On Summit

It's spring in Akron and things at the Akron almost-mansion are (mostly) moving forward. In my last update on this project I alluded to the fact that we're spending every weekend at the house attending to the business of patching, prepping, priming, and painting. Well, we're still doing that, one room at a time, and actually starting to see some progress. Three rooms are pictured through two doorways. One doorway is arched and the next is rectangular. The closest room is painted yellow. The next room is tangerine. The last room is a kitchen with blue-grey floors. My wife has determined that this house is going to be cheerful, bright, and full of whimsy. I support that initiative and will point out that those efforts begin with paint selection. While I wouldn't go so far as to say we're selecting colors based on name alone, it's nice when the moniker fits the theme. Here you can see we chose Optimistic Yellow (Sherwin Williams) for the dining room, and Cheerful ...

In a previous post I shared that our recent visit to Paris was planned primarily around seeing the Gerhard Richter retrospective at the Foundation Louis Vuitton . There's obviously lots of other things to see and do in the City of Light and I wanted to follow-up with some more pics from that trip. We typically stay in the Latin Quarter near the Seine and a couple blocks over from Blvd St. Michel. It's an area that maybe isn't highly regarded by "travelers in the know" since it's pretty touristy, but like it or not, we're tourists. The fact is it's close to a lot of things we love (Jardin de Luxembourg, Musée de Cluny, the Seine, Notre Dame), walking distance to others (the Louvre, the Orsay, Jardin des Plantes), and it's central enough that you can get anywhere in the city pretty easily. Plus, there's nothing like taking the RER train from Charles de Gaulle airport and entering the city via the Saint-Michel-Notre Dame metro station. It's ju...

Within hours of the announcement that then president of The Ohio State University, Walter Edward "Ted" Carter had resigned, I received an email from the OSU Alumni Association. To the Association's credit, it wasn't a fundraising email. Rather, it was a missive designed to reassure alumni like me that leaders come and go, but the strength of the OSU community rests with its people. I was assured that our great university would weather this moment, move forward, and succeed. To say that letter came at a bad time would be an understatement. My opinion of and support for my alma mater had been in a freefall over the last few years as I watched scandal upon scandal stack up on campus. So, I reflected on my relationship to the university and offered a version of the following as my reply: Thanks for the update. I don't know that my one voice really makes a difference, but I wanted to write and let you know that any time the subject of college selection comes up in my p...

I'll start with some disclaimers. I don't know the first thing about how the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) awards franchises. I expect you don't either. We refer to these civic pleas for major sports franchises as "bids", but what exactly constitutes a bid? Is there a request for proposals I can review? An application? A notice of funding opportunity? Is there a form to fill out? A list of specific targets that a city or community is expected to meet? Some measurable standards? Rubrics? Transparency? If any of those things exist please help me out, because I can't find them. Rather, and by the look of what's happening in Columbus right now, a "bid" for an NWSL franchise consists exactly of a current billionaire MLS owner expressing interest, sending out some press releases, talking to city hall, eyeballing city property, and getting the attention of the central Ohio soccer community. Normally, I'd be excited about the idea of expa...