This week on Athens News Matters, the Wild Rumpus Halloween Parade has a new charity initiative. Plus, poetry from 1970s Normaltown.
Wild Rumpus Parade launches new charity costume drive
Every Halloween, the Wild Rumpus parade floods downtown Athens with wacky costumes and spooky spirit. This year, the people behind the Wild Rumpus have launched a new initiative to make sure Athens kids have access to great costumes. WUGA’s Havivah Saltz sat down with Rumpus board member Tyler Stansky to find out more.
The Wild Rumpus is on Halloween this year, kicking off at the intersection of West Hancock Street and Pulaski Street in downtown Athens.
Decades-old poetry about Normaltown helped one woman connect with her late grandmother
Amber Newberry has never lived in Athens, but she has a pretty good idea of what Normaltown was like in the mid to late 1900s. That’s thanks to a suitcase full of poetry she inherited from her grandmother, Bernice Newberry, who lived in Athens. Amber sat down with WUGA’s Havivah Saltz to discuss the poems and her grandmother’s legacy.
You can read Bernice Newberry‘s poetry at inkandredwine.substack.com.
The haunting of the Athens Library Heritage Room
The Athens-Clarke County Library’s Heritage Room serves as the headquarters of the Archives and Special Collections Department, with a focus on local history and genealogy. The tucked-away space doesn’t get many visitors—but it may have a resident ghost. WUGA’s Havivah Saltz went to the Heritage Room to meet Rachel Bentley, a Heritage Room Specialist, and hear her ghost story.
This is the first installment of "Ghost Gabs", a series of Athens ghost stories. If you have a story you’d like to tell, email havivahsaltz@uga.edu.
