When Jenn Cornell cranked up her cello at the top of the Northbound train escalator at MARTA’s Five Points Station Monday afternoon, maybe a dozen or so passengers gathered round to watch or listen or take videos. Atlanta transit riders can expect more moments worth stopping for – be it music, dance, painting or other art – as the transit system kicks off a reinvigorated arts program.
Category: Columns
Posted inTom Baxter
The 6th District election and the fate of the AHCA
In its closing days, the race for the 6th District congressional seat, already regarded as the most important bellwether for the 2018 congressional elections, has begun to be seen as an indicator of something much more immediate: the fate of the American Health Care Act.
Posted inColumns
Metro Atlanta’s drought: Far from Dust Bowl, but far from healthy
As the drought of 2016 extends into 2017, metro Atlanta remains under the same set of water restrictions that have been in place since November. Potential relief stems from forecasts of higher than average summer rainfall in north and central Georgia, as predicted by Accuweather forecasters.
Posted inColumns
Remembering Papa on Father’s Day; knowing how mad he would be about Trump’s reversal on Cuba
As I write this, Father’s Day is coming to a close.
The day has been filled with memories of Papa – interrupted by the news of the day.
One memory of Papa keeps colliding with today’s news of President Donald Trump refreezing the thawing of restrictions in U.S. trade and travel to Cuba.
Posted inColumns
‘Paris Can Wait’ – Eleanor Coppola’s feature debut loses its way
A movie has to be pretty bad to make Diane Lane look bad.
Alas, “Paris Can Wait” is that movie.
Lane plays Anne, a chicly dressed accessory (read, wife) to power-player filmmaker, Michael (Alec Baldwin). He’s not a monster (well, not by Hollywood standards). Sure, he plays around and generally treats her more like a personal assistant than a wife (Where are my socks? Where are my pills?)). But at least he’s semi-conscious of the inequity and, in his way, values her.
Posted inColumns
Georgians, state treasury to suffer under President Trump’s budget plan
By Guest Columnist TAIFA BUTLER, executive director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute
Georgians can find a lot not to like in the federal budget President Trump is proposing. It jeopardizes the state’s financial stability. It promises to hurt the ability of millions of Georgians to meet basic living standards. Even Social Security disability benefits are slashed in the planned budget cuts.
Posted inLatest News
Atlanta to honor amputee who rolled his wheelchair to Chicago to draw attention to gun violence
The Atlanta City Council on Monday is slated to honor an Atlanta native who propelled himself in a wheelchair from Atlanta to Chicago to draw attention to gun violence. The man’s legs were amputated after he was wounded in a shotgun attack in what was then a crime infested public housing complex.
Posted inLatest News
Study shows manatees use Intracoastal Waterway, at risk of collisions with boats
Manatees, it turns out, share something in common with recreational boaters – both use the Intracoastal Waterway to traverse the Georgia coast. This is one discovery of a manatee-tracking project that was renewed this spring.
Posted inLatest News
Uber, Lyft crush taxies at Atlanta’s airport; cargo expansion underway: ATL GM
As expected, Uber and Lyft trounced the traditional taxi industry at Atlanta’s airport during the first three months they operated at the airport, the airport’s general manager said Wednesday.
Posted inLatest News
Toshiba’s loan guarantee at Plant Vogtle may be hollow: Moody’s
The agreement announced by Georgia Power regarding a loan guarantee of $3.68 billion by the parent of the Plant Vogtle contractor may be hollow because of the parent’s weak financial position, according to a comment by Moody’s Investors Service.
Posted inColumns
‘Megan Leavey’ – an endearing movie of a woman Marine and a bomb-sniffing dog
“Megan Leavey” had me at “Woof.”
Based on the true story of a Marine and her bomb-sniffing dog, the movie is a well-told weepie, especially if you’re a full-blown animal lover (Full confession…me).
Megan (Kate Mara) has a dead-end job and a deadbeat mom (Edie Falco) in a deader-than-dead town. There’s nothing keeping her in this Rust Belt corner of hell, but she doesn’t have any place she especially wants to go.
Posted inColumns
Ted Turner honored by the rarefied founders of the America’s Cup
By David Pendered
Ted Turner is now formally honored by the blue-blazer crowd of the yachting world. The New York Yacht Club marked the 40th anniversary of Turner’s victory in the America’s Cup, in 1977, by awarding Turner the highest individual honor the club bestows.
This is a significant bow from a club with an autocratic reputation, one that took its time in even extending a membership offer to Turner. Evidently, back in the day, the club’s leadership had determined that Turner wasn’t a good fit in a private club founded in 1844 by a scion of one of the nation’s founders and led since by a host of mostly Northern bluebloods.
Posted inColumns
London to Topeka: A long arc of spectacular miscalculation
What connected Kansas to the United Kingdom last week were the inevitable consequences of bad math, which always trumps political conviction.
Posted inColumns
Georgia Trust’s tour of Southwest Atlanta helps us appreciate the history in our town
Frances Westbrook of Brookhaven was having lunch Saturday in Adair Park – a southwest Atlanta community that she did not know before signing up for the Georgia Trust’s Southwest Atlanta Expedition.
“I thought it would an excellent opportunity to see this area, which I had never been to before,” said Westbrook, who has also been on the Atlanta BeltLine tour. “It’s really a superb opportunity to get to know another part of Atlanta.”
More than 200 people visited the 20-plus sites on the Southwest Atlanta tour – which included houses, industrial buildings and some of the incredible academic institutions that have anchored the communities for more than 100 years.
Posted inLatest News
Atlanta poised to help Tech construct super-environmentally friendly building
Atlanta is entering the final stage of its role in helping Georgia Tech build what Tech bills as, “the most environmentally advanced education and research building ever constructed in the Southeast.” The city intends to sell an acre of land for the site of Tech’s planned Living Building.
Posted inColumns
Faith community stepping up on climate change
By Guest Columnist SUSAN VARLAMOFF, coauthor of the ‘Laudato Si Action Plan’ and author of ‘Sustainable Gardening for the Southeast’
Nature abhors a vacuum. With the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate accord, there is a void in global leadership on climate change that others are willing and able to fill it. Countries like China, Germany and France are stepping up. In the U.S., states, cities, universities, corporations, and even churches are voluntarily reducing greenhouse emissions in the spirit of the Paris climate accord.
