Civic Life in Atlanta: Grading on a Curve

Earlier this month The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta released a report on the state of civic life in Atlanta.  This report was based on an analysis the 2011 Current Population Survey for the Atlanta metropolitan region (there is a separate report that looks at the state of Georgia as a whole).

In the Atlanta area, 28% of respondants reported that they do formal volunteer work and 10% said that they work with neighbors to fix community problems.  Both of these proportions are higher than in most cities in the U.S., with Atlanta ranking 6th for formal volunteerism among the country's 51 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas, and 12th for working with neighbor to fix a community problem.  If 10% working with neighbors gets you 12th ranking overall, it must be really bad in a lot of places -- 10% seems quite low to me.  The volunteering that we do is most commonly done for (or perhaps through) religious and educational organizations.

41% of us participate in some kind of an organization.  Our participation is high, relative to other metropolitan areas, for participation in school groups (5th overall) and sports and recreation programs (11th).  This sounds right to me, given what I remember about when our kids were younger, with an expectation for a high degree of parental involvement in both school and extracurricular sports activities.  We may participate, but it's not necessarily because we want to.  According to the report, "there is less willingness among individuals to assume leadership responsibilities by holding an office or serving on a committee," with the Atlanta region ranking 35th in this category.

In the Atlanta area, we rank a dismal 34th for seeing or hearing regularly from family and 36th for eating regularly with others in the household.  The authors speculate that "this may reflect the region's long-standing status as an in-migration hub for job-seekers, especially young adults."  Maybe.  It also may reflect that so many people spend so much time driving (or at soccer practice).

In terms of electoral participation, 65% of us are registered to vote but only 47% of us voted in the previous mid-term election (27th and 22nd, respectively, compared to other metropolitan areas).  For local election voting, we are 34th, with only 31% of us voting.  But we are high for online political expression (9th), contacting public officials (13%), and making purchasing decisions for certain products (either to buy or not buy them) based on our personal values (12%).  I interpret this that we like to complain about things but we aren't very good at actually showing up at the ballot box.

What do they recommend we do about this?  The report ends with recommendations for increasing civic engagement, with lists of things individuals, nonprofits, funders, public officials, the media, and the private sector can do.  Most of this is totally in the non-rocket-science category.  "Invite your neighbors to dinner; introduce your neighbors to one another.  Begin a neighborhood project like a community garden or neighborhood watch...Begin a neighborhood listserv."  Show up.  Pay attention.  Say hello.  Put your neighbor's newspaper on their porch when they're out of town.

And don't just complain, but figure out which candidate you think is best for the job and vote.

"A Series of Unfortunate Circumstances"

A message from Lynsley one day last week - the new waffle sandwich place that replaced the burger place that replaced the empty space where Caramba used to be - was closed.  The brown paper is back up over the windows.  The notice that is posted on the door refers to "a series of unfortunate circumstances."

Of course I don't know what the specific "unfortunate circumstances" were but thanks to What Now Atlanta we do know about the trademark issues.  There probably was a way around that (pancakes could be substituted for the waffles, perhaps), but there was no way around this restaurant not being a good match for the neighborhood.

This space is in a small commercial area that already includes other restaurants.  There's Doc Chey's, which is a place to take the kids, but you won't linger over green tea after dinner.  There's Rosebud, where you can have your locally sourced chicken with the heirloom tomato salad, but I at least would not take my children there (although I am sure other families do).  There's the Family Dog, which is a popular bar that serves food, but don't even think about asking for the burger without the sauce.  (There was a review on Yelp complaining about the lack of a children's menu there.  Well, okay.)  There's Alon's, which is busy throughout the day with the morning coffee-and-croissants crowd, the lunchtime soup-and-sandwich crowd, and the after work get-something-so-I-don't-have-to-cook-tonight crowd.  The latter group could also get a casserole from Casseroles.

There also is not much parking.  Even with the small lot in front of Alon's, the small lot adjacent to Rosebud, the big lot in front of Doc Chey's, and the small lot behind the former waffle sandwich place, there is still overflow on busy nights to adjacent residential streets.  Which is fine -- I would rather have that than more parking lots -- but the reality is for all these places to be successful, a lot of people need to walk there, which mean they need to be appealing to people in the neighborhood, and worth walking to.

We used to walk to Caramba, when they were in that location.  Even though we might linger at our table, we almost always had margaritas, and I'm sure the owners made money on our visit.  We'd talk to the people at the next table, or visit with friends or neighbors who were sitting at the bar, or wander to the patio to say hello to someone we hadn't seen a while.  We liked the food, but it wasn't just the food.  It was a place where we participated in the social fabric of our neighborhood, and I'm sorry, you're not going to recreate that with waffle sandwiches.  

Yesterday morning, after a successful launch of a 2-liter soda bottle from a PVC pipe attached to a bicycle pump at Sunken Garden Park, Iain and I walked to Alon's to get some croissants.  The outdoor tables there overlook a parking lot and aren't obviously pleasant places to sit, but they were full.  It was late in the morning and things were winding down at the farmers' market across the street, but people were still walking through and lingering a moment to chat with an acquaintance.  Both of these places, Alon's and the farmers' market, are destinations worth going to on a Saturday morning.  We want to go to places where there are people.  And except for the part about launching the 2-liter soda bottle, it's not rocket science.

Opening the Street

I first heard about Atlanta Streets Alive when someone pasted a link on Facebook – North Highland was going to be closed from Virginia Avenue south for two miles on Sunday, May 20.  It sounded like it could be very disruptive for anyone needing to drive somewhere.  In retrospect, I can’t believe that that was my first reaction.  It may have had to do with the original information I saw, which made me think it was a bicycling event, or some vestigial memory of being pregnant in the 1990s, with a spring due date, back when Freaknik paralyzed traffic in much of the city for one weekend each spring, and Tom trying to figure out how we would get to Piedmont Hospital if Peachtree Road was impassible.  But I looked into it a little more, and it wasn’t just for bicycles, and it looked like fun.  So last Sunday afternoon Iain and I headed off for the North Highland and Virginia, with hats and sunscreen and water bottles.

We hadn't seen quite sure what to expect, but we had a great time.  We ended up walking all the way to the endpoint at Corley Street, near the Old Highland Bakery in Inman Park.  We saw people on bicycles in costume, people on unusual bicycles like the man riding the reproduction of an old bicycle with the very large front wheel and the small back wheel, and a napping cat strapped into an umbrella stroller.  There were musicians; my favorite were the percussionists, playing on overturned 5 gallon plastic buckets, and offering passersby and chance to join them, with pan lids to play, but the Seed & Feed Marching Band was playing near Manuel’s Tavern, and there were others too on sidewalks and in parking lots along the route.

There was lots of food.  The restaurants seemed to be doing a good business, and the ones with outdoor seating were pretty much full.  Some had set up tables to sell takeout, and there were food trucks and other vendors too.  We got lunch at a stand in the parking lot of the video rental place at Highland and North Avenue, and ice cream from the Westside Creamery truck, and popsicles from the King of Pops himself, in Inman Park. 

The Indie-pendent had a participatory art project – we painted something on the large canvas they had propped up against a retaining wall – and we cut pictures out of old children’s encyclopedias to make buttons outside Young Blood Gallery (they came out great --  that was really neat).  Story Corps was collecting very brief stories on Post It notes (“When did you fall in love for the first time?”  “What are you proudest of?”).  PEDS was asking people to put their foot in paint and leave a print on a roll of paper that they were going to deliver as a petition to the city, requesting that the sidewalks get fixed.  (I would have signed a petition, but I wasn’t going to take my shoe and sock off, almost three miles from home, and leave a paint footprint on a petition.  That just didn’t seem like a very good idea.)  I think it was the organizers who had a participatory exhibit entitled Pop-Up City Hall on how to improve the city.  But my favorite thing of the whole afternoon was Free Poems on Demand.  Two young men and a young woman were sitting on the sidewalk on folding chairs near Highland and North Avenue.  You could give them a topic, and then come back in a few minutes and get a poem, written just for you, on that topic.  As it turned out, demand was high and our poet had not gotten to the topic Iain had chosen by the time we finished lunch.  So we stopped by on our way back, and Iain collected his poem, and we dropped a dollar in the hat on the sidewalk.  (The poem, by the way, was worth waiting for, and we probably should have contributed more than a dollar.)

It was a great afternoon, but it was more than that.  The experience of walking the route really made me see the area differently.  It wouldn’t otherwise have occurred to me to walk from our house to Inman Park, but that’s what Iain and I did last Sunday afternoon.  It was about three miles, six miles round trip.  Realizing that in fact these distances are walkable (although maybe I won’t do it often) means that I probably will do it again sometime.  Honestly, that never had occurred to me.  And things look different from the perspective of the sidewalk (or walking down the middle of the street, where we were walking much of the time) than they do from behind the wheel of the car.  The event taught me that our intown neighborhoods are even more walkable than I thought they were, and just knowing that, I am more likely to do it.  (Where's that sidewalk petition?)

Atlanta Streets Alive wasn’t a big commercial festival like SummerFest for the Dogwood Festival.   A two-mile stretch of a street was mostly closed to vehicular traffic for the afternoon, and there were small scale, almost spontaneous activities and performances along the route.   Since last Sunday, I've learned a little more about the thinking behind events like Atlanta Streets Alive.  It's part of a movement of sorts to reclaim cities for people, through small scale changes in how people use space and interact with each other in the urban setting.  It’s called tactical urbanism.  According to Tactical Urbanism 2, “Improving the livability of our towns and cities commonly starts at the street, block, or building scale.  While larger scale efforts do have their place, incremental, small-scale improvements are increasingly seen as a way to stage more substantial investments.”  

The Atlanta Streets Alive project was – in tactical urbanism terms – an open street.  Open streets “temporarily provide safe spaces for walking, bicycling, skating and social activities; promote local economic development; and raise awareness about the detrimental effects of the automobile on urban living.”  I can’t say it better than the authors of Tactical Urbanism 2, so I am going to quote them at some length.

While the benefit of Open Streets initiatives are widely recognized, perhaps the most tangible benefit is the social interaction and activity that develops – thousands of people of all ages, incomes, occupations, religions, and races have the opportunity to meet in the public realm while sharing in physical or social activities.  In doing so, participants develop a wider understanding of their city, each other, and the potential for making streets friendlier for people.

The resulting vibrancy therefore enables people to experience their city’s public realm in a different way, which helps build broader political support for undertaking more permanent pedestrian, bicycle, and other livability improvements.  In this way, open streets are a tool for building social and political capital, while having a very real economic impacts for businesses, vendors, and organizations along the chosen route.

Last night we went to Caramba for dinner, and driving down North Highland I was pointing out to Tom and Caroline where we’d made the buttons, where we’d gotten a poem written to order, where we got our lunch.  I don’t see the street through the same eyes as I did before last Sunday, and I know I can walk to places that previously I would have never thought of walking.  And I'd still like that sidewalk petition.

On page 2 of Tactical Urbanism 2, there is a story about a “guerilla crosswalk” that was painted across a busy street in Baltimore; it has since become permanent, with an official, City of Baltimore-sanctioned crosswalk there.  I’m thinking that maybe we need one at Wessyngton and Cumberland.

Photo from Tactical Urbanism 2

Moving Day

Our neighbors Melinda and Aaron and their daughter Adele moved to Portland last weekend.  As I recall, Adele was just a baby when they moved here.  We passed along a favorite toy, a horse with wheels, to Adele in 2008.  Over the years, we've seen them at block parties and and admired their porch decorations (was it a witch with a tutu at Halloween?) and seen them at lemonade stands.  The Sunday before they left Lynsley hosted a going away party for Melinda.  There was good food and good company.  We're excited for them -- Aaron has a new job there -- and are sure they'll love Portland.

They've sold their house, and sometime soon we will have new neighbors.  Melinda told me she had told the couple who bought the house that the street is special, that there are block parties and they should get involved and get to know their neighbors.  She wasn't sure when they would be moving in, but we'll look forward to meeting them when they do.

There are many reasons why it's good to know your neighbors.  It makes it easy to find someone to feed your cat or your rabbit or your turtle or your fish when you're out of town.  They can pick up your mail and keep an eye on your house while you're gone, and call 911 if guys in an unmarked truck start carrying your stuff out of your house.  If your dog gets lost, it's more likely to make it home quickly.  If your party goes late and stays loud, neighbors that know you are more likely to look for earplugs and less likely to call the police than otherwise.  If there's an issue affecting the neighborhood, whether it's crime or school redistricting, it's easier to organize for some kind of collective action, which is more likely to be effective.  And, of course, when you move away, your neighbors might throw you a going away party.

And we hope Melinda and Aaron find a great new neighborhood in Portland, and we'll look forward to meeting our new neighbors. In the meantime, I guess we need to find a date for that spring block party.

The Last Chapter

Years ago - before Caroline was born - I was an officer in a local organization for women physicians. I don't quite remember how I got involved in this, but both the president and vice-president were spouses of people I knew from work, so that probably had something to do with it. I remember there were some meetings at people's houses, and that we sponsored a reception for a distinguished Emory faculty member who had just gotten a lifetime achievement award from a national organization. I spent an enormous amount of time putting together several issues of a newsletter for the group. I used WordPerfect, which at least at the time wasn't optimal software for newsletter publishing, and it was a lot of trouble, just to get it to look right. And I spent a lot of time working on content. This was before Google, so I was on the lookout in the newspaper for news about women physicians in the community that might be of interest. Once it was all done, I'd take it to Kinko's and get it copied on ledger-sized paper and folded for mailing, then print out mailing labels on my 9-pin printer and put it in the mail. I think the three of us did a pretty good job, but then I had my first child and I had no more time to spend on putting together a newsletter or for that matter much of anything else. I don't remember what happened after that, and I had forgotten about it.

A year or two ago I heard from Rachel, who had been president when I was the secretary, with the news that somehow there never was a successful handoff to the next set of officers. This wouldn't have mattered so much, but there was still quite a bit of money in the organization's bank account, and we had to do our due diligence to either try to find some new officers or officially put the group out of business. Carol, the former vice-president, no longer lived in Atlanta, so it was just Rachel and I. Rachel hired someone to send out a letter to our distribution list and there was a meeting at a restaurant, somewhere, to see if anyone was interested in taking the chapter over. No one was. There was one more outreach and then - absent any alternative - the decision was to close the bank account and send the money to the national organization.

So Rachel tried to do that, but it turned out that only Carol and I were signatories on the account. Rachel sent me the paperwork to get her added to the account but I never got it done. I would periodically get an email from her, asking when I could go to the bank with her to close out the account. The times that worked for her were always bad for me. There were a few final checks a couple of months ago, covering the costs of mailing and a deposit Rachel had made just to keep the account active. But the days I took off from work and had time to go to the bank were not days that worked for her.

Then, on Monday I had to go to the Bank of America to deposit some money for the Girl Scout's fall product sale. Girl Scout product sales - including the cookies that will be on sale in a few months - are set up as cash sales. The directions say don't keep more cash than you can afford to replace if it's lost or stolen, but you have to go to the bank in person to deposit it, which suggests to me that they think all their volunteers work for Bank of America (and can easily do this, during the hours the bank is open). But I digress. So I emailed Rachel and told her I would try to close the account while I was there, and if she would tell me what to do with the check, I would mail it.

At the bank that afternoon, I deposited my $57 for the Girl Scouts, and then told the teller I needed to close an account. Personal? A business? An organization, I told him; I showed him the checkbook. It would be a few minutes; have a seat.

Just a couple of minutes later I was invited into an office, and the banker pulled up the account. Carol and I were signatories on it; did I have ID? I gave him my driver's license. I told him I wanted to purchase a cashier's check for the balance of the account; he said they'd give me the cashier's check, that I didn't have to buy it. So I wrote a last check for the account balance - $19,720.24 - to the American Medical Women's Association, and he asked a little apologetically for a second ID ("because of the size of the check.") I gave him my passport. He disappeared with the check, my driver's license, and my passport and came back a few minutes later with my documents and a cashier's check, made out to AMWA. It was done.

That evening Rachel emailed me a cover letter to send with the check, and asked what the final amount was. I told her, and that the banker had told me that the account had been opened sixty years ago. She responded back that it said a lot about how things had changed for women physicians that there apparently was no longer a recognized need for a local organization like this one (although she thought there was still a need at the national level). I thought this was an interesting observation, and she may be right - on the other hand, organizations generally are not fairing so well in modern life. I asked her if she'd read Bowling Alone. No, she replied, should she? Yes, I told her, it's one of my favorite books.

In his book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam makes the case that both formal and informal social ties have massively frayed in the modern United States, and that this actually matters - that social ties contribute in important ways both to our personal well-being and the strength of our nation. Thinking back to all that time I spent putting together that newsletter, years ago, and putting a first class stamp on each one and dropping the bundles in the mail - it was an effort to tie together somehow a group of busy professional women who were too busy in the end to keep the organization going.

Sixty years ago, there were many fewer women in the medical profession, and they were of a generation that were more organizationally-inclined than their daughters and granddaughters. Now, of course, if we did want to network with other women physicians in the community we would do it differently. If we had a newsletter at all, it would go out by email, but we probably wouldn't have a newsletter; we'd have a website or a Facebook group or a blog. (This is one of the reasons that the Postal Service is in trouble.) But we're busy - we have jobs and kids and causes we're passionate about - and maybe this category doesn't resonate any more.

On Tuesday morning on my way to work I dropped the letter into the mailbox.

The Race for Research

I am writing this at a coffee shop, since we finally gave up on Earthlink a few days ago and now are internet-connection-less at home; we are in the progress of moving to AT&T and hopefully that will work better.

The big news is that Sunday is the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation's Race for Research. Last November, when the race occurred, Amy was newly diagnosed, and by chance I saw the flyer at Emory when I was having my mammogram. Amy couldn't walk with us, but she was there, and cheered us on; Lynsley made a sign, and we took pictures. Iain ran with Dan, and besides the neighbors, other friends of Amy and of Max were there. We weren't very organized, but I said to Lynsley, "Next year - T-shirts!"

So we actually have a team this year, and we sort of have T-shirts, thanks to a color inkjet printer and iron-on transfers from Office Depot - Amy is still waiting for a couple more, but I ran out and didn't have a chance to get to the store til now. But now I have them, and I'll print up more tonight.

At the Republican National Convention, Rudy Guiliani gave a talk in which he ridiculed Barack Obama's background as a community organizer. Setting aside how I feel about the two Presidential candidates, I was deeply disappointed that Mr. Guiliani chose to say what he did.

Community is really important. It's a ride to the doctor when your car breaks down, and someone to look after your kids when you can't get home from work on time. It's someone bringing you a meal when the doctor gives you really bad news and and going across the street late at night to ask someone for advice about whether or not your baby needs to go to the ER. It's the people who care about whether or not your street is safe from hazards, whether it is drug dealers or speeders or predatory lenders, and who can call 911 when you aren't home and can't. It's neighborhood watches and the Morningside Security Patrol. It's wine and cheese on a Sunday evening or a potluck at the end of summer or even guys playing guitars in the parking lot. Maybe in Rudy Guiliani's neighborhood no one does these things, but on my street we do. And it doesn't just happen.

And on Sunday, we'll be in the parking lot at Manuel's Tavern, and this year, we'll have T-shirts. They'll be hugs and photos, and this year, Amy will be walking with us. And when I'm dead, I would be honored to be identified as a community organizer.

See you Sunday. Let me know if you need a transfer for your T-shirt. Hot iron, no steam.