News & Views You Can Use
Oct 13, 2004
City Pages
District 6 Heats Up
Ask Commissioner Carl Jordan what his priorities are for the county, and you'll get a lecture from an economics professor. First, public health and safety - the smoking ban, the ban on outdoor burning - followed by "the integrity of legal and public institutions" like courts and police, and finally "the efficient allocation of public goods." By this last, Jordan means things with no prices attached, like clean air. But hey, can't this guy speak English?
Even his Republican opponent, Bob Beal, admits that "Carl is sharp." But why, Beal asks, is Jordan so often on the short end of 9-1 votes at ACC Commission meetings? Why does he raise detailed questions at the last minute that "take all the time of 10 other people" and county staffers? Beal says "most of the people don't want" to master details of county government; Beal himself is "running on not going into the issues in depth." He says he will learn on the job when he gets elected, just as Jordan and other commissioners have done.
"I think I do annoy people," by constantly raising issues about county expenditures, Jordan admits. "I do badger management to get more for a dollar." But he thinks his questions are "beginning to have some effect on the commission" and that a recent downtick in the property tax rate "wouldn't have happened" otherwise. Is Jordan an effective commissioner, or a whining obstructionist?
Actually Jordan's badgering at televised commission meetings is just the tip of the iceberg. He has for years worked behind the scenes on initiatives such as the county's 75-foot protection zones around streams, and for stronger protections for trees. He is proud of the county's ban on open burning as a measure for protecting clean air. Athens Grow Green Coalition moderator Beth Gavrilles credits Jordan with including energy-reduction goals in the county budget; she thinks he "sees the big picture as well as the details."
Former BikeAthens president Dorothy O'Niell believes Jordan's critics are people who either don't follow local government closely or simply disagree with him on issues. "We all benefit from the time he puts in ferreting out details from reports and budgets," she says.
But effective or not, Jordan faces a serious re-election challenge. Yard signs for his opponent, Bob Beal, dot the western Clarke County district. (Mostly outside the bypass, it straddles Atlanta Highway and Tallassee Road.) As for Jordan's own signs, there are none to be seen. That's because Jordan doesn't want his yard signs out until two weeks before the election. (That provision is no longer part of local law, but Jordan thinks the signs clutter the community and serve little function.) Jordan also won't accept campaign donations: he thinks they make some supporters "more equal than others," and he criticizes his opponent's financial support as coming mostly from "real-estate interests."
Does Jordan expect to be re-elected? He has "no expectation" either way, he says: "I offer my services."
Both candidates are knocking on District 6 doors. Jordan finds support "very strong," although "nobody agrees with me 100 percent." Besides, he says, "this is the South. They'd rather say nothing than something negative."
Even Bob Beal reports hearing "extremely favorable comments" about Jordan while he's out campaigning to replace him. Beal was a leading opponent of Wal-Mart's 1999 proposal to build an Atlanta Highway "supercenter" off Mitchell Bridge Road near his residence. (Wal-Mart withdrew its plans.) Beal's own experiences in sales and in property rentals have given him the "common sense" the commission needs, he says. Owning 42 duplexes has given him "sense enough to know when there's good money and when there's not good money," he says. "People do not understand how their liberties are being absolved day by day."
Beal says he is "against clear-cutting" and the extensive flattening of land for new developments, but, "I don't know enough" about the permitting process to say exactly what government's role should be. Yet Beal believes that too many different kinds of construction permits are being required by the county. "There needs to be a blanket permit," he said. "I'd combine every one of them."
A budget like Athens-Clarke's, Beal believes, will have "10 percent fat: You give me about a year, and I'll bring it to the surface." Beal's website, www.bobbeal.org, speaks in general terms of bringing new employers to Athens. He says the city has "a very dark reputation" with potential industries for having a workforce "not capable of being trained," given Clarke County's high rate of school dropouts. Pressed for his plans on this and other issues, Beal declines. "You're asking me to give you some answers that are in depth," he says. "I've got to stay on the surface." He can't campaign for office and "get a Ph.D. in Clarke County government" at the same time, he says. But once elected, he will listen to citizens and "study the pure holy hell" out of specific issues on his computer, he says. "When I go to a voting session, I will have everything I need under my belt."
John Huie has not contributed to either candidate.
For 75 Years
The balloons pop. The flowers wilt. The last bit of cake gets eaten. And, that's the end of many anniversary celebrations. Athens First Bank and Trust Company administration and staff decided this wasn't really how they wanted to celebrate their 75th anniversary in the Athens area. There had to be a way for this celebration to create a more lasting effect. So the brainstorming began.
Stacee Farrell
Cogan also emphasized how tree plantings are educational, and this is a community which values education. The Athens First ad campaign about the 75th anniversary celebration often includes key points about trees such as how their roots help in the water cycle, hold soil from washing away, and how their leaves provide shade and cooling effects during the hot summer months in Georgia. Trees even affect children in positive and calming ways.
Athens-Clarke County (ACC) Community Forester and Community Tree Council secretary Connie Head was crucial in this project. Stacee Farrell, Executive Director of Keep ACC Beautiful, worked with Head to propose areas where people were willing to water the trees, and which species were best suited for those areas. This guidance was considered crucial. Athens First does not want to see any trees removed due to being planted in improper locations - such as, putting a large growing white oak too near a power line. Nor does Athens First want to see trees die due lack of proper care.
Cogan appreciated the enthusiasm of Bill Douglas, President and CEO of Athens First, "He thought this idea was great! He believes part of our job is to be involved in the community at many levels, and that this is an important part of the mission of our company."
In a formal statement, Douglas wrote, "… By donating trees to the area, we hope to inspire other businesses and members of our community to be creative and think outside the box when it comes to improving our hometown and the lives of our neighbors. We couldn't think of a better way to celebrate our anniversary and a better gift to give back to the community we love."
The planting of these trees will continue throughout the Athens area up through and around Arbor Day (Feb. 18).
Liz Conroy is a local writer who has hugged a tree or two.
Powell Meets The Press
In a toybox full of My Pet Monsters, Colin Powell is the teddy bear that rarely gets a hug. His woeful mug, a bark short of a bulldog, displays his confessed regret at being duped and his confident intelligence in foreign affairs. He is a strategist and philosopher, a thinker in a huddle of thugs. In short, the man you see on the screen in front of the United Nations and on the White House lawn needs a good squeeze and a pat on the back. On television you get torsos, sound bites and head nods - in person, you can see a man's shoes.
Thomas Wheatley
Atlanta Press Club President Mark Alden introduces Secretary of State Colin Powell
The Atlanta Press Club, the group which this day has the honor to ogle and to pose questions for Sec. Powell, is made up of an assortment of people in and of the media: print and radio journalists, public relations executives, network brass and other professionals.
I am one of the first working media to arrive (most members paid for the $30 lunch following), and secure a seat at a table to the immediate left of the podium. After waiting and waiting, being ushered out en masse and lowered two floors to make way for smartnosed canines and security strongarms, we return to our cameras, our lights, our notepads and note cards. Note to security: when clearing the room next time, advise women to leave their purses and handbags behind so they, too, can be searched.
The early arrivers set up equipment, test lights, mike the room and use their cell phones. I become a tool in the process: to gauge lighting, I am enlisted as a stand-in for Sec. Powell by CBS-46. In order to gauge sound, they ask me to speak into the podium microphone.
"Hell-low, hell-low," I whisper, my lips brush against the mike, and the bass hum of my voice blasts from the speakers, sending the sound man into a backbending jolt of pain.
"Not so close to the mike, guy."
Seated at my table are two broadcast news people, a Reuters correspondent, a business writer from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a student reporter from Georgia State University and a charmingly pixie-ish freelance stringer for Time Magazine, who is bright and cocks her head back when she laughs and tells me about the hardships of freelancing, how she juggles three to four deadlines at a time (when things are going well), and how she wishes there was an office she could rent cheaply to avoid the phone calls from her sister to turn on VH-1.
The people who write the words you read - who decide for the most part what you know and when you know it - are as varied as the outlets where you find them. They are fat, skinny, gorgeous or unnoticeable; they rarely look distinguished, but their attire generally correlates with the prestige of their media company.
The talking heads of television are beautiful, overly tanned and, when not eye-catching, have an astute plainness about them. The hacks of print media are precisely the opposite, unassuming and appearing ever in wait.
The Secretary of State nods and smiles, acknowledging the ovation that greets him; his blue suit is unimpressively flat, and there is a dimple under his left ear along his jaw. He makes eye contact with me; I can't hug him or I'll get shot.
His skin is multiracial ("Just like I'm a Jamaican-American, an African-American… each one of you can hyphenate your names"), soft and white-chocolate under the lights. He smiles with his eyes, which is not a talent but a gift, a defense mechanism given to strong, silent types. Most of all, he's articulate. His words flow with refreshing ease, lubricated by an admirable track record and a sleepy, monotone delivery. Jokes are suitable and universal, even at his own expense. You understand why he says he decided against running for office - he says he couldn't bring the passion, but he could've brought some decency. Glance around the room, and some faces resemble hatchlings waiting for worms. They are the scribblers and the gawkers, soaking in the moment or hanging on the words.
Powell zips through talking points, generates lighthearted chuckles and tells a heartwarming story about a hotdog vendor in New York City. This man is not a performer or a politician, he is, well, a puzzle. On the question whether he'll stay on in the event of a Bush victory, he once again teasingly informs the media that he "serves at the pleasure of the president." Then he turns, and in those scruffy shoes - scruffy like mine - glides out the door. Pens are put away; forks are lifted.
Thomas Wheatley is a freelance journalist and a regular contributor to Flagpole.
Not The Only Ones
Denial is a powerful defense mechanism. Many times it comes to our aid and softens an emotional blow that at the moment would be devastating. And in that sense denial plays a healthy role in our overall well-being.
But remaining in denial is just as devastating. Given our cultural habits and opulent lifestyle, we've learned how to close our eyes to the truth and drift off to sleep believing God is in heaven and all is right with the world.
The tragedy of September 11, 2001 is one example. While certainly it is a tragedy, we should never forget we can use the suffering that visited our land to wake us up to the fact that we are not the only people on this planet who suffer. We never have been, we never will be.
Marva J. Dawn in her book, Unfettered Hope, notes that on September 11, 2001 there occurred deaths caused by starvation and other preventable conditions: 35,615 children died in poor countries. There were no newspaper articles written about them, no special television coverage, no message from the President. Not a single bill was presented to Congress to address this tragedy. The military alert level remained unchanged, and there were no silent moments observed for these victims.
There were over 2,800 people who died when hijackers flew planes into the Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, and we mourned. Jarred out of our false sense of security, reality set in and denial could no longer be entertained. We felt pain and horror; we felt vulnerable and afraid. We justifiably mourned.
But it seems denial has crept back into our collective psyche. Rather than allow grief to make us a healthier people, we've come again to believe that there were no other victims on that day or that others suffer even to this day - and it is not all linked to terrorism.
We've become complacent to the needs of neighbors and the cries of those beyond our borders. We have adopted a foreign policy that not only has alienated us from the world but has isolated us from clasping hands with fellow sufferers.
We live in denial yet again, only now it is not denying the possibility of an outside invasion, but a denial that other people hurt and die due to a foreign policy and a world view that are both myopic and unrealistic. We're told it's how America should lead in the world, that might makes right, and suffering only matters when we're the ones hurting. Surely we can do better than that. Leadership is more than political rhetoric, and power is more than brute force; leadership is the ability to empathize with any who suffer and then act constructively to find healing solutions.
John Shea in The Legend of the Bells helps us glimpse how leadership can truly make the world a better place by "waking up" to the reality that we're all human. His story is "The Grieving Woman and the Spiritual Master."
"A woman has lost her husband, and she is terribly bereaved. She has tried many remedies from her grief, and finally someone says that she should go see this spiritual master. He will help her with her grief.
"So she goes to see him and she tells him about the loss of her husband and how prolonged and difficult her grieving has been.
"The spiritual master tells her that he would love to help her, but he is cold. It is a chilly day and he has no wood for his fire. If she would please go and collect some wood and they could build a fire, they could talk without the chill of the day in them. Certainly her terrible grief could be better addressed if both of them were a little warmer.
"He asked her to go out and collect some sticks for the fire. There were plenty of houses around where he lived. She should go to each of them and ask for wood. He told her they were very generous people and would surely give it to her.
"'But only take wood, please, from a house that has lost no one,' the master said.
"And so the woman moved from house to house, asking for wood. As she did, however, she had to ask, 'If this house has lost no one, then give me some wood.'"
She came back many hours later without any wood, but with her grief healed.
We have the ability to make use of the suffering of 9/11 and not let it remain a political talking point in this year's election. But first we have to wake up to the fact that we really are not the only ones in the world. We've been alienated and isolated far too long.
Mike Marsingill is pastor of Young Harris Memorial United Methodist Church here in Athens.
Last Week's Scorecard
Athens-Clarke County Animal Control responded to 86 calls
4 complaints of animal cruelty
6 bite cases
8 complaints of barking dogs
7 citations for ordinance violations
46 animals impounded
42 dogs
1 cat
3 livestock or wildlife
20 dogs placed
9 adopted
10 reclaimed
1 turned over to another agency
ACC Animal Control press release for the week of Sept. 30 to Oct. 6.
Schools, No
Amongst other afflictions, I'm a lap steel guitar player. My job involves going into saloons and getting people to drink more alcohol by assaulting them with live music. I've never liked the hard-wired connection between bars and live music, particularly when my comrades and I succeed to the point where the customers drink enough to produce their pistols, threatening to mess with the "live" part. The general rule is to keep playing. And if we play loud enough, we can often divert attention from anything but actual gunfire - at which point, like everyone else, we begin hugging the floor (assuming we haven't wet it).
Lately, I've been playing in a mellow duo with the soon-great, always-wonderful Ben Jordan, and back in July we got a gig at The Canal Club down in "The Bottom," in downtown Richmond, VA, where I live, a pretty average, mid-sized American city. I had played The Canal Club before and liked it for being a big room, with good sound and unusually large and attentive crowds.
But, unknown to us last July, The Canal Club was almost dark, as in "closed." The big upstairs stage I'd enjoyed before was dark. We played downstairs to perhaps five people, two of whom were "with the band," such as we are. There had been recent, widely-published incidents of more than usual success in the live music/ alcohol consumption /pistol-producing department. The prospect of mayhem and death had dampened enthusiasms. Once more, crime was eating the people and profits of Richmond!
But my exclamation point is flaccid. Crime has been taking a bite outta Richmond and other American cities for many years. Last year's bite is written into next year's budget - and into our personal profit and loss statements. Whatever your "enthusiasm," in terms of conducting business in your town, the prospect of mayhem and death will surely dampen it.
The only enthusiasm not dampened by crime is what the late President Eisenhower might have termed "the Criminal-Corrections Industrial Complex," now a power lobby in every state and federal body. The C-CIC easily outlobbies interests in education and social programs, because tough laws, mandatory sentences and, most of all, Prohibition II: "The Drug War," have created demand for a supply of police, guards, bureaucrats and ever-bigger prisons. This enriches a Big Lobby that is against crime and for motherhood so explain your vote against that, Sen. Smith!
It's a self-amplifying, continuous loop: skimping on social services and schools to pay the C-CIC assures the creation of more angry, illiterate criminals who can only go… into the C-CIC - where most grow even more illiterate and angry. Americans are caught in a downward spiral of botched priorities.
We don't want to pay a few dollars up front getting decent schools and help for single working moms. We seem to prefer paying billions on the back side, "correcting" the predictable result of our front-side folly: trigger-happy kids with nothing to lose. Gang activity grows apace, with gangs and the C-CIC lobby being among the few institutions actually investing in America's children.
I understand that the Swiss keep assault rifles in their houses as part of a simple national defense plan, to wit: who wants to attack a mountainous country where everybody has a machine gun? The Israelis, awash in terrible violence on a daily basis, are likewise armed to the teeth, but, like Switzerland, England, Canada or New Zealand, their murder rate is insignificant compared to the United States.
I forget my Michael Moore, but Bowling for Columbine re-related the familiar statistics: a few dozen fatalities for all those other countries, and thousands of shot-dead citizens for the United States. It's not just easy availability of firearms, though that doesn't help. Again, we apparently prefer it this way - unless we are personally killed, or someone we love. Or our particular gig goes dark.
Otherwise, we enjoy electing "tough" politicians who build a bigger prison where we really needed a better school. In Richmond, the minute any child of sufficient means reaches school age, it is whisked away to our local versions of Columbine: suburbs where the schools are whiter and the delusion of "safe" soothes the savage commute back to the bleeding city.
Opponents of educational spending and social supports say caring is for wimps. They don't know why we kill each other in such outlandish proportion to other nations either, but, whatever it is, it ain't no education and social supports. It's an erosion of traditional values by the liberal media - or too much gun control, taking the firepower away from law-abiding citizens who might otherwise provide triangulated counter-fire from across the bar, literally lighting up those dark clubs and taking out the bad guys - with minimal "collateral damage," of course.
But, surely, people learn the vast majority of their behavior, good or bad. And learning involves teaching, both by our despised teaching institutions, and by the day-to-day example of a society that despises teaching. Given the burgeoning home school movement, the vouchers and "faith-based" initiatives, unattractive teaching salaries, inflexible union and government bureaucrats, even the old, derisive platitude, "Those who can do, those who can't teach" - few can remain unaware of American disdain for its public schools - especially in cities.
Kids are ignorant, not dumb. They see the priorities. Why should they value education when, plainly, we don't?
Crime, gangs, violence - it always comes back to teaching, the business of creating citizens instead of problems. That answer is as hard to run away from as a bullet.
Travis Charbeneau is a Richmond writer and musician who has previously written for Flagpole.
In Daniel S. Whitman's story on the Miami presidential debate in the Oct. 6 Flagpole, we inadvertently printed a draft that did not contain in the concluding paragraph the attribution of a quote from Hunter S. Thompson. Flagpole regrets the confusion and apologizes to Mr. Thompson.
City Pages RSS Feed
Share This Page 
View the Paper in PDF
Past Issues
