Oakland Cemetery Atlanta

The sun was setting and the air was cold.

 

  

  

  

I don't really know what this was about.  A larger than life sculpture of the interred?

  

The world carries on outside the cemetery walls.

  

  

The personal and family names are on the other side, but in some ways this is best.

  

In the cemetery, life gets cut down. 

Firestone Chats

Early Valentine's morning I took a tow truck to the Firestone on N Druid Hills.  The television, always too loud, played continuous local news for two hours.  The periodicals were all well arranged and the chairs mostly empty.  The service was fast.  The perks of a morning visit were clear.

Waiting for his vehicle was a pathologist from Emory hospital.  When the television news shared a story on a man who died under observation in the sleep clinic it elicited a strong response.   As he put it, "I don't like them sullying the name of the university."  To him the situation was clear: "I mean, he's 300 lbs, it's his own fault."  Not that he's not sympathetic.  He knew the fellow doctor who performed the autopsy.  He had warned him not to talk to the family; "that's how you get sued."  Evidently no one should see anyone without risk management.  He didn't think the family should sue "when it's all on emotion, not science."  He himself became a pathologist after doing rounds in medical school.  "People are nice, but they're not very nice when they're sick."  Their families are even worse.  He likes his job now, he doesn't have patients at all, but people drive too slow in Atlanta. 

The television news also informed me that in Forsyth county they're putting cell phone towers on school campuses.  Concerns?  Radiation, appearance.  As the city council member shared: "We haven't met anyone who is in favor of it--but people realize we have a budget problem."

The question of the day at the Firestone: are you ready for more snow?

Behind the counter were a number of gentlemen and one dependent.   No one likes working Sunday mornings, much less on Valentine's Day, but they all like having jobs.  "It's worth it."

Ormsby's

1170 Howell Mill Rd

This place recently opened and already it's pretty popular.  Upstairs is the restaurant and bar, downstairs bar & games (though you can also order food).  The games include: pool, darts, shuffleboard, indoor bocce, arcade.  Indoor bocce?  That's kind of special.  The idea is cool and the place is nice.  Folks seem to like the beer list, though there's a real lack of cider options.  Prices are reasonable and apart from the arcade and pool ($1.50 per game), the games are free.

The downside?  Not enough of the good stuff.  Only 2 pool tables?  I felt a bit like a lurker waiting to get "next"--same holds with the bocce and shuffleboard.  I never got to the bocce and the chalkboard sign-ups should be accompanied by a PA system.  The "arcade" aspect?  All old school, as advertised, but only 2 games.  They did have a good amount of televisions for spectators.  

On a weeknight or another weekend after a bit of a downstairs remodel (at least one more pool table and shuffleboard table each, fewer dining tables), I'd go back.

Trivia Night at Hand & Hand

            It was just another Wednesday night of trivia.  Clusters of young, urban professionals crowded around tables, blocking the aisles for the waitresses and pondering such mysteries as “What American islands were once called the Sandwich Islands?”  “Who produced the song ‘Muscles’ for Diana Ross in the 1980s?”  Scribbling with golf pencils onto uniform sheets and wagering significantly less than they do online, the patrons hoped to score big points for their teams.  Teams such as “Margaret Thatcher has tasted my cum five times,” “Michael Jackson didn’t molest those kids, he made love to them” and “Horsecock.”  Trivia night is little more than a way to practice the same covert phone skills required in high school, but it is a significant outlet for the disgusting and one way of viewing a societal shift. 

            Fifty years ago, if you wanted a strawberry milkshake, you might ask for a “shake in the hay” (trivia question), and back then if you wanted to call your team “Horsecock” your female friends might object.  Not today.  “Coed” no longer applies to a handful of colleges; it now applies to a whole range of social activities, including barhopping and strip clubs.  As relatively successful and decently dressed twenty-somethings scan the bar for potential mates, they spar in trivial knowledge, and rival each other in lewd comments.  No one seems to mind.  In fact, trivia is good clean fun.  Hearing the trivia coordinator read the team names into the microphone is the only moment of joy shared by all the teams (who can’t all be winners).

            What are the gender dynamics, if their terrain has shifted?  Trivia seems predetermined to favor men.  Statistically they are less educated than their female peers, but we all know who is most likely to get the questions on “sports” and “comics.” Sure, there are plenty of “geography” and “world history” questions, but I have yet to hear “art” or “Babysitter’s Club.” 

   

         Team dynamics are noteworthy.  Alphas assert themselves, always convinced they are correct.  Others will defer even knowing they possess the truth.  Many don’t know enough to make a reasonable guess.  The competitive types worry about other teams gaining a lead.  Some will snatch pencils and paper from others to write their preferred answers.  The slightly more subversive will change an answer while walking it up for submission.  All teams despise the player who says the answer loud enough for neighbors to hear.  Human nature is on display.

            Trivia night is one in which the bar is unusually full for a weeknight.  Yet despite the crowd, and their overdressed approach to “80s sitcoms,” little mixing takes place.  There is plenty of “the gaze.”  However, the team nature of the night makes one suspicious to outsiders.  If one is not suspicious, one must be exceptionally useless to a team in order to wander free around the bar, hence becoming less attractive to some.  The tension is broken when the songs play and patrons take their answers to the trivia coordinator, flashing smiles and nods to competitors, all the while banking more on a ten dollar gift card valid the next day than on the chance of meeting someone special.   

           Who always wins?  The bar of course. 

MARBL's 12th Night Revel

The night was cold but fur coats warmed many of the patrons.  Inside the Piedmont Driving Club anxious and awkward graduate students and archivists mingled with patrons of the fundraiser.  Theirs was the revel and theirs were the “Chief Revelers.”  While the patrons comfortably mixed and casually greeted the former poet laureate, Robert Pinsky, the students pondered what to order at the open bar.  The patrons were typically older and deeply interested in the goals of the library and Emory University.  They knew professors by name and advocated for open library access to all academic journals.  They were charming and warm and their name plates led them to tables close to the stage and the band. 

The dinner was served to the sound of the Gary Motley Trio.  Emory faculty and administrative figures read poems aloud to eager applause.  When the time came, Robert Pinksy took the stage to read from his Essential Pleasures collection, “an anthology of poems to be read aloud.”  These were America’s favorite poems and he was officially one of America’s favorite poems.  Though many authors may dislike readings, Pinsky seemed in his element.  Not for him were the words Raymond Carver put in Bukowski’s mouth in “You Don’t Know What Love Is”: “I’ve met men in jail who had more style/ than the people who hang around colleges/ and go to poetry readings.”  He was not a reluctant reader; he was a ready charmer.  For him were the words later in the poem: “there’s only one poet in this room tonight;” though certainly many guests felt otherwise in their hearts.  While he read I paused in my playing with the literal marble in Emory colors which lay on the table in proper theme.

Everyone clapped.  Everyone was kind.  MARBL would go on expanding its collections.  Soon these same people would have the pleasure of an evening with Salman Rushdie.  There was a bit of a logjam at the door waiting for the valet at the end.  Eager faces waiting as close to the door as they could tolerate the cold, clutching their new (free) copies of Essential Pleasures.  When the valet saw my car he knew what kind of tip to expect but he did not begrudge me my night in another world.