Enlivening our community, celebrating our diversity, restoring our legacy, recovering our dreams.
The truth is, a couple of years ago, I liked Birmingham. I thought, “This is an alright place to have ended up.” It was a passive approval. But like many others, I still had my hang ups. But when Lauren moved back home from Chicago and she and I decided to embark on our dream of co-creating our very own publication -- THAT is when I fell in love with Birmingham.
Like most passionate love affairs, it was quite accidental that Birmingham and I found ourselves together like this. It all began with a series of questions. Of course the first question, the one that made my eyes open anew, was: What will our magazine be about? Following that, questions like: What audience are we trying to reach? What do these readers need?
Birmingham was smack dab in the middle of one of its most awful cases of political turmoil since the 1960s. Our city and county governments were up against accusations of embezzlement, fraud, bribery, mismanagement, miscommunication, lack of transparency, and it would only get worse.
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Birmingham, you’ve got a lot of soul. I wasn’t always convinced of that, I’ll admit, but I can now, with complete certainty say, that our Bham is like a kaleidoscope, not always beautiful, not always fitting everyone’s tastes but the more you look at it, the more you see and understand its complexities and appreciate its unique intricacies.
I learned my love of Birmingham about four years ago, on a night flying in from Chicago. I’d been living in that cold metropolis for about two years and I was on the fence about what I actually called home. Chicago’s lakefront, skyline, and cultural scene are world class and I thought that meant it was world class to me as well. It wasn’t until the Birmingham skyline came into view that night on the airplane that I realized that Birmingham was my “world class” because of its people, history, spirit and above all, my own memories. Read more...