Okay… it’s quote time once again. This one comes from Between God and Man, an anthology of writings by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.

Religion is an answer to ultimate questions. The moment we become oblivious to ultimate questions, religion becomes irrelevant, and its crisis sets in. The primary task of religious thinking is to rediscover the questions to which religion is an answer, to develop a degree of snsitivity to the ultimate questions which its ideas and acts are trying to answer.

Religious thinking is an intellectual endavor out of the depths of reason. It is a source of cognitive insight into the ultimate issues of human existence. Religion is more than a mood or a feeling. Judaism, for example, is a way of thinking, not only a way of living. Unless we understand its categories, its mode of apprehension and evaluation, its teachings remain unintelligible.

It is not enough to call for good will. We are in desperate need of good thinking.

I first discovered this book when I was in high school, and since then, I have come back to this particular passage several times and found new meanings in it over time. As times change, so does the context in which we live, and I continue to find something new in this passage.

Last Friday, my synagogue hosted an interfaith service with a nearby Catholic congregation. We heard from their priest on the recent scandals that have gone on in the Catholic Church. Many people have lost faith, not just in the Church, but in religion. As Heschel’s passage separates the concept of organized religion from faith and religious thinking, I think it’s at times appropriate to reflect on the importance on what we think of in issues of faith.

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church is not the only organized religion that has suffered on behalf of the actions of its leaders. The Southern Baptist Convention has suffered for its unhealthy levels of blind faith to the point of claiming to have knowledge of “The Truth;” these leaders need to realize that it is fundamentalism itself that is the enemy of religion. Some religious denominations, including Jewish denominations, suffer for leaders who focus too much on fundraising and not enough on outreach; these leaders should ask the question of whether they would be willing to give up the fancy churches and synagogues in exchange for a congregation where they can go on a first name basis with each of their congregants.

These crises are not universal. Not all Catholic leaders exploit their most vulnerable congregants. Not all Baptists buy into the hellfire and brimstone. Not all congregations are so large as to be cold and distant. I suppose that what all this leads me to say, in light of Heschel’s passage, is that ultimately I still have faith in organized religion. Where I have lost faith is in top-down hierarchies.

I just received a link to yet another example of bad covers. This time, it’s Pat Boone doing covers of tunes he was never meant to sing. As the Amazon review said, “You want absurd, this is the pinnacle… The mere idea of Pat Boone, Mr. Squeaky Clean himself, (ahem) crooning heavy metal tunes is bad enough, but it gets so much worse.” Check out the song samples, if you dare…

Among other absurdities, Alvin & the Chipmunks does Stayin’ Alive, and Time Warp. The Gregorian Monks chant R.E.M.’s Losing My Religion. Worst of all, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich sings Chain Gang.

Well, the Downtown Macy’s is going to close. Shame. Maria Saporta’s column today was filled with a sort of passionate anger, though I think it was misdirected. According to Saporta, downtown boosters, namely Central Atlanta Progress, did too little to keep Macy’s in town. In actuality, CAP and the City bent over backwards to make sure that Macy’s would stay. Saporta is right to say that nobody worked hard enough (or at all) to market the Downtown location, but this is not the only factor leading to the store closing.

One problem encountered by Macy’s was that when Downtown was on the decline, fewer people shopped downtown, so it became necessary to keep a smaller inventory at the store. As inventory shrunk, the store became less adequate to fill shopping needs. Then a whole endless spiral would erupt. The store was inadequate, so fewer people shopped there, so inventory was reduced, so the store was inadequate, so fewer people shopped there, so… you get the point. This is one of the problems with large corporations. Typical corporate managerial thinking is risk-averse, so if a product is dying, it no longer matters how much market potential there is in the product should a small investment be made in response to the market.

In the case of Macy’s Downtown, the product was the store itself. The market dictated a more adequate department store that would attract both tourists and locals who would have to go out of their way to get to Lenox. How large was the market? Who knows. It’s reasonable to say at least that the market has grown over the past two years. The Downtown housing market has grown over that time, and all indicators show continued growth, even if the market bubble in the rest of Metro Atlanta busts. That spells a potentially captive audience for Macy’s.

So why is Macy’s ignoring the market? They’re not. To figure out what they are doing, one would have to read between the lines in the AJC articles that have been written on the story.

If you read only the headlines, you would almost come to the conclusion that only the Downtown store is closing. This is not the case. Macy’s is closing stores in malls where there is both a Macy’s and a Rich’s in favor of a single store in each mall. The exception to that is in Lenox and Perimeter, where all stores are closing in favor of the more upscale Bloomingdale’s. This particular move speaks louder than the closing of the Downtown store. What this move says is that Macy’s is not ignoring the market. They’re actually abandoning a whole market in favor of a more upscale market. Think about it. Midscale retail has taken a beating by the discount stores ever since the establishment of Sprawl-Mart. In order to adjust to the midscale market, department stores have had to do all sorts of things to attract customers, mostly in the form of big discounts.

In the end, the safest thing for Macy’s and Rich’s to do is abandon the midscale market in favor of their upscale sibling in the Federated family. This brings me back to my earlier point of risk-averse thinking among corporate managers. The change in corporate strategy makes sense. When I think of Macy’s or Rich’s, I think of a good place where I can afford to buy myself a tie or a dress shirt that is actually tasteful. Bloomingdale’s, being more upscale, is supposedly not as affordable. In an entrepreneurial environment, Macy’s or Rich’s would take a turn to attract more of the discount crowd, but that would supposedly hurt the brand, which would be risky. The potential rewards would have been fairly high compared to closing the stores altogether.

What’s in store for the Downtown location’s future (no pun intended)? Perhaps a Target location? God forbid…

When Post Properties proposed (backed by CAP) that the upper floors of Macy’s be turned into apartments, Macy’s initially gave a positive response. That was until a separate company bid a higher price just so they could place telephone switching equipment in that space. Macy’s, having no long-term vision, accepted the telephone switching deal for the sake of short-term gain, foregoing the possibility of a very captive audience living in the same building.

Macy’s continuing record of bad moves in favor of short term gain tells me that maybe we should be glad that Macy’s is out of Downtown. With the possibility of a new investor in that building, we have the prospect of new management that is less afraid to take a risk. I think the closing of Macy’s Downtown will be a blessing in disguise, a new opportunity for all of Downtown’s residents and businesses.

It feels good to be right sometimes. Today, I discovered that I was right. Twice.

It all began last semester when I spent a fair amount of time investigating the possibility of building a path across Woodruff Park. After the opening of the Aderhold Learning Center in the Fairlie-Poplar district, GSU students are now travelling across Woodruff Park to go between there and the main campus. The shortest path between these two places cuts right through a grassy portion of Woodruff, which can get very muddy on rainy days. In addition to the mud, there is a short pink marble wall on the Peachtree St. side of Woodruff. On wet days, the wall is very slippery and dangerous.

In the interests of pedestrian safety and aesthetic beauty, I made it a goal to make sure a path gets built across the park. Eventually, word got back to me that the path is now in the plans.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have a class in the General Classroom Building immediately following a class in the Aderhold. Today, I was among a large stream of hundreds of students travelling between the two areas at around 10:40 this morning. I felt vindicated.

Later in the day, around 1:30 or so, the Astronomy Club held a solar observing session in the park. At first, we were in the southern end of Woodruff, by the gazeebo. Most of the folks we spoke to were homeless people enamored at the telescope. This was not the audience we were trying to reach. I turned around and noticed another large stream of students crossing the park at around the location of the flagpole. We moved there to reach our target audience. Once again, I felt vindicated.

Elephants… Yeah!

Somehow politicians occasionally come up with ideas that are supposed to have some particular effect, and in reality the opposite is true. Today was the first day of my Urban Economics class with Dr. Kelly Edmiston. Upon walking into the classroom, the first thing Dr. Edmiston announced to the class was that he wanted to talk about a particular aspect of Bush’s economic stimulus package before handing out the syllabus. The total cost of the proposed bill is about $600 billion over 10 years. $300 billion would go toward the elimination of the tax on corporate dividends.

The intended effect of the elimination of this tax is that it would increase consumer spending and corporate investment. According to Dr. Edmiston, Bush is wrong on both counts.

On corporate spending: an overwhelming majority of corporate stocks are owned by people who already have very high incomes. As income rises, the rate of savings increases and spending decreases. Therefore, a majority of the additional money “given back” to taxpayers or distributed in dividends would only wind up sitting in banks rather than providing an economic stimulus.

On corporate investment: there is a common misconception that when you purchase a share of stock in a company, the money goes to the company. This is not true. The money goes to the person selling the stock. Companies don’t receive money from stocks except in an initial offering. So while there remains the possibility that there will be an increase in the number of stock transactions, none of the money exchanged will actually go to corporations.

Meanwhile, the incentive structure will change. Under the current structure, capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than dividends are taxed. Therefore, corporations have a greater incentive to keep retained earnings and use those retained earnings to make further investments. Under the proposed structure, corporations will have a greater incentive to spend away their retained earnings by offering higher dividends. That is essentially a corporate disinvestment, rather than the investment that President Bush believes will happen.

A part of the stimulus package that Dr. Edmiston does like is the proposal to change accounting rules on depreciation. If equipment depreciates faster, then corporations have an incentive to purchase equipment more often. That’s an increase in corporate investment, and that will be good for the economy.

I just recently finished reading Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival. My general feeling of it overall is that it is a much more worthy followup to Jane Jacobs, even though it doesn’t really try to be. One thing the authors made a very concerted effort to do was avoid being seen as partisans. If you can figure out whether the authors are Democrats or Republicans, then you’re a better guesser than I am.

Independent of any party loyalty or ideology, the authors make an effort to present the case for the revival of inner cities throughout the U.S. The blueprint they offer to speed up the process to make this happen is based on four items: grassroots development and involvement through Community Development Corporations; refocusing policing methods away from crime and punishment and toward application of the Broken Windows theory, customized for each city where it is implemented; continued enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, which effectively eliminated redlining; and deregulation of government programs that have become too inflexible to be effective, such as welfare.

First, I’ll give a little bit of criticism. The authors tried very hard to present their blueprint as though it was built off pragmatism rather than ideology. As noble a goal as that is, I’m not sure there is any such thing as a truly pragmatic solution that completely lacks ideology. Chapter 11, with the title, “The ‘Third Way’ in City Hall,” offers a case that politicians from both major political parties are beginning to adopt a so-called “third way” of politics that calls for taking ideologies from both conservatives and liberals and offering solutions that cater to ideas of rights and responsibilities, and the attack on poverty and discrimination. Even behind the “pragmatism,” there is still and underlying ideological assumption that the poor should be helped. Don’t get me wrong, as I share many of the values expressed by the authors. I just think the authors would have been more honest (and less arrogant) by not making the claim of pragmatism.

The great thing about Comeback Cities is that it offers many real-life stories of inner-city neighborhoods that were rescued not by external organizations or the government, but by its’ own citizens. These citizens did receive some help along the way, but it was essentially citizens’ initiatives that rescued these neigbhorhoods. This is where the most effective and long-lasting progress can be made, not by government fiat.

I think anyone going into politics or policy would be very smart to read this book. It’s a great cure for cynicism.

Well, I’ve been thinking of doing this for a few years now, and I’ve finally gotten around to doing it.

The ponytail went to Locks of Love.

Want to know the latest on what’s going on in downtown Atlanta? Central Atlanta Progress will begin hosting quarterly town hall meetings this year. Be there!

The Story from the West Side reports that the former Castlegate Hotel site will be developed into something “compatible with the adjoining neighborhoods.” The Castlegate, which was once a favorite among hookers, was nearly sold to the Home Depot at one time until neighborhood protest prompted the Depot’s new CEO Bob Nardelli to pull the plug on the deal, not that having a store location so close to the Ponce and Vinings locations would be such a great deal to begin with. Creative Loafing, though the article is no longer available on the website, one time reported that neighbors envisioned a mixed-use development for the location. We’ll see if the neighbors’ vision comes to fruition.