About 200 yards from the Chronicle offices rise two blue buildings adorned with red silhouettes of dancers in mid-air, looking ready to leap off the walls and dance in the Decatur Square. These buildings house the offices and two dance studios of CORE, for nearly 25 years Atlanta’s premier contemporary dance company. CORE moved onto the Decatur Square long before the city’s renaissance, and they’ve done that thing artists do best: seen through the rubble to the beauty that could be and then helped create it.

Through everything from community outreach with local war refugees to ballroom classes to that subtle but scintillating something that comes of having internationally acclaimed professional dancers heading out onto the square for lunch during a break in rehearsal, CORE has been an important partner in the revival of downtown Decatur. CORE’s international touring has also built metro Atlanta’s reputation as a city for dance, and the educational opportunities and facilities CORE makes available to the Atlanta dance community at large have helped grow the dance scene.

But CORE is also where I’ve personally taken hundreds of dance classes, where I’ve made some exceptional friends, and where one of the dance companies in which I perform has created several works over the years. Some of the most compelling contemporary dance I’ve seen has been created and performed by CORE.

That’s why, two years ago, I readily accepted an invitation to join CORE’s board of directors and why, earlier this year, I became the president of that board. It’s why Chronicle partnered with our friends at Lenz, Inc. last year to produce a profile highlighting CORE’s many accomplishments. And it’s why  Chronicle is supporting CORE during its Annual Spring Appeal.

I hope you’ll consider joining Chronicle in supporting this extraordinary organization in all its artistic and social efforts. You can contribute online at my First Giving page, or contact me anytime if you’d like to contribute in some other way. Thanks for helping Chronicle support our good friends at CORE.

Also, we recently interviewed one of our favorite authors (and people), Terra Elan McVoy. We talked to her about her novel After the Kiss, what it’s like to write for teens, what it’s like to write a novel made up entirely of poems, and more. You can even see Terra read from her book: Go here.

Example: She was the founder and original emcee of this regular Atlanta event called INFO DEMO, a collection of themed lectures modeled after John Hodgman’s Little Gray Book Lectures. And if you were around then, and you went up to her and said, “Hey, can I do a PowerPoint and sing a country song about the death of my dog at INFO DEMO?” JS would not have done what so many MFA grads and poets might have (that is, turn up their noses or just offer confused looks). Instead, she would have said, “Yes, of course, please.”

This kind of attitude, freedom, and/or leeway is needed in creative fields; it’s seldom taught; and it will be missed in Atlanta and Decatur now that JS has left us. We send our deepest condolences to her family and close friends.

For more on her repertoire of work, see here.

Dear Atlantans,

Sincerely,
The band members of Oryx and Crake

Or maybe it’s just a handful of people working themselves to the cuticles in the name of word power. Who would do such a thing? And what are their superhero names? Good questions. Here’s the staff that’s bringing the AJC DBF program together:

Tom Bell, Program Director
Responsibilities: Oversees all author events and programming.
Superhero name: The GrEEn! FuRy!

Terra McVoy, Assistant Program Director (and Critically Acclaimed YA Author)
Responsibilities: All author events and programming.
Superhero name: Good Idea Girl

Jenny Sefa-Boakye, Writers Conference Director, Assistant to the Program Director
Responsibilities: Organizes conference, gives database and social media support, acts as liaison to Local Prose, Local Poetry, and Emerging Authors stages
Superhero name: Third-Eye Ninja

Bhumika Patel, Intern and Agnes Scott student
Responsibilities: Database support, blog writer, boring tasks made fun
Superhero name: Wonder Kid, The Mayor of Speedtown

Now they have a new book out titled Life After College. It arrived at Chronicle offices today.

Video proof here, with an intro by Tom.

The book covers everything the new college grad needs to know about settling in to the real world, from finding a job, to advice on finances, food, fun, Facebook, and more. It’s entertaining and helpful.

Congrats, Hundreds of Heads. You continue to do good work and help people through transitional times in their lives. The rest of you: Get it for the college grad in your family.

But yeah, summer break. About two or three weeks ago, I was supposed to give feedback on the piece my student, Trevon, is putting together. However, because I have been on summer break in my mind for several years now, I was slack about getting the feedback in, until now. I wish I had done it sooner, mostly because the act of offering feedback can be so rewarding. It’s really satisfying to look at another person’s writing, see into their brain, and discover a place you never knew existed. I went places with Trevon.

For your enjoyment, here are few excerpts from my feedback to him:

- “When you say he ‘rocked’ his solo, try to describe it a bit more. What does it feel and sound like to rock a solo?”

- “Did they meet Colombo? What did he look like? Was he nice? Shady? What kind of clothes did he wear? I want to know the details.”

- “End it with, ‘Colombo stood us up.’”

- “We need to add a scene where Oscar is home, figuring out with his brothers what happened and what it means to their record career. Ask your granddad for details on this – did they look for Colombo? Were they angry at Colombo? What did Oscar’s brothers and mother and father want to do to Colombo?”

Or if I obsess about a great band that has been around a while, I inevitably veer toward their early material when they were still in the formative stages of sound and production, when they had no idea what they were doing, they were just doing it and, by doing so, doing it right. The White Stripes are an example: A good friend forced me to really listen to them long after the band’s wagon got overloaded, around the time that Jack White might have started taking steroids so he could form 87 other bands, a record company, make half a dozen movies, etc. But as I have found myself appreciating most of all the early moments of WS, I’ve also learned that JW, too, is a defender of mistakes, of real moments, of simplicity and the grunting democracy of music. Make odd, passionate, sloppy handshakes. That’s when you’re at your most human. The results for the White Stripes can be pretty spectacular, even years later.

I don’t suppose I am alone when, as a human, I say that I like those moments when humanity is evident. And other humans like it, too, right, and that’s why the band becomes popular in the first place? Right? But then it’s lost forever. Repeat cycle.

And so now I’m going to talk about popsicles. Because a lot of American Idol-types should learn something from the King of Pops, this popsicle stand that’s set up shop in the Poncey-Highland area of Atlanta. The guy who started it, Steven Carse, basically came up with a good name, got a good logo, made some good pops, and started slinging. He’s at that point in his “career,” a few months in, when he’s like that band with their first album. He’s young, tall, and his production methods are sloppy. He doesn’t keep regular hours. But the product is good; his flavors are mixes of what might seem to make odd flavor-mates:

And he’s human when you visit. On my last visit with kids, he was literally too tired to recommend a flavor for us.

And yes, to communicate his human experience of forming a business in Atlanta, he Twitters and Facebooks. Showing your humanness, and creating something good, works. Seriously, when I’ve bought pops from him and seen others come up to buy them … the customers look shy, awkward, unsure. It’s like they actually believe he’s the King of Pops. The dude is famous! In a time when everybody is famous!

In summary, I just hope the King of Pops doesn’t turn into another boy band. Also, if you have some spare time and don’t mind seeing Meg White cry, watch this.