Posted By Carlo on June 28, 2009

I spent a few hours on Larchmere Boulevard in Cleveland yesterday, baking in the sun to sell copies of my book, “Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories.” I was part of the Loganberry Books local authors’ fair, which was part of a daylong flea market.

Didn’t sell a single copy, but I saw a lot of friends and enjoyed partaking in an event designed to push local writing, an ever more endangered species. The event also gave me an opportunity to check out Loganberry Books, a fabulous place I’m sure to revisit. Not only is the place cavernous, it offers a lot of used books (including rare first editions), the giant fiction room I show here, even a bindery.

It’s great to see a local concern thriving amidst dire economic news like the shriveling of the Telarc record label and the downsizing of Borders. I don’t know how Loganberry is doing, but its mix of ambience, inventory and locale is inspiring. It reminds me of the ‘60s in Cambridge, Mass., when I used to scour bookstores around Harvard University. Harvard Bookstore remains the best I’ve ever seen, but I also recall Pangloss and even Schoenhof’s, bookstores long gone.

Being in Loganberry got the intellectual juices going in a way chain stores don’t. I’m not sure why, but I’m happy about it.

Category: Books-general, Northern Ohio, Personal | No Comments »
Tags: Media

Posted By Carlo on June 26, 2009

When I called Michael Jackson a has-been on my Facebook page, some people were pissed. All I meant was that since the mid-’90s, the most interesting thing about Jackson, who died June 25, was his dysfunction. Weird-looking, for sure; mysterious and shape-shifting psychologically and otherwise. The child molestation charges he was cleared of, the marriages that didn’t work, the kids in the shadows, the hassles with his family are what grabbed us from the mid-‘90s on more than his music, though that lasts, and the best of it is as good as pop gets.

It seems that when you call an icon a has-been—you could argue that that was true of Elvis after his initial burst in the mid-‘50s, and of the solo careers of Beatles Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and, particularly, the lightweight, charming Ringo—you threaten people’s memories. I remember dancing to Michael Jackson; how couldn’t you? I remember being a kid intoxicated by Elvis, and as a young man dancing and romancing to the Beatles. I even recall being moved by U2, whose inspirations have seemed largely formulaic for the past 15 years. Just because a band is still commercial doesn’t make it creative.

Michael Jackson will rule the news for about a week—tomorrow’s papers are sure to feature lengthy, heady editorial about his meaning—and then return to the tabloids, his natural home these past 15-plus years. Now, when I think of him, I think of his genius, his moves, his singular spirit. Too bad that’s clouded by the soap opera he generated that defined, and then ended, his life.

Category: Music, Personal | No Comments »
Tags: Celebrity, Entertainment, Michael Jackson

Posted By Carlo on June 13, 2009

Lylah and I drove to Fredericksburg, an Ohio town so small it seems like nothing more than a string of houses between huge tracts of land, today to pick up a bentwood rocker from Marty Hershberger.

Marty’s Amish; his faith forbids him from having his picture taken, so I settled—happily—for a shot of one of his kids, Firman, in the rocker, a beauty made of cherry wood and oak and brass nails. Marty said Firman could pose because he wasn’t old enough to be a member of the church.

Marty made the rocker himself. I put a deposit on it April 2 and he called me this week to say it was ready. Marty’s a very fine wood worker who seems to do quite all right, thank you, with his Woodland Furniture, a small operation hard by the plain white house where he and his family live. His is a bucolic, private scene.
Lylah had never been to Wayne or Holmes County, a little more than an hour south of Cleveland; Wayne is where Schantz Organ is, Holmes where Marty lives. I’ve been visiting Schantz Organ on and off for the past few months, trying to help its head, Vic Schantz, publicize an upcoming series of concerts he’s sponsoring by the jazz organist Barbara Dennerlein and trying to decide whether to pursue a book idea that’s turning into an itch I have to scratch.

It would be a lot more work than “Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories,” but I’m leaning toward doing it. A university press has expressed preliminary interest.

My book would examine what keeps various family-owned Orrville businesses, like Schantz Organ and Smucker’s, going. It would also look into the prevailing Amish and Mennonite culture of the area and see how such non-Amish, non-Mennonite businesses as Schantz interact with the Amish and Mennonites.

I asked Marty whether he’d be willing to talk to me about this for my book; Vic was trying to coax him, too. Marty said he’d have to speak to his bishop about it and would get back to me. Marty doesn’t have a phone or electricity. His faith forbids it. If he lets me into his world, I’m going to pursue this. I look forward to his letter, or a phone call from a neighbor’s. I already love his work.

Category: Books-general, Northern Ohio, Personal | No Comments »
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Posted By Carlo on June 10, 2009

I’m in a fashion spread in today’s Plain Dealer. I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails about it. It’s fun to be in the spotlight.

It’s also fun to wear stuff I really like, particularly these days, when I spend a lot of time at home and there’s no need to dress up to go out. Putting on rock ‘n’ roll clothes is a special gas.

So is being part of a section that’s one of the liveliest in the paper; I thank Kim Crow, who puts together the Wednesday fashion section, for her words, Scott Shaw for his photo.

Although I no longer write for it, I still read the PD. Even though people routinely trash it, I value the good stuff it does. I value newspapers; I write for the Boston Globe, which is shrinking fast, like the PD.

The link to my spread will eventually die off. I’m glad there’s a hard copy in circulation, at least for now. I wish I had the answer as to how newspapers will evolve—if they survive.

Category: Northern Ohio, Personal | 2 Comments »
Tags: Style

Posted By Carlo on June 9, 2009

Big news: The first CD by one of my favorite duos, guitarist Bob Fraser and Ki Allen, is finally out and available at CD Baby. Its name is “Calling Card.” It’s a collection of 13 tunes including one original, “Nonetheless.” Ki wrote the melody, Bob arranged it, and Ireta, Ki’s mother, wrote the lyrics. “Nonetheless” nestles comfortably between “I Concentrate on You” and “I’m Confessing,” Great American Songbook standards Bob and Ki freshen with their intimate, swinging style.

I won’t review the album because I wrote the liner notes. But I can’t help telling you it’s a beauty, showcasing a woman I consider the best jazz singer in Cleveland and a guitarist whose gentlemanly approach renders a highly evolved, modernist harmonic sensibility unusually accessible. The album is sweet, often rueful and always highly personal. I hope it gets widespread airplay and brings Bob and Ki the acclaim—and the work—they so richly deserve.

Category: Music-general, Personal | 1 Comment »
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Posted By Carlo on May 25, 2009

I want to thank my wife, the gifted multimedia artist Karen Sandstrom, for outfitting my website with this new header, and I want to thank website facilitator Dave Miyares for fitting it and my “old” blog into this new template. I also want to thank the technocommunications expert Penny Stetz for advice in setting it up and schooling me on how to feed it. I’m getting better with putting links into the thing, though I still have trouble with photos.

I hope these pictures from a recent press trip I took to Honduras amuse and entertain you. I’ve never had a macaw perch on my shoulder, let alone held a sleepy, five-month-old Capuchin monkey. The trip itself was tiring; we were on the run for nearly six days, visiting all kinds of tourist spots including the fabulous Mayan ruins of Copan. Bummer: I lost my camera. Upside: Manos Angelakis, a classy gentleman who operates the website luxuryweb.com, helped me by providing these photos.

Category: Travel | 2 Comments »
Tags: Honduras, Travel

Posted By Carlo on May 18, 2009

Northern Ohio Live, a magazine I’ve written for on-and-off for nearly 20 years, is dead. RightUp Media, which took it over from founder John Schambach three years ago, closed May 15, pulling the plug on the bimonthly and laying off the whole staff.

For now, the website remains, offering readers a look at the kinds of articles the magazine specialized in: stories about various media, my City Therapy column, editor Sarah Sphar’s welcome to summer, a voluminous, mouth-watering gourmet guide by associate editor Ivan Sheehan. It’s good reading.

I hope a publisher, former or new, resurrects Live and is willing to be patient and gamble on monetizing a medium that seems quaint but still is necessary: the leisurely, thoughtful read. The best example of that is The New Yorker, a weekly marvel that never ceases to astonish.

But every locale of any size needs such a publication. To me, Live always represented an opportunity to trumpet and safeguard and interpret what is best about Cleveland’s culture. I hope I don’t miss it too long.

Category: Northern Ohio | 1 Comment »
Tags: Media

Posted By Carlo on May 4, 2009

I had a difference of style with a major newspaper the other day when the editors there sanitized my review of a book based on the work of Philip K. Dick, the science fiction writer. I punned on his name, and it wouldn’t fly. Funny how the gap remains between what people can joke about and what they can print.

Of course, as one wag wrote me, “You don’t know Richard” just doesn’t scan that well. But it sure reads clean.

Category: Books-general | 1 Comment »
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Posted By Carlo on April 17, 2009

I’m going to Ohio City on Sunday for my second afternoon of canvassing for gay rights. Working with AskCleveland, a liberal, flexible issues advocacy group, I’ll walk a neighborhood in support of the domestic partnership registry, which Cleveland City Council created in a 13-7 vote in December. When it takes effect next month, it will help extend benefits such as hospital visitation and employee benefits, treating gay and unmarried couples normally.

It doesn’t take effect until May, but a group of African-American ministers is already mobilizing against the registry in the name of heterosexual, more conventional marriage. The Cleveland Coalition of Churches, the minister’s coalition, is saying the registry flouts state law; four years ago, the state of Ohio resoundingly and revoltingly passed a resolution banning gay marriage.

Weird that a prominent group of African-Americans would battle civil rights, particularly after the election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president.

I don’t pretend to know what it feels like to be African-American or gay—I’m heterosexual, though eons ago I skirted homosexuality once—but I’ve always felt civil rights are just that: freedoms available to all rather than privileges available only to a select few.

It feels odd to represent gays when I’m not. It also feels good. Those who call homosexuality unnatural and anti-family only betray their prejudices and fears. There is room for all kinds—of gender, shape, appetite, aspiration, faith—on the planet, particularly in the U.S., which is finally growing up.

The legalization of gay marriage in Vermont, Iowa, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and New York Gov. David Paterson’s putting his clout behind such a move in his state, put momentum on the side of civil rights. You’d think such rights were built in to U.S. culture and society, but no. Each breakthrough—they come particularly hard in Ohio, where yahoos often set the agenda—comes hard. Canvassing neighborhoods and organizing them to fight against forces that would repeal the domestic partner registry are key steps.

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Posted By Carlo on April 7, 2009

Penny Stetz, a tech whiz I met through Macintosh guru Spike, is coming over to help me update technologically. Blogs take feeding; Facebook takes even greater attention. I have both, and I don’t use them enough.

I’d write more for my blog if I could embed links in it, along with photography. I’d do more on Facebook if I knew how to work it better. If it seems I haven’t been busy for more than three weeks—the last time I blogged—that’s deceptive.
Here are things I haven’t written about:

• My trip to Burlington, Vermont in early March to see my old friend Eric Lazarus, pictured here sitting on his couch
• my trip to Hawaii for a La Quinta conference in February, and
• my trip last week to the Schantz Organ Company in Orrville, Ohio, a family business I’m considering for the nucleus of a possible book.

Writing a book is a commitment of time and thought and sweat, so I want to make sure that a book I write has an audience, fills a need—and tells a good story I want to tell. I think the Schantz-centered book has those elements: It would be about a fourth-generation, continuously family-owned business that has been one of the pillars of its community for more than 125 years (Orrville’s also home to Smucker’s). So it would be about family values, faith, and tradition.

Orrville is in Wayne County, which, like Holmes County to the south, is known for its Amish and Mennonite populations. These rural counties feature fast tracts of farmland, landscapes where you can see an Amish father and his son tilling the field with mechanical implements (the Amish don’t use electricity). Word is some of these people are very rich, which can happen if you work sunup to sundown, your crops fetch a tidy yield, your kids are home-schooled, and you buy only what you need. Vic Schantz, president of Schantz Organ, tells me it’s about keeping life simple. The society in Orrville (and to a greater extent, among the Amish and their more conventionally attired relatives, the Mennonites) is to a great degree closed. Not only does that preserve traditions and provide cultural continuity, it to some extent immunizes the area from the economic downturn affecting more urban populations.

I’m thinking this would be great material for a university press, but I’d like to think wider. I believe there’s a big picture here, and I want feedback. Would you read a book about family business and family values? Should it include “lessons” on how to run a business? I think not. I think stories about business successes, from a largely rural, faith-based point of view, will resonate on their own. I need input.

Category: Books-general, Northern Ohio | No Comments »
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