Free-For-All Friday 3/12/10
Decatur Metro | March 12, 2010Use this post to ask questions and make comments about local issues not discussed here in the past week.
Comments close on Monday.
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Use this post to ask questions and make comments about local issues not discussed here in the past week.
Comments close on Monday.
Mickey Montana
Chris Billingsley
smalltowngal
Larkspur
Sharron
Daydreamer
J_T
Rick Julian
smalltowngal
The Walrus
Kimberly Rhodes
Sharron
DEM
The Walrus
AMB
Can anyone recommend volunteer opportunities to help immigrant populations in Decatur? I’m considering teaching ESL, but I wanted to know what other options are out there.
thanks!
The person who would be best able to answer this question would be LeeAnn Harvey, the Volunteer Coordinator for the City of Decatur. She can be reached at 678-553-6548 or .
You can also check the current postings on Volunteer! Decatur here:
http://www.decaturga.com/cgs_citysvcs_ced_volunteer.aspx
Or talk to the Decatur Housing Authority which rents to many Somalian refugee families. The DHA has a community center with programs.
Thanks everybody!
You may also want to try Refuge Family Services in the Clarkston area. They can be found on the web @ refugeefamilyservices.org. They do good work.
One of the most rewarding opportunities to help with the educational needs of war refugees is right here in the middle of Decatur: the Global Village School. This is the first year of the school, whose mission is to educate teenage war refugee girls. These girls have typically ended up in area public middle schools as they arrive in this country, and with no English or familiarity with the culture, the dropout rate for these girls has been enormous–they’ve fallen through the cracks. 25-30 girls from all around the world, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, Somalia and Sudan, are learning together with the help of many volunteers and support from partners at Agnes Scott and Emory, among others. The website is http://www.theglobalvillageschool.org, if you want to learn more.
Chris, these organizations are great:
http://www.rrisa.org/
http://www.fugeesfamily.org/about.html
This one is a bit farther away in Chamblee but also wonderful:
http://www.icpacs.org
Decatur Active Living needs youth soccer coaches for teams for 8-9 and 10-11 year olds. The season has already begun. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Lindsey Struck at or 678-553-6550, or Lee Williams at 678-553-6551. There is even a free t-shirt involved! There is a one hour practice once a week, and a one hour game on Saturdays.
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Come join Decatur Active Living on Saturday, March 20th for the annual “Touch-a-Truck” event. This free community event gives children of all ages a chance to touch, explore and see their favorite truck or equipment on wheels. The City of Decatur fire truck, dump trucks, tractors, police cars, motorcycles, bicycles and many other vehicles will be on display.
Location: Calloway Building Parking Lot, 120 West Trinity Place
When: Saturday, March 20, 2010
Time: 10:00am-1:00pm
For more information, please contact Greg White at 678-553-6543.
Is is possible to get my son on a team as a late addition if I volunteer?
I believe that soccer is full in most age groups but if they are desperate enough for coaches, I’ll bet they’ll make an exception.
Anyone been to Mac McGee’s? Good?
Bulldog-Yes, I’ve been to Mac McGees…two or three times. I haven’t had the food but the ambiance is great and their beer and liquor selection is good as well.
Mac McGee’s is solid! The food is good comfort food and the atmosphere is comfortable.
Personally, I liken it to the way the Brick Store was when it first opened – Comfortable, friendly staff, and walk right in and grab a seat.
Rumor has it that the weekends are getting packed there, so plan for a crowd.
Food is great, drinks are generous and the staff is really attentive the time I went. And the ambiance is absolutely great. Overall a perfect fit for our square!
Very solid…wife and I went there with the 2.7 year old last night and had two AWESOME burgers! Fantastic. They do them with two small patties and the fries were great. Lil one got the mac and cheese and it was delicious. Home made, not the crap kind. My wife got too full eating her burger and half the kids mac. Excellent pub!
The AJC recently did a positive write up (at least online):
http://www.accessatlanta.com/atlanta-restaurants-food/mac-mcgee-irish-pub-357530.html
Earlier in the week, in the thread discussing crop subsidies and nutrition, someone shared a link to a Fox News item about obesity rates by state, and commented about the relative proportions of “red” and “blue” states in the list. I didn’t want to threadjack at the time, but do want to offer this by way of keeping us all honest.
Essentially, the terms “red state” and “blue state” are misleading because they imply that everyone in a given state voted the same way. They help news commentators spit out provocative sound bites, but do little to clarify real discussion. Adjusting the national map to use red and blue only in those states where one side or the other received at least 70% of the vote, and using shades of purple in all other cases, reveals a much different and IMO more accurate picture. Taking it to the county level is even more dramatic. (They also made some cartograms, in which the relative sizes of states are dictated by population instead of geographic area–also illuminating.) Via the link below you can access the 2008 and 2004 maps.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/
Figuring out what it means to be (or not to be) Democrat, Republican, or Libertarian, conservative or liberal or progressive, is challenging and stimulating. I submit that Red State/Blue State characterizations obscure real contrasts and obliterate the nuances that account for our true diversity and complexity.
Great maps!
One observation and one question.
First the observation: I really like the red/purple/blue cartogram which shows big pockets of blue (cities) surrounded by this massive web of red.
As for my question: what’s with the strain of blue that starts up near Asheville, NC and extends through central Georgia to Mississippi?
I’m guessing it roughly follows I85, which is the most urbanized belt through the south.
I shoulda said “Interstates” in general. Not just 85.
But the blue line looks like it dips and crosses GA below Atlanta, no? There really aren’t any highways that take that route.
It’s roughly the same area historically referred to as the Black Belt. I found a map on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Black_belt_counties.png
(One of many factors acting to confound rubrics that would generalize voting patterns by state or even by county, and also by blue collar/white collar…that one bugs me, too, but I don’t have time today to seek data to support my view.)
It’s also the “Stroke Belt”.
Essentially, the terms “red state” and “blue state” are misleading because they imply that everyone in a given state voted the same way.
____________________
Really? Do people really think a “blue” state is one in which Barak Obama received 100% of the vote? Or McCain got all the votes in a red state? If people are that stupid, we have some serious problems.
Of course, the red/blue state dichotomy came about because electoral votes are apportioned by state. In that sense, it is very relevant to view the vote on a statewide basis. I do agree that it gets absurd when applied to behavorial issues, though. We have way too many people who use these stats to “prove” that one political party is smartest. See, the blue states have higher incomes! Fewer truck rallies! More art museums! And on and on.
DEM: If you take a look at the electoral college cartogram on the website, you’ll see that while some individual states change size somewhat (when scaled to their number of electoral votes instead of their population), the proportions of red and blue in the nation as a whole are almost identical to the cartogram based on population (and substantially different from both maps). I agree that it makes sense to think about states as wholes in the context of electoral votes; but I still think a map based on geographic area misleads about the relative support of the two candidates (or parties or platforms or whatever people voted for), regardless of whether you are assigning colors based on population or on electoral votes.
You may be correct that the red state/blue state rubric first came about in the context of electoral votes–I can’t remember. But it was swiftly embraced in the media and has been widely and continuously applied out of that context, in ways that are misleading and often disingenuous. No, I wouldn’t say people are stupid. (Well, I would and often do, but not strictly on the basis of this.) Mostly they are busy and/or lazy and/or simply not thinking critically about what they’re reading and hearing. That enables pundits and journalists to get away with positing fallacious arguments when they begin with this false dichotomy. I feel very passionate about it because it has (IMO) contributed to the increasing polarization of the electorate, who are letting themselves be convinced that they are at odds to a greater degree and on many more issues than they really are.
Scott is probably right although I was thinking that it followed Appalachia which historically for the Union, not the Confederacy, has been exploited in the past by certain manufacturing industries, and has substantial blue collar vs white collar populations.
I sent a note to DM about this but he hasn’t felt it warranted its own entry so I will bring it up here
Has anyone else noticed the rise in graffiti all over the Atlanta area recently? Am I the only one that is starting to see more of it everywhere?
Are gangs getting more brazen marking down territories?
Check out the salon pic that DM put up. Lil grafitti on the window.
D’oh! I had been planning to put it up on Wednesday and had even written a post about it, but the whole site slowdown threw me off and I saved it for later!
Don’t believe me? I’ll post ‘er right now!
If anyone is looking for a reliable, trustworthy person to clean their house that is also kid and pet-friendly, Pat Felty is looking for clients in the Decatur area. She has cleaned our house for the last six years and we love her. She is also environmentally-friendly and prefers low-impact cleaning products. Her phone number is 404-822-8043.
I was thinking that same thing last weekend, but I thought that perhaps I just hadn’t been paying attention before. I wish these “artists” would get a life and stop defacing property that doesn’t belong to them.
Oops. My first post was in response to Left Wing’s post. I should have clicked on the Reply link.
Theories on graffiti:
- Have heard that there’s an increase in gang activity by APD is downplaying it
- Tight budgets result in less enforcement plus less clean up
More theories:
- Unruly high school kids not in gangs.
- Unruly adults who don’t like the tornado siren.
But seriously, I wouldn’t worry about gang activity. A good portion of the grafitti is done by “artists” and not by gangs (at least I hope). I subscribe to the “unruly high school kids” theory above (of course it is my own, but what do I know).
I do wish it would be cleaned up – terrible.
actually some friends of mine from a few different county and city depts around here have been saying there has been a large influx in gang activity across the entire metro area for the past 5-6 yrs
And of course, this week’s Creative Loafing piece glamourizing the life of a grafitti arists helps a great deal.
Just this morning I noticed that some folks have come along and spray painted a series of extraordinarily poor quality pieces of artwork on the wall of the MLK Center facing Boulevard.
Amazing that nobody noticed this, as it required either a fairly tall ladder, or some sort of hoisting device.
Have always wondered how graffiti artists could get away with some of their large-scale prominent work, whether in N.Y., L.A., or here. There’s only so fast that one can spray especially when up on a ladder! It can’t be that law enforcement doesn’t notice–they just don’t have the resources or permission to do anything about it.
But isn’t the entire metro area different than Decatur? For example, there is some fairly awful “artwork” on Arizona Street – that’s not Decatur. And neither is MLK Center.
I just don’t want people thinking there is a large influx in gang activity in the 4 square miles we call home (unless statistics say otherwise, then I stand corrected).
FYI, our black 1996 Honda Accord was stolen from the street parking in front of our house on Lansdowne Ave last Tuesday. According to the Decatur PD officer, thieves often target mid to late ’90s Hondas and Toyotas because they’re generally long-lasting cars, and the parts are worth a lot on the black market once ‘acquired.’ And also because cars of that era didn’t come with factory alarm systems. As an added bonus, the window regulators (the things that roll the windows up and down) are easy to break, meaning that theives can apparently just push a certain way to get the window to drop — no broken glass involved!
On a related note, any recommended places (dealerships or otherwise) to buy a car in the area? We’re thinking a 2008-2009 used Honda Accord or something in that vein..
I think there’s a 2008 Toyota Prius for sale out in California. Of course, you’ll have to wait until NTSA and the Toyota engineers fix a little problem with the accelerator and brakes.
I’m not really interested in the Prius, but if you happen to have a Ford Explorer with Firestone tires…I’d be all over that!
Here’s the marketing brochure:
http://www.firestone-tire-recall.com/pages/overview.html
Thanks for letting us all know that Todd- we live in the Lenox Place area and hadn’t yet heard. One of the things I really appreciate about this forum is a heads up on this kind of stuff (as well as all the good news and discussion!).
Dear Macarolina,
I you live in the Lenox Place area, consider signing up for the Lenox Place Homeowners Association. You would have heard about the car theft immediately, as well as other incidents in the neighborhood.
Email and I’ll send you a link about how to sign up.
We’ve blanketed the neighborhood telling people about us, but we’re still building.
Spring forward tonight!
For me it’s more like getting dragged forward feet first.
Anyone know what standards the Salvation Army store in Avondale have in terms of donated clothing?
I’m going some Spring cleaning and would like to get rid of a good number of articles.
I don’t shop there much, but the standards for most thrift stores are:
Clean (preferably with no stains or excessive fading)
No rips or broken zippers ( a missing button or two can be easily replaced)
No moth holes
No offensive slogans/ graphics
In or out of style doesn’t matter much. They’ll often mark it up as “vintage”!
Ask yourself, “If I needed to make every dollar count, would this item have value?” When doing a good thing, you don’t want for someone to get home and discover that it’s not in the condition they thought. The lighting can be horrific in thrift stores. ( And take pity on the poor store employees who sort through the mountains of clothing donations. Take a peek in their backrooms! )
*End PSA for my fav places to shop!*