Cold-lanta

I've been in Atlanta since Sunday evening, specifically downtown Atlanta. My room has a balcony that overlooks the covered-over pool of the hotel and the vista is of a number of multi-story office buildings.

There is something to be said about staying or living in a city. The city, without speaking, seems to speak of a quiet yet urgent sense of purpose that the suburbs can't quite match.

Cities make me depressed. And maybe this is a mixture of listening to Ingrid Michaelson while also missing my family back in Florida, but with the sense of purpose mentioned above, also comes a rawness. I'm referring less to the icy weather outside and more the exposure to other people and the varied expressions of so many different faces.

Living in suburban Florida has again turned my attitude for the homeless toward the negative, and this is surely fed by the panhandlers I encounter on a daily basis. And yet when we were riding a bus back from an opulent, $50 per person conference reception, I saw from the window a young woman hurry past an open vestibule on the side of a building, a vestibule that was occupied by an aged man with grey hair who was at that moment gingerly pulling his sockless foot from a worn tennis shoe; his feet I imagine were sore and perhaps cracked from a winter season spent outdoors in the elements of the city.