“There’s a Booik”

      When I was a little guy, perhaps four or so, it is said that I would stand at the window looking out onto busy Euclid Hts. Blvd. and declare without a moment’s hesitation,” There’s a Booick, there’s a Thevrolet, there’s a Pymouth!”

It is clear that even in those tender years I was hooked on cars; marking the beginning of a lifelong, passionate love affair with automobiles.                                             
 And, I have come to recognize, the feeling is mutual.

This is part of that story.

Cars that have loved me

         To almost everyone, the yellow, American Motors Hornet Sportabout, with the fake wood sides looked ridiculous. I thought it was really cool. Bought it from Tom Ganley at his first agency on Lake Shore Blvd. back in the early 70’s.

Not In My Backyard

Tilting at Turbines 

        Not too long ago, while driving through the vast, unpredictable landscape of Northwest Texas, we came upon a swarm of enormous windmills, planted as far as the eye could see, in every direction.  
         Now better known as “wind turbines.” Everywhere. They are apparently beloved by many environmentalists and engineers alike, touted as the wave of the green future. the cure to the so-called global warming. And that’s scary. 

        The novelty and the pervasiveness of these monsters distorting the Texas skyline, grabbed my attention. It was nothing like I had ever seen before. My initial reaction was of amazement.  They must be creating enough power to light the whole city of Ft. Worth, I thought to myself.  Not really, I have been told.  Possibly part of Abilene. Not enough power lines exist in the area to do much more.
        My next thought: what a blight on the natural environment.

The New Normal Run Amok

   I winced the other day when the main story on page one of the New York Times declared pretty much without equivocation that births out of wedlock are the “New Normal” in America.
   My initial reaction was one of sadness for the nation and for the mothers who either by choice or by pain of abandonment go it alone.  But mostly a personal pain for the children, primarily for the boys, who must grow up without a father.  You might call it, as does the Cleveland Plain 
Dealer, "Fatherless in America. A national tragedy.”  I was startled to learn the 76 % of children  born in Cleveland out of wedlock.  fatherless boys we are told are much more likely to end up in jail, to fail in school, to become jobless.
   A national tragedy you bet.  If we wnt to fix  America, here's a very good place to start.
   I drew partly on my own experience as I wrote this story about “LeBron and Me” a while ago touching on this subject.. This is a slightly expanded and updated version that tells it as it is, or, at least, as it is for me.…

LeBron and Me

I felt an eerie, uneasy kinship with LeBron the other night as I watched him slowly, painfully walk off the court in Miami, in defeat in game six with Dallas in the NBA playoffs.

I wondered how he really felt inside.  This huge boy in a man’s body, lifted by passion and athleticism to heights few mortals ever reach,

What are his inner resources? To whom can he turn as he feels the pain of loss? Not to the man who made his mother pregnant at age 16 and never returned.

I think I know something about that sense of loss. And the inability to deal with it likes a “man”, so to speak.

Like LeBron, I grew up without a father.  It was not good experience.  This devastating loss of the man in your life leaves a hole in you gut a mile wide. And it never really goes away.  No matter how hard you try, on the basketball court or on the courtyard of life.

Particularly when the man you came to depend on disappears, or in LeBron’s case, was never there at all.
I was enchanted when he told the journalists at a news conference after the playoff loss that it was truly up to “the Man upstairs” to determine when he would ultimately win that coveted championship ring. Something, he had indicated he wanted more than anything in this world.

Why Not Numero UNO in our Metroplex?

  Given the positive changes in the higher education establishment Columbus these days, and the newly emerged focus on regional development, the time may be right to consider the creation of a truly great regional state university in our part of Ohio: our Northeast Ohio “Metroplex”. 

  We could call it the University of Northeastern Ohio -UNO. Potentially a first rate public university on a par with the best in undergraduate, graduate and research-related education.

And although UNO would not single handedly solve all our Metro area’s problems, it could be another piece in the complex struggle to create, or perhaps recreate, our region (the Cleveland, Akron-Canton, Youngstown triangle) into something with a heart and a soul.