Another place to drink coffee and tea

Condessa Coffee opened this week at the Tribute loftominium on Boulevard. It's on the path I walk along daily! I'm so happy. Not as good as being, say, across the street, but good. It's every urbanites wish to live within easy (five minutes) walking distance of a cafe or quart of milk. Condessa, though light on the eats, pours a nice cup and has plans for itself. Hopefully, that will include something interestingly Mexican in the pastry or sandwich department. The cafe looks out on Boulevard where a parade of sauntering homeless mix with area walker/runners. It also has a full view of the architect's widow's house on Blvd. and Cain. It's a house of mystery and speculation.

I'm Not Alone Here, Either

During the last weeks of the semester/quarter, I give practice essay exams. This is especially important for the GPC students because they have to pass a Regents exam. To get a bead on the timing and to keep my own hand in (now that I'm "allowed" to write any way I want, I have to force myself to write as they must) I will occasionally write along with them.

Following the Regent's approved list of topics, I chose one about "a time you should have complained but did not."


     Sometimes I worry that I've become the invisible middle-aged woman --- neither attractive enough to capture attention or dangerous enough to set off warnings. My invisibility is making me neurotic. Instead of being annoyed and energized by it, I'm humbled to silence. Instead of complaining about poor customer service at a Phipps Plaza jewelry store (Ross-Simon), I was reduced to passive-aggression and, a week later, am still smarting. Had I complained I might have shrunk my neurosis, learned something of how the store operates and even awakened the sales clerk to their power.
    Do I look poor? My I dress up like a hooker's mother to shop at Phipps Plaza? Were my arty earrings too small? Had I forgotten to wear them at all? Was I wearing both?
    Last week I stood at the Pandora counter in Ross-Simons trying to see onto the stacked trays of silver and gold charms. I was there to shop for Christmas gifts for my sister and sister-in-law. To the side, about two feet from the counter, stood two sales associates discussing the previous day's crowd. "It was dead," said one. It was dead today, I thought. No one was at the Pandora counter with me. In fact, throughout the store there was more sales help than customers.
    I don't know why, but when the two associates continued to chat and ignore my obvious efforts to see the display, I grew irate. Rather than catch their attention, I played the counting game. How many seconds would pass before one of them sauntered over? One, two, three, four. The woman clerk left her co-worker, an older man in a suit who stared ahead as if captaining a ship---or a dining room.  Eight, nine, ten, eleven. I ticked the seconds off wondering if I was being fair and simultaneously growing more angry. At one point I may have hoped no one would help me. Then I would be justified in this feeling.  Twenty-one, 22, 23, 24, 25...How long a minute takes to pass.
     I looked at the gold, the silver, the braided leather. Oh, they have earrings and rings. Is this some version of Brighton after all? (that chased silver collectable I detest?) Is the whole Pandora idea hopelessly suburban?
     Sixty, 61, 62. A minute. How much longer will this take? By now I could not look up. I do not need to buy charms today and certainly not at Ross-Simons.
     At 90 seconds I gave it up. A minute and a half. Should I complain? Should I ask for help? I felt so irritated but with it embarrassed. It's only a minute and a half for Chrissake. Wondering why I hadn't simply looked up and captured attention (something I knew well enough how to do) I simply left.
     At the store where I  work, (also at Phipps) we are required to engage a customer immediately and then again twice more. Sometimes this just doesn't happen. If a woman is short, hard to see, we might miss her until she's penetrated the store. If both clerks are busy with others, we'll miss a greeting. But this is reasonably rare. Sometimes we're confronted by women after they've left. These return to complain, having clearly bubbled with the same sense of irritation and shame I described above. We are always shocked when this happens. We never mean to offend. We're nice people who believe it's more fun to help (and sell) than ignore customers.
     Is it possible the clerks at Ross-Simon just didn't see me? Or weren't responsible for Pandora sales? I could wonder why one didn't just let me know this or fetched the appropriate clerk, but having ignored customers myself for unavoidable reasons, it's likely I simply fell between the cracks of one clerk's attention span. Had I complained, they may have looked t me with the same wary sympathy we give our more neurotic shoppers.
     At the same time, whenever a customer does complain about how she's been treated (or feels she's been treated) I am alerted to my own power. Like any good recovering Catholic, I rake my conscience for how I could have offended and usually double my efforts to please.  I may spend more times at the front of the store or put down the endless folding and walk around rooting out the petites. At the register, I'll scan the entrance and wave or smile.  Had I complained at Ross-Simon, could the same "wake up" have occurred? I'll never know.


For my next trick, I'll get this down to five paragraphs....or not.

  

Everyone's a foodie blogger on Thanksgiving

A roll call of gratitude:

30-year fixed-interest mortgage
ability to pay it so far
good neighbors and friends, Faye and Bill. Here's to another year of early morning walks. Thanks for your patience when I just have to take another photo.
Donna and her family
Linda and the restoration of miracles
Sarah and the endurance of love
Evy, Bill, Clay and Johnny, Serey and Mike
Jean, Pat, the Soupers
Janeann and Steve, Deborah and David's ghost
AID and my newest career. Living proof that if I can't be a good example, there's value to being a horrible warning.
GPC and its hard-working student body. Thanks for holding those doors open, ladies and gentlemen.
Our neurotic customers at the Hanger and Fold - there are plenty of people with money to burn. Thanks for burning it with us. Now, go get yourself some real therapy.
Art and the way you make me feel...alive and in the moment.
The Particulars
Atlanta Printmakers
The birds in the trees, the wind, the roof over my head
my health
my Lexapro.
my trust Toyota.
...I could keep going.

Kid in Candy Store

A shot captured in Belly, in Virginia-Highland. Great scones and olive-oil bagels that satisfy despite being as unlike a real bagel as possible and still be terrifically tasty. I hadn't been in since joining the ranks of the mighty 9%. The nice, worn communal table remains but the store has turned teenager (to paraphrase from a favorite poem) in an old-fashioned way. Maybe it's the luck of the light or ghosts of Fleeman's Drugstore, but this little patch of intown Atlanta has a sweetness not related to its goods sold.

A few weeks ago, after lunch at Super Pan Latino (disappointing, but I have only myself to blame for risking a "pig's head" sandwich)

pal Jen and I strolled back to her house and were caught by Belly's facade. Jen's got a thing for those Maryjane candies while I recall the giant orange circus peanuts with fondness. What else? Boston baked beans, chikstiks, those peanut butter and slivered sugar candies. Oh, it was worth the stop and nothing like a jawbreaker to wipe the taste of pig head off the tongue.

These huge jars filled with candy sit mid-store. There are more on benches in front and behind and even more ranged along waist height and in the shabby chic cabinets. In fact, I had to look hard for any gourmet savories before spotting some oils and coffees. 

Still, it's a friendly place for sitting and who doesn't miss penny candy? 

Life Off the Grid - Angleslide

Independent contract worker
Adjunct instructor
Not exactly starving artist
Good example
Horrible warning

I used to call a change in point of view "angleslide"

I will again.

Off the Grid - so much work, so few jobs

Am now fairly well convinced that there's plenty of work out there, even for rapidly aging boomers, but there are no jobs. Jobs, after all, come with expenses. Employers must pay insurance, workers comp, overhead, attaboys, training, all that Xeroxing. Work is free!

I'll be teaching a full load this Fall. Three classes at the Art Institute in Decatur and one (I hope) at Georgia Perimeter. It's amazing how we come full circle. In fact, I wonder why I ever left home. I started my college career at a community college about as unprepared for the collegiate experience as anyone else who had drifted through high school with little focus beyond the desire to "be cool."

Like the people I'll be working with, I made my share of inadvertent bad choices, went for the easy path, got distracted by emotions I couldn't put names to and sucked into the role of daughter of an anxious narcissist.  But I wrote my way through it and while I wasn't much of a writer and kept just a small diary, the daily exercise kept me grounded in myself. It wasn't much, but it was something.

What I hope to share with the GPC students is that community college is as good a start as any. We all start somewhere after all. Like those at Ashford and even AIA-D, these students come with burdens that won't be shucked off just because they've completed the paperwork, bought themselves new pens and managed to find the right building. Nothing leaves our head for long. The point is to make use of what we've done and learn how to think without letting emotions get in the way. To learn how to distinguish between an opinion and a heartfelt belief.

All of which is to say I'm going to be hugely busy this fall. Not sure I'll have the time I'd like for this forum, or the time to finish posting Dangerous Book. I'll do my best.

See you on the other side.

Off the Grid - 3, 4...how many jobs now?

For a person with no job, I've been very busy working at my assorted part-time jobs this summer.
The good news is my new (ish)  respect for the working poor and everyone else who pushes a rock up a hill every day. I guess I didn't need those illusions after all.

As the Knuckle used to say, "Be glad you're not working in a factory." True enough, though grading papers for the online college can often feel that way. With any piece-work kind of job, the urge to get the work done quickly and so earn more money, must be balanced against the artist's desire to do the job well, i.e., to make each piece unique. I do feel that compulsion while reading the majority of the autobiographies I'm paid to read. But I also feel the impulse to get the job done and so have at times turned my own office into a factory where I am strapped to a chair for ten hours, fingers on the keyboard and mouse, cutting and pasting comments with my heart and mind elsewhere. I rise from this dizzy and subdued, but I rise earlier than on the days when I know what I've written to every student...and this, of course, is the reason.

How often do we turn ourselves into slaves? The antidote for me, as far as this particular gig goes, is to pay attention to the lives I'm privileged to read. True, most people are not very articulate about their histories, but given the limited number of stories, there are plenty who tell the half dozen variations well enough to give a clear picture. For the rest, I rely on sheer volume. Our online schools are filled with people who don't know where the commas go, couldn't identify a conjunction and have more use but less reason for the conditional tense than is necessary.  A year ago I didn't know why this was so. Now I do.  They were absent the day those lessons were taught. In the essays I read, I discovered what they were doing.

stay tuned.