If you dipped into FFAF over the weekend you may have noticed a resurgence in talk surrounding a recent development concerning the most-talked about property in Oakhurst.

The topic of the “Big H” property at 630 East Lake Drive – named for a long-gone former tenant – frequently brings out both the young and old alike to debate the future of the property and Oakhurst itself.   The largest remaining vestige of a former era that saw unlimited potential in the automobile, the Big H was built for major artery-like car crowds in a single-family, residential neighborhood.

Today the parking lot often sits mostly empty; and until this past weekend, served as an overflow FREE parking spot for drivers looking to frequent one of Oakhurst’s businesses.

But then, parking suddenly went from FREE to $5, the response from “consumers” was the same as when ANYTHING goes from free to pay.  Anger, resentment, exasperation.  The pastor at the new Oakhurst Church in the “Big H” complex stated publicly on the Oakhurst Message Board that he was “deeply saddened and frustrated” by the switch to pay parking, and asserted that creating a pay lot “was in direct conflict” to “fostering community”.

But is it really?

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All AJC print subscribers received this email yesterday.

Dear _________,

The floods that washed across most of Georgia have personally impacted everyone. Whether you’ve experienced power outages, been stuck in the traffic gridlock or have property damage, your life has been affected.

This epic story is a reminder of the vital role that newspapers play in the communities we serve. Our journalists traveled far and wide in the middle of the floods, photographers took to the skies in a helicopter to document the damage, and newspaper carriers battled traffic, detours and downed trees to deliver the paper to you. Like no other news source could, the AJC delivered ongoing, up-to-the-minute information on ajc.com, and in-depth coverage in the AJC.

Each and every day, employees are committed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution being a forum for the local community. The AJC doesn’t take this responsibility lightly. We work very hard at fulfilling our mission – providing news and information that’s meaningful to our readers every day.

With the largest news-gathering team in the state, the AJC will continue to bring you the most extensive coverage on the efforts to recover and rebuild. You can trust that we will see the story through and provide investigative journalism that only a newspaper can provide. Our commitment to serving you remains strong. Thank you for being our subscriber.

Sincerely,

Michael Joseph

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In this morning’s AJC, fellow Decatur resident and recent not-just-a-food-writer, John Kessler, sits down with Paste’s editor Josh Jackson for an in-depth look at the “Save Paste” campaign.

In the article, Kessler discusses Paste’s long-standing mission, the not quite success of the Pay-What-You-Want campaign, their ties to Decatur, and throws out a few key numbers:

• 1 million uniques a month for PasteMagazine.com:

• 205,000 people subscribe to the print version of Paste

• The company has raised $240,000 of $300,000 needed to stay afloat

Kessler even gets some response from the Atlanta music community on Paste’s move to ask for money: Stomp and Stammer’s publisher is opposed (saying the effort “comprises you what you do”), while the owner of Criminal Records supports it.

Here in Decatur, we’ve been around this block before.  First it was Wordsmiths Books that asked for donations to stay afloat (though ultimately folded) and now Paste.  And though editor Nick Purdy informed me that Wordsmiths’ decision didn’t influence Paste’s fundraising idea, it seems more than mere coincidence that this idea is only being pursued here.

Why?  It might just be that community effectively blurs the idea of “charity” and removes it from it’s black-and-white context in the stark global economy.  As Wendell Berry wrote in 2001,

In a viable neighborhood, neighbors ask themselves what they can do or provide for one another, and they find answers that they and their place can afford. This, and nothing else, is the practice of neighborhood. This practice must be, in part, charitable, but it must also be economic, and the economic part must be equitable; there is a significant charity in just prices.

Good luck fellas.  In addition to much the music world, Decatur is behind you.

From NPR News…

Anthropologists have come up with a theory about what kicked off a series of “creative explosions” in human ingenuity during the Stone Age – from about 90,000 to 45,000 years ago – and it doesn’t involve some sudden improvement in brain power.

Instead, the flowering of intelligence that brought sophisticated tools, better weapons and art came about because of population density: More people started living in bigger communities.

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A recent article in NY Times Magazine’s “Green Issue” explored the question “Why Isn’t the Brain Green?”,  searching out answers to why humans have such trouble focusing on long-term problems – in this instance climate change.

However, probably the most interesting element of the article has little to do with the environment at all.  It’s all about how we make decisions.

In the article, psychologists assert that we analyze a problem in two ways: analytically and emotionally.  Not too surprising, right?

But what’s really interesting is that they also discovered that they could affect the way people thought about an issue depending on how and when the issue was presented.  Asked to make a decision individually before joining a group, participants used phrases like “I feel…” much more frequently, showing an initial emotional response to the issue.  However, when the same question was presented in a group format first, respondents were much more likely to be analytical about these problems and used words like “we” and “us” demonstrating group identity.

So what?  Well, this obviously could have implications across all spectrums.  Not just regarding climate change, but any and all decision-making.  So when cities, towns,  corporations across the country, sit down to solve a potential problem, much of the possibility for solution is apparently determined by when the information is disseminated and how you promote teamwork (apparently giving teams identities – i.e. “you are the blue star team!” – works pretty well).

This gets me wondering not just about how this study and its results apply to our city’s own decision-making process, but also about any potential impact that a community blog might have vs. a newspaper.  While I can see how it can be argued that learning about an issue in either a blog or a newspaper is learning and deciding on an issue individually, I think there’s an argument to be made that a blog with an active and productive feedback/discussion mechanism could provide an element of community cooperation that could never be promoted by a hard copy (or unmoderated) newspaper.  (And no wonder AJC comments are all unbridled emotion.) I doubt its a strong enough incentive as sitting across the table from a bunch of fellow citizens, but hey, its better than nothing.

Interesting stuff.  Sounds a bit like Otis White, doesn’t it?

h/t:  Otis White