Home » Posts

Posts

Posted inLatest News

VOX Teen Communications looking for full-time director; founder to be in strategic role

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

After 19 years at the helm of VOX Teen Communications, Rachel Alterman Wallack is stepping aside as the nonprofit’s executive director but will take on a new role as director of strategic initiatives.

Wallack, who founded the organization that has become metro Atlanta’s premier writing program for teens, has been serving as a part-time (75 percent) executive director for the past six years so she could spend more time with her family and raising her three children.

Now she and the VOX board believe it’s time for the nonprofit to focus on long term strategic plan and put in place a new leadership model.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Sheriff who broke Brer Rabbit case now a lone voice against criminal sentencing reform

by David Pendered

The Georgia sheriff who cracked the case of the stolen statue of Brer Rabbit has come out with a last ditch effort against a proposal pending in the Legislature that is strongly supported by Gov. Nathan Deal and ranking lawmakers.

Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills says the alternative sentencing bill that’s due for a vote Monday in the state Senate is soft on crime and will shift the cost of lawbreakers from the state to counties. The House unanimously approved the bill.

To fight the bill, Sills has distributed an email filled with the sort of rousing language he deployed in August. At that time, the sheriff vowed to throw the law book at thieves who stole a statue of Brer Rabbit from the front yard of the Uncle Remus Museum, in Eatonton.

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Through writing and golf, Furman Bisher taught about life and death

by Michelle Hiskey

When Furman Bisher came into my life in 1986, I was fresh out of college, a whippersnapper sportswriter in awe of the legendary Atlanta Journal columnist. Aged 68, he seemed positively ancient.

Over the next quarter century, I studied the way he worked and wrote, and we became friends through our shared interest in golf – a sport that connects people of diverse ages and abilities.

When “the Bish” died a week ago, to me he was a young 93, because he changed my view of what it meant to grow old.

He did this by example — by living and writing the way he played golf.

Posted inLatest News

Dennis Creech of Southface receives ABC’s environmental “lifetime achievement” award

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

It was so Dennis Creech.

Upon being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s 2012 Environmental Awards breakfast Friday, Creech said the honor really belongs to all the people he has worked with for the past 34 years.

Creech, who was a founder of Southface in 1978, has been advocating for green building practices for more than three decades. Due to his leadership, metro Atlanta has become a leader for green building with some of the highest concentration of LEED certified buildings in a metro area.

Posted inLatest News

In memory of Furman Bisher — services to be on Saturday

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

We are in mourning at SaportaReport over the passing of Furman Bisher, our beloved colleague who was the legendary sports columnist for the Atlanta Journal, and later the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Although Furman was 93, outliving so many of his contemporaries, it still came as a shock to hear he had passed away on Sunday. We all thought that Furman was immortal — that he would live forever.

There are many Furman Bisher stories, and Michelle Hiskey will share some with you in her column next week.

Meanwhile, we wanted to let you know about the upcoming services honoring Furman’s rich and storied life.

Posted inLatest News

Health care and investing in infrastructure are next on the agenda for Mayor Kasim Reed

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed continues to enjoy solid support from a leading group of metro business leader serving on the Atlanta Committee for Progress.

The group met Monday morning when they discussed the mayor’s next steps for his administration — efforts that the business community has been willing to lend their financial and influential support.

“There’s been consistent support for what’s going to make a difference long term in the quality of life of the city,” said Jim Hannan, CEO of Georgia-Pacific Corp. who is new chair of the Atlanta Committee for Progress.

Posted inDesign, Design and Our City, Thought Leader, Thought Leadership

Being Healthy, Flexible, Sustainable Keys to Sprout Space

Avatar photo by Perkins and Will

Last week I introduced Sprout Space, the modular classroom we designed at Perkins+Will that we hope will replace the trailers now used by eight million students in this country. These trailers, which are barely legal to be occupied as buildings, are often brought in by schools as temporary space when the school is experiencing growth […]

Posted inMichelle Hiskey

Andrew Crawford’s metal gates are passages of his own creative risks

by Michelle Hiskey

A garden gate by Andrew T. Crawford is a frame of beauty and a joy of metal.

It’s also a sign of the artist’s mid-career transformation.
Eleven of Andrew T. Crawford’s organically inspired gates frame the daffodils, tulips and hyacinths in the current exhibit, “Atlanta Blooms: 300,000 Watts of Flower Power” at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, through April. “I learned that you can change how you do something without changing what you do,” said the successful blacksmith who switched gears into more sculpture art at age 40. “Because of that freedom, I’ve done more honest work and met with more success.”

Posted inDavid Pendered

Brunswick port project may help Caterpillar serve Europe, South America; grow in Asia

by David Pendered

A $2.8 million renovation project approved Monday for the Brunswick port could help Caterpillar export machines to overseas markets from its future plant near Athens, which broke ground last week.

The Georgia Ports Authority approved an array of improvements to roads, bridges, staging areas, and rail loading and offloading areas at the Colonel’s Island terminal. The facility is designed to handle autos and machine parts.

Caterpillar’s new plant in Oconee County is the latest step in the company’s long-term strategy to grow its position in Asia’s booming construction industry. Caterpillar intends to focus its plants in Asia on meeting demand in Asia, and use two new plants in the U.S. to service markets in the Americas and Europe.

Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1

John Pruitt’s first TV Moment went national, sparking award-filled career

Avatar photo by adminmegan

As a longtime news anchor on Atlanta’s top-rated television stations, John Pruitt narrated and often embodied the tumultuous events that punctuated our last half-century. On July 4, 1964, John stood next to a colleague at a segregationist rally when four young African-American men wandered in, inciting a melee in the stands. John’s colleague handed him a video camera, quickly showed him how to press the button to record on film and pushed him in the direction of the battle and into his own Moment of journalistic fate.

Posted inLatest News

Sports writer George Vecsey of NYT fame says Atlanta has way too many Peachtrees

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

Too many Peachtrees?

So thinks my friend George Vecsey, the famed sports writer and columnist who took a buyout from the New York Times in December.

Vecsey, who now has his own website — www.georgevecesy.com, was in Atlanta over the weekend visiting family when he “squandered an hour or two of my life trying to solve the maze of streets named Peachtree in the northern Atlanta suburbs.”

For Vecesey, he can’t understand why there are more than 70 streets in metro Atlanta with Peachtree in their name. He makes a valid case in his “How Baseball Could Solve a Terrible Problem” post.

“This suggests a staggering failure of imagination, if all the planners of the New South cannot do better than slap the name Peachtree on bisecting boulevards,” Vecsey said.

Posted inTom Baxter

Election-year tax package a serious stretch

Avatar photo by Tom Baxter

Seriously? Seriously?

That little mirror phrase has spread recently through comedy shows and social media, to a point where it has become nearly as hackneyed as the dreadful “at the end of the day.” But you can’t help but think that when a lot of people picked up their Sunday paper and read about the plan to launch yet another attempt at a major tax overhaul late in this election-year legislative session, their response had to be, “Seriously? Seriously?”

Posted inMaria's Metro

New international terminal lacking direct MARTA access; future airport master plan should focus on transit, rail

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

When the new Maynard H. Jackson International Terminal opens on May 16, arriving passengers will no longer have to recheck their bags before they are able to leave the airport.

But if the passengers decide they want to ride MARTA to get to Atlanta, they will have to board a shuttle that will take them along the Loop Road on a 12 to 14 minute ride from the Jackson International terminal to the domestic terminal where they can board MARTA.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Southern Co. unit loses coal plant ruling in Mississippi; says work will proceed

by David Pendered

Environmentalists have won a battle against a coal gasification power plant in Mississippi, but a Southern Co. unit announced plans to continue construction of that plant pending review by the state’s utilities commission.

The Mississippi Supreme Court reversed last week the approval of state permits for a coal gasification plant that’s being built at the headwaters of the Pascagoula River system. The plan is to create a 14,000-acre strip mine to extract lignite, a soft brown coal. The coal would be converted to a synthetic gas used to fuel the power plant being built at the site, according to several reports.

The court ruling in Mississippi follows two recent actions in Georgia on coal-fueled plants. One of them halted construction of a coal-fired plant in Early County. Another proposed plant, this one near Sandersville, may have been hobbled by operational changes being made by one investor.

Posted inEleanor Ringel Cater

In spirit of March Madness, my favorite basketball movies

Avatar photo by Eleanor Ringel Cater

For the longest time, the term “March Madness” had no real meaning for me.

At best, it summoned up Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter (loony from the dye fumes) and March Hare (loony with love). But basketball?

Well, as time went by, March Madness got me. Mostly due to the obsessive affection of one David Secrest, but there are others: My cousin Jane, Janet Ward, Jack Wilkinson…

Posted inATL Business Chronicle, Maria's Metro

Atlanta bids for regional U.S. patent and trademark office

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta
Friday, March 9, 2012

Leaders in Atlanta and Georgia have launched a high-powered effort to lure a regional office of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to the city.

The federal government has said that it wants to establish several regional offices that could review and issue patents and trademarks as a way of encouraging innovation throughout the country.

Gift this article