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KEVAN WILLIAMS
WHAT’S UP IN NEW DEVELOPMENT
The packed pickups and rental trucks roam
ing around town like Conestoga wagons for
college students around the first of August
have got me thinking a bit differently. Often,
this column keeps time in past, present and
possible futures; however, so much of how
we experience places is cyclical. Soon,
the 2011-2012 school year will begin and
the summer will end. Of course, summer will
be back again soon, and school just left.
Unfortunately, our vocabulary has so geared
us to linear thinking that even the marking of
events on cyclical calendars occurs within a
linear language. Regardless, here's a collection
of impressions about the seasonality of our
local landscape. It's worth considering that
the places we occupy are just as much defined
by when we occupy them as by where or
what they are.
It's summer that really brings my aware
ness of the rural hinterlands into clearest
focus. Swimming holes are to be found on
the South Fork Broad River, north of town in
Madison County. Peaches lie to the South, on
that stretch of US-441 between Bishop and
Madison. U.S. 441 is a major north-south
route in the region, and seems to carry a
significant number of minivans from Ontario
to and from Florida. It’s climate and geology
that set the schedule for those summer foods
and activities we identify with, though, and
going for day trips in the country isn't totally
disconnected from when summer breaks from
school were for going home to work on the
farm.
Football defines fall, of course, and inspires
exuberant displays of patriotism for the
Bulldawg nation. But it also aligns well with
the fall semester, when new students are just
getting the feel of what UGA is about and
oid students, whether they be sophomores
or alumni, are coming back after being away
for a summer or for years. There's definitely a
cyclical sense of repetition to returning for
the annual football season, with victories
giving a title to be defended and losses serv
ing as motivation to try harder on the next
go-round. Sanford Stadium, looming as its
presence is in the landscape of campus, is
silent most of the year. The structure can only
really be understood on those few Saturdays
when the population of Athens doubles. A dif
ferent kind of community exists on those fall
game days, and it only exists briefly.
Winter is a time when the kudzu shriv
els back and all sorts of hidden things are
revealed. Some of the most iconic images I
have of Athens are those gray winter scenes,
with the spaghetti-draped industrial monu
ments, like the incinerator smokestack on
College Avenue, or the eponymous Murmur
Trestle. A brittle vine by itself is an inevitable
fact of the season, but the way it shapes
and reveals familiar elements can have an
effect like one of the artist Christo's wrapped
structures.
And of course, there are those twinkling
Christmas lights on Clayton.
Cycles don't only happen yearly, though;
there are also daily cycles, like the bugle
calls that once echoed across the Navy School
campus, or the ebb and flow of traffic on our
snarled intersections. You might even hear an
illicit cock crow in a "Pro-Chicken" enclave of
Boulevard as a marker of the morning.
Likewise the week
and nightlife have their
own cycle, with inten
sity swelling toward
the weekend and lazy
Sundays. Blue laws
contribute to this pace,
regardless of their
Christian overtone, and
when we do have that
referendum, something
about the flavor of down
town will change. There's
a certain vibe that only
Sunday evenings have,
when the bars are closed
but the restaurants are
open, and people might
be out, but not too late.
There's also the cycle
of paychecks for the poor
and working classes of
Athens, with flush times
coming after the check is cut, and progres
sively leaner times as the days and weeks
progress until the next pay period.
It's worth wondering how a less than token
awareness of the cyclical currents that define
our community could influence our sense of
creating progress and shaping the future.
Viewing the lives of the city's intergenera-
tional poor holistically certainly changes the
strategies, with the quality of life of parents
affecting their children, their education and
their adult lives, which in turn affect their
children and so on. Rather than treating
symptoms of a broken cycle, how can we spe
cifically shape the cycle itself to produce more !
equitable results?
Another cycle might be that of our lead
ers' and planners’ continual cat-and-mouse
game with developers, who are always finding
loopholes in the codes, prompting increasingly i
Draconian reactionary rules, which in turn
create new loopholes. Suppose a more nimble
and evolution-driven approach for regulating
our growth was devised, which recognized this
cycle and attempted to change it? It would
certainly be better than declaring an issue to
be fixed and waiting for the next problem to
crop up (see Carr's Hill moratoria).
Looking at both our problems and our
assets from unfamiliar angles reveals new
information about why things are the way
they are. It's worth wondering how integrat
ing those perspectives can better generate
strategies for improving what works and
addressing what doesn't.
Kevan Williams athensrising@flagpole.com
Overflowing fruit stands along 441 south of Bishop are a part of the local
landscape of summer.
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AUGUST 10,2011 • FLAGPOLE.COM 7
