How to Kill an Afternoon in Atlanta

I live in metro Atlanta, a region that is a crossroads rather than a destination for most business travelers, who pass through Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on their way to somewhere else. But what if Atlanta is your final destination? This brief guide will give the business traveler to Atlanta a few ideas to make the most of her time between meetings.

• Even without your kids in tow, the Georgia Aquarium is worth a visit downtown. The main tank in the world's largest aquarium holds over 6 million gallons of water behind the second largest window the world, offering stunning views of the whale sharks, rays, grouper, and thousands of other fish; you can feel as if you are standing on the bottom of the ocean. Half an hour in front of the window watching the fish glide by is a remarkable way to relax after a stressful morning meeting.
• If you are more a plant person than an animal person, the Atlanta Botanical Garden in Midtown offers a variety of exhibits both indoors and out, including a nice collection of orchids, and is compact enough to get through in a couple of hours. The new canopy walk through the treetops is proving popular, too. Best of all, the garden is located adjacent to Piedmont Park, the finest public space in Atlanta, and a pleasant place to stroll or jog if you are here in the temperate months (late September through May).
  
• At the High Museum of Art in Midtown, the highlight may be the buildings themselves, a 1983 Richard Meier classic which was further improved by a Renzo Piano-designed expansion that opened in 2005. Check to see if one of the regular blockbuster exhibitions is on while you are here; if not, the best part of the permanent collection is the top floor of the new Wieland Pavilion, where natural light filters through a specially-designed high ceiling onto a part of the Contemporary art collection. If you don't believe that architecture can affect your perceptions and mood, visit this space.
  
• For the quintessential Atlanta shopping experience, head to Lenox Mall in Buckhead. Built in the late 1950s as an outdoor shopping center, expanded and covered since then, it has been THE place to shop in Atlanta since it opened. Housing both everyman department stores and luxury boutiques, this is the place to see metro Atlanta's mix of society matrons, hip-hop urbanites, modernist hipsters, and suburban families, all in one place.
• Atlanta is a great restaurant town, but if I had to pick just one place to recommend to a traveler staying in the downtown convention district, I would recommend French American Brasserie on Ivan Allen Jr Blvd. Walkable from all the convention hotels, FAB offers excellent French comfort food, Parisian-inspired decor, friendly service, and a cool rooftop bar that is an ideal place for an aperitif. Your clients will be impressed that you know about this place.
  

Spare Time

One potential benefit of the severe recession we've been through since 2008 is that fewer work hours, whether due to layoff or simply working less hours, is a time dividend that can be put to more productive use (psychologically, if not economically) building relationships, experiences, and memories with ourselves and our loved ones.

It appears, however, that reality may be a bit different than the theory. The Wall Street Journal yesterday ran an article highlighting how unemployed and under-employed Americans are spending the free time they used to spend working. Comparing 2007 and 2009 data from the Labor Dept.'s American Time Use Survey, the authors find that most people are watching TV and sleeping; daily time spent on those activities increased by an average 12 minutes and 6 minutes, respectively, over the two years. Meanwhile there was virtually no increase in the time spent volunteering, exercising, participating in religious activities, pursuing education, or even working on household chores. Says University of Texas economist Daniel Hamermesh of the time dividend: "It's a waste."

A couple of thoughts here. First, the Time Use Survey covers all Americans, not just laid off or under-employed Americans, so those left behind at companies, who are now doing the work that two or three used to do, could be offsetting the statistics from the unemployed. Second, some desirable activities may not show up in the available answers to the questions. If I now spend the afternoon helping my wife make dinner, it may take us 20 minutes instead of 30 minutes that it takes her alone. In the survey result her time on housework would go down while mine would go up; but the intangible benefit of doing something together and spending more time talking doesn't show up anywhere in the data.

Still, the fact that TV time is growing is troubling because it is growing off an already high base: nearly 3 hours per day for adults. There is nothing inherently wrong with TV, but to think that three hours out of every 16-hour waking day is spent in passive consumption of entertainment is disappointing, and indicates that many of us are missing much that is happening in the world around us. As I've noted before, very few of your most precious memories are created in front of a screen. Only by engaging with the world around us--the people, the sights, the sounds--do we really live; living comes through doing. Passively watching other people live their lives on screen (terribly misnamed as "reality TV") is a poor substitute.

What are you doing with your free time?

Long Day

Here at Present Tense Living, our philosophy is to make the most of every day, to enjoy life in the here and now. I've recently returned from Alaska, where long summer days open open up an entirely different perspective on "make the most of today."

While all of us in the lower 48 enjoy the longer summer evenings, in Alaska summer is a totally different experience. One evening I did my bedtime reading by the light streaming through my window at 11 pm--the trees were still bathed in the orange glow of the setting sun. Still adjusting to the four-hour time change, I awoke the first morning at 4 am--to bright sunshine forcing its way into the room around the blackout curtains. With 20+ hours of daylight, in Alaska one can pack two days worth of activities into each day--talk about "making the most of today"!

June 21 marks the summer solstice, the day with the most daylight in the Northern Hemisphere. I checked the stats for Fairbanks today: sunrise at 2:58a, sunset at 12:48a. I now know the answer to that hypothetical question: "What would you do if you only had one day to live?" Answer: Go to Fairbanks on a June day--the day never ends.

The payback comes, of course, in December, when I am told the night seems to never end. But for a few weeks in the summer, our friends in Alaska can do more in a day than any of us dare even attempt.

Wherever you find yourself on this longest of days, spare a moment to take notice of and appreciate the sights, sounds, and people around you. This is the day the Lord has made--let us rejoice and be glad in it!