My wife and I spent Sunday and Monday in Lost River, West Virginia, staying in a prefab cabin in the hills. I liked this interesting dwelling so much that I hesitate to post this link to the people who rent it out. The area is beautiful, all the more so with a dusting of snow. I particularly recommend Smoke Hole Canyon. It was a good place to exercise my new camera (a Canon 5D mk2, since you ask; more on that vital matter another time).
I bring this up because, I confess, the trip made me examine my current enthusisam for infrastructure spending. The United States has plenty of badly congested highways and urban roads so deeply pitted that a half-track, rather than a mere Hummer, is called for. Fixing those problems seems a good idea. But the "Robert C. Byrd Appalachian Highway System"--the signs keep announcing that--is a different proposition altogether. I don't think I have seen roads so empty since I first drove along the M62 to Hull (in its day, one of Britain's more notable roads to nowhere). Like then, I was afraid I had found my way on to a road that had not been opened to the public. I imagined road-surfacing vehicles coming towards me line abreast round the next corner (not that the M62 to Hull has any corners, now I think of it).
Mr Byrd's highways are wider than the towns they connect. I hope the fiscal stimulus includes no further shovel-ready improvements. I could see the case for hiring people to drive around on them, though, to help visitors feel more comfortable. Plug-in hybrids, obviously.
Update:
Did I say "dusting" of snow? That is not how it looked on Tuesday morning. Remind me in future not to tempt the weather gods.
Wow, those Lost River prefab people sure get a lot of press. It sounds as if it is deserved. That very house happens to be featured in the current issue of Dwell magazine.
Any fiscal stimulus package aimed at building infrastructure will turn out to consist largely of boondoggles and bridges to nowhere. I intend to relax and enjoy it all.
Sounds like parts of rural Maine; though here the pot holes are man eating and the biggest dangers your likely to encounter on your journey are tractor trailer trucks going around the next curve half in your lane and a moose in the dark. your headlights shine under their bellies, making them invisible when they're standing in the middle of the road at night.
But the real treasure hidden in these back-woods places are the small businesses launched because somebody needed a job and there we none available. So they made one.
My hope is that the stimulus trickling into these places reinforces their efforts. SBA assistance to help viable business remain viable, angel funding, and traditional capital to help folk grow business, even micro loans, would all go a long way in these small places, these pockets of real America.
And back here in the woods, green energy looks might appealing right now. Costs a lot to heat our homes, get to the grocery store, and we also pay extra to get product into our neighborhoods.