Christmas Shopping Party Helps Create Haitian Jobs It’s a tired old cliche. What do you give people for Christmas when they already have all they want and more? Ann Piper has an idea: hope. It will be on sale at a benefit held at Little Savannah restaurant December 4th, 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. While [...]

There is probably something to be said for cookie-cutter restaurants with large drive-in parking lots, conveniently located near interstate exits, but I think that most people, deep down, long to partake of food in a public space that also evokes the feel of a private home, where you can sit in comfort and relative privacy, [...]

A February 5, 1970 article in the Birmingham Public Library Archives tells us that the Powell Elementary School is Birmingham’s oldest school, dating back to 1874, having been founded immediately after the cholera epidemic swept the town, practically depopulating it. Woodlawn, Henley and Powell were known as the oldest white public schools in Birmingham, the [...]

The public is invited to the Birmingham Peace Project’s 8th annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration on Saturday, January 8, 2011 at Kelly Ingram Park. This year the organization developed an essay-writing competition. Local students were asked to discuss a quotation from one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s great speeches – “Remaining Awake Through a [...]

The Birmingham Business Journal reported Wednesday that the Jefferson County occupational tax violates the Alabama Constitution. The occupational tax had been passed in a special legislative session last year in August of 2009, and it would have applied to anyone who works in Jefferson County, regardless of whether they already have to pay for professional [...]

Playing chess develops the cognitive abilities of children, improving concentration, memory, focus, and attention; planning, calculation ability, patience, reading, time management, confidence, and discipline! Did you know that corporations and universities are offering grants and scholarships to chess players? Come to the 3rd Annual Dancing Knights Scholastic Chess Tournament on November 6, 2010 at Valley [...]

Local self-government sounds good in principle and ought to be a healthy step away from an Alabama State constitution deemed outdated – and one that prohibits home rule in many cases. However, as an October 10 article by Don Casey in Shelby County’s Beacon newspaper points out, “Home Rule” is often better described as “The [...]

Birmingham has an air of expectancy about it. Now that taxes and legislation have combined to make business development difficult for the average entrepreneur, Greater Birmingham’s economy seems to have flatlined. Perhaps this is only an illusion, asMichael Tomberlin of The Birmingham News reported yesterday, September 10, 2010, that the Birmingham Business Alliance is “putting [...]

A locally brewed beer! Go directly to their cool website to hear their story. From their notes on “humble beginnings and no intention of ever starting a business” we can get some ideas about making an income and starting a business from doing something you love or something you think is fun, or maybe just [...]

So this is one of the great things you can do with e-waste. A 2008 blog entitled Yan reported the unveiling of this “three-tonne humanoid figure made out of electronic waste” constructed by the Royal Society of Art on London’s South Bank. It is 7 meters tall and consists of the calculated average of the [...]

Woodlawn Stories “Woodlawn Stories” is a community storytelling project of the Desert Island Supply Co. We believe that we are the stories we tell ourselves. To that end, we aim to capture the “expert amateur” storytellers that make up the Woodlawn community. “Woodlawn Stories” is an attempt to bring together the stories of diverse neighbors, [...]

Donut fix August 3, 2010 by Jeremy Erdreich bhamarchitect.com Dunkin’ Donuts, the fabled donut purveyor based in Canton, MA, serves over 3 million customers a day in 31 countries worldwide. It has recently started a push into the deep south–where Krispy Kreme has long reigned supreme–and the second (“flagship” , according to the News article [...]