Arts & Entertainment Articles

For African-American women, a hairstyle can be a tricky decision

by Michelle Hiskey March 4, 2013 1:35 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:10 pm

For African-American women, unemployment is 12.3 percent nationally, 13.1 percent in Georgia. That tough reality helped draw more than 100 black women to an event last week at Georgia State University focused on one decision that each of them faces:

What to do with my hair?

For them, preparing for a job interview or the first day of work isn’t as simple as deciding whether to go with the regimental blue-striped or the red power tie. Around the country, disputes over African American female hairstyles have led to accusations of wrongful firings and discrimination lawsuits.

Atlanta is where people notice, too; for example, TV news viewers spent decades obsessing over local anchor Monica Kaufman Pearson’s changing ‘dos.

Cycling in the city celebrated at Atlanta Bicycle Coalition event

by Maria Saporta February 9, 2013 3:43 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:10 pm

By Maria Saporta

The Atlanta Bicycle Coalition knows how to throw a party.

On Friday night, the bicycle advocacy group held its annual “Blinkie Awards” program at the Ponce City Market event space on North Avenue where it honored people, organizations and businesses from all over the community for being bicycle-friendly.

The highlight of the night came when Rebecca Serna, ABC’s executive director, gave the first award to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed for his efforts to improve cycling on Atlanta’s streets. Just a few days ago, the city approved $2.47 million for “high-quality Complete Streets-style bike projects” in 2013.

Eleanor Ringel Cater

‘Amour’ – a breathtaking and demanding film about love and dying

by Eleanor Ringel Cater January 31, 2013 6:41 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:10 pm

There’s an old show biz chestnut, variously attributed to different people that goes something like this:

A famous comedian is terminally ill. One of his buddies goes to see him in the hospital. The guy says, “This must be so hard for you.” And the sick man replies, “Dying’s easy. Comedy’s hard.”

Michelle Hiskey

For 15 years, the mark of an Atlanta newcomer: a 678 phone number

by Michelle Hiskey January 28, 2013 8:00 amFebruary 17, 2023 3:10 pm

Fifteen years ago this month, 678 became Atlanta’s third telephone prefix, and every call became a 10-digit dial. Today, when smartphones let us tap to connect, it’s easy to forget past milestones in how Atlantans connect – and what those turning points meant in the perception of the city’s growth and who we are.

For many native Atlantans inside I-285, there’s 404 and everything else. That’s what they grew up with. The 770, 678 and 470 will always belong to the Johnny-come-latelys and suburbanites.

The 404 prefix is dialed into their identity, a shared jersey number for the veterans on Atlanta’s home team. It is a holdover from a simpler time, before the rest of us got here and made life a whole lot more complicated.

Moments, Moments Season 2

New Season of Moments – sparked by a Friday morning conversation – returns next week

by adminmegan January 21, 2013 9:03 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:09 pm

I seem to remember Moments. I can’t tell you the name of the movie I saw last week, but my friends look to me to remind them of scenes from our childhood and high school years. I also remember the day I came up with the idea for this Moments column that we’ve been publishing since last January.

It was on September 7, 2011 – just a few weeks after Maria Saporta asked me to join in the fun and contribute a weekly column to this increasingly popular journey in journalism that we call SaportaReport – that the idea first struck me. I was sitting quietly at a table at On the Border restaurant in Buckhead as my Friday Morning Men’s Fellowship group. My weekly table-mates were discussing the Bible passage in which Saul was struck by lightning – and blinded – while on the road to Damascus.

Michelle Hiskey

Behind 100 miles and $10K, an endurance to care for men on foot

by Michelle Hiskey December 17, 2012 4:32 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:09 pm

Someone ran 100 miles and showed up last week at the Central Night Shelter downtown with a pocketful of checks totaling $10,000, an eye-popping climax to a story of one man trying to help the many homeless men who had shown him how to better appreciate his own life.

His donation shone light on the endurance of the shelter, which has for 32 years housed and fed about 100 men a night at Central Presbyterian Church and the Catholic Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Between November and March, this shelter has never missed a night.

Michelle Hiskey

Atlanta memoirists risk writing truth about living relatives

by Michelle Hiskey October 29, 2012 6:13 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:08 pm

Between family members, the truth is a delicate thing. That’s why memoirs are popular. We like reading about people who take the risk to bear witness to their intimate lives, because most of us will never go there, especially not in public.

This weekend, two Atlanta authors of new memoirs will speak locally about risking family relationships. Lynn Garson and Christal Presley overcame major emotional hurdles to confront and understand their family dysfunction.They crossed that emotional tightrope and stayed connected to the family members despite writing critically about them. Doing so changed them into healthier adults.

Moments, Moments Season 2

Alana Shepherd’s Moment was the ‘call from hell,’ launching her son’s recovery and family’s investment in a remarkable rehabilitative hospital

by adminmegan October 22, 2012 12:24 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:08 pm

By Chris Schroder

It was a Sunday morning, October 21, 1973. Alana Shepherd remembers this specific Sunday morning – not because it happened to be her mother’s birthday – but because it was the morning she received the “call from hell.”

“That’s the way every family describes it,” Alana told us. “And it’s true.” The call was to inform Alana and her husband, Harold, that their 22-year-old son James had been in a life-threatening accident.

Moments, Moments Season 2

Kevin Rathbun’s Moment was tearful one, stirred into a lifelong family recipe in the restaurant business

by adminmegan October 1, 2012 5:07 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:08 pm

By Chris Schroder

Chef Kevin Rathbun had invested months of time, as well as a lot of money and sweat on his relatively risky idea to open his first restaurant off the beaten path in Atlanta’s Inman Park neighborhood. As he prepared to open the doors on his first night, he added an unexpected ingredient to what would soon become a legendary menu: his tears.

Kevin’s defining Moment in his career wasn’t conceiving the idea for his first restaurant – it was the day it opened. “I remember getting done talking to all of the waiters and sharing a glass of champagne and I started to tear up,” he said. “I didn’t want to do that in front of the whole staff so I finished the line-up and immediately went in the bathroom and cried.”

Moments, Moments Season 2

Rev. Dan Matthews was on phone as his father described 9/11 tragedy outside his window

by adminmegan September 10, 2012 4:20 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:09 pm

By Chris Schroder

On September 11, 2001, Dan Matthews was reading in his office when the phone rang, disturbing his quiet time. When the current rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in downtown Atlanta picked up the phone, he heard the shaken and uncertain voice of his characteristically calm and collected father.

“Danny, I’m not sure what just happened,” his father said.

Dan’s father was rector of Trinity Church in New York’s Wall Street district. His office was on the 24th floor of a building behind the church, a mere stone’s throw from the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Michelle Hiskey

Jeff Galloway: For health and success, schedule frequent breaks — and there’s an app for that

by Michelle Hiskey September 10, 2012 9:09 amFebruary 17, 2023 3:09 pm

Traffic alert: On Thursday at 7 pm, 16,000 people will run and walk 3.1 miles of closed streets in downtown Atlanta.

Jeff Galloway started this annual event — now called the Kaiser Permanente Corporate Run/Walk and Fitness Program — 30 years ago. Its growth paralleled that of Galloway’s path from elite runner to widely-traveled motivational speaker and corporate coach.

After the 1972 Olympics and winning the first Peachtree Road Races, Galloway’s reach and impact widened as he focused on the deceptively simple key to running and achieving any long-range goal.

Pacing.

Michelle Hiskey

While battling Vietnam scars, memoirist receives nearly $5,000 in city water fight

by Michelle Hiskey May 21, 2012 11:00 amFebruary 17, 2023 3:06 pm

While Christal Presley was uncovering her and her father’s scars from his service in Vietnam, she also ended up unearthing subterranean trouble familiar to other city of Atlanta homeowners:

Water meter problems.

Despite minimal water each month, and even in a city beset by the highest combined water and sewage bills in the country, Presley’s bills were about double her neighbors’.

To write her book and solve her water problems, she had to probe what for too long had seemed normal.

Answers came from questioning authorities – first her own father, and then the city of Atlanta.

Moments, Moments Season 1

Lisa Borders’ Moment helping to integrate Westminster provided life and career lessons

by adminmegan April 23, 2012 5:40 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:07 pm

Seventh grade can be an awkward time for any student, but for former Atlanta City Council President and current Grady Foundation President Lisa Borders, helping to integrate an independent private school in Atlanta made it especially challenging.

“What I learned is that I had the capacity not only be at that school, but to excel, and it taught me to deal with adverse circumstances, always,” Lisa said.

Moments, Moments Season 1

Tom Key’s Moment was choosing between Atlanta and a great job offer in the bright lights of New York

by adminmegan April 16, 2012 7:20 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:07 pm

Tom Key has graced Atlanta audiences with many dramatic productions at Theatrical Outfit and the Alliance Theater, but the curtains rose on his own dramatic Moment 26 years ago when he was offered a chance to lead a theater in New York City.

With echoes of nightly off-Broadway standing ovations for his one-man show still ringing in his head, Tom instead chose to nurture his talents in Atlanta – his “home place in the American South.”

Moments, Moments Season 1

Joel Babbit isn’t sure he even believes in Moments, but finally picked a Mother of one

by adminmegan March 26, 2012 4:00 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:06 pm

By Chris Schroder

Having now published a dozen installments of Moments, it seemed an appropriate time to visit with Joel Babbit, the ever-inventive viceroy of Atlanta’s creative scene.

Michelle Hiskey

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

by Michelle Hiskey March 19, 2012 6:53 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:06 pm

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.”

Moments, Moments Season 1

Rolling Stones’ Chuck Leavell’s Moment happened 40 years ago … Could it have been Ladies’ Night?

by adminmegan March 5, 2012 1:24 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:06 pm

By Chris Schroder

Chuck Leavell leads a musical life that most guys would trade everything to have – playing keyboards for the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton the Allman Brothers and later next month with John Mayer – but his Moment was one all the ladies will love.

Now at age 59, looking back on all that rock ‘n’ roll, Chuck really wants to talk about his true loves: his wife, family and his deep abiding care for the environment, support for which he is spending an increasing amount of his time and treasure.

Michelle Hiskey

Georgia family with 14 children gives back through basketball fundraiser

by Michelle Hiskey February 27, 2012 5:57 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:06 pm

On Saturday at 7 pm at St. Pius X Catholic High School gymnasium, you can see a team of local lawyers show up on a different court against a squad of Atlanta doctors with a prescription for winning.

The game, billed as “Jawbones vs. Sawbones,” will be played the weekend before the ACC college basketball tournament in Philips Arena. March Madness kicks off with a bit of March Malpractice.

“I hope their cardiologist brings his paddles,” one lawyer joked in an email.

The game benefits Side by Side Clubhouse, a day program for people who have experienced traumatic brain injury – a population that has swelled with returning troops. Brain injuries have also become more publicized through athletic concussions.

Moments, Moments Season 1

Evelyn Wynn-Dixon’s Moment was a vision others had for a life she’s living

by adminmegan February 20, 2012 2:53 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:06 pm

As I watch Dr. Evelyn Wynn-Dixon glide into her stride, telling her life story, I try to brush away a nagging premonition that we might soon see her firing up a Monday night crowd at a national political convention – but then again, other people’s premonitions is how she ended up in the mayor’s chair of Riverdale, Georgia.

Evelyn was driven to find a way out of her situation for both her and her children and serves now as an inspiration to her seven grandchildren and others who meet her.

Michelle Hiskey

High Museum educator raises game, career with “The Art of Golf”

by Michelle Hiskey February 6, 2012 6:12 pmFebruary 17, 2023 3:05 pm

Ambitious women in business are often advised to learn to play golf, for greater success in law, banking and such careers. Julia Forbes used her lifelong passion for the sport to move up in the museum world, by curating the new exhibit at Atlanta’s High Museum, “The Art of Golf.”