Fresh Loaf

Borders with sinister City Hall puppet-master Tom Bell!

Folks, there are scarcely two weeks left before the Nov. 3 city elections. Two damn weeks! It would seem the mayoral candidates are mindful of this because they’ve shifted into attack mode.

Last Friday, City Council President Lisa Borders challenged opponent Kasim Reed to pledge to “end nepotism” in City Hall, while pointing out that his brother works as a contract compliance officer for the city.

Now, the Borders folks told me about this months ago, hinting at some vague conflict of interest. But it isn’t nepotism because, while  candidate Reed is close to Mayor Franklin, he’s never worked for the city. And if he used his influence to help his brother get the job, that’s not illegal or even, I would argue, necessarily unethical.

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Borders, Norwood and Reed, oh my!

The stage is set. The field is fixed. The race is on.

Although qualifying is still nearly four months away and the election itself not until Nov. 3, few if any political observers expect the next mayor of Atlanta to be anyone who hasn’t already joined the race. In fact, conventional wisdom holds that, come a year from now, the office will be occupied by one of the three apparent front-runners: Council President Lisa Borders, Councilwoman Mary Norwood or state Sen. Kasim Reed.

It won’t take anywhere near that long, however, for the rest of us to be sick of hearing about the mayor’s race. Typically, yard signs for city races start to appear sometime in late summer. You can thank Norwood for kicking the effort off early, peppering Atlanta lawns with her campaign logo last month.

“If you can find a neighborhood in the city where she doesn’t have a yard sign, it’s because someone stole it,” jokes one local politico.

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Local all-around arts maven Louise Runyon and former CL dance and lit critic Tom Bell present their new contact improvisation piece “Chairs: Unseated” this weekend during Language/Listening. The duet forms the centerpiece of the evening’s four dance performances and involves two individuals vying for a single chair, the pair floating back and forth to illustrate the give and take of sharing. Post performance, Bell and Runyon will lecture on and demonstrate contact improvisation methods.

Among the show’s other bits and bobs, local poet, artist and activist Alice Lovelace will perform from forever, her recently published book of poetry informed by her relationship with her daughter and the loss of her husband. Runyon will also take the stage as a poet to read from her latest work LANDSCAPE/Fear & Love.

But wait … there’s more! Women’s drumming group ConunDrums opens and closes the evening with rhythmic West African, well, drumming. A smorgasboard of treats from the Decatur Organic Farmers Market tops everything off.

Language/Listening. $10. Fri.-Sat., Nov. 21-22, 8 p.m. Beacon Hill Arts Center Studio Theatre, 410 W. Trinity Place, Decatur. 404-728-8991. www.LouiseRunyonPerformance.com

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