Atlanta’s Underground Art Show was well-named: it was SO underground that three Lyft drivers could not find it, and one Lyft left!

The venue, the Georgia Freight Depot, is adjacent to Underground Atlanta but is not actually under the viaducts that carry traffic overhead. The young artists displaying their works also seemed adjacent to “The City Too Busy To Hate” as white Atlantans dubbed their hometown during the 1960s even as they kept busy dragging their feet before joining the march for Civil Rights; artists whose works seemed adjacent to but not covered by the protective viaducts of art schools and Atlanta galleries, mainstream money  and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Not the High Museum, certainly; more like the low museum, where money is scarce and the struggle is real… but so is the art.

The Old Lady took only the photo seen above. She felt it disrespectful to photograph art that is for sale but has not been bought, a theft of intellectual property.

SUPPORT LOCAL ARTISTS!

LISTEN to The Old Lady!

The Old Lady confesses to indulging in a benign voyeurism as she travels about.

She is not hesitant to stare at windows, which often frame poignant or amusing vignettes.

One Sunday morning while seated on the café terrace beside a repurposed train depot she spotted a little dog face peeking out of a nearby window…

… perhaps watching her human walk away to work…

… maybe then sighing once, and settling down for the day’s nap.

“You just never know what little dramas one might happen to notice,” she chuckled over a steaming cup of blue matcha.

The Old Lady LOVES public art, whether free range or officially sanctioned…

… and Atlanta displays both with equanimity.

From the bus stop to the public plaza…

… ART-lanta celebrates!

The city of Atlanta looks her best when seen through windows, in The Old Lady’s not-so-humble opinion.

MARTA stations feature geometrically-shaped openings that seduce the photographic eye like flowers romance butterflies…

… and even the trains offer their own unique perspectives.

Curves and angles seem framed and hanged and carefully curated by a constantly changing collaboration of architects, nature, and light into the great art exhibit titled The City of Atlanta.

Alas, The Old Lady’s last bid for adventure in Hotlanta ended in bitter disappointment.

She had so much fun on the superhigh escalator at the Peachtree Center MARTA Station (left) that she wanted to ride the even-higher escalator at CNN Center (above, right).

But did you know they won’t even let you ride it unless you pay for the CNN Studio Tour?

Those tour tickets are pricey! Oh, they’ll knock a dollar off for Senior Citizens… a whole dollar! Paltry compensation for the doddering elderly! Can ya spare it?

The Old Lady proposes that there should be a cheaper ticket for just the escalator ride – hey, money’s money, right?

Get Ted Turner on the phone!

LISTEN to The Old Lady!

Sweet Water Taste by Gloria Bond Clooney is a comedy, but gets its deepest laughs from the discomfort of raw truth. A fine Horizon Theatre cast takes the absurdity of clinging to the old racist ways in the new inclusive world to the edge of tragedy, and still leaves the audience laughing through tears.

An historic act of sexual exploitation by a slave owner results generations later in a dispute between two descendants, one white and one black, over the right to be buried in the family cemetery. The story forces the audience to face the continuing conflict between those who expect to control who’s in, who’s out, and who can be where… and those who believe that we are all who’s.

Of course in today’s world ancestry need not rely on family trees but is proven through DNA testing. In Sweet Water Taste the results of a DNA test are left open… perhaps to hammer home the idea that we are all siblings, fellow heirs to the ancestral global estate of the Human family.

The production runs through August 25, 2019; find ticket info at https://www.horizontheatre.com/

SUPPORT LIVE THEATRE!

Half a century ago, when The Old Lady was just a teenager, she would ride an Atlanta Transit bus (MARTA hadn’t been invented yet) from Cascade Heights downtown to the Central Atlanta Public Library.

A marble statue stood in that marble building, tucked away in the corner of a staircase landing. The Veiled Rebekah fascinated The Old Lady for the skillful carving of stone into the diaphanous fabric that covers but does not conceal Rebekah’s lovely face and figure.

Over the years since they tore down the old library building The Old Lady wondered what had become of Veiled Rebekah… until now!

She discovered her in the High Museum of Art!

A chance meeting with an old friend!

And she hasn’t changed a bit.

The Old Lady rode the MARTA train in Atlanta for the first time since 1984 – 35 years!

Forget Space Mountain and the Tilt-a-Whirl. The Old Lady gets her kicks from screeching rails and The World’s Longest Escalator – now THAT’S a thrill ride!

She is excited by the top-down view on the city of her growing up years – so much has changed, so much is the same, and so much has been painted over with the brilliant colors of free-range public art.

But the trains are the same.

“They haven’t changed a thing,” she observed, “except that all those people who used to stare out the windows to avoid looking at each other are now staring down at their phones.”

“I just love summer!” insists The Old Lady, “Southern summertimes mean real red-ripe home-grown tomatoes and you know what that means (dramatic pause)… BLTs!”

For the uninitiated BLTs are Bacon Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches.

We’ve talked Tomato, now let’s talk Bacon. Three things: thick sliced, cooked crispy, and save the bacon grease! The Old Lady is a progressive Southern cook; she does not strain her bacon grease but pours it bits and all in an old jelly jar. “Just like the health benefits of eating a whole apple versus drinking the juice, when I add bacon grease to my cornbread I want all the nutrition of these crunchy bits,” she says.

“Lettuce? Anything but iceberg.

“Mayo? Nothing but Hellman’s.

“Bread? Whole grains please.

“I sing the praises of the BLT,” hummed The Old Lady happily. “It is the song of my people.”

The groove and grub club loves downtown Valdosta’s Food Truck Thursdays.

The most recent event drew an enthusiastic crowd to the vacant lot at Central and Lee Streets where the grubbers enjoyed everything from BBQ to tacos to sausage dogs, and the groovers bopped to the beat of Alphonso Johnson’s Goodtimes Jr. Music Shed.

Goodtimes will play at all of this season’s Food Truck Thursdays. The next is scheduled for July 18.

If outdoor events are not your bag you can catch Goodtimes every first and third Friday in the space at Central and Patterson formerly known as Hildegard’s but now better known as The Music Shed.

“Third Friday? That’s TONIGHT!” squealed The Old Lady, digging out her dancing shoes.