Category: Columns
Posted inLatest News
Joe Beasley’s latest efforts: Drinking water in Somaliland, human rights in Columbia
Atlanta human rights activist Joe Beasley’s latest projects involve helping provide water to the people of drought-stricken Somaliland and advancing the human rights of black folks in some countries in South America.
Posted inColumns
‘Baby Driver’ – a ‘sweet ride of a movie’ filmed in Atlanta
Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby.
“Baby Driver” is one sweet ride.
Part of the fun is purely visceral: “Baby Driver” spins fantastical wheelies all over Atlanta. And unlike, say, the CGI mayhem in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, these chases, crashes and exhilarating loop-the-loop thrills combine technical wizardry with the hands-on genius of a small flotilla of stunt drivers.
Posted inColumns
Moreland Avenue’s remake will promote alternative transit in a growing community
By Guest Columnist CARL HOLT, an avid promoter of bicycling who volunteered as project manager for the installation of Atlanta’s first bike corral, in the Kirkwood neighborhood
The Georgia Department of Transportation, along with City of Atlanta and Little Five Points Community Improvement District, has been working to transform a half-mile section of Moreland Avenue (U.S. 23/Ga. 42) from a traditional urban highway to a Complete Street. A Complete Street usually involves a road diet, to provide a safer corridor for all modes of transportation. What is unique about this corridor is that Moreland Avenue is a six-lane roadway passing through one of Atlanta’s more pedestrian active business districts, Little Five Points.
Posted inLatest News
Atlanta recognizes top performers in Better Buildings Challenge as fate of national program seems unclear
On the heels of reports that rank Atlanta among cities with the most green buildings, the city of Atlanta and its partners have recognized nearly 80 buildings that are leaders in the Atlanta Better Buildings Challenge.
Posted inLatest News, Maggie Lee, Main Slider
Nearly $600,000 raised in contest to lead Atlanta City Council
Three members of Atlanta City Council are asking voters to promote them to president of the body. The three have reported raising almost $600,000 in total campaign funds.
Posted inLatest News
Mayor candidates talk equity, vie for green vote, at Downtown forum
The organizers of an Atlanta mayoral candidate forum on green space Thursday night had to move their event to a bigger auditorium — their first venue couldn’t hold everyone who wanted to know more about what candidates propose for the city’s trees, watersheds and parks.
Posted inLatest News
MARTA dreams of converting dull to destination at King Memorial Station
Now that MARTA has secured a deal to develop homes and shops next to the King Memorial Station, MARTA is seeking an artist to energize the tunnel that will be the only pedestrian route to the station from the planned development.
Posted inLatest News
City panel pauses Pullman Yard landmark designation process
Amid general support for landmarking Kirkwood’s Pullman Yard, a city panel hearing the idea delayed a vote while they await historic details on at least one building.
Posted inLatest News
Georgia’s gamble on film industry continues to pay off
Gov. Nathan Deal’s trade mission to Hollywood in 2015 evidently continues to reap benefits. Deal announced the film industry generated $9.5 billion of economic impact for the fiscal year that ended June 30. That’s up from the $7 billion in economic impact for the previous fiscal year.
Posted inLatest News
Three Atlanta mayor candidates top $1 million in campaign cash
The top fundraisers in the Atlanta mayoral race have already broken seven figures in campaign cash.
Posted inColumns
A growing chorus: Atlanta must be proactive to preserve its unique tree canopy
This is the third column in a series about Atlanta’s trees
A groundswell of community leaders are doing all they can to make sure Joni Mitchell’s song “Big Yellow Taxi” doesn’t become Atlanta’s reality.
The song’s chorus feels all too familiar:
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
Atlanta is uniquely positioned as a city in a forest, and there is a movement afoot to make sure it stays that way.
Posted inTom Baxter
The hunt for technological guano
The history of how we’ve managed to feed ourselves over the past century or so is a dramatic story with many surprising twists, although it has become entangled in and obscured by the more explosive events of our times.
Posted inColumns
Financial literacy: ‘It’s not about how big your paycheck is; it’s what you do with it’
David Malone says he learned more than he ever expected from the SunTrust financial literacy program offered by his employer. The program might even prove to be life changing, depending on how he and his wife decide to implement its lessons.
Posted inColumns
‘The Beguiled’ – movie suffocates from too much estrogen
Though based on the same book by Thomas Cullinan, Clint Eastwood’s “The Beguiled” (released in 1971) and Sofia Coppola’s current version couldn’t be more different.
Eastwood’s picture, directed by fellow macho-man Don Siegel (remember, this is the Eastwood of “Dirty Harry,” not “Million Dollar Baby”), had a kind of leering Gothic misogyny. Coppola’s film, which made her only the second woman ever to win best director at Cannes, offers a gauzier female gaze — rustling petticoats and repressed desire.
Posted inLatest News
Metro Atlanta ranks third in green buildings as Trump proposes to defund Energy Star Program
Metro Atlanta has climbed to third place on the fourth annual Green Building Adoption Index, an index led by CBRE, a real estate firm. But the big news appears in at the start of the executive summary – regarding the potential demise of the green building movement.
Posted inColumns
Why ‘We the People’ need the Legal Services Corp.
By Guest Columnist JOHN BARROW, representative of Georgia’s 12th Congressional District from 2005 through 2015
When I was in Congress I was able to help a lot of folks get their Social Security or VA benefits, and I got a lot of hugs from those I was able to help. Now I’m working as a volunteer in a legal aid office supported by the Legal Services Corp. And just the other day I got a hug from a victim of domestic violence I’d helped get a protective order.
