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Posted inMichelle Hiskey

With service in their marrow, metro teacher gets transplant from British student

by Michelle Hiskey

“Everything is hard the first time,” Asa Valente tells her fourth graders at Berkeley Lake Elementary in Duluth. “Don’t get discouraged. Hold yourself up and keep trying.”

The lives she touches there were in the balance as Valente battled acute lymphoblastic leukemia. To stay in the classroom as a vibrant, inspired teacher, Valente needed a stem cell transplant. This forced her to live out what she had been teaching her students, and put her lin the path of a stranger 4,200 miles away who was using education to help people survive.

A few days before Valente and her stem cell donor met in Atlanta, national TV anchor (and former Atlantan) Robin Roberts highlighted stem cell transplants by receiving one from her sister.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Of dogs, loyalty and Chipper Jones

by Michelle Hiskey

Diezel is 9, which in dog years is 63, but the Boston terrier didn’t look or act his age Sunday night at Turner Field.

He was rocking a red and blue fur mohawk during the divine canine evening known as Bark in the Park, when dogs take over the nosebleed seats.

At this point in this season, this night was really loyalty – pure and bittersweet. This month will mark the farewell of third baseman Chipper Jones, after a Braves career that began with the 1990 amateur draft.

Chipper is that blue-moon pro athlete who performs so well for so long in the same place. Our dogs don’t stay with us very long, either.

Posted inSaba Long

Atlanta citizens are key to making and keeping our communities safe

by Saba Long

Just as they turned the corner of Peachtree and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, a group of downtown neighbors noticed someone rummaging through one of a pair of planters flanking the entrance to their loft building. After chasing the young man away, one of the residents discovered the booty — a bag of oxycontin pills – that was in the adjacent, undisturbed planter.

Coincidentally, as they chatted about the discovery, a police cruiser stopped at the red light outside the building. The gentleman who found the bag approached the officer and motioned for his attention. The brief exchange ended as the seemingly unconcerned officer shrugged and drove off as the light turned green, leaving at least $300 worth of narcotics on the street.

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 2

Mike Luckovich learned lessons about the power of the cartoonist’s pen at an early age

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By Chris Schroder

Ruffling feathers with a cartoon isn’t unfamiliar territory for Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial cartoonist, Mike Luckovich, but his approach to his cartoons was permanently defined by a high school Moment. Luckovich was a sophomore in high school at Sheldon High School in Eugene, Oregon and had just begun drawing cartoons for the school newspaper.

He joked, “In high school, believe it or not, I was not a very big guy” and described how the rest of his peers towered over him – even the Sheldon High School cheerleaders. “So I did this cartoon – I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said.

The cartoon depicted a freak museum with a billboard marquis that read: “Freak Museum: featuring Snerdily the boy with three nostrils, Melvin the deformed hippo and main attraction: The Sheldon Cheerleaders.”

Posted inSaba Long

New SaportaReport columnist to explore what’s next for the region

by Saba Long

Just a month before, we had all been in the same room at the top of the Marriott Marquis in the war room suite on the night of the July 31 primary. We were constantly hitting refresh on our laptops and iPads as the election results of the regional transportation sales tax referendum trickled in. There was a nervous energy in the room as we mentally prepared for the outcome of one of Georgia’s most important elections.

Thirty odd days later, we were comparing notes on our new projects and positions and sharing our concerns about the future of the region. As I sat back and observed the leaders in the room — the campaign’s chair, consultants and Metro Atlanta Chamber officials, I was sure that we were all still going over the “what-if” scenarios that could have led to passing the largest transportation infrastructure spending project metro Atlanta had ever seen.

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 2

Rev. Dan Matthews was on phone as his father described 9/11 tragedy outside his window

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By Chris Schroder

On September 11, 2001, Dan Matthews was reading in his office when the phone rang, disturbing his quiet time. When the current rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in downtown Atlanta picked up the phone, he heard the shaken and uncertain voice of his characteristically calm and collected father.

“Danny, I’m not sure what just happened,” his father said.

Dan’s father was rector of Trinity Church in New York’s Wall Street district. His office was on the 24th floor of a building behind the church, a mere stone’s throw from the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Jeff Galloway: For health and success, schedule frequent breaks — and there’s an app for that

by Michelle Hiskey

Traffic alert: On Thursday at 7 pm, 16,000 people will run and walk 3.1 miles of closed streets in downtown Atlanta.

Jeff Galloway started this annual event — now called the Kaiser Permanente Corporate Run/Walk and Fitness Program — 30 years ago. Its growth paralleled that of Galloway’s path from elite runner to widely-traveled motivational speaker and corporate coach.

After the 1972 Olympics and winning the first Peachtree Road Races, Galloway’s reach and impact widened as he focused on the deceptively simple key to running and achieving any long-range goal.

Pacing.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

From a straight Young Republican to a gay Democrat delegate

by Michelle Hiskey

In 1972, Georgia Tech student Bob Gibeling cheered Pat Nixon’s arrival at the Republican Convention in Miami. He gave interviews to national media about his generation’s support of the GOP’s progressive policies. He dreamed of becoming mayor of Atlanta, his hometown.

This week, Bob Gibeling will cheer Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention in Charlotte. As a volunteer coordinator for a faith-based nonprofit in Atlanta, Gibeling is thrilled to be voting for a platform with a full marriage equality plank. His political career has been spent not in local politics, but working for change in his religious denomination.

Over 40 years, whose life and context doesn’t change? The constants in Gibeling’s story are a family-bred passion for politics, a lifelong commitment to the middle ground and a willingness to stand for change.

His arrival at the opposite political pole is one marker of discovering his true religious faith and sexual orientation – a secret that kept him from realizing his political dreams. As he found himself, he realized the ground he had always stood on no longer made room for people like him.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Move over, big profit Amazon. Make room for Little Free Libraries.

by Michelle Hiskey

A computer will forever spit out a list of “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought….”

But for those of us who want books that tell us stories about our neighbors’ tastes and experiences, and bring us into conversation and community, here’s a recommendation: Little Free Libraries.

Resembling large birdhouses, the Little Free Libraries are weatherproof cabinets with a couple of dozen books inside. Borrow one, read it, bring it back, or bring another. No cards, no fines.

It’s the charm of yard art, the wonder of a message in a bottle, sprinkled with the spell cast by a deft writer.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Broken cell phone, local lifeline and the powerful need to connect

by Michelle Hiskey

The marimba beat from the iPhone woke me as usual, only the direction was very wrong. The sound came from the floor, where the phone had fallen.

My phone is my lifeline, stowing my schedule, contacts, reminders, lists, music, maps, photos, news and diversions in case of boredom. Just how emotional and deep that connection can be became more evident in the brief, illuminating adventure to turn a cracked screen clear again.

The quest led to a small, thriving universe that exists to reconnect us, and how one young man in Atlanta, Shahzad Pirani, re-made himself through repairing phones.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

With island help, Atlanta family tastes success with a Sea View and pimento cheese

by Michelle Hiskey

Pawleys Island, SC

Brian and Sassy Henry say they left Atlanta ten years ago because they didn’t like how competitive everyday life had become. Simply getting a parking space was a hassle. They didn’t want to raise their daughters (ages 1 and 3) at such a fast, crowded pace. One day in 2002, they took off.

“We literally left like thieves in the night,” said Sassy Henry, who grew up near Chastain Park and went to Lovett School. “We had nothing but what was in our car, and when we got to the island, we slept on mattresses for three weeks.”

To restore their balance, they took on a big restoration project 350 miles east: an icon of South Carolina’s Low Country, the rustic Sea View Inn.

Now in its 75th year, and the only inn on Pawleys Island, the Sea View is where generations of families have vacationed, eating family-style meals in the dining room, unplugging how the rat race and pace conditions us over time. The the inn, the couple and their line of gourmet pimento cheese (Palmetto Cheese) have followed a similar recipe for success: Blend the new and old to make the new better.

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1

Arthur Blank’s 1978 firing led to Home Depot, Falcons re-birth and countless benefits for Atlanta

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By Chris Schroder

The story of the phoenix – the mythical bird that rose from the ashes with renewed youth to live through another cycle – is often interwoven with the history of Atlanta. Yet no phoenix-like business story has so benefited our region as that Moment in 1978 when Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus were fired.

“We were running the most successful home improvement company in the country at that time,” Arthur told us while filming our accompanying Moments video. “So when we got fired during what was supposed to be a five-year budget meeting, we were both shocked.”

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1

Doug Hertz’ Moment was realizing so many nonprofit groups were counting on his idea

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By Chris Schroder

Doug Hertz wears a lot of hats these days, but a couple of weeks ago he was worried he wasn’t wearing the right shirt. Not that there’s anything wrong with wearing a Falcons shirt – after all, he’s an owner now.

But on this day, he was supposed to be talking about Camp Twin Lakes, which he founded 20 years ago after he spotted and then solved a common issue among nonprofit groups serving children with various kinds of illnesses. These camps all needed a home – and the ability to provide custom medical services.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Word power stokes Jenny Munn’s success and our search engines

by Michelle Hiskey

When Jenny Munn worked at the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau, she traveled to Latin America to persuade people and companies to visit Atlanta. Her message relied on her fluency in Spanish.

Today she’s 31 and no longer needs a passport for the global reach of her language skills. Her expert fluency these days is in search engine optimization (SEO) – the way we find what we are looking for on the Internet, and how businesses use our word patterns to connect with us.

“SEO does have its own language, with basics that you need to understand to become more fluent in it,” said Munn, a native Atlantan who went to Lassiter High School and University of Georgia. “Once you get the ‘code,’ you can break down the barriers.”

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1

Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff’s Moment was seeing his mom and dad together one last time

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By Chris Schroder

Thomas Dimitroff likes to live life in the fast lane. In his free time, you will find the highly successful general manager of the Atlanta Falcons pushing the limits in extreme sports, such as snowboarding, mountain biking, rock climbing or riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Under his management, the Falcons have had four consecutive winning seasons, made three playoff appearances and have reset expectations to be considered as one of the elite teams in the NFL.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Would Jesus vote yes on the T-SPLOST?

by Michelle Hiskey

A conversation with Rhodes Scholar Katharine K. Wilkinson, 29, provoked this question as related to her recent book, “Between God & Green: How Evangelicals are Cultivating a Middle Ground on Climate Change” (Oxford University Press).

While the issue of climate change is global, and her book focuses on national politics, Atlanta is where Wilkinson started to become aware of the vast natural resources in the Appalachian foothills and beyond.

Only much later did Wilkinson, an agnostic, begin the see the power and numbers of the people in Atlanta and beyond who call themselves evangelical Christians.

“If you understand American evangelical Christianity, representing at least a quarter of the U.S. population, as the politically and theologically complex, fractious, and ultimately mainstream phenomenon that it is, then you’ll appreciate the nuance and sensitivity with which Katharine Wilkinson navigates her subject,” said a Boston Globe reviewer. “Wilkinson tells a vitally important, even subversive, story.”

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Restoration after rats requires Melton’s strong will

by Michelle Hiskey

Aaron and Staci Melton, sitting at a bar table amid a decent weekday dinner crowd, still live with the damage – financial and emotional — from a rat infestation that closed their doors in late 2011.

Every day, they think about their lawsuit against their neighbor, Pet Supermarket, which is in the discovery phase in DeKalb County Superior Judge Daniel M. Coursey Jr. If a resolution comes at all, it will take a while. At stake for the Meltons is $250,000 – their lost revenue and debt for repairs.

Take away the litigation, and the Meltons still represent the psychological struggle for so many of us in middle-class Atlanta and America. Despite hard work and diligence amid economic distress, our standard of living and hope in the future have gone from security to struggle. We come face-to-face daily with this reality: forces beyond our control can quickly shut us down.

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1

Souper Jenny Levison’s Moment happened as she watched her friend battle energetically to the end

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By Chris Schroder

If you can keep up with Jenny Levison this year as she appears on the NBC’s morning Today Show for the sixth time, or as she stirs the pots in the kitchen on Sundays at her second restaurant, Cafe Jonah, named after her son, or as she converts a food truck into a soon-to-be-launched mobile juice business – you would wonder how she does it all. You will also find her signing copies of her second book at the Peachtree Road Farmer’s Market on Saturdays or singing and dancing across Atlanta stages in various theatrical productions – one of which her restaurant staff writes, produces and stars.

“I can thank my friend Andrea. What happened to her really taught me a lesson about living now and not putting off things for the future and doing everything you can in the present,” she told us in our accompanying Moments video interview.

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1

Brad Cunard’s Moment was first day recovering from the worst thing that can happen to a man

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By Chris Schroder

Almost 11 years ago, the worst tragedy anyone can imagine happened to Brad Cunard. In the days and weeks that followed, as word of the accident spread through Atlanta and around the world on CNN, most people responded with the same question: “How does one recover from that?” Happily, we now have an answer.

“My Moment was the day after tragedy struck,” Brad told us in our accompanying video. “I woke up and my whole world was gone. I lost everything. I lost my business, I lost my family and I had to start over. The first thing I could think of to do was to just go out and start walking, trying to get some sort of flow into my brain. I found that it became more of a prayer walk, if you will. And I went from about 230 pounds down to about 175 pounds over a few weeks time. And that was really the beginning of the new me.”

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

For deliverance on Appalachian Trail, hikers rely on folks like Ron Brown

by Michelle Hiskey

On July 20, Atlanta’s Fox Theatre will celebrate the 40th anniversary of “Deliverance,” the startling and brutal film about city dwellers venturing into Georgia’s devilish Appalachian country.

A walk in the north Georgia woods today has its hazards, too – but luckily our recent group of hikers got help from a trail angel named Ron Brown.

Unlike the predatory locals in the movie, Brown is part of an super-friendly mountain hospitality corps who serve visitors to Springer Mountain — the southern terminus of the 2,180 mile Appalachian Trail — and beyond.

Thousands of outsiders show up every year to experience the “AT,” the world’s longest hiking-only footpath, which next month celebrates its 75th anniversary.

It was a hellish 100 degrees plus when we cinched up our backpacks for a long-planned overnight trip around Springer…

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