Thinking Out Loud

Comedian Dennis Miller once said if your job requires you to wear a plastic nametag, you’ve made a serious vocational error.

Miller’s mid-90s shtick was about flight attendants, but one can’t help but notice that journalists wear plastic nametags, too, and right now there are many, many newspaper employees wondering whether or not they’ve made a serious vocational error.

When I turned sixteen, I received my driver’s license the very same day. There was nothing else more important in my world than going to the DMV and obtaining my laminated ticket to freedom. No greater birthday gift was to be had. A driver’s license meant I could take myself where I wanted to go – provided, of course, I could garner permission to borrow the family car.

A driver’s license was, and remains to a large degree, a right of teenage passage. The cost of that passage was a lot less back then. Gas was about 50 cents a gallon.

As most people will attest to in these harried times, there is little time in any given day to think about much else beyond the crisis in front of you. Making deadlines, getting the kids to all their activities and homework, trying to get ahead at the office and having some semblance of a social life means we are spending far more time than ever trying to keep all the balls in the air.

Americans surpassed the rest of the world in 1999 for the longest work hours; Japan fell to second place that year.

Two days after the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) and Mulkey Engineers and Consultants held their second public workshop at Mt. Pisgah Church to champion improvements on the Old Alabama Road corridor, the chairman of GDOT, Mike Evans, held a press conference downtown to release a new report that says the state faces a $51 billion transportation shortfall through 2035. Bummer.

But the bad news didn’t stop there.

Financial times are getting tough and the bubble that seemingly protects Johns Creek may have been pierced. Though instead of a giant kaboom, the sound we hear is more like the soft sound of air being let out of a balloon.

But beware. Sometimes a gentle breeze can be the very thing that ushers in a larger storm.

love this time of year. No, it’s not the buds on trees, the days when the temperatures make it into the 70s, or the promise of spring around the corner.

Nope. For me this time of year marks the final few weeks of Georgia’s legislative session, a time of guerrilla political warfare, skullduggery and other interesting techniques on how to best your political opponents and bring the bacon home to your constituents just in time for re-election.

I suppose many Creekers sincerely believed the formation of a new city would cure all ills. Gone would be the days of Fulton County’s destructive decision-making, real or perceived, in our northern regions.

Crazy-making county-level decisions that prevented full build-outs of our libraries, consistent repaving of our roads, barely adequate public safety programs, and rezoning decisions that left our neighborhood leaders scratching their heads or flat out angry would be a distant memory. Our hard-earned tax dollars would have a local and more visible impact. Hooray.

My Summer Vacation

It has been an interesting summer! Everybody found their own way to enjoy (or endure) Georgia’s heat. For some it was sleeping a little later, enjoying the lighter traffic, or maybe some fun at the beach. I had my share of that, too, but not nearly enough.

It was the advice the nation needed to hear on 9/11. Sadly, it was ignored.

Welcome to The Post!

Earlier this year, I thought it would be a clever idea to create a Johns Creek-centric news outlet that not only covered our local city government and political scene, but also examined the impact of state and national issues on our community.

As I talked to my friends and colleagues about the idea, they had a few things on their news wish lists: more in-depth coverage of local news, cultural and community activities, book reviews, something webby, and blogs that dealt with meaningful matters within the community.