Nah, that's not really true - I've neither been extremely depressed the past week nor have I stopped blaming things on George Bush.

I had to leave work early today to drive downtown to attend a meeting of the advisory committee for the Beltline project. Nothing much of significance, other than the Beltline has survived yet another near-death experience, this time involving Amtrak wanting to take over its light-rail route with their heavy-duty lines. The Beltline is beginning to resemble a nine-lives cat with its multiple near-fatal experiences.

I had to leave that meeting after 2 1/2 hours even though its was still in progress to drive to a neighbor's house for a meeting between the neighborhoods and the local hospital. While we cherish the hospital in our neighborhood, there are issues relative to the traffic it generates, the noise, and the stress. A Health Impact Assessment was recently completed by a professor at Georgia Tech that indicated that these factors had more of a net negative impact on our health and well-being than the positive contributions from the health-care facility.

So we've organized a group of community leaders to act as a liaison between the hospital and the neighborhoods. The goal is to allow this group to express community interests to the hospital and for the hospital to get community input on new development plans and such. We seem to be off to a good start, as the hospital was quite receptive to our overtures.

Finally, speaking of the neighborhood, last week I met one of my near neighbors and learned that she teaches yoga and Qigong, and leads a spirituality group that meets at her house. When she learned that I teach Zen meditation, she insisted that I meet with her group, and that we explore opportunities to bring meditation practice to her group.

I'll give it a shot.