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July 2006
How has development inconvenienced you?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Note to readers: Bill Allen’s blog will return soon.
Life in Duluth has come full circle for me of late.
My first blog with the AJC told of my Russian friend getting lost on 120 because of all of the name changes it undergoes. My second blog was about a computer virus that viciously attacked my computer. My third (or is it fourth? My memory ain’t what it used to be) relayed a complaint that some of you had expressed to me about traffic and how development in Duluth was getting out of hand.
I got to revisit all of these subjects this past weekend.
Last Friday, my Russian friend called me in a panic. She had a virus on her computer. A pop-up window kept appearing every time she was in the middle of doing something, shutting her computer down. Could I go over and help her? Eager to demonstrate my technological prowess (and thinking that I had better pull this off or I was in deep doo-doo), I went to her house to play Bill Gates for a while.
She lives in a subdivision just off of Pleasant Hill Road near Buford Highway where they are putting in the new interchange ramps. The DOT completely blocked off the original entrance to her subdivision, moved it down a couple of hundred yards, and erected a traffic light so that she (and her neighbors) have better access (though there are no signs nor street lights to mark the change, adding to the confusion of it all). I got to her house, cracked my knuckles, and went to work. After two hours, I had not only fixed the problem but also fixed several others. I was so proud of myself that I pulled a tendon in my elbow patting myself on the back.
She thanked me by taking me to a movie the next night. We went to see “RV” at Venture Mall, the 99-cent cinema ($1.99 after 6:00. We are both cheap, so this worked out well for us). The last time I had been there, the mall was virtually empty. All of the stores had been vacated. I thought at the time (and still do) that overdevelopment drove everyone away, that it was too hard to get in and out of there (I avoid that area like the plague when possible because of this. It’s not uncommon to take 45 minutes to travel the half-mile on Pleasant Hill from Satellite to I-85). There were new stores, however, and the parking lot was full. The joint was jumping.
Usually when I am in that neck of the woods, I will bypass Pleasant Hill via Steve Reynolds Blvd. Most times it’s a lesser of two evils, but there are times when it offers little or no relief. Saturday proved to be a good night, as we made it from her house to the movie theater in 15 minutes (pretty darn good for a Saturday night, if you ask me).
Leaving the place, however, was a different matter. Too many people were trying to get back onto Venture Drive at the same time. There was no point turning left to get back to Steve Reynolds, we’d be there forever. So, I turned right, knowing that there was a traffic light at the intersection of Venture and Pleasant Hill. I would just turn left onto Pleasant Hill and deal with it.
Except that you can’t turn left at that traffic light any more. Used to be able to, but not any more. I didn’t know that. The first painted arrow on Venture as you approach Pleasant Hill showed that you could turn left, but subsequent arrows showed either going straight or right. I couldn’t go straight – people had the intersection blocked (par for the course), and I couldn’t make a U-turn. So, we found ourselves headed to I-85. As I was getting onto Pleasant Hill, my Russian friend said, “Oh, I have been here before. You turn left on to 85 and then you end up going to 316 because no one will let you over.” Déjà vu.
Long story short, we did in fact end up going up 85, but I showed her how to get to 120 from there, and we had a good conversation recalling our previous conversation about getting lost once she realized where we were, and how her adventure had started my work here with the AJC. Her computer is still working, and traffic on Pleasant Hill is still awful. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
How has development inconvenienced you?
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: Bill Allen
Are you prepared to help if terror strikes Gwinnett?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Do you know how to help people if disaster strikes?
If you want to learn, then I have good news for you. The Gwinnett Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) is registering people for their next classes in October.
CERT is part of the Citizen Corps which President Bush initiated after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
I graduated from the Gwinnett CERT program in May and I recommend it to everyone who lives or works in the county.
In addition to making new friends, I learned how to offer real help in crisis situations until first responders arrive and I learned how to cooperate with those first responders after they show up.
CERT participants learned how to quickly size up an emergency situation, identify and triage the injured and sick, provide basic first aid, as well as how to relate to victims without becoming emotionally distraught.
We also learned how to do light search and rescue work in buildings, how to extinguish small fires, and how to contain gas and water leaks that could cause explosions or flooding.
Most important: We practiced how to effectively communicate under difficult circumstances and share information with CERT team members, first responders, victims and their families.
We also learned how to “think outside of the box” to prevent blood-borne diseases, make splints and bandages, help excavate trapped victims and transport them when standard first-aid supplies are not available.
For example, plastic grocery bags can be used as a barrier when gloves are not available. Splints can be made out of magazines and tape. Loose boards can be turned into levers to pry up debris around embedded victims and may also be used as a means to transport victims.
CERT training consists of 20 hours of classroom training. Active participation is required. CERTs learn through reading, videos, classroom discussion as well as exercises and drills.
Before graduating all candidates for CERT basic certification must participate in mock disaster exercises, which are held a couple of weeks after regular CERT classes are completed at the Gwinnett Fire College.
Upon graduating, you earn a certificate of completion, your official CERT identification, and you become part of a group of caring and dedicated citizens who are ready and able to respond to crisis situations at home, school, on the job, and anywhere else a crisis may occur.
As a CERT graduate you also have the opportunity to participate in additional training, help instruct new CERT students, and to assume leadership within the CERT organization.
For more information about Gwinnett CERT you can email CERT at info@gwinnettcert.org or call 770-513-5830.
The next CERT classes are Oct. 10-Nov. 28 and Dec. 2. For more information and to sign up online go to: www.gwinnettcert.org
Will you contact Gwinnett CERT to learn how to offer assistance during an emergency? Are you prepared to help if terror strikes Gwinnett?
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Beni Dakar
I dislike cell phones - but may I borrow yours?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My company participates in a softball league. We’re not very good, but we have a lot of fun.
The other night, I’m sitting on the bench at the during a game waiting for my turn at bat, and this music starts playing.
At once, three people reach into their pockets, shoes, and gym bags. It took me a second, but then I realized: It was a cell phone ringing.
I don’t have a cell phone. I may be one of the few people in North America who don’t.
I had one briefly when I worked in outside sales at my previous job, but I was glad to get rid of it.
In my mind, cell phones are a loss of privacy, a leash to unwanted demands, another way to be accessible to an encroaching world.
“Come on, Bill, you’re being silly,” my friends say. “You can always turn it off, for Pete’s sake.”
They have a point. However, I notice that few who have them ever do, even when they are in restaurants, or movie theaters, or churches. A co-worker was telling me not too long ago that she was at a funeral, and a cell phone interrupted the service. Of all places.
It gets me every time. I’m sitting in the park in downtown Duluth or I’m walking in the grocery store and someone will start talking.
I, of course, think that they are talking to me, and so I will answer them. But they aren’t talking to me. They’re talking on their cell phones.
And now, they have these things in their ear that look like what Lt. Uhura used to wear on Star Trek (Mr. Spock too). Y’all probably know what they’re called - I honestly have no idea - so it’s even harder to tell that they’re not talking to me.
And then they have the temerity to look at ME like I’m crazy because I answered them. They are standing alone in the middle of an open area, seemingly talking to nobody, and they look at me like I’m crazy because I answered. It makes sense, I guess. I mean, I am the one engaging in the “abnormal” behavior by not talking on my cell phone, or even owning a cell phone. Hmm.
I was waiting at a red light to turn east onto State Bridge from southbound Medlock Bridge the other day, and I observed the cars from those turning north onto Medlock Bridge from eastbound State Bridge. Of the 22 cars I counted, 17 people were talking on their cell phones while they were in the process of turning.
People have complained ad nauseum about the dangers of DWT (Driving While Talking) so I don’t want to touch on it too much here, except to say that given how many people I saw doing it and how many people I’ve heard complain about it - well, there’s more than a few of you out there who are hypocrites.
Maybe I notice it because I’m in a growing (shrinking) minority. I see it going on around me so often that I become more acutely aware of my lack of participation.
Until the other night. I was having some food at a local establishment and I was talking to my friend John at the bar. John was going to take a trip to Myrtle Beach. I told him I had a friend of a friend in Charleston who chartered fishing trips and that I could call my buddy to track down the number.
I asked John to borrow his cell phone to make the call. And then, I thought back and realized that it wasn’t the first time that I borrowed someone’s cell phone.
Smokers complain about OPC smokers (Other People’s Cigarettes). I’m becoming an OPCP caller (Other People’s Cell Phones). How quickly I have tumbled from my moral high ground.
Do you know any OPCP callers?
Permalink | Comments (70) | Categories: Bill Allen
Summer snowballs?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Summer has long been my favorite season.
Nearly three decades since my school girl days have faded away, I still remember how slowly those last few weeks of school seemed to drag by while eagerly waiting for summer vacation to begin.
I am fortunate to have many wonderful summer memories. However, one memory reigns supreme: The July 1967 snowball fight. Yes, a children’s snowball fight, right in the middle of July.
Like many Gwinnettians, much of my life’s history is in another place. My beginning is in the Midwest, where we fully experience the gladness of all four seasons.
My mother and Aunt Addie, unbeknownst to anyone else, had made dozens and dozens of snowballs throughout the winter and stored them away in brown paper grocery bags kept in my mother’s big deep freezer.
One hot and lazy mid July summer afternoon, my Mom and Auntie challenged about a half dozen of my playmates and me to a snowball fight.
We all looked perplexed and nervously laughed at the adults who proposed such a preposterous idea.
After all, it was hot - July hot – and there was scarcely a cool breeze to be found, much less any snow.
Suddenly, the unbelievable was made believable. Against the backdrop of 90 degree and rising heat, winter’s chill splattered all over my face. Someone had tossed a snowball at me.
My friends’ eyes widened with wonder. Nervous laughter turned into unrestrained merriment.
Like magic, sacks and sacks of snowballs appeared.
For about 15 minutes we enjoyed a supernatural like bliss of hurling the cold snowballs in the summer’s heat at one another.
To this day, that is the most counterintuitive fun that I have ever had.
The other kids could not wait to tell their parents about the summer snowball fight. Several parents came by our house to verify that such an event had indeed occurred. Perhaps, they thought their offspring had just made up a silly story?
I now think about how much love and intention my mother and aunt put into planning for a few minutes of summer time fun for my buddies and me. I wonder what were their thoughts and their inspiration to make and sack and store dozens of snowballs in the winter – to be used as ammunition for a July snowball fight by their daughter/niece’s playmates.
The memory of those remarkable ladies and the delight of that summer snowball fight continue to bring me pleasure.
What is your best childhood summer memory?
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Beni Dakar
I know why a deer smashed your windshield
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The deer are rebelling.
According to an AJC article this week, Georgia has the nation’s fifth highest rate of deer-vehicle collisions.
Behind Henry County, Gwinnett is second in the number of accidents involving deer.
That’s a ranking based on the total incidents reported to police in Georgia two years ago - 10,017. Georgia State Patrol officials suspect that not all incidents were reported. The Wildlife Resources Division estimates that 50,000 accidents actually took place.
I see deer at my office. I will go outside to catch a breath of fresh air during the course of the day, and I will often see one, two, sometimes three of them roaming about in the wooded area just on the other side of the parking lot. It’s a really neat thing to see.
There’s always been wildlife here. Back in the day, Gwinnett was a great area in which to hunt and fish. I saw raccoons, opossums and box turtles regularly when I was growing up. Lately, in addition to deer, I have also been seeing foxes and even a coyote.
Back when Jones Bridge Park was still in the country and there were actually dirt roads strewn throughout the county, it was rare to see a dead critter on the side of the road. They all stayed back in the woods, for the most part. I knew they were there, but I never saw them. We had not yet encroached upon their land.
The fact of the matter is that deer, and wildlife in general, are running out of room. Developers carve subdivisions out of valleys, mow down whole forests in order to erect apartments, strip malls, shopping centers, business complexes and recreation complexes such as ball fields and golf courses.
I call it the Field of Dreams Mentality: If you build it, they will come. And come we have, in droves. Mild winters, reasonable prices for land, economic opportunity: There are many reasons why we have grown so much.
Now, the hidden expenses of our growth are starting to come to light. Development of the region has been so haphazard, so unplanned and uncontrolled, that now we are starting to see the consequences of our lack of restraint.
Deer come out of the woods and hit our cars like jihadists attacking infidels. The costs of repairing a damaged car and paying for hospital bills continue to grow.
Coyotes and bears, once seen only on the rarest of occasions, are now foraging through the trash bins of our apartment complexes and shopping malls.
When I was growing up, my dogs had free run of the neighborhood. They never ventured far away, my neighbors knew them, and they played in the streets just like the kids did. If I did that today, there is a better than good chance that my pet could become some critter’s dinner because they are forced to live closer together.
We haven’t really faced the consequences of our growth, but now we are starting to. And it’s going to get worse. The less space they have for their own, the more they will start to encroach on ours. Expenses resulting from property damage caused by deer and other wildlife will continue to grow.
I’m not sure what to do about it, but I’d like to hear your suggestions.
Permalink | Comments (20) | Categories: Bill Allen
King papers important for Gwinnett, too
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Shirley Franklin’s political savvy and leadership ability spill over into the entire Atlanta metro region.
Last February, in a speech to the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce, the Atlanta mayor addressed a capacity crowd of local business and political leaders about the need for a strong regional focus.
Franklin spoke about how Atlanta and metro counties, like Gwinnett, share natural resources of air and water — and, moreover, how we draw from the same labor pool.
Without being smug, Franklin knows that the prestige and attraction of her city has a lead role to play in forging the identity and the perceptions of the metro area and perhaps even the entire state.
That is why it is important, not just for Atlantans, but for all Georgians to celebrate Franklin’s recent success in putting together a rainbow-colored cadre of local business leaders to purchase the papers of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The King papers were purchased in late June for $32 million. The King children had placed their father’s papers with Sotheby’s in New York for auction.
This treasure trove of King’s papers and mementos includes drafts of his famous 1963 March on Washington speech as well as his 1964 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
It is misguided to believe that the King collection is only important for Atlantans or black people or scholars.
King’s papers are something to be valued and shared by everyone who is committed to rid the world of the cancer of racism and chauvinism in all of its manifestations, the cancer that maims and murders human beings and dries up human potential.
That is why I am steadfast in my belief that Gwinnettians have ample reason to be joyful and proud in knowing the King papers will be housed in nearby Atlanta.
Gwinnett, like most of America has greatly improved in race relations, but the county still has a long way to go.
The minority population of Gwinnett that includes blacks, Asian-Americans and Latinos has grown exponentially over the last decade. Collectively, non-whites now make up 43 percent of the county’s population. But Gwinnett citizens of color have yet to effectively penetrate the vanguard of the existing political and business infrastructure of the county.
The recent faux pas by the library board regarding its Spanish fiction collection in part can be traced to a lack of racial and cultural sensitivity. Having board members who reflect the changing demographics of the county may have diverted them from making such a publicly embarrassing mistake of having elimated and later (to their credit) restoring the funding for Spanish-language reading materials.
Moreover, both the GOP and the Democrats in Gwinnett have tremendous opportunity for more diversity in recruiting, mentoring, and running candidates who reflect a multicultural county.
Although, Gwinnett is about 15 miles north of Atlanta, we are as distant as the North Pole when it comes to Atlanta’s more progressive and inclusive political climate (albeit often contentious). In Gwinnett we have yet to get the recipe right for the “primordial soup” that would enable our own needed version of Shirley Franklin to evolve.
I hope that Gwinnettians will visit, read and be inspired by the King papers.
Perhaps having the King papers in our midst and the outstanding example of regional leadership of Franklin will provide Gwinnett with the drive to move beyond its superficial racial diversity.
Gwinnett is a good place to live, but it will never truly be great until its growing minority population is sought out and welcomed as co-laborers in leading the county’s business and political communities.
In what ways you think the King papers are important for Gwinnettians?
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Beni Dakar
Lost my youth but not the memories…or the scrapes!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I am remembering Independence Day celebrations from my youth, growing up on the Gwinnett side of the Lockridge Forest subdivision.
Summertime was always a special time at Lockridge Forest.
The swim team was wrapping up, and the pool was always filled with kids running around half naked in our Speedos (I apologize now for leaving that image in your head).
The adults would bring the volleyball net out, and for their 15 minutes of adult swim bliss, contentious battles were fought, both with the volleyball and with their beverages.
A watermelon was always greased later in the afternoon and the kids wrestled it (and each other) out of the pool. Eggs were tossed and we dove for change. Sometimes there were burgers and hot dogs. Sometimes, a pig cooked in a pit all night long, attended to by the fathers in the neighborhood.
Every year, at night, there was a fireworks show. Tom Griffith lived in our neighborhood. He was a fire chief, or an assistant fire chief - well, whatever the title, he was a pretty big guy, at least to a kid my size - so we had our permits and official representation and all that good stuff. I don’t know how the fireworks compared to others out there, but I always thought they were spectacular. Each year was better than the previous one.
Every year since I was six, this was our Independence Day. Lockridge Forest, located off of off of Winter’s Chapel Road, was a great place in which to be a kid, in which to have a lot of good friends, and in which to grow up.
I am reminded of this now for three reasons:
During this 4th of July vacation, I am in Charleston with my friend Kevin and his wife Beth. Kevin is a de facto Lockridge gang member. Though he didn’t grow up in Lockridge, our gang has known him since we were 11 or 12. He has earned the title by attrition. We are going flounder fishing, maybe some good beach time, and a round of Go Karts if we can squeeze it in. My point is, even though I’m in another state, I’m still close to home.
Independence Day is a day to sit back and remind ourselves of how good we as Americans have it. Our parents, their parents, and generations before them worked very hard to ensure what we have today. Let us never forget that we must give as good as we have gotten, and we must pass that sense of obligation onto our children.
I seem to have regressed a bit into my childhood. I don’t know what possessed me, but I decided to play softball with my company team. It’s been great fun, and I play with a bunch of fun people. I have been painfully reminded that my body is no longer 25, no matter what my mind says. I had a good wipe out last Thursday, scraped up my leg pretty good. I’ve been in considerable pain ever since. I somehow don’t remember the many skinned knees, scrapes and bruises acquired in my youth hurting quite as much as this one.
Ah, yes, these last couple of days, I have become reacquainted with a striking reminder of my youth:
Bactine.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Bill Allen
Button Gwinnett’s spirit lives on
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For me the Fourth of July is the most special day in American history.
It is a day that should mean more than backyard barbecues, fireworks, and an extra day of summer shopping. Without the boldness and courage displayed by the signers of the Declaration of Independence, America as we experience it and love it, may never have existed.
On the Fourth of July 1776, the men who signed this historic document, committed treason against the British Crown. If caught the penalty was likely to be death by hanging. Among those men willing to sacrifice their lives in exchange for being free of British rule were three Georgians: Lyman Hall, George Walton, and Button Gwinnett.
Many people fail to realize that Georgia is one of the original 13 colonies. The first colony founded by the London Company in 1607 was Virginia.
The last colony founded by James Edward Oglethorpe in 1732 and became a Royal Colony in 1752, is our beloved Georgia.
Today’s Gwinnett reflects the spirit of the man the county was named after. Button Gwinnett, like many Gwinnettians today, was an immigrant who hoped to improve his life by settling in the Americas. Gwinnett was born in 1735, in Gloucestershire, England.
When Gwinnett was about 22 years old, he emigrated from England to Charleston, S.C., but later moved to Savannah, Georgia. Although Gwinnett County is named after him, it’s likely than he never set foot here. The land belonged to the Cherokees in his day.
Gwinnett was an outspoken critic of the Crown and his enthusiasm was recognized. He was chosen to be a representative at the Continental Congress, where he added his name to the Declaration of Independence.
Unfortunately, less than a year after the famous signing, Gwinnett died. Upon returning to Georgia, Gwinnett ran for governor and lost to his opponent and “personal enemy,” Lachland McIntosh. Their bitterness towards each other was so great that Gwinnett challenged McIntosh to a duel on May 15, 1777. Both men were badly wounded and Gwinnett died on May 27, 1777.
Because Gwinnett died so soon after the Declaration of Independence was signed; there are very few other documents that have his signature - this makes Gwinnett’s signature among the rarest of all of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. In 2001 his signature sold for $110,000 at Sotheby’s, more than an album signed by all four Beatles.
Happy Birthday America!
How do you celebrate the Fourth of July?
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Beni Dakar
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