A little ray of sunshine from Bob Dylan before he stops off at our Memorial Stadium in a couple of weeks:
Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."
A friend and I have done all three of the public library's "One City, One Book" programs ("Farenheit 451," "The Diary of Anne Frank" and "Frankenstein") and even bought study guides for the books. We kept waiting for this year's, and she finally decided to ask someone at the main branch, discovering there is no 2006 book. They had some silly excuse about being too busy with getting ready for the renovated building's reopening.
Maybe we ought to do a "One Blog, One Book" program. Anybody got a good book we can discuss?
AWB at Summit City Odds and Ends has a sad post about the death of Buddy, the family dog:
There are a couple of people I know at work, different in philosophies, politics, religious outlooks. They each home-school their children. As different as those two people are, if their children were in the same classroom, they'd have different reasons for questioning the curriculum and how it would affect their children. As it is, they each know exactly what's important to teach their children, so it's easy for them to set a course of study and measure whether goals are being met.
How many public hearings do we have to have over something that isn't even there to discuss yet?
He suggested not inviting speakers to the Aug. 29 forum, instead organizing it like a public hearing, because he has received phone calls from people just now becoming interested in the issue.
“I think there are still a number of people out there who want to say something,” Smith said.
Council has hosted one public hearing already, on top of four by Allen County Commissioners.
Why doesn't someone ask Wizards fans what they think about a new baseball stadium downtown? New-stadium backers hope a move would increase the fan base, but it certainly won't work without the current fans, so their opinions matter more than most people's. It would seem to be a simple matter to hand out cards at a game or two with these options: Would you like the stadium to remain where it is, or would you prefer it downtown?
I hesitate to write about the heat wave, lest I fall into one of those weather cliches, but this is a nice story. A friend's father, an 80-year-old World War II veteran, took their dog Maisy out for a walk yesterday in his neighborhood. At one point, Maisy decided she needed a rest and sat down. She wouldn't get up, so her walker decided to sit down with her.
No matter how long I keep looking at the baseball numbers for a downtown stadium, they don't make sense. Attendance is now about 3,500 a game. Let's say moving downtown could increase it to 4,500. If you say, well, that would be 300,000 people downtown over a five-month period, that would be one thing. But it won't be. It will be maybe 3,000 of the same people coming over and over again and a few thousand more who come occasionally.
On our editorial page, we've been extremely supportive of downtown development, and we've advocated some things most of our readers probably haven't favored, such as the library renovation. But we've had two editorials in a row expressing skepticism about a downtown baseball stadium. The latest one wonders why, given all the "catalyst projects" that could have been chosen, a baseball stadium is the one everybody is zeroing in on.
It's nice that our courts are going 21st century hi-tech:
Now, a $250,000 project to outfit each of the four “Grand Courtrooms” on the courthouse's third floor with plasma video screens, digital sound, digital recording, telestrators and other gadgets designed to make trials and proceedings run faster and smoother is on the cusp of being complete.
