Some Stuff to Get Your Week Started

Yes, it's pre-dawn on a winter Monday, at least according to the calendar. But I'm feeling rather spring-like today, since yesterday's thaw in the temperatures allowed me to give my car a thorough spring cleaning. And that's no small job, since I tend to have a rolling office in there: dozens of files on things half-gathered and perhaps one-quarter-written. Piles of clipped magazine articles and newspapers, set aside for later use. Stacks of articles printed out from the web, with notes and underlines appended. And of course various scribblings on various sheets of paper. But now it's all organized, much of it is back in the house where it belongs, filed away for easier access when I need it. So life is good, even if my sturdy, beloved Honda Accord has just passed 100,000 miles...

Not even Ralph Nader can break my good mood today. The horse's ass will pretty well damage his place in history with his latest bit of obstructionist purist insistence on running no matter what. But this interesting piece in The New Republic makes a reasonably good case that, contrary to much of the media commentary of late, Ralph is merely doing what he's always done: "The qualities that liberals have observed in him of late--the monomania, the vindictiveness, the rage against pragmatic liberalism--have been present all along." TNR can occasionally be a bit predictable in its contrarianism, but just as often it hits the mark in reconsidering received wisdom of the chattering classes. Perhaps at some later date I'll recount the fascinating tale of having waited on Nader more than 20 years ago when I worked at a restaurant (perhaps there's a movie in there somewhere?). Anyway, do read this piece when you get a moment and make your own judgment. And that especially means you, RB...

Chas Continues to Score Direct Hits. The Sardonic One, local blogger Chas Rich, continues to do a yeoman's job of closely reading PD coverage of selected issues and shrewdly calling the paper to task. His latest bit of surgery is among his most interesting, watching the battle of the Tims for Cuyahoga County commissioner. He happens to note an especially interesting dynamic which had given me some pause too: editorial writer Joe Frolik, a good Cleveland Heights progressive intellectual (whom I've known socially for some years), unfortunately seems to have been picking up just a bit of the Alex Machaskee/Brent Larkin crony Cleveland politics contagion of late. Suppose it can't be helped, working in that environment every day for many years. Still, I hope he eventually comes to his senses on that count...

A Useful Tool? I, for one, plan to find out...

March Dad's Column Now Online. Click here for it.

Literary Cleveland. Okay, I know that might strike you as something of an oxymoron. But we're working on it. A few of us underground activists have been plotting a regional literary festival for sometime this year, and that's still the hope. More about which later. In the meantime, I want to keep highlighting those far-too-infrequent chances we have to call attention to all things literary here. One highlight has been the Gray & Co. kickoff parties, launching new books. I attended one about three weeks ago for a new book, Cleveland Couples, and David Gray and his incomparable diva of publicity, Jane Lassar, did it up right. It was at Vivo in the old Arcade, most of whose life has been sucked out by the sad rehab into a hotel. But Vivo has some of the Arcade's old buzz, and that night perhaps half of literary Cleveland was on hand to toast the newest addition to the fold. As always, hats off to David Gray for ignoring naysayers who have been saying for years that there's no way to make a business of publishing books on regional themes. He's coming up on his 50th such book--each one a testament to the power of smart contrarianism. Anyway, an equally heartening local literary development, pushing up from the permafrost like a particularly hardy variety of flower, has been CWRU's endowed journalism lectureship series. A couple of weeks ago, as I've written, that brought us the New Yorker's Susan Orlean. This week, Katha Pollitt of the Nation will be on hand to speak. I've never been a fan of her work in the Nation--she seems forever stuck in a dreary, post-Stalinist Upper West Side of Manhattan ideology to which I can't much relate. But as she's aged, as a person and a writer, I've also noticed some interesting signs of a deeper kind of self-engagement she seems to be having with her more rigid views. At least that's how I interpreted a much-clucked-about piece she did two or three months ago in the New Yorker, in which she confesses (with some mildly astonishing detail) to having done some webstalking of a former lover who suddenly left her. Perhaps it's merely natural to feel sympathy for anyone who so nakedly puts their own dirty laundry out for public inspection, but I found it really remarkable that someone who's always seemed to be so sure about so many things was suddenly confessing to millions of readers that she was lost, hurt and confused. I think I'll go hear her on Wednesday and help add to the sympathetic noise that will no doubt await her at University Circle. If she ever decides to blog, this interesting little advice column will nicely prepare her for the possible pitfalls of mixing blogging with one's love life...

And speaking of Case: I know my friend Anton and his wife Erin, a couple of the best walking advertisements for the benefits of a Peace Corps stint, will enjoy this: CWRU bragging about its strong rankings among universities for the number of its students who serve in the Corps. Ask not what your country can do for you, but....