I hate mobs, I hate overpriced food, and I hate festivals. But if I have to be at one, I like to camp out with a sketchbook and steal a couple portraits.
Somebody told me that the island used to be a slum for immigrants that just came off the boat from Lake Erie, and that during prohibition the Canadians used to smuggle booze across the lake and move it here (hence the name). Then somebody told me it’s not even an island, it’s a peninsula.
One thing I know: there were some weird-looking Joes around there.
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My Powerbook is in worse shape than before. We took it apart yesterday and replaced the hard drive, but midway through, I pulled the power socket out of the logic board. (Turns out, this is a common problem.) So the hard drive is fine now, but you can’t turn the stupid thing on, because the cable that runs from the power button to the power supply is disconnected! So now I have to find a tiny soldering iron to get in there and fix it… (if anybody in the Cleveland area is reading this and has done such a thing…let me know!)
I’m begging you: if you bought a Mac recently, before your one-year warranty runs out, GET THE APPLECARE. It will be worth it! (That reminds me of this YouTube video of the Animals’ “San Francisco Nights”: “It’s an American Dream / includes Indians, too!”)
And if you’re ever dumb enough to attempt a repair like this, I really suggest getting a guide from this site.
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I have such a love/hate relationship with the Magnetic Fields. Meg and I love their music so much, but when we went to see them live, I wasn’t expecting Stephin Merritt to be such an asshole. Reading Daniel Handler’s liner notes to 69 LOVE SONGS makes me feel a little bit better about the whole thing: he’s obviously a workhorse of a songwriter.
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Other things: David Heatley is posting some of his new work at his blog. Rbally has a Specials show up. Se4n talks interactive fiction. Gerry quotes Vonnegut on oil depletion. Meg reports that going green is getting easier. (Check out Vonnegut’s “Pre-Bush Blueprint for the American Dream.”) And a Western alum has a long, personal eulogy for our alma mater.
The Great Merritt Conflict — I know it well. I can vouch for the fact that Claudia Gonson and Chris Ewan are Really Nice People, which balances things out.
well, there you go…if Aunt Gwenda vouches for them, they’re okay in my book! :-D
Actually Whiskey Island takes its name from the 13 salons, as well as whiskey stills that supposedly existed on the “island,” when it was a thriving, although slummy, neighborhood of Irish immigrants from the 1830’s to the turn of the century. Most of the immigrants, however, where “just off the boat,” but arrived in Cleveland overland. On August 10, 1837, THE OHIO CITY ARGUS stated, “While our attention is diverted to the numerous shiploads of poor Irish that arrive at our ports…” The use of “ports,” however, refers to East Coast ports, not Cleveland, as the article makes clear. There has been some confusion about the nature of work that these Irish immigrants undertook, although from extant records it appears that Irish canal workers did not settle in Cleveland/Ohio City proper. Most Whiskey Island men and boys worked along the ore docks. Along the remnants of Riverbed Road are still to be found foundation ruins, if you hunt hard enough. In its heyday, 22 streets crisscrossed it. There was a There was an unnamed alley parallel to and a block west of Toledo Street, which some of the early inhabitants dubbed “Sin Alley,” more than likely for its stills and prostitutes.
There are a number of excellent sources of information on Whiskey Island, the most accurate, perhaps, being IRSH AMERICANS AND THEIR COMMUNITIES OF CLEVELAND by William F. Hickey (http://www.clevelandmemory.org/irish/tabsam.html)
whoa, thanks frank!