Here’s the lowdown on tomorrow’s 4th of July schedule straight off the city’s website…

Join Decatur’s July 4th Pied Piper Parade as it winds through downtown Decatur. Decorate your wagon, ride your bike, skate, or walk in this event.

The City Commissioners will lead the parade in the mini-firetruck. Neighborhoods and organizations are encouraged to make floats and join the fun.

Parade line-up is at the First Baptist Church of Decatur at 5:30 p.m. The parade begins at 6 p.m. It ends at the Community Bandstand on the square with a presentation of colors and the Star Spangled Banner.

Anyone may participate in the parade but those with vehicles must register by completing the July 4th Pied Piper Parade Guidelines form.

The concert, featuring the Callanwolde Concert Band, begins at 7 p.m. in the Community Bandstand. Fireworks begin at dark (approximately 9 p.m.) and are shot from the top of the DeKalb County parking deck.

For information call 404-371-8386 or email . For 24-hour information call the Decatur Events Hotline, 404-371-8262, or check this website.

Decatur events hotline?

The Decatur Minute has the details on Fire Chief Jerry Malone’s retirement ceremony this past Wednesday after an incredible 35 years of service.

Cheryl writes…

Mayor Floyd, Tony Parker, Peggy Merriss and other city officials were on hand to thank Chief Malone for his many years of outstanding service to the City of Decatur. There were also many firefighters on hand to wish the Chief well and give him a send off.

In the Decatur tradition, Malone was presented with his badge, his helmet, and the valued Play Pipe Trophy. The Fire Department also presented him with a shadowbox containing his badges, patches and other memories.

James Radford sends in a link to a WSB story that details the discrimination case brought by a GSU grad student, Selma Shelbayah, against an unnamed professor who is accused of making multiple dispariging remarks about her Muslim heritage.

Radford ,who is seen briefly in the video, is representing both the student and GSU professor Dona Stewart, who stepped down from her post as Director of Middle East Studies over the university’s reaction to the student’s claims of the incident.  Stewart is also an Oakhurst resident.

Here’s what happened after Shelbayah told Steward about the incident according to GPB…

Stewart told Selma Shelbayah to file an official complaint to the department dean. After that the professor apologized to the student, but a day later, Stewart said that the dean told her to fire Shelbayah, and she refused.

But GSU says…

“In no way was retaliation taken against Stewart or the student as a result of the complaint.”

Uh OK.  Even if only half the details here are true, this is still a really ugly story for Georgia State.

Here’s an idea that’s too often lost in modern academia: try putting your students before your tenured faculty every once in a while.

Another week, another mashup of journalists publicly stumbling their way through the tough questions facing their industry, emerging on the other side of a two-hour session essentially where they started; with resigned, puzzled looks on their faces.   And then of course, a bunch of other journalists inevitably run back to their laptops to write about it.   We must forgive them of course, because although the formal industry is in dire straights, never has the field of journalism been such a rich battleground of ideas, open questions and opportunities to ruminate over.

This week, another chapter in this Mitchner-length saga unfolded; this time out west, amongst the cool shadows of the Rocky Mountains.  A panel of “old guard” journalists met out in Apsen, Colorado at the Ideas Festival to take another go at the new age  question of “How do we save journalism in it’s traditional form (a.k.a. ourselves)?”

Politico summed up the event nicely yesterday, capped with a snarky headline that could only have been written by an online-only news outlet, “Save Journalism?  Beats us panel says“.  But reading deeper into the article, that’s not actually what was said.  In fact, I’d argue that this panel of traditional journalists came the closest to a “mea culpa” moment that I’ve encountered.

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