About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 10, 2011)
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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