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Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

Between faith and facts, ‘Zealot’ author Reza Aslan zeroes in

by Ben Smith

What do you most ardently believe in, and what discoveries might change your mind? Reza Aslan’s strong clear voice at the intersection of belief and facts came to metro Atlanta last week, drawing more than 470 people to the First Baptist Church in Decatur.

The author of the bestseller “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,” Aslan drew my attention after his July 2013 viral Fox News interview. You may have seen how the interviewer repeatedly questioned why Aslan, a Muslim who serves as a scholar of religions and professor of creative writing at the University of California Riverside, would write a book about Jesus.

Posted inSaba Long

Bruce Levenson email shows we still are not living in a post-racial world

by Saba Long

Being a person of color is at times a weary experience and, with age the burden of misunderstanding gets a little heavier. My generation, the Millenials, is supposed to make up the façade of a post-racial America, but I’m afraid that notion need be reserved for the likes of my four-year old nephew.

On Sunday, the Bruce Levenson email came to light when the co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks (at least for now) lamented the adverse impact of black basketball fans showing up to games. He plainly stated a fact that is still evident in neighborhood subdivisions across the country.

Although I recognize we’ve a long way to go before we move out of a “black and white” mindset, it’s terribly disheartening to hear such language come out of someone who owns part of an Atlanta team.

Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

With 18,000 films and corner storefront, Videodrome survives era of movie streaming

by Ben Smith

Year after year, Videodrome won Creative Loafing’s top rating as the best video store in Atlanta. Its deep stock of movie titles was matched by the staff’s deep appreciation for film history and genres. Then came online streaming and a recession that erased the competition—and the video store category from the Best of Atlanta competition. Now Videodrome is alone.

Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Redbox have not killed this video store at the corner of North and Highland Avenues, which continues to rent its 18,000 DVD titles to customers who want an experience not offered by the grocery store movie box and the online streaming service.

Posted inSaba Long

Allies need to step up as U.S. weighs interventionism versus isolationism

by Saba Long

A week ago I stopped to say hello to the security guard in my building. I hadn’t seen him in a while and felt compelled to speak. Normally jovial, I immediately noticed his energy was different so I asked how he was doing.

An Army reservist, he had just received orders to go to the Middle East and would be leaving after Thanksgiving. For the few minutes I listened to him speak, his Caribbean accent slightly heavier than usual, it was evident he was still dealing with the scars of earlier Middle East deployments.

Why are we trying to save other countries when we’re dealing with problems like Ferguson, he questioned. What are we going to accomplish by going there, he continued.

Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

To journalists on front line, Atlanta chaplain offers lifeline

by Michelle Hiskey

The beheading of James Foley troubled Dorie Griggs of Roswell on a level that most of us cannot relate to. For the last 12 years she has followed an unpaid calling as a chaplain to journalists, especially those in combat zones.

It would be hard to find anyone in metro Atlanta who understands and supports the news gatherers who rush to danger without the benefit of trauma training. And sometimes don’t come back.

Posted inSaba Long

WonderRoot weaves a beautiful piece of art as it plans its new APS home

by Saba Long

It has been exciting to watch the Atlanta arts scene grow by leaps and bounds. C4Atlanta, Elevate, Flux and glo are just a few of the new projects that have come on line in recent years. And, just this weekend, Living Walls multi-genre arts showcase celebrated its fifth year.

Another player in the Atlanta arts scene is WonderRoot, the Reynoldstown-based, arts nonprofit. Founded in 2004, WonderRoot unites local artists and the community to inspire positive social change. From mixed media works inspired by Civil Rights leader Lonnie King to youth programming with the Boys & Girls Club, WonderRoot’s reach crosses boundaries, like only art can.

Led by Atlanta-native Chris Appleton, the organization has just announced it will expand its services and move to the former Tech High Charter School as the WonderRoot Center for Arts & Social Change.

Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

Obscure inventor, quirky museum plow roots of television

by Michelle Hiskey

Rigby, Idaho—Life before television lies in stark relief here in this small high desert town (pop. 4000) in southeastern Idaho. Its claim to fame is the birthplace of TV, where a teenaged farm boy first thought up the technology to carry images through the air into our homes.

The story is told at the quirky Farnsworth TV and Pioneer Museum, which itself could be a destination for the Travel Channel. In this converted hotel, amid the animal trophies, retro beauty shop mannequins and collections of barbed wire, you can find his quintessentially American hard-luck inventor story. Philo Farnsworth believed he could invent a device to transmit pictures and sound over long distance, and he did it without getting much credit or fortune.

Posted inSaba Long

Let’s move beyond partisan isolationism for our nation’s sake

by Saba Long

As the saying goes, politics stops at the water’s edge. But these days the tides of partisanship are eroding our shores. The edge isn’t where it used to be.

If the past 12 years of war are any indication, as a country we’ve embraced our role as interventionists, long moved from the 19th Century notions of approaching foreign policy with an isolationism mindset.

We have military and foreign affairs personnel across the globe; we’ve brokered international elections and ceasefires; and we’ve made attempts at aiding nation building.

Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

At 78, my healthy mom’s guide to dying well

by Michelle Hiskey

My parents both turned 78 last week, and they remain so fit that I am unsure, at 51, if I can keep up. I know that they won’t always be alive, but picturing them gone is hard to wrap my mind around. It’s too painful. So I rarely dwell on that reality.

One surprising Sunday afternoon late last month cleared the hard-packed sand around my ostrich head, and helped me start accepting the fact of their eventual deaths. Especially if you’re in the sandwich generation and put off dealing with this reality….

Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

HVAC family finds knack for giving back

by Ben Smith

In the tiny Iowa farming community where Matthew Holtkamp grew up, folks tended to their own crops. When illness or catastrophe struck any of the 100 residents of St. Paul everyone rallied to help. Today he and his wife Suzanne, who is from Ohio, are trying to pitch in on a much larger scale in Gwinnett County (population nearly 850,000).

The Holtkamps own a Suwanee-based heating and air-conditioning company, so they know how important basic systems are to family comfort and stability. In their county, many families lacked basic needs—even food. So the Holtkamps decided during the depths of the Great Recession to create a charity through their company.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

At 72, Chuck Wolf still developing a photo legacy

by Michelle Hiskey

At 72, Chuck Wolf has reinvented himself from the owner of a national chain of camera stores to a single boutique storefront in Sandy Springs. Chuck Wolf’s Photo Bar points to how phones and social media make it easy to document our lives, but in the fast pace of digital life, how many of us take a longer view of what we want most to leave behind?

Wolf’s knack has always been to understand that photos aren’t about people and places and moments; they are about our identities and values. The Photo Bar serves those customers, some of whom want to curate and manipulate the selves they show to the world.

Posted inSaba Long

General election campaign for U.S. Senate has begun with hyped memo

by Saba Long

Oh how I love – or is it loathe – politics in the digital age. Stories regularly receive more coverage than they are worth, and others serve as an anchor, drowning a promising political career.

In these times, events such as leaked memos are bothersome little things. And so it seems, on the surface, Democratic nominee Michelle Nunn is having a bad day – or couple of days depending on the news cycle.

The Republican communications machine has swiftly pounced on a leaked Nunn campaign memo outlining a nearly year-old campaign strategy conducted by a national Democratic pollster.

Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

Political silence not always golden

by Ben Smith

The two-month political campaign cone of silence finally broke Sunday.  Since the May 20th Georgia primary, I have not received a single flier, heard one obnoxious robocall or discovered any earnest campaign volunteers hanging on my doorbell.

But two days before the July 22nd Georgia primary runoff election a friend sent me an e-mail telling me how to vote. “Please know how important it is to vote in the runoff Tuesday,” wrote Margaret Hylton Jones. “I am often asked by many friends who I am supporting for public office because of my lifelong experience in Georgia politics. So I am reaching out to many friends to offer a couple of very important recommendations for critical offices.” So how effective is neighbor-to-neighbor voter outreach?

Posted inSaba Long

Wanted: Leaders who make tough decisions on transportation funding

by Saba Long

Legislators in Washington, D.C. approach funding transportation infrastructure the same way the Falcons approach a fourth quarter deficit – by ignoring it until the clock is about to run out.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and eleven of his predecessors penned a letter to Congress on Monday urging tmembers to reconsider their approach to dealing with the shortfall of the Highway Trust Fund.

Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

As Atlanta watches World Cup, is soccer trending up?

by Ben Smith

Sunday’s World Cup final at the Brewhouse in Little Five Points felt like a bar gathering for a big SEC football game, only louder and more crowded.  Hundreds of soccer fans packed the tavern and its parking lot to watch Germany defeat Argentina 1-0. Thirty TV sets served a blend of German and Argentinian immigrants and other diehard fans.

The closing of this year’s World Cup raises the same questions that get asked every time the planet’s biggest sporting event grabs the attention of Americans, who have historically been resistant to embrace the sport. Has it gained a permanent foothold as a spectator sport the U.S.?

Posted inSaba Long

After four years of residents coping without transit, Clayton now has hope

by Saba Long

On Saturday, July 5, the Clayton County Board of Commissioners made history.

With a 3-to-1 vote to place a binding referendum on the November ballot to join MARTA, the citizens of Clayton County now have the opportunity to add an important tool in their economic toolbox – full-fledged transit access, funded without burdening the county’s budget.

My mind instantly rewound four years.

Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

X marks signs of an Atlanta murder remembered

by Ben Smith

Pass through Kirkwood and East Atlanta, and still you’ll see the simple symbol X everywhere. In spray paint graffiti on utility poles, on mass-produced placards in homeowners’ yards, in duct tape on a street sign near the spot where X’avier Arnold, 21, died the day after Christmas—these signs remain all over these east Atlanta neighborhoods.

Here, the X reminds the public that memorials don’t have to be made of stone or steel to endure. Sometimes the strength of collective resolve is enough: X stands for a community’s desire to end the kind of violence that claimed his life.

Posted inSaba Long

Goodie Hack brings technology and Atlanta nonprofits together

by Saba Long

Joey Womack, better known as Joey Digital – an Atlanta-based technologist, has been around the startup scene for quite some time. He and his business partner, Justin Dawkins, are making an indelible impression in the technology scene.

Womack and Dawkins jointly own sf35, a business mentoring venture focused on African-American, Latino and women entrepreneurs. Under sf35, they’ve launched a new community-driven hackathon – Goodie Hack.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Color Runs: The Peachtree Road Race’s millennial offspring

by Michelle Hiskey

The Peachtree Road Race on July 4 is rooted in a time when running wasn’t popular. Out on the multicolored, millennial fringes of outdoor recreation for young adults, the clenched-teeth grind is passé.

By turning up the party, color runs have become a popular mixing zone for socializing, sweating, and social media. If anything was tailor made for the selfie and the “unique shareable experiences” craved by the millennial generation, it’s a color run.

Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

Atlanta arcade deviants unite to play the silver (pin)ball

by Ben Smith

As the world prepared to wage war against Adolf Hitler three-quarters of a century ago, the Atlanta City Council took aim at a homegrown evil. “These machines lead to gambling and stealing and killing and eventually to a rope around the neck for someone,” said then-Atlanta city councilman E.A. Minor.

Minor was, of course, talking about pinball. On June 19, 1939, the council voted to ban the machines that he believed “encourage a moral degeneration among our children.” Minor must be somersaulting under the grass.

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