of the various agencies that had regulatory authority over some aspect or another of the trail to permit the alternative route, but to our relief, we got "green lighted" all the way. It appeared that we had managed to save the park, while still supporting the bike trail and the City.

Or so we thought. To our disappointment, we were called to a meeting last January and told that the City had performed its own analysis of the alternative routes, and decided that despite the clear community consensus, to proceed with the route that goes right through our park - the route that they had wanted all along, from the very beginning - and to abandon the alternative route identified.

Needless to say, we were not happy to hear this. When we tried to appeal the decision, we were told that the City's decision was final, and that a binding vote had been taken among City bureaucrats, without any neighborhood representation.

Well, funny thing. Karma can be a real bitch. Today, it was announced that the Georgia Supreme Court ruled this morning that the funding mechanism for the whole Beltline project, including the trail through Tanyard Creek Park, is unconstitutional, basically stripping the project of its funding.

Just yesterday, after seeing Mount Hood loom magestically over the City of Portland, I posted the text of the Po hexagram, including its statement that "those who rule rest on the broad foundation of the people. They too should be generous and benevolent, like the earth that carries all. Then they will make their position as secure as a mountain is in its tranquillity."

A mountain rests on the earth. When it is steep and narrow, lacking a broad base, it must topple over. Its position is strong only when it rises out of the earth broad and great, not proud and steep. The city government of Atlanta, in its prideful arrogance, thought that its will could rise above that of its citizens, only to find karma knocking its steep and narrow peak back down on its ass.

Of course, no one really wins here. There is no "us" and "them," and no "win" and "lose." The park won't suffer the trail, but we won't get a bicycle path at all now. We won't get the Beltline mass transit, and we won't get the new parks included in the Beltline plan. We share in the City's misfortune - their karma is ours, too.

As I said, karma can be a real bitch.