Face The Change

 

My old neighborhood looking west down Ponce de Leon Avenue toward Midtown. Photo by me, September 2025.

Turn and face the strange. - David Bowie's Changes 

 

A couple of weeks ago I was in my old 1990s neighborhood in Atlanta. The only reason for me to go there is I have some need to go to Ponce City Market and that was true again as I walked into Madewell. I visit Ponce City Market or to me, City Hall East/the old Sears building, about twice a year since I am rarely down in the city anymore. My infrequent visits to Atlanta are marked by the changes to the landscape. I play the game of what is the same and what is gone. The changes used to happen around me in more of a gradual sense like the frog in a pot of boiling water, but since I have not lived in the city for four years this month, the changes are more noticeable.

 

The Clermont became a boutique hotel with a rooftop bar, the Masquerade was gutted, Zesto and Paris on Ponce are gone and The Eagle and MJQ moved out of the neighborhood. Ponce has changed as part of the evolution of the city at large. It would be stereotypical to feel that the change was bad, but I am indifferent, as I am emotionally checked out on Atlanta and that feeling has been building for the last fifteen years.

Where I lived in the Ford Factory and Ponce City Market next door. Photo by me, September 2025.

Walking through Ponce City Market, I noticed there was some turnover in the retail and more vacancies since my last visit. There was some odd place that felt very downmarket with vendors selling products that were obviously made at the kitchen table and it had two live DJs playing over each other. Was it a club or a store? Most of the other people there were talking to each other and not buying anything. My ears hurt, I straightened my collar and realized that whatever that place was, it was not for me. A couple of other places were odd fits too. Ponce City Market is a nice piece of architecture, but the shine is wearing off and it felt less chic.

 

I am not as plugged in as times past as to what happens in the city and unbeknownst to me, it was the first day of the Shaky Knees Festival, which has moved to Piedmont Park and replaced Music Midtown. I remember when Music Midtown began off Tenth Street in what were then empty lots west of Peachtree behind what was Weekends before the Federal Reserve moved from Downtown to Midtown. I remember trying to get to work at Turner through the Music Midtown scene and the detours. I would say Atlanta was more interesting and alternative then, but I would guess the people who attended Shaky Knees this year would say the same about modern Atlanta. In your youth and mistake making period, all of the world can seem to be an interesting playground. 

James Laid.

The first Music Midtown lineup in 1994 varied from James Brown to The Knack to James. I am a sucker for bands from Manchester and I loved James. They had hits with Say Something, Born of Frustration and in 1993 their big hit was Laid, a song about messing around with gender roles. If that song could be a mainstream hit in the U.S. in the early 90s and it likely would not be in the climate of 2025, then what has changed and is society going backwards or forwards? Why are we more uptight about some topics and lowering our standards everywhere else from public behavior, education, the arts, government, architecture, fashion and so on?

The Bank of America building from North Avenue. Photo by me, September 2025.

 

Peachtree Street looking north from North Avenue. September 2025.

If the city was not more interesting and alternative in the 90s, it certainly was more loose, rundown, smaller and society and culture were entirely different. Was the 90s the last great decade and the peak of personal freedom? I was in my teens and twenties then, so with youth clouded memories, I am biased. There is no easy answer, but I would be dishonest if part of me did not want to say it was. When comparing today to the 90s and if given a choice of being young today or being young in the 1990s, even with the ever-present risk of AIDS and the gay rights struggles of that time, I would choose the 90s again without hesitation. Young people today are growing up in an entirely different world that is in some ways better and in some ways worse and I do not envy them. The person I am, the young person I was and the experiences I had are not suited for Atlanta in 2025. I do not belong there and I am comfortable with that, nostalgia is not leading me by the hand to a rose colored past. 

A new skyline. Photo by me, September 2025.

The only building visible in the photo above from 17^th Street from the foreground to the background that existed in the 1990s is the one marked. That is 999 Peachtree Street or what was known as First Union Plaza completed in 1987. First Union bank was purchased by Wachovia, now Wells Fargo, in 2001. In the 90s, the foreground was the Atlantic Steel mill.

The original goths, the punks, the alterna kids of the past are all grown and gone like the hippies of the Tight Squeeze before them. Gone too are the hangouts from 688, Midtown Music Hall to The Metroplex. Atlanta once had a thriving rock and alternative scene, not that most not from here would know since the media only fixates on rap and hip hop and ignores anything else. The city of today is a different playground for a different generation that lacks an original cultural identity. Are they Generation Recycle? I suppose I should be happy that Little Five Points still exists.

Nirvana playing at the old Masquerade on North Avenue in 1990 before they took over the globe. They would play here again in the fall of '91 in support of Nevermind and then on subsequent visits, they played the big venues.

Consider and Reconsider

 

A nice piece of reality from a September walk near home. Photo by me, September 2025.

If you read, watch or listen to the news, then you might be convinced that the world is falling apart. This feeling is not something new, but it is amplified more now via the internet, but the world has kind of always been falling apart with global crises, murders and all sorts of calamity and mayhem unfolding in the words of reporters between the advertisements. The world is a chaotic place, though when focusing on the United States, it certainly appears more chaotic than recent decades, at least since the 1960s. Whether that chaos is good or bad or even to what degree probably depends on your political bent, as most everyone online is acting out their performative political obsession, which is now bleeding into reality, from shaking their heads at every perceived slight injustice, from attacking strangers for different opinions, boycotts of retail stores or television networks to the far extreme act of assassination.

Having been born after the sixties in the early seventies, I have no personal experience with that decade. The sixties was a decade I learned about as vivid images and stale words in history books in the eighties. My assumption is that to the average person living in the United States in the suburbs or a small town, it probably seemed like a crazy time to be alive with political assassinations, Vietnam, Kent State, the Manson family murders, the civil rights movement, Woodstock and so on. There was one big difference between then and now: it was much easier to avoid the news and keep it at a healthy distance.

If you did not watch the network evening news or read the newspapers, then you were detached from what was happening in the cities or in far-flung places like California or Vietnam. The news on television was not close to home, outside your door or in your face. The news that mattered most was who was getting married, having their second child or who got a new job down at the plant. There was no internet to digitally bring all of these events to your bedroom as you pulled the covers up to your chin. The internet has brought the chaos up close and personal and the addictive intimacy of the twenty-four-hour news cycle is driving people crazy as they overdose on the news. The human brain, as powerful and adaptable as it is, cannot handle modern technology very well.

Nature is not concerned with the news. Photo by me, September 2025.

Today's world offers a person plenty to think about, consider and reconsider. I read the news and then I go out into the world and enjoy what is in that moment and in my presence, or at least I try. Keeping the news in a proper perspective and at a distance helps me stay sane. I do not make policy or battle criminals and whatever is going to happen is going to happen no matter what I may think. I am an observer of the larger world and a participant in my much, much smaller life. I foster my opinions mostly in private, rarely on social media and share a few on this website or in my books. It would be impossible and unwise to comment on subjects I know little about or do not care to know enough to have a solid opinion.

Here is one solid opinion of mine: the world would be better if people lacking self-control did not rush half-cocked to social media to fire off emotionally inflamed words. Once the haze of the dopamine rush clears, they are left to look like a fool; whether they see it or not, others do and they remember it. It is worth remembering and often forgotten, but the world does not revolve around you; you are only along for a temporary ride through the vast emptiness of space. There is a benefit in stepping back from the keyboard, putting the phone down, going for a walk, reading a book, watching a movie, meditating or doing something better with the time you have.

 

After a few miles I sat and considered the world near home and what mattered the most. Photo by me, September 2025.

Do not lose perspective.

R.E.M. It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

From Green To Brown

 

Summer's death duly noted in Athens, Ga. Photo by me, August 2025.

Summer died on the backs of my knees in a cool, dry breeze this past Sunday in Athens. It was a recognition the same as the flocks of birds beginning the migration south as they speckled the sky of smeared clouds. It was a relief as if I had accomplished something more than play witness to the passing of another season. I was running errands and the surname of the protagonist of my current novel had come to me. I had been stressing over this not-so-minor detail for months. The last name had to sound right or sing when spoken aloud with the first name and I had paired numerous names in my head without success. Then in a parking lot among the first tinges of fall color in the sugar maples it came. The name was simple, solid and was a fine tonic to the more complex first name. The character was fully born.

 

Fiona Apple's album When the Pawn...

I have been listening to lots of Fiona Apple the past couple of weeks and this happens to me most every fall. I am the eternal fan. Her music reminds me of Louisville in the 1990s and a particular autumn when I thought everything in life was as perfect as life could get. I was in my twenties and foolish; what else can I say? Life is never perfect except in small increments and the good news is that it happens even long after the twenties are nostalgic memories. Perfect in a parking lot in the breeze in Athens, Georgia kind of way or perfect in the sense of appreciating happiness in victories over creative blocks.

With perfection comes the imperfection and Saturday we attended an arts festival on the square over in faraway Marietta. I can do without ever attending another arts festival for the rest of my life. I am so tired of seeing booths of the same makeshift art projects made in garages and basements with glue guns, glitter and limited inspiration.

 

The book cover of Pieces of the Frame by John McPhee.

Labor Day was about getting in the miles on the legs through the woods, reflections on a lake and feeling fresh in the crisp air. Fall is a rejuvenator not sold in a bottle at the cosmetics counter or in the energy drink aisle at the grocery store. Deer foraged in the shadows and my mind thumbed thoughts on the book I have been reading, Pieces of the Frame (1975) by John McPhee. There was a story in the essay, Travels in Georgia, about McPhee, Sam Candler (an heir to the Coca-Cola fortune) and Carol Ruckdeschel (a conservationist) canoeing down the Chattahoochee River with then-Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter with Georgia State Patrol troopers as bodyguards. Carter, a country boy, a former Navy officer and an avid outdoorsman, fit perfectly into the canoe trip, which was meant to serve as a way to convince him to protect the land along the Chattahoochee, which he did as President of the United States. After the trip, the group ate grilled cheese sandwiches at a twenty-foot table under a crystal chandelier and then played basketball in the driveway of the governor's mansion on West Paces in Buckhead, a thirty-room Greek Revival home I toured as a kid in the 1980s, either during the George Busbee or the first Joe Frank Harris administration. I thought, “Well that kind of politician no longer exists,” but politicians sure like to play up and pander to the average common person when trying to get elected. Carter, disparaged by people who have never done a decent day's work in their life, unlike the phonies, was genuine. Since 1980, if you are as old as I am, you have to wonder what people value and expect from their presidents.

 

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Monday wound down as I re-watched Sunday Bloody Sunday from 1971 starring Glenda Jackson, Peter Finch and Murray Head. The movie, nominated for four Academy Awards, is about a love triangle between a straight woman, a gay male Jewish doctor and a bisexual artist. It was the right cozy movie to start fall with the drab London weather and scenery and what I like most about that movie is the abundance of brown fashion. 

All the world is beautifully exquisite seventies brown.

Every character lives in shades of the color brown from scarves, jackets, pants, coats, vests, sweaters, ties, turtlenecks and so on. The costume design was by the late Jocelyn Rickards who also designed for Blow-Up, From Russia With Love and many other films. She was a painter too and published her autobiography in 1987. It is very 1970s, as I remember that decade. Brown is a color not worn enough anymore. It is a sophisticated color that works well in any season and people should wear it. It is also the better choice between it and another popular seventies color, ghastly orange which is best suited for pumpkins. Perhaps the reason people do not is because it is a modest choice and does not garner enough attention in our narcissistic decadent times.

Other than Fiona Apple it seemed to be an all-out seventies entertainment weekend as the season turns from green to brown.

The Inner Scar

 

A scene from The Inner Scar.

It was an unusually cool August night when I watched the 1972 surrealist film The Inner Scar by French film director Philippe Garrel. The film stars Nico, Garrel and the late French underground dandy Pierre Clementi. It was the kind of movie with its gray skies and earthy brown palette to set the mood for the transition to autumn.

Nico and Philippe Garrel.

There is no plot to this hour long movie as the director has said. There are reviews online saying that this is the most influential movie ever shot, or essays on how it holds the meaning of life or has something to do with the foggy mysteries of the human soul, but those are flowery piles of bullshit. Garrel has said not to ask questions of the film and to just watch it for pleasure like taking a walk through the desert. There is no deeper meaning to analyze, but it was probably a blast to make.

Nico and Pierre Clementi.

Visually it is a striking film shot in the desolate but beautiful landscapes of the American Southwest, Egypt and Iceland. It is filled with vignettes of beautifully composed scenes in wild landscapes that mean nothing but are a feast. There is no narrative to follow, though Nico screams, bellows and sings through the course of the film. The Inner Scar is the kind of film that you watch by wrapping up in a fuzzy throw on the sofa and let it lead you through a hallucinogenic experience.

Pierre Clementi, unafraid to take acting risks.

As a fan of Pierre Clementi, he was the best part of the film, he certainly had the most acting experience among the cast and his presence raised the prestige factor. He is also completely nude in every second that he appears on camera as an archer riding a horse bareback, navigating a tiny sailboat or striding across the land with his long thin legs. The film is a must for Clementi admirers.
 

The ending did seem like a nod to Excalibur, but whatever The Inner Scar might be, it is a beautiful hour.

Cocoon Forty Years Later

 

Along the Pinellas Bayway near St. Petersburg, Florida. Some scenes of Cocoon were filmed in this area. Photo by me, 2009.

On a recent summer night, I re-watched the popular summer of 1985 hit, Cocoon. The movie was released that June and my mother and I watched it in our local small-town theater, The Paulding Plaza. The two of us spent many a night in the late 70s through the mid 80s going to movies together until I started dating or going with friends. We saw lots of duds and some good movies too, but Cocoon was a dud. I was a bored twelve-year-old watching a movie about elderly people swimming, dancing and arguing while wearing bad clothes. The characters were the ages of my grandparents and less entertaining. I was eager for the credits to roll, charge up the aisle into the lobby and throw away the empty popcorn container. My mother and I would have discussed the movie on the fifteen-minute drive home with the windows down letting in the cool night air. She liked it and I told her that I did not. She probably said something like I was too young to understand or that I was too picky. She might have been right, but I saw nothing wrong with being picky about what kind of entertainment I liked.

I was willing to give the movie a chance and had reasons to be hopeful that it was going to be good. After all, I was not just any twelve-year-old boy; I was a twelve-year-old gay boy that was into space movies, the ocean, the beach and my newest secret Hollywood crush, who was the same age as me, was in the movie. It was to be the second movie that he was in that had come out that month. I was excited to see Barret Oliver again. I had just seen him two weeks before as the main character (a boy with a big secret) in another new movie that I enjoyed, D.A.R.Y.L., and had liked him since The Neverending Story.

Barret Oliver in Cocoon.

It was not to be, as I was soon disavowed of that hope when I saw that the aliens and their spaceship were not cool in a Star Wars or Close Encounters of the Third Kind way. Barret Oliver was barely in the movie, appearing as an ornament at the beginning and at the end and was absent most of the movie. In the few scenes he was in, he looked as bored making the movie as I was watching it, which might have been the result of the wooden dialogue he was given and bad direction by Ron Howard, who has directed an entire career of pablum. I felt cheated out of a good time by the movie. 

The highlight for me was the ocean and the laid-back atmosphere of 1980s Florida that permeates the movie. Ron Howard at least managed to capture the Florida I miss. Florida was a different place then, more relaxing and peaceful. It was before the state was overly built up, filled with crazy drivers who have boiled their brains with too much sunshine and humidity and it was a place not trying to be more than swamps and orange groves surrounded by nice beaches with Mickey Mouse in the middle. Miami, gauche and trashy today, was not even that big in 1985 despite how the hit show that debuted the year before, Miami Vice, made it seem. 

Wilford Brimley and Barret Oliver during a scene along the Pinellas Bayway in Cocoon.

Cocoon was filmed in St. Petersburg, a place I have spent plenty of time over the last two decades, second only to the amount of time I have enjoyed in Fort Lauderdale. St. Petersburg's downtown has undergone significant change too, but some of the film locations are still recognizable like, John's Pass and the Pinellas Bayway/Tierra Verde/Fort De Soto area. One can go to the beach in St. Pete and not feel as though you are surrounded by influencers faking their fantasy lifestyle of faux wealth and the lie of eternal happiness.

Cocoon was a bland movie about old people who wanted to live forever even if that meant leaving everyone that they claimed to love behind on another planet. It seemed selfish to my twelve-year-old eyes. The old people were silly and the aliens acted more like a cult. Forty years passed before I chose to watch it again. This time, I would have the eyes and experience of a fifty-two-year-old and I would watch it at home. My mother has long since died; she did not get to live forever with aliens, and I was closer to the age of the actors in the movie. I might have an ache or pain every now and then, or “once in a blue moon,” as my mother would have said, so maybe I could relate to physical human frailty. Barret Oliver has not made a movie since 1989, The Plaza Theater closed in the early 2000s and I live nowhere near my hometown. I have always kept my love for movies and this year, after eight years of not going, I returned to watching them in theaters. 

 

Sometimes my perspectives on movies from the past change. A movie I loved as a kid might be one I like less now or a movie I did not like then might be more interesting at this age. The Breakfast Club, which also came out when I was twelve in 1985, is a movie I loved then, but today a film about a group of teenagers doing detention in a school library is as entertaining as reading people's political diatribes on social media. Even the nostalgia factor cannot keep me interested. I am one who believes that tastes in entertainment should mature as we age. I find it odd when adults, especially men, are interested in Star Wars or Legos or collecting toys from their childhood to display. It is some sad symptom of Peter Pan syndrome.

Forty years onward, I still did not like Cocoon. The movie had an interesting beginning but quickly lost itself in the waters of the fountain of youth or the Gulf of Mexico and became sugary sweet and sentimental. It was an instant pudding movie that was safe and the same no matter how many boxes you tasted. I forced myself to finish it. This is a movie about selfish people leaving the ones they love behind so they can live forever without pain or responsibility.

Brian Dennehy and Steve Guttenberg in Cocoon 1985.

After forty years, I remain picky about my entertainment choices. If anything changed for me, it was developing an appreciation of the short swim trunks and nice body that Steve Guttenberg showed off on his boat. I have also traveled Florida from Pensacola to Key West and back several hundred times and there are parts of the state I still like, but those are a secret.

Summer Fever

The hottest day of the year cooking in Statham, Georgia. Photo by me, July 2025.

It reached 102 degrees in Athens on Monday, 100 on Tuesday and also 100 in Atlanta and I am elated July is over. The heat and humidity make July my least favorite month, I do not even like the name. The good news is that only one third of meteorological summer remains and perhaps this week was the peak of the heat. I am hopeful that there will not been another stretch with temperatures around 100 in August.

 

I was in Athens, Statham and Bogart on Monday during the worst of the heat. Many areas had been without significant rain since late June and driving the old Atlanta Highway the yards were brown. It was dry enough that even the crabgrass had given up. Horses and cows munched on brown grass in huddles underneath trees. The kudzu wilted and any type of breeze was nothing more than a dream. No humans wanted to be outside either, conversations with strangers were about the heat and the shade was a precious commodity. 

 

Statham, Ga. Photo by me, July 2025.

 

Statham, Ga. Photo by me, July 2025.

I spent some of the afternoon rummaging through the top floor of an old brick building without air conditioning in Statham. The heat index was around 110 degrees. It was not the best day to be doing such, but I cannot resist wandering through old buildings when the opportunity presents.

 

The sky turned black by late afternoon in Athens upon leaving Trader Joe's.  Relief filled the horizon as I saw the storms with red and magenta on the radar depiction on my phone. To the east over downtown Athens the rain poured. When it is that hot, the atmosphere boils up storms that unleash the torrents. Such is the summer fever and hopefully it has broken.

 

Photo by me, July 2025.

Driving out of town, a puny storm wet the roads to make steam rise from the asphalt. Dog days be gone and good riddance to July.
 

The Mid Point of 2025

Happy Fourth of July from Broad Street in Monroe, Georgia. Photo by me, June 2025.

It was during a hiking trip last fall and sitting in a barbecue joint in Gainesville, Georgia when I knew I had enough notes and ideas to begin writing the first draft of a new novel. This realization was a nice change from when I had stood in Micanopy, Florida in September chasing down the ghost of River Phoenix. I was undecided if I was on a wild goose chase or if I was seeking twisted inspiration. Inspiration can come from anywhere I suppose, even from long dead movie stars with bad drug habits. 

The town square of Gainesville, Georgia. October 2024.

After eating, I walked around the square and aired out my thoughts like sheets on a clothes line. I had two people in mind who I had known that I could use as inspiration for characters. One was a prim and proper person and the other was a person who lived below their raising and had wasted their chance at life. These two would be among the foundational characters at the heart of the novel. I decided to set this story primarily in two places I know well, Monroe, Georgia and Athens. River Phoenix and Micanopy, Florida might still figure into this somehow or maybe not, River did spend time in Athens hanging out with Michael Stipe in the 1990s. 

"The bike is the answer." Athens, Georgia. Photo by me, April 2014.

At the mid point of this year, this book is a long way from being finished and I am still writing the first draft. There will be no new book from me in 2025. Other than what I have written above, the only new tease I have for this book might be found in the Eagles song One of These Nights crossed with the mood and themes of the Chris Isaak song Wicked Game. A previous tease can be found in a post here.

 

A week ago, Shadow's Gravity had its one year anniversary and I updated the cover.  

The new cover features a portion of a photo of my mother from the late 1940s when she was a toddler. She was holding on to the back of a parked Mercury and had dropped her toy cat. 

Secret Falls

 

Somewhere in the Georgia mountains. Photo by me, October 2024.

In typical fashion, the last week of October near Halloween is when I drive up to the mountains of Georgia or North Carolina to see the peak leaf color, go for a hike and buy locally grown Georgia apples and apple cider doughnuts. These are trips I have been making since the 1980s.

One of my destinations in October 2024 was a little known waterfall that I had found in a hiking book from the 1990s. There are many waterfalls in the Georgia mountains and in the fall, the mountain trails are crowded, especially on weekends. I call it the tourist circuit in which metro Atlanta residents drive up to the mountains, fill up the trailheads and huff and puff through the woods for a selfie in front of the water falling over the rocks. The peace I associate with the mountains is nonexistent during fall weekends and the last thing I want to do is listen to people drowning out the sounds of nature.

To help prevent this location from falling victim to the overcrowding of the tourist circuit, I am not going to name this waterfall or its specific location. There is very little information on the internet about this trail and waterfall and I do not want to contribute to it being overrun like most every other place.

The snaky road with sneaky curves. Photo by me, October 2024.

To hunt down this waterfall and lightly traveled trail which I feared might be overgrown, you drive a twisting and narrow two lane state road into the Chattahoochee National Forest. After passing over the tops of ridges for many miles there is another turn onto an even more narrow and curvy road that follows a gap between the ridges. Several miles down this road and following directions from thirty years ago we turned again down a gravel and mud Forest Service road. There were no signs indicating there was a trail or waterfall to be found. The road was in decent shape for an unpaved Forest Service road given that it was only a month since Hurricane Helene had barreled through the mountains and caused so much destruction. Also, you never know what conditions to expect on Forest Service roads as some are more treacherous than others.

Shall we drive this Forest Service road through a creek? Photo by me, October 2024.

The gravel road followed a creek upstream into a mountain cove for some time before we guessed we had located the trailhead by a small pullover as again there were no signs. 

Tempted by the unmarked path. Photo by me, October 2024.

A trail peeked at us through the brush and we decided to take it with no one else around to tell us that we could be making a mistake. Not that I cared, I was happy to be having an adventure in the woods just as I had since I was a boy. Up the cove we walked between the ridge tops that ranged between 3,200 and 3,400 feet in elevation.

A bigfoot. Nah, just me. Photo October 2024.

We walked for some time as the cove began to close in around us. It was around that time and after trudging through a long muddy stretch that I suspected we might be on the wrong trail or that the directions from a thirty year old book were wrong. I sensed that the person I was with began to question our direction and was hesitant about continuing. I assured him that it was not much further and to keep following the swift moving creek upstream, not that I had any real clue. We were going to find something even if it was a bear and we had earlier heard something crashing through the underbrush and leaves on a ridge above us. Though the thousands of wild black bears in Georgia are mostly afraid of human contact and will run away, I hoped not to test it.

It was the sound of the waterfall in the distance that we heard first and with that, our pace quickened. The boundary of two counties went unseen between our legs as we straddled it.

A place with history under the fallen leaves. Photo by me, October 2024.

The ground leveled out and we were standing in the spot of a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp from the 1930s. From looking around, there were signs that on rare occasion people still used the area to tent camp. Those people too were as lucky as us to know about this almost secret place that on this day we had completely to ourselves.

Some of the old mill ruins from over a hundred years ago. Photo by me, October 2024.

Prior to it becoming a C.C.C. camp almost a hundred years ago, there had been a family mill located just below the falls. A few ruins of the mill were scattered around.

The rooted and rocky trail to the ledge. Photo by me, October 2024.

The waterfall crashed through the foliage and remained hidden from view from the banks of the creek. There were two options to be able to view the falls: wade into the cold October mountain water on slippery rocks or crawl up a rooted, rocky ledge then on hands and knees inch out to the edge. It if had been July or August I would have stripped down and chosen the water route. Since it was almost November and from experience I know how cold mountain streams can be even at the height of summer, I forced my too-old-to-be-doing-this-self up onto the ledge.

Between the mountain laurel the secret waterfall runs. Photo by me, October 2024.

 The view was worth it and was made even more beautiful since we had it to ourselves with no other humans around for miles. There was no line of selfie takers, chatter about lives lived by the glow of a cell phone aimed at the face and no alerts or noise masquerading as music blaring from cheap speakers. This was not an experience to be checked off from a list and forgotten. There was nature as it should be enjoyed with a present mind and a satisfaction of finding its beautiful secrets that has driven me since I was a young boy in the 1970s.

The moon of the mountains nearing Halloween. Photo by me, October 2024.

On the way out of the cove to the gravel road, the weather turned as it does in the mountains like flipping through the pages of an old hiking book. Sunshine became cloudy and would become rain later. Clouds with small cracks between coagulated in the sky with my thoughts, the temperature cooled and the moon signaled from above the limbs that nightfall lurked. Ichabod Crane on a lonely country road entered my thoughts as I looked at the trees leaning over the road. The stories of The Headless Horseman and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow inflamed my imagination as a kid and still I remember the eeriness of that dirt road behind my childhood home as something sinister decades later. Not all of my childhood Halloweens were spent running with untied shoe laces from spooks and birds or hearing my grandmother relay news stories of razor blades hidden in the apples. I suppose there is a little of Washington Irving's characters in me, both Ichabod and Rip Van Winkle, and when in the silent woods on October evenings my imagination taps me on the shoulder.

Photo by me, October 2024.

Where the road meets the trail and forks into our imagination if we are lucky. 

 

Athfest 2025

 

Athens, Georgia. Photo by me, June 2025.

We dropped into Athfest for another year this past weekend. It was Sunday afternoon at the arts and music festival that many townies see as the highlight of townie summer in Athens after the UGA students leave. We parked on the north end of campus and walked over to the scene. I am not keen on arts festivals; I have been to too many and seen the homemade crafts made with glue guns and chainsaws enough times, but I like Athfest as it has more live music than art. Though you can find plenty of crafts with tongue-wagging bulldogs stuck on them if you are inclined.

A rainbow crosswalk at College Avenue and E. Clayton Street out front of Wuxtry Records. Photo by me, June 2025.

A sparse bunch at the main stage outside the 40 Watt Club. Photo by me, June 2025.

The weather was hot and perhaps that was the reason the crowd was thin at the main stage outside the 40 Watt when we showed.

A band performs on another stage on N. Hull. Photo by me, June 2025.

The crowds. Photo by me, 2025.

Over on N. Hull Street by The World Famous, we found the crowd by another stage. Maybe they sought the shade? The mood of the people was that of not wanting to let it wind down, to keep the party going until it was a last call, beer-goggle-eyed evening that ended in a long walk of shame to Normaltown or Five Points. We did not stick around long enough to witness that.

I had heard that James Franco was in town working on a project with William H. Macy and that he had been seen in the downtown restaurants. If he was going to be in Athens on Sunday, then he might as well have been at Athfest incognito. Franco does have an Athens connection, as he directed videos for R.EM.'s That Someone Is You and Blue from the album Collapse Into Now.

The arts? Photo by me, June 2025.

So many movies and television shows are filmed in Georgia that you regularly run into them. A television show for ABC was filming recently in a park that I often walk in for exercise and I recently passed another show featuring Sylvester Stallone that was shooting in Monroe. At my last place in Atlanta, before I moved, some scenes from Hillbilly Elegy were filmed within walking distance around the corner and Stranger Things was partly shot nearby too. I am not impressed by the lights or stars, as I find the productions are often a hindrance to public spaces and roads closed to the public.

Walking through Athfest I passed a man on W. Washington Street who looked exactly like Franco and we made eye contact. He was with two other rather attractive guys who were more fashionably dressed than most. They gave off the air of not being townies even though Athens has plenty of local wannabe hipsters. I was inches from the guy for a few seconds and in that brief moment I thought it was Franco.

Later, I spotted the trio again playing hacky sack on a closed street. I wanted to snag a photo, but the guy was looking my direction as I walked by. I wanted to be more subtle about it and the opportunity passed. Was it James Franco? Maybe or maybe not.

I am pretty terrible about recognizing famous people in person. I have been a huge fan of R.E.M since the 1980s and I could walk by Michael Stipe on E. Broad Street and never realize it. Well, I did see Stipe once in Atlanta in the 1990s, but that was work related. Franco is only five years younger than I am and the more I consider it, the guy I saw looked like he was in his twenties rather than his forties, but some people do age incredibly well.

I look forward to another Athfest next year to see whom I do not meet on the street.