ABULAFIA






		2 0 0 3 OCTOBER 01 SEPTEMBER AUGUST 02 AUGUST 01 JULY 02 JULY 01 JUNE 02 JUNE 01 MAY 02 MAY 01 APRIL 02 APRIL 01 MARCH FEBRUARY JANUARY L I N K S AAA Abulafia Boardwalk Bread CHN Christ Lutheran Church Neighborhood Research Institute Old Oaks Olde Towne Polyphony INTP Business First Business First Daily Edition Call and Post Columbus Alive Columbus Dispatch Columbus Free Press Columbus Post Communicator News The Daily Reporter Inner Art The Lantern The Other Paper Suburban News Publications Short North Gazette NBC4 Columbus WSYX 6 10TV WBNS ONN BBC World Service CNN Christian Science Monitor The Guardian IndiaTimes New York Times StarTribune Washington Post Washington Times AfricaPundit William F. Buckley Jr. Command Post Cronaca Crooked Timber Daniel W. Drezner John Ellis David Frum Hit & Run Instapundit Mickey Kaus Little Green Footballs Joshua Micah Marshall The Note PaleoJudaica Virginia Postrel Wes Pruden Jim Romenesko Andrew Sullivan Volokh Conspiracy Day by Day Doonesbury Ted Rall Peter Steiner Tom Toles Tom Tommorow Rob Pegoraro Matt Drudge Communication Arts Acme Art Company Ballet Met CCAD Columbus Arts Columbus Arts Festival Columbus Metropolitan Library Columbus Museum of Art Columbus Symphony Dialogue Franklin Park Conservatory Glass Axis Music in the Air Opera Columbus Thurber House Wexner Center City of Bexley City of Columbus Columbus City Council Columbus Police Columbus Public Schools OTENA egroup OTENA-NIC egroup OTENA-tours egroup OTENA-trustees egroup Old Oaks egroup Ohio Parsons Blockwatch egroup				OCTOBER 03 > r O C T O B E R 2 3 , 2 0 0 3 Posted photographs Back garden, mid-October AESQUE Pumpkin carving party AESQUE \| Link Sand Run Leaf Trail AESQUE \| Link The other war The ludicrous "War on drugs" continues. It is hard to imagine a foreign policy better suited to alienate the entirety of the southern hemisphere, and yet it seems to enter the public discourse only when politicians feel they need to garner some more votes from the tough on crime crowd and so vow to continue -- nay intensify -- redouble even -- these truly harmful policies. New York Times. On a visit to the White House last year, President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada told President Bush that he would push ahead with a plan to eradicate coca but that he needed more money to ease the impact on farmers. Otherwise, the Bolivian president's advisers recalled him as saying, "I may be back here in a year, this time seeking political asylum." Mr. Bush was amused, Bolivian officials recounted, told his visitor that all heads of state had tough problems and wished him good luck. Now Mr. Sánchez de Lozada, Washington's most stalwart ally in South America, is living in exile in the United States after being toppled last week by a popular uprising, a potentially crippling blow to Washington's anti-drug policy in the Andean region. United States officials interviewed here minimized the importance of the drug issue in Mr. Sánchez de Lozada's downfall, blaming a "pent-up frustration" over issues ranging from natural gas exports to corruption. But to many Bolivians and analysts, the coca problem is intimately tied to the broader issues of impoverishment and disenfranchisement that have stoked explosive resentments here and fueled a month of often violent protests. Freeze warning South of I-70 Talk about on the edge ... Speaking of ice ... Cleveland Barons The AHL affiliate of the National Hockey League's San Jose Sharks (To answer another lingering question from the Simon & Garfunkel concert) Ideas Park benches, designed by various artists Newsday Some appear functional, some appear not so functional I am intrigued by number 9 in particular. Possibly functional, and yet quite beautiful. Update: Amy favors the shadows of number 21. Choir rehearsal Bexley afterwards M. rescued a beautiful fern. The kitchen has been painted and looks very good. The red on the tile blends the countertops and wood of the cabinets, and the yellow on the wall opposite gives the room life and vitality. The clean black of the stove fits very well. The black jars perched on its top, a new clock to match the stove, and the framed pictures next to the hall door tie the room together. Celebrated with a pumpkin pie. Stephen's party Rebecca's due any day now. The day I was supposed to stay home Driving to work, I headed up Parsons to get on I-670 at Broad St. The intersection at Broad and Parsons was thoroughly congested due to a semi-truck seemingly parked across three lanes of Broad St. not far away, and the hopeless inability of drivers not to enter an intersection when there is obviously no place for them to go aside from sitting and blocking the way of all other traffic. Having finally squeezed through, the ramp was moving just fine, however at the bottom, there appeared next to me a semi which wanted back on I-71 and nearly ran me off the road. Taking to the shoulder, as the semi simply changed lanes with no regard for me, I ended up on I-71 also, even though I really didn't want to be there. Dodging another semi and a cement mixer I made it over to the 11th Avenue exit, the first possible escape from 70 now that the 5th Avenue exit is restricted, and prepared to turn around and jump back on 70 south. There was a car broken down in the left hand turn lane and everyone was backed for a couple of lights working around it. Back on 70 south, I entered just as a funeral procession was making its way past and had to stay out of their way. Finally making it to 670 and the Neil Avenue exit, there was a lane closed for construction on the Goodale Street connector and again cars were backed up through the Neil Avenue intersection because everyone simply crammed as far forward as possible even when they were obviously not going to be able to clear the path of cross-traffic. Have I mentioned I don't like commuting? I should have just stayed home. "Ah, but I'm all right, I'm all right I'm just weary to my bones" Paul Simon, American Tune, 1973 w O C T O B E R 2 2 , 2 0 0 3 Happy Birthday Liz! Polybag deadline A very long day I was doing very well this morning, but then came lunch ... No volcanos ... in the news today. Kathy update From Amy \| Link This took more effort than I expected, but I found a reasonably reliable-seeming answer: Medialab 5.8 Who is that on the cover of the -Songbook- with Paul? It's his then-girlfriend and muse, Kathleen Mary (Kathy) Chitty, of Kathy's Song, America, and Homeward Bound fame. Some sources (including -The-Encyclopedia-Of-Rock-) claim it's Judith Piepe, but Paul himself discounted this in 1986, speaking with David Hepworth: "To be 22 years old and to have your girlfriend on your album cover. That was -it-!" They met at the very first coffeehouse Paul played when he arrived in England in 1964. She was three years younger than him. Paul also referred to her in the version of A Simple Desultory Phillipic included on the -Songbook- in the lines: When in London Do as I do Find yourself a friendly haiku Go to sleep for 10 or 15 years -- Copyright © 1965 Paul Simon Kathy was the "friendly haiku" on account of the fact she rarely spoke. They broke up in 1965, right about the time The Sound Of Silence became a big hit. Some accounts have it that Kathy wanted no part of the success and fame that awaited Paul. Paul didn't hear from Kathy again until May 1991 when he was touring England with Born At The Right Time and, to his delight, received a letter from her. The British tabloids jumped on the story. They found her married with three children and living in a remote village in the Welsh mountains, working part-time at a technical college. She wasn't, however, interested in talking to the press. t O C T O B E R 2 1 , 2 0 0 3 "Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day And I'm trying to get some rest That's all, I'm trying to get some rest" Paul Simon, American Tune, 1973 Volcano of the day An eruption of the Thera volcano (circa 1450 B.C.) makes the New York Times. For decades, scholars have debated whether the eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean more than 3,000 years ago brought about the mysterious collapse of Minoan civilization at the peak of its glory. The volcanic isle (whose remnants are known as Santorini) lay just 70 miles from Minoan Crete, so it seemed quite reasonable that its fury could have accounted for the fall of that celebrated people. This idea suffered a blow in 1987 when Danish scientists studying cores from the Greenland icecap reported evidence that Thera exploded in 1645 B.C., some 150 years before the usual date. That put so much time between the natural disaster and the Minoan decline that the linkage came to be widely doubted, seeming far-fetched at best. Now, scientists at Columbia University, the University of Hawaii and other institutions are renewing the proposed connection. New findings, they say, show that Thera's upheaval was far more violent than previously calculated — many times larger than the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, which killed more than 36,000 people. They say the Thera blast's cultural repercussions were equally large, rippling across the eastern Mediterranean for decades, even centuries. As usual, they don't have much in the way of images. So: Santorini Photo Gallery Many of these photos were quite spectacular; a few ("Colors and light") betray a predeliction for overworking the "saturation" feature in Photoshop, but otherwise .... I favor the "Angles and shapes." Also, excavations of an town buried and preserved by the volcano's eruption. Akrotiri And once more -- Merapi -- from above. A "secret" garden Plans for a never-executed garden by a famous landscape designer are discovered and reinterpreted. Christian Science Monitor At the turn of the last century, Gertrude Jekyll changed the design of gardens virtually overnight in Britain. Gone were the sculptured, manicured boxwoods. Out went the mazes, knot gardens, and carefully manicured lawns. In their stead were drifts of color - spiky delphiniums and hollyhocks, loose presentations of bright shades merging into pastels, growing and changing as the season progressed. The cottage garden, as it came to be called, reflected a less formal lifestyle and the desire to step away from the structure of Victorian society. "... that is the question" Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered. The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went on, was that the intelligence reports about Iraq provided by the United Nations inspection teams and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitored Iraq’s nuclear-weapons programs, were far more accurate than the C.I.A. estimates. “Some of the old-timers in the community are appalled by how bad the analysis was,” the official said. “If you look at them side by side, C.I.A. versus United Nations, the U.N. agencies come out ahead across the board.” There were, of course, good reasons to worry about Saddam Hussein’s possession of W.M.D.s. He had manufactured and used chemical weapons in the past, and had experimented with biological weapons; before the first Gulf War, he maintained a multibillion-dollar nuclear-weapons program. In addition, there were widespread doubts about the efficacy of the U.N. inspection teams, whose operations in Iraq were repeatedly challenged and disrupted by Saddam Hussein. Iraq was thought to have manufactured at least six thousand more chemical weapons than the U.N. could account for. And yet, as some former U.N. inspectors often predicted, the tons of chemical and biological weapons that the American public was led to expect have thus far proved illusory. As long as that remains the case, one question will be asked more and more insistently: How did the American intelligence community get it so wrong? ... The point is not that the President and his senior aides were consciously lying. What was taking place was much more systematic—and potentially just as troublesome. Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book “The Threatening Storm” generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein, told me that what the Bush people did was “dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them. “They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information,” Pollack continued. “They were forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn’t have the time or the energy to go after the bad information.” I know, too many quotes today. A surfeit of words. A surfeit of others' words, a modicum of mine own. My thoughts far outpace my words, even on the best of days. Daddy's calling Georgie Anne Geyer (Chicago Tribune) It's not as though Osama Bin Laden gave a Jihad Award to Ariel Sharon, or Donald Rumsfeld gave his Good Pal Award to Condoleezza Rice. It's not even as though Dick Cheney gave his Favorite Foreigners Citation to the French. But the news from College Station, Texas, this week--that the First Father, former President George H.W. Bush, has given his own most treasured award to Sen. Edward Kennedy--is nearly as astonishing. When it was announced (with amazingly little fanfare) that the pugnaciously anti-Iraq war Democrat Kennedy had been awarded the 2003 George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service, so many jaws dropped all over Washington that usually voluble politicians were only heard swallowing their real thoughts. Illustrations Walking numbers and checking checks for IR and Entrepreneur, respectively. Better than average. On the old road again Drove into Columbus around 10 a.m. but would have preferred to just keep on drivin'. Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike They've all come to look for America All come to look for America Overcast with a little sun breaking through here and there; perfect driving weather. Listened to NPR, CD101, and some odd stations and music in between. Stopped at the rest stop just south of 36/37. Rt. 18 was blocked just outside of Fairlawn; turned around and took 77/76 south and over to 71. To Columbus m O C T O B E R 2 0 , 2 0 0 3 Simon & Garfunkel Old Friends Tour (Review -- Cleveland Plain Dealer -- well, sort of a review; it actually didn't say much at all) Gund Arena, Cleveland The directions were a little short on what to do once exiting the freeway, but we succesfully overcame all hazards to reach the [Correction: almost-] highest-priced parking possible. Also the closest, and thus most congested upon leaving. It's the same old story, Everywhere I go I get slandered, libeled I hear words I never heard in the Bible I did not expect to hear "Keep the customer satisfied," but it did seem to fit the "Old friends" / "Home is where I want to be" theme, and it was the point in the concert that won me over. Scarborough Fair: Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme Amy says this is the road around Grayling and Gaylord, north of the last of anything south of the bridge. It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw North of Saginaw, even. "Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping And where's Kathy now, she asked? [Update] The music almost glosses over this foreboding imagery: And high up above, my eyes could clearly see The Statue of Liberty Sailing away to sea An inappropriate woman in the row behind us unfortunately did not sail away, nor move away as she tantalizingly suggested she (and her companions) ought before the seats below filled in. She smoked (before and after being told that the arena is non-smoking), whistled unbelievably loudly unbelievably frequently, and talked throughout most of the concert. She quite visibly annoyed nearly everyone around her, but didn't notice this at all herself. And I'm so tired I'm oh so tired But I'm trying to keep my customers satisfied Satisfied Raj Mahal Redecorated Indian restaurant The food was very good, the medium spice was mild, the former booths (not to my knowledge, but from reports) had been removed and replaced with tables. We all agreed that we tend toward the lamb dishes, because where else but at a (Greek or Indian, primarily) restaurant are you going to get lamb? And it's so good. Walk With Charlie and Sally, who (Sally) walked twice the distance the rest of us did, tugging, pulling, over here, over there, ... n O C T O B E R 1 9 , 2 0 0 3 Pumpkin Carving (Which is not a competitive event) Photographs AESQUE and costume party (for certain select guests). Well attended this year, with many successful carvings -- from a mouse to a Munch "Scream." And ebbing and flowing tides of dogs, in and out of the rooms and the yards. & birthday party ... with cake -- real homemade Black Forest cake Guard dog I woke into a haze a couple of times before getting up to witness Charlie informing Sally that her breathless frolicking was not yet welcome. Sally soon calmed down, at least for a little while. The Book of Jonah, RSV, Chapter 4 6: And the LORD God appointed a plant, and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. 7: But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm which attacked the plant, so that it withered. 8: When the sun rose, God appointed a sultry east wind, and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah so that he was faint; and he asked that he might die, and said, "It is better for me to die than to live." 9: But God said to Jonah, "Do you do well to be angry for the plant?" And he said, "I do well to be angry, angry enough to die." 10: And the LORD said, "You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a night. 11: And should not I pity Nin'eveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" How natural and unsurprising it is that Jonah cared much for the plant. I do not know why it is that Charlie watches over me -- surely it is nothing that I have done. It is like an appointment from God. And yet I have grown attached, and already fear I shall be dis-appointed some day. s O C T O B E R 1 8 , 2 0 0 3 Todd's baptism And party at Julie and Don's soon-to-be former house What are those things called? Horns? knobs? bumps? "[Giraffe] [h]orns are bony masses covered with skin and tufts of hair and are not really horns at all. They may represent relics of pedicles from which antlers grew ages before (since giraffe are fairly closely related to deer)." Oakland Zoo Giraffes have "horns" not true horns but knobs covered with skin and hair above the eyes to protect the head from blows. African Wildlife Foundation So, horns but not horns? The homily was a somewhat overlong (for the topic) disquisition on the proper and accepted (in the strict sense that all else seems to be unaccepted) manner in which to pass the peace. To which I say: Peace. A still oddly unsettling drive The road seemed so different from before ... Many leaves have already fallen, but there are still bursts of brilliant orange or red amid patches of yellow. To Akron A slow start to a day That old defeated feeling just keeps coming back f O C T O B E R 1 7 , 2 0 0 3 Fast 50 A quick and successful forgathering. A good start to a weekend. Downtown Lazarus to close Business First Not that it's Lazarus anymore, it's Lazarus-Macy's. Perhaps it's good that the name changed before they decided to close the flagship store of the Lazarus chain, the one-time hometown department store. Better to remember Lazarus as an integral part of a vital city. Macy's is an alien name to being with, and now it is a particularily unwelcome name in this city. After decades of neglect, New York department flagstores are being royally renovated, according to a New York Times article some weeks ago -- they realize what a sense of place a grand downtown presence makes. And if Federated wondered at the decrease in retailing at their City Center location, one look at what appears to be an exterior neglected since the 1950s ought to offer a clue. Empty display windows, blank walls and decrepit fixtures all give off an air of decay and disappointment. There was, and is, possible greatness beneath this drab shell, but it would require vision and care to embrace it. Federated Stores, which has no hometown anymore, and Lazarus, which isn't Lazarus anymore and is being homogenized into a national Macy's brand, doesn't have the vision and certainly not the care, at least not in Columbus, a market they profess to be committed to. And indeed, they are committed to making money in Central Ohio; they are not, however, committed to the community. It's hard to believe a retailer with executives that make decisions and live here deciding to abandon downtown at this point. Better to be like Marshall Field's and leave Columbus altogether. r O C T O B E R 1 6 , 2 0 0 3 Merapi / Indonesia pages Joglosemar Thinking about climbing mountains made me think once more of Merapi, and I found this link via Google. Warning: Censored comics Uclick It's not often that I approve of newspapers censoring comic strips, so this was simply a challenge to find out what had so offended them: "The Washington Post has decided not to publish this week's Boondocks strip. The comic will return to washingtonpost.com Oct. 19." Not much of a challenge at all, really, as the Boondocks is posted daily at Uclick. I don't recall the Washington Post having censored Boondocks before, though I know other papers have (undeservedly, in my opinion). In this case, however, I can sympathize with the Post. It is rather a personal attack on Condoleeza Rice. I'm not sure how I would vote in an editorial meeting. Indexing can be fun Crooked Timber "and from Barnes’ index entry on Lady Thatcher: rumours of lunacy; receives electric shocks in bath; ‘bawls like a fish-wife’; accused of war crimes; new version of Saint Augustine; how not to make the poor richer; discovers it’s a funny old world; compared to Hamlet’s father; compared to Catherine the Great; Bursts into flame; omnipresence; effect on carol singers; unimpressed by the French Revolution." As well as this in the comments section: "In a well-known solid state physics book, one can find entries in the index like both cart, before horse horse, after cart and prose, page of unrelieved as well as a listing of every page in which there is an exclamation mark, including one page with two (noted with an exclamation mark that is also duly listed)." Cool photographs By other people CandidColors Smoky Mountain Blog Via Instapundit These pictures add some nice visuals to the "walk in the woods" contemplation. Wedding pages Finally posted No comment needed "Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he "didn't want to see any stories" quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used." Philadelphia Inquirer Blue Jackets game Vs. Chicago Blackhawks Final: CBJ 2 - 1 With Rudy, Holly, Lisa Book of Lists cover Tentative image, explored cropping Indian Oven lunch Janet and I were there for a photoshoot -- I tried hard to pretend to have something to do aside from eating free food. w O C T O B E R 1 5 , 2 0 0 3 Deadline day Late, late, late stories > OCTOBER 01