Diner: In a Jam
There's a secret I keep in my closet, not because I'm ashamed, but because it's the only place to put it. There sits a monument of culinary hubris: 42 pints of homemade strawberry jam. To dispose of it properly would require a more durable toaster than mine. And, unfortunately, the stuff is too thick…
Whirlygig: 7
Keeping Warm For the past couple of years, my New Year's Eve has begun with a small dinner party at my apartment. Usually, my roommate Christa and I are frantically cooking dinner (I mean heating up the gourmet dishes her mother makes us). Then we rush out to wherever, standing elbow to elbow with near-strangers.…
Harlem on My Mind
Get ready for the NBA: the New Black Aesthetic. Our grandparents, Zora Neale Hurston and James Baldwin, bequeathed it to us. They got it from folks like Romare Bearden, Gordon Parks, Josephine Baker, Miles Davis, Paul Robeson, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, Duke Ellington, Donny Hathaway and Jelly Roll Morton. I see the…
Forgiveness in Healing
One of the hardest tasks in healing — whether it be in ourselves, in our relationships, in our communities or our world — is forgiveness. Author and medical intuitive Caroline Myss stated, "All disease can be cured by forgiveness." That can be a hard concept to understand until we begin to understand the freeing capabilities…
Connecting and volunteering
So the New Year is upon us, and you've been thinking about ways to make 2002 better, more meaningful, more whatever. Was volunteering on your list of New Year's resolutions? There's a lot of attention being paid right now to volunteerism in the wake of Sept. 11 as people who perhaps had never volunteered anything…
Rueff’s Overdue Spotlight
The first time I met Tommy Rueff, he was running an arts education class from a drab plaza storefront along Beechmont Avenue. The last time I saw Rueff he was still working hard from the same storefront. His dedication to Happen Inc. — a non-profit company that mixes art education and creativity for a diverse…
The Year We Knew
In a year when the events of one day changed the tone for the entire year, leaving our country and the world understandably preoccupied with reevaluating priorities, it is important to take a look back at some of the other important milestones that defined 2001 for the gay and lesbian community. On the same-sex marriage…
The Trash Brats
The Trash Brats If you're looking to stave that New Year's Eve hangover off well into the new year, we highly recommend the debauched Rock & Roll swagger of Detroit's bastard sons The Trash Brats. Live, the group shows a loving debt to the New York Dolls, with a perverse energy and cheap-lingerie stage…
With the Police Division in Disorder, Should the City Make It Bigger?
Can Cincinnati really handle more new cops, when the ones it already has have caused so much trouble? That's the biggest question left unanswered in city council's rush to hire 75 more police officers. An increase in violent crime this year requires additional staffing, according to Police Chief Tom Streicher, who spoke Dec. 17 to…
Watch out for the ego’s version of truth
In a recent TV interview, Ann Graham, Billy Graham's daughter, blamed the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on our nation's collective abandonment of God. According to Graham, God, being a gentleman, politely backed off and left us to our own devices when we ended prayer in public schools and began teaching our teenagers…
