Marissa from Piece of Cake alerts us that their new Decatur store is now open in the Trackside strip.  Hours are Monday – Friday 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM and Saturday 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM.

And as soon as Gmail starts functioning again, I’ll provide even more detail and pics.  Stay tuned!

UPDATE: Here’s the press release…

DECATUR, Ga. Sept. 1, 2009 – Decatur just got a little bit sweeter. Piece of Cake, Atlanta’s largest cake company, today opened a new store in Decatur.

Located at 307-A East College Ave., Piece of Cake’s new Decatur store is the company’s third retail location in metro Atlanta. Other stores are located at 3215 Roswell Road in Buckhead and 10971 Crabapple Road, Suite 1300 in Roswell. The Decatur shop is located near the intersection of East College Avenue and South Candler Street, next door to the children’s boutique Wiggle.

“We’ve been looking at Decatur for a long time and have seen an increase in customers from that area at our other stores,” said Melissa Bunnen, founder of Piece of Cake. “Decatur is a special, close-knit community, and we’re really looking forward to being part of it. We feel like Piece of Cake will be a great fit.”

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Inman Park isn’t mincing words about gubenatorial candidate John Oxendine’s proposal of building more bypasses and highways around Atlanta.  CL’s Thomas Wheatley has the note to the candidate from Inman Park President Lisa Burnette.

The idea has obviously picked open the old scab that Inman Park has worn since a coalition of in-town neighborhoods defeated the plan of connecting the road with the most laughable 35mph speed limit sign in the city (Freedom Parkway) with Highway 78.

Now in politics, pissing people off is kind of inevitable.  But pissing off people with money?  Oh, that’s bad.  Very bad.

These Atlanta neighborhoods, including Inman Park, most soundly defeated this highway proposal decades ago, at a time when they had little organization and little resources. Today, we are highly organized and closely networked. We have neighbors and friends in many high places, and we have a lot of money, set aside specifically to protect ourselves against these kinds of proposals.

The Inman Park Neighborhood Association demands that you immediately retract your statements that you would consider building a Stone Mountain Freeway through intown Atlanta.

Hells yes.

Hey Inman Park, let Decatur know if you need help.  We don’t have quite the wealth-hoards, but we’re feisty and we’ll volunteer for near about anything.

Did anyone else read the New York Times article this past Sunday about the Jonesboro, Georgia teacher who is letting her students pick the books they read in class – within certain limits – instead of assigning the standardized classics?

It’s an article that gets to the heart of many recent conversations about the importance of writing and asks the question, “What is more important: instilling kids with a habit of reading or giving them a solid foundation of classic literature before sending them off into the world?”

An apt question on the eve of a festival o’ books.

I can imagine that there have been endless discussions and seminars by far-smarter educators tackling this very topics, so I do not pretend to be able to argue the educator’s point of view.  But I can craft the argument of a one-time student, who was always told he wasn’t “living up to his potential”.

I’m loving the classics.  And I say so in the clear-and-present-tense, since it’s only now that I’m exploring their true meaning and complexities.  As a student, I read and ignored countless classics dumped on my desk by a more-than-willing English teacher, hoping to relay his/her passion to a group of religiously uninterested students.  But in the past 5 years or so, without the threat of a test or book report just over the horizon, I am finally feel free to enjoy classic novels like Moby Dick, The Merchant of Venice, and All the King’s Men and take from them whatever I please.

These are books that I can only begin to understand at 30.  At 14, 16, 18 years-old, at most I could conceive the plot and, if I was lucky, some of the motivations of a character.  But goodness knows I couldn’t understand the lessons of  “the Boss” and his initial quest for fairness and ultimate corruption or the complexities of Ahab’s obsession with a whale.  Metaphors are so silly to a literal teenager.  So, perhaps letting students choose the Twilight series over Jane Eyre was the answer for me, right?

To employ my favorite word: Maybe.

But I have trouble casting aside the looming retort.  The one that makes the old argument that teaching the classics can instill both a love of them and provide a valuable foundation of life lessons early on.  And these arguments often emerge in the silence of a busy day after finding something entirely profound in the depths of a novel, like Penn Warren’s passing description of a parent’s “blood-lust” or Melville’s ethereal description of a pod of whales just below the water’s surface.  I feel eons behind my former fellow student who somehow could ignore the generational and ageless siren calls of our youth and take in and process these small miracles.

Perhaps it is such a tough question to answer because it’s basis goes well beyond classroom instruction.  Looking more broadly the true question seems to be “Should classic literature serve as a foundation for learning about the world or should our life’s foundation serve to instruct our reading of the classics?”

It’s a complex two-way street that defies resolution in the classroom and beyond.

In a letter published in September’s Decatur Focus, By Hand South’s owner, Brenda Leder, thanks the Decatur community for 20 great years…

“Thank you, Decatur, for helping me build By Hand South into a nationally recognized American Craft gallery. I cannot say how much I appreciate all that you have done. I have been thinking about retiring for a while.  Now is the time for me to relax and enjoy  weekends and holidays free from the responsibilities of retailing.

“The past 20 years of doing business in Decatur have afforded me the opportunity to meet wonderful people who have shared their lives with me, supported me, and through their loyalty to By Hand South have helped sustain American craftspeople. There is no better place in this metropolitan area to do business than here in Decatur.

“Thank You.” — Brenda Leder

If anyone is interested in continuing By Hand South’s legacy, Lyn mentions in her downtown development notes that Leder is “happy to consider the possibility”.

With the Decatur Book Festival just days away, it seems like you can’t even get in your first cup of coffee this week without being accosted by some from of DBF press in these final days. (The Book Festival has a distinct advantage of more free press over other festivals since it can play off journalists love of writing about themselves and their “craft.”)

• This morning, DBF program director Tom Bell sat down with WABE to discuss what’s in store for attendees of this year’s festival.

• Over on Creative Loafing, they’re posting a Poem-A-Day during the countdown to the event.

• And probably one of the most interesting pieces I’ve yet seen on the Festival: over on the great blog/online journal “Like the Dew”, Lenz’s Alice Murrary chronicles the very beginnings of the festival when it was just a couple neurons suspended in Daren Wang’s head.  A great read.
• Mingie World Arts is featured in today’s AJC selling “fanciful and colorful” folk art figures from Oaxaca, Mexico all reading books.  20% of proceeds benefit the town of La Union.  Ann reports that the figures are flying off the shelves.
• As Scott mentioned in the comments, the AJC has a profile of Little Shop author Terra McVoy.  She’s speaking at 1:30p on Saturday on the Teens “Escape” stage.

And while we’re on the topic of the Book Festival, has anyone planned their schedule for the weekend yet?  While there are already many authors I already consider “can’t miss”, I’m finding that filling in the holes in my schedule is a rather daunting task.

Who are your “can’t miss” authors for the festival?