I don't know if anybody has noticed a deepening of my accent, but for the last couple of days I have been posting from Georgia. We are visiting the grandchildren and will probably be here until about Friday evening.

We are about 35 or 40 miles out of downtown Atlanta, and at the edge of Big A's urban sprawl. It seems to be sprawling a couple of miles every year, at least in this direction. The city has already swallowed up several counties. Like most big cities, this one spills out past it's own city limits. You can drive for over an hour at interstate speeds just to cross greater Atlanta. If traffic is normal (gridlocked) you can spend several hours in transit.

A number of years ago, they built a beltway all the way around the city. Then, as so often happens, the city moved out past the beltway so that now you must drive miles and miles just to get to it. One solution is to build another concentric beltway, but that is big bucks. Besides, Atlanta would soon engulf that one as well. It sort of makes me wonder how big a city can get. I also wonder when it will merge with Birmingham, Chattanooga, and Columbus. Don't laugh. Have you driven from Washington D.C. to New York to Boston lately? How much time did you spend out in the country?
I've watched a number of cities more than quadruple their size in the last 50 years, so I have an idea of what will happen in the next 50.
Howard