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A couple of cold photos from Englewood MetroPark this afternoon (click to embiggen):
Google Maps still refers to “Englewood Recreation Reservoir,” but as you can see from Five Rivers MetroParks’ sign about the “lake,” it’s reverting to a “rich floodplain habitat,” not that you can tell that when it’s covered by even a small amount of snow.
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Ask people you know to name a famous historical figure from Dayton, and if they don’t name the Wright Brothers, they might name Paul Laurence Dunbar or John Patterson or perhaps even Erma Bombeck. But I bet they won’t name Natalie Clifford Barney. If you’re not gay yourself (and even if you are), odds are that you’ve never heard of her either. Yet when Natalie Barney died in 1972, her obituary was in the New York Times, and if you speak French and ever find yourself in Paris and ask about her, you’ll have a better chance than in Dayton of finding someone who’s heard of her1. Why? Because Barney, an heiress of Dayton’s Barney Car Company, lived for decades in Paris as an out lesbian, feminist, writer, and salon hostess, bringing together authors and artists such as Romaine Brooks (her long-time lover), F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and many more. Today, 37 years after her death in Paris and 133 years after her birth in Dayton, an Ohio Historical Marker was finally unveiled, thanks to the efforts of the Greater Dayton LGBT Center, the Living Beatitudes Community (Dignity Dayton), the Gay Ohio Historical Initiative and the Ohio Historical Society. As Dayton mayor Rhine McLin pointed out during the dedication, the marker commemorating Natalie Barney is another Dayton first, the first historical marker in Ohio commemorating an LGBT person. Long-time Dayton LGBT Center board member, librarian and Dayton historian Leon Bey spoke both outside during the dedication as well as at the reception inside the library afterwards. Over the years Leon has done a lot of research on Barney’s life. An interesting anecdote he shared was of going to Paris with his partner David and visiting Barney’s faithful servant Berthe Cleyrergue, who prepared for Leon and David many of the items she’d so often made to serve at Barney’s famous salons. During the reception, in addition to hearing more from Leon about Barney’s life, we were treated to a Readers Theatre highlighting a small selection of writings by and and about Barney. The readings also gave a taste of another historical perspective about Dayton, the annual Salon de DLGC (Dayton Lesbian and Gay Center, as the Greater Dayton LGBT Center was then known), held in the 80s and early 90s in the style of Barney’s Paris salon with performances by gay and lesbian Daytonians. You yourself can read the selections presented during the Readers Theatre by viewing the event’s program (in PDF format), which also includes an annotated bibliography of the sources used for the text of the historical marker about Barney. To see some more photos from the dedication ceremony, visit the gallery page about the event.   (Click either image above to embiggen.)
1Si vous parlez français, this page has a lot of information about (and photos of) Natalie Barney.
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 Proud to dine with queers, proud to vote against queers? Well the reason I was surprised to see Lovelace is that unlike Foley, who was there to tell us about Montgomery County’s new policy banning discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in county hiring, or Whaley, who was there to remind us of her support in 2007 for an ordinance prohibiting such discrimination in the City of Dayton, Lovelace actually supports discrimination against queers. In case you don’t remember, in 2007, Dean Lovelace voted to keep discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity legal in the City of Dayton. Perhaps by attending the Pride Dinner he’s hoping that queers have forgotten that, and maybe also that African American pastors from the the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, who also opposed the ordinance in 2007, will be unaware of his attending a gay pride event. If a white politician in 1967 had voted to keep racial discrimination legal, would he have been welcome at a NAACP dinner? Perhaps if such a politician publicly recanted his vote and opposed any new attempts to make discrimination legal again, he’d be welcome. I don’t know if black ministers are still thinking about trying to put Dayton’s non-discrimination ordinance up for a public vote, but if they do, Lovelace will have a chance to redeem himself. Until such a time I say that his 2007 vote trumps his 2009 Pride Dinner attendance. And I won’t have forgotten his 2007 vote if he runs for re-election in 2011. |
 CareSource’s building all alit (behind some others) Tonight I heard singing and chanting outside that I couldn’t understand. It was Greek to me, and when I went to look for its source, wouldn’t you know, it was! Tonight the church across from my apartment celebrated Orthodox Good Friday, and part of their service was this candlelit procession around their building. Fun! While I was out I got a decent shot of Dayton’s skyline at night. Healthcare must be really profitable because not only could CareSource afford to build a brand new building downtown but they can also afford to keep all the lights inside fully blazing along with fancy colored trim lighting along the roof. |
Parking Fail
 Click to embiggen One thing that’s funny is that from my balcony seeing their cars pull alongside the spot I can see that if some of these drivers actually knew how to parallel park, a skill Daytonians in general haven’t mastered, they could in fact fit their cars in this almost-a-parking-spot or that if any of them were driving one of the brand new self-parking cars, their new self-parking car could fit itself into it. Another thing I can see from my perch high above the potential parkers is just how much wasted parking space there is. People don’t seem to want to pull up. The red lines in the lower photo here point out all the wasted parking space. Makes me glad I have a spot in our building’s garage. |
The green line in this photo taken tonight is almost a parking spot. There’s some event going on tonight at the Last week I read on esrati.com about yet another Dayton mayoral candidate, namely James R. Greene, III, so, as I did with Gary Leitzell, I e-mailed Mr. Greene to ask about his position on Dayton's non-discrimination ordinance and the 2007 addition to it of sexual orientation. And as with Mr. Leitzell I got an interesting response from Mr. Greene, not one saying, as Mr. Leitzell did, that traditional marriage should be protected—I hadn't asked Mr. Greene (or Mr. Leitzell) about marriage, which is not a local issue—but saying that he thought our laws already provided for protection against discrimination on any basis and that Dayton's law just mirrored that. Lest I be accused of misquoting Mr. Greene, as I was with Mr. Leitzell, here is precisely what he said: First, as a practicing civil rights attorney for over 20+ years I am firmly convinced that our laws, as presently written, provide that no person should be discriminated against on any basis. Second, Dayton's ordinance merely reflects current law. Third, I do not believe that the discussions on Dayton's non-discrimination ordinance were properly framed. The focus of the ordinance should've been on treating people as you or I would want to be treated. I was surprised by that. If our state's and nation's laws already prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, then what was all the fuss about getting sexual orientation added to non-discrimination laws? I wrote back to Mr. Greene and said I didn't think he was right and asked specifically if he therefore thought sexual orientation should be removed from Dayton's non-discrimination ordinance. Mr. Greene replied back, saying that "[he] would not withdraw the ordinance," but that he disagreed with my interpretation of the law: I respectfully disagree with your interpretation of the law. Under a Title VII (federal discrimination statute) comprehensive analysis, the United States Supreme Court in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc. 523 U.S. 75 (1998) held that same-sex sexual harassment may fall within Title VII's prohibition of discrimination. The legal argument was framed this way: "…[a]s some courts have observed, male-on-male sexual harassment in the workplace was assuredly not the principle [sic] evil Congress was concerned with when it enacted Title VII." But statutory prohibitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils, and it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed. "Title VII prohibits 'discrimination … because of … sex' in the terms or conditions of employment." Thus, a reasonable legal argument can be sustained that a person who is deprived of means of support, employment and such when done on the basis of that person's sex, is impermissible because the US Supreme Court has said that harassment (including, hiring, firing etc., and I quote "must extend to sexual harassment of any kind that meets the statutory requirements." The Supreme Court is basically putting forth the argument that if one can establish that sexual orientation is the basis of discrimination, and that sexual oritentation [sic] has nothing to do with job performance etc., it is impermissible to use sexual orientation as a criteria to discriminate against that person. I thanked Mr. Greene for his reply and said that I wanted to check with some gay rights organizations to see whether they could find any cases related to the case he cited. The folks at the Midwest Regional Office of Lambda Legal were very helpful. Cheryl Angelaccio actually laughed when I told her about Mr. Greene's position and asked for help in finding cases related to it. She didn't have any cases in which people had tried to use Oncale v. Sundowner for redress for instances of sexual orientation discrimination, but she did point me to a very informative PDF on Lambda Legal's website, "There Ought to be a Law," which summarizes multiple cases involving harassment based on sexual orientation, all of which specifically say that, contrary to Mr. Greene's opinion, Title VII does not apply to harassment on the basis of sexual orientation. I shared this information with Mr. Greene and asked him if, given that courts have held that Title VII doesn't apply to harassment on the basis of sexual orientation, he still thought that Title VII would be applicable to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and if he could cite any cases in which someone who'd been fired for being gay had been able to obtain redress under Oncase v. Sundowner. His answer to that was: The direct answer to your question is no. I am only aware of the case I cited being used for same sex discrimination in the employment setting (which is what my law practice is centered around). Meanwhile in addition to asking Lambda Legal for help I'd also contacted Equality Ohio, thinking that perhaps they could give me some examples here in Ohio. They refered me to Scott Knox, a Cincinnati attorney, who has dealt with a lot of gay / lesbian / transgender / HIV issues, and Scott said what I'd noted above, that Oncale was about harassment not discrimination and that "[t]his case has absolutely no applicability to people who are fired / not hired / otherwise discriminated against in employment because they're gay." So perhaps Mr. Greene is right and our nation's greatest LGBT legal minds are wrong, but I don't really think so. And, as I pointed out to him, even if he were right, it's important that sexual orientation be included explicitly in non-discrimination laws because our laws reflect what our society thinks is right and wrong and because having it included explicitly might discourage people from engaging in it. He points out that it won't prevent it completely, which is correct, just as having race-based discrimination being illegal hasn't prevented that, but I think it might stop some people. Now I post all this not as an attack on Mr. Greene for being (in my and others' opinions) wrong about this, but because if he thinks this, perhaps other people do. Lord knows that enough people who aren't lawyers and who have never heard of Oncale think that firing someone just for being gay is already illegal. And even if Mr. Greene is wrong about the law I have to give him credit for thinking that gay people (and everyone) should be "treat[ed] as ... [he] would want to be treated," for not wanting to roll back Dayton's protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and for being willing to engage in dialogue about what he thinks. At the end of all these e-mails between us, Mr. Greene asked me if I had any concerns other than the anti-discrimination ordinance and if so what they were. I answered him that I do have other concerns, giving him urban sprawl and race relations as two, in addition to wanting a decent grocery store downtown. However, I also told him that plenty of people share my other concerns and ask politicians about them, which is why I don't ask about a long list of issues but focus on gay rights. I have spent time personally working on race relations and spend time through my church's Justice and Witness ministry working on that as well as on the environment, but I don't see tons of straight people asking politicians whether they think it should be legal to fire queers. Well, actually, let me strike that; I do see a fair number of straight people who think that it should be legal to fire queers advocating for that. So, yeah, I'm going to continue to keep my eyes open, and when I see people running for office, I'm going to ask questions about my issue. You gotta love democracy, and the Internet, which makes dialogue with politicians much easier. |
 EasyParkDowntown.org as it looks in Firefox (click to embiggen)  EasyParkDowntown.org as it looks in Internet Explorer (click to embiggen) The Dayton Daily News had an article today about the Downtown Dayton Partnership's fancy new EasyParkDowntown.org website. The article's author, Tim Tresslar, must be a faithful reader of David Esrati's blog because this is not the first time he's written about something that Esrati wrote about first (update: actually Dayton Business Journal wrote about it first). Esrati's blog entry about EasyParkDowntown.org was not favorable. And I have to say I'm not impressed with EasyParkDowntown.org either, but for other reasons, namely web design reasons. The interactive map on the site was created using Adobe Flash, a cumbersome tool for websites (read some of my earlier gripes about Flash on websites), and the coder added some JavaScript to his page to make sure the Flash object is resized to take up the entire size of the browser window. Actually it makes the Flash object larger than the browser window, cutting off text and making it impossible to scroll down to see the rest of the content, especially in Firefox but even in Internet Explorer. Their helpful "Let's get Started" text mentions buttons you can click in order to hide or show layers of information on their map, but you can't see the buttons if your web browser's set to a size their web developer didn't anticipate (for example, maximized Firefox or Internet Explorer windows on my 1920x1200 laptop screen or my 1440x900 external LCD)! Did anyone even look at this application after it was published but before it was announced to the world? From the work I do I know that some organizations are willing to pay big bucks, thousands of dollars, for applications such as this (for example), and they're too ignorant to know better. I gleaned the data from EasyParkDowntown and rolled my own webpage based on Google Maps in a couple hours. Check it out and see if you don't agree that it's friendlier to end users: www.davidlauri.com/easyparking Here's one way in which my version is friendlier — try printing from my version and try printing from EasyParkDowntown.org. Completely ignoring the fact that if you print using your browser's File->Print command on their site you won't get what they intended, even if you do realize that to print you have to click on their print icon (the little pic of the page at the right of the icons below their map), what you get isn't at all useful. Want a list of parking garages to take with you? You're not gonna get it from EasyParkDowntown.org! One last gripe — if you're coming downtown to go to the Oregon District, you won't find any of its parking on EasyParkDowntown.org. Is it because most people don't consider the Oregon District to be part of downtown (or Greater Downtown)? Or is it because the Oregon District Business Association wouldn't participate in the Special Improvement District tax that funds the Downtown Dayton Partnership? |
A copy of a photograph of Gary Leitzell with his lovely wife and daughter was originally posted here, but he asked me to remove it.*
Traditionally no husband would be a stay at home father. So much for changing the traditional definition of marriage, huh?
I read in today's Dayton Daily News of Gary Leitzell's mayoral candidacy, so I e-mailed him to ask where he stood on last year's addition of sexual orientation as a protected class in Dayton's non-discrimination ordinances. He very quickly replied, saying that he has "no problems with equal rights for gays" but adding, unasked, that he does "have a problem with changing the legal definition of a traditional word like marriage."* Funny, how equal rights for gays so obviously, even to a straight man, relates to marriage. Funny, also, how people don't understand what marriage traditionally meant. Traditionally marriage meant a man was master of his wife or wives. He'd acquired her (or them) from her (or their) father(s) and legally couldn't even rape her (them) for how could a man rape what was basically his own property. Women had no rights in marriage traditionally. You don't hear too many people advocating a return to truly traditional marriage, do you? No, most people have grown comfortable with the idea that marriage is a relationship between two equal partners. And if the definition of marriage has changed to that, and don't tell me it hasn't, then what's so wrong with those two equal partners both being men or both being women? *Update: Gary Leitzell e-mailed me to ask me to remove the photograph of him with his lovely wife and daughter, so I've done so, though you can still see it (at least for now) on his mayoral campaign blog or on his personal blog. He was also dismayed that I had asked him "a question anonymously" and then posted his answer, taking it out of context. Well first, I did not ask him a question anonymously. I used my real name and used my davidlauri.com e-mail address, not some made up AOL or Yahoo screen name totally unconnected to any real person. And second, he's a candidate for mayor; that he should be surprised that people discuss his positions on issues is itself surprising. And no, he did not specify that his answer was "off the record," though if he had done so, that'd be pretty interesting, wouldn't it? A candidate for mayor who didn't care to take public stands on issues? So let's look at the rest of his reply: I do have a problem with changing the legal definition of a traditional word like marriage to line the pockets of lawyers though. It would mean that we could legally change the meaning of any word to suit our purpose. That could lead us on a very dangerous course. I suppose that could mean he doesn't mind changing the legal definition of marriage if it wouldn't line the pockets of lawyers to do so. Or it could mean that he thinks that despite our having changed the legal definition of marriage in the past to preclude polygamy or to make divorce possible or to change a wife's rights that to change it by extending it to same sex couples would mean that we'd start changing the definition of other words too — perhaps we'll end up dangerously redefining legally "blue" to mean "red" or "expenses" to mean "income." Why he'd think that, I've no idea. Seems to me that marriage has had a relatively straightforward (no pun intended) legal evolution and extending it to same sex couples doesn't mean we're going to be redefining everything. And I think it seems that way to the justices on the Supreme Courts of several states (Hawaii: Baehr v. Lewin, 1993; Vermont: Baker v. Vermont, 1999; Massachusetts: Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 2003; California: In re Marriage Cases, 2008; Connecticut: Kerrigan and Mock v. Connecticut Department of Public Health, 2008 [update 04/03/2009: and Iowa: Varnum v. Brien, 2009]) and a foreign country too (Canada: Reference re Same-Sex Marriage, 2004) as well as to the legislatures of some foreign countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada). But what do they know? |
The fine folks involved in the  of our fair city, at least those at its Human Relations Council, aren't very good at proofreading: They do, however, a fine job of being PC (not, I guess, that there's anything wrong with that): 
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I bought a 1945 street map of Dayton from eBay. You can see it online here. |
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This evening my nephew Carl and I did a typically American summer thing, namely go to a ball game, the 
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An old punch bowl and 1969 television 
Yesterday evening was the annual Dayton Gay Men's Chorus progressive dinner, of which I hosted the first course, hors d'oeuvres, which gave me an occasion to use my grandmother's 18-piece Williamsport Crystal Punch Service of polished Prescut crystal by HazelWare®,
 My friend Bob pouring punch into my grandmother's bowl Unless you're a collector of HazelWare or Prescut crystal, the punch bowl may not be of much interest to you, but you might be interested what was used to cushion it inside its box, namely a couple sections of the Dayton Journal Herald newspaper of Tuesday, April 1, 1969. That date is less than a week after the birth of my sister, so I wonder what use my grandmother put the punch bowl to that week after which she'd have carefully packed it back up. She used a couple different sections of the paper as cushioning, but rather than share the whole trove with you at once, I'll follow my grandfather's tradition and save it for multiple blog entries (no, he didn't have a blog, but he could cut up a single Bun Bar and make it last for a week or longer). 
What I saw when I lifted the punch bowl out of its box was the top half of page 35, the TV listings for April 1, 1969. This pre-dates my own TV viewing memories but only barely. These were the days when every city had only a handful of stations and when every house had an aerial on its roof. Our house (and probably many others) had an antenna that could be rotated by means of a control kept atop the TV console because different stations (particularly the distant Cincinnati ones) came in better with the antenna in different positions. The Dayton newspapers listed both Dayton and Cincinnati stations, although during prime time the choices on Dayton and Cincinnati affiliates of the same networks were duplicates.
So what were your prime time viewing choices in Dayton, Ohio, on April 1, 1969?
In addition, the newspaper also lists channel 16 WKTR-TV as having "movies" (but doesn't name them!), channel 26 WSWO as having Canadian hockey and channel 19 WXIX as carrying the Joan Rivers Show (I loved Joan Rivers when her Late Show helped launch the Fox network but had no idea she had an earlier show). All three of these channels were independent stations launched in 1968 and 1969. WKTR and WSWO I don't remember, and Wikipedia reports they were both off the air by 1970 (perhaps because all they showed were these untitled "movies"), but WXIX is what my sister and I tuned in after school to watch snowy repeats of shows like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeanie. The idea of television being in color was still a novelty since the Jerry Lewis Show is noted in one of the previews as being "in color." It seems the Journal Herald didn't employ its own television writer, relying instead on the syndicated services of Richard K. Shull, an Indianapolis-based writer who died just this year. One obituary notes that Shull was noted for his acerbic wit, a wit that's apparent in his preview of the April 1, 1969 episode of the Doris Day Show; he says, "this episode isn't all that bad. Miss Day has some good, light comedy moments." Not quite what you'd call high praise, but I checked out the first season of Doris Day's show once from the library and I think Shull's analysis is accurate. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
For the past year, I've lived near downtown Dayton on Grafton Hill. I like living downtown because there are lots of fun things to do within walking distance. I spent part of today with my mother, sister and brother-in-law. First we walked over to the CityFolk festival, where we got something to eat, watched some dancing and listened to some music. Then we went to the Victoria Theatre for the first of this summer's Cool Films, 1776, a film fitting for the holiday weekend but one about whom I agree with Roger Ebert.
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Something that comes along with having a website is that you can look at your logs to see what's bringing people to your site. I got a particularly interesting hit today from Google, namely the query "is rhine mclin gay."
 If Mayor McLin is gay she hasn't told me It's possible that Mayor McLin will get a push in this area sometime since there's a fresh generation of young queer activitists who might have the energy to do so. The other hit I got today is from someone studying Shakespeare and wanting to know "which is the merchant and which the jew," something I had to consider for ENG410 once. Alas for the poor Googler, although my site can point him or her in the right direction, I do not reveal the answer. |
This evening, courtesy of MVFHC, I went to the Dayton Branch of the NAACP's annual Freedom Fund Banquet, the 55th year the dinner was held but the first time I'd ever attended.
The event was held downtown at the Convention Center, and so I can't help comparing the NAACP banquet to the Pride Dinner, which was held several years at the Convention Center and was the last dinner-style event I'd attended there.
 Corrine Brown as seen from my distant seat 
 Corrine Brown in pink
Brown was fun, and though she was politic enough not to mention Blackwell by name, she didn't spare him any punches, exhorting the audience to vote for people not just cause they "bought a ticket to the NAACP barbeque" but instead because of their stand on the issues and their voting records and reminding us that we need to be vigilant to make sure this year's election is a fair one, unlike the 2000 election in Florida, in which 27,000 voters in her district had their ballots tossed out, and the 2004 election in Ohio, for whose handling Blackwell has been so widely praised (not).
I couldn't see Brown so well from my distant seat on the edge, but she stood out since she was pretty in pink, a color I guess she likes to wear other places too. Now Brown is prettier than a drag queen, but, bless her heart, I have to admit the comparison did cross my mind. I looked for a pic of Ms. Demure (of Harper's Bizzaroworld fame) in pink but couldn't find one.
Looking for websites tonight while writing this, I see that people are just plagued by expiring domain names. The Dayton Branch of the NAACP is one of only a few in Ohio listed on the NAACP website as having its own website (the big three, Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati don't have websites), but daytonnaacp.org expired in June this year and was snatched up by a domain name prospector. Ms. Demure used to have a domain name for her show at bazzaroworld.com, but that expired and has been taken over too. Google lists an article about Ms. Demure on queerohio.com, but that just expired this month, though its proprietors may yet reclaim it. How difficult is it to keep track of your domain names, people?
Stupid idea: NAACP is commonly pronounced as N double-A CP. I think it'd be cool if they updated their name to American Association for the Advancement of African Americans, cause then they'd be the quintuple-A.
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Yes, it's rare for me to post twice to my blog on the same day, but I just got an e-mail that I want to comment on.
 Not a good place to have anonymous sex My friend is upset that the police do not "put hot undercover babes with their tits hanging out in parks [to] bust the straight guys," and he considers this arrest to be "entrapment and selective enforcement" and "cultural repression and isolation" to be "the crux of the problem." Now entrapment is certainly a tool that the police and others use to try to weed out behavior they consider undesirable. However, the DDN article says that the men "were arrested Tuesday evening after undercover Dayton officers said they observed them engaging in sex acts in a park shelter." The men were not arrested because they approached an undercover police officer and asked for sex (there in fact used to be a law in Ohio against asking another man for sex, if the other man might find such a request offensive, but that was struck down as unconstitutional in 2002) — no, instead the men were arrested because they were fucking in a park shelter, clearly not entrapment. I don't think it was selective enforcement either. The article also quotes Police Lt. Patrick Welsh as saying these "undercover operations" are common "in the park and other areas where public sex and prostitution are common." Prostitution stings against heterosexual men aren't exactly rare, are they? And last time I checked there haven't been tons of straight men and women heading to park shelters to have sex. Are the police aware of something I'm not and giving public breeders a pass? I suppose you could argue that having sex in a park at night, when children aren't around, doesn't hurt anyone, and you could argue that police resources would be put to better use by focusing on other crimes. But I'd argue that working for the right to have sex in park shelters is not the best use of our resources either. Is having sex in park shelters more important than having the right to marry or to have health insurance or Social Security benefits?  A good place to have anonymous sex Married (to a woman) and still in the closet? Well if you don't want your wife catching you online at gay.com, then you don't have to resort to the park to find sex. You can drive up to Club Columbus or Flexx Baths, find yourself a man and have police-free sex in a private club. My friend may in fact be right that "cultural repression and isolation" are the "crux of the problem," but that's not the fault of the police. Heterosexually-married, closeted gay men may think that sex in a park is their only option, but I cannot fault the majority of people who think sex in parks is inappropriate and should be stopped. Note to Mr. Pyle: yes, sex in park shelters might be considered an example of destructive behavior, but I still think heterosexual johns cruising for hookers have gay guys outnumbered. |
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This evening I went with some friends to A World A'Fair, an annual event held at the convention center that I've attended even before I moved downtown. We got there in time to see the opening parade of nations featuring people in various ethnic costumes (Dayton Mayor Rhine McLin marched too but not in ethnic garb).
Although the parade is fun, the point of the event is the food. We started with some Riesling from the South Slavs (even during various wars and peaceful divorces in Europe, immigrants from Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia here in Dayton always continued to get along). I had a cheese triangle pastry thingie (I forget what it's really called) from Greece, bul go gi (marinated beef) from Korea, plantain chips from the Philippines and a cannoli from Italy (yum!). And of course no World A'Fair is complete without some Appelflappen from the Netherlands (although this year they are 2 for $1 instead of 3 for $1). It runs through Sunday at 6pm so you can still go if you're reading this in time. |
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I was out and about downtown this afternoon (had lunch at Quiznos and saw Sweet Sixteen at Neon Movies). While I was out I saw something you won't see much longer downtown, namely a mounted patrolman. Because of budget cuts, the city is getting rid of the horses and making their downtown police officers ride bikes. I guess all the reasons make sense (not having to pay a trained policeman to spend his time taking care of horses, police on bikes being better able to chase criminals, etc.), but it seems to me that with the push to make downtown tourist-friendly the horses were a nice touch.
 
Then on my way home I saw something on my street you'll probably always be able to see downtown, a homeless person with his two grocery carts full of stuff. |
 
Then in the afternoon I went to another TEFL party. This time Dr. Crusan and her husband Dr. Bank hosted. They live in a beautiful mission-style mansion in
Springfield where Dr. Bank's practice, the Transformational Healing Center, is also based. The party was in honor of the Korean TEFL students from WooSong University as well as one of their professors, Dr. Sung, who came to teach in the TEFL program. Tim and Yuki played guitar again, with a little help from Eun-Young. Anthony wore his cool shoes.
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I walked over to Fifth Third Field this evening to watch the dress rehearsal of the Inventing Flight opening ceremonies, and it was really a rough rehearsal. I'd heard from a friend of a friend of the crew that the rehearsal would start at 8pm and would take an hour if there were no hitches. I got there around 8 (as did a lot of other people wanting a preview), and there was a lot of nothing going on, although there were some interesting costumes backstage, as you can see.
 
Before I'd made it to the ballpark, I walked along the new section of the pedestrian canal, and a woman from Miami Jacobs College asked me to take her picture and e-mail it to her. She was going to complain to the city about the water coming down the lightpoles, which concerned her because the poles have electrical outlets at the bottom.
 
After I got to the ballpark and saw that things weren't starting any time soon, I decided to walk over to the new pedestrian bridge across the Mad River from downtown to Deeds Point.   Here's an interest part of Dayton history you probably won't hear elsewhere -- before all the downtown renovation, and especially before they decided to have Inventing Flight stuff on Deeds Points and nearby, the Levee there by the river was a major cruising ground for closeted gay men (particularly married ones) to pick each other up! While I was over there I noticed that a guard was posted by the fireworks. Guess he's got to spend the night there.
    
When I made it back to the ballpark a second time, things began to start. A woman named Nancy was coordinating things over the loudspeakers, often yelling "Stop the music!" or "No, that's the wrong tape!" or "Could my balloon people get out here?" Things were not running smoothly, but it was entertaining nevertheless. I didn't stay for the whole thing, which I could see was going to take closer to three hours than one, but I did enjoy the flying dancers and the kids with balloons and the Pegasus. I don't regret not buying $150 official tickets though. This was good enough. |
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