We came together at The Granite Room to kick-off the giving season with a bang... and I even got to sing with Alexis Vear.

Next up? ARTvision 2009. Watch for details soon.

Notes from the YouTube video:

“Atlanta's own Positive Impact threw its second-annual "Parties with Impact" gala at The Granite Room in Castleberry Hill. Alexis Vear (accompanied by guitarist Matthew Smith) headlined the event, with clips including "Step Out," a song Alexis wrote about Eddie's Attic; as well as covers of "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" by U2 - a duet with Will Pollock (additional backing vocals by Todd Price). Videography by Will Pollock & Todd Price; edited by Will Pollock. ARTvision 2009 sales launch on December 1st. For more, visit www.positiveimpact-atl.org.”

Tags: willpollock.com positive impact, cool events, cool people

Check out Mama Jean up top on wp.com! Taken on our boat in the South of France.

She’s reading The Times and enjoying the start of our day.



This is also a Pride 2009 preview picture, and depending on how things go, could be an ARTvision piece.

Tags: willpollock.com new captures, cool events

I got fall today in my nostrils.

(ATLANTA :: 25 September 2009) - Positive Impact, AID Atlanta and many other Atlanta- and Georgia-based organizations rely on funding from the Ryan White Care Act. And the deadline to extend and/or renew looms in a few days.

With Congress atwitter about the healthcare debate, many eyes are off the ball and we need to focus to make sure this funding is not interrupted.

I just left a voice message with Sen. Isakson’s office, and his page crashed when I tried to send the following e-mail:

“Subject: REAUTHORIZE THE RYAN WHITE CARE ACT

The subject says it all, and you should make that an official topic in your pull-down menu. This is a HUGE deal for HIV agencies in the state of Georgia and it's not getting sufficient play - either in the media or from your public statements.”

Please take a moment to contact his office. Here’s his info:

Washington, DC Office
120 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-3643/ Fax: (202) 228-0724

Georgia Office
One Overton Park, Suite 970
3625 Cumberland Boulevard
Atlanta, GA 30339
(770) 661-0999/Fax: (770) 661-0768

Sen. Isakson, give your constituents the chance to e-mail you directly about this and other important issues. SHAME ON YOU.

Last, since this is a national-funding program, no matter where you live it’s important to let your representatives in the House and Senate know that reauthorizing Ryan White funding is critical to HIV services everywhere. Click here to find out how to get contact info for your representatives.

Give ‘em hell!

# # #

Tags: willpollock.com breaking news, ryan white act, positive impact

Not a Miley fan, but this video is hilarious.

Here is a video round-up of Eagle-raid-related protests. Go here for a link to the SoVo video page, or here for the ongoing news story. Also, Mike Alvear has a great (but scary) round-up of what happened on his blog.

If you’re so inclined, write a letter of complaint to the Mayor’s office of communications and then make a comment here about the reply you get.

Here’s the contact info:

Beverly L. Isom, Director of Communications
404.330.6558 office
404.886.2334 cell
bisom@atlantaga.gov

Mayor Franklin has apparently played pretty dumb in responding to this aggressive action, so we need to hit them with protests.

A round of applause to Mike Alvear and Justin Ziegler and everyone else who spearheaded this City Hall protest - taking a stand in the torrential rain.







And then finally, a rally outside the bar:

Tags: willpollock.com youtube, rant, seriously?

As new host of the New York Philharmonic’s weekly, nationally syndicated broadcast on WQXR radio, Alec Baldwin laments the current state of pop music with a nod to EI. Here’s an excerpt from the New York magazine piece:

“In his dressing room, where the radio is tuned to WQXR “all day long,” Baldwin makes no apologies for his anti–Top 40 feelings. It’s part of his growing up. “Popular music has an emotional-intelligence quotient that’s geared much toward younger people,” he explains. “It’s all about”—he flattens his voice to a disaffected teen monotone—“ ‘You left me. Why did you leave me? I still love you. I tried so hard to stop loving you.’ And it’s like, well, I relate to that, I just don’t want to think about that. When you’re younger, you want to wallow in it. When you get older, you still love the person, and wonder why they don’t love you. You just have other things to do.” Baldwin had a relentlessly troubled relationship to his now-ex-wife, Kim Basinger, of course. It hit the news when a most unfatherly voice mail he left for Ireland somehow came out.”

I’m still very much a fan of quality pop - especially when it paints a picture or a story that actually means something.

Tags: willpollock.com emotional intellect

I stumbled across this on LastFM today. One of the better tracks on her debut CD, “Sober” is something I can really resonate with these days.

Tags: willpollock.com youtube, tunes, cool people

(4 September 2009 :: CHARLOTTESVILLE) - I learned a new term while traveling on a catered passenger barge for Rob’s birthday in France.

Aside from needing (and getting) regular exercise to work off the ultra-rich, amazingly tasty French cuisine, one must also pass through what’s called a “lock” when one travels down a canal or other body where the water level changes. I guess being a city boy I never had a need to know that.

This month’s header capture, “Emergence,” could only have come to pass because of these canal locks. The guy in the picture was working his boat with this two other buddies, rising up as the lock sloshed and churned full with murky water. He had his hands resting on the side of the lock and was waiting for the boat to reach the required level to move on.

I grabbed my camera and shot their entry into the lock, which turned out to be a very interesting group of pictures to say the least. Then... I went for a run.

# # #

Tags: willpollock.com new captures, general posts

Ambivalence - Although it walks and talks like a passive action, the result is vastly different.

“Ambivalence is one of the sharpest, deadliest weapons one can wield against a loved one.”

Tags: willpollock.com quotes 2 remember, emotional intellect

As we slink away from summer, I thought a nice way to say good-bye would be next month’s header capture, “emergence,” a photo I snapped while in France.

Watch for it, along with a brief story, on Wednesday.

More stuff added then, too, including details on new SFM projects and ARTvision previews.

Stay tuned.

(30 August 2009 - ATLANTA, GA) :: In my quest to get my book published and out in the national conversation, I have been reminded of a conceptual thread critical to my task: convincing men of all stripes that “mattering” is more important than almost anything we wrestle with.

I don’t mean the consensus view of mattering, mind you - “that issue matters to me” - I mean the way we feel, belong and love each other. And, more importantly, ourselves. (The latter informs the former.) I’ve recently seen the underbelly of mattering - bearing witness to a deeply flawed, emotional ghost of someone as opposed to his real, truer, higher self - and seeing that pointed lack motivated me to sort some of it out with this post.

Too often, I see people who simply forget that we have but one chance in this lifetime to “make it right” - and love, above all, should never be wrapped in (or cursed by) a shroud of ambivalence. Don’t seek the kindness of strangers when you yourself are a stranger to kindness. Walk with people, not through them. Carry your heart with the same grace you’d want it received.

Why? T.S. Elliott got it right:

"To be of importance to others is to be alive.”

In other words, who and what we are to each other - our inner and outer mattering - is tantamount to a peaceful coexistence. To understand. To connect. To stay. To evolve. Love is not a currency we spend or earn, it is a means and method through which we appreciate, know, realize.

So I sit at my desk knowing I’m an imperfect being living in an imperfect world, doing my part to make it a few clicks better every day. If we wake up to the truth of how we matter each day, joy will rise with us, and we’ll stop seeing ghosts.

---

Photo: “mattering,” France, August 2009, a spontaneous, unmanaged and unstaged split-screen composition featuring a happy Stuey in a window reflection.

Tags: willpollock.com emotional intellect

You know how I love to come up with snazzy titles:

“Wheels of Fortune & Adventure: A New Bimmer Beginning”

For more, go directly to the Euro Blog.

Many thanks to Heinz, Daniel (pictured here) and so many other BMW officials who welcomed me with open arms.

Tags: willpollock.com travel blogs, captures

Fuck it, I wish our nation’s companies weren’t so fucking god damned greedy.

(Actually, I just wanted an excuse to swear and be able to justify it -- like I needed one.)

I was cussin’ in the same way after a recent news post about Novare Partners, a local company with whom I’ve had a beef for a number of years in its flagrant greed and disregard for what’s best for Atlanta. “For whom are we building in this city,” I asked back then. “For the people, or for the bank accounts of the suits?”

Turns out the bank accounts are not as fat as we thought they are - in fact, this company is being questioned as a “going concern.” Seriously? This is your legacy for our city?

Just because you CAN make a building, it doesn’t mean you should. Evidenced by the spectacular disaster that is Spire Midtown - its retail more than 50% vacant (sometimes more) and its interior spaces looking more like a Budget 8 Motel. Anyways, my set-up on Facebook, sparking a number of comments from my friends, included the following few-sentence editorial from yours truly:

“When you build shitty buildings, fuck up your retail spaces and allow a city to be mired by sameness... I say: you had it coming. (This is my version of "I Told You So.")

Then it reminded me of the Piedmont Park parking deck controversy, that was a soap opera starring a highly paid executive presiding over a no-bid contract and very little transparency in how they awarded it. Here’s the editorial I sent to the AJC:

The Garden, Parking Deck & Conservancy: Of Two Minds In Midtown

I’m following the debate over the Botanical Garden’s parking deck, as I hope many city residents are. The work of the Piedmont Park Conservancy has benefited me -- as an investor at Piedmont Crest, a new Park-side condominium development off of 12th street; as an ALTA player out of Piedmont Park Tennis Center; and as a frequent visitor to Park events such as Screen on the Green, the Dogwood Festival and the Dave Matthews Concert.

I am also a paid member of the Conservancy. Their work has, without question, brought this great park of ours forward – and has made it greener, cleaner and more full of life. We are the better for it.

So it’s with a heavy heart that I question the defensive and self-promoting editorial by Debbie McCown, the Conservancy’s Executive Director (“Conservancy openly takes park from blight to bright,” @issue, 22 August). This stuffy piece was the second of the one-two punch I read in the AJC, after a gaggle of attorneys wrote in defense of the Botanical Garden’s independence from city affairs and state Sunshine laws (“Plan will be a boon; Garden has nothing to hide,” 25 August 2007). Why are we rehashing this stuff?

Both McCown and Team McBeal are missing the point. We are on a slippery slope when we as a city give ourselves wholly over to the private sector. It’s one thing to source corporate assistance to help create a commercial thoroughfare such as the Midtown Mile; but quite another to give over a natural jewel such as Piedmont Park. Not only have our city planners ceded control of that treasured asset – we are, in many ways, relinquishing the spirit that our residents, our Mayor, our visitors and our city council members have worked so hard to build. As an activist, property owner, journalist and business manager here in Atlanta, I stand firmly behind Mike King’s plainly worded editorial (“Park groups should let sun shine in,” 17 August 2007). It asks, in simple language: Now that the Botanical Garden’s Grecian Army of lawyers has snake-charmed the presiding judge to toss many of the claims brought by Friends of Piedmont Park, just come clean.

Show us how you’ve awarded contracts, to whom, and why; disclose your finances and balance sheets; and give us less lip when we ask you to comply with Georgia’s Sunshine laws. You’re doing the city’s work, the people’s work, even if it’s not coming directly from City Hall. If you’ve given no-bid contracts to friends of the Conservancy, as is rumored, then I want to know about it. And so do a lot of other folks.

Doug Abramson, principal of Friends of Piedmont Park, the advocacy group leading the legal opposition to the parking deck, also says our great gains in beautification have come at a price.

“The Garden and the Conservancy do some good work in the Park, but when questioned about their decisions and their practices they respond that they have raised millions of dollars over the years and somehow that should insulate them from public scrutiny and accountability,” he says. “As stewards of our public park and as representatives of the City, they should act transparently and disclose how and where money is spent, and otherwise conduct their affairs publicly.”

Actually, the current parking arrangement works pretty well. Piedmont Park Tennis Center – one of the last units of the park still managed by the City of Atlanta, run expertly by Sharon Lester and her team – enjoys regular access off Park Drive to the modest yet ultimately convenient parking lot adjacent to Magnolia Hall and, yes, the Botanical Garden. We have managed with this arrangement because the unpretentious parking area provides a small, controllable yet effective resource when these great events happen (including our home tennis matches). My teammates and I use this lot frequently and do not want to see it torn up. Rather, it should be maintained and used as is. What about eco-friendly asphalt? Low-water landscaping? More restricted access? Other creative uses? This area could be a testing ground for new environmentally friendly landscaping products, but all we ever hear about is how this mammoth car deck is going to be our savior, an expansive car heaven that will alleviate Midtown’s parking woes.

Let’s also remember how royally the private sector can fumble the public ball. After mulling this issue, I kept having nightmare reminders of Iraq reconstruction getting handed over to the likes of Halliburton, Parsons Corp. and others -- only to have billions wasted. Do we need such a profound example of alleged no-bid private contracts gone awry? I don’t think so. Privatization, in some weird way, seems to absolve officials from the personal care and obligation that comes with public management. And since secrecy breeds skepticism and mistrust, here we are.

I write this, clearly, of two minds, because again, I know full well the benefits we’ve seen in the Park. I may be a Conservancy member, but remain a dissenting voice within, hoping the air around this project is cleared. But this nose-thumbing, redundant, “look what we’ve done for you lately” approach is maddening and makes me want to scream – and it should bring all Atlanta residents to their front porches, too, to do the same. McCown earned nearly $115,000 in annual salary in 2005, which has most certainly increased since then; in that year, the Conservancy paid more than $100,000 to an external PR firm. Are these needed expenditures or extravagant usage of donors’ generosity? And that’s only the stuff we know about.

Simply singing one’s own praises does not magically immunize you from public speculation – particularly when you have people in the city who enjoy the park set-up as is, and would rather not indulge the Botanical Garden’s desire to give their members in Alpharetta a more convenient place to park in the city. I use the tennis center proudly, along with its parking area, knowing the recently updated clubhouse and courts there are the last bastion of municipal-managerial excellence that the park has.

I am a traditionalist and would prefer to see the park’s car-management system kept the same while still have the park expanded and enhanced. However, if the parking deck is our savior, show us how. If any of our private partners must stand on a pedestal to claim grand success, and continue to move us forward in this great city of ours, let us peek behind your curtain so we’re all on the same page. Without that, it’s a mystery too great to accept.

I **definitely** would have swore a lot more if I thought it would have spurred them to print it. (They didn’t.)

Tags: willpollock.com seriously?, rant

This poem by Linda Ellis - recited recently by Angela Harmon at Spiritual Living Center - makes a shit load of sense.

How will you spend your dash?

Recent life events have made me even more certain that the “dash” is precious and we should treat ourselves, and each other, as carefully and as kindly as we can.

We get one shot at this. Make it resonante.


The Dash Poem, by Linda Ellis
I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning to the end

He noted that first came the date of her birth
And spoke the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years

For that dash represents all the time
That she spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not how much we own;
The cars, the house, the cash,
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard.
Are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left,
That can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough
To consider what’s true and real
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger,
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we’ve never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect,
And more often wear a smile
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.

So, when your eulogy is being read
With your life’s actions to rehash
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?

# # #

Tags: willpollock.com emotional intellect

(5 July 2009 - AUGUSTA, GA) Beneath the veils, white gloves and baby dangling, an artist moved through our pop-culture consciousness with a singular adeptness. As the long-version video shows, “Back or White” beautifully summarizes his conflict with and love of life... where he wanted to reject conventional perceptions but also show a longing for acceptance.



We are gearing up for a memorial for this man, this legend - no matter what your opinion of him, our world will be a lot less interesting without him.

And herein lies my point: We can’t wait for death to appreciate life. In his last 10 or so years, he was a lightening rod for lawsuits (some of them deserved), criticism and many, many aspersions. Much of his life drama played out publicly... and much if not all was self-created.

But amidst all of this, here’s the question: Why is everyone always a saint after they die? He wasn’t a saint, he didn’t walk on water. He was human... and a very talented one at that. We should work harder to celebrate life while we have it - instead of waiting to deliver a eulogy and wishing we had just one more moment in the waking world.

# # #

Tags: willpollock.com emotional intellect, youtube, cool people

Richard Blais does his thing at his new, hip and happening burger joint in West Midtown.

Thanks to Alison for such great company.

Tags: willpollock.com cool people, reviews

Like I’ve said in my conversations with other riders, “Don’t send a photographer to do a cyclist’s job.”

Hence the lots of stopping to capture scenes while doing 70 miles over a two-day stretch. “Great Oaks,” the header capture for wp.com this month, was an outgrowth of that ride - and is a symbol of country kindness you don’t find anywhere else.

On my return leg, I stopped at this familiar location and a gal came out to as me if I was OK. “I’m fine, just taking a breather,” I said. Sounded like their family was getting ready to sit down to Sunday brunch.

Everyone should be required to spend a day on a bike touring the countryside. You get an immediate appreciation for your surroundings, and every once in a while, you are surprised by kindness.

Click here to see my entire 2009 header-capture gallery. Take a look here at all the photos from my AV200 ride.

# # #

Tags: willpollock.com captures