Fresh Loaf

The following Home Base article is part of the Urban Living section, CL’s monthly focus on city home life. If you know of interesting events in your neighborhood, submit them to soapbox@creativeloafing.com or urbanliving@creativeloafing.com. We’re always on the lookout for cool homes to feature, too. So send us an e-mail today!

RUNNING DOWN A DREAM: Sweet Auburn mingles the old with the new.

(Photo Alaneffphotography.com)

By Charles E. Johnson

The Sweet Auburn Springfest is one of Atlanta’s many highly anticipated annual events, attracting hundreds of thousands to this historic street for one of the largest street festivals in the Southeast. But for the merchants who are there every day, it’s more important that people visit Auburn Avenue on a regular basis.

Our vision is that the Auburn Historical District be the Beale Street, Bourbon Street, Church Street Station of Atlanta. Rich with nostalgia and historical landmarks, Auburn Avenue holds a special place in Atlanta’s past. Starting at Auburn Avenue and Courtland Street there’s the Atlanta Life building, home of the nation’s largest black-owned insurance company. Across the street is the Auburn Avenue Research Library that archives African-American culture and history. Next door is the African Panoramic Experience (APEX Museum) that houses so much history.

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(Photos by Joeff Davis, Perry Julien and Alex Gibbs)

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The following Home Base article is part of the Urban Living section, CL’s monthly focus on city home life. If you know of interesting events in your neighborhood, submit them to soapbox@creativeloafing.com or urbanliving@creativeloafing.com. We’re always on the lookout for cool homes to feature, too. So send us an e-mail today!

By Douglas L. Wood

Who can argue that strong schools don’t make a better neighborhood and a stronger city? While some choose private schools and others start charters, the Kirkwood community’s partnership with Atlanta Public Schools to implement the first K-12 Chinese language program in Georgia is just one example of how APS is willing and capable of engaging neighborhoods and enabling change.

NO RAIN ON THIS PARADE: Toomer Elementary students perform an umbrella dance at the opening ceremony of the Confucius Institute of Atlanta.

(Photo by www.alaneffphotography.com)

Mandarin is the world’s most spoken language, and by the time Kirkwood’s Toomer Elementary children graduate from college, China will be the No. 2 economy in the world. And since Chinese is a character-based language, learning it develops a different portion of the brain than a Romance-based language such as Spanish, and test scores tend to increase.

Members of the Kirkwood Neighborhood Organization, Principal Tonya Saunders at Toomer and Principal Andre Williams at Coan Middle School wrote a grant to the Georgia Department of Education requesting funds for a study on successful K-12 models of Chinese language instruction. A portion of the funding was used to conduct workshops for the Toomer PTA on what a Chinese curriculum would mean. From fall 2006 to spring 2007, a small team of parents, educators and community members visited programs in Chicago, the Washington, D.C. area, and Portland, Ore., and reported back to the community and other key players on the programs’ successes and struggles. (more…)

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By Sonia Clark
(photo by Joeff Davis)

Barbara Moody was a flight attendant for Delta Airlines for 45 years before retiring in December. Now she’s a professional pet sitter.

Her career choice was inspired by the flight attendants she saw as a high school student in Hawaii. “They all looked so glamorous. I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”

Moody graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1962: “I went to college, graduated, went home, changed clothes and went to work for Delta.”

Her first flight was on a Convair 440 to Charleston: “One of the passengers had to tell me where the [cabin] light switch was. The passengers knew the plane better than I did.”

On the difference between pets and passengers: “People sometimes cannot accept that they are one out of 300. Pets don’t talk back and you can come to some kind of mutual agreement with them.”

In 2002, Barb volunteered for military charter flights to Kuwait. Once, while a plane was still on the ground in Kuwait, sirens went off indicating incoming fire. Barb and her fellow crew members had to don gas masks.

Although she was given the option by Delta not to fly anymore, Barb continued to fly after the 9/11 attacks because she did not want to give terrorists the satisfaction. “I was angry about what had happened, but I wasn’t going to change the way I lived.”

What Moody misses most about being a flight attendant: “Being able to go to dinner in a foreign city.”

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Pre-debate analysis

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York
Age: 60
Eyes: Two
Hair: Immovable
Nickname: Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois
Age: 46
Eyes: Dreamy
Hair: Afro-y
Nickname: Osama

What to look for from Sen. Hillary Clinton tonight:

– Expect her to point out that after 32 years of riding her husband’s coattails, she feels like America owes her a chance to run something by herself for a change. Maybe not in those words, though.

– Expect her to point out how she’s ready to take on the Republicans in the fall, even though she hasn’t yet proven herself capable of taking on Obama yet.

– Expect her to cite her colossal botching of health care reform in the 1990s as a reason to trust her on health care reform.

– Expect her to use words to explain that words don’t matter, and talk about how Obama is all talk.

What to look for from Sen. Barack Obama tonight:

– A well-tailored, single-breasted suit with either a red or blue tie

– Charm coupled with easy-going confidence

– Hope

– Change

– A statistic or hyperspecific detail about a policy initiative that will make at least one CNN analyst point out how he really dove into policy details tonight

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By Joe Winter

Lost amid news this month that the city has reached an agreement with a developer over the northeast section of the Beltline may be the most significant threat yet to the transit portion of the project. Yet, there’s still an opportunity for the public to have a sliver of say over the decision.

Atlanta Regional Commission staff members have decided to split the Beltline in half, and recommended only the east side for a key type of federal grant called “New Starts” funding. That could upset the political balance that won the project support in all four quadrants of the city. It also jeopardizes the very concept of the project as a transportation loop around downtown.

The decision was incorporated in a draft of the ARC’s Envision6 transportation plan . The U.S. Department of Transportation will use the final plan to dole out hundreds of millions of dollars in transportation funds over the next 25 years.

Atlanta Regional Commission officials tried to paint a happy face on the decision by arguing that there’s still plenty of time to include funding for the west side of the Beltline in future transportation plans. In a response to a letter from Lee Biola, president of Citizens for Progressive Transit, the ARC’s David Haynes wrote:

While this shift doesn’t prohibit an application for New Starts, it would put those segments at a disadvantage because the application would not align with regional priorities (as defined by the RTP [Regional Transportation Plan]). But as you know, the planning process is continual and priorities and funding assumptions can change from plan to plan.

There’s a little history here that Haynes is brushing under the rug. In the 1960s, the federal government decided once-and-for-all that regional organizations would be the arbiters of local transportation funding priorities. Federal regulations on New Starts funding rules continue that tradition. In fact, the regulation (Section 611.7, if you’re counting) makes it quite clear:

New start projects, like all transportation investments in metropolitan areas, must emerge from a regional multimodal transportation planning process in order to be eligible for Federal funding.

So as Haynes suggests, Atlanta could apply for federal funding. But without inclusion in the region’s Envision6 transportation plan, the Beltline’s “disadvantage” (as Haynes puts it) would be so strong, the project might as well be rendered ineligible.

More disappointing is the lack of vision on the part of ARC officials, who contend that — due to funding shortfalls — many painful cuts in the region’s transportation plan were necessary. That funding shortfall didn’t seem to affect the ARC’s decision to recommend funding projects like the Northwest Corridor Project, which would widen I-75 to 23 lanes. The Northwest Corridor Project also would use New Starts money to establish a new bus system that is specially designed so that few people would want to use it.

The bottom line is that as a long-term strategy, ARC staff members are putting more money toward sprawl-inducing projects than toward sustainable transit alternatives. And when the time comes to cut budgets, what few visionary projects remain in the plan are the ones that get the ax.

Individuals can comment on the decision to cut out funding for the western half of the Beltline (as well as on the overall plan) at two online public meetings set up by the Atlanta Regional Commission to allow metro Atlantans to chat directly with transportation planners and policy makers. The online meetings will take place 7-8:30 p.m. Thursday, and 10-11:30 a.m. Saturday. Click here to register. You can also comment on the ARC’s website or by e-mailing transportation@atlantaregional.com before Aug. 23.

Editor’s note: Joe Winter serves on the board of directors of Citizen’s for Progressive Transit.

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Remember to check back at the end of the week for a recap of the answers. Tell us what you think, and vote for Best of Atlanta 2007!

A Grant Park couple wants to build a 45-foot wind turbine in their yard to power their home.

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Remember to check back at the end of the week for a recap of the answers. Tell us what you think, and vote for Best of Atlanta 2007!

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Yep, that’s right. Best of Atlanta is just around the corner. To get you in the habit of voting, we’re going to feature a regular poll question for your amusement here at Fresh Loaf.

Make sure to check back often — as there are more Best of Atlanta-related goodies in store — and we’ll give a brief recap of the poll answers at the end of the week. Tell us what you think, and remember to vote for Best of Atlanta 2007!

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We get tons of e-mail here at CL Online central, and some of it doesn’t make much sense. Sometimes people believe that we are the bearers of answers to their most intimate and intricate questions, ranging from how to find a wife in Ghana (and it wasn’t spam, I swear) to how to get into the adult film industry. All legitimate questions, to which, frankly, we don’t have legitimate answers. How does one do porn in Atlanta?

With the slew of material we get each week, I’ve decided to start yet another weekly series here at Bad Habits, with the highlights of the previous week. We shall call it “Crystal Ball Tuesdays.”

If you feel like you have the perfect answer to one, or all of these questions, don’t hesitate, post it on the comments.

Here we go:

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This past weekend, our new online contributing photographer (sounds nice, eh Perry?) caught the Of Montreal show at the Variety Playhouse on Saturday, Feb. 24.

All photos by Perry Julien

Click below to see more pics!

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