Oakhurst, Decatur GA (submitted by Julie)

From Decatur City Commissioner Patti Garrett…

Memorial service planned for Oakhurst Garden co-founder Sally Wylde on September 11
A celebration of Sally’s life will take place on September 11, 2010, at 5 p.m. at the Oakhurst Baptist Church (222 East Lake Drive). If you live in the Oakhurst neighborhood, we encourage you to walk to the Church. The service will be followed by a Sally-inspired puppet parade. If you made a puppet with Sally for Earth Day a few years ago, please bring it out — or create a new one (you may store your puppet at the church during the service). The parade will process from the Oakhurst Baptist Church to the Oakhurst Community Garden Project along the East Lake Drive and Oakview Road route. You may join the parade anywhere along the route. A reception, to be held at the Oakhurst Community Garden Project (435 Oakview Road), will be a covered dish meal, Sally style! If you can bring a dish to share, dishes may be dropped off at the Oakhurst Garden between 3:30-4:30 p.m. In case of rain, the reception will take place at the Solarium (321 West Hill Street).

Gifts may be made in memory of Sally to the following organizations:
The Oakhurst Community Garden
The Community of Hospitality
The Global Village School

From Decatur City Commissioner Patti Garrett’s email blast to the community…

According to Hugh Saxon, Deputy City Manager, a permit is being issued for the demolition of the Trackside and Fifth Earl property. This work will take place starting at 8 pm on Wednesday or Thursday of this week (Sept 1-2) and will conclude by 5 am the following morning. Because East College Avenue is a state route, a GDOT permit is also required. It appears that one travel lane will be closed but temporary pedestrian access must be maintained at all times. Once the remains of the building are demolished, work will commence on a new building.

Trackside’s Facebook page is a bit more specific, stating that the demo will take place Thursday evening.

It’s getting ready to happen: the walls of Trackside are scheduled to start coming down on Thursday evening, Sept 2nd (I don’t know the time yet). If you go to watch, please stay out of the way of the demolition guys. The best and safest place to park and watch is probably going to be across the street by the train depot (which is now the Farmstead 303 Restaurant). If you take pictures, please post them on this page.

Phillip posted this on Free-For-All Friday last week, but I wanted to give it a bit more exposure.  Here are the facts thus far, according to Phillip…

• Found on August 26th on Westchester Drive
• Female, all black with a graying muzzle.
• She has been neutered and still has the metal staples from the surgery. Vet’s haven’t used metal staples for about 4 or 5 years.
• She has excellent teeth and has been well kept.
• Only a black nylon collar, with no tags, was around her neck.

If you recognize this dog, please contact Phillip at [email protected]

More so than in other countries, memory and reflection live in an unsettled place in the American psyche.

A new and prosperous country by civilization’s standards, the United States is understandably more comfortable with looking forward than back.  More comfortable with future prospects than past performance.

This forward-thinking mentality, while great at cultivating innovation, has continuously created interesting tension in a population looking to define its place in an ever-changing world.

But what happens when all the physical landmarks that served to ground your life are wiped out, not slowly over the course of decades years, but in a single day?

Inspired by her new non-fiction book, “Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast”, Decatur’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey’s op-ed in the New York Times this morning reflects and documents how Hurricane Katrina continues to ravage the memories and lives of people along her native Mississippi Coast, years after the actual physical destruction has ended.

For my brother, the Marine Life sign was an anchor to the past, and Katrina — devastating and symbolic — represents a break with that past, casting us into a present and future in which our personal landmarks have vanished. Of course, life before Katrina was hardly unchanging — we lost the pasture, the road, the persimmon trees. But those losses were incorporated more easily, more gradually, into our narratives. Katrina was different — it was an absolute end to one chapter of our lives, and the beginning of a new and awfully difficult one. Before Katrina, change was natural. In the post-Katrina landscape, all change is haunted by the devastation of the storm, and thus inseparable from it. Even the construction of a house is seen through a scrim of loss.

Trethewey will speak at the Decatur Book Festival next Sunday at 1:15p on the Decatur First Baptist stage.

Travis Hudgens of Hudgens Photography sends in these great pics from yesterday’s “Chicks in the City” event at the Decatur Farmer’s Market.

More after the jump!

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In the New York Times’ cleverly titled article, “A Novel Is All the Rage Even Before It Is Sold“, (“rage” as in both “fad or craze” and “a fit of anger”), journo Julie Bosman relays the array of buzz surrounding the pending release of Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom”.

Mary Flad points out this particularly Decatur-centric paragraph…

Next Wednesday, Mr. Franzen will plunge into an 18-city tour. In St. Paul, the primary setting of the book, an event on Sept. 21 featuring Mr. Franzen at the 1,000-seat Fitzgerald Theater sold out quickly. At the Eagle Eye Book Shop in Decatur, Ga., one of the stores that distributed tickets to a Franzen speech at the coming Decatur Book Festival, tickets were snapped up in two days.

“We had people calling from South Carolina and Florida” who were willing to make a trip to see Mr. Franzen, said Bob Munson, a bookseller.

I’m sure Mr. Wang was out mighty early this morning scavenging up every last copy of the New York Times in a 5-mile vicinity.  (I know because I had to chase him off my driveway around daybreak this morning.  Man, he can really move in those red shoes.)