So I pull into a Lexus dealer who tells me to go across the street to Metro Toyota. I’m looking to pull in, get the problem solved, and be on my way. It’s a very cold call.

At Metro, I tell the service desk my problem, and this tall guy says no hassle, he’ll take care of it, he won’t even write it up, go into the waiting room and he’ll be back to me. Long story short, 20 minutes later, he tells me my car’s ready. The tires were woefully low on pressure, they need to be replaced by winter, two valve stems were missing (I’d forgotten to put them back on after my ill-fated inflation attempt), he’d had the car washed, no charge.

Unreal. I didn’t think service like this existed anymore. Maybe it’s because Toyota is trying to repair a public relations image its recalls have badly damaged. Maybe it’s because Toyota wants me to remain loyal. It didn’t feel calculated at all, however. It felt genuine. That’s why I want to go on record thanking Bruce Schad, the service manager at Metro Toyota, for what he did. Service like that should go on the record.

The CJO decision continues to weigh on me, and I’m not sure whether I’m going to reconsider it. It left me in a world of hurt, a place I don’t want to occupy and one I’m struggling to pry myself out of. Sorry for the grammar, sorry for the circumspection. It’s a matter of calibrating the proper balance between personal and professional.

As for Katy, it was difficult to leave her so far away in beautiful Colorado, but word is she’s adjusting, though not without challenges. Our trip there en famille was stressful, though Boulder’s very attractive.

Ties do bind. Sometimes they fray. Sometimes they break. The last is when repair becomes the operative word. September will be a month of repair.

Other random thoughts: I’m reviewing/working in/on jazz a lot, writing reviews and features for Jazz Times and doing some marketing work for the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra. I’m also listening to rock again. I love the new Tom Jones CD “Praise and Blame” and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Mojo” and am intrigued by The National, a New York group running Bowie circa “Low” through a fuzzadelic blender on “High Violet,” their dourly beautiful new album.

Also must direct you to the blog of my wife, Karen Sandstrom, who has crafted a portrait of me at my summeriest, wearing “jorts.” What a drag it will be to wear long pants again. It’s almost time.

What’s great about her first world credit as Lylah Rose Wolff is she hit it age 15. I didn’t go global until the ‘80s, when I was in my late 30s and writing for Goldmine, a record collectors’ magazine. My wife, the amazing multimedia artist Karen Sandstrom, hit the world in 1995 with a preview of the art that would go into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. That ran in Art and Antiques.

Lylah’s way ahead of the curve. A whiz at Photoshop, she’s wired for contemporary media. She has a Nikon, she’s beginning to turn her bedroom into a studio, and she’s creative and ready to learn. All she has to do is keep on keeping on with her camera, get over any squeamishness that stands in the way of getting a powerful picture (much is distasteful to my very girly girl) and press her case. It’s a powerful one.

I miss my parents lately, particularly now that I’ve read The Orientalist, Tom Reiss’ biography of Lev Nussimbaum, a tortured intellectual and prolific writer who lived while the great empires—the Ottoman, the Hapsburg, the Russian—died and totalitarianism took over. Nussimbaum was also known as Essad Bey and Kurban Said; he was a Jewish Orientalist whose greatest talent was self-invention.

Nussimbaum was born five months after my mother, in Baku, Azerbaijan, a city where there were oil fires above ground when he was a child. Baku, in Reiss’ telling, sounds like it came from The Arabian Nights.

My mother, who was quite a party girl, might have known Lev in the ‘20s when both were living in Berlin, a city Reiss captures with extraordinary vividness. Berlin in the Weimar period must have been a delight. If time travel were possible, I’d be there.

Nussimbaum’s is a story of displacement and exile. The book unearths history I had never imagined and helps explain why my parents, like the fascism-prone, Bolshevik-hating Nussimbaum, fled Germany for Italy in the early ‘30s (Italy wasn’t officially anti-Semitic until 1938, the year of the Anschluss, when Germany annexed Austria and Hitler and Mussolini formalized their alliance).

One of the most original works of history I’ve ever read, Reiss’ book—which he developed because he’s the “child of German-speaking Jews trapped in Nazi Europe” (I’m the son of German Jews who got out just in time)—documents a fantastic man negotiating perilous, challenging times. We live in interesting times now, with the world collapsing economically, forcing political accommodations that will be strenuous indeed. But Nussimbaum’s short career—he died, gangrenous and in great pain, in 1942—celebrates a degree of ingenuity and inventiveness rarely called for these days.

It also makes me very happy my parents made it to America, where you can breathe relatively freely. I wish I’d recorded more of their stories.

Also, visit Tom Reiss’s website.

Antonio Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is Catholicism on LSD.

I’m with friends on a hotel trip that’s deeply wearing but stimulating, on a continent that seems to be imploding but is still vital, authoritative and elegant. Here, trains are high-speed, cars are efficient, you can walk the cities, health care isn’t a fight. Shows you the U.S. has a long way to go.

A week later, however, Europe’s troubles are dragging down the world, stymieing what looks like an embryonic U.S. recovery. I don’t understand how a continent so apparently progressive can be in imminent danger of collapse. Too much community, it seems. It’s great to be all for one and one for all when the economy is on the way up, but one drags down all when it’s tanking.

But I ramble. The trip went from April 22 to May 1. We visited Belgium (Brussels was much more attractive than I expected), France (a day in Paris was expectedly delightful and Provence was ravishing), Spain, and Munich, Germany. I spent less than two hours at Dachau Concentration Camp, just long enough to chill at the recognition that it’s not just the evil the Nazis did, it’s how systematic and efficient that was.

Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp, a model for all the others.

I hope I go back. Each major city I visited—Brussels, Paris, Marseille, Barcelona and Munich—is a world of its own. I’m a Europhile.

I’ll be in Brussels, Barcelona, Toulon, Marseille, Chantilly and Munich. More train than plane is in the plans; it’ll be interesting to see how Europe handles its travel in the shadow of the volcano.

It’s been a while since I wrote. One of the highlights of the past few weeks was Karen and I going to dinner with Bob Hoover, books editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; his wife, Kathleen; our friends Ron Antonucci and Sarah Willis; and the star of the event, Kay Ryan, Poet Laureate of the United States.

Dinner with the Poet Laureate of the United States was something to chew on.

It’s still cold but it’s bright, the snow crunching less than it did even a week ago. It’s been a chilly winter, though the sun the past few days has been delightful if a bit illusory. Around this time of year in Cleveland, the mind turns to getting far, far away and warm, warm and sunny.

Karen and Katy are traveling to Colorado next week to look at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Lylah just turned 15 and got a Nikon for that milestone (you’ve seen some of her pix; you’ll see more). And I’ll be traveling to Europe in about six weeks on a hotel trip arranged by my good friend and highly prized professional colleague, Rich Roberts.

So the thaw seems real, there’s motion in the works, the freeze is breaking. Other signs: those wily socialist Democrats who want to plunder the country for their own takeover will pass health care reform, flawed though it may be; the economy is sputtering with a little promise; reason seems to be clawing its way back into public discourse.

Ask me for citations and I’d be hard-pressed, but that’s my feeling.

In mid-December, my wife suggested I e-mail as many people as I could think of to tell them I wanted to engage more. Being semi-retired can be lonely, even when there’s work at home; I’ve been looking for part-time work outside home for a while, and haven’t gotten that. Part of that is the economy; a bigger part is that when you apply online—the only way to search for a job these days—you’re very likely to disappear into the digital void. It’s a buyer’s market, an impersonal one. Anyhow.

I e-mailed about 100 people in my various circles and got a gang of invitations to lunch and coffee, some virtual get well cards (“sorry about your situation; I’ll keep my ears open”) and some good work. The best was an assignment to write the history of rock and roll in Cleveland from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum for its website. I’ve already turned in my intro; it should be online in about a month. I think this will become an ongoing relationship. I might also get some museum-related work in the future. My outreach e-mail was a winner.

Other catch-up: Lylah and I went to New Orleans in January, arriving the night the Saints beat the Cardinals. The city was cool; it’s great the Saints won the Super Bowl. Now the Cavs have to do something similar for Cleveland. Traveling with Lylah was fun; she had a blast photographing scenes from that very scenic place, one of the best in the country for architecture. It’s becoming one of my favorite cities; if you go, be sure to eat at Domenica, in the Roosevelt, and at Acme Oyster House, in the Quarter.

At the Cafe du Monde

A fellow New Orleans tourist snapped this for us

Pleasures of the season: the snow is beautiful but getting old, like the cold. Walking the dog is a pleasure; Pearl likes the snow, likes getting her coat frosted. In the next three weeks, Karen, Katy and Lylah all have their birthdays, so I’ve been busy assembling gifts and the money to pay for them.

Recommendations: Avatar in 3D; the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man (very Jewish, very weird, quite interesting); Crazy Heart (Jeff Bridges is better than the movie, which works despite itself); Jimmy McDonough’s biography of Tammy Wynette; The Nels Cline Singers’ Initiate, and Reclamation, by the Stephan Crump Rosetta Trio.

T.J. Stiles, The First Tycoon (Knopf)
Hans Fallada, Every Man Dies Alone (Melville House)
Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire (Knopf)
Peter Kuper, Diario de Oaxaca (PM Press)
David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp (Pantheon)
Anders Roslund and Borge Hellstrom, Box 21 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Ken Auletta, Googled (Penguin)
Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs (Knopf)
Robert Goolrick, A Reliable Wife (Algonquin)
Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll (Oxford University Press)
Andre Agassi, Open (Knopf)
Steve Knopper, Appetite for Self-Destruction (Free Press)

We saw a cop ticketing my car. I yelled there was time left. He said I’d parked more than two feet from the curb. “Downright Christmasy,” I told him. I also told him I couldn’t believe him and said he’d had a choice: to ticket me or leave it be.

What’s your name? I asked. It’s on the ticket, he said. My $25 ticket from The Parking Violations Bureau of the city of Cleveland identifies him as “Cintron.” I told him the city does anything for money. I was furious. I took out my bile on Lylah on our way back east. That was unfair.

She wondered whether he’d had a yardstick to measure that legal 24 inches. I wish I’d had one with me and had the presence of mind to measure the distance myself. Didn’t look like two feet to me, so it’ll be my word against Cintron’s when I go for my hearing. I don’t intend to pay this fine.

Wonder what else the uninviting city of Cleveland plans to do to me and others willing to brave it? Its officials wonder why people don’t want to go downtown. People like Cintron are one of the reasons. So is a law that’s more than open to interpretation—and that feels especially capricious in a city with no traffic to worry about because nobody wants to go there.

When my wife gave birth to our daughter, I realized no man ever works as hard as a woman. When, nearly 40 years ago, my then-wife-to-be (she became my first) and I decided to have an abortion instead of a child we weren’t ready to parent, we had to go to New York, where abortions were legal. It was a painful and difficult and intensely personal decision. It always is.

I just e-mailed Nelson nailing him for his arrogance, his presumption that in the name of morality he has the right to control a woman’s body. I can’t settle differences people have on abortion, but it’s a private affair, a highly personal situation. Don’t have one if you’re against it. But don’t prevent those who want or need one. If you don’t like the show, change the channel. But don’t put a chastity belt on the TV.

I’ll let you know if Nelson responds. At least someone other than a Nebraskan can contact him; Bart Stupak, the Michigan Neanderthal Democrat in the House who shares Nelson’s primitive approach, doesn’t accept e-mail from outside his own state.

Don’t even get me started on Joe Lieberman, an opportunist who gives chameleons a bad name.

If health care reform survives, let alone passes, it will be a miracle. I used to think it should, because at least, despite lack of public option and Medicare buy-in, it would be a start. I’m not so sure anymore given the way Nelson, Lieberman, Stupak and the perpetually negative Republicans have used morality to bludgeon it into impotence.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have come up with a screed, 10 principles to live by. These are retro in the name of conservatism. The party says it won’t fund any candidate unless he or she swears by at least eight of these. What next? Loyalty oaths?

Leonard Cohen: The mystic as fashion plate.

Cohen’s was one of two concerts (here’s John Soeder’s spot-on review from the Plain Dealer) I saw in the last week by Jewish musicians. Cohen’s was one of the best I’ve ever seen, and that covers hundreds of shows.

The other was by Sophie Milman, a 26-year-old Russian Jew who grew up in Israel and now lives in Toronto. A tiny blonde bombshell whose contralto-alto embodies the airy and the husky, she’s a true torch singer. Milman fronts an excellent band (Diego Rivera stood out on sax), scats like Sarah, and takes over Joni Mitchell’s “Be Cool” for her own smoldering purposes. (Here’s my preview from Cleveland Jewish News). The hottest Canadian import since Diana Krall, Milman is set to explode. Some paintings fell off the wall of Nighttown during her first set; might that have been a sign?

This pictures Sophie's newest disk.

Arizona State was gigantic—69,000 students at four separate Phoenix-area campuses—and the Tempe campus is very attractive. It’s the kind of place where you can create your own career, it seems. The facilities were excellent, the weather the week of Oct. 19 gorgeous. The Tucson campus was more logically laid out and more manageable; that city is probably a fifth the size of Phoenix, too, so the scale is easier to handle.

We must see whether Katy gets into either school or both; she has also applied to Ohio State University and Denison, a private school in southern Ohio. Our trip—our first together—was a lot of fun. We stayed in three different hotels—including two nights at a modern Best Western in Phoenix, where we wound up so I could cover a Best Western convention—and got along really well. My favorite memory is of stopping at the Tom Mix Memorial in Florence, where we met Jim and Mary, a motorcycle couple from Phoenix.

Never exchanged addresses but we did exchange kindly words. The encounter made the desert feels less deserted.

Willie is a great live performer, a true-blue New Yorker who celebrates the city, the young, the innocent, the dreamers. “Vagabond Moon” and the Stonesy “She’s So Cold” should have been hits when they popped out of his 1980 debut, but they weren’t. Later tunes like “Places I Have Never Been” (the title of his 1988 “comeback” album) and the soaring “Whole World With You” should have been, too. Willie spent most of the ‘80s in litigation with Arista, which released his first two albums. The limbo didn’t help. Neither did record-company disinterest.

Anyhow, Willie, who was once described as a “one-man Clash,” soldiers on, rocking hard and passionate as ever, and his writing has gotten even more rugged and true. Willie writes rock that deserves to be classic.

When Willie saw me backstage before his show, he didn’t miss a beat, called my name, we hugged, and it was as if no years had intervened. He’s still charmingly and rightfully convinced of his own talent, sure his writing is getting better. He gave me his latest CDs and a DVD and told me he’s doing really well in Europe, he just performed with Springsteen at Giants Stadium, and he’s about to drop a new CD even though “House of a Thousand Guitars” has been out for only half a year.

It’s a pleasure to hang out with Willie Nile. It’s a pleasure to catch his shows, too. He may be the best folk-rocker most people have never heard. Makes me wish newspapers still published reviews of club acts. They may not draw big crowds, but they can be mighty.

I’m also writing debut columns for a yet-to-be-announced, Cleveland-based news portal that will debut in November. My first two will be about the head of the Civic Innovation Lab and my friend Dave Pech, a photographer who happens to make Ping-Pong paddles.

I just returned from a trip to Phoenix for a lodging conference. I stayed at the Arizona Biltmore, one of the nicest hotels in the U.S. The conference was by no means upbeat—occupancy and rate are way down—but it was great to be warm for a few days after this chilly summer.

Oh, yes. Sunday night, Karen and I are going to be reading at Wise Up!, a benefit for the Cleveland Heights Public Library. I’m going to tell very short stories about jazz—fitting for Nighttown, where Wise Up! will be staged.

Clinton intimated tears when a woman asked her how she bore up under the campaign strain. Pelosi quivered when she compared today’s heated rhetoric over health care reform and other Obama moves to late November 1978 in San Francisco, when Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the city’s first openly gay executive, were assassinated.

Clinton and Pelosi have reputations for being hard and unemotional. Many credited Clinton’s unexpected vulnerability for her primary win against Barack Obama. I wonder whether Pelosi’s show of vulnerability over the meanness in today’s charged political atmosphere will pay a parallel dividend. What that might be is being played out daily.

At Fairmount Presbyterian, the petite, 45-year-old German phenomenon played for about an hour and a half, traversing a desultory blues, a few Latin numbers, and a finale that shook the rafters, blending Dennerlein’s volcanic flourishes with Bach’s “Passacaglia and Fugue.” At the Bop Stop, she delivered two sets, serving up deep groove with an homage to Jimmy Smith, a fabulous samba in honor of her half-dachshund, half-terrier dog, and a gang of other originals.

The reason I comment on Dennerlein’s performances is that the guy who sponsored her local appearances challenged me to review her. This is my substitute. There’s no regular outlet anymore for reviews that focus on the unusual artist, the artist who doesn’t draw megacrowds. Part of that is the withering of print. Part is the subsequent conservatism, meaning newspapers aren’t trying to cover everything anymore; they just want to hold on to what they’ve got.

The church show drew about 300, the Bop Stop show close to its capacity of 110 seats. The Bop Stop show swung more and was more conventionally jazzy, showcasing the room’s singularly accommodating design and outstanding acoustics. The place is for sale and opens only for special occasions, like the Dennerlein show. How sad that the best music room in Cleveland can’t do regular business.

By the way, I’m beginning to review CDs and preview shows for Scene again. Seems timely given the number of fine, new CDs by Cleveland-based or –originated musicians like trumpeter Josh Rzepka and saxophonists Mike Lee and Bobby Selvaggio. I’m willing to bet that a promoter willing to mix it up—spotlighting jazz one night, blues another and, God forbid, rock from time to time—could make a go of the Bop Stop. As it, the place is magnificent and shuttered. What a waste.

What’s happened to Obama, who as a campaigner was the best politician I’d ever seen? Apparently, he can’t lead, only synthesize, only accommodate. God knows I’m no fan of Republicans, but as Jon Stewart said, they had the discipline to sell the public on a disastrous war. Maybe Obama’s working health care reform like a wimp to appease the center right the polls say rule the country. Maybe he’s doing it because of a grander scheme he’ll unveil after midterm elections next year—if the Democratic majority holds, which it may not because of health care reform waffling.

I voted for Obama because I thought he was a liberal ready and canny enough to spearhead major social change, including health care reform that would result in a system similar to those in much of Europe and Canada. I’m not so sure anymore. I hope he pushes back Blue Dogs and ignores Republicans (except for those Maine ladies). I hope he has the spine to match his intellect and the will to move the country forward.

People complain he has bitten off more than he can chew. I hope Obama has the courage to bite down even harder.

On July 23, for my birthday the day before, Karen bought me an evening’s cooking course at Sur La Table at Eton Center. We joined 14 other people to prepare those scampi; pan-roasted (farm-raised) catfish with caper-butter sauce & green beans almandine; breaded crabcakes with red pepper aioli & celery root slaw; and grilled salmon with baby bok choy, wasabi mashed potatoes and lime soy vinaigrette; and key lime pie (we didn’t make that, only ate it). Chef Ky-Wai Wong of Lucky’s Cafe in Tremont supervised. I hope you can tell from the pictures that the scene was jamming.

The class lasted two hours; the kitchen at the back of Sur La Table was fully used, believe me, and the degrees of experience ran the gamut. I’ve always had good taste, a healthy appetite and an open-minded attitude, but I’ve been squeamish about preparing food. I don’t like my hands greasy, I don’t like the mess, and I’m probably leery because I’m an only child whose mom cooked for both my father and I and viewed the kitchen as her domain. What I learned above all is that cooking feels good, especially when you do it with your family. Next time, Katy will be on the set (she went to the Indians game). That should make it even better.

Only this one puts vendors and beggars into competition—in China, they were somehow separate—so the main feeling a spoiled western tourist like me has is of being put upon, harassed. I don’t want to buy a Taj Mahal snowglobe or one of those thick red bullwhips vendors keep thrusting at me.

I’m heading across a short bridge and the tour bus is in sight when I see a man on all fours with a hand out toward me. He’s on all fours because that’s how he’s built. I can’t really see the man. All I see is the deformity.

I don’t speak his language, I don’t know what to do, even though I have some rupees on me. I feel ashamed, privileged beyond my right. I wonder how the man got this way and what could be done/what he could do to change a condition so extreme it seems no amount of money in the world could fix it. Helplessness and anger and shame roil me.

I ask our tour guide why that man was that way. There were others in the area like that, too; one wasn’t on all fours but had similar stick, scuttling legs. It was phantasmagorical.

The guide told me it was about education; those men didn’t know enough to go where help, available under India’s system of free medical care, was available.

No matter. I can’t get the image of the man on all fours out of my mind. Taking a picture of him would have been blasphemous.

I got into India very early a.m. July 13 after nearly two days of flying and layover. That first day was a blur, largely consisting of meeting various Leela executives including its remarkable chairman C.K. Nair, who is in his 80s, has seen it all and remains enthusiastic.

On July 14, we went to the heart of one of the many subcities of Delhi, to old, old markets where I and another journalist on this fascinating press trip occupied a narrow, hard seat in a bicycle rickshaw. Our driver took us through the narrowest, busiest streets I’ve ever seen. I can’t recall ever being this hot ‘n’ sweaty (hey, the heat’s dry in Phoenix and Dubai) or as saturated by atmosphere. The streets were so tight no way anything motorized other than auto rickshaws (covered Vespas seating four thin folk) could work them. The cost of the ride was covered by the PR agency that sent me to India, but at the end, the driver, who pushed a sickly beggar kid off me during it, wanted a big tip. We gave him 300 rupees (about $6.25) when Pamela, my seatmate, added 100 to my 200, exceeding the norm. The guy was demanding and shameless and I didn’t like his attitude. Then I thought to myself, where the hell do I come off begrudging someone who just nearly worked himself to death pampering me? I want to kill my inner Ugly American.

The next day our band of 10, half of them journalists, rode four and a half hours south to the state of Uttar Pradesh, home to Agra, home to the Taj Mahal. Our bus driver was a hero, dodging bullets mechanical and animal over iffy roadway. We arrived around 11:30 a.m. and the sun was relentless as we entered the site, which is much bigger than I thought it would be. Like Beijing’s Forbidden City, it’s massive; that’s why it’s called monumental. It’s also dazzlingly white, even radiant, its calligraphy and gemstone marble inlay gorgeous, its shimmer and magnetism undeniable. I now understand the term “mogul” and am beginning to glimpse how complex and challenging are the area’s politics.

Before I descend into fatuousness, I’ll cut this short. India makes you reconsider your viewpoint, your conceptions, your preconceptions. I’ll write more about the trip to Agra next time I blog. I have to get ready for a trip to Atlanta today (it’s July 20) so goodbye for now.

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.

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.

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.

Firman tries my rocker on for size. His daddy Marty made the rocker.

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.

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.

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.

To catch up since I last wrote. I just published my first piece about watches, a feature about RGM Watch Company in Lancaster, PA. I wrote the piece. The pictures are by Rich Roberts, my friend who took me to six countries (including Malta) in 2006 and to China in 2007. Rich is freelancing now, too. Here are links to International Watch (check out Archives for my story) and to RGM:

http://www.iwmagazine.com/
http://www.rgmwatches.com/

I’m planning to report on two other watch-related stories in Florida in the first week of January: a watch company named Krieger and the collection of R. Donahue Peebles, the noted African-American developer I’ve been reporting on for more than 10 years. Keeping busy has not been a problem.

As for 2008, it’s been turbulent. My family lost a lot of its wealth, as did everybody’s. The real estate market tanked, American cars went in the toilet (I’ll be reviewing them for Northern Ohio Live starting very shortly) and as for politics, it was bizarre. The greatest news—it’s still fresh, still moving—was Obama’s election. We’re having some friends over for the inaugural, which will be a time to party indeed.

We just visited Karen’s brother Mark and his long-time love, Sally, in Ann Arbor, an oasis in devastated Michigan. Quick trip; we took both girls, along with Katy’s boyfriend, Nick. Fast but fun, and longer than the Christmas week visit of Karen’s other brother, Eric, and his family. Family’s ever more important. So is keeping in touch.

Tonight, Karen and I are going to a friend’s house for what has become a New Year’s Eve tradition. I hope the conversation is lively. Hopes for 2009, after a year in which economics fused with politics to provide a feast for news junkies, sure are.

Since last I blogged, Karen has left the Plain Dealer and been accepted to the Cleveland Institute of Art. She starts Jan. 12. Her PD buyout goes through next September, though we have to secure health insurance and pay for it on our own starting next month. Creativity is on the rise, money on the down. I’m worried yet hopeful. And busy.

I’m going to start writing about cars for Northern Ohio Live next month and am eager to pontificate about an industry in the throes of change. I’m also looking forward to driving machines that, like them or not, so richly express politics, culture and economics. I promise I won’t be this highfalutin in my car column.

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/books/1340318,autophobia-books-122108.article

I’m also debuting City Therapy, a column about how to make Cleveland better, in Live next month. My first topic is an innovative, midcity bus line that promises to heighten the profile of Cleveland, not to mention institute new, public and desirable traffic patterns.

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/10/rtas_healthline_debuts_minus_f.html

What I’ve dropped is my annual Top 10 listing/ranking of record albums (so quaint a term) and singles. Couldn’t get it together this year, though I’ve been doing them since 1970, when my top album was Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” In the last year, politics took over from pop; I’ve spent more time and energy on politics than on music and recently attended one of the “change” meetings the Obama campaign has spawned. The meeting was a mixed bag, but promising overall.

I’ll post my No Top 10 column (it may be a swan song) separately. More soon, and happy holidays.

It’s Thanksgiving Day, my second (I was there her birth year in 1995) with my daughter, Lylah and the first I’ve spent with the rest of my family in 13 years. Each year this weekend, I’ve gone to either Detroit or Baltimore for a table tennis tournament. Not this one; last year’s was not a great experience (I didn’t play well and was captive to the guy who drove there and back) and besides, I wanted to spend Thanksgiving with my family.

We’re going to the house of two women who are mainly friends of Karen’s. They’re a couple and they’re interesting, though I haven’t seen either of them in quite a while. If I’m rambling, it’s because spending Thanksgiving this way is a minor change in a year of big ones: I retired in August, Karen’s quitting her job a week from tomorrow, people are being slaughtered in Mumbai, Bush is wreaking environmental havoc on his way out, and Obama’s emerging high-profile, centrist and managerial. I’m worried about money, health insurance, getting work. Things will turn out all right, I hope, though in previous—and lesser—times of stress, I would have said I’m sure. The world is unusually dicey these days, and there’s no guarantee I (or for that matter, Karen) will continue to get enough work to keep our income robust after her buyout expires next fall. I shouldn’t worry, but I do. That’s one consequence of aging, along with aches and pains and being the oldest in a family with different, sometimes opposing needs.

Meanwhile, there is hope. Karen’s book is generating some interest, she’s just illustrated and written a really cool brochure for the Greater Cleveland AIDS Task Force, and I’ve written my first City Therapy column for Northern Ohio Live, a magazine that seems to want to use me more. So there’s some work, and it’s creative. And Karen’s going back to school for illustration is inspiring (she plans to get a bachelor’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art). Above all, there’s movement—and I haven’t even mentioned the promise of the kids: Katy’s planning to go to college in Chicago in 2010, and Lylah’s becoming ever more of a whiz at Photoshop. I’m going to get her a MacBook with good graphics software for Christmas, our main expense this season. All I want for myself this Christmas is warmth, stability and adventure. I hope we can afford that.