Bill, speaking of middle Tennessee barn blogging, check out this post (http://blog.hammock.com/index.php?p=49) from last month on the Hammock Publishing weblog, Hammorati.

I once read an article on the development of the American barn, which is more interesting than you would expect, and helps to explain why New England-dominated political parties don't do well in national elections. But I digress.

The article said that most Americans have never been in a barn. At first, I found that unbelievable. But on reflection, I realized that having been brought up on a farm was distorting my judgment. So I'm glad to see a barn in the middle of suburbia. A lot of people will at least be able to get a good look at it. Otherwise, they'd only see a barn as they whizzed past it on the Interstate.

BTW, as part of Ohio's celebration of the hundredth anniversary of joining the Union, the Ohio Centennial logo was painted on one barn in each of the 88 counties. Which means that every county has at least one barn.

I was raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, but I have been in some barns. I find barns very ... comforting. I'm not sure why.

I have this dream of one day owning property out west with a barn on it, somewhat like the one above, but weathered and brownish gray and leaning a little bit. Inside that barn, will be my office, all oak beams and pine floors, but from the outside it will look like a semi-dilapidated empty barn.

In the meantime, from time to time, I'm going to photograph the barns that the region I currently reside in, and barn-blog from time to time.

I lived in Atlanta, Georgia for a year in 2001 - the city grew so fast that it swallowed up farmland and old barns just like the one you picture.

Gwinnett County in North Atlanta had the good sense to preserve one of these barns and they built a city park around it. It's a pretty nice park, though I agree that it turns these structures into museum pieces. But it beats dismantling them and sending the timber out to the West Coast for house siding.

We need a barn preservation society that decides which barn can be dismantled for salvage, and which one should be preserved.

I realise this doesn't sit well with free enterprise capitalism, but hey, who said we have to be ideologically rigorous about keeping old barns?