Seeing The Way Clear

For the last year of so, every day on my walk to work and on the way home I’ve faced this same scene at the corner of Rich and Third Streets in downtown Columbus.  They’re putting up a new building called 80 on the Commons.  I’ve watched the construction of the building with interest, but walking past the site has been a royal pain.

They’ve closed the sidewalk and one lane of Third Street so construction workers and equipment have room to work.  As a result, we pedestrians have been shunted off to a narrow temporary walking lane with a chain-link fence to one side and a row of orange barriers to the other.  And just on the other side of the orange barriers, so close that walkers could easily reach out and touch them, are cars, trucks, and buses speeding down Third Street.  Third Street just happens to be one of the main ways out of downtown, and it’s always jammed with fast-moving traffic.

It’s unnerving to be so close to the traffic, and it became even more so when I was started walking down the channel one day this winter and discovered that some driver had smashed into the row of orange barriers, crushing a few of them and knocking the rest out of line — which made me have to climb over the helter-skelter barriers to get to work.  I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn’t walking down the lane when that incident occurred.  Interestingly, they didn’t appear to replace the crushed barriers, they just made the barrier row shorter — which means that when you emerge at the north end of the row the orange barrier row ends before the fencing does.

The temporary walking path has gotten pretty disgusting, too.  Trash gets blown into the channel or is dropped by thoughtless jerks and gets trapped there, so you’re always picking your way around the newest food wrapper or soft drink can to be added to the debris field.  You’d think that somebody on the construction crew or from the City of Columbus would be responsible for picking up and disposing of the trash, but the interests of downtown walkers apparently aren’t a high priority.

The signs on the chain link fence have been telling me that 80 on the Commons is coming in the summer of 2018.  Well, it’s the summer of 2018 already — and I’m still waiting.  It looks like they are finally getting ready to end construction and reopen the sidewalk.  I’ll be grateful to finally see the way clear to the office again.

Tearing Down And Building Up

They’re in the process of demolishing the old Columbus Africentric School building along Livingston Avenue, adjacent to German Village.  As of yesterday, the site was home to mound of rubble, lots of heavy equipment, and one sad, lone section of the old school building yet to be torn down.

The Africentric School had been unused for a while, and it had become both an unkept eyesore and a weedy squatting ground for homeless people.  But then the property was bought by Nationwide Children’s Hospital from the Columbus City Schools at the end of 2017, and NCH has announced that after demolition is complete and the debris is removed, the property will be paved and turned into a parking lot.  Given the amount of construction currently underway for Nationwide Children’s Hospital — with multiple buildings and garages being built along Livingston Avenue in the area between the Columbus Africentric property and the original hospital complex — many people suspect that the former Africentric grounds won’t remain a parking lot for long.

With the old school building gone, walkers along Livingston Avenue will have a better view of the eastern part of downtown Columbus — for a while, at least. I’m generally not a fan of surface parking lots, but abandoned buildings are never welcome in a neighborhood.  I’ll take a well maintained parking lot over a crumbling magnet for vagrants, vandals and graffiti practitioners any day.

NASA Turns 60

Today NASA celebrates its 60th birthday.  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was created when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 on July 29, 1958.

NASA replaced the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, and President Eisenhower viewed the creation of the agency as an historic step, “further equipping the United States for leadership in the space age” and allowing it to make “an effective national effort in the fields of aeronautics and space exploration.”  You can read the full text of President Eisenhower’s signing statement here.

It is not unusual for federal legislation to be hailed as historic when it is signed, but in the case of the National Aeronautics and Space Act that prediction was entirely accurate.  I think it is safe to say that NASA has met, and greatly exceeded, the goal of allowing the United States to make “an effective national effort in the field of aeronautics and space exploration.”  The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, the space shuttle and international space station, and the many unmanned probes and devices that have allowed us to better understand our solar system all bear the indelible imprint of NASA.  NASA has taken human beings to the Moon and brought them safely back home and has given us up-close looks at Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and their moons.  NASA’s efforts have also helped to push advancements in science, technology, and other areas that have now become part of our lives and culture.  By any measure, this still-sprightly 60-year-old has been a spectacular success.

Some people reflexively complain about the creation of any federal agency, but NASA is an example of how mobilizing an effort at the national level and entrusting it to knowledgeable people can accomplish great things.  With private space exploration and travel looming on the immediate horizon, and Congress currently considering how to regulate those private efforts going forward, it will be interesting to see what the next 60 years bring for NASA — the little agency that could.

Blue Bar

The Blue Bar at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan is probably the bluest bar in the world. With blue lights overhead, a blue backdrop, and tiny blue lights embedded in the bar itself, it has maxed out the blue decorating options. The results are truly over the top, and the only thing missing is blues for background music.

As I sat at the bar drinking a glass of wine on Friday night, though, I wondered — would this be a place you’d want to frequent if you had the blues?

Times Square, 6:45 a.m.

Times Square at 6:45 a.m. is a bit different than it is at 10 p.m. on Friday night.

Hamlet At The ‘Gonq

We ended up at the Algonquin Hotel last night. It’s known as the location of the Algonquin Roundtable, where Dorothy Parker and the American literati of the ’20s held forth. It’s also known as the home of Hamlet, the house cat. There’s been a house cat at the ‘Gonq for at least 90 years -and I think they’ve all been called Hamlet.

This morning, Hamlet was guarding the front desk when we left. I’m not a “cat person,” but I think a house cat is pretty cool.

Stranded In NYC

My flight out of LaGuardia got cancelled, no other flights home are available tonight, and we’re trying to find a hotel that can put us up for the night.

Oh, yeah — it’s raining, and apparently every other flight out is being cancelled too.

When that happens, the lobby of the Roosevelt hotel is as good a place as any to make some calls in order to find a room. They don’t have any rooms, but at least it’s dry.

LaGuardia is not my favorite airport.

The ’70s Bad Hair Blip

Last week I went to get my hair cut.  It’s been a hot summer in Columbus, and in my view hair of any appreciable length just adds to the heat, so I asked the Platinum Stylist to cut my hair extra short this time.  She did her usual terrific job, and when I walked out of the salon, I rubbed my hand over my scalp and realized my hair was probably as short as it has been since I was growing up in the ’60s.

For the first ten years or so of my life, I was a kid with a crew cut.  Dad used “home barbershop” clippers to give UJ and me buzz cuts in the basement of our house.  We went to school and played with our friends — all of whom also had buzz cuts — without thinking about our hair.  But as the ’60s moved forward, we became dimly aware that you were supposed to pay attention to your hair if you wanted to be cool, and those haircuts started to get a little bit longer.

The ’70s, though, were when the hair length really took off.  From a style standpoint, virtually everything about the ’70s, from haircuts to clothing styles to car designs, was an over-the-top disaster.  By the time I reached high school, I was one of the kids in the yearbook with the generic ’70s long hair look — grown down to the collar and then chopped off in the back, and grown down to eye level and parted to some fashion or another in front, requiring you to constantly fling the hair out of your eyes and out of your way.  Sure, your head looked like you were wearing a hairy bicycle helmet, and it was hot as blazes in summer, but that was the price you paid for fitting in.  And in college my hair got even longer.

But when the ’80s rolled around, and I started working as a professional, the hair trend reversed.  Over the last 30 or so years, my haircuts have gotten progressively shorter and more frequent, and I like it that way.  When I think of my haircuts as a kind of chart, it’s an extreme bell graph, with the ’70s being the height of the bad hair blip.  And when you look at a bell graph, it kind of looks like one of those bad ’70s haircuts, doesn’t it?

I’m glad I’m now on the other side of the bad hair blip.

When You Need To Shave With An Axe . . .

I get all kinds of weird email offers and see strange products on pop-up ads, but I think I’ve just seen something that tops them all.  It’s the “Viking Celtic Nordic style straight razor warrior axe.”

As the name suggests, the product is a straight razor in the form of a miniature axe, one that some designer apparently thinks looks like the kind of lethal but cool axe that the “Viking Celtic Nordic” guys might have used in days gone by.  And it’s not only got the faux ancient axe design — it also comes in a box shaped like a block of wood, with a little carve-out area for the axe.  You know, like the kind of wooden box the “Viking Celtic Nordic” guys used to carry their shaving supplies when they went on one of their raids.

It’s as if the simple act of shaving isn’t “manly” enough, so now we’ve got to up the ante by using a fake axe instead of a plain straight razor — or a safety razor with multiple blades, which is what I use.  Presumably after lopping off their facial hairs, the axe shavers are all charged up to go out and loot and pillage and ransack, just like the “Viking Celtic Nordic” studs used to do back when men were axe-shaving men.

It all seems kind of silly and desperate, doesn’t it?  Are there really guys out there who feel the need to buy this kind of stuff?  You can get it on Amazon for only $125.

The No-Desk Zone

I’m on the road again, this time in NYC for work. My room at the Hyatt at Grand Central Station is fine, except for one small detail — there’s no desk.

Seriously? No desk? Where are you supposed to set up your laptop, roll through your emails, and get some work done before the meetings begin? I’d gladly exchange the modern sofa and the large hardwood floor area that seems suited only for ballroom dancing for a simple desk, chair, and electrical outlets. But I’ll be using the sofa as a makeshift desk instead.

I’m perfectly willing to put up with the weirdness of modern hotel room decor, but when they sacrifice function for form I’ve got to draw the line. Hotels rooms should always — always! — have a desk.

Red-Light Runners

I’m convinced the quality of driving, and drivers, in America is going steadily downhill, and our roads are becoming more dangerous.  The best evidence of that reality is found at any intersection in any American city with a traffic light.

If you take a moment to watch the traffic light at an intersection go through its signal progression and observe the actions of drivers in response — as I do every day on my walks to and from the office — you’ll immediately notice three things.  First, almost nobody stops when the light turns yellow.  Instead, the amber caution light now is viewed as an invitation to speed up, so that three or four or five more speeding cars can go careening through the intersection.  Second, at least one car, and sometimes two, will rip through the intersection on the red light, apparently banking on the hope that the cars on the crossing street, and any pedestrians trying to cross the street, won’t have moved into the intersection by then.  And third, cars turning right at the intersection don’t actually stop at the red light.  Instead, they’ll roll right into the crosswalk and move immediately into their turns, not stopping unless there’s a car approaching from the left.  It’s not the traffic signal, but instead the oncoming traffic, that affects their behavior.

This is a significant change from when I started driving, and you were trained to stop when the yellow light appeared.  If you took somebody fresh from a ’70s-era drivers’ education course and put them on a modern city street, they’d probably get rear-ended and cause a multi-car pileup because the drivers behind would be expecting them to speed up on yellow, just like everybody else seems to do.  And, of course, running a red light was a sure way to get a ticket in those days.   But now no police officers seem to be writing tickets for red-light runners, and efforts by cities to enforce the red-light rules through intersection camera set-ups has been mired in corruption claims and technological issues.  So people feel free to run the red lights, and probably will continue to do so until they get into an accident, hit a pedestrian or a cyclist, or get a ticket.

I wish city police departments would devote more resources to in-city enforcement of traffic laws so that as many officers are looking for urban red-light runners as are looking for speeders on the nation’s highways.  And who knows?  Maybe when the technological glitches get ironed out, self-driving cars will actually make the streets safer.  But right now, it’s dangerous out there, and it seems to be getting worse.

Nothing New Under The Sun

The latest personal transportation initiative to hit Columbus is scooters.

Electric scooters, to be sure — but still . . . scooters.

A company called Bird has identified Columbus as a location for its rent-a-scooter program, and now you see the Bird scooters all over the place, like this duo that I found at the corner of Gay and Third on Sunday.  The Bird scooter program sounds a lot like the Cars2Go program that was launched in Columbus several years ago — and which was discontinued earlier this year.  Bird users tap an app that allows them to unlock a scooter for $1, and then they pay 15 cents a minute as they ride.  The scooters can travel up to 15 mph, can only be used during daylight hours, and are supposed to be ridden on the street or in bike lanes and not on the sidewalks.  (Speaking for pedestrians everywhere, I’m grateful for that last caveat.)  Based on an article in the Columbus Dispatch, it appears that Columbus and surrounding communities are trying to figure how how the Bird scooters fit into the current rules regulating transportation options and whether permits and other requirements should apply.

The scooters are supposed to target people needing “last mile” transportation, and I’ve seen a few people riding them around.  I wouldn’t use one, but if the Bird option gets more people out of their cars and using the bike lanes, that seems like a positive thing to me.

Mostly, though, I’m amazed that scooters — which date back to at least the ’30s in America — have reemerged as a transportation option.  What’s next?  Rentable pogo sticks?

 

Handy Heidi And Her Magic Brush

It’s always nice to host family house guests, to share some laughs about days gone by and catch up one what they and their family members are doing.  But when you can get some good, solid home improvement work out of them that greatly improves the appearance of your place, it’s even better.

Kish’s sister Heidi is a fearless do-it-yourselfer who’s willing to tackle just about any task.  When she heard that the stairway in our Maine house needed to be painted, she insisted that she and Kish would do it.  So we bought scraping tools and a sander, and when Heidi came to visit she brought her own, personal paintbrush.  And, being a long-time California resident and therefore intrinsically cool by definition, Heidi of course also brought her shades, the better to cut down on the glare of the white paint on the steps.

Now Heidi and Kish have finished the job, and it’s hard to exaggerate what a huge improvement these freshly painted steps are.  The “before” photo with this post really doesn’t fully capture the dramatic upgrade.  When we bought the place, the stairs were covered by thick, ugly brown carpeting that looked like the fur of a teddy bear and was secured to the stairs by about a thousand staples.  When the teddy bear carpeting was removed, we found that the natural stairs were covered by multiple overcoats of paint.  That’s when Heidi was alerted and the sisters’ project was planned.  Kish started their project by scraping off years of paint — the photo above being taken mid-scrape — and then she and Heidi sanded it down, and finally Heidi and her magic brush applied primer and then several coats of paint to the stairs and bannister.  Now the staircase has gone from an ugly eyesore to a part of the house that helps to create the “cottagey” feel that Kish has been aiming for.  You can see the final result below.

Thanks, Handy Heidi, for your excellent work on the staircase.  You and your paintbrush are always welcome.  And don’t forget your shades!

Leave The Colors Of Air Force One Be

News outlets are reporting that President Trump is planning on redesigning Air Force One, the plane that ferries the President of the United States around the globe.  Boeing is starting work on the new plane, which will replace the plane that has been in service for the last 30 years.

The President thinks its time to junk the understated blue and white motif of the plane, which has been the color scheme since the Kennedy administration.  He thinks a red, white, and blue design would be better.  He also wants to install a bigger bed on the plane — the current bed apparently isn’t as large as the one on President Trump’s personal plane — and he also reportedly has issues with the softness of the current plane’s hand towels.  As the case with so many things the President is involved in, he’s very enthusiastic about the new design, and says the plane is going to be “incredible,” “top of the line,” and “top in the world.”

I’m all for modernizing Air Force One.  No doubt there have been significant advances in airplane design and outfitting in the past 30 years — aside from the constant reduction in passenger leg room and comfort that we’ve experienced in commercial passenger jets, of course — and the President’s plane should have all of the cutting edge technology, as befits the United States’ leadership position in the world.  And clearly the President has the prerogative to fiddle with the plane.  After all, the Kennedys chose the current color scheme and jettisoned the red and gold that had decorated the plane in the Eisenhower administration.  By all means, get softer towels and a bigger bed in there.

But I like the current color scheme.  It’s not only familiar but also understated and classy, and I think it projects a powerful image to the world.  It’s not shouting about who we are; instead it speaks softly (and carries a big stick).  I’m a fan of the American flag and our national colors, but that doesn’t mean we need to douse everything in red, white, and blue.  And I’m concerned that we’re going to end up with some gauche, over-the-top design with maybe a screaming eagle and some gold foil thrown in, too.

The color of Air Force One is something that America got right.  I say leave it be.

What The WGU?

These owl ads are popping up all over Columbus. They’re on the sides of buildings, on the signs at the bikes to go stations, and on just about every other ad location you can think of.

I like the stern, alert owl picture, but there’s one big problem from my standpoint — the ad doesn’t say the name of the “university” that is being advertised. It’s pretty obvious that the whole point of the ad campaign is to pique your curiosity and get you to do a search for WGU, so you can find out what it is. Those campaigns are consciously designed to manipulate ordinary people — and I hate that.

So I hereby declare that I’m not going to be manipulated. I guess I’ll just have to go through life without learning what WGU is. Let the owl stare all he wants — I’m not biting.