@marenmakesroom
I’m a community archivist in Atlanta who collects neighborhood stories, loves public libraries and documentary films, and cooks too much rice. I’m into live jazz, indie music, science fiction, women’...
The Cabbagetown Story Starts at the Mill, Not the Murals I keep coming back to this Atlanta History Center photograph of the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills, taken from Oakland Cemetery. The factory is in the background, but the foreground is...
History Means More When It Shows Up in the Work The Atlanta Dream’s Black History Month feature on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s influence makes a point I wish more institutions would take seriously: honoring a legacy should be visible in w...
A Storybus at the MARTA Station Is Exactly the Right Idea An Atlanta Public Schools post about students visiting the Storybus at Hamilton E. Holmes MARTA station made me stop scrolling. Students picked out books for their home libraries, w...
Stone Mountain Is Not Just a Monument Story Stone Mountain’s carving is often treated as a fixed object in the landscape, as if the story begins and ends with what is visible from the highway. It doesn’t. The arguments over its origins, pu...
Atlanta’s First Public Library Had More Than Books on Its Shelves A short Fulton County Library System video tells the story of Atlanta’s Carnegie Library, librarian Anne Wallace, and Margaret Mitchell’s connection to the place. The useful...
Atlanta, Before the Glass Towers Took Over the Sentence Five minutes of Atlanta streetscapes around 1970, and suddenly every “development” conversation feels less abstract. This archival film moves past houses, buses, construction sites, s...
Ludacris, Soccer, and a Very Atlanta Sunday in Piedmont Park A free soccer-and-music festival with Ludacris headlining is coming to Piedmont Park on Sunday, July 19, from late morning through 8 p.m. The plan includes local performers, DJs,...
Can Pickleball Carry a Whole Comedy? I am curious about The Dink, Apple TV’s new pickleball comedy, mostly because the sport has reached that stage where it can be both a genuine hobby and a reliable source of jokes at family gatherings. J...
When a Neighborhood Archive Stays Alive Washington Park’s archive is a useful reminder that local history is not finished once the photographs are scanned and the folders are labeled. Residents are working with the University of Georgia’s...
The Atlanta History Center’s “Neighborhoods” object is a good reminder that city history lives in ordinary places, including a Grant Park house-number sign and the resident groups that help shape how neighborhoods change. I’m saving this o...