Category: places

April Fool's Day 2008, So Far

MineWell, you know my criteria for good April Fool's Day jokes. Here's what I've kept track of so far for the day:

What else ya got?

Bill Clinton Visits Richmond, Indiana

Shaking Hands with Bill Clinton - 2008I spend a lot of time on this blog and elsewhere encouraging people to avoid ceding too much power over their lives to the individuals who would claim it for the wrong reasons (or in many cases, claim it at all), or to institutions and organizations that may not truly have our best interests in mind. But despite my own wariness of those things and of participating in a superstar celebrity culture, it's still pretty hard to ignore the excitement and intrigue that follows around a former President of the United States. This is amplified when he appears in a place quite unexpected, like Richmond Indiana.
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Links for the Week - February 17, 2008

The "I'm too busy with the dog show to blog for real so I'll grow them a linkfarm" edition:

Review: Galo's Italian Grill

Galo's Italian Grill in Richmond IndianaI don't usually go to restaurants the first day they're open. The last time I tried to do that it was based on bad information and the place was still preparing to open. The time before that we walked in and seated ourselves, only to realize that the *next* day was the official public open, and that we had just joined in a private friends and family only dining experience. Oops.

But, third time's a charm. Tonight's dining experience at Galo's Italian Grill here in Richmond was worth the potential for injury or embarrassment, and neither occurred. In fact, from start to finish, it was a pleasure all around.
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What constitutes good local news coverage?

Jason Truitt, Online Editor of the Palladium-Item newspaper here in Richmond, recently asked what readers are looking for when they ask for more "local news." My response:

For me, a good local news story is one that reflects the things that are happening and the experiences people are having in and around our city and county. For it truly to reflect a local point of view, the story should include the perspectives, thoughts and emotions of local people, and preferably be written by someone who has a local context for (even, dare I say, a personal investment in) why those things might matter.
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Links for the Week - January 12, 2008

Links of recent interest:

Presenting to the EDC Board on Peak Oil

Open Flame in the WorkplaceEarlier tonight I had the honor of being a guest speaker at the monthly meeting for the Economic Development Corporation of Wayne County's board of directors, presenting a version of my talk on how we can build a more self-reliant Richmond, Indiana in the face of peaking availability of natural energy resources, global climate change, and the decline of the U.S. dollar. As I said about the November 2007 presentation, it was somewhat especially nerve-wracking because the topics covered are so important to me and, in my view, so important to the future of this community. Today it was also always a growing experience to step beyond the safety of the traditional, "business world/tech guy" kinds of interactions I have with some of these folks, exposing another side of my interests and passions along the way.
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Earlham College Senior Disorientation

Today marked the last day of the 2008 Earlham College Senior Disorientation event, which helps soon-to-graduate college seniors to transition to the "real world" more smoothly. I've been participating in the event as a speaker/workshop facilitator since it began, and it's always an interesting experience to interact with "the Earlham kids" with an ever-increasing temporal distance between my era at the school and theirs. On one hand, I envy them for the newness and possibility that life holds at this particular time, but on the other, I find myself cringing at how seemingly unaware they are of just how many choices they get to make, and how important those choices are. And then I find myself thinking those thoughts and suddenly feel quite old. And then I tell the Earlham administrators who put on the program that it makes me feel old, and then I realize that I've just essentially called them ancient, and I feel them glaring at me a bit. And then I digress in a blog entry about it.

But what I really meant to say was that I appreciate very much that Earlham puts this event on - I imagine that I would have found it incredibly useful and impressive during my last semester there, and part of the reason I participate year after year is to try to make up for that sense of lost time that I experienced learning some of these things (from how to eat properly at a nice restaurant to how to be a young leader in your post-grad destination community) on my own. And of course, I also carry out my super-secret secondary agenda of showing at least some of the students that there are scenarios in which one can graduate from Earlham, stay in Richmond, make a living here, and really love it.

Local coffee shop Charlie's closes its doors

As they are seemingly wont to do, another locally owned coffee shop, Charlie's Coffee Bar and Gallery, has closed its doors. Sigh.

This is not an isolated incident. This is not a bump in the road on the way to a better Richmond. These things must not go unconsidered in the context of larger trends. This is about more than coffee shops, and an adequate response requires more than our sympathy and wistfulness.