ABULAFIA






		2 0 0 3 NOVEMBER 02 NOVEMBER 01 OCTOBER 03 OCTOBER 02 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 WEDDING 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 Newsday New York Times StarTribune Washington Post Washington Times AfricaPundit William F. Buckley Jr. Command Post Crooked Timber Daniel W. Drezner John Ellis David Frum Hit & Run Instapundit Mickey Kaus Joshua Micah Marshall The Note OxBlog Virginia Postrel Wes Pruden Jim Romenesko Andrew Sullivan Volokh Conspiracy Day by Day Doonesbury Ted Rall Peter Steiner Tom Toles Tom Tomorrow Rob Pegoraro Matt Drudge Cronaca Languagehat Language Log Open Brackets PaleoJudaica Blue Ridge Blog Candid Colors Communication Arts Conscientious D.U.I. Studio Ecotone Wiki Maps and territories Smoky Mountain Journal 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				> NOVEMBER 04 s N O V E M B E R 2 2 , 2 0 0 3 Posted images The city after dark Jeffrey Mansion Columbus College of Art & Design, One Columbus College of Art & Design, Two Columbus Museum of Art Greenlawn Cemetery Greenlawn, One Greenlawn, Two Touring Greenlawn Cemetery I believe that my great-grandfather is buried somewhere on these grounds. I drove around, thinking to look in some section with old German names. Greenlawn Cemetery is located just outside German Village, however, so this plan was quite ineffective at eliminating any sections. It would be simpler just to ask -- I know my mother and her cousin Mary Jo visited his grave when Mary Jo was in town from Australia this spring. As it was, it gave me a good excuse to wander around and explore. The names were very similar to the church roster when I was growing up: Metzger, Bauer, .... There were a number of different ways to spell Schultz, but none the right Schultz that I was looking (not dilligently) for. Schulz, Schultze, Shultz, Shulze, ... I drove past Eddie Rickenbacker's grave. I know many of Columbus' founders are buried here, but I didn't see others that I recognized. The gravestones range from toppled and weatherworn beyond decipherment to meticulously-maintained. It was a wonderfully warm day out, cloudy but with occasional bursts of sun that made it worthwhile to be alive. f N O V E M B E R 2 1 , 2 0 0 3 BOL / Newsmakers Arrived early, left late All work and no play -- well, a little maybe It was a beautiful day outside, and I took an hour for lunch to run home and lay in the hammock Hard not to wonder Washington Post Did Johnny Hart -- the beloved creator of "B.C." and one of the most widely read cartoonists on Earth -- sneak a vulgar defamation of Islam into the comics pages last week? ... Hart and his syndicate say no -- that a simple, straightforward joke is being misconstrued. That may well be true, but the 73-year-old cartoonist's history of evangelizing his Christian beliefs through his comic cavemen have left many people doubtful. ... [Marshall] Blonsky [professor of semiotics at the New School in New York] said the cartoon seemed in some way manipulative -- constructed in "a polysemic fashion, to supply multiple meanings that would deliberately evade interpretation." When told of the religious interpretation, he said that in this light, the cartoon suddenly made logical sense. The coincidences were simply too great to ignore, he said. ... "It's highly, overwhelmingly, incontrovertibly suspicious," said Berkeley Breathed, creator of "Bloom County" and the new Sunday-only strip "Opus." "There's no explanation for that gag without Islam. It's meaningless." ... For non-academics, though, the issue is intent and intent only. If Hart did not intend to slur Islam, then he is absorbing some terribly unfair criticism. But what if he did intend to slur Islam? You need only read the Constitution to conclude that Johnny Hart had every right to express whatever views he has. But was it right to do it subversively, in what would amount to an act of intellectual sabotage? r N O V E M B E R 2 0 , 2 0 0 3 Choir rehearsal Al was sick, so rehearsal was shorter than usual Bexley afterward w N O V E M B E R 1 9 , 2 0 0 3 Images The City after Dark Old Veterans Memorial Columbus Athaenium Fifth Street BalletMet sidewalk Naughten Street Fire Museum Midland building St. Joseph Cathedral M&D to Columbus t N O V E M B E R 1 8 , 2 0 0 3 Link Maps and territories An NYT essay A moth, a butterfly, and elegant merger of science and art \| Thomas Eisner \| New York Times There was a world of hidden dimensions in these [wings of butterflies and moths], a treasury of abstract art to be explored, pointillist in design, elegant in coloration, and infinitely pleasing. There was proof in these images that science and art, while dwelling separately in our consciousness, may well merge in that vague undecipherable domain of the subconscious that guides us in our passions. Interesting people Leo Thurn Thurn has ushered parishioners to their pews and passed the collection plate at St. Mary Catholic Church in German Village since he was 19. Now 70, Thurn volunteers his time once every Saturday and twice every Sunday during Masses. ... The number of parishioners at St. Mary began to slip in the 1950s as houses and shops in German Village deteriorated. "It was becoming a slum," Thurn recalled. The German Village Society was founded in 1960 and sparked the area’s subsequent revitalization. Since then, the congregation has remained steady at about 750 families, Thurn said. "Today, we have more young people and babies than ever," he said. "I love the young ones. They’re the future." Pointing to the church’s colorful stained-glass windows, statues and elaborate woodwork, Thurn said, "Many young people like the inside of the church. It’s old-fashioned. Brides especially like to get married here." Columbus Dispatch Elderly man beaten, robbed at [somewhere] WBNS 10-TV Two men barged their way into an east Columbus home, tied up the elderly homeowner and robbed him. It happened on Littlebrook Way just before noon Monday. Yahoo Maps responded : "We assumed that you meant Little Brook Way, instead of Littlebrook Way." OK. Assuming that they did mean Little Brook Way, that puts this incident in the Brice Road / Livingston Avenue corridor that the Columbus Dispatch (NB: The Dispatch Co. also owns WBNS) featured on Sunday in a prominent article as "struggling with change." A bandage covers the bruised, broken finger that supported a diamond wedding ring for close to half a century. The widowed grandmother lost the ring on Oct. 27 when three men yanked it off her finger outside a restaurant near the Brice Road-Livingston Avenue intersection. The men slapped her and took her driver’s license and credit cards as well. The woman, 67, is afraid to reveal her name, but said she is glad she recently moved out of the Far East Side neighborhood. "It’s very sad when you see the deterioration of an area," she said. Others share her concerns about the crime and the sagging fortunes of Brice Road’s business district. Context is so easily provided on the Web. It could have helped this story. m N O V E M B E R 1 7 , 2 0 0 3 Images The City after Dark Fourth & State Streets Broad Street United Methodist Church Gay Street Techneglas YWCA Columbus Club Columbus Dispatch More on Gabriel García Márquez Living to tell the tale: The man of Macondo \| New York Times García Márquez's new book, a memoir called ''Living to Tell the Tale,'' reminds us that what seems so fantastical in ''One Hundred Years of Solitude'' is in fact a reasonable description of Colombia, where ghosts are still central to workaday life and the successor to the civil war depicted in the novel rages to this very day. The ghosts and the guerrillas benefit from a hallucinatory topography that keeps conventional reality at bay. The western part of the country is cleaved by three chains of the Andes, which carve the region into isolated pockets while forming a Tolkienesque barrier between the cities of the Caribbean coast and the capital of Bogota, which sits atop the easternmost chain at the ear-popping height of nearly 8,600 feet. The majority of the country lies east of that drizzly mountain capital and is divided between the Amazon jungle and a vast plain, much of which floods most of the year. A half-century of civil war has left Colombia a very dangerous place. At the moment, 40 percent of the country lies in the hands of guerrilla organizations. The largest is known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which supports itself by taxing the cocaine producers who supply North America, extorting protection money from oil companies that drill in the region and, most commonly, through kidnapping for ransom. The small, inept military tries to keep the guerrillas in check with paramilitary groups, but they have a history of violence indistinguishable from that of the rebels and have dipped into the drug trade as well. Planning lunch At Buca di Beppo Good planning, very mediocre lunch (Manicotti) And I had been looking forward to it, too n NO V E M B E R 1 6 , 2 0 0 3 A day of sound and music And much silence Signifying what? From the wonderful song that came on the radio as I pulled into the garage, Me and Bobby McGee ... Freedom´s just another word for nothin´ left to lose Nothin´ don´t mean nothin´ hon´ if it ain´t free, no no And feelin´ good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues You know, feelin´ good was good enough for me Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee ... to the verse of a hymn from today's service. I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies, No sudden rending of the veil of clay, No angel visitant, no opening skies; But take the dimness of my soul away. This is why I go to church. Take the dimness of my soul away. I don't need inexplicable miracles -- the "explicable" ones are plenty -- if I just open my eyes, my ears, my heart, and let them into my soul. An eclipse of the moon is easily explained and predicted to the minute, but this does not diminish the wonder of its experience. Spirit of God, descend upon my heart; Wean it from earth; through all its pulses move; Stoop to my weakness, strength to me impart; And make me love Thee as I ought to love. I usually like Pastor Hudson's sermons, and this, on Mark's little apocalypse, was no exception. Here would have fit an allusion to "Oh, no, not another apocalypse" from any random Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode. I took grandma to Panera for lunch, (she likes their onion soup), and then we went home to Bexley and read the newspaper and talked. She asked several times through the day if there was anything on TV I wanted to watch, but the quiet was far better. Old downtown stores that Grandma remembers: Montgomery Ward at Third and Main (now a parking lot -- a large sign has read "will build to suit" for as long as I can remember; The Union, later moved east to Town & Country (I vaguely recall it in that location); Penney's. Madison's, which lasted into the 1990s, dying out only after choosing not to move from North High when the insular Columbus City Center opened, killing off any remaining freestanding retail. The Madison family had wisely sold out long before that, allowing Bexley Mayor David Madison, among others, to be able to afford to live in Bexley and devote all of his time to the low-paying mayoral post. Great-grandfather moved to the parsonage, an "huge barn of a place" next to Old Trinity when Grandpa was five. The parsonage no longer exists. Grandma and grandpa's first home was on Sheridan Avenue in Bexley, in a rented duplex. Many Capital University colleagues lived sid-by-side there on "professor's row." They were the first to move out, a couple of blocks east, to the home on Astor Avenue that Grandpa convinced the builders to add a second floor to. A bay window in the front was perfect for the baby grand piano that they later acquired. The Kaupers came from Schleswig-Holstein in Germany; grandma's father came to America when he was five. A cousin spent some time in Europe and tried to trace the family, but the parish church from the town he thought he needed to find had burned down, and along with it all the town records. Grandma's grandfather was a Lutheran pastor (when Lutheran pastors were truly preachers: his wife sat in the back of the church with an umbrella which she would move from her right to her left side when she was ready for him to bring the sermon to an end -- when he got to "in conclusion," you could count on only another 15 - 20 minutes) with a church in Richmond and later in Dayton. She doesn't think he ever owned a car, and can remember him taking her downtown on the trolleys in Dayton. Her uncles almost all worked for the Starr Piano company [more] in Richmond, one of the largest piano manufacturers in the U.S. One uncle worked on the ivory keys, back when piano keys truly were made of ivory. The Starr Piano Company also owned Gennett Records, a pioneer in jazz recordings of Jelly Roll Morton and many others. It was expected that her father would also go to work at the piano factory -- which he did, at first. Three days later, but not before he had already found another job, he announced that he would not be returning. He instead became a leading salesman for the Adam H. Bartel wholesalers company. He was a book person, and loved to read to Grandma -- she wishes he had been able to go to college, but it just hadn't happened. He was able later to send all sorts of things to Columbus -- if one crayon in a box was broken, the whole box was discarded and probably sent to Mom and her brothers. Once, grandma received a huge (and very heavy) case, which proved to be full of smaple buttons. She didn't buy buttons for years and years, and a popular children's game was "button salesman." Grandma remembers eating popcorn on the front porch with her mother. She and Mom enjoy popcorn together today. We enjoyed a little ice cream. > NOVEMBER 02