Growing up, our family’s favorite holiday celebration was New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
Because of our Jewish heritage, we didn’t really celebrate Christmas (even though we almost always had a tree in our home, and some years we’d go to the Catholic church on Christmas Eve to hear Christmas carols).
And because we were non-practicing Jews, we really didn’t celebrate
Consumer advocate Clark Howard came home for Thanksgiving from his sophomore year in college and faced a very grim household. From the sad faces he found around his family’s dinner table, he knew something bad had just happened.
When the dishes were cleared from Clark’s holiday table, his father asked him to stay afterwards to talk with him alone. Clark’s first guess when he saw his relatives’ faces and his father’s “awful” face, was that his father was going to announce that he was dying, he told us in our Moments HD Video.
By Guest Columnist VAL PETERSON, first lady of Georgia Tech
Since coming to the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2009, one thing I have learned is that the City of Atlanta has truly benefitted from projects created by our students, faculty and alumni. From our skyline to Atlantic Station to the Beltline, Atlanta would be a very different place without Georgia Tech.
A new project is being proposed by Mike Messner, a 1976 Civil Engineering graduate who grew up in Atlanta and still cares deeply about our city. In Mike’s mind there is far too much non-productive real estate and not enough green space in Atlanta.
Atlanta native Peter Linz talks about finding his identity by becoming a Muppeteer:
“The character of Walter hits really close to home for me. I’ve always been an enormous Muppet fan who dreamed of one day working with the Muppets, and that’s basically who Walter is. How flipping crazy is that? It’s mind-blowing. I could have been cast as a monster or a chicken or someone’s right hand, but instead, I got cast to play the guy who is the world’s biggest Muppet fan who literally dreams of working with the Muppets. Apart from my wedding day and birth of my children, being cast as Walter, was one of the greatest moments of my life. I was beyond happiness.”
The Atlanta City Council is entering the final weekend of what is likely to be intense period of discussion over its scheduled Jan. 3 vote to award airport concessions contracts worth more than $3 billion.
The rumor mill abounds with reports that politically connected individuals, or their friends or relatives, stand to profit from their interests in some of the companies recommended by Mayor Kasim Reed’s administration. No reports can be verified now, in part because the administration is not revealing details about the proposals received.
The administration has taken the position that it is being as open and transparent as possible under state law.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, December 30, 2011
On his first day as the new president and CEO of Boys & Girls Clubs of America on Jan. 2, Jim Clark will be in Hartford, Conn. — the site of the founding of the organization in 1860.
And on his second day on the job, Clark will visit the A. Worley Brown Club in Norcross, a demonstration of how important metro Atlanta is to the nation’s top nonprofit youth organization — a title it has held for 16 consecutive years.
Based on John Le Carre’s 1974 best-seller, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy,” takes place in the mid ‘70s, when the Cold War is still in its Big Chill stage.
So, with a mole deeply burrowed into the inner circle of “The Circus” (as British Intelligence is called), something must be done to keep the Commies at bay. The Circus’s ringmaster, if you will, — code-named Control and played by John Hurt with a heavily furrowed brow and deep rasping voice — knows this. But he doesn’t know who said mole is.
Atlanta’s chief of the airport says there is no reason the Atlanta City Council should delay adopting a package of concessions contracts worth more than $3 billion, as was suggested Wednesday by Common Cause of Georgia.
“We believe that the city council will have had ample opportunity to study and review the RFP (request for proposals) process and recommendations of award in time for their Jan. 3 vote,” said Louis Miller, the airport’s general manager. “We will continue to make ourselves available to meet with any of the council members and discuss any questions and concerns that they may have.”
Mayor Kasim Reed’s administration delivered its list of recommended companies to oversee the food and drink establishments at the airport, along with some retailers. The process has been underway since January and now is four months behind the schedule Miller announced in March.
By Maria Saporta
The Civic League for Regional Atlanta will have a new chairman as of Jan. 1 — Robert Inman “Trey” Ragsdale III.
Ragsdale manages government and community relations for Kaiser Permanente. He also has been involved in a variety of government, business and civic groups in metro Atlanta including the Bank of North Georgia, the Children’s Museum of Atlanta, People to People International as well as several chambers of commerce.
Common Cause of Georgia today called on the Atlanta City Council to slow down the consideration of the multi-billion dollar airport concessions deal it is slated to consider Jan. 3.
“We hope the selection of proposed contractors has been a fair and impartial process”, said William Perry, executive director of Common Cause Georgia. “Unfortunately it has not been transparent enough for anyone to know if it has indeed been fair and impartial.”
Mayor Kasim Reed’s administration delivered the proposed deal to the homes of members of the council’s Transportation Committee the night of Dec. 13. Airport General Manager Louis Miller told the committee the next day that he could arrange private briefings with council members to answer any questions.
There’s money and then there’s politics. Both are likely on the agenda of the Atlanta City Council’s Jan. 3 meeting.
The council is under pressure from Mayor Kasim Reed’s administration to approve more than $3 billion worth of airport concessions deals. The same day, the council is expected to vote to create new boundaries for council districts – an exercise in balancing black voters in a city that recorded a significant drop in estimated population in many historically black neighborhoods.
Both votes are for legislation that will stand at least a decade.
My brother Jack and Karen started a New Year’s Eve tradition a few years ago amongst their retired friends at Big Canoe in the north Georgia mountains that is unusual.
It’s perhaps the only New Year’s Eve party in America for which people call up the hosts all afternoon and ask, “What time does the ball drop?”
You see, Jack starts playing a videotape of the previous year’s Times Square ceremonies about 9:30pm so everyone can go home early and be in bed before anyone notices the “new” year looks a lot like the previous one.
By Maria Saporta
One of Atlanta’s longest serving cultural leaders will be retiring at the end of the year.
Jane Leavey, executive director of the Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum, will retire Dec. 31 after 28 years in the role.
Leavey, who had been an employee of the Atlanta Jewish Federation (now renamed the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta), saw the need for an archives and history museum that focused on the settlement and presence of Jews in Atlanta.
So much is on hold as the Atlanta region looks forward to the vote on the passage of the one penny regional transportation sales tax.
As currently envisioned, the transportation sales tax will be on the July 31, 2012 ballot — and community leaders are working as hard as they can to help make sure it will pass.
But one popular concept — a fractional sales tax that would be dedicated funding for counties to invest in the arts, economic development and quality of life initiatives — is being tabled until after the transportation sales tax vote.
The work ethic and energy of the dancers from Moving in the Spirit is remarkable.
Every day they are moving against the tide of childhood obesity, too common in poorer neighborhoods. Their personal work ethic contrasts to the cheating educators in the Atlanta Public Schools, where many of these dancers learn.
Their Holiday Store helps teach them financial literacy and credit lessons that too few of us grasp.
By Guest Columnist ALAN ESSIG, executive director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute
Stop any Georgian on the street and ask if our state’s taxes should be “fair,” and the answer will almost surely be “yes.”
But what does fairness mean?
A good explanation is that you’re taxed according to your ability to pay — the more you make, the more you contribute. Public investments in education, roads and public safety are vital ingredients in the success of the wealthy.
Several protests reportedly have been filed over the decision by Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s administration to award airport concessions bids to certain companies, many of which have contributed to Reed’s mayoral campaigns.
At least one protest asks the city’s Procurement Department to stay the execution of contracts until the protest has been resolved. Friday apparently was the deadline for filing a protest.
By Maria Saporta
Friday, December 16, 2011
When Delta Air Lines Inc. recently hired Tad Hutcheson to be its new vice president of community affairs, it sent a welcome message to Atlanta and its key markets — the airline is strengthening its civic commitment.
Hutcheson recently resigned as vice president of marketing and sales of AirTran Airways, where he had been for nearly 15 years and become the discount carrier’s key person in Atlanta.
By Maria Saporta
Longtime Atlanta business leader, Joe Bankoff, will retire on May 31, 2012 as president and CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center — the largest cultural organization in the state.
Bankoff has been leading the center — which includes the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the High Museum of Art, the Alliance Theatre and Young Audiences — since September, 2006.
“I have found the opportunity to serve in this role to be the most exciting, the most exhausting, the most rewarding and the most challenging job I’ve ever done,” Bankoff said in an interview.
While Atlanta Braves and their fans break for the winter, the team’s quirkiest personality — Matthew Kaminski, the twittering organist of Turner Field — stars in another arena.
Kaminski moves from brushback pitches to Broadway when he plays a tribute to Cole Porter on Dec. 28 at Eddie’s Attic.
