We’re taking Ginny Phillips off the masthead. Now that she’s a published author, it only seems appropriate that any future bylines in this paper match what it says on the cover of her debut novel: Gin Phillips. The excerpt of The Well & the Mine that ran as this week’s cover story ought to be enough to convince you to get your very own copy (and if it’s not, perhaps the cornbread at John’s City Diner will be – the book release party will be held there on March 13).
Far stranger than fiction is the atmosphere surrounding Magic City government. A porn star and the Pope? It sounds like the start of a bad joke. And then there’s JeffCo’s money woes – possibly the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history looming on the horizon. Good thing Mayor Larry Langford hired a guy who helped create that catastrophe as the city finance director.
“You can travel across the entire land, ain’t no place like Birmingham…”
O! For a restart of the city! For a reboot of the republic! If only a good meal – barbecue say, or lobster tails and champagne — could make this all go away.
Popularity: 49% [?]
IT TAKES A VILLAGE: Just ask Joe Minter, who took his backyard in Titusville and made it into a an African village. Minter’s sculpture Slave Ship: The Ship that We were Hijacked and Kidnapped Out of Africa into American and Europe is currently on display at Vulcan Park, and the artist himself will be there on Tuesday, Feb. 26, for the final “Collective Perspectives” program. 
The Birmingham Mayor’s office has proposed a $150,000 contract with a consulting firm implicated in dirty tricks during the last city council election and also tied to unofficial mayoral aide John Katopodis.
