Andisheh sends along this announcement from Eagle Eye…

The Campaign 2008 C-SPAN Bus is coming to Eagle Eye Book Shop, Saturday, December 13th from 1 to 3 PM.  Eagle Eye will be hosting book signings and interviews with Kathryn Stockett, author of the forthcoming novel, The Help; Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation and other authors to be scheduled.

C-SPAN’s new book about Abraham Lincoln will be available for sale:  Abraham Lincoln: Great American Historians on Our Sixteenth President.  Published in conjunction with C-SPAN’s year-long celebration of the Lincoln bicentennial, this work offers an enlightening, wide-ranging anthology of essays on Lincoln by top historians.

The AJC reports this morning that MARTA ridership was up 12.4% system wide in the third quarter of 2008 vs. same period year-ago, even though gas prices peaked in July.

That’s an even bigger increase than the 10% system-wide increase reported in second quarter 2008.

Obviously the great unknown is whether the return of cheap gas will get people back in their cars or whether the recent reintroduction to transit along with a sagging economy will keep transit ridership levels up over years past.

Time will tell.

If you like numbers, all of the data cited above can be found on the American Public Transportation Association website.

In the midst of our extremely successful holiday shoping in downtown Decatur yesterday, I conjured up with this question…

If I were looking to get someone something for the holidays that screams “DECATUR!” right our of the box, what would it be?

Taste has cool stone coasters featuring pics around town (including the Brick Store, Twain’s, the Valentine statue, and the Old DeKalb County Courthouse), Turvis Tumblers with Oakhurst and City of Decatur logos, and Decatur-made Starr Brand bottle openers.  Of course, Whit’s End has tons of Decatur-based stuff, recently detailed over on their blog.

And I would also recommend a map, produced by the DeKalb History Center, which shows an early 20th century Sanborn fire map of downtown Decatur with a red, 1981 overlay.   A great, unique gift for the local history buff in your family.  When I bought one a few months back, it only cost a 5 spot!

And that’s just off the top of my head.  So whatelse ya got?