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Rarely do the tornadoes actually come through a central city.  Now that they have, the effects could be scary.  We may be abandoned.

Amazingly, the death toll from the entire storm system seems to be two.  However, the property damage is estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars.

A significant portion of this was suffered directly by the state as the Georgia Wold Congress Center was damaged.  The good news is that they have already begun fixing the place.  The bad news is that it will cost the state millions in tourist dollars and we’ll have to fight like hell to get them back.

When Katrina went through New Orleans, we benefited by picking up conferences that came here instead.  Now, the Big Easy and other southern cities are going to ‘return the favor’.  Getting that business back will not be easy.   On top of a recession, this is not good.

Moreover, the number of buildings which need repair has led to a large swath of downtown being closed.     This means that except for repairs, economic activity in much of downtown will grind to a halt.

There are two silver linings here.  One is that construction workers will certainly be back in the economy.  All across the state, the storm hit hard.  Hail up to three inches destroyed cars and damaged buildings.  Much of that will be covered by insurance, and one would think that Governor Perdue could get us some disaster funding here to help poorer folks pay for the rest.

The second silver lining is that with much of downtown closed to vehicular traffic, lots of people will be taking MARTA, which apparently was not effected.  The more people who get in the habit of taking it, the better.

What can you do?  First, donate to the Red Cross.  Second, come this weekend, you can support the communities that were hit.  Go see a show at Theatrical Outfit and eat downtown.  Help the local economy get back on it’s feet.

You would think that Real Estate developers would be a positive force in improving Atlanta architecture, but it just isn’t so.

Now, Ben Carter Properties wants to tear down the Buckhead Library and put up another condo tower.  The problem is that the Buckhead library is internationally recognized as a great piece of post modern architecture.  In fact, students and architecture fans have build fan sites about it.  It’s a tourism generator!  It’s Atlanta architecture that people want to visit and about which they want to write good things!

The library not only garners visitors, but it’s a pretty effective library.   Staffers are able to administer it, find it’s recourses, and give people information.  For a long time, it also have a great view of the city, making it an excellent contemplative space. That view has been substantially altered by a condo tower.

Now the developer, of course, promises that they will replace the library in their tower, but you know it would be as large or as effective.   Moreover, it will simply be part of a larger complex.  It will look a lot like another Carter Property, the Mall of Georgia.

Whether the library survives will say a lot about Atlanta.  We have a history of destroying good architecture.  Atlanta has long been the city to busy to preserve.   In recent years, there has been a claim that we’ve become much more cosmopolitan.

Choosing to preserve the library will prove it.  Choosing to tear it down, just means the power blonds still think that they can become cosmopolitan by drinking them.

There is good news and bad news.  The good news is that the State clearly understands the importance of Grady hospital and is committed to moving it toward a new management structure. 

 The bad news is that they seem intent on forcing Fulton and Dekalb county to continue to pay for it, whether they like the new agreement or not. 

It’s likely that the new agreement is in Fulton and Dekalb’s long term interests, but the state should not have to power to force the local tax payers to accept an agreement without approval of their county commissions. 

Both the Fulton County Commission and Dekalb County Commission have given the agreements to their legal departments for study.  Both want to act on the proposals in a timely fashion.  The legislature is pre-mature in trying to force the issue. 

It’s not as though the counties want to hospital to shut down.  What they do want is to be able to assure it provides the services each of the counties needs, that Doctors and other staff who live and are trained in Fulton and Dekalb continue to have access to working at the hospital, and that as stake holders, residents of the counties can influence how the system is managed. 

Grady sees nearly a million patients a year through it’s system.  It’s budget is nearly $700 million and over $100 comes directly from Fulton and Dekalb tax payers.  When you pay $100 million, your commission should get the read the proposals before the state intervenes.

So, the Dogwood Festival cannot be in Piedmont Park due to the drought.  You’d think they’d go to Centennial Park, right?  Nope.  They’re going to Lenox Square.

Is there anything more Atlantan than having a festival named for a tree in a shopping mall that was paved over them?  Somewhere Joe Winter’s bumper sticker grins through the tears.

Worse, Bryan Hill, head of the Dogwood festival literally said on WABE, “We’re so glad we could keep the festival in Midtown…” Oy.

Am I glad the festival will continue?  Yes.  Is having it at Lenox a wise idea?  No.  There is no shade.  Nowhere for the the animals to be.  If the weather is even remotely warm, there are no trees for shade and the blacktop will generate a ton of heat.  Further, people are going to try to drive that weekend, despite having two MARTA stations walking distance from the mall.

They are having a record number of artists, but in a much smaller space…  You have to wonder what they’re giving up… Music?  the Dog Show?

It could be a huge mess, we hope not, but wouldn’t bet on it.

We all need medical care sometimes. However, if you don’t have insurance, it can be expensive.

Well take heart, because there are affordable options out there. Here are some of them. At 1340 Boulevard is the Grant Park clinic. Office visits are $30. At 1350 Boulevard is the Family Health Enterprise. This clinic is $40 but they take appointments. Their phone number is 4O4 635 13OO.

Both clinics work with Publix to provide free prescriptions. Many of those not free at Publix are $4 at Target.

So, if you’re sick and you need help… Take I-20 to Boulevard and head south to health!

Want something odd? If you’re African American and you want to graduate from college in Georgia, you should go to Emory. According to recently published research, 83% of African Americans who enter Emory graduate. 66% of African Americans who enter UGA graduate. No information was available for Agnes Scott, Oglethorpe, or Georgia State.

Contrast this with the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Morehouse graduates 55% percent of it’s students while Clark Atlanta University sees a mere 32% of its students who enter finish. Only Spellman rises above. They graduate 77% of their entrants.

Of course, if you really want to graduate, you go to Harvard. 95% of their African American students graduate. In fact, the top seven schools in terms of African American graduation rates are all in the northeast and a majority of those are Ivy league universities.

Contrast this with the historically Black colleges and universities of which only 8 have a graduation rate of more than 50% and this represents a significant improvement since 1998. This calls into question the need, purpose, and future of America’s historically Black Colleges and Universities. At the outset there are two contrasting points of view:

1) Their time has passed. The strong ones will evolve toward a more multi-cultural future and start admitting a variety of students based on the strength of their own programs.

2) The other argument is that they need to be strengthened and fortified. In this view, one sees the need for more governmental and private support as an effort to keep African American college enrollment local and strong. A special emphasis would need to placed to induce young African American men to enroll. Right now, far more Black women are going to college and of those who go, half graduate. Fewer men attend college and roughly a third of them graduate. One possible role for these schools is to address that gap.

Still for those whose goal is graduation & with the grades and the intellectual drive to apply, traditional colleges are the way to go. Even with a 77% graduation rate, Spellman cannot touch the Seven Sisters or even Emory.

DragonCon Junior, AKA Anime Weekend Atlanta, has hit and it has twice the orientation acceptance yet an average age of attendance of half of DragonCon.

If you live in Atlanta, you know the wildest party of the year if DragonCon.  In fact, it’s the wildest party Atlanta has seen since Freaknik.  It’s people in all manner of get ups invading downtown for the weekend and essentially shutting down Peachtree Center.  We all know it’s wild, we all know it’s licentious (if you’re doing it right), and we all know we want those tourist dollars.

Many of you may be unaware that about 20% of the people who went to DragonCon will come back inside the perimeter this weekend to put their Bleach costume back on and go to AWA.  People come from Florida, Tennessee, Chicago, Texas, and even Japan to participate in the convention.  Thousands of people attend and thousands dress in costume.  The Waverly and Galleria are used almost exclusively for the conference (in fact, if you’re part of the Log and Timber Show, you’re in for a surprise).

What makes AWA interesting is that while it’s nominal focus and events are more narrowly targeted, the anime focus makes explicit more of the funnier and more adult parts of DragonCon.  This while the audience is generally younger.  While topics focus heavily on anime, it’s production elements, on creating the costumes, and new releases, there are also elements that acknowledge certain fetishes and those who like them.

There is a sub-genre of anime that specifically deals with ‘boys who like boys‘ and the girls who like them.  At AWA this year, there was a meet and greet specifically for fans of this genre.  This was then followed by another 18 and up session dealing specifically with the art of Japanese Bondage.  What makes this amazing is that because a large minority of the anime produced is expressly sexual in content, the convention reasonably deals with it and expects participants to be generally tolerant if not open and affirming of people of different orientations.  This perhaps reached a fever pitch with an ad hoc march/conga line of the furries through the Waverly.

The people running the convention are walking a very fine line.  They want to attract a diverse audience and give people room to dress up as it ads to the atmosphere.  On the other hand, they are expressly concerned with the well being of thousands of attending children and the concerns of their parents.  Not only have they made some events strictly 18 and up, but they make a serious effort to keep other events G-rated and put serious constraints on what can be put into a costume.  They even (perhaps wisely) have decided that silly string is a weapon.

Still, these restrictions don’t seem to cramp the style of the convention, which has a formal ball, a Jazz night, and a higher percentage of participants in costume than DragonCon.  What AWA needs to do now is add programming.  They have a few tracks, but they are limited.  If the number of participants grows, adding more seminars will give people a place to go, add to the quality of the presentations, and raise the prestige of the event.   That should make the convention managers, Cobb County, and local vendors very happy indeed.

Recently, Gilda’s Club held an event at 2 Peachtree Street.  The results tell a lot of about Atlantans.  It turns out that White native Atlantans had no idea where this was.

This building used to be known as the First Atlanta Tower and the Woodruff Foundation paid to refurbish the building then gave it to the state.  It now houses state departments and some offices of Georgia State University.  For nearly 10 years it was the tallest building in Atlanta and it was the second tallest for another 8 years.  Now, people have forgotten it completely.

Why?  Because for many years, Atlanta wasn’t a city, it was Los Angeles East, and White native Atlantans abandoned downtown as soon as Mayor Jackson was elected.  Part of the culture was the wholesale abandonment of downtown for the mall.  Hence, Rich’s and Davidsons are long gone.  Hence Underground continues to have trouble.  Hence Fairlie Poplar still has not become the nightclub/theatre section of town it is perfectly laid out to be.

The result is that the people who actually knew, or at least deduced, where the building was were all northerners or African Americans.  They were people who had thought about the actual street number and what it meant, something which the white natives apparently no longer do.  They were also the ones who actually knew their way around downtown a little bit.

What Atlanta needs is for the current generation of native Atlantans to actually discover the city part of their city.  They should know where 2 Peachtree is.  They should know where 206 Washington Street is and what is there.  The same goes for 84 Luckie Street.  If Atlanta is to thrive, people need to be able to take advantage of these resources, and to do that, they have to be able to find them without a GPS.

MARTA did not win customers this weekend.  On one of the busiest weekends of the year, MARTA decided to single track.  Further, they ran a number of trains on the opposite site of where they usually arrive confusing tons of out of towners.

Here’s what happened this weekend:

• The Braves were in town
• Falcons played
• Georgia Tech Played
• African American Gay Pride
• Oh, Yeah, the 60,000 people that went to some part of DragonCon!

All of these events meant that trains were packed.  Often they were so full, that if you tried to get on at a station south of Lindbergh you couldn’t.  Moreover, during the day on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, they did not run all the trains to the airport, doubling the demand for southbound trains.

People griped.  Worse, Klingons griped!  You don’t want to be stuck in a MARTA car between an angry Klingon, a Wookie, and a Mets Fan.

Of course MARTA has to do maintenance, but events such as DragonCon are high profile events that bring lots of tourists to town.  Those folks will go back to work Tuesday and help determine whether more conventions come to here.  Their negative MARTA experience will not help.  Surely, MARTA management, the local sports teams, and the ACVB can coordinate events so that maintenance is done at night and on weekends when nothing is happening in town.

Moreover, MARTA needs to make a guarantee.  If you wait more than 20 minutes for a train ever, that ride is free.  How can they do this?  Tap out.  The system knows where you got on.  They know how long it takes to travel on MARTA to your destination.  They know when you tap out.  Hence if your time traveled plus twenty minutes is greater than your tap in and out, the system can credit you.

Such a guarantee would encourage MARTA use and put pressure on operations staff to keep things well maintained.  It can also go into the Union goals as a benchmark for them to hit and that will also please the MARTOC committee.  When the customers win, the politicians are satiated and efforts are made to increase the economy of the product, we’ll get better results both in transit and in economic development terms.

It looked as though a constructive re-formulation of Grady might be in the works with a new governance system, a new board, and new money.  Meetings were happening and even the Speaker of the House was in attendance.  But those already in power at Grady saw their livelihoods in danger and so they pulled the race switch.  This, of course, has thrown the train off the track.  Whether it derails is yet to be seen.

Part of the Grady issue is about race.  The people who use Grady is disproportionately minorities.  People without health insurance in Georgia are also disproportionately minorities.  Grady also has a stigma of race left over from past decades when people referred to the hospital as “The Grady’s”.   Morehouse, one of the few African American medical schools has said that if Grady Closes, they too may have to shut their doors.

Still, race here, while legitimate, is only an issue.  It’s not The Issue.  The issue is that letting Grady close is flat stupid and no one seems to have the courage to step up and say “Grady will not close, it’s too important an asset, we’ll all accept changes to make it happen”.  If there were a real disaster and Grady was closed, we’d have lost the best level one trauma center south of DC to handle the emergency.  People with real traumas would also lose their access to good care.  Without Grady, more people will die.

Yes, there are racial concerns if Morehouse close, but the real issue of Morehouse closing is that we need Doctors.  Georgia needs all they can get and keeping Medical schools open is important.  Again, if Grady closes and Morehouse closes, there will be fewer Doctors and more people will die.

The Chamber of Commerce recommendations (with which everyone has a complaint, so you know they did something right), suggest keeping the operating authority in place and it’s board in place to address governmental oversight, long term strategic issues, and a link to the communities which Grady primarily serves.  Under that board, would the be board of the Non Profit Corporation which was responsible for running the hospital and health system day to day and doing the general strategic and tactical management necessary to keep the enterprise financially stable.

Who should be on the two boards?  On the Authority board, there should be elected representatives from the City of Atlanta, Dekalb County, and Fulton County.  They should make a bare majority.  Then, representatives from the State, Atlanta Regional Commission, and community groups should also be represented.  Lastly, members of the Corporation Board should have voting power on the new Authority board.  This way, the tax payers who have carried the bulk of the load for Grady will still make a majority of the board and they, via election, would have to be responsive to the people most likely to use the hospital.

The Corporation board will need to be made up of dedicated professionals.  Members of Emory University, Morehouse, business leaders, and experts in financial stabilization such as Lisa Cremin must be on this board.  A balance of financial experts and medical professionals is needed to keep Grady Running.

Further, the goal of both board must be the same:  To financially stabilize and increase the quality of care for all those using the system, regardless of ability to pay.

Grady, perhaps more than any other institution in Georgia calls for a Deming style approach to improve the excellence in the care it provides.  To accomplish this, the focus has to be on the customers.  To make the customers happy, efforts will be needed to make effective use of staff time, to give them incentives to improve things, and guarantees that the system will still be in place.

So far, one politician seems to get this, and he is Lt. Governor Casey Cagle.  Much to the surprise of everyone, he has been out front and recognizing Grady’s importance, keeping it open to those it currently serves, and suing state resources to help fund the transition to a more stable structure that wastes less money.  Working with Senator David Shaeffer, there will be enabling legislation for the changes envisioned by the Chamber Report in the coming session of the Legislature.

As for those who still harp about the loss of ‘Black Power’, this is worth pointing out.  Power, in and of itself, is pointless.  Unchecked, it merely leads to inefficiency… witness the current system at Grady.  The key is not power, but actually doing something to help the people who the hospital serves:  those in great medical need and those without insurance.  A majority of the people using Grady are minorities and so if the system is fixed, the majority who will actually benefit, will also be minorities.

On the outside, the color that matters here is green.  On the inside, the color that matters is red.  If all you can see is Black or White, you’ll never capture enough green to stop the red from hemorrhaging.