No Butts?
Smoking Ban Discussed

ACC Commissioners' on-again, off-again support for a smoking ban in bars or restaurants seems to be on again, and an exploratory public hearing will be held next month. A 1994 ordinance already prohibits smoking in most indoor public spaces and private businesses, except for bars. The definition of a bar is any area "defined by the owner or manager" as "primarily" devoted to drinking and not to eating, according to the ordinance. Restaurants are required to provide no-smoking areas for customers.
Commissioners discussed strengthening that ordinance last year, and decided against it. But recently it was referred back to the Legislative Review Committee by Mayor Heidi Davison. The committee is one of two - the other is the Government Operations Committee - that meet monthly to discuss items referred by the mayor. The public may attend as observers. Committee recommendations then go to the full commission for discussion or a vote.
Committee chair Tom Chasteen said "a large portion of the community" has asked for a smoking ban in bars. He said state legislators have discussed a state-wide ban, but he doubts that it will be passed in an election year.
Commissioner George Maxwell said he'd prefer to wait for the state to act, and called it "a very difficult decision" that could hurt business downtown. People who enter bars are "aware that it's dangerous to your health", he said.
Commissioner Kathy Hoard said she'd heard from many people on both sides of the question, and would like to hear from the owner of a bar that reportedly went out of business after it banned smoking.
Rather than craft specific proposals, the committee agreed to hold a public hearing at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 16 in order to "get a feel for what kind of impact" a smoking ban might have on business owners and the public. The hearing will be at 120 W. Dougherty Street downtown.

John Huie

No coffee beans were mistreated in the preparation of this article.

Political Action
Headquarters Needed

Common Ground seeks to provide a home for the progressive community in Athens. A coalition of local residents and organizations, such as the ACLU, BikeAthens, and the Grow Green Coalition, is uniting around a common vision for a long-term resource center - a sort of "civic infrastructure." Grass-roots organizations need greater access to like-minded people, information, technology, media, and organizing resources that are essential to their success. By pooling its resources, the progressive community is creating a shared civic space that would be otherwise unattainable. Common Ground is actively searching for a home that will house event space, meeting rooms, office space, and a lending library. In the meantime, the new organization is throwing benefit parties and launching its outreach and fundraising campaigns, with hopes of moving into a space by March.
Imagine for a moment walking into such a place. Maybe you are new in town. Maybe you are frustrated with politics, feeling uninformed or ineffective, like most people. A volunteer says hi and tells you briefly what Common Ground is all about, and you start to look around. In one room you see a large group of people listening to a speaker, a labor activist from Colombia, and some animated discussion erupts. You look up and see a huge community calendar, the hours and days filled with events. In the back room, some people are producing video about a local campaign. A study group is gathered in the reading room, and you browse the shelves of a lending library with thousands of volumes, magazine subscriptions, videos. In the kitchen, Food Not Bombs! is preparing some soup for the streets. Maybe you're cynical, or maybe you leave with a newsletter in hand, thinking that you might come back.
Common Ground is an innovative project, though not without precedent. In the early '80s, a similar concept took root in the Progressive Resource Center, located next to the Morton Theatre. Examples of non-profit resource centers can even be found in other Southeastern towns, such as the Civic Media Center in Gainesville, Florida (www.civicmediacenter.org).
The homegrown effort seeks to improve and expand upon these examples by involving a broader swath of the community and setting the project in a strong organizational and financial base. Being a non-profit organization, Common Ground can receive tax-deductible donations, but the root of its strength will be found in community participation and a spirit of volunteerism.
The new organization will use methods of decision-making that reflect its progressive mission. Too often a few people at the top of a non-profit organization dictate the future of the group and use volunteers merely for the grunt work. Common Ground's governance procedures will minimize hierarchy and bureaucracy and maximize participation. While the group has a board of directors, decisions will be made mostly in committees of volunteers, and the membership will have opportunities to guide the group through a consensus decision-making process.
Common Ground is a work in progress, and it will become what Athens wants it to be. As a member who has talked to innumerable people about their ideas, I believe that Common Ground might provide a nexus for social action, based not on money, influence, and votes, but on unity, imagination, and participation.
Volunteers, memberships, and in kind donations are being cultivated, most recently at the Common Ground "Love at First Sight" benefit on Valentine's Day. Generous performances by the Dreaded Mindz Family, the Radical Cheerleaders, Reason:Biodynamics and Tepookatoo made for an auspicious public debut. When all was said and done, the "grand" effort brought Common Ground much closer to its goal of establishing a home for the progressive community. More art and music events are already in the works.
Until Common Ground's reading room is established at its new home, a sample selection will be available for perusal at the new Hot Corner Coffee on the corner of Washington and Hull streets. Book donation forms can also be picked up there for those ready to wipe the dust off their old political volumes and put them to good use with their neighbors and acquaintances.
Brian Holland

Brian Holland is a board member of Common Ground. To contact the group, email commongroundathens@yahoo.com. Visit their website at www.commongroundathens.org.

Just A Cartoonist
Arnold Roth At UGA

I have liked Arnold Roth's work since I first saw it. The problem is that when I first saw Roth's work, I didn't know it was actually his. This is, I would suppose, a common problem for a cartoonist and illustrator as prolific as Roth. After attending his talk, which was a part of the UGA art school's Jack Davis Lecture Series, I wish I had known more about him beforehand.
Roth is one of those people whose talent makes normal people jealous. Sure, he's an incredibly good artist, but he's also an amazingly accomplished speaker, not to mention a pretty good saxophone player. I could have listened to him talk for at least twice as much time as he took on Friday night, Feb.13.
Roth was born in 1929, and has been a freelance artist since 1951. His body of work is absolutely huge, having worked for The New Yorker, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, Punch Magazine, and Humbug, a publication he founded along with Jack Davis. Roth's stories about his life and his work are good enough to have landed him guest spots on television shows hosted by Johnny Carson, David Letterman and even Joan Rivers, but it's his drawings that always got the biggest laughs. You can tell that this is a man who truly loves his work, and that's certainly a rarity.
The talk was accompanied by a short video, including clips from some of the television appearances and a slide show of his work both early and recent. Hearing Roth describe the process behind the creation of his work added an extra dimension to the drawings, and I'm pretty sure I'll recognize his work every time I see it from now on.
Although I wish I'd had a more thorough appreciation of the work of Arnold Roth before the talk, it was amazing just to be in a room and listen to him for an hour. Listening to Roth, you get a sense of the importance of cartoon art from one of the form's giants. Roth said that he's been introduced as a "visual humorist" and pretty much every other euphemism there is for cartoonist, but has corrected the person making the introduction each time. Roth is not ashamed of being a cartoonist and is clearly not suffering from his work being pigeonholed as cartoons. This is the main message I took away from the talk, and I hope that the art students, who apparently were required to attend the talk, took it as well. We need more cartoonists who aren't afraid to label themselves as such. We need more artists like Arnold Roth to keep reminding us that art doesn't have to be so damned serious all the time.

Robert Newsome

Robert Newsome is the CEO of Second Period Industries and creator of The Journal of MODOK Studies.

Institute Index
To Our Health

o Percent of U.S. residents who rank health care as one of their "top issues:" 82
o Number of people in U.S. without health insurance, in millions: 43.6
o Percent of personal bankruptcies due in part to medical expenses: 50
o Amount by which President's budget cuts Medicaid over 10 years, in billions: $16
o Amount his Medicaid plan will increase drug company profits, in billions: $139
o Percent of health care costs that go to administrative overhead in private insurance: 11.7
o Percent for administrative overhead in the Medicaid program: 3.6
o Percent for administrative overhead in Canada's national health system: 1.3
o Number of times a December government report mentioned racial health "disparities:" 30
o Number of times it mentioned this after being "edited" by Bush officials: 2

The Institute For Southern Studies

Sources on file at the Institute for Southern Studies, www.southernstudies.org.

X-Ray Diary
Random Thoughts

I just read the weirdest article in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution titled "Kissing Coroners of Coweta"... link: www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/fayette/0204/14coroners.html and my latest obsession the past few weeks has been reading on-line school lunch menus... I think it's great that kids can now stand in line at their school cafeteria and order "string cheese with doughnut," "foot-long hot dog on bun," "doggie bars," "corn dog nuggets" or "cheesy potatoes"... link: www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/foodsvc/hhs.html
I grew up in Bugtussle... it's gentrified now.
Remember when your mom would make chocolate pudding and when it cooled in the refrigerator she said the top layer was called "the skin?" Mmmm...
Speaking of "skin," I was at Merrill-Lynch the other day showing my stockbroker how you can put a thin layer of Elmer's glue on your hand, let it dry, and then, when the right moment comes, peel it off so people think you have a really bad case of psoriasis...
Athens has THE BEST drinking, peeing and vomiting scene in the country right now according to a new study: people come from miles around each weekend just to experience it...
Next time you're in Chicago you really need to check out "HUNG PHAT," my favorite Vietnamese restaurant... the "namkapong" is out of this world, and if you're into Vietnamese baked goods, try the "mung bean squares" or the "banh bo" (a "spongy glutinous cake made from rice flour and coconut milk")... link: www1.chicagoreader.com/cgibin/rrr/details.cgi?RestaurantName= hung&PriceCategory=&SearchByName&numb=2142
Whoever stole my legwarmer I wish you'd please return it, 'cause I feel pretty dumb walking around wearing just ONE legwarmer.

Paul Thomas

Paul Thomas is the proprietor of X-Ray Café downtown.

Animal Control
Last Week's Scorecard

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control responded to 85 calls:

11 complaints of animal cruelty
2 bite cases
2 complaints of barking dogs
6 citations for ordinance violations
36 animal impounded
31 dogs
1 cat
2 raccoons
1 opossum
1 chicken
18 dogs placed
4 adopted
11 reclaimed
3 turned over to other agencies

ACC Animal Control press release for the week of Feb. 12 to Feb. 18.