Fresh Loaf

By Janisse Ray

Taped next to a light switch in my house is a photo of an Appalachian mountain that has been mined for coal by blowing off its peak. That photo reminds me to keep the light off as much as I can.

This week we have a chance to shut off lights together, to create a massive blackout that NASA will be able to document.

The event is called Earth Hour.

At 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 29, people around the world plan to join together to raise awareness about how human actions affect the planet. Not only does our use of electricity tear down old mountains, it causes global warming and other climate disruption.

Even as we search for alternatives to fossil fuels, we must reduce the kilowatts we consume and get efficient in our use of power.

The world is too bright. It’s ablaze. Terrible things are happening.

Sydney, Australia, organized Earth Hour 2007, when millions of Sydney-ites shut off their lights and consequently reduced power consumption by 10 percent.

This year, the event, organized by World Wildlife Fund, is going global, and including Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, and cities worldwide. In Atlanta, the list of participating attractions and businesses that will darken is long: the IBM Tower, the Varsity, the Georgia Aquarium. Even Turner Field plans to turn out its lights! Word is that Georgia Power will monitor consumption during the event.

To sign up to participate, go to www.earthhour.org.

Better yet, simply turn out all light in your home at 8 p.m. on March 29 and leave them off for an hour. Turn off all inessential appliances. Turn off computers.

Don’t just turn off appliances. Unplug them and leave them unplugged. Many appliances use a small amount of electricity even when switched off, for indicator lights or remote-control signals.

While the lights are out and the television is off, think about ways you can reduce electricity in your life. Replace incandescent bulbs with LED lighting. Turn down your hot water heater thermostat. Turn your washer setting to cold.

If you can see what you’re doing, use the time to plant a shade tree — I’ve been told that each hardwood tree absorbs an average of 25 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air annually.

Together we can make next Saturday night powerfully dark.

Janisse Ray is a writer, poet and environmental activist from Appling County, Georgia. Her latest book is entitled Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land

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By Rob Gomes

If there were a “Murder & Mischief Award” among local news companies, WSB-TV Channel 2 News would be the clear winner.

If you haven’t noticed, or are just too scared to tune in, Channel 2 always opens with a murder or mischief story. Granted, they will first touch on the major international stories, but you can bet your last dollar they are gonna do their best to scare the crap out of you with seamlessly random acts of murder/mischief. Yes, Atlanta does have its share of murders and crime, but the other local news outlets don’t lead or constantly tease with these issues.

I’ve been tracking WSB’s “scare them into watching” formula for over a year now. They use this formula every day. Don’t believe me? Tune in right now and find out. If they aren’t covering a murder/mischief story, wait 60 seconds. I guarantee before they head off into a commercial, they are going to tease a murder or mischief story.

Channel 2 news is not fair or balanced. They are intent on gaining viewers by keeping them scared and glued to their TV’s — hoping the non-thinking masses will believe that only Channel 2 has the answer to where the next act of random murder and mischief will happen.

Their current tag line is, “Coverage you can count on.” It should be – “Channel 2 News — If you’re not scared, we’re not doing our job”.

Rob Gomes is a recent LA transplant who “LOVES Atlanta!” He works as a freelance tv/film writer/producer and has produced for Tyler Perry, Turner and B.E.T. He enjoys spending time on the couch with his wife, walking his dog in Grant Park and having a cigar at the Highland Cigar Company.

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By Janisse Ray

I remember one Sunday when my son Silas was 6 years old. He and I spent the entire day in the woods.

That was before he cared that there wasn’t television or video games at our house.

Later, when I heard the term “nature-deficit disorder,” I would remember days like that Sunday and think maybe I hadn’t, as a parent, done everything wrong.

Silas and I slid down the deep ravine behind our house and headed toward the creek, a silver glint beneath magnolia trees. When we got to the only spot that was deep enough to bathe, two red-shouldered hawks commenced to call nearby, alarmed.

“They must be nesting,” I said. “Let’s see.” Silas and I plunged through cinnamon fern and dog hobble until he spotted the nest, 50 feet up.

The parent birds, wild with worry, never stopped circling and crying.

“Let’s leave them alone,” I whispered.

Here’s what Silas and I did the rest of the day. We gathered stones, looking for fossils, then skimmed them. We rubbed clay on our faces. We built a sand fort and floated magnolia-leaf boats downstream. We crossed the creek balanced on a high log.

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By Janisse Ray

This past Sunday my friend Albert Culbreath heard a strange bugling in the Tifton sky. Actually, he felt it more than heard it, he said. Gazing upward, Albert witnessed a flock of sandhill cranes, flying northward, calling back and forth to each other their magnificent “ga-roo-roo-roos.”

Before Albert lost count, he had tallied more than 100 cranes.

Sandhill cranes stand four to five feet tall, with a gray body and a red forehead. They court with enthusiastic, leaping dances. They mate for life and nest in marshes and other open, treeless places.

Florida naturalist Archie Carr once wrote that only three great animal voices remain in the southeastern United States — “the jovial lunacy of the barred owl … the roar of the alligator … the ethereal bugling of the sandhill crane.”

The birds never fail to put me in mind of my great friend Milton Hopkins, a passionate observer of wildlife on his Osierfield, Ga., farm until his death last year. Milton always dropped me notes to say the cranes were passing in their flyway. Sometimes they descended to feed or spend the night. Once, Milton was standing in a field when a flock of more than 300 cranes landed.

After Milton died, right in the middle of his funeral a long “V” of sandhill cranes passed overhead, sounding their ancient music, their rattling trumpets. Maybe Milton heard the cranes, Albert wrote me, and decided to fly off with them.

When I hear sandhill cranes in late winter, I know spring is on its way. I start looking for the first purple martin scouts to come flying in from South America, and the first dogtooth violets to bloom in the woods. Soon frogs will be breeding, and we’ll see our first swallow-tail kites.

Milton always reported the cranes migrating between March 1 and 19. February is early for them.

People say the cranes are moving earlier in the spring and later in the fall, and that global warming may be responsible. In fact, studies show spring has rushed forward an average of 10 days worldwide in the last 30 years. This led the Arbor Day Foundation to redraw its hardiness zone maps in 2006 based on new weather data. All across the country gardeners are getting longer growing seasons.

This year, then, I’ll start looking early for trillium to bloom and cypress to leaf out, and for cranes to come calling.

Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, keeps a pair of binoculars handy.

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By Janisse Ray

Winter is the time to plant native trees and shrubs that will turn your yard into a wildlife sanctuary. Large or small, your yard can be a habitat for wildlife. Songbirds are attracted to native, wooded gardens with many canopy layers, including mature trees and a dense understory.

First, let’s define “native plants.” They are those that existed in Georgia before Oglethorpe arrived. They are great for landscaping because they require less care, less attention, and less expense, since they don’t require fertilizers or pesticides. Once established, they rarely need watering.
The sassafras, for example, is a native tree that provides good cover and nesting sites for birds, which also like the fruit. Swallowtail butterfly larvae eat sassafras leaves.

Acorns feed a menagerie of animals high-energy food. Game birds, woodpeckers, flying squirrels, and raccoons are among the creatures that love them. Many species of oak (white, water, myrtle, and laurel) make excellent additions to a wildlife lover’s yard. In addition to food, the trees provide dens and nesting material, including Spanish moss, and a good source of caterpillars.

The bright red fruit of flowering dogwood and American holly are attractive to cedar waxwings and roving flocks of birds. Other impressive native trees that attract wildlife include American beech, tulip poplar, wild cherry, and bald cypress.

In terms of shrubs, Southern wax myrtle is perfect for a yard. It is an evergreen and, planted closely, makes a great hedge. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers peck neat rows of holes in the bark as they feed. Red buckeye is a favorite of ruby-throated hummingbirds. Many animals eat the seed of sparkleberry. Beautyberry, yaupon holly, and oakleaf hydrangea are shrubs that make excellent additions for a homeowner set on becoming more native.

Planting with wildlife in mind can turn your back yard into your own personal nature preserve. Less lawn will mean fewer hours spent mowing. But the greatest benefit of all will be that a more diverse yard, with foxes and deer making surprise appearances, brings a lot more excitement to your life.
Native plants are increasingly available from local nurseries, and a number of nurseries specializing in native plants may be found throughout the state. Information may be obtained from the Georgia Native Plant Society.
If even a fraction of Georgia’s gardeners turned part of their yard to a wilder state, there would be a measurable positive impact on wildlife.

Writer Janisse Ray has seen fox and wild turkeys in her yard in Appling County.

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By Kelly Hill

Kathryn Johnston was no fool. She knew all too well the danger that came with living in her northwest Atlanta neighborhood. It was a community where drugs were sold in plain sight, and hearing gunfire was an unnoteworthy occurrence. It was less than a year before Ms. Johnston’s death on Nov. 21, 2006, that an elderly friend had been savagely attacked by an intruder, and to many, things only seemed to be getting worse.

In Ms. Johnston’s mind, the iron bars that safeguarded her home were hardly enough to protect her in a community that seemed to be deteriorating around her. She was determined not to be a victim, so she kept a gun.

Ms. Johnston and I had become fast friends during the summer of 2003. It was then that my aunt who was visiting from Philadelphia introduced me to Ms. Johnston, who had relocated to Atlanta nearly 20 years earlier.

Our relationship was a genuine one. With her never having any children and me having no relatives in the area, we both filled a very natural space in each others’ life. At 92 years old, Ms. Johnston was remarkably independent and sharper than most people a fraction of her age. She was honest to a fault and easily the most authentic person I’d ever met.

I received news of the shooting late that Tuesday night when a friend called and told me to turn on the television. There, on the 10 p.m. news, lit up by flashbulbs and police lights was Ms. Johnston’s house. What I saw was incomprehensible.

I knew Ms. Johnston owned a gun. The .38 caliber revolver that she kept by her bedside had been a constant source of ribbing between us. But what I couldn’t understand was why she would shoot at three Atlanta police officers or why they’d be at her house serving a search warrant.

As I stood at the crime scene that night watching APD officers stream in and out of Ms. Johnston’s home, I felt an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. I knew the police had made a terrible mistake. But, I also knew that Ms. Johnston lived in one of the poorest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the entire city – the type of place where the gunning down of an old lady could be easily explained away.

The details of police corruption that surfaced in the weeks following the initial allegations sent shockwaves across the country and was reported in places as far away as Japan and Dubai. Even in a time when people have become largely desensitized to violence, the killing and subsequent framing of a 92-year-old woman seemed beyond the pale. The story was so sordid and scandalous that it seemed more befitting of a New York Times best-selling crime novel or HBO original series.

However, there was nothing scripted about what happened to Kathryn Johnston on that day. And unfortunately for her, the consequences were very real. In the year since the tragedy occurred, there have been numerous missteps by city officials, yet the most disappointing reaction has come from the chief executive herself.

From the very beginning, Mayor Shirley Franklin chose to handle the Johnston slaying as a matter of public safety rather than community crisis. By deflecting the management of the tragedy to the police chief, a person in whom many Atlantans had little confidence, she created a leadership vacuum that has only served to exacerbate community-government relations.

The behavior by the mayor seems uncharacteristic at best. After all, she prides herself on taking on the toughest problems of local governance. However, when it came to dealing with one of the most egregious examples of modern-day police abuse, the mayor was nowhere to be found. The few times that the mayor did comment on the tragedy, she seemed more concerned with avowing her political support for the police chief than with fostering reconciliation and restoring public confidence. It’s almost as if the death of Kathryn Johnston presented a political inconvenience for the mayor, a blot on her near spotless career during the twilight of her administration.

In many ways, the tragedy of 933 Neal St. feeds into a larger narrative – one of two Atlantas. Despite that Atlanta has experienced 30 years of minority control, there remains a large segment of the population that continues to go unrepresented.

Whether the subject is the closing of Grady Memorial Hospital, failing public schools, disappearing affordable housing, the state of the city’s homeless, gentrification and displacement, or police abuse and corruption, the issues of poor people rarely find their way to the top of the agenda.

While these are all issues that most major cities face, you somehow expect things to be just a little different in Atlanta. After all, it’s the home of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights – confronting social injustice is supposed to be a part of what we do. But unfortunately for Ms. Johnston, she was slain in the “City Too Busy to Hate,” when the priority was all Beltlines and sewer lines and little else.

As Atlanta continues to change, it seems inevitable that the city will finally shake itself loose of the post-civil rights-era dynasty, which despite the association has had very little to do with civil rights since. Hopefully, the next generation of leaders will project a vision of leadership that extends beyond building bigger and shinier buildings, to show a modicum of concern for the people who live their lives in the shadows of downtown skyscrapers and high-rises – those who live in places where little old ladies still sleep with guns by their beds.

Kelly Hill is a graduate student at Emory University and was Kathryn Johnston’s close friend.

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By Ron Marshall

It does not surprise me that Grady voted to go private. This has been in the plan to privatize all major funding resources in America to control how money is being spent and who receives it. Look at Iraq — since when do we hire a private force to protect public interest? This has never happened in the history of war. Who benefits from privatization?

Grady changes have started the wheel of genocide. A whole community will perish (poor people and poor accident victims) in the name of profits. Not to mention the land deals that will be made. We have put a price on human life. Not only have we put a price on the life of an individual, we allow the health care system to pick and choose who gets treated and how much treatment they as humans receive. Animals get treated better than people. Throw a dog in the street and see what happens.

Our governor had the nerve to pray for rain. The prayers should be for humanity as well as for the salvation of human life and for the protection of our planet. Now we have really fallen off the path of survival.

What’s still hidden is how this happened and who is responsible for what happened. This has never been asked. If it has, there sure has been very little said about the accountability of the officials who oversee Grady and the officials who appoint the board that put Grady in this position. Why is the public being denied access to records that will show where all the money went or is going and who is receiving it? This is not new, and it seems to happen like the migration of geese heading south every year.

Only one person was sent to prison for stealing from Grady: Charles Walker. Walker did not steal all that money by himself. He had to have help. Somebody signed the checks and somebody got paid to keep it quiet. Why wasn’t there an investigation conducted to find the accomplices? This is like a private (secret) Mafia, they sacrificed one to save the rest. I notice Walker has not turned on his accomplices. Is there money waiting for him when he is released?

Does cover-up money pay for a pass, as Emory has shown? It has clearly had its way with Grady’s funding with a sweet heart contract. Does being a politician automatically give you a pass, when crisis after crisis’ shock after shock costs tax payers millions, without having them be accountable time after time?

Now we had an explosion in South Georgia and no other but Grady is in the front again. The needs are clear — human lives are at stake. Is there no other real-time event that shows Grady at its best?

So to feel anything is like watching killings and brutality between 6-11 p.m. live on the news or a television program. You get used to it. The fight for justice and accountability has only hit a bump in the road; we must be protectors of justice and righteousness and we will accelerate ahead of corruption. Buckle up.

Ron Marshall is chairman of the New Grady Coalition.

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By Allie Wall

What could be scarier than a serious car accident with a driver who has little or no insurance? Thousands of dollars in medical bills and an insurance company that won’t give you the coverage for which you’ve faithfully paid each month.

In December 2006, Sandy Sloat, a West Georgia College student, survived a major head-on collision caused by an uninsured driver using a friend’s car with $50,000 in liability coverage. Sloat was hospitalized with serious injuries, at a cost of over $300,000.

Sloat’s insurance policy included $100,000 in additional “uninsured motorist” coverage. UM coverage is designed to pay for the medical bills and property damage of a car-accident victim when the at-fault driver is uninsured or underinsured.

However, Georgia law allowed Sloat’s insurance company to deduct the at-fault driver’s $50,000 liability coverage from their UM policy. Even though the Sloats had faithfully paid monthly premiums for $100,000 in UM coverage, the family was only able to access $50,000 of the policy to put toward the medical bills. Their insurance company kept the rest.

Michael Sloat, Sandy’s father, believes that current state law lets insurance companies exploit drivers who want the extra security of the UM coverage. Why shouldn’t drivers like Sloat receive the full face value of what they’ve been paying when they are hit by an underinsured driver – which is exactly what Sloat was insuring himself against?

Just like Sandy and Michael Sloat, many Georgia drivers would be shocked to learn UM coverage doesn’t “stack,” or add to, liability coverage. Because state law prohibits UM stacking, drivers covered by a UM policy cannot access all of their coverage in certain scenarios, such as when at-fault drivers have the bare minimum of liability coverage.

In fact, Georgia drivers only receive the full benefit of UM coverage if hit by an uninsured motorist.

Nearly two dozen other states – including neighbors Alabama and South Carolina – allow UM stacking when the at-fault driver has minimum coverage. State Farm Insurance, the state’s largest car-insurance carrier, estimates that the cost of UM policies in Georgia would increase on average between $2.50 and $4 a month if stacking were allowed.

According to State Farm’s data, Alabama drivers pay an average $28.75 premium for a six-month policy of $25,000 of UM coverage that will stack on top of an at-fault driver’s liability coverage. For the same UM coverage that doesn’t stack, Georgia drivers currently pay an average $13 premium.

During the 2007 General Assembly, state Sen. Cecil Staton, R-Macon, introduced Senate Bill 276, which would authorize stacking in Georgia and give Georgia drivers guaranteed access to every penny of UM coverage they pay for when it is needed for medical bills and property damage. SB 276 easily passed the Senate by a margin of 46-3, and will be eligible for action on the House floor during the 2008 General Assembly.

Allison Wall is executive director of Georgia Watch, a consumer advocacy organization.

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By Nadia Ali

I was talking to a young Turkish student at Georgia State the other day, making light conversation and asking about his experiences here in this country — and in Atlanta in particular — and his responses got me thinking. He mentioned many positive things about the United States and about Atlanta, but also compared our city to other big cities in the country — New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. He noted that Atlanta does have a diverse international community, albeit not as large as some of those other mentioned cities — yet he also reflected a little sadly on how hard it was to break into any community here other than one’s “own” ethnicity. Even among the student population, ethnicities tended to clump together more often than not, though there were exceptions among individuals. While this is true in the other big American cities, it seemed to be particularly true for him in Atlanta.

I can’t help remembering that conversation. Maybe because my own father first came to this country in order to go to college, back in the 1960s. He’s been here ever since and has given back to his alma mater (his medical school in particular) as well as to his community, ever since. He doesn’t need someone to reach out to him anymore, but I imagine he did when he first got here. Or maybe because I’ve traveled myself a little bit and know how much it can mean to have someone reach out to you when you are somewhere other than where you were born, on those occasions when you can’t help feeling like a little bit of an outsider. I do know of one group here in Atlanta, the Atlanta Ministry with International Students Inc., which “provides friendship and hospitality to the more than 5,500 international students from 140 nations studying at colleges and universities in the metro-Atlanta area.” Maybe there are other groups here in Atlanta that share that goal and I’m simply not familiar with them. It’s been awhile since I’ve been in college myself, after all. All I know is that it’s a good goal, that of welcoming those who come here to study and to live.

One of the things we pride ourselves on here in Atlanta is that we are always growing, the major, most diversified city of the South (Miami not included!). I think it would be worth our while to make more of a conscious effort to get to know those students and other folks who are choosing to make Atlanta their home and help us grow.

Nadia Ali is the co-producer of the WRFG-FM (89.3) radio show “Just Peace.”

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By Matthew Cardinale

Atlanta Housing Authority’s plan to destroy all remaining Atlanta public-housing communities in the city is a massive atrocity that will tragically displace families, destroy communities, decrease Atlanta’s affordable housing supply and eliminate a precious safety net we’re going to continue needing for some time.

Make no mistake, developers are salivating over this land, and that’s what this is all about. AHA’s role is to confuse, distract and deceive the people of Atlanta, especially the residents, that somehow tearing down public housing is the best thing, even the only thing, possible.

Most Atlanta residents don’t realize that when 5,500 public-housing units are removed from a city’s housing stock, those people are either pushed into the low-income rental market – either here or in the suburbs – or into homeless shelters.

That means those of us who are already struggling with housing-cost burden – i.e., monthly fear of coming up short on rent — due to the critical lack of affordable housing in Atlanta will now have around 5,500 fewer units to compete for.

Yes, you may say, but the new “mixed-income, mixed-use developments” will surely contain affordable housing, won’t they? AHA implies this, but its definition of “affordable” comes from a parallel universe.

To most people, affordable means what’s actually affordable to working people in terms of how much they earn and what their other costs of living are.

Instead, AHA’s Renee Glover calculates housing policy based on the Area Median Income (AMI). For a family in 2000, the Atlanta AMI was over $55,000.

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By Bill Crane

There’s nothing quite like a drought of the century to focus one’s attention on water use, conservation and consumption. As federal, state and local officials grapple with any possible solution to meet the water demands of Georgia, Alabama and Florida, now is the time to begin planning to prevent such a drought from impacting this region ever again. Water covers more than 70 percent of the globe, but 97 percent of that is salt water not fit for drinking, irrigation or most any commercial purpose.

Western states long ago harnessed the Colorado River to help handle the water needs of Las Vegas and Los Angeles — both without a natural water supply. Today, our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as sailors in the nuclear navy, daily consume desalinated water.

The world’s largest desalination plants are logically located near some of the world’s largest deserts, including the largest at Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates. Water desalination plants in Saudi Arabia currently account for nearly 25 percent of the world’s total desalination capacity. Perth, Australia, now operates a wind-powered desalination plant capable of producing 40 million gallons of clean water per day.

Israel is producing desalinized water at 53 cents per cubic meter, and Singapore is down to 49 cents. Desalination in all forms requires significant energy, to separate and remove the sodium and other sediment from the fresh water. One of the processes most energy-efficient for desalination is called co-generation, combining the use of electricity production and producing heat. This heat is then recovered and re-used. In the Middle East and North Africa, there are co-generation plants that produce both electricity and water, with the combined facility consuming less fuel than would be needed by two separate facilities.

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By Sam Massell

Much has been written about the “Village” in Buckhead, an area of about six blocks on the east side of Peachtree at Paces Ferry. It was the center of commerce for this community before Buckhead was incorporated into the city limits of Atlanta. In the 1980s, it became the city’s nightclub district, at one time numbering as many as 100 establishments with alcoholic licenses. Problems numbered as many.

After years of effort by the Buckhead Coalition and others, a new local government administration brought about reform with the needed police presence, plus ordinance enforcement by the fire marshal, building director, health inspector and others. We then saw the transformation to seedy vacant properties where rowdy nightspots had operated. These properties are now being demolished to make way for very fancy midrise multifamily and office buildings with high-end retail at street level, plus two to three boutique hotels and appropriate parking decks. It is being called “The Streets of Buckhead.”

Since this dramatic change, there has evolved the misconception that our nightlife is a thing of the past. Fortunately, what we had in the “East Village” has gone the way of all bad ailments … before it killed us! Nevertheless, Buckhead indeed does still have ample places of entertainment for those who want a late-night cocktail, dancing and fellowship.

There are two dozen — yes, 24 — operations that have alcoholic licenses in our “West Village” at Peachtree and Roswell, diagonally across from the old “East Village.” In addition, there are three alcoholic package places offering bottled spirits.
Equally important, though, is that this West Village is much more than a nightlife district, as there are an equal number of non-nightclub businesses in those few blocks bound by West Paces Ferry, Roswell and Andrews. Here we have a real hidden treasure unknown to the casual visitor. It’s a historic and eclectic shopping destination with its array of quaint shops, galleries, restaurants and other businesses.

This district has a real “village” atmosphere artfully combining the beauty and tradition of the Old South with the needs of sophisticated style-seekers, offering something for everyone. There’s clothing, accessories, jewelry, lingerie, furnishings, antiques and more.

So Buckhead has bragging rights for yet another dimension — a “village” with which not many have been familiar. It’s right in the heart of Buckhead, yet it’s hidden away to be discovered. It’s the 24-hour part of Atlanta that young and old will enjoy, with delightful “mom and pop” businesses; safe, orderly and sensible nightlife; and convenience of location at the Buckhead Triangle Park. This is where the community came into being about 169 years ago, where the name changed from Irbyville to Buckhead, when a trophy buck’s head became the meeting place of friends.

For those who want to know more about Buckhead and other treasures in its 28 square miles, check out the Buckhead Guidebook (from the Buckhead Coalition or area bookstores). You won’t find much in print about the West Village, however, so now you know one of our best-kept secrets!
Sam Massell is the president of the Buckhead Coalition.

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