Tales from the Corners

Morguefile/ pawankawan As  of this writing, the great outdoors is a ghost town in certain respects. As I run, jog or walk in the neighborhood, I see fellow residents on the sidewalks and/or paths. They're a bit more active these days and for good reason. We need to get outside of our four walls to forget about the pandemic for a while.  Thus far, we all follow the CDC protocols and distance ourselves. I have yet to encounter anyone violating the guidelines. Although, I do witness neighborhood cyclists crowding a bit much. Perhaps being on the bikes gives cycling groups a sense of security -- albeit that is quite false in reality. I also observed some construction workers crowding up a bit. As I make my way on the neighborhood paths, I try not to take it all as an insult as we all step out of each other's way, but that is quite difficult whether one is insecure or not insecure.  I'm confident that anyone reading this in late March 2020 will agree that socia...

It seems that when it comes to weather, the bottom always falls out on MLK Day here in the Atlanta metro. Last year, I participated in the MLK Day Drum Run 5K . I made my way down to the Piedmont Park area, parked at Grady High School and then braved the 20-degree Fahrenheit morning. Of course, I was all bundled up for the occasion, but I was pondering why in the world it was a bit more tolerable on New Year’s Day 2019, when I was at Piedmont Park for the Resolution Run weeks prior. It even rained on that New Year’s Day run and still, it was not nearly as cold as it was on MLK Day. This year, I decided to forgo the Drum Run and participate in another volunteer effort. I signed up to do another river clean-up, this time with the Chattahoochee Riverkeepers. Mind you, I signed up when we were experiencing 70-degree days in January – knowing full well that the temps would drop by MLK Day. Not only did the temps drops, they fell well beyond what I expected. Like most events suc...

Morguefile According to the tech website SmartAsset , Atlanta failed to make even the top 25 list of American city boomtowns. Although it currently ranks at number 28, Atlanta is not nearly as booming as 27 other cities on the list. What are the criteria used for such a list? Those who are involved in this ranking say that many factors are used to determine the who is booming the most. Factors including unemployment rate, population change, household income change, business and housing growth. Who made the top 10 in this list? The three towns in Texas piqued my interest when viewing the list. Round Rock is near Austin, which must mean that it's "cool" due to the Texas music scene. New Braunfels is a place in which I am some...

Dan and I were winding down our first semester in the first year of junior high. Even though we started making Super 8mm home movies towards the end of elementary school, we were both in sports camp through the following summer and then geared up for what was a huge change for us: entering the second level of our public-school education. That was a big deal for us at the time. By the time December 1979 rolled around, we dusted off Dan’s sister’s silent Bell & Howell camera. We did a quite goofy film inspired by British comic actor Benny Hill, which we sweetly called, BeHi , which was code for a short film in which we didn’t want anyone to view. Let’s just say that the film is quite raunchy for 12-year-olds to produce, but it was one of many experimental shorts that we "produced." Shortly after BeHi , we tapped into our love of StarWars Episode IV: A New Hope , released about two years prior to this production. With Dan’s father’s “raw materials” from his HVAC/roofin...

Back in mid-June I was taking my usual downtown stroll. On that humid evening, things were a tad different. The Hot 107.9 bash was taking place in and pretty much around downtown Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park. For those unaware, Hot 107.9, is a local hip-hop terrestrial radio station. There I was fitting in quite nicely with the throngs of concert/party-goers who were set to spend an evening with the likes of Migos, Yella Beezy, City Girls, Lil Yachty, Megan Thee Stallion and many other young talented artists of the day. I still have no idea who these performers are, but I rattled the list off to my twenty-something daughter who was sorry she missed the Hot 107.9 bash. Many folks around my age would say that they would have felt awkward strolling in the Hot 107.9 throng, but I was perfectly happy to join these nice, young festive people who only wished to have a great time in the ATL. Indeed, I have quite an open mind. On that evening, I took in the sights of young me...

Today would have been Dad’s 85 th birthday. I ponder whether that’s a useless exercise or if it’s something important in my mind. Many times, I think about a phrase that he repeated for years, “woulda, shoulda, coulda,” meaning: what’s the point about what could have taken place. Whether one calls this thought about what could have been or Monday Morning Quarterbacking, there’s always another memory that pops up in my mind with each milestone after Dad’s passing. “What would Dad think about the president? “What would Dad think about this new piece of technology?” Those thoughts never stop as the days, weeks, months and years pass. On what would have been his 85 th birthday, I think of the cars that Dad drove and, I think about a car that my oldest sister affectionately called Big Mike. Like many of us, Aimee gave the family cars their own personality. The 1975 Camaro was Sylvia and her early 1980s Toyota Corolla was known as Dennis – or was it Denis, because I c...

The friends of Crooked Creek On May 18, I once again participated in Peachtree Corners’ annual Crooked Creek Clean-up. This local volunteer effort was started about five years ago by our neighbor, Robert Howard. Robert worked for the state Environmental Protection Agency for well over 40 years. He decided to give back by organizing this volunteer effort to clean up the stream that runs through our area called Crooked Creek. Crooked Creek is near Jimmy Carter Boulevard and Holcomb Bridge Road in the southeast portion of Gwinnett County. The creek flows down from the county’s Yellow River and eventually winds up in the Chattahoochee River. Every May, a group of 25 gather behind a Bojangles restaurant where we head into the woods for the clean-up. This year, some of the featured items that we pulled out from Crooked Creek included discarded tires, lawn equipment and even a large plastic drum. In previous years, we discovered bicycles lodged into the creek and evidence of...