Gardening during a recent torrential downpour with my very driven father—a 78-year-old golf pro and lay minister— brought back old lessons in resiliency and competition. In families like ours, standing up for your beliefs requires communicating across generations.
Author Archives: Michelle Hiskey
Michelle Hiskey is a freelance writer and writing coach based in Decatur, and her day job is senior editor on Emory University's development communications team. Michelle worked at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for 22 years as a sports reporter, columnist and Sunday feature writer, and her stories of recovery and redemption bridge unexpected places and people across Atlanta. She lives in Decatur with her husband Ben Smith, also a journalist, and their two awesome daughters. She can be reached at michelle.hiskey@gmail.com.
Posted inMichelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
Local Bikram yoga studio reinvents itself after guru’s alleged abuse
Practicing yoga created an awareness in Eric Jennings’ life that led him to establishing Bikram Yoga Decatur, or BYD, in 2002. As he became more aware of sex abuse claims against his mentor Bikram Choudhury, Jennings wrestled with distancing himself from his guru. For successful businesses, a name change can be a kiss of death.
Posted inMichelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
Ryan’s Run shines for shelter, son and suicide prevention
Raised by parents who started Central Night Shelter as volunteers, Ryan Bashor met men who coped with personal darkness, such as mental illness. Some carried secrets from their families; they feared the stigma. Ryan started working at the shelter in high school because he enjoyed helping people too.
Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey
Letters by couple separated by WWII united in Atlanta son’s new book
As the 71st anniversary of D-Day approaches Thursday, the memories of World War II are newly fresh for Josh Taylor, a longtime Atlanta resident who recently transformed a heavy box of 460 letters between his Navy dad and stateside mom into a published book. So many families have a need to preserve important family history—especially if that history is on paper, not digitized. If sons and daughters don’t act, a lot of letters, photos and other important personal archives can be lost forever. That’s the story behind “Love Letters Across the Pacific.”
Posted inColumns, Main Slider, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
As APS faces trust gap, Carver valedictorian praises her giants
As APS rebuilds trust after the test cheating scandal, it needs more voices like Carver School of the Arts valedictorian Vanessa Badillo-Rodriguez. Her success (including a full scholarship to Georgia Tech) was made possible by her “giants”–the many people who believed in her even when she wasn’t sure of herself. Her giants show what a difference one person can make by going beyond mere duty.
Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
GSU art professor helps resculpt Alaska’s plastic ocean trash for CDC museum art
Beach season alert: The persistence of marine debris, carried by enormous ocean currents, inspired the provocative sculptures and assemblages at the odd museum in CDC headquarters. If you swim in the ocean or admire its immense power, seek out “Gyre: The Plastic Ocean” before it closes June 16 at the David J. Sencer CDC Museum. GSU distinguished art professor Pam Longobardi fashioned a giant cornucopia titled “Dark and Plentiful Bounty,” the largest and most complex sculpture of her career. It features only a fraction of the tons of trash gathered from remote inlets in Alaska—garbage that became the palette for the 25 artists in this exhibit.
Posted inMichelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
After 25 Years of ADA, our sense of service dogs isn’t fixed
Service dogs like Chevy and Bobby, who live in Tucker and help their owner with PTSD, are a topic of great interest this week in Atlanta at the National ADA Symposium, which marks the 25th anniversary of the nation’s landmark Americans with Disabilities Act. More people are taking animals of all kinds on planes and into public spaces—for comfort more than service—because the accessibility laws can be confusing.
Posted inColumns, Main Slider, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
Atlanta’s roller derby moms lean in for real
Maisha “Queen Loseyateefa” Polite of Dunwoody, Shannon “Deathskull” Nowlan and Michelle “Hate Ashbury” Brattain were moms who felt like something was missing in their lives. Each woman discovered her alter ego on wheels, relying on core strength, teamwork and assertiveness. They will celebrate Mother’s Day by competing in roller derby with the Atlanta Rollergirls as their daughters (who are learning the sport) and moms cheer on their fearlessness and drive. For these women, the only way to circle the track is to lean in.
Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
Bow-tied Alpha Derby Party bucks odds to benefit young black men
The odds weren’t great last year when local Alpha Phi Alpha chapters brainstormed to raise money for educating young black men. They wanted an event that had style, substance and would capture the imagination of donors, and the cause was timely because of police shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere.
This week they are turning people away from Saturday’s first Alpha Derby Party, which sold out so quickly that they moved to the City Club of Buckhead, which also sold out. More than 750 guests, about a third from out of state, and national sponsors have stepped up.
Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
The underdog’s bittersweet aftermath from Atlanta teacher cheating trial
When 11 Atlanta teachers are sentenced in the cheating scandal, local defense attorney Sandy Wallack will observe with bitter sweetness. Fewer than 5 percent of criminal defendants who go to trial get acquitted; his client walked away. Dessa Curb, a special education teacher at Dobbs Elementary School, was the only one; her 11 fellow courtroom underdogs failed.
Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
In letter to Atlanta boy, MLB manager urges help for minority players
As the Atlanta Braves open the 2015 season this week, 11-year-old Cole Deschenes-Worboy of Decatur was driven by curiosity in the history of his favorite sport. He followed his passion back to the Negro Leagues and ended up with a surprise message from major league manager Lloyd McClendon about minorities in baseball.
Posted inColumns, Main Slider, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
Atlanta Bucket List: Sunrise Hike on Easter Sunday
Hiking Stone Mountain for the Easter sunrise service takes some planning and discomfort, but it is a spectacular annual event unique to our city.
If it’s on your bucket list, read on for tips on how to chalk it up this weekend—and why for 70 years, Atlantans have found it to be so memorable.
Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
“Class of ‘65”: The moral guts of a bullied middle child
On March 31 at the Carter Center, Greg Wittkamper will recount the reconciliation with his high school classmates in Americus who bullied and nearly killed him for living in a mixed-race community that gave rise to Habitat for Humanity.
The story forms “Class of ’65: A Student, a Divided Town, and the Long Road to Forgiveness” by noted Atlanta author Jim Auchmutey, scheduled for release next month.
Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
Crushed car windows beautify C Glass Jewelry
Corinne Adams’ artistic vision saw past the shattered window of her VW Touareg and admired the nuggets of safety glass scattered like diamonds on the ground. Today the Buckhead photographer and mixed media artist creates cuffs, earrings, belt buckles and more from the glass remnants of car crimes and misadventures. C Glass accessories convey a message of hope and redemption, and often are given to mark a loss or difficult life event, as a message that what is broken can become something beautiful.
Posted inColumns, Main Slider, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
For greater inner peace, sanctify your living space
When Lent begins Wednesday, so does six weeks of sacrifice that is supposed to help a person get closer to God. Another way there is to move your furniture. That’s what some Atlantans have learned through the course “Creating a Sacred Space in Your Home” at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church. Furniture, décor, lighting or atmosphere can serve as a portal to the individual’s peace, contentment, or positivity. “Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again,” said comparative religions scholar Joseph Campbell.
Posted inMichelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
Simply abundant paper valentines and a bestselling author’s broken heart
Sending happiness and love on Feb. 14 begins for many of us in elementary school with decorated shoeboxes and signed valentines—sometimes handmade. Early this month, at a modest ranch house in Tucker, adult friends gathered —as they have many times since 1998—to make fun, one-of-a-kind valentines from sparkles and scraps. Inspired by the 1995 book, “Simple Abundance” (whose author had her own bad romance), the party is a throwback to turning paper and glue into a little something special, especially in the digital age.
Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith
Same-sex wedding planning tricky now in Georgia
Wedding planning is never easy, and picking a date and location is particularly tricky right now for same-sex couples in Georgia, one of 14 states where gay marriage remains illegal. The closest possibility is Florida or one of the Carolinas. Alabama may be the next state to legalize. On this cusp of historic change are stakeholders like Kristen Ott Palladino, who with her wife Maria Palladino publishes Equally Wed magazine from Atlanta, and local couples like Dan Treadaway and Eric Still, who married in 2014 for romantic and legal reasons, not wanting to stay unwed any longer.
Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey
Nostalgia and 50 Atlanta pies served up in a zine
With so many ways to tell a story, the promise of a personal handmade one led to Pie, A Zine about Memories and Pie Eating. Zines (short for magazines) are crafted with thought, heart and hand, and it was the perfect topping to author Muriel Vega’s quest to master making 50 pies in a year. What started on Instagram ended up sketched, Xeroxed and stapled.
Posted inMichelle Hiskey
The only girl in a room of coders
Atlanta is home to 13,000 technology companies, and the Metro Atlanta Chamber says the tech sector will invest $1 billion in Georgia the next five years. It’s a rosy picture for young people who are learning to code.
Unfortunately, too few are girls. Those who are trying to break into the boys’ club are facing a pioneer’s uphill, often lonely climb. They are the “rainbow unicorns,” said local mom Caroline Busse, whose sixth grader Madeline is learning to code.
Posted inMichelle Hiskey
From CHOA to the White House, via NASCAR
Andrew Childers nearly died playing high school football in Atlanta in 2002 and appeared far removed from the sports fame that earns the highest national accolades. And yet this year he and his team were guests at the White House, where President Obama complimented his team’s athleticism.
Childers got to the White House using his strength and speed from football to help change tires as the jack man for 2013 NASCAR champion driver Jimmie Johnson.
