This actually works pretty well as beat poetry.

Rambunctious Romaine, bounteous butterhead.

Searing serranos.

Bunches and bunches of basil.

A gaggle of green beans.

And oh, those tomatoes… gotta let them ripen… and wait, just a little bit longer…

Cuyahoga county’s first Sonic.

On Snow Road in Parma right in the middle of the Midtown strip mall parking lot. Across the street from an Eat ‘n Park and a Burger King. A few feet down from a Dunkin Donuts and a McDonalds.

I think that’s what’s known as variety.

Time for another installment of the vacation edition of Sign of the Times, meaning another trip to an exotic locale close to home. This time, it’s ol’  Toledo.

I spent a day in Toledo last week with two goals in mind; one, to visit the Fallen Timbers battlefield site south of Toledo, and to attend the Collingwood Arts Center poetry reading hosted by Michael Grover.

First stop, the famous Tony Packo’s where I had a decent lunch (a dog, a bowl of chili, and an iced tea for $6.49) and read the Toledo City Paper. And what do I find there? A review of “Food, Inc.” which I saw the night before at Cedar Lee. And, a glowing review of a new Indian restaurant in Toledo called Masala Cuisine of India, which I quickly decided I would find and have dinner at later that day.

So now, it’s 12:30 and I’ve got 8 hours (!) to kill.

I drive around a bit along the Maumee River north of Tony Packo’s, with its vast open lots where shipbuilding factories once stood, and pass a newish-looking development  known as the Toledo Skyway Marina with an old coal-fired power plant in its midst. A local news crew filming a segment tells me that power plants future was uncertain for a while, but that now there are plans to save it and convert it to condos or apartments.

I drove on an stopped by the International Park just off of Main Street before crossing the Maumee into downtown Toledo. One small sign swayed my decision to turn left; ship museum. I soon found the Willis Boyer Museum Ship anchored to a dock on the Maumee River, paid 6 bucks, and took a nice leisurely 2-hour tour of the magnificent 617-foot -long iron-ore boat launched in 1911.

I talked with the director of the museum, a young guy named Paul, an ex fighter pilot, about the financial situation of the museum, their relocation a bit downriver toward the lake next year, and their quest to buy one of the two remaining Hulett ore unloaders now in storage in Cleveland.

Next, I cross the river via Main St. and make my way to the Toledo Museum of Art. The TMA, like the CMA, has free admission, with $5 parking. I saw the show of native Toledo artists (which was a mix of good and not-so-good, IMHO).

But the TMA’s Glass Pavilion was the most impressive. It felt like being in no other structure I’ve ever been in. Free and open and transparent throughout, just a remarkable structure that seemed to hover in space somewhere, pleasantly altering your idea of what a building should look and feel like.

After the museum, I drove on through the charming town of Maumee, Ohio on the way to Fallen Timbers. I found it in a round-about, off-the-map kind of way. It’s wedged between a housing development, a bike path, and a busy freeway, with a shopping mall (always a shopping mall) just on the other side of the freeway.

The story is that if the U.S. hadn’t won the Battle of Fallen Timbers, there may never have been an Ohio, much less a Michigan, Indiana, or much of the other midwest/Great Lakes states. Or at best, it all would’ve been a part of Canada.

The site is mostly a quiet, wooded knoll in a clearing overlooking the Maumee River below and to the east. There’s a main central statue, two-sided monuments on either side with the names of American soldiers killed and the other side with the names of participating Indian tribes.

By this time, I was getting real hungry, so I drove to Masala Cuisine of India for dinner. I had 2 veggie samosas ($1.99) with mint chutney and mango chutney (the samosas were fine, the chutneys ho-hum), then had an onion kulcha ($2.99) and a complex and kickin’ spicy chana masala ($8.99). The chana and the kulcha were probably some of the best I’ve ever had anywhere (including some of the Indian joints I sampled in London years ago). I talked to the owner who hails from California via Michigan, who tells me his is only the third Indian restaurant in the Toledo area. All I know is that his utterly kicks ass.

I finished off at the Collingwood Arts Center, housed in a cool, eerie Victorian-era building, (which, according to Grover, houses a few ghosts) with an energetic poetry reading hosted by Michael Grover that ended just after midnight. Followed by a small shot of caffeine and a 2-hour drive back home.

Happy 213th birthday to our fair city.

Earlier this week, I saw the movie “Food, Inc.” It’s a documentary about the food industry in this country and how it has all gone terribly wrong for us, the customers, and fantastically well for the handful of large corporations that essentially supply what we eat.

Truth be told, if you’ve followed the growing food awareness movement for any length of time, much of what the movie shows isn’t really new. Authors Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, which I wrote about here) make appearances in the movie. What the movie does do, through some graphic imagery which meat processors don’t want the public to see as well as interviews with these authors and even some organic farmers, is send the message that each of us should care where our food comes from and what we are eating.

Check out the trailer at the movie’s web site and then go see the movie.

So there I am, pouring a glass of water in the kitchen when I hear a knock at the front screen door. It’s two 20-something kids dressed in shirts and ties, holding clipboards, and trying to work up big salesguy smiles for their 20-hour a week summer sales jobs.

“How are you today, sir?” (Sir. I love it when they call me Sir…)

“Oh, just fine. And you?” I ask, knowing they want to get to the sales pitch ASAP.

“Great!”

After we’ve established that I’m the primary homeowner, the lad doing most of the talking hands me a laminated sheet of paper illustrated with various home improvement projects, like window replacements, air conditioning updates, that sorta thing.

“Which one of these would you say you’re most likely to do soon?”

I laughed a hearty, belly-shaking laugh and said “Well, to be honest, the project I need to do the soonest is find a job.”

“Oh, right, sorry to hear that” they kind of mumble.

Now I’ve got them on the ropes. So I go in for the knockout punch.

“Yeah, people are always wondering what I’m doing home on a Monday. ‘Day off?’ they ask. ‘More like a LOT of days off, if ya know what I mean’” And I keep it up, stringing together word after word at a maddening pace, while they just stand and stare, growing more uncomfortable with each passing second.

I pause just long enough and when I do, they’re wishing me all the best and backing away from the front steps toward the sidewalk.

And I walk back toward the kitchen and my glass of water thinking “That’s it! I’ve found the secret to getting rid of annoying salespeople.”

Tell them you’re unemployed. Start babbling about your problems, give off the look of being a little unhinged, then watch them squirm and run for the hills.

Brilliant.

Hard to believe it’s been a year of blogging already. For everyone who’s stopped by in the past year to browse or leave a comment, a hearty THANK YOU!

Stay tuned. More is on the way…

One of the worst buzzwords to emerge during the summer of 2008 was the dreadful “staycation.” For me, there was nothing “stay” about my “cation” last summer, considering that I logged well over 30,000 air miles jetting across the globe from Australia to Asia to Europe and back again to the U.S. of A.

This year, however, things are a little different. Which brings me to this installment of Sign of the Times; let’s call them a series of (mostly) One-tank Trips (in a nod to Neil Zurcher‘s long-running series of the same name.)

Back in May I drew up a list of Buckeye state attractions I’d always wanted to visit but for some reason or other never did. So, the plan was to visit as many of these places as I could this summer. (Like, for instance, Amish country. I know, I know… what kind of Ohioan am I, right?)

First on the list (and closest to home), the Money Museum at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland on the corner of E. 6th and Superior.

Anyone who’s spent time downtown has certainly noticed the Fed building. It’s one of the city’s most beautiful buildings and was modeled after the Medici-Riccardi palace in Florence (yes, those Medici).  The walls of the lobby are covered in marble from Siena, Italy and the vaulted and domed ceiling is simply breathtaking.

Built in 1923 during the Roaring 20s (when Cleveland was the 5th largest city in the country), the place has a fortress-like feel with security in every direction, including hundreds of security cameras inside and out and gun turretts at the base of the two statues on the west side of the building by the E. 6th St. entrance. Once you get past the metal detector at the uber-secured entrance, (which was added only after 9/11, when the public could still walk in and buy U.S. savings bonds at teller windows), you get a full view of the magnificent lobby.

Here are some photos from the Money Museum inside:

One view of the lobby

Part of the ceiling listing the 12 cities with Fed banks

Some of the ironwork in the lobby

Slang terms for money on a wall inside the museum

The money tree

Why does Jovan Jovanovic “Zmaj” look sad? Because he’s on a worthless 500 billion dinar note printed during the insane inflationary period in Yugoslavia in 1993-94 when the monthly inflation averaged more than 1,300%(!)

Two weeks ago, the day after the Cleveland Museum of Art’s hugely successful Summer Solstice Party, I gushed about it here.

Well, the gushing continues. In an op-ed in today’s PD, Charles Michener waxes about the party and how it was significantly different from the other events in University Circle as well as other happenings in and around town. The most salient observation, I think, was how  the party managed to create a spirit of togetherness and that, for once, it didn’t involve any of the city’s professional sports teams.

Take note, Clevelanders.