Tuesday, June 30, 2009
News Tiffany Brown joins mayoral race!
Posted by Andisheh Nouraee on Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 2:12 PM
The competition for fifth place in Atlanta's mayoral race just got hotter!
Tiffany Brown "launched" her campaign this morning in the form of a web site, BrownForAtlanta.com.
This is Brown's second "run" at Atlanta's highest elected office. Brown, then 25, "ran" for mayor in 2005, citing her 3.22 undergrad GPA as one of her main qualifications.
Brown has been commenting on the mayoral race since March using the Twitter pseudonym @nextatlmayor.
News Morning Newsdome: Iraq pull out, Airbus crash, border drug violence
Posted by Alejandro A. Leal on Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 1:59 PM
- Done: U.S. troops pull out of major cities in Iraq... meanwhile, some of Iraq's massive oil and gas fields are now opened for bids from foreign firms for exploration.
- Damn: An Airbus airliner carrying 153 passengers crashed off the Comoros islands, so far a 5-year-old child is the lone survivor.
- Don't look now: But drug violence is increasing at the border... the U.S.-Canada border.
- In our own backyard: In light of the coup in Honduras, and while President Obama strongly condemed the ouster of the Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, the U.S. has a long history of instigation in the region.
- Serious WTF!: Some people (read: demented) are holding "swine flu parties" to "immunize" their children.
- Interesting: China decides against plan to require manufacturers to install a web filter after protests from the Obama Administration and Chinese internet users.
- White collar crime justice? Bernanrd Madoff sentenced to 150 years in prison.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
Uncategorized Crossing the Lines revisits the Civil Rights Movement
Posted by Wyatt Williams on Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 1:00 PM
For his second novel, Crossing the Lines, Atlanta author Richard Doster resurrects small-town sports writer Jack Hall. When Hall interviews for a job at the Atlanta Constitution in the fall of 1955, he expects to end up covering the Atlanta Crackers, a team he calls “the New York Yankees of minor league baseball, the best team ever assembled in a Southern city.” Outside of some experience helping a black baseball player sign to an all-white team (the subject of Doster’s first novel, Safe at Home), he’s less than concerned about the burgeoning set of conflicts materializing into a Civil Rights Movement outside his front door. Being a white, middle-class guy means he doesn’t want to be bothered by it all, it seems. But Ralph McGill, his new editor at the Constitution, doesn’t give him that option.
Continue reading "Crossing the Lines revisits the Civil Rights Movement"
(Image courtesy Richard Doster)
News 5 things to do: Tuesday
Posted by Amber Robinson on Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 4:15 AM
1) M.O.T.O. plays the Earl.
2) Sol Fusion and Friends host a Michael Jackson tribute at Opera nightclub.
3) Einstein Meets Elvis stages rock ’n’ roll improv at Laughing Skull Lounge.
4) Oakhurst Community Garden hosts Buggin' Out and Living in a Garden of Weedin'.
5) Pints for Park Pride raises money for Atlanta parks at Sweetwater Brewery.
(Photo courtesy M.O.T.O.)
Monday, June 29, 2009
News Atlanta tax hike: Profiles in cowardice
Posted by Scott Henry on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 10:51 PM
The Atlanta City Council voted today to raise property taxes by 3 mills, an outcome we'd been predicting for weeks. But the actual vote count — 8 to 7 — was closer than anyone expected it to be. Not because Council members believed the tax hike was a bad idea. Hell, with only one or two possible exceptions, even those who voted against it were privately praying it would pass.
No, the vote was so close because several of our Council members possess, as Teddy Roosevelt once said, "the backbone of a chocolate eclair."
Exhibit A is Jim "40 Winks" Maddox, the self-proclaimed "Dean of the Council" because he's warmed a chair in City Hall for more than three long decades. Today, Maddox shocked his colleagues by voting against the tax hike and the $541 million budget. This is a guy who, two months ago, said publicaly that he didn't think Mayor Franklin's proposed 3-mill increase was big enough!
“I’m prepared to approve a tax increase to end the furloughs for all employees,” he announced at a budget hearing at the end of April.
But that was before he picked up three challengers for his beloved Council seat. So, today, without giving anyone a heads up, the lily-livered Maddox cravenly hung his colleagues out to dry.
News Same firm that built parking deck involved with Botanical Garden walkway
Posted by Thomas Wheatley on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 10:19 PM
CBS Atlanta reports that Hardin Construction, the big-name firm that managed the construction of the partially-collapsed Cyntergy parking deck in Midtown Atlanta, was also involved in the construction of the Atlanta Botanical Garden walkway that collapsed in December 2008. One worker was killed and 18 others injured in that accident.
The company, which was founded in Atlanta, is behind such notable buildings as 30 Allen Plaza, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation office, Terminus in Buckhead and — well, hell, a bunch of other buildings in metro Atlanta. In April, Hardin was selected by the University of Georgia to build two new parking decks on campus (PDF of the announcement).
A Hardin spokeswoman sent CL this statement:
We were the construction manager on the entire Centergy project, which included two office buildings and the parking facility. The parking facility was completed in December of 2002
For more information on how this deck was designed, fabricated and erected, your best source of information is Metromont Corporation who was responsible for the structure and chosen because of their expertise in precast/prestressed concrete building systems.
We contacted Metromont's Greenville, S.C. office, but it's closed for the day. We'll update when we hear word. Back to the statement!
Uncategorized Hoff in a Huff
Posted by Russ Marshalek on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 9:44 PM
Get this: apparently, being a New York Times-bestselling author of only occasionally tropey chicklit (but, to be fair, sometimes really awesome fantastical lit-fic) means that you get to act like an utter jerk on the interwebs!
When Boston Globe critic Roberta Silman dared to say things about Alice Hoffman's new book, The Story Sisters, such as "this new novel lacks the spark of the earlier work" or "Admittedly, there are some wonderful passages as the book winds to a close" or other, um, burns and, uh, digs?, on par with those, Hoffman did what any self-respecting author angry at her book's review would do: She turned to Twitter to extract vengeance on the reviewer.
In a series of 20-some-odd tweets, covered in all their stand-alone glory on Gawker, Hoffman became more and more unhinged, finally posting personal contact info for the reviewer at the Globe, and encouraging folks to contact said reviewer to tell her what they "think of snarky critics."
Snarky critics, it must be said, who include statements in their reviews such as ..."one of my favorite books is her “Illumination Night,’’ which amply displays her gifts of precise prose and the ability to create sympathetic characters."
News Honduras coup leaders schooled in Georgia
Posted by Andisheh Nouraee on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 9:29 PM
The two alleged top leaders of the weekend's military coup in Honduras are graduates of the U.S. Army's Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, a.k.a. the School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Columbus.
General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, head of Honduras' armed forces, attended the school in 1976 and again in 1986. General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, head of the country's air force, attended the school for a month in 1996.
WHINSEC/School of the Americas was founded in 1963, ostensibly to help professionalize the militaries of U.S.-allied countries in Latin America. A September 21, 1996 by the Washington Post's Dana Priest revealed the school taught students how to torture, kidnap, extort and execute prisoners. Priest won a Pulitzer Prize ten years later for uncovering the Bush Administration's gulag archipelago chain of secret CIA prisons.
Uncategorized Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is built like a brick house
Posted by Curt Holman on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 8:37 PM
Georgia Shakespeare doesn't program modern plays lightly, but Tennessee Williams’ 1955 Pulitzer Prize winner Cat on a Hot Tin Roof feels even more Shakespearean than some of the Bard’s own work. Where some of the playwright’s lauded contemporaries, such as Arthur Miller, age less gracefully, Williams’ best plays seem increasingly at home in the classical canon, as attested by the grand production of Cat directed by Jasson Minadakis.
In addition to its sturdy “Daddy’s dying — who’s got the will?” plot, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof sets up an axis between three characters, each of whom could come from a different major literary tradition. “Big Daddy” Pollitt (Tim McDonough) looks like King Lear transplanted as a rich midcentury Mississippi farmer. Like Lear, Big Daddy succumbs to both a towering temper and the lies of his untrustworthy children. He also proves reckless in the disposal of his kingdom, “28,000 acres of the richest land this side of the River Nile.” Cat takes place on the eve of Big Daddy’s massive 65th birthday party, and outdoor fireworks provide booming accompaniment to his most explosive speeches, like Lear raging against the tempest.
Continue reading "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is built like a brick house"
(Photo by Jennifer Hofstetter)
News Last week's top posts
Posted by Mara Shalhoup on Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 8:35 PM
1. Congress debates, votes on cap-and-trade energy bill (Good news: The House passed the monumental energy-conversation bill. Bad news: Georgia Congressman Paul Broun has embarrassed the entire state.)
2. Clermont foreclosure is tip of the iceberg (The plot thickens.)
3. Michael Jackson tributes in Atlanta (Atlanta celebrates the King of Pop. Twitter crashes. And Perez Hilton weeps.)
4. Coolest contest ever: Redesign the Clermont Hotel (The contest would have been a lot cooler if the seedy hotel wasn't in danger of foreclosure. See No. 2.)
5. Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter told to vacate building (In the end, surprisingly, the homeless prevailed.)
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