Standard Time

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Radiohead's Daydreaming from A Moon Shaped Pool played as we headed west out of Dawsonville, Georgia en-route to Ellijay. We were on a mission to buy apples and cider doughnuts, look at the mountain foliage and maybe, if the weather held, enjoy a hike. I craved the trails and the smell of fall. It was not looking good for the weather, light rain was on the radar to the west and clouds were banking up against the Appalachians. The weather models had said not to worry that the weather would hold until evening, but reality was not looking so favorable. The trees were putting on their best show, much better than last weekend when we were up here and the leaves were weak with color that looked like dried pea soup.

I was digging my head out of reading David Foster Wallace essays. People have made so many moral judgments about him since his suicide in 2008 and one-sided details of his personal life were revealed that his writing has fallen out of favor. People put others on pedestals and realize that they should not have done so and topple them. Or could it be they learned that people are complicated and imperfect? The time had changed or fallen back one hour. Standard time arrived and it is my preferred time with early sunsets and longer nights when daylight no longer needs to be saved. Standard time should be permanent time.

Decks Dark played.

Radiohead has been one of my favorite bands since the magical period of music in the early 1990s. I first saw Thom Yorke on MTV in Creep with his short, bleached hair and looking oddly sexy. He smoldered. My desire for him was like Cobain in that I could never tell if I only found him attractive from certain angles or if my attraction was fooled by the hairstyle. Yorke's physical beauty has not aged well since and “sexy” would not be a word I would apply to him in his late fifties. He is five years older than me, but I never had sexiness to lose and I was also never a rockstar.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

The countryside unfurled on the twisty Georgia Highway 52 that is married to the southern border of the Chattahoochee National Forest. The first raindrops smacked the windshield as we passed the sunflower farm that we visited five years ago when COVID-19 was still the threat du jour and people were masked outdoors. It felt silly even then to be outdoors in a mask, but I was pragmatic, responsible as adults should be and fearful. I would not even eat inside a restaurant until the summer of 2022. It feels so much longer than only three years ago.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

Clouds rolled over the mountains. We passed the turn to Mt. Oglethorpe. I was still hopeful about the weather. Three years ago in a mask felt more distant than the clouds atop the mountain and the early 90s. Getting older and standard time is the past disordered, out of sync, scattered memories mixed up on the floor and leaves on the ground. Life is a straight line, but the human mind is nonlinear.

Ful Stop played.

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

We stopped at the first apple place we saw. It was comically painted red, white and blue. It was photogenic in the drizzle and temperatures in the upper forties. Gray weather and gray times. In the gravel lot in my Columbia fleece, Mexican made Levi's jeans and American made Brooks running shoes I tried to connect apples to the American flag theme. No signal in my head and I shrugged it off. The rain kept the crowds low or back closer to Atlanta in the exposed bulb lit food halls selling craft beer and noodles. We went inside for apples. This was not our regular place that we visit every fall, but new things were needed. Piles of apples looked at us and the disappointment was simultaneous between us. We were of one mind and turned and left without apples. We would buy them down the road. 

 

Photo by me, November 2025.

The sky sagged. It was loaded with rain. A model failure and the rain unleashed on us. Knobs were adjusted to warm the car. Rain streaked windows and the hope for a hike drained. The cold and dim world closed in around our capsule of warmth. At least the leaves were pretty and we had apples. The Cartecay River appeared out of the trees next to the car. Someone told me once it had the cleanest water in the state, but I do not know if that is true. What is the truth from a stranger's mouth and what is false? It is okay to not know everything and it is okay not to believe everything too.

The Numbers played.

When will the next Radiohead album be released? A Moon Shaped Pool came out in 2016. It is not that fans will forget the band or that I imagine the band being worried that they need to release an album to stay relevant, but I would like to hear some new music from them. They challenge my ears, stimulate me, sometimes depress me and they never have bored me.

They are the only rock band that I do not mind maintaining an active, albeit slower, career into their older years. I do not see them as an embarrassment to still be on stage on a tour around the world. The band is not a cashing in, nostalgia act like the Rolling Stones or those other bands from the sixties, seventies and eighties. Radiohead's music always seems to stay new and maybe that is because the music has been ahead of everyone else their entire career and we still have not caught up.

Photo by me, November 2025.

Present Tense played.

Internet rumors are out there that a new album is coming, sometime, possibly in 2026. The band is beginning a limited European tour this month going into December. The shows are sold out. I am ready for new music from the band who is possibly the only band who would excite me to hear a new album. Nine years in my mixed-up memories have passed since the band's last album. I was younger, still not sexy, was spending a lot of time in Grant Park, hiking, swimming, dancing and buying apples in the mountains.

Ellijay, cradled by the ridges, sat in the pouring rain. We circled downtown. Tourists dashed for doors and warm tables. We debated whether to eat or leave in the early mountain darkness. I said something about the 80s and coming through here when it was nothing. I noticed that I am saying stuff like that too often the older I get. “When it was nothing” or “when it was cheaper” or “when it was different” and sometimes “when it was better.” My mother smiled in my mind around 1990 and took a bite of an apple behind her big sunglasses. I held the camera into 1991. Tom Cochrane's Life is a Highway was fun with the windows down.  My mother was funny, easy to be around and I missed her. The present or the past, the carousel of memories was the same on standard time. We retraced our miles home down the highway in the falling leaves.

 

True Love Waits played. 

Me in the fall of 1990 around Ellijay. I am glad I gave up on the mustache.

The Carousel At Zoo Atlanta

Photo by me, February 2013.

A carousel for me is a reminder of days gone by like my childhood and times of more simple and grand forms of amusement. Carousels are a fantastical and leisurely ride in circles bobbing up and down on wooden animals instead of the adrenaline pumping theme park rides of modern times. Yet, carousels have somehow managed to survive maybe because they still amuse small children and satisfy the nostalgia of us older adults. Aside from the nostalgia I like carousels because they are beautiful, the animals are often hand carved and are a display of quality craftsmanship and because they are colorful. I tend to think of them as a piece of art that you can ride.

Photo by me, February 2013.

Despite the feelings of nostalgia it might evoke the carousel inside Zoo Atlanta is not an old one however, it was built in 1998. It was built by the Ohio company Carousel Works, which is the largest manufacturer of carousels in the world. I remember walking through the zoo last year and lighting up in a smile at the sight of the carousel. The bright colors and the animals resurrected feelings of being a child again if ever so briefly. I don't think a person can be unhappy around a carousel except for maybe a child whose parent won't let them ride it again.

Photo by me, February 2013.

It's difficult to resist the sweet stare of those elephant's eyes. The animals are all made of wood lined up in a herd of three rows. There are bears, elephants, leopards, tigers, a giraffe and other animals with two sleighs to ride if you prefer that over mounting an animal. The current carousel had a predecessor outside the zoo and located in Grant Park. It was installed in 1966 but was sold off in the 1980s and today it is amusing young and old in Chattanooga.

Photo by me, February 2013.

If you are interested in carousels there are a few of others that I can think of nearby in the Atlanta suburbs and they are located at Northpoint Mall in Alpharetta, Sugarloaf Mills in Duluth and one at Six Flags Over Georgia.

The Grant Park Overlook

August 11, 2013

Left to decay on property leased to zoo Atlanta is this wonderful brick and granite overlook in Grant Park. It is a shame that the zoo is allowed to let this decay into the past with no maintenance as this structure belongs to the citizens of Atlanta. If the zoo is fencing the area off and leasing city owned property it should be required to care for this overlook and maintain it in the event that in the future the area is returned to the public. This was once the main entrance to the park from Cherokee Avenue and you could stand on the overlook and view what was Lake Abana. However today, you would hardly even know it exists underneath the vines, weeds and trees taking it over.

Photo by me, August 2013

As you can see the zoo it allowing nature to run wild over it with weeds and even trees are growing out of it. The overlook sits at the intersection of Cherokee Avenue and Ormond Street behind the Erskine Fountain which was moved to this entrance of the park in 1912. I see no reason for the public to not be allowed to walk out on the overlook even if the view is not the same. The zoo is not using it and only neglecting it so why not open it back up to the public? Visitors to the neighborhood and park could utilize the space and the city could maintain it.

Photo by me, August 2013

Before too long this piece of Atlanta's history will not be able to be saved. Grant Park, which is Atlanta's oldest park, seems to get neglected. It is odd that Piedmont Park gets so much attention and care but not so for Grant Park. In doing some reading it seems the overlook was sealed off from public use some time between 1988 to 1997. Since then it has been left abandoned and abused.

Grant Park Master Plan 2008

In a master plan that I found on the website for the Grant Park Neighborhood Association it calls for the re-opening and restoration of the overlook for public usage. It is nice to see that others are also interested in seeing this saved and opened back up for public use. Yet, that was five years ago and nothing has happened.