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Tag Archives: atlanta

Georgia on My Mind

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by ghosteye3 in A Plot for Pridemore, my life

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Tags

atlanta, barnes & noble, columbus, fiction, foxtale book shoppe, georgia, lagrange, lagrange memorial library, mercer university press, plot for pridemore, Stephen Roth, woodstock

One thing I have learned in my three-plus months as a published author: sometimes things don’t work out exactly as you had planned.

PlotForPridemore (2)I was originally slated to speak about A Plot for Pridemore at the Georgia Literary Festival in Augusta on the weekend of November 7-9. Last week, I learned that the festival had been canceled for this year. This sent me scrambling to set up new gigs to fill up my weekend visit to Georgia.

Thanks to some understanding folks who were willing to work with me on just a few weeks’ notice, I have been able to pull together a few appearances in the Peach State:

At 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 8, I will sign books and possibly do a reading from Pridemore at FoxTale Book Shoppe in Woodstock. FoxTale is one of the top independent bookstores in the Atlanta area, and has hosted many Mercer University Press authors over the years. I am thrilled that FoxTale is willing to fit me into its schedule on such short notice.

At 1 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 9, I will be signing books at the Barnes & Noble in Columbus. This will not be a formal author appearance, but I will be in the bookstore’s coffee shop to meet with people and chat.

Finally, at 6 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 10, I will be speaking and signing books at the LaGrange Memorial Library as part of its “Author Talk” series. This is especially meaningful because it is the first author event I have done in my hometown of LaGrange. I am really looking forward to catching up with friends I haven’t seen in a few years.

So that’s the plan for my trip to Georgia next month. If you happen to be around those parts on that particular weekend, or know someone who is, I would appreciate some company at any of my scheduled appearances. Can’t wait to get down there!

A Few Words About Ice

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by ghosteye3 in current events, humor, my life

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Tags

2002, atlanta, ice storm, kansas city, Super Bowl, winter

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Fears of widespread power outages came to fruition as the ice and snow storm that forecasters have been warning about for days pounded metro Atlanta and the northern half of the state.

More than 168,000 Georgia Power customers had lost electricity by 1 p.m., with service already being restored to some 48,000 of those customers. At 4 p.m., Georgia Power reported about 131,000 customers currently without power.

– The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (or AJC.com, or whatever else they’re calling it these days)

My home state of Georgia is getting slugged with its second winter storm in three weeks, and this one looks to be even worse than the last. Ice storms are unusual even in the frigid Midwest. I remember the last big ice storm we had in Kansas City, and I hope the one this week in Atlanta doesn’t have the same resounding effects as the one we endured.

It was late January 2002. My wife and I had been married for five months, and were still getting used to living together. Then, The Storm happened, starting innocently enough on a Tuesday morning with a little sleet and ice, nothing to get too excited about. Except that it kept coming down, all through the day and into the night, until the tree branches outside our home sagged painfully low, each limb perfectly encased in a full inch of crystal.

We woke up the next morning without power. The house was freezing, and the bathroom filled up with steam when we turned on the hot water. The streets were pretty slick, but my wife and I went to work. When we got home, there was still no power. It was still freezing, and the branches that sagged under the weight of all that accumulated ice were starting to snap. We huddled together under all the blankets we could pile on the bed that night, listening to the occasional cracks of branches collapsing all through our neighborhood. Then, a loud pop and a white flash right outside our window. A tree branch had hit a transformer, turning it into a sparkler from the Fourth of July. A few minutes later, we heard another blast. Then another one. The whole town was falling apart.

Long story short, we went without power for seven long days and nights. Our neighborhood looked like a war zone: power lines sagging almost to the ground, tree branches scattered everywhere. Utility workers and tree trimmers were disbursed throughout the city, and many workers came from out-of-town to help clean up and restore the power grid. When one of their trucks came through our area, my neighbors and I gathered around, peppering the poor workers with questions about when the streets would be cleared, when the power would be restored.

After three nights without light and heat, my wife and I stayed at a friend’s apartment across town. Then we got a nice, warm hotel room and watched Tom Brady and New England upset the St. Louis Rams in the Super Bowl (warning: beware of hotels that will price-gouge you during an ice storm). Then, we spent a night at a relative’s place. Finally, the power returned on a Tuesday. It was perhaps the happiest day for my wife and I since we came back from our honeymoon.

The storm lasted only 24 hours, but left its mark on our city for years to come. Thousands of trees collapsed or had to be cut down. Our leafy neighborhood looked almost bare the following spring, so many of its stately oaks were nothing more than foot-high stumps. It’s been 12 years since that ice storm. Unfortunately, it seems we are past due for another one.

R.E.M. and the New World

25 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by ghosteye3 in fiction, Uncategorized

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Tags

1980s, 1985, alternative rock, athens, atlanta, fiction, georgia, high school, music, north carolina, r.e.m., rock, Stephen Roth, u2

Looking back on it, Crawford Connelly was kind of a prick, but he did Grady one enormous favor: he introduced him to music.

“You’re from Georgia, right?” Crawford asked on their first ride to school together.

“Yeah,” Grady said, even though he hadn’t lived there in six years.

“You like R.E.M.?”

“Sure, man.” Grady wasn’t certain he had heard correctly, but he thought Crawford must have meant R.E.O. Speedwagon, which Grady did, in fact, like. He’d been listening to the Wheels Are Turnin’ album for most of the summer.

Crawford pulled an unlabeled, dark grey cassette from the car’s console and popped it into the player. From the custom-installed Bose speakers came a jingly-jangly guitar riff that sounded nothing like anything produced by R.E.O. Speedwagon.
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Crawford lit a cigarette while waiting to turn onto Battlefield Road, which would take them to Church of Christ Presbyterian School, where Grady’s mom had recently enrolled him in the hopes of securing a quality, private school education.

“I dunno, man. I still like Murmur the best,” Crawford said between songs. “What’s your favorite?”

“Huh?”

“What’s your favorite R.E.M. album?”

“Oh,” Grady said, staring at his book bag. “Probably Murmur, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Crawford said, taking a drag from his Camel. “It’s pretty awesome.”

It did not take long for Crawford Connelly to deduce that his passenger knew nothing about the emerging band scene coming out of Athens, Georgia, nor much else about music beyond whatever shit was on Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Countdown. Crawford probably knew this from the moment Grady stepped into his car. The kid was wide-eyed, ruffled and hopelessly unstylish in his dress and speech. The recent switch from glasses to contact lenses had only slightly improved his appearance. Grady looked like what he was: a skinny, nerdy, terrified high school freshman, product of a single mom who lacked either the time or awareness to inform him that wearing a blue and white collared shirt with hexagonal patterns to the first day of class was decidedly uncool in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1985. Or any place in any year, for that matter.

Crawford took Grady under his wing, at least during the 15 minutes of drive time each morning from their neighborhood to the school parking lot. Once they were in the lot, Grady was on his own. Crawford would light up another cancer stick with one of his letter-jacketed buddies, and Grady would skulk into the classroom building. But the morning drives in Crawford’s Chevy Caprice were Alternative Rock 101: starting with the R.E.M. albums of the day—Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction (which Crawford thought was their weakest effort) and the debut EP Chronic Town. Pretty soon, they moved on to the B-52s and more obscure bands like Drivin’ & Cryin’, Guadalcanal Diary, Jason & the Nashville Scorchers and White Animals. By the time R.E.M. came out with its next release, Life’s Rich Pageant, Grady was primed and ready. Exercising his newly acquired learner’s permit, he drove to the Record Bar and bought the tape the first chance he got, and spent much of the following weekend holed up in his room, trying to jot down and decipher the mysterious lyrics (“Fall on Me,” as far as he could tell, had something to do with the environment).

A few weeks later, when his mother forbade him from driving down to Atlanta with his new friends and watching R.E.M. play the Fox Theater as part of its Work tour, he again retreated to his room, grabbed the first thing he could get his hands on (a Trivial Pursuit box) and hurled it against the wall. The surprisingly large sheetrock dent it left was a stark reminder throughout his teenaged years that, despite getting good grades and mostly staying out of trouble, he was still a prisoner in his own home. “Welcome to the Occupation,” indeed.

Junior year came around, and this time Grady would not be denied. He would travel to the Omni in Atlanta to see U2 on its Joshua Tree tour. He would never forget that show, the very first concert he ever attended: the opening organ strains of “Where the Streets Have No Name” filling the arena, then a spotlight shining on The Edge as he took the stage, then a familiar voice that was both current and already iconic at the same time, “I want to run, I want to hide…” Grady looked next to him at Emily Duncan, a sophomore whose parents had, inexplicably, allowed her to travel ten hours, round-trip, in a Honda Civic crammed full of beer and teenagers. They were in the Omni’s upper deck, but Emily’s face glowed as if Bono were a few feet away, singing just to her. Grady badly wanted to kiss Emily Duncan, and he would attempt that maneuver a few hours later in the parking lot of a Denny’s. It was too late at that point. The magic of the show had faded for her, and she just wanted to get back home to her boyfriend.

There would be many more shows, including R.E.M.’s Green Tour in 1989, which wasn’t as life-altering as Grady had expected. The band had already made it big at that point. They were no longer a secret discovery shared by him and the self-possessed, nicotine-breathing soccer star who carpooled him to school every day. That was okay. R.E.M. had been the first, the one that opened his eyes to a new world where music could be cutting, raw and angry, or even moody, sly and cerebral. It could be many things, and it could be about so much more than just liking some girl.

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Thru-hiking. Truck-driving. Miles.

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I have people to kill, lives to ruin, plagues to bring, and worlds to destroy. I am not the Angel of Death. I'm a fiction writer.

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I am a mother of five active, sometimes aggravating children that drive me crazy, provide me with lots of entertainment and remind me constantly about the value of love and family. I am married to my best friend. He makes me laugh every day (usually at myself). I love to eat, run, write, read and then eat again, run again…you get it. I am a children's author, having published four books with MeeGenuis (The Halloween Costume, When Santa Was Small, The Baseball Game, and The Great Adventure Brothers). I have had several pieces of writing published on Adoptive Families, Adoption Today, Brain Child, Scary Mommy, and Ten To Twenty Parenting. I am also a child psychologist, however I honestly think that I may have learned more from my parents and my children than I ever did in any book I read in graduate school. This blog is a place where I can gather my thoughts and my stories and share them with others. My writing is usually about kids and trying to see the world through their eyes, a few about parenting, adoption (one of my children is adopted) and some other random thoughts thrown in… I hope you enjoy them! So grab a cup of coffee, or a glass of wine, depending on what time of day it is (or what kind of day it is) and take a few minutes to sit back, relax and read. Please add your comments or opinions, I know you must have something to say, and I would love to hear it. Thanks for stopping by. Anne Cavanaugh-Sawan

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