On Summit

It seems that SoHud is winning the battle for my neighborhood's nickname. This is regrettable, but at this point likely unavoidable. For the uninitiated, I live in the University District in Columbus, Ohio; a few blocks south of Hudson Street. Hudson is an almost major east-west artery that separates our neighborhood from an arguably nicer neighborhood to the north. Ours is an in-between area. To my knowledge it's never had an official name; at least not one that's lasted into the 21st century. I've heard it referred to variously as North Campus, The University District, Old North Columbus, Baja Clintonville, Washington Beach, SoHu, and SoHud. Sadly, at this stage, the SoHud designator is gaining traction and seems poised to stick. Our friends at Wild Goose Creative have adopted it for their mural project . A group of affiliated musicians use it to describe their music collective . Perhaps most importantly, the taste-makers at Columbus Underground favor SoHud over SoH...

In a previous post I outlined what I saw as a couple of real deficiencies in Ohio Governor John Kasich's leadership style. My hope was to frame (in a non-partisan way) Kasich's words and actions in the context of some commonly understood leadership principles. And while it's never been my intention to make this blog particularly political, Mr Kasich's off the cuff style (and relative lack of any sort of filter) has provided yet another chance to consider what makes a good leader. In recent remarks, Governor Kasich stressed the need to make Ohio economically competitive by making Ohio "cool". Kasich said: "We've got to make Ohio cool. You know, I was down at Lexis-Nexis down in Dayton, I'm meeting with the CEO of the company, and he says, you know, a lot of these, these young people, you know, they want to head for the coast. Why do they want to go to the coast? It's cool. Why do they want to go to Austin? You ever been to Austin? It...

This year the Ohio Historical Society is holding an Ohio history themed Peeps diorama contest, Ohio: A History of a Peeple . Participants have been invited to create a diorama based on famous scenes from Ohio's past. While I don't expect this is exactly famous, I do know that the last captive passenger pigeon, "Martha," died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. So, to commemorate Martha, and to acknowledge (in some small way) the passenger pigeon's place in Ohio's history, I present Martha, the last passenger peep: The passenger peep, Ectopistes marshmellosous , was once the most common bird in the United States, numbering in the billions. Passenger peeps lived in enormous colonies, with sometimes up to 100 nests in a single tree. Migrating flocks stretched a mile wide, turning the skies sticky and yellow. Bird painter John James Audubon, who watched them pass on his way to Louisville in 1813, described “the muffled tones of their gelatinous wings,” and sa...