Athens News Matters: August 15th, 2026

Athens News Matters is sponsored in part by the WUGA Community Advisory Council, dedicated and involved individuals who help WUGA stay connected with our listeners, community organizations, and issues in the Athens area. Learn more at WUGA.org. Today on Athens News Matters, a new short story collection from a local author. There was a really good undergraduate group called Improv Athens, and so I joined it, and it was just really invigorating, and I found that at that stage in my life, it was a really good compliment to my writing. Plus, the new local emergency planning committee and why we need it. When the news comes at you quickly, NPR's Morning Edition slows it down to make sense of what matters. Stay connected to the facts with Morning Edition every weekday. This is Athens News Matters. I'm Alexia Ridley. Many Americans have spent this summer afraid of eating fresh produce, especially lettuce, thanks to an outbreak of a parasite called cyclospora. But how concerned should we be about that parasite here in Georgia? To find out WUGA's Haviva Salts sat down with Dr. Francisco Diaz, the director of the UGA Center for Food Safety, and a professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology. Here's that conversation. How does the parasite spread? Well, it's a unique microorganism. It can only grow and replicate inside of a human. It starts with a person that is infected with the organism, and then the person infected sheds what is called oocytes in their feces. And once the oocytes, which are, let's assume that it's small spores, after some time in the environment outside, in the soil, in water, or whatever outside, eventually they can become infectious again. And the next person that gets exposed by ingestion, can develop disease. It's basically a fecal matter that one or another found its way into the crops. either through contamination of water, used for irrigation, soil amendments that could have been contaminated with sewage, also by farm workers, and also could have been the water that is used for washing the lettuce after it's been harvested. So what crops are affected by cyclospora right now? The authorities have identified one of the largest concentrations of cases was related to consumption of product in a fast food chain, Taco Bell, and that was linked to Taylor Farns, which was the company that supplied the lettuce coming from Mexico. That explains some of the cases in the Midwest.

But the rest of the country, we're not sure whether what else has been causing it because the number of cases are so many. This is a historic event. I think that's, I don't know if you realize this, in terms of foodborne disease outbreak, this is reaching record proportions on number of cases. Fortunately, this pathogen is not so serious to make people sick to the point of. causing death, and also very few people need hospitalization. But it's very, very nasty when you get psychosporiosis because of the diarrhea, vomiting, and other symptoms that it causes. Is there anything that you would say to Georgians who are still concerned about cyclospora? Like, is there anything they should do to try and protect themselves? My best recommendation for consumers is being informed. If you happen to read any news and you're getting scared about your risk of cyclospora, consult the FDA, the CDC, and the Department of Health websites to be informed of what's actually happening in Georgia. And just by looking at the map of the CDC, I don't think that we should be worried in Georgia because there is no cases. So that means the batch of lettuce that was distributed in other parts of the country did not make it to Georgia. But at the same time, be informed because the FDA released on their website, the list of... recall products and it also recalled several products from Taylor Farms. An informed consumer is the best way to address any concerns. That way you will be able to avoid either buying or consuming the product that has been directly linked to this outbreak. Thank you so much for talking to me. No, you're welcome, Habiba. Francisco Diaz is the director of the UGA Center for Food Safety. You can access the most recent federal findings on Cyclospora, including current case statistics and recalled foods at CDC.gov and FDA.gov.

This is Athens News Matters. I'm Alexia Ridley. For the first time since 2019, Athens is going to have a local emergency planning committee. To learn what an LEPC is and why we need one, WUGA's Haviva Salts spoke with Athens-Clark County Emergency Planning Director Meredith Barnum. Here's that conversation. So what is the LEPC, the local emergency planning committee? Yes. So local emergency planning committee is not... a concept unique to Athens Clark. It's actually a like federal, not really a requirement, but something that's very strongly encouraged in communities. And it resulted from actually a pesticide disaster that occurred in India in I think the 80s. And basically the whole concept of it is public right to know. So making sure that people have first of all that all of the industries and the first responders have the opportunity to come together share information work on emergency plans and then also make sure that the community has a right to know in those meetings and in that committee what's going on within their their environment what's going on locally what's actually there because um that pesticide disaster that i mentioned earlier one of the bigger things that came from it is There was a leak going on for several days that was quite devastating to the community. And the community didn't even know that it was happening. So it's basically founded on the concept of transparency and building preparedness and making sure that we're all having relationships formed ahead of time so that when things do happen, we're able to information share very easily. And why does Athens specifically need an LEPC? We have a really hefty mix of like a lot of different industries. So we've got, you know, the research side. UGA has research facilities. We have like a poultry research facility. We have a lot of medical research facilities going on. And then we also have a good bit of industry for how small the county is geographically. You know, like when you think of industry, you think of like mechanical building, you think of factories, things like that. We have a good mix of that as well, and then local small businesses. So all of these different factors come together in the committee to information, share, and just make sure that we're, you know, touching base with each other and going through exercises together and bridging the gap between like a private owned industry and our public first responders. So that. the private industry has that opportunity to like talk through emergency response plans with the people who are actually going to be responding should something happen. And then the first responders also have a good opportunity to know like, okay, this is what I'm going to be walking into if I get a call from this address. And we didn't have a committee like this before now, right? We had one in 2019 and it kind of just dissolved a little bit. You know, COVID kind of.

through a ranch and meetings and the cadence of it and then we had some um personnel changes on the county side before my position was revitalized so there was one at one point um but it has not been visited in about seven or eight years so what benefits is this committee going to provide for our community or our area yeah so it's going to be um a good driver for us to plan some exercises that encompass both like our private entities and our public first responders. It's going to increase the general preparedness. All of these companies that are part of this are They have to meet certain state and federal regulations. So they have emergency plans that exist. They have them filed away. But whether or not they're like talked through consistently with first responders is like a piece that we're going to bring into the LEPC. So like. They have a file with a plan somewhere in their office probably, and first responders have like a general idea of what's more than likely stored at that facility. But this LEPC gives us the chance to really like confirm and make sure that everyone is on the same page and take a good hard look at any plans that exist and make any tweaks like we feel we need to. Meredith Barnum, thank you so much. The Local Emergency Planning Committee will hold its first meeting on August 20th from 3 to 4 p.m. at 120 Doherty Street.

This is Athens News Matters from WUGA. I'm Tanya Mosley. There's so much news that it's hard to keep up. And many of those stories break in the middle of the day. Here and now covers the news when you need it, so you're in the know. Welcome back to Athens News Matters. I'm Alexia Ridley. Last Tuesday, there was a lot of buzz about one of the ordinances on the agenda for the regular mayor and commission meeting. WUGA's Haviva Salts went to find out why. You could see the crowd outside City Hall from a block away last Tuesday, and every person there was waiting to give public comment at the regular mayor and commission meeting. The main ordinance in contention was issue number 29 on the agenda, the Rights of Way Use, ad hoc committee report. It's a deceptively boring name for a controversial issue. The ordinance would prohibit sleeping, making accommodations to sleep, or lying down in the right of way on sidewalks and roadways. Tim Denson, a board of education member and discharge coordinator for the Advantage Behavioral Health Systems Behavioral Health Crisis Center, calls it an urban camping ordinance. It is being presented as some kind of solution to actually reduce homelessness, but these laws have been shown across the country that they actually don't reduce homelessness in the communities that pass them. What they actually do is add an extra barrier onto it so that those who are experienced homelessness have just another barrier now that they have to overcome for them to get out of homelessness. The Athens Homeless Coalition was set up outside City Hall with water and pizza for community members, especially those experiencing homelessness, many of whom were there to speak out at the meeting, like Rashon Prince. Yeah, I just wanted to know, even right now in this moment, I'm having, like, real anxiety because I'm about to go into a meeting that's supposed to address, like, I guess, economic issues that myself was going through, and I really don't want to do it, but, like, I'm struggling. That crackling you hear is a water bottle he couldn't stop fidgeting with anxiously. The way that certain individuals and businesses make us feel while being homeless, like, it makes it worth the fight, I guess. But it's like, why do I have to feel like I've already been defeated before I even step into the fight? By the entrance, members of the Homeless Coalition warned people with suitcases that their bags would be checked at the door. Inside, people were packed in shoulder to shoulder, waiting to be let into the meeting room. A lot of them were discussing the ordinance or looking over notes. Arlisha Trotter, a DJ with local music station WXAG, experienced homelessness herself as a child. She volunteers with local homeless populations in her spare time, and she was there to speak against the ordinance, too. I have a home, but I feel homeless because I know any day it could be me. She says that legal enforcement of a camping ordinance would only make homeless people's lives harder. They're putting somebody in debt that's already in debt. They're kicking somebody that's already down. You cannot climb out of that hole by yourself. It's just too much. The majority of people who spoke at the meeting were opposed to the ordinance, but some were for it, like longtime resident Jeff Cass.

The amount of homelessness and loitering that has been allowed to go on in this town has impacted businesses. It's made families fear for their safety. These people regularly harass folks. Several of the commissioners in attendance also spoke in favor of the ordinance, including mayor-elect Dexter Fisher, who echoed Cass's concerns. And somebody sent me a video on last Thursday. This guy was doing his business right in front of their, doing his business right in front of their business. That's just not fair to those business zones downtown. Fisher also said the community's fears of arrests are unfounded. We already have a camping ban in place. You know, we can't camp in our parks in this community. The arrest has not gone up because we put that ban in place. Public comment on the item lasted over two hours. The commissioners discussed the item for half an hour before a motion was made to deny the ordinance. Substitute motion is to deny from Commissioner Link. We'll go around the room beginning with Commissioner Link. Link? Yes to deny. Taylor? Yes to deny. Wright? No. Fisher? No. Johnson? Yes. Culpepper? No. Myers? Yes to deny. Thornton? Yes to deny. Hamby? No. Davenport? Yes to deny. The commission voted to deny the ordinance six to four. For now, sleeping on sidewalks remains legal in Athens-Clark County. But everyone who spoke agreed on one thing. Homelessness remains a pressing issue in our community and something needs to be done. Item 30 on the agenda, a resolution for homelessness support, passed unanimously after only seven minutes of discussion. For WUGA Athens, I'm Haviva Salts.

Bradley Basil is an Athens author whose short story collection in the shadow of the architect is coming out this fall. He sat down with WUGA's Haviva Salts to talk about his upcoming publication and where he finds inspiration for his work. So can you give me a quick synopsis of your book? I guess if I were to try to describe my stories, most of them I think have to do with childhood memories, but the memories are sort of framed by an adult narrator or an adult protagonist who is trying to make sense of the memories into adulthood. So for example, in the title story, a man is remembering the first summer where he was really confident on his bike. And he started kind of biking around his sort of weird empty neighborhood. And he ends up befriending this girl who's about his age. And as he gets to know her, he discovers that her home life is very much unlike his own. She lives in this big, fancy house that her father, who was older and has died, actually designed. And she lives there with her young mother, and it turns out they don't really have the money to maintain the house. And so they have kind of a strange, intimate home life that he is exposed to. And then one day she leaves. And so in adulthood, he kind of finds himself thinking about her, especially when he visits his parents, not only wondering what she is up to now, which he has no idea, but wondering what she would think about him now that he's in middle-aged and married and has a child. So it's very much like literary fiction. I think when you try to summarize these stories, sometimes they sound a little bit boring. But I hope they're rendered in kind of a vivid thought-provoking way. Yeah, they are. It's very... There's something sort of atmospheric and nostalgic about them from what I read, which is very fun to read. And as you mentioned, there's sort of this framing device of an older person looking back at memories. But at least in the ones that I read, it also seems like a lot of it is couched in conversation between the older person and a partner. Yes, yeah. So I've gotten into using the partner character as a sort of interlocutor to help. make sense of the memories. And often the partner character is a little bit more grounded, a little bit less nostalgic. And not surprisingly, it's sometimes based on my wife, who I think she and I have different personalities and she will listen to me talk about things and often have a very different take. So you mentioned there's a little bit of inspiration from your wife there. And I do think, obviously, the book is fiction, but some of the stories read almost. like autobiographical or like it feels like the main character is in a way a real person who's telling you just about events in their lives. So are there other elements of the stories that you feel you take from your own experiences? Yeah, for sure, for sure. So in the story I just described, none of that happened to me, but the neighborhood is one I knew well and that house is one I knew well. And so I was able to draw on my memories to, I think, describe it in a particular way. In the second story,

The main character is gay, and he's looking back at a life drawing class that he took, and these nude models who also happen to be gay men, getting to know one of them in particular. And so that story was, as I started writing through that material, it was based very closely on my own life. I did a lot of art. I ended up doing some classes on a college campus, which in my case was SMU because I was in Dallas. I moved the story to Fort Worth and said that it was TCU. And another distancing effect. or a technique I used to distance myself from the material was to put it in third person. And as I continued working through that material, it occurred to me that these events would be more impactful to a young person who was gay himself. And so I ended up making that change. And after I made that change, you know, I did several revisions and I feel like the story came together in kind of a richer... I know that you have some background in improv and in playwriting. Do you feel that experience influences your writing in these stories at all? So for me, when I came here to UGA, there was a really good undergraduate group called Improv Athens. And so I joined it and started performing with these people who were like 10 years younger than I am. And it was just really invigorating. And I found that at that stage in my life, it was a really good compliment to my writing. because I had gotten to the point with my writing where I was doing so much revision and just pouring over these stories again and again, you know, sometimes just the most minor things would get changed, draft to draft. And when you do improv, you know, you just step onto the stage, whether it's in practice or in a show, and you do it, and then it's gone forever. This ephemeral quality I just found, like, so refreshing and invigorating. So I'm not sure how much they color each other, but improv as an artistic... or a leisure pursuit really compliments, I think, the writer's life. How would you say that you want people to feel when they're reading the story collection? Oh, man, I have no idea. I have no idea, and that's why I asked. Well, I guess what I could say is I want people to feel reading my stories the way I feel, reading the stories of the authors that I admire most. And the author I admire, the most of any author is definitely Alice Monroe. And there's this feeling when you read one of her really great stories that it's just kind of the world is opening up in all of these particulars. It's, you know, sometimes when you read science fiction, you get the sense that, oh, there's this whole world and it's just the tip of the iceberg. And it's a little bit like that, but it's more particular and it's more real. And you wonder how these strands are going to come together, but you have like absolute faith in her somehow. Her voice is so. conversational while at the same time her art is so tuned up and so impressive. I mean, that's like crazy to compare myself to Alice Monroe, but I'm just saying like that's what I aspire to, you know. I think my early writing, it was much more deliberately humorous. I think coming from the background I did, I thought, well, the only way I'm going to earn people's attention is by being funny. Like, if this isn't funny, like, why would anybody read it? And so I think my stories back then might have been overly concise, are a little bit like trying too hard to be funny. But as I've gotten older and as I've gotten more confident in my ability to do things besides making people laugh, like, I think that it's a richer.

experience to read my work, or at least I hope it is. Bradley Basil, thank you so much. In the Shadow of the Architect comes out on September 15th. You can hear Bradley Basil read from the collection and get an early copy on September 14th at Rec Room Books. You've been listening to Athens News Matters from WUGA News. The opinions expressed on this broadcast do not necessarily reflect those of WUGA or the University of Georgia. This week's show was produced by Haviva Salts. If you missed a portion of this broadcast, Athens News Matters is available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and at wuGA.org. and will be rebroadcast Monday evenings at 8. As always, thanks for listening and stay with WUGA throughout the week for the latest in-depth local news.