Georgia Institute of Technology Brain Research Study NEUROSCIENCE AND MEMORY!

We are conducting neuroscience studies to observe and improve learning and memory in older adults. Eligible participants will perform memory tasks while receiving magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans. *Non-MRI option available.

• 65 – 80 years of age

• continued from page 15 personas, as borne out in their names. One is the little town of Bethlehem in Barrow County, between Atlanta and Athens. The other is the even tinier town of Santa Claus in Toombs County in South Georgia.

Not surprisingly, a Christmas theme runs through both towns year round. Their streets bear Yuletide monikers: Bethlehem’s main thoroughfare (of course) is Christmas Avenue. Its other streets include Mary, Joseph, Shepherd, Angel, King, David, Star, Manger and Judea streets. Santa Claus‘s City Hall, which is decorated for Christmas all year long, sits at 25 December Drive — and there are Candy Cane Road, Rudolph Way and Dancer, Prancer and Sleigh streets.

In Bethlehem, instead of a lit-up Christmas tree, it’s a huge, bright “star” — made of incandescent light bulbs and sitting on a post in the center of town — that grabs the attention each holiday season. It’s why Bethlehem calls itself “the little town under the star.” It’s turned on after Thanksgiving and shines through New Years Eve.

But the main reason people come to Bethlehem in December is its U.S. Post Office branch. They want their Christmas cards and gifts mailed from there so they will bear a Bethlehem postmark. Well over 120,000 people from all over Georgia and the Southeast come to the little town to have their Christmas mailings stamped with a “greetings from Bethlehem” message.

“It’s a hard place to get in and out of in December,” Bethlehem Mayor Sandy McNab told me.