We walked around the college grounds and the picturesque main street, but the heat and lack of breeze — even on Denison’s hilltop campus — was too much for us.  So, we retreated to Brew’s Cafe for a bite to eat, then topped things off with some Almond Joy cones from Whit’s Frozen Custard.  It was a spectacularly delicious way to cool off.

The little trip also allowed me to take my first photo with the new camera — of the Swasey Chapel on the Denison campus.

The doors open at 9:45, and the programs begin at 10 a.m. at the Fort Hayes Metropolitan Education Center in downtown Columbus.  There will be interesting readings, enlightening discussions, and lots of friendly book-lovers browsing through reading options, hobnobbing with authors, and eagerly discussing their latest page-turning favorites.  There will be good food at some of Columbus coolest new food trucks and children’s activities and the pretty surroundings of the Fort Hayes campus.

If you are an avid reader, or a budding author, or a member of a book club, the Ohioana Book Festival is the place for you.

It’s supposed to be a lovely day, weather-wise, with temperatures in the 70s — perfect conditions for walking the Fort Hayes campus as you go from program to program.  You might want to start, say, with a morning program about fiction by women or juvenile literature, then dip your toe into the mystery writing area.  Over the lunch hour you can visit one of the great food trucks and food carts that will be there — Ajumama?  Green Meanie?  Jeni’s Ice Creams?  Sweet! — and then listen to music in the courtyard.  In the afternoon, aspiring writers can hear from experienced pros about how to get published.  And throughout the day you can visit the central areas where authors are giving readings, where books are sold, and where writers will gladly talk to you about their works.

The doors open at 10 a.m., and I’ll be there, holding down the Ohioana welcome table.  Stop by and say hello!

The casino, which is located in the heart of downtown, right on Public Square, next to Cleveland’s landmark Terminal Tower, has been the focus of significant hope and concern.  The hope is that the casino will kick start the struggling downtown economy by bringing jobs, foot traffic, and tourist dollars to local restaurants and businesses.   In some ways the casino has already delivered on some of the hope; it is housed in a vacant space formerly occupied by a closed department store that had to be refurbished, and it has hired workers to deal cards, serve drinks, and do the other things that casino workers do.

The concern is that the Public Square location might not show Cleveland off to the greatest advantage.  It is an extensive open area that is frequented by vagrants and panhandlers; it’s also the place where RTA riders board buses and vice versa.  Clevelanders fear that casino visitors who see homeless people in the surrounding area might not venture out to explore the rest of downtown Cleveland — and the hoped-for broader economic impact won’t materialize as a result.  In an effort to spiff up the area, Cleveland police have increased their patrols and worked to roust vagrants from the area.

The big question with casinos as an engine of economic activity is whether visitors will leave the casino grounds and check out the rest of the area.  If casino patrons don’t feel secure enough to do so, they’ll just stay in the casino, punching buttons on their slot machine of choice and eating and drinking the casino’s fare.  The challenge for Cleveland is to do what it can to prevent that from happening.

Jeni Britton Bauer will be one of the featured authors at the Ohioana Book Festival on Saturday, May 12 on the Fort Hayes campus.  She’ll be talking about Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams At Home — an ice cream cookbook that my friends say is spectacular, just like Jeni’s ice cream.  And anyone who reads cookbooks knows that a really good cookbook tells you a lot about the cook who wrote it.  From Jeni’s cookbook, I’m guessing that she will be a really interesting person to listen to.  She’ll be one of the authors participating in a panel discussion entitled Food:  The Seduction of Flavor at 11:45 a.m.  (Great title for the panel discussion, isn’t it?)  The YouTube video below tells you a little bit more about Jeni Britton Bauer and her ice cream passions.

What’s summer without a little ice cream?  If the ice cream is something fabulous like Jeni’s salty caramel, made at home, so much the better.  Jeni Britton Bauer alone is a good reason to stop by the Ohioana Book Festival this coming Saturday.

The Avengers movie opens this weekend.  As I reported last summer, it was filmed, in part, in Cleveland, so I’m hoping it does well.

This trailer makes the movie look like must-viewing.  Samuel L. Jackson in an eye patch?  Awesome.  Robert Downey, Jr. reprising Iron Man, and getting into the obligatory, caused-by-a-mutual misunderstanding fight with Thor so we can see how evenly matched their powers are?  Even more awesome.  Scarlett Johansson in a tight-fitting black jumpsuit, looking to take out some dangerous supernatural foe with just a pistol?  Double awesome!  And a giant airborne slug-like creature tearing buildings to shreds in pursuit of Iron Man?  Most awesome of all.

Nothing says summer is here like a mindless action movie, and The Avengers will fit that bill nicely.  I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a little summer.

I’ll write more about the race as we get closer to the election.  For now, I’ll just say that I’m mystified by the tactics of the Brown campaign.  I get their e-mails constantly, and they all are about money.  How much money Mandel is raising, how much money “special interests” are contributing to support Mandel’s candidacy, how many TV ads have been purchased as a result of the money contributed to the Mandel campaign, and how much money the Brown campaign needs to make up for the cash landslide that is tumbling into Ohio.

Money, money, money!  Obviously, the Brown campaign believes that the constant drumbeat of news about what donors have contributed to Mandel’s campaign will spur me to open my checkbook, again and again, to give money to Sherrod Brown.  My question is:  why do they think that is what will happen?  Isn’t it equally plausible that I’ll just get sick to death of being hit up for money and immediately delete their e-mails, unread?  (After all, we’re still six months away from the election — how many more money-grubbing e-mails do they think I can bear?)  Or that I’ll just give up because the money lead for the Mandel campaign apparently is insurmountable?  Or that I’ll conclude that the Brown campaign doesn’t care about anything except cold, hard cash?

Political campaigns used to be about candidates, issues, speeches and rallies, now they are about money, money, and more money.  We are all the poorer for this.

As I’ve mentioned before, eastern Ohio is home to the Utica shale formation, an incredibly deep layer of rock that apparently is a rich repository of natural gas, oil, and other highly valued “wet gases.”  Drilling wells requires steel pipe, and because the Utica shale formation is so deep underground it requires lots and lots of pipe.  As this New York Times article reports, the need for pipe caused by the resurgence in natural gas drilling in the continental United States has helped to fuel a resurgence in the Ohio steel industry, which has seen expanding steel mills and the hiring of new workers to handle the skyrocketing demand.

The effects don’t stop there.  The owners of the property on which the wells are being drilled have been paid for the privilege and therefore have more money to put into their local economies.  The fracking method used to extract the gas and oil requires lots of water, so trucking companies have expanded their tanker fleets to meet the demand.  And all of the truck drivers, oil drillers, geologists, and drilling engineers who work in Ohio’s oil patch have to eat and sleep and work, which means that hotels, motels, and restaurants in the area are busier than they’ve been in years and the demand for office space has increased, too.

In short, Ohio’s economy demonstrates the good things that can happen when energy resources are located and tapped.  As the Ohio story shows, developing our oil and gas resources — a proven commodity with a proven market that doesn’t require government subsidies or wasteful stimulus spending — is a sure means for an economy to grow its way out of this unending recession.

Thanks to Richard for sending me the linked article.

I think the 2012 election will be much less emotion-charged than 2008 was.  In 2008 many hoped that Barack Obama would be a transformative figure whose election would finally slay the dragons of racism in America.   Many others were panicked by the financial abyss yawning open beneath our feet and were looking for the candidate they felt was best suited to deal with the crisis.

Barring unforeseen events, neither of those emotional themes will be at work in 2012.  President Obama still has many supporters, but I don’t know anyone who views him as a kind of magical arbiter capable of bringing people together through sheer force of oratory and personality.  His time in office has demonstrated, to all but the true believers, that the President is a politician who makes the same kinds of political calculations that other politicians do.  The hopes for a miraculous national reconciliation and a perfect leader that motivated many people in 2008 just don’t seem to exist now.

Nor does the terror that gripped some people in 2008.  Worries about a complete financial meltdown cut both ways in that election; some voted for Barack Obama because he seemed to deal with the crisis without drama, others voted for John McCain because he was more experienced.  Now, I think, people are not panicky, but rather are concerned and angry — concerned because, years later, the economy still stinks and jobs remain hard to come by, and angry because our political leaders don’t seem to be doing anything much about it.

What does this mean?  First, I think fewer people will be deeply involved in the election and a smaller percentage of people will vote.  No one will be arguing that the election offers a chance to vote for a perfect candidate.  Second, I think many people have already made up their minds, based purely on their assessment of President Obama’s performance.  They either think he has done a good job in avoiding another Great Depression despite the obstructionism of his opponents or believe he has spent recklessly and put the country on the path to financial ruin.  Even the most powerful political ads aren’t going to change their competing perceptions.

Third, I think many people are still reserving judgment and want to see how things play out.  They’ll be making two judgments in the coming months.  First, is Mitt Romney up to the job?  Can he handle the pressure and juggle the competing demands without meltdowns or gross missteps?  If Romney passes that test, then they’ll think about whether President Obama has done a good job.

Elections in which an incumbent is on the ballot are almost always referendums on the incumbent’s performance, and I think 2012 will be no different.  Stripped of illusion and romantic hopes, undecided voters will consider whether the economy is improving in ways that affect their lives.  Are family members and friends who have been out of work getting hired, or are other acquaintances getting laid off?  They’ll look at gas prices, and unemployment statistics, and the stock market, and I think those indicators will tell the tale.  If unemployment rates inch back up, and gas prices remain at or above $4 a gallon, President Obama will face a very tough road.

A peaceful suburbanite will sip her morning coffee and look out into the backyard, and be startled to see a brown, loose-limbed creature ambling across the lawn.  They call them “urban coyotes,” and studies indicate that they are thriving in cities across the northern states.  The urban coyotes tend to be more nocturnal than their rural counterparts, are better fed, and live longer, too.  They often live in packs that claim specific territories.  And while no one knows exactly how many there are, because most coyotes are too smart to be easily caught and tagged for electronic monitoring, researchers estimate that there are anywhere from hundreds to several thousand in most metropolitan areas.

Although timid suburbanites are worried that the coyotes might devour the house cat and small dog population, the coyotes mainly feast on small rodents and the eggs of those annoying Canadian geese — and thereby are helping to save the world from being buried in goose droppings.  I’d say they are providing a valuable service in that regard, and don’t mind if they take an occasional stroll through our neighborhood.