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Editor's Note:
Kids, welcome to the redesigned journal. I've been working toward this for a while, and my joy at finally getting the site to the point where it is sort of ready for your eyes is enormous.
None of this site is written in XML or SQL or Java. None of it is powered by Blogger. It is basically powered by crossed fingers and a great deal of ignorance. It was painstakingly Scotch-taped together over the past few weeks. I sure hope you like it. I sure hope it doesn't fall apart.
If it looks terrible in Netscape or whatever, I'm sorry, but there's not a darn thing I'm going to do about it. I think it looks okay in Safari and less okay in Explorer. But whatever. I am at peace with imperfection.
The thing I'm most excited about right now, besides the fact that I refrained from sending my fist through my computer monitor during the absurd redesign process, is the new photoblog. I hope you'll enjoy checking it out. I plan on having a lot of fun over there in the coming weeks and months.
If you do catch some obviously busted links as you're clicking through this redesigned site, feel free to let me know.
Thanks for continuing to read the site. I'm really glad we're here together.
—Your brave, ignorant editor.
May 8, 2004
The Mythic City
When I was a kid, I thought Atlanta was the biggest, baddest, coolest city in the world. Even as a high school student, I remember my delicious excitement when I drove with a friend to the annual Greek Festival at the enormous Greek Orthodox Church on Clairmont Road. To my high school mind, driving down to Clairmont Road meant driving down to Atlanta, having a real experience with a real city.
Soon after, I realized that driving down to Clairmont Road didn't really qualify as having a real experience with a real city. It was just a gentrified 4-lane urban road 20 miles north of Atlanta. The street was demystified further when I took my first job out of college at an office on Clairmont Road.
Soon after, I ventured further out of the suburbs and took a trip downtown, the real downtown, where Atlanta kept all of her tall buildings and one-way streets. As I strolled the cramped sidewalks, I thought: this is it. I have arrived. I am here in Atlanta, at the beating heart of it all.
Then I got a job at a big office in one of those tall buildings downtown, and started walking down those one-way streets on my way to work. My search for the mythic city dissolved again as downtown Atlanta became commonplace. Peachtree Street was just another busy street on the way to the office.
Finally I realized that as I was growing, the city was shrinking.
Not so with New York. Even though I try to spend a few days there every year, it's a city of mythic proportions. The older I get, the bigger it gets.
My sister-in-law and I visited the city last week. Kathy was the perfect travel mate; I can't imagine a better companion. We had four days full of rich conversation and rich food, walking tulip-lined sidewalks and dreaming on blankets in Central Park. I am already scheming about returning there with her some day soon.
I don't think I could ever live year-round in New York, but I do wonder about it sometimes. I try on the idea to see how it fits. For now I'll just suck all the marrow out of my brief visit every year. New York has been very good to me. We seem to appreciate each other.
You might've seen this coming: I've started a little photoblog on TypePad. I invite you to step on over for a look at some of my New York photo galleries. It's a work in progress, but I'm sure you'll get the idea. There are more stories from my New York trip there; I hope you enjoy them.
A note to you purists: don't be too annoyed by the photoblog. Yeah, it's sort of slick and distracting. Also, it's a heck of a lot easier to assemble a fun little gallery of photos there than to write a really thoughtful entry in this journal. But I don't think that the photoblog will ever take the place of this page. Writing here has become an important part of my life. So you may see a few more photo entries now than in the past, but I'll still be here, sweating over the keyboard just like I always have. And isn't that nice to look forward to?
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