Carlo | January 29, 2011
I went to a show at Beachland Ballroom Jan. 22 that made me think there are second chances, ways to start all over again. It starred the Hesitations, a nine-piece soul group from Cleveland’s 1960s. The singing Hesitations are in their 60s and are prime exponents of Northern Soul, a variant of Motown with a [...]
Carlo | November 7, 2010
Musings of a peripatetic thinker. Ponderings without a point. Catching up. Intellectual laziness. Call it what you will, I figure I should capture some mind wanderings, given the week past, last night’s entertaining Cleveland Jazz Orchestra concert “The Cleveland Scene,” and upcoming travels. I’ve never been great at headlines. I’m depressed about the elections, though [...]
Carlo | October 23, 2010
Nearly two years into the presidency of Barack Obama, the country seems ready to backpedal. It looks Dubya Lite John Kasich will be governor of Ohio despite decreasing unemployment and glimmers of creativity. Rand Paul might be governor of Kentucky, Sharron Angle the senator from Nevada. The mind reels. The country—hell, the world—is rocky. England [...]
Carlo | May 25, 2010
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 [...]
Carlo | March 6, 2010
The headline is a pun I use as an excuse to catch up with my blog, woefully unattended to for nearly a month. Seriously, it’s a pleasure to write this at my living room window as I watch snow mounds on the deck finally melt. It’s still cold but it’s bright, the snow crunching less [...]
Carlo | January 21, 2010
I went to traffic court today for a hearing about the $25 ticket I got Dec. 22, when I was accused of parking too far from the curb. I parked in the Justice Center garage across the street from the plug-ugly Justice Center and got to the second floor in plenty of time for my [...]
Carlo | December 17, 2009
It’s almost Christmas, time for the spirit of giving, but our politicians seem to have lost sight of this. Three weeks ago, I ranted against the Republicans for saying no to health care reform. Now, I’m blasting spineless or mean-spirited Democrats, particularly Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, a self-styled conservative determined to scuttle health care reform [...]
Carlo | September 29, 2009
I’m writing about jazz again. Just cobbled together a feature about Cleveland-based jazz saxophonist Bobby Selvaggio, who’s working his new CD, Modern Times. Just wrote a short about Fra Fra Sound, an Amsterdam septet whose Dya So CD is cool world music. These are for Scene. I’m also writing debut columns for a yet-to-be-announced, Cleveland-based [...]
