Forest City Enterprises is taking a beating in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, N.Y. that is.
Read in Gehry leaves Brooklyn megaproject how Forest City dumped architect Frank Gehry for Ellerby Becket, a Minnesota firm. The article notes that Ellerby Becket has a “numbing track record of uninspired sport complexes” to its credit. Of course, Ellerby Becket designed Gund Quicken Arena in Cleveland.
Pressuring Forest City”s desires for development in Brooklyn is a community organization that operates as real community organization should – hit the developers, and then hit them again, and then again. Would that Cleveland has such a creature.
They also dispense RU-486. When I asked one of the directors why, I was told, “We follow the law of love.” They came to the conclusion that when a dilemma doesn’t present black-and-white choices, Christians have to do the most loving thing. Once they looked at it in those terms, it became clear that for an orphaned, eleven-year-old rape victim in a collapsed state with no adoption system and overcrowded orphanages, the most loving thing to do is not to force one child to deliver another who would inevitably suffer and almost certainly die. The most loving thing to do for those girls is to end potential pregnancies with grief for the horror that the living and the yet-to-be-born have to endure.
If any result from the murder of Dr. George Tiller can be said to be good, it must be this, that our national conversation on a woman’s right to choose has changed. How much, it is too early to say. But The Daily Dish reader’s do give a glimpse.
Mark Puente is certainly having a wonderful time tilling the rich corrupt soil at Cuyahoga County and Cleveland public offices. May his garden grow and grow.
The young Plain Dealer reporter is digging in fertile soil. You have to wonder where reporters who have covered Cuyahoga County for the last decade or more have been. They certainly haven”t been looking very carefully.
Anyway, Puente came at just the right time. Former Sheriff Gerry McFaul thought he was God and could dump on employees while he fattened the salaries of friends and relatives. People do talk when that happens.
They talked and Puente listened.
Now, Puente in today”s Plain Dealer set his sights on Earle Turner, the hapless Cleveland Clerk of Courts. Continue Reading »
Anti-psychotic drugs were the top-selling group of prescription medications in the U.S. last year with sales of $14.6 billion, according to the health care analysis firm.
And from the final paragraph of the story:
Schizophrenia affects about 2.4 million Americans and is characterized by hallucinations, delusions and social withdrawal, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. About 5.7 million Americans experience bipolar disorder, which causes rapid mood swings and shifts in energy.
Perhaps the larger lesson is a very empowering one: success depends less on intellectual endowment than on perseverance and drive. As Professor Nisbett puts it, “Intelligence and academic achievement are very much under people”s control.”
Death is the great equalizer. Even multi-millionaires have to participate.
It is not optional, as Woody Allen once said, Americans seem to believe.
Dick Jacobs was well-regarded in Cleveland because he helped the Cleveland Indians win a couple of American League pennants and go to the World Series. For that, many believe he was “good for the town,” as they say. He gave it some spirit when it needed it.
He was a tough and smart businessman. When he wanted Italian marble for Jacobs Field”s loges, he got marble despite warnings they would break. They did break.
A very rich man, he once told a City Club crowd that baseball player salaries were “obscene.” He was right, of course. But he neglected to mention the profits of owners. They could be even more obscene.
I called him a Socialist for his comments that day. The proof. What he said. Continue Reading »
Netanyahu is in a terrible spot: He must preserve, at all costs, Israel’s strategic relationship with Washington; on the other hand, he has right-wing coalition partners who are myopically obsessed with the status of the Neve Manyak outposts.
Something is bound to break, and when it does, the Netanyahu government collapses. Which doesn’t mean that Netanyahu is out of power. It means that he then shares power with Tzipi Livni’s centrist Kadima Party. If I were an American policymaker, that’s the Israeli coalition I would hope for: Netanyahu-Barak-Livni, rather than Netanyahu-Barak-Lieberman. You watch: It’s coming.
A pastor in Kentucky is redefining the tradition of wearing your Sunday best to services by encouraging his congregation to strap on holsters and bring their weapons to church.
Pastor Ken Pagano of New Bethel Church in Louisville, Ky., says that he organized an “Open Carry Celebration” to promote responsible gun ownership.
But the greater point about this style of “journalism,” is made by this headline which I came across–“Drunk Americans=Israeli Public Opinion.” Man listen, hand me a fifth of Henny, a video camera, and an hour, and I’ll show you Negroes claiming that God’s messenger lives in a space-ship orbiting the earth.
The Henny is for me. The Negroes can be found, sober, saying anything. As can all people. That’s the point. Bigotry is human. Why would the blacks and Jews be any different?
Creative-writing programs are designed on the theory that students who have never published a poem can teach other students who have never published a poem how to write a publishable poem. The fruit of the theory is the writing workshop, a combination of ritual scarring and twelve-on-one group therapy where aspiring writers offer their views of the efforts of other aspiring writers.
People who take creative-writing workshops get course credit and can, ultimately, receive an academic degree in the subject; but a workshop is not a course in the normal sense-a scene of instruction in which some body of knowledge is transmitted by means of a curricular script.
The workshop is a process, an unscripted performance space, a regime for forcing people to do two things that are fundamentally contrary to human nature: actually write stuff (as opposed to planning to write stuff very, very soon), and then sit there while strangers tear it apart.
[A] GM staff economist, red-faced (literally), accosting my prof to castigate him for inviting me. During the prior couple of years, or prior 5 or 6 years (?), GM’s market share had dropped from 45% to 36%. I had said that GM had “lost 20% of its market share in the last X years”-obviously accurate. (That is: 9/45 = .20.) This guy went on and on (and on!) about having “only” lost 9%. He was right in absolute terms-obviously. (Yes, 45 – 36 = 9.) And I was obviously right in relative terms.
The memory this morning is of this little-trivial “moment of denial” (dear god, 9% is awful) which, alas, has been characteristic of the last 30 years of GM’s history. The depth of the GM malaise, of course, is why we the taxpayers are highly unlikely to get much or any of our $50 billion plus back that we are about to “invest.”
I hate writing this–it’s such a sinister frame, and it distorts how black voters actually think about issues. It flattens us out–like we don’t care about the economy, or foreign policy. I guess I can only speak for myself. I voted for Obama because of the speech he gave today, because I think he is the best soldier for our side that I’ve seen, because he has a deliberative mind, because he can walk and chew gum, because he is ruthless politician.
The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved. —Marge Piercy, For the young who want to in The Moon Is Always Female
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At day’s first light, have in readiness, against disinclination to leave your bed, the thought that “I am rising for the work of man.” Must I grumble at setting out to do what I was born for and for the sake of which I have been brought into the world? Is this the purpose of my creation, to lie here under my blankets and keep myself warm? “Ah, but it is a great deal more pleasant!” Was it for pleasure, then, that you were born and not for work? —Marcus Aurelius
Let me respectfully remind you, life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken-- Awaken! This night your days will be diminished by one. Take heed. Do not squander your life. —Zen Evening Gatha
Take an ax to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now. —Rumi, Quietness
