Last night I received the news of the death of a friend, Charles Barnett. Probably one of the wittiest people I’ve ever known, Charles was a good man who could always add life to any party with mere words. Of course, he was also known to many of us quite fondly as Emperor Chuckles, and once as Tactile Man, the superhero of one particular costume party.

But I’ll also remember Charles for those times when he was simply there to listen and offer words of comfort and advice. He was a compassionate listener who could see life in its best possible light. Rest in peace, great emperor. We’ll certainly raise a glass in your memory.

Update: I’ve pasted below the info about the funeral and wake:

[Many of us knew Charles as quick with a smile, always ready with his cheerful demeanor. He brought richness to the parties he attended, and I swear Brunch tasted better when he was around. We miss you,
Chuckles. Kudos to Cathy for coordination efforts. -dave]

Apologies to any who are getting this unfortunate news for the first time by this impersonal means.

Charles Barnett passed away on Friday of a diabetic seizure.

Following are details of the Funeral in Rome, the Wake in Atlanta for his friends here, and the memorial website that Ben Langberg has set up. Please forward this to any and all who knew Charles.

Funeral:
There will be a viewing this Monday evening, May 02, at Henderson and Sons in Rome, GA, from 6PM to 8PM.

3002 Maple Road SE
Rome, GA 30161
706-234-5302

There will be a grave site service on Tuesday at 2:00 in Rockmart, GA, New Prospect Cemetery, New Prospect Rd. Ben will post more info on the site mentioned below as soon as we receive it.

Memorial webpage: Ben has put together a website as a tribute to Charles.

If you would like to write something for the memories page, or if you have scanned photos you can send to Ben (with captions if possible) that would be wonderful. Send to charles@abscape.org. Please pass this along to everyone who knew Charles.

Wake: We are hosting a wake at Raleigh Square Clubhouse for all of Charles’ friends on Tuesday evening after the funeral. Please bring your pictures and memories of Charles.

Where: 6700 Roswell Road, in Sandy Springs, one block from the intersection of Roswell Road & Abernathy.
When: the wake will start at 6 and will continue as long as needed.

If you would like to help with set-up, food, martinis, etc. please contact the following people:
Food: Cathy Poley
Drink: Joe Winter
Set up: Lisa Duncan
Lodging: limited crash space available if needed: Lisa Duncan

• Andisheh Nouraee’s comments on a local Republican hack remind me of how I feel about most of Jim Wooten’s columns, especially those inane “Thinking Right” piece-of-crap columns. Do those columns really represent how right-wingers think? I’m sorry, but who is knee-jerking here?
• Why do they call it “Pleasant Hill Road,” when everybody there is so surly? That area is ripe for a streetcar, with Gwinnett Place as the centerpiece for redevelopment as a mixed-use community, a la Eastgate mall’s transformation.
• DoCoMoMo wants to save ugly buildings like the Constitution building. These are the same folks who cried over the loss of Techwood Homes. Get over it. Sometimes, just because a place has “historical” significance — if that’s what you want to call it — doesn’t mean it’s worth saving. I mean, really. Barf.
• Recent reports show that UGA’s donors heavily favor donating money to athletics over academics. Can GA State’s athletic department afford to make the same mistake as they switch over to the Colonial Athletic Association? I don’t know of any students ready to fork over an extra $30 every semester just so the atheletes can travel farther away.
• According to Sperling’s, Atlanta is the most expensive city to drive when you take everything into account. What were those low gas prices good for, again? Using Sperling’s data, Men’s Health also recently found that Atlanta is among the top twenty most depressed cities. Somehow my hometown just doesn’t know how to kick the Prozac habit.
• Looking not quite as dumb as the Cobb County school board, the Odessa, Texas school board unanimously voted in favor of offering an “elective” Bible class, forgetting that religious freedom is already preserved quite well at Sunday school. This agenda was pushed by none other than the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (Warning: turn your speakers down when following this link), a group whose advisory board includes Chuck Norris and the “rabbi” Daniel Lapin. You may recall that Lapin is the orthodox kook who believes that living wills should be made illegal, and fundamentalist orthodox Bible-thumping Christians aren’t all that bad. You may recall Norris as the star of high-body-count violent cinema. So much for a culture of life.
• News flash! Democrat willing to compromise without compromising his values! Republican stubborn, even in the face of good common sense! Wait. This is a news flash? Nothing new here, really.
• I’m not sure how Jim Wooten can keep writing columns like this. Not that they’re the typical cohesive, normal newspaper columns, but “Thinking Right” must be really easy. To write a “Thinking Left” column requires so much more substance and thought. I guess that’s the problem with thinking left — it actually requires substantive thinking.

There is a movement afoot for Atlanta area bloggers to show up at the Cedar Creek Lanes on Delk Rd. tomorrow night. It looks like I’ll be there. Will you?

Bowl . Or . Die

Beaker seemed lonely and bored, and I just couldn’t have that happen anymore, especially seeing how often I’m not in the house. So I went out today and got Beaker a new companion. Naturally, its name is Dr. Busnen Honeydew. For short, I’ll just call it Doc. So far, they seem to be getting along really well.

I took this photo about a month ago over in the General Classroom building.

Taking a break from reading The Rise of the Creative Class, I have been reading God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. The first I’ve heard of Sojourners Magazine was in reading this book. Overall, Wallis has a much more sane perspective than his right wing counterparts. (The magazine even has an article on sprawl in the current issue.)

I did want to post one letter from a Sojo reader. Concerning the Terri Schiavo case:

David Federman writes from Narberth, Pennsylvania:

You say “the morally safer course is always to err on the side of life,” but err it is if that life is one of complete limbo and extinguished consciousness. For me, the safer course is always to err on the side of compassion, to say that there is a level below which life is no longer meaningful by any definition of the word.

When my mother was dying of lung cancer 10 years ago, I asked one of her hospice care providers if they believed in God. She told me the job has made a believer of her. “I remember the day I realized there was a higher power,” she told me. A family had gathered to say their last goodbyes to their mother who was in a coma. Each took their turn urging the mother to depart for Heaven. Then the youngest daughter flung herself on her mother’s body and begged her not to leave. She was sobbing uncontrollably. Suddenly the mother awoke, sat up in bed and said to her daughter, “Helen, shut the hell up,” and died. The family went from stunned silence to laughter. Even the daughter joined in. “It’s then that I knew there was a God,” the hospice worker told me. If Terry Schiavo could speak, I think she’d have told her parents to shut the hell up and let go.

Taking a survey this evening from Georgia State, I came across an interesting question regarding future commencement ceremonies:

As a graduating student, we need your perspective to help us plan for future graduations!

In 2007, the university is planning to have graduation activities take place once a year in the spring. There are two events that will honor all summer, fall, and spring graduates for the academic year. With that in mind, please answer the following questions from the “point of view” of a graduating student.

1. The university will have a community commencement event open to those who graduated in the summer, fall, and spring (as well as family and friends). It will be held in a large venue (the Georgia Dome, for example) and feature an internationally well-known speaker. You will wear your regalia, there will be a procession, and you will sit in a prominent designated area - but there will be no individual recognition. Would you attend this event?

YES!!

I’d like to encourage anyone with a little spare change to help out the Susan G. Komen foundation in their race for the cure. Erin set up a page in his mom’s memory. From there, you can donate to help him achieve his goal. A quick view of the Komen web site will give you a pretty good look to see where your donations go.

I’m warning you: these jokes are bad. For extra pleasure, I suggest playing some accordion music in the background. You will now be tortured.

• Is urban sprawl an accident? No, we did it on purpose.
• Why is smart growth a great marketing gimmick? Who wants to support stupid growth?
• Can you imagine trying to embrace sprawl? No.
• What is the best way to support stupid growth? Continue paying for it.
• Why is building a new freeway like putting sugar near an anthill? Guess.
• Is transit a waste of money? Yes, we could have much more traffic congestion without it.
• Do Americans hate density? They hate density in their neighborhoods as much as they do congestion on the freeway at rush hour.
• Why don’t we get rid of housing subsidies? Good idea, let’s start with the federal single family home income tax deduction. But I meant apartments for poor people. Oh.
• Can our children and their children look forward to using cars as their basic means of transportation? Yes, until the last drop of oil is gone.
• Who is in charge of metropolitan urban form? In most areas of the USA, no one.
• How many states are prepared for Smart Growth? Seven according to a national report.
• What is your favorite game? “Smart Growth or Stupid Growth, You Decide”.
• So what’s the problem? “We have met the enemy and he is us”. (Pogo)
• Have you heard about the “tragedy of the commons”? Yes, I think that it is playing somewhere in my area.
• Does anyone like to walk anymore? Yes, Americans love to drive to places to walk.
• Who is TOD? I’m not sure but a lot of people are talking about him/her/it.

I’m having a fun argument over at Blog for Democracy. It starts out with a simple, innocent post (don’t all the best flame wars start out that way?) that makes the simple argument that the goal of the organization is to get Democrats, even if they’re *gasp* conservative Democrats, elected.

I found the post about 14 comments into the whole discussion, so I was already set to throw in my own wild-eyed observations. My arguments:

• Just as there is no spoon in the Matrix, there is no spectrum in politics. The “political spectrum” is artifically concocted to make politics seem more simple than reality. Left, right, center, conservative, liberal: these terms have no meaning.
• The party with the bigger forest wins. The ideological forest of a political party should include as many different kinds of trees as it can while still remaining a coherent forest. Would you rather be an Appalachian pine forest, or a rainforest?
• What can and should hold the Democratic party together first and foremost are principles of good governance. Republicans can speak of those principles very well (and at one time, like a decade ago, they were very good at speaking that language), but they’ve done a terrible job of putting those principles into practice.
• The DLC made a huge error in trying to silence Howard Dean. If Dean is not careful, his biggest mistake would be to try to exclude the DLC.