Print This Post Print This Post

Oct

2

Phoenix Coffee promotes Fair Trade and Cafe Feminino Foundation

Filed Under Announcements, Business, Cleveland+, Culture, Women | 4 Comments

ARGH! I missed this by a day and then some (in terms of posting about it – I’m sorry, Sarah! Rats!)

Anyway – if anyone went to this event, please comment.  And if you didn’t but would want to, comment about that too.  Maybe we can get with Sarah to do another…???

Dear Friends of Phoenix,

Did you know that due to the high altitude and lack of available oxygen, La Paz, Bolivia doesn’t have a fire department?

Or that some coffee farmers dry the coffee cherries on the roof of their house?

Just wanted to let you know that we are hosting a Fair Trade Coffee Tasting at our Roastery next Monday in celebration of Fair Trade Month.  We are featuring five coffees that are either Fair Trade certified or Fairly Traded under another certification.  There will also be clothing available for purchase from Revive, the fair trade clothing store in Cleveland Heights.

Drink coffee!  Learn about the world economy the fun way!  Impress your friends with how smart you sound with your new coffee factoids!

Time: 7-9 pm
Date: Monday October 1st
Place: Phoenix Coffee Roastery 1728 St. Clair Avenue
RSVP: reservations@phoenixcoffee.com or 216-522-9744
Donations accepted for the Cafe Feminino Foundation

Why am I grousing about having let this announcement lapse?

Because I was so touched that Sarah Wilson-Jones of Phoenix Coffee specifically emailed me and wrote,

Just wanted to give you the heads up that one of the coffees we’ll be serving at our tasting next monday will be a cafe feminino coffee!!!  I think I first heard about them from you, so I just thought I’d let you know.  Thanks for the heads up, the coffees are great and the women and stories behind it are even better!

I wrote about Fair Trade Coffee and the Cafe Feminino coffee a little less than two years ago. And Sarah remembered.  And I forgot – to post this (I knew I wasn’t going to be able to attend).

But, if it’s any consolation, I bought some Phoenix coffee a little over a month ago when George was helping me with this website and now? Nothing even comes close.  So – I’ll be heading over there this week to pick up some more.  Maybe there will be some Fair Trade to pick up.

If you want to learn more about Cleveland’s own Phoenix, read here, and Sarah’s blog is here.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:43 pm October 2nd, 2007 in Announcements, Business, Cleveland+, Culture, Women | 4 Comments 

Print This Post Print This Post

Oct

2

Diane Rehm at Trinity Cathedral, October 30, 7:30

Filed Under Announcements, Media | 6 Comments

And it’s free.  Anyone want to join me?

An Evening with Diane Rehm
The Dean’s Lecture
Tuesday, October 30, 7:30 pm
Free and open to all
Diane Rehm is an internationally recognized radio host, journalist and author. She is also an Episcopalian and, earlier this year, was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary.

For more than 25 years, her program, The Diane Rehm Show, has provided thoughtful conversations on the topics of the day with world leaders, authors, public figures, and ordinary people who call in each hour to take part in what the show terms “a civil exchange of ideas.”

Now heard nationally and internationally by more than 1.6 million listeners on NPR and NPR Worldwide stations, The Diane Rehm Show’s recent guests have included former president Bill Clinton, General Tommy Franks, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Toni Morrison and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. In Cleveland, The Diane Rehm Show is broadcast each weekday on WCPN.

During her visit to Cleveland, Diane Rehm will also give the President’s Lecture at Cleveland State University and appear on 90.3 WCPN.

Sponsored by Trinity Cathedral and Cleveland State University with support from 90.3 WCPN

More here.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:29 pm October 2nd, 2007 in Announcements, Media | 6 Comments 

Print This Post Print This Post

Oct

2

Remains of the Day, 10-02-07

Filed Under Remains of the Day | Comments Off

1.  Carol Ann Gotbaum.

2.  Knowing that this is the resource used by many conservatives and Republicans explains a lot. If you’d like to hear one of the authors speak on, “Do you want a ‘Living Constitution,’ or, do you want a Constitution?” check out the Buckeye Institute‘s Founders Lecture and Breakfast. I can’t find the info online so here it is from my invitation (looking askance at my left of center friends, with a Church Lady look):

Please join us for the
2007 Buckeye Institute
Founders Lecture and Breakfast

Wednesday, October 24
7:30 – 9:00 AM
Capital Club
41 South High Street, Columbus
_____________

featuring the presentation of the
Heritage Guide to the Constitution to
members of the 127th Ohio General Assembly
and remarks on:
“Do you want a ‘Living Constitution,’
or, do you want a Constitution?”
by Dr. David F. Forte
Senior Editor, Heritage Guide to the Constitution
Dr. Forte, a member of the Buckeye Institute’s Board of Academic Advisors, holds the Charles R. Emrick Jr. – Calfee, Halter & Griswold Endowed Chair at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University.

Dr. Forte holds degrees from Harvard College, the University of Toronto and Columbia University. Professor Forte has served as chief counsel to the United States delegation to the United Nations and alternate delegate to the Security Council.

A recognized authority on constitutional law, religious liberty, Islamic law, the rights of families and international affairs, Dr. Forte also serves at an Adjunct Scholar at the Ashbrook Center.
_______________
This event is complimentary and open to the public, but space is limited.
Please contact Jenna McNulty at 614.224.4422 or jmcnulty@buckeyeinstitute.org to reserve your place.

3. Does decreasing inspection of meat sound counterintuitive to anyone in this day and age?

4. Jerid’s work connecting the dots between Bill Todd and the Buckeye Institute comes to fruition. Wow.

5. Well, if nothing else, Ohio House Speaker Jon Husted is being consistent: if the anti-stripper law is going to put up to 10,000 people out of work, he absolutely should not act to save the jobs of those who’ll be put out of jobs if Ohio chooses to ban cash pay-out wagering.

6.  Thank you to Cool Cleveland for a mention of Wide Open via Pho.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:22 pm October 2nd, 2007 in Remains of the Day | Comments Off 

Print This Post Print This Post

Oct

2

George Nemeth on WCPN regional roundtable

Filed Under Announcements, WCPN/SOI | Comments Off

He’s got the goods on this week’s Thursday Sound of Ideas here, but I’ll repeat:

The topics:

RTA’s designation as the top transit system in N. America

State government bans direct purchase of wine from many out of state wineries

State officials groaning under crush of public records requests

Cuyahoga’s new sales tax takes effect

Treasurer Jim Rokakis writes poignant op-ed on predatory lending in Wash. Post

Developers with dueling plans to build lifestyle center in Solon

Oops. City of Cleveland tears down wrong house.

Listen live here or listen to it later from here. George also requests that you consider leaving comments at Brewed Fresh, calling in during the show (216.578.0903) or emailing in during the show (news@wcpn.org).

The other panelists appear to be Pete Kotz (editor of the Cleveland Scene) and Bill Hershey, who is with the Dayton Daily News Mark Naymik and Mike McIntyre of the Plain Dealer.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:28 pm October 2nd, 2007 in Announcements, WCPN/SOI | Comments Off 

Print This Post Print This Post

Oct

2

How gay is OSU? Ask them to take Campus Climate Index survey

Filed Under Civil Rights, Education, Ohio | Comments Off

From the incomparable C-Notes:

Shane Windmeyer runs Campus Pride , a national gay-rights organization that aims to make college kosher for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. He’s also written five books, including The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students , published last year. It ranks the nation’s top 100 LGBT-friendly schools based on interviews of more than 5,000 students and 500 faculty and staff. Windmeyer gathered opinions on student perspectives, campus events, housing and support resources, then factored them all into a “Gay-Point Average” for each school. We did okay, too: Ohio State and Oberlin College cracked the top twenty.

But now, there’s the Campus Climate Index and OSU hasn’t taken that yet:

This summer, Campus Pride launched the “Campus Climate Index”, a survey school officials can use to compare themselves. The setup’s a bit different – rather than reading polls of students or faculty, officials themselves have to answer questions about their “institutional commitment,” safety, and health. But they also get a separate “Gay-Point Average,” which prospective LBGT students can dissect in detail as they decide where to apply.

Though we’ve got two of the country’s most gay-friendly universities, neither Ohio State nor Oberlin have checked in. Neither have most of the others – to date, only six of the 108 other colleges and universities in Ohio have finished the survey. Ohio University posted the highest score – 4.5 on a five-point scale. Baldwin-Wallace and Case Western each topped 3.0, with the University of Cincinnati just behind at 2.5. Youngstown State and, oddly, the Columbus College of Art and Design (1.5 each) — well, they’ve got some work to do.

With Georgetown being a 70% Catholic university, I wouldn’t expect my alma mater to do so well, but then, you just never know.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 5:31 pm October 2nd, 2007 in Civil Rights, Education, Ohio | Comments Off 

Print This Post Print This Post

Oct

2

WSJ: Americans prefer Dems to GOP in handling key economic issues

Filed Under Business, Congress, Elections, Government, Politics, WH2008 | 1 Comment

You read that right. From the Wall Street Journal, “GOP is Losing Grip On Core Business Vote: Deficit Hawks Defect As Social Issues Prevail; ‘The Party Left Me’”:

WSJ: Americans prefer Dems over GOP in handling economic issues

The most prominent sign of dissatisfaction has come from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, long a pillar of Republican Party economic thinking. He blasted the party’s fiscal record in a new book. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said: “The Republican Party, which ruled the House, the Senate and the presidency, I no longer recognize.”

Some well-known business leaders have openly changed allegiances. Morgan Stanley Chairman and Chief Executive John Mack, formerly a big Bush backer, now supports Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. John Canning Jr., chairman and chief executive of Madison Dearborn Partners, a large private-equity firm, now donates to Democrats after a lifetime as a Republican. Recently, he told one Democratic Party leader: “The Republican Party left me” — a twist on a line Ronald Reagan and his followers used when they abandoned the Democratic Party decades ago to protest its ’60s and ’70s-era liberalism.

However, here’s the crux of why they wrote the article:

…polling data confirm business support for Republicans is eroding. In the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in September, 37% of professionals and managers identify themselves as Republican or leaning Republican, down from 44% three years ago.

Ah, yes, numbers are our friends. Or your friends. Or whomever can manipulate them’s friends. I looked but couldn’t find a trace of the poll. Maybe it’s in the print version of the WSJ?

The article is very, very long. I hope Tom reads it and opine about it. It’s not really my bailiwick as they say. But it is fascinating.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 4:31 pm October 2nd, 2007 in Business, Congress, Elections, Government, Politics, WH2008 | 1 Comment 

Print This Post Print This Post

Oct

2

Cleveland schools’ website rates “continuous improvement”

Filed Under Blogging, Cleveland+, Education, Writing | Comments Off

Great post by Bill Callahan about adequate yearly progress and the Cleveland Municipal School District’s website. If you want to understand how to analyze such things, there’s no better method than studying Bill’s work.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 3:43 pm October 2nd, 2007 in Blogging, Cleveland+, Education, Writing | Comments Off 

Print This Post Print This Post

Oct

2

How an Ohio bill really becomes a law

Filed Under Blogging, Ohio, Resources, Statehouse, Tech, Tools | 1 Comment

Well, we don’t quite know every single time. But there are a lot of ways to collect info on what’s happening to anyone initiative.

Contacting your state legislators is always a good start (state senators here, representatives here). If you don’t know who your senator or rep is, you can find out here for reps and here for senators.

And following it in the blogs, through blog comments and via feeds from newspapers (and the blogs) is also a good way. Google Alerts will tell you anytime a particular phrase – such as a bill number – comes up. And Technorati has “watchlists” that let you follow blogs. There’s always search tools for blogs only (like Google’s blog search). And then there are aggregators like Lefty Blogs for Ohio and Blog Net News for Ohio. I don’t know if SOB Alliance is really considered an aggregator for the righty blogs but it’s a good resource for them anyway. There are gobs more of tools – these are just some of the ones I use.

Now, there are also some sites like BillHop.com which also can help you follow a bill but they are only as good as the input and the one in Ohio I don’t think has really taken off.

I keep track of a lot of the info via Bloglines, which is what’s called an aggregator or feed reader (I think that’s what it’s called – that’s what I call it anyway). What you do is, you sign up for Bloglines and then, when you’re on a site you want to follow, look for the little orange square with some curved white lines on it on the righthand side of the URL address line at the top of your screen. If you click on it, it will ask you if you want to subscribe and the process should be more or less automatic once you’ve signed up with Bloglines. A lot of people use Google Reader too but I haven’t gotten very comfortable with that one. And there are many more out there. I’ve also probably skipped a bunch of interim steps, but the instructions are almost always easy to follow – even if, like me, you don’t quite understand what you’re doing as you do it. Kind of sounds like life.

Anyway, I fear that I’m outgrowing the wonkabee moniker I’ve applied to myself for the last couple of years by confessing that I use these different methods for following what’s going on in the Ohio statehouse. Except that I know that there are other folks who will always out-wonk me.

If you want to see an example of how this following stuff works, read more here.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:35 pm October 2nd, 2007 in Blogging, Ohio, Resources, Statehouse, Tech, Tools | 1 Comment 

Print This Post Print This Post

Oct

2

Watch Blackwater hearing live

Filed Under Announcements, Media, Military | 4 Comments

Thanks to the Washington Post, you can watch it here.  If you can stand to watch or listen.

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:05 am October 2nd, 2007 in Announcements, Media, Military | 4 Comments 

Print This Post Print This Post

Oct

2

Kucinich, free speech restrictions & banning tanning

Filed Under Blogging, Ohio, Parenting, Politics, Statehouse, WH2008 | 2 Comments

Read about those and more at my Wide Open posts:

CQ says Kucinich has a serious challenge

Pepper Pike continues one political yard sign per yard restriction when no one else does

Feds clampdown on tanning warnings – dermatology lobby focuses on minors’ ban next?

Bookmark and Share

By Jill Miller Zimon at 7:41 am October 2nd, 2007 in Blogging, Ohio, Parenting, Politics, Statehouse, WH2008 | 2 Comments 

"));