This Blog. It’s a passion, a labor of love for me – one that I wish I had more time to update. So, my apologies, gentle readers, for my lack of keeping up-to-date. Maybe I’ll do better. I’ll try.
Someone suggested I should just pour my leftovers, i.e. those items in my notebook which don’t turn into stories, on here. I have to admit, that’s an interesting idea. There are some things in there that never see the light of day and are somewhat noteworthy. I’ll work on that and we’ll see what happens.
Things have been so busy lately, in fact, that I’ve not updated my weekly column on here for weeks. The column has appeared every Saturday, but I haven’t been able to get it up here.
I’ll play catch up for a moment. Let’s start with last week’s column about the Blackberries buzzing during City Council meetings. Not earth shattering news, but kind of interesting and funny if you ever watch on TV (like I do constantly) Council meetings – or attend them in person (which I almost always do).
Before that was a column brought to me by Laketa Cole’s impassioned plea for help finding her friend’s missing daughter. In the week that was Liz Carroll’s trial, nary a word was mentioned of the African-American girl. And, honestly, that bothered me quite a bit. I also got a lot of interesting – and some very hateful – e-mail about the column, which I may share at a later date.
As a side note, did anyone catch Marcus Fiesel’s biological mother tell the media that we have been pronouncing Marcus’s name wrong the entire time? Apparently Marcus’s last name is pronounced “Fee-zel” not “Fi-zel.” Then, did anybody catch WKRC-TVs tag to that story where the anchor just continued to call our dead ratings-booster Marcus Fee-zel?
Side note continuing here for just another sec, but I have to say, the triple-whammo of two substantial weather-related events and the Liz Carroll trial was a ready-made ratings, sweeps-month bonanza for the TV stations. That snow fell like manna from heaven for those folks… And, I would venture a guess that Liz Carroll’s trial would not have fetched the round-the-clock three-live-reporters-at-the-courthouse coverage it got, say, had it happened, uh, this month. Just a thought…
Anyway, this week’s column: Park+Vine, a new “green” general store in Over-the-Rhine, is working on a June opening. I won’t go on too much here and just let the readers check it out.
Also, I wrote a story today about the permitting process on Fountain Square. It got ugly, but it appears it is getting better, and the managers of Fountain Square, the Cincinnati Center City Development Corp., or 3CDC, say it was just a giant misunderstanding.
Two stories I wrote last week are also kind of interesting, I think (hey, I wrote ’em, right?). One is about the Social Compact study being done in Cincinnati’s urban core. The other was about Enzo’s Over-the-Rhine – a new coffee shop – opening on Race Street after it moved from Northern Kentucky. What’s interesting about them (and now also Park+Vine) is they are using a new business recruiting tool from the Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce to help set up shop.
Just looked out the window and it’s snowing? A lot. This is big news. Not.