The Love and Hate of Atlanta

Completely by accident, Atlanta has been home now for the last thirteen years.  In the beginning, the plan was simple.  I had received a great job offer to leave the bustling metropolis of Charlotte, NC for Atlanta, a.k.a. “Hotlanta” or “The ATL” (an alias I loathe, for reasons I myself can’t even explain.)  We would stay here for a few years; explore the possibility of Raquel attending Veterinary school at the UGA, then cherry pick where to live after that.  However, to borrow from the Hippie King John Lennon “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”

Though I’m not sure how, a few years have now morphed into over a decade.  And like any good dysfunctional relationship, I have developed an intense love hate relationship with Atlanta.  I've always thought that a good measure of how you feel about where you live is what happens when friends or family from out of town visit.  We almost always end up taking them to places outside of Atlanta.  I think this is a fairly good indicator that lately, the hate is more and more often eclipsing the love.  I don’t know if there has been any scientific research to support this reasoning, but it sounds good.  Even now, thinking of some of my favorite places, almost all are outside of the metro area and suburbs.  

This is going to leave a mark.

Like any respectable love hate relationship, for every electrifying rush of love, there is white hot rage and anger.  My relationship with Atlanta is full of make ups and break ups; perhaps we have incompatible personalities.  While I've never asked Atlanta what it thinks of my personality, I find it to be completely lacking in character and persona.  This city has no real soul to it.  To be fair, individual areas of Atlanta often display fantastic “mini-personas” of their own:  the wonderfully artistic weirdos in Little Five Points, the hippies in Candler Park, the rich people in Buckhead.  But viewed as a whole, I don’t see much personality to the city beyond “Hey, we’re a big city in the South.”  And again, in all fairness, it might not be Atlanta’s fault.  We are talking about a city that was burned to the ground.  That kind of abuse has to leave some pretty deep emotional trauma. 

Where's the obligatory "Bed, Bath And Beyond?"

I think Atlanta squandered a rare development opportunity to really be something special. Almost everything feels like a bad compromise. The city and region couldn't really decide what they wanted to be, so they instead allowed developers to dictate development policy.  Combined with the near constant turn over in population, it’s difficult to develop the continuity that similar large cities have.  Those living outside the perimeter dread going into “THE CITY”.  Likewise, there's this ridiculous fear of those in “THE CITY” of venturing out to Kennesaw, Acworth or similar.  The suburban sprawl is equally soulless; there’s not a patch of land anywhere they won’t build a strip mall on.  And, city or suburbs, it’s almost always the same, bland architecture.  

I once read that a good exercise in any love hate relationship was to list the pros and cons of the relationship.  What are the pros and cons of my love hate relationship? I’ll bypass the usual complaints:  heat (it’s the South!), pollen (see “heat”), and traffic (the traffic isn't the problem, it’s the dumb-ass drivers).  Enjoy a list of the good, bad, and ugly about Atlanta.  Since I firmly believe in ending on a positive note, I’ll start with the hate first:

WHAT I HATE:

Atlanta Radio Stations:  The radio market in Atlanta can only be described as mediocre at best.  With the exception of a few stations (WRFG, WABE), the radio scene is either dead or dying. (Please note that I am talking specifically about the radio scene, not the local music scene.)  I loved radio and music growing up and even briefly considered a career in radio.  But now mainstream music is bland and generic and radio stations have followed suit; almost all sound the same with no life. Get “all of today’s hottest/blandest music” sprinkled in with a bunch of commercials and the incessant chatter of wannabe comedians. Even the talk and sports stations of various flavors are not exempt; you get snippets of talk during the near non-stop barrage of the most annoying commercials you’ll ever be exposed to. The only thing of value they offer is the traffic reports.

Kudzu:  I firmly believe kudzu is not from this planet.  I was explaining kudzu to a friend of mine in Australia, a place filled with creatures designed from the ground up to kill humans.  He didn’t believe such a nasty plant could even exist.  I presented him with photographic proof from my backyard; his reaction was predictably one of horror.  When a guy who grew up surrounded by some of the most venomous and deadly snakes and spiders on the planet is afraid of a plant, there’s a serious problem.  I’m sick of kudzu.  How do you fight a leafy abomination that grows up to 2 feet per day? You don’t.  There's not a thing that we can do because Georgia is a perfect breeding ground for this hell spawn.  It takes over our yards, our forests, and our homes.  There is simply no end in sight and no defense.  The kudzu is coming.

Yes, that is a house under there.

Pot Holes in Midtown:  You know those shiny new rims you were eyeballing? The ones you can pay off for $9.99 a week? Don’t even bother putting them on the cars.

The Damn Georgia Dome:  Bike lanes? Hah! Beltline? That’s not for transportation, it's for parking. Litter? Everywhere. Chicken bones? The state bird. MARTA cuts? Yearly. Public schools? Weak. Parking? For private profit.  If you can park and not get booted due to vague signage.  Streets and sidewalk look like they've taken incoming artillery fire?  Go around them.  We’d rather pour hundreds of millions into a new dome that will sit empty 350 days out of the year.  And just as the old one is getting paid for.  Those luxury limos won't feel the potholes getting to the big games.  It's infuriating when you really look at the dome's opportunity cost, especially considering how OPTIONAL it is.

Not “The South”:  This is truly one of my biggest hates about Atlanta.  As a born and bred Southerner, I tell people all the time that Atlanta is not really “The South”.  I love the idea “The South” is different from other parts of the country.  And that that difference is worth preserving. Compare Atlanta to Charleston or (a favorite city of mine) New Orleans.  Yes, New Orleans is hot, dirty, and mildly skanky.  But it has a vibe and atmosphere unlike any other city I’ve visited.  I don’t want to see Atlanta turn into Orlando. In its attempts to modernize, Atlanta is destroying everything that makes the South different and unique.  Old town areas are getting harder and harder to find, getting replaced by Wal-Marts or post 90’s “Bed, Bath, And Beyond” style strip malls.  Historic, breathtaking churches are turned into bland, featureless buildings, boasting a giant sign out front advertising the week’s sermon as if it were a going-out-of-business sale. I don’t have a problem with things getting more modern, but so much of the flavor is lost in the transition. 

To balance the scales and end on a high note (and try to rekindle my affections for this place), things I enjoy about Atlanta:

Trees:  Unlike a lot of cities I’ve been in, Atlanta has done a great job keeping the greenery intact.  Minus the cursed kudzu, the trees are waging an epic battle against the freeways and strip malls.  And they appear to be winning.  After a few years of living in Albuquerque, my older brother visited us here.  One of the first things he commented on was how green everything looked, to the point that it almost hurt his eyes.  According to a recent article, Atlanta has more trees per square mile than any other major metropolitan area.  Bravo, Atlanta.  I’ve always enjoyed looking out the window here.

Street Names:  Yes, there are 70+ streets with “Peachtree”.  But there is also Post Oak Tritt, North Druid Hills, Snapfinger Road, Trickum, Beaver Ruin, Flowery Branch and the triple word score of Hardscrabble! Atlanta architecture may be bland and generic at times, but the streets have a great flavor.

Where “The Walking Dead” (and much more) is Filmed:  This is one area I am thrilled to see kudzu-like growth.  Atlanta is controls a lot of media (Turner, CNN, the Weather Channel) and is currently the 4th largest film industry in the country.  Vampire Diaries, The Walking Dead, and too many movies to name are all filmed in and around the area.  This place is set to be the Hollywood of the East Coast and I fully expect DragonCon to rival ComicCon in the next decade.    

"Give me the goods and no one gets hurt."

Animals!!:  Much like the trees, this is another area that Atlanta excels in.  While the Georgia Aquarium and Zoo Atlanta are the obvious choices, within a two hour drive there are attractions to please any animal lover.  The Chattanooga Aquarium is a world class facility in its own right and makes a fantastic day trip.  If you prefer something a little more hands on, Tanglewood Farm has more than 100 Miniature Farm Animals to pet and feed while the North Georgia Zoo offers the opportunity to be a zookeeper for a day.  Rent a zebra van from Wild AnimalSafari and come face to face with everything from an American Bison to a Giraffe.  For anyone interested in animals, the Atlanta area is tough to beat.   

The Written and Spoken Word:  Thankfully, I had two parents that instilled in me a love of reading.  This may not sound unusual; I would hope it’s what many good parents do.  However, I graduated high school in rural North Carolina, in a county with an estimated 56% adult illiteracy rate.  Some could not even write their own names, leaving their “mark” when needed.  In a place like that, even a single literature themed event or gathering would have attracted only a handful at best.  Atlanta, by contrast, is positively bursting with events celebrating the written or spoken word.  There is no shortage of places to gather around a microphone to listen or share creative and heartfelt stories, either written or spoken.  Scattered throughout the city, each offers its own unique flavor, from the audience driven stories of Carapace to the literary “blood sport” of Write Club Atlanta, there truly is something for everyone.  While I am, of course, partial to Carapace, there’s Stories on the Square, NakedCity, Hyde Atlanta, The Iceberg, True Story! Reading Series, just to name a few (apologies in advance to any I may have inadvertently left out.)  The sheer number of events speaks volumes of the popularity of an art form that remains one of the most powerful and, especially in an electronic age, one of the most underrated.   

Readers, I now turn it over to you.  What are your feelings on Atlanta? What do you love , hate, (or a little of both) about Atlanta? 

Not All Pain Is Bad

On May 6th, while many were dealing with Cinco de Mayo hangovers, I was having a conversation with a doctor over the results of some recent tests. As soon as I answered the phone, I knew this call was going to be a bit different. Instead of the standard “Everything looks fine” speech, I was instead asked:

“Are you somewhere where you can talk?”

I knew immediately what she was about to say: cancer had caught up with me. With my family history, I knew I would come face to face with cancer at some point. I just hadn't planned on it being at forty. And this began an odyssey of near constant doctor appointments, consultations, and testing. Ultimately, it was determined that my type of cancer was slow growing, in the fairly early stages, and surgical removal would be the best option. While the days and weeks didn't feel quick when it was happening, looking back, I am amazed at the speed with which everything progressed. Barely three weeks out from the diagnosis and I had a surgery date of May 21.

The surgery would be a twofold process. The first step would be a large and deep total excision of the malignancy and the surrounding tissue. The second would be a process called a "sentinel lymph node biopsy": a surgery that would remove one or more lymph nodes to ensure the cancer had not spread. In discussions with the surgeons, it became clear that the first part would be the worse.

The goal was to remove every last bit of the cancer. The excision and removal was going to be quite hefty; a circle roughly 4 centimeters in diameter and well into the muscle and surrounding tissue. A plastic surgeon would then follow immediately behind to reconstruct the area and close the gaping hole that would be created. The finished result, the plastic surgeon said, would “look like a shark bite.” Both surgeons assured me that such a large excision was the only way to be sure.  I dubbed it the "Ground Zero Approach" and had an immediate movie flash.






Despite how it looked, the surgery went well. The recovery however, was difficult and, at times, exceedingly painful, despite the assistance of some hardcore painkillers. One of the worst days was about a ten or so days after the surgery, when the external stitches were removed. The surgery site was almost at the elbow of my right arm. My arm had been nearly immobile since the surgery and this was going to be the first time I had really moved it. After removing the external stitches (and assuring me my arm was held together by internal stitches), the surgeon asked me to fully straighten my arm. To say doing this was agony would be an understatement. What surged through my arm and body was a pain so excruciating I almost lost consciousness.

The day after someone implanted a tennis ball in my arm.

As the pain receded and my wits returned, the surgeon delivered a one-two combo of news. The good news: despite the pain, everything seemed fine he said, and was healing nicely. The bad news: the surgery had wreaked havoc on my forearm and elbow; “traumatized” were his exact words. The muscles had become atrophied, connective tissue constricted, and nerves and other soft tissues would need time to heal and regrow. In short, every movement from the elbow down was going to cause intense pain. Despite this, I was now under strict orders to slowly move and stretch my arm every day.

“It’s going to hurt,” he said, “but you have got to keep doing it.” This was the only way for the muscle to rebuild and the connective tissues to regain their former flexibility. The tissues would grow back and eventually re-pattern themselves back into something more functional. Without moving, stretching, and enduring the pain, the arm would lose much of its former strength and range of motion. Following doctor’s orders and dubbing my arm “Frankenarm”, I started moving it, slowly and gingerly, still convinced something was wrong. It shouldn't hurt this much, I kept thinking. But it did. Worse, I was told this level of pain was normal.

During this recovery, I thought a lot about pain and discomfort. My mother and I have often had conversations about how much tougher people were in the past. I’m glad I’m in the 21st century; I would have never survived 150, even 100 years ago. At a time when doctors with tiny cameras can see nearly every part of our bodies, inside and out, it’s hard to imagine that people once bled, purged and puked themselves to near death with the idea of getting to better health. It’s only in the last 100 or so years that people have had relatively easy access to a doctor. Prior to that, if you broke a leg you limped for the rest of your life. Broken rib? You’re probably going to have pain anytime you breathe from that point on. Don’t like the sagging body parts? Tough, live with it. Hypochondriacs didn't stand a chance.

Even if a doctor could be found, most performed procedures without any anesthetic beyond whiskey or laudanum. Sick in the 1800’s? Kicked by a horse? Too bad, you were probably out of luck. And out of time. A doctor then was a bit of double edged sword. In a letter to his family in 1849 a California miner wrote, “Have now paid all my gold to the Doctors and they leave me worse in health.” The doctors of that era seemed to believe that a person could not get well without a sufficient amount of pain being suffered first. And, to some extent, they might have been right. 

This was new territory for me. I’d never experienced the level of pain, constriction, and loss of function I was now going through. The whole process seemed counter intuitive: it hurts to move, but the only way stop the hurt is to keep moving. I thought of a saying: “When you are going through Hell, the only thing you can do is keep going.” Against all instincts, I forced myself to keep moving and stretching Frankenarm.

Even with the pain and my concerns, over time, I started to notice something. To be accurate, I started to notice what I wasn't noticing. The pain. What had once been agony gave way to mere torture. Torture slowly became excruciating. And even excruciating was eventually downgraded to discomfort. The pain had, in fact, eased. The doctor was right; both Frankenarm and my hand began to get better and slowly started to feel relatively normal. Looking back, it all happened in a remarkably short period of time.

Of course, removing the tennis ball probably helped.

As an adult, I've known that not all pain is bad. However, as bad as this pain was, left to my own devices, I probably would have babied my arm to the point of irreparable damage. Though Frankenarm still isn't quite what it used to be, it is almost back to normal. This ongoing ordeal reminded me of a very simple truth. Sometimes, we need the input and advice of others to help us know whether what we’re feeling is "good" pain or "bad" pain. Sometimes we’re simply too close to the pain, emotional or physical, to be able to make an intelligent decision. And this is true not just for our bodies, but our lives. We’re usually smart enough or experienced enough to get by in most situations. But sometimes, we’re not good enough to do it alone. We need to be open to advice and different ways of thinking. We need a little guidance and assurance that not all pain is bad.