The set-up gives the Festival a more airy and open feel than I found at last year’s Festival.  It also gives the visitor a chance to check out the Scioto Mile park area and cross Columbus’ two cool new downtown bridges, which are works of art in their own right.  The Rich Street bridge features an interesting series of buttress supports, and the Main Street bridge uses an unusual inclined arch superstructure and has a wide pedestrian walkway. I think the two bridges, the downtown buildings, and the Scioto Mile features do a really nice job of framing the Festival and making it a visually appealing venue for the artwork.

When I was at the Festival this morning there was lots of foot traffic and apparent purchases, some fine jazz being played at the main stage, and the heady smell of street food in the air.  The Festival runs until 10 p.m. tonight and from 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. tomorrow.  If you’re in Columbus this weekend, it’s well worth a visit.

Rabbits throughout the neighborhood cower in fear when this formidable pair steps outside on their latest expedition.  They know that the crafty Penny has devised a diabolical plan to snare any unwary hare.  They know that it is only a matter of time before the finely honed tracking instincts of the hunters locate any nearby rabbit and then fix the bunny with a penetrating stare that seemingly can last for hours.  After the creature is hopelessly mesmerized, the pair employ their patented lunge technique, hurling themselves at the cowering cottontail with murderous intent until they strain at the end of their leashes.  Although the lunge breaks the spell and allows the reprieved rabbit to scamper away, the sight of the advancing dogs sends provokes an unmistakable bolt of fear that leaves the lucky lapin vowing to never again enter the hunters’ domain.

Even when the hunters are inside, their terrifying indoor woofing causes any hare that might stray into view to bolt, without risking even a nibble at the tender shoots of a tasty zinnia.

Yes, there’s a reason why the bunnies of New Albany are even more timid than your normal rabbit.

For a minute, can we please just set aside politics and stop worrying about the impact of the unemployment rate on the prospects of President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney?  The last time I checked, they both had jobs — which puts them ahead of the millions of Americans who want to find work but can’t, because our economy is sputtering.  Those millions of unemployed Americans, many of whom have been out of work for years, are at the end of their ropes.  They’re about to be joined by a host of new college graduates, many of them saddled with absurd amounts of debt, and high school graduates searching for jobs in the driest of dry holes.

Before the talking heads start spinning the data, or trying to assign blame to one political party or another, let’s pause for a moment to think about the jobless women and men who have lost their houses, spent their retirement nest eggs and children’s college funds, and beat the pavement trying to find gainful employment without success.  They’re beaten down by failure, worried about their futures, and tired of the constant infighting.

Can’t we all agree that this latest round of unemployment data shows that what we have tried hasn’t worked?  “Quantitative easing,” extensive federal “stimulus” projects, and massive deficit spending have not produced the promised results.  It’s time to try something else.

(Spencer Levin and Scott Stallings are tied for the lead.)

When something like that happens to a person you know, it shakes you.  You think about your own family medical history and wonder how many of those health problems were due to lifestyle and how many to awesome genetic forces lurking deep within our cells, like tiny time bombs that could explode with devastating consequences at any moment, irrespective of how much lettuce you eat?  Did my father, uncle, and grandfather die of cancer because they were heavy smokers, or because of some squamous anomaly in their mitochondria that was triggered by strands of DNA without regard to intake of tar and nicotine?

And, probing even deeper into the levels of introspection, what would you prefer the answers to these questions to be?  Are you a fatalist who is more comfortable thinking you’ve already been dealt all the cards and just have to play the hand as well as you can?  If you could take a test and determine, conclusively, that the raging fires of cancer were going to consume your body no matter what you did, would you want to know so you could adjust your lifestyle accordingly and move down the spectrum to enjoy the delightful but unhealthy things you’ve avoided?  Or would you rather hope that your good behavior and healthy lifestyle could win you a reprieve from the otherwise inevitable genetic snare?

I’m in the latter category.  I’d like to think that my decisions make a difference to the equation and might have an impact on whether I keel over in the near future.  My friend’s situation makes me think, however:  “Am I just kidding myself?”

The coming big bang will occur when our galaxy, the Milky Way, collides with and merges into Andromeda, a neighboring galaxy.  The two galaxies are being pulled together by their mutual gravities, and in fact are rushing toward each other at the breathtaking speed of 250,000 miles per hour.  At such astronomical (pun intended) speeds, it’s hard to believe that all Earth-dwellers aren’t experiencing a touch of cosmic motion sickness.

Of course, galaxies are mostly empty space, so whoever is left on Earth when the galactic convergence occurs isn’t likely to see suns and planets smashing into each other.  But the night sky will look different.  Orion and Taurus and Ursa Major will have lots of company.

Elizabeth Warren’s campaign must not employ a public relations person.  If it does, she isn’t very good at her job — because the story of Warren’s alleged Cherokee ancestry has become a never-ending story in Warren’s campaign for election to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts.  Every day, seemingly, there is some new revelation that puts Warren on the defensive, interferes with her intended “message,” and distracts from the issues she thinks are important.

On Wednesday, for example, Warren acknowledged for the first time that two law schools that identified her as Native American did so because she identified herself as such, based on her understanding of “family lore.”  Her admission is just the latest in a series of statements about the issue — some of which arguably are inconsistent — that have just encouraged the press to dig ever deeper into the history of Warren’s employment, whether she identified herself as Native American, and whether there is any proof of actual Cherokee ancestry in her family tree.

I don’t think a candidate’s race, or self-reported minority status, has anything to do with fitness to serve as a U.S. Senator.  On the other hand, I think a candidate’s truthfulness, credibility, and ability to deal with a crisis are relevant — and Warren seems to be falling short in all of those categories.  The Native American story has  dominated the headlines for a month now, and for that Warren has only herself to blame.  Her statements and partial disclosures have a whiff of embarrassed shiftiness about them that have made a minor issue into a major one and, at the same time, made her look evasive and inept.  Although her race shouldn’t affect a voter’s decision about her, her apparent inability to give a satisfactory explanation of her actions reasonably could.

“Robert” didn’t even sound good when actors on last season’s Game of Thrones talked to or about King Robert Baratheon.  You know your name isn’t a thing of beauty if, even when it is spoken by actors with British accents, it still sounds like a word for a failed engine part.

Fortunately, no one but the IRS and my bank refer to me as “Robert.”  But what nickname to choose?  For the first 12 years of my life, everyone called me Bobby.  I liked Bobby, but as I hit the teenage years I realized almost no one used the diminutive form of nickname anymore.  Now the only adult males I know who go by “Bobby” hail from south of the Mason-Dixon line, boast about SEC football dominance, comfortably wear white loafers without socks, and drink bourbon in the evenings.  The name fits them, but not me.

“Rob” never really worked, and “Robby” even less so.  It’s not just because “Rob” is a word for an act of theft, either.  Mostly, “Rob” seems prissy and highfalutin, a sort of halfway attempt to hang on to the old English roots of Robert.

That leaves Bob.  I settled on Bob more than 40 years ago, and I still like it.  It’s rarely mispronounced and almost never misspelled.  It’s short and solid and simple.  I think it suits me.  After all, as we swim through the sea of life, everybody needs to bob now and then.

Tomorrow the Memorial Tournament begins at the Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, a Columbus suburb.  It’s a terrific tournament hosted by Jack Nicklaus on a fabulous golf course.  As any Columbus resident also knows, however, it also means we are guaranteed to have rain.

It’s pretty amazing, really.  It’s rained so frequently for the Memorial that the New York Times has written about the weird coincidence — not once, but twice.  They’ve moved the date of the tournament, and the rain followed the Memorial to its new place on the calendar.  It’s rained so often that some people contend that the rain is the curse of Chief Leatherlips (from his name, apparently not a ladies’ man) because the course purportedly was built on a sacred Wyandot burial ground.

Whatever the reason, it’s time to spread the grass seed, plant the flowers, batten down the hatches, and prepare for the inevitable downpour.  The Memorial Tournament is here!

The Fates don’t appreciate such temerity.  They become infuriated when puny mortals rise up and stick a thumb in their eye.  They know when the time has come for a beat down and aren’t shy about relentlessly punishing those who don’t quite know their place.  The only surprise is that, having been a sports fan for many decades now, I would need to relearn that lesson, painfully, yet again.

Since I’ve written my little piece, the team in question has lost five out of six, been pulverized by divisional foes, and fallen out of first place.

Don’t believe in jinxes?  I’m just askin’.

For years Americans cackled at the French for inexplicably admiring, and indeed finding deeper significance in, the “genius” of Jerry Lewis movies.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the French chuckle at the fact that Americans have a seemingly endless appetite for low-brow Adam Sandler drivel.  The movies keep getting made, so somebody must go watch them.  The question is:  who?  You wouldn’t think there would be a sufficient audience of pathetic, friendless, unmarried 40-year-old guys who appreciate the subtle humor of a pie in the face, but apparently there are.

Watching the That’s My Boy preview, I found myself imagining how Adam Sandler movies come to be.  Picture a man running away from you, down a long hallway.  He bursts through the door of an office, and a Hollywood type wearing a Hawaiian shirt and about a pound of gold neck chains looks up.

Running man:  “Boss, we’re ready to move forward on the next Adam Sandler project!  The writers and I have come up with an entirely novel way for a man to unexpectedly get hit in the crotch!”

Producer:  “That’s great, Jenkins — but that only puts us halfway there.  Now you need to think of an excuse for Sandler to wear a stupid wig.”

In fairness to Sandler, I haven’t been to see one of his movies since the Happy Gilmore era.  For all I know, the movies are richly rewarding, profoundly moving viewing experiences.  However, I take the previews at face value, and consider them to be fair warning.  If I went to see That’s My Boy and it was even close to as dreadful as the preview suggests, I’d have no one to blame but myself.

The recent gruesome cannibalistic attack in Miami is one such story.  What could possibly cause two men to be naked on a bridge, with one man literally eating the other’s face (including nose and eyeballs), growling animal-like to police, and finally having to be shot multiple times because he was unresponsive to commands to stop?

The apparent answer is:  drugs.  Specifically, a new kind of LSD called “bath salts” that acts as a stimulant and leaves users in a state of complete delirium.  Police and ER doctors in Miami have seen the effects of the drug, which can dramatically increase body temperature and leave its victims extremely aggressive, with a kind of temporary super-human strength and an urge to use their jaws as weapons.

Some libertarians argue that we shouldn’t regulate drug use, because it is a victimless crime.  The awful nature of “bath salts” and their effect on people belie that argument — at least, as it relates to this particular drug.  It is beyond me why anyone would develop a drug that has such terrible effects, of obvious danger to both the user and to the people around him, and it is even more unimaginable that anyone would sell such a drug on the street.  I suppose it’s too much to expect drug producers and pushers to act with any kind of responsibility, but anyone involved in the “bath salts” drug trade should be punished, harshly, for injecting such an awful, hazardous substance into our society.

The recall election is the result of a petition drive that began after Walker pushed through reforms to address Wisconsin’s fiscal problems — reforms that public employee unions didn’t like, but that appear to be working and allowing the state and local governments to get their budgets under control.

The recall election is a rematch of the 2010 gubernatorial election between Walker and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.  Huge amounts of money — much of it from out of state — is being spent on the election.  Interestingly, Barrett’s chief objection to Walker doesn’t seem to be the merits of the reforms that produced the recall election.  Instead, he has raised other, minor issues and seems most troubled because he thinks Walker has been “divisive.”  If a politician has been successful in dealing with seemingly intractable problems, however, he’s likely to have upset some people. Why should that disqualify him from finishing his term and standing for reelection at that point?

The Wisconsin election just shows why recall elections are a bad idea and should be reserved for rare circumstances — like criminal activity by the incumbent.  Recalls should not be had just because a segment of the population disagrees with the incumbent’s approach to issues.  Elections should have consequences, and when they do the losing side shouldn’t be able to force costly redos that just distract from the public business.

The polls are indicating that Walker will survive, and national Democrats are downplaying the notion that the Wisconsin election reflects the national mood come November.  I don’t think they need to worry about that.  Wisconsin has been mired in a bitter brew of its own making over the past few years, and I’m sure that many voters just want to bring an end to the constant fighting and let Walker finish his term.  I’d be cautious about drawing too many national inferences from the Wisconsin results.

There are people who can “lay down a base” without getting burned and gradually get darker and darker, without telltale peeling, as the summer progresses.  It’s as if they have special tanning knowledge, passed down from generation to generation like the Rites of Ephesus.

I’m not one of those people.  I go directly from winter white to a blazing brick red that quickly peels off in great, sweeping curtains of skin the size of dish towels that you can roll up and toss in the waste basket.  After that distasteful condition passes, I’m set for the summer with a permanent ruddy red face.

This happens no matter what I try.  Today, for example, I smeared heaping handfuls of Coppertone on head, ears, face and neck in hopes of avoiding the burn.  After a few moments in the sun playing golf, however, my sweat glands kicked into high gear and the resulting cascade of sunscreen runoff left me partially blinded and milky eyed.  After swabbing the perspiration off with a towel, I may as well have not applied any suntan lotion in the first place.

And now I sit, with that fine, bright burning feeling on my skin, waiting for the peeling to begin.  Summer has arrived.

How it got into our house is anybody’s guess.  I’d guess it was a green tree frog — about the size of a half dollar, with long webbed toes and excellent adhesive abilities.  Kasey noticed him, too, and was starting to pay the little guy an uncomfortable amount of attention.  I got a dish towel, draped it over him, gently picked him up, and took him outside and dropped him onto the grass.  He quickly hopped under some nearby bushes and was gone, probably on his way back to the tree at the corner of our house.

This is the first frog in our house that I can remember, but it’s not uncommon for us to find that moths, bees, spiders, and even birds have gotten into the house somehow.  Whenever that happens I always try to do whatever I can to get them back outside, safely and without injury, and when I do so I feel a bit better about myself.  After I set Mr. Frog on the path to freedom this morning, I walked around the Yantis Loop with an extra hop in my step.