Burnin’

We just completed a nine day journey cross country by car from coastal South Carolina to Portland, Oregon. On day one, we stopped for lunch in Asheville, NC to say “hi” to Gary and Katie. We then pushed on to Lexington, KY for the night. From the hotel we walked first to Mexican food and top shelf margs, then over to the historic Red Mile for harness racing. In the morning we found our coffee place downtown, before heading out to horse country for a tour of the distillery where the world’s best bourbon, Woodford Reserve, is made.

From the limestone hills of Kentucky, we headed north for Cincinnati where our wonderful hosts, Dave and Tera Ackerman, plus their kids, dogs and friends entertained us in their fine Craftsman-era home. That was fun. Day three took us northwest to Chicago where Casey and Gwen opened their Ravenswood apartment to us for the night. Stef came over and we walked down to Pizza D.O.C. on Lawrence to meet Liz and Buban for dinner. Pizza D.O.C. rocks, as does having dinner with friends one hasn’t seen in years. There was more drinking at two Lincoln Square bars after dinner–hey, this is Chicago we’re talking about here–before retiring to Casey and Gwen’s.

Sunday we dropped in on Evil Vince for a visit, before heading west. When Chicago started to give way to the fields of corn, I started to feel good. I felt even better when we crossed the Mississippi River and drove through the picturesque hills of Iowa. The sunset and simultaneous moonrise, as we were pulling into Omaha on night four, was stunning. We grabbed some salad, pizza and wine for dinner at a patio table in the Old Market before heading over for a free night on points at Hilton Garden Inn. In the morning I met with Shawn at his work place and had a chance to talk to his boss about picking up some copywriting assignments. We then met my aunt Leanne for lunch at Kona Grill in West O before heading for the Sandhills on Highway 2. We stopped in Halsey–where my grandpa and I used to go deer hunting–to mail some letters. At Seneca, we pulled over to see the Middle Loup River up close. A local gentleman directed us to his “rickety” cable and plyboard bridge over the river, a kind gesture we greatly appreciated.

We looked for a dinner spot in Alliance but decided to head on to Scottsbluff for the night. When we got there places were closing, but The Gaslight in Gering took us in and made steaks for us. I love Nebraska and Nebraskans. On day six we took the back way to Laramie, seeing the North Platte River near Fort Laramie. In the college town of Laramie we ate a kind hippie lunch at Jeffrey’s Bistro before heading over to Martindale’s for some new pearl snaps and a straw hat. That’s Laramie in a nutshell–part hippie, part cowboy.

We pushed westward on I-80 to Salt Lake City, where DK was entertaining his family rooftop at American Towers. DK and Anina recently purchased a truly outstanding 19th floor apartment in American Towers, with south-, west- and north-facing views. In the morning we headed up City Creek Canyon for a hike, then ventured across the tracks to Red Iguana for a mole festival at one of the nation’s best Mexican joints.

We were tempted to stay another night in SLC, but opted instead to drive five hours further west on I-80 to Winnemucca, where I thought we’d rent a cute little cabin or roadhouse room for the night. Instead, we looked at several flea-bitten options before settling in to the Days Inn. Thankfully, the grocery store had a Peet’s Coffee in it, so we fueled up in the morning and headed onto one of the loneliest stretches of two-lane road you’ll find anywhere in America. North of Winnemucca about 40 miles, we turned left onto Highway 140, which goes for many miles before delivering one to Oregon and the homey little town of Lakeview. Jerry’s Dinner in Lakeview made us perfectly prepared hash browns to go with our sandwiches and iced tea. We then took more country roads toward Crater Lake National Park, a park we’d never visited before. After you enter the park, you climb up several thousand feet to the rim of the ancient volcano and peer into the pearl blue otherworldly lake. Wow.

We took Highway 138 north from the park and wound down the canyon with the North Umpqua River as our guide. Another major wow. We caught up with the interstate highway system again in Roseburg and punched it up to Eugene for the night, where we dined on Thai food and infused ginger-cranberry cocktails. We made it to Portland by mid-day on Friday and began to settle in.

Metropolis Magazine published a feature last September on the rapid acceleration of New Urbanism in Omaha.

The magazine claims much of the groundwork for Omaha’s urban-design plan was put in place by the Omaha Community Foundation, which started working on a vision for the city in 1999. In 2002 the foundation asked Connie Spellman from the chamber of commerce to spearhead Omaha by Design, a nonprofit set up to focus their efforts, and they brought in Fred Kent of Project for Public Spaces to help.

Omaha by Design came up with 73 urban-design recommendations as part of the Omaha Master Plan. The plan encompasses everything from the landscaping of street corners, the design of important civic sites, and streetlamp choices available for neighborhoods to regional development, protection of watersheds, and the creation of a citywide trail system.

“Corporations were realizing that Omaha didn’t have the energy that a lot of young workers were looking for,” Steve Jensen, Omaha’s planning director says. “They’re saying, ‘It’s important to have a city that’s interesting and active—and a little edgy.’” That’s something community leaders appreciate about Saddle Creek Records. According to the Omaha World Herald, the city helped finance Saddle Creek’s new entertainment complex in NoDo. The 56,000 square feet complex consists of Saddle Creek Records, live music venue Slowdown, the Film Streams art-house theater and spaces in which artists can work and live.

Joe Gudenrath, spokesman for Mayor Mike Fahey, said the mayor’s office was “active in encouraging them to locate in north downtown.”

“We didn’t want to take the chance of losing Saddle Creek Records to another city,” Gudenrath said.

“I want every one of you, every one of us, 100 senators, to look in that camera, and you tell your people back home what you think. Don’t hide anymore; none of us. That is the essence of our responsibility. And if we’re not willing to do it, we’re not worthy to be seated right here. We fail our country. If we don’t debate this . . . we are not worthy of our country.” -Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) during a meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Hagel tells it like it is. I like that about him. But before I get too thrilled with his truth saying, another truth begs to be observed. This time, it’s from Huffington Post writer Matt Browner Hamlin.

Chuck Hagel’s voting record is clear. He votes with Bush and he votes the way conservatives want him to vote. Hagel votes against abortion rights, against civil rights, and against environmental protections. Hagel’s beliefs are squarely in line with the Republican Party platform. Period.

Please, the next time you hear Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, or even a Republican blogger claim that Hagel is a moderate, a maverick, or any other adjective that paints him as an anti-Republican figure, remember that it simply is not true. He remains a purebred Republican despite his correct positioning on Iraq.

Hamlin makes a good point. But I’m not as willing, nor as quick, to downgrade the man. Despite his voting record, Iraq is the central issue of the day and he’s right on Iraq. Just as importantly, he’s also right about another critical issue of our day–that’s it’s our duty as Americans to think critically, then stand up and be heard. He’s totally consistent on this issue. In fact, I’ve posted twice before about his opposing stance to the President and his administration.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times is not loving Dog Days, the new first novel by Nebraskan Ana Marie Cox, better known as Wonkette, thanks to her political blog of that name.

Dog Days manages to be doubly conventional: it follows both an old-fashioned love-betrayal-redemption arc and the newer, bitchier nanny-Prada chick-lit motif. Melanie is a myopic and self-interested heroine by the standards of either genre.

Anyone expecting Dog Day to sound like Wonkette will wait a long time for any Wonkette wit to kick in.

Jessica Cutler, a woman who once worked on The Hill and gained fame via Wonkette’s reporting, also has a book out. The Washingtonienne is a fictionalized account of her real life sexual antics/conquests.

[UPDATE] As hard as this is to comprehend, Cox–who is without a doubt a media darling–now has a more complimentary second review in the Times, care of Christopher Buckley. Buckley says Dog Days is a “brisk, smart, smutty, knowing and very well-written first novel.”

Nebraskans are notorious for being straight shooters. Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator from the Cornhusker State is no exception. Earlier this week Hagel took President Bush to task for his comments criticizing Americans who would dare question his decision making in regards to the war in Iraq. Given that Hagel is a decorated Vietnam War vet, he has strong legs to stand on.

According to U.S. Newswire, Hagel said, “the Bush administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them.”

Hagel also said the Vietnam War “was a national tragedy partly because members of Congress failed their country, remained silent and lacked the courage to challenge the administrations in power until it was too late. To question your government is not unpatriotic — to not question your government is unpatriotic,” Hagel said, arguing that 58,000 troops died in Vietnam because of silence by political leaders. “America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices.”

KETV: ABC sportscaster Brent Musburger was ticketed at the intersection of 9th and T Streets in Lincoln after Saturday’s Husker game.

Lincoln police said Musburger was a passenger in the ABC crew’s rental car.

One witness said a traffic officer had just waved traffic through the intersection when he spotted Musberger drinking a beer.

The witness said he saw other passengers with alcohol, but Lincoln police said only Musburger was ticketed.

The driver was not drinking.

Musburger was given a $144 citation, including court costs.

[UPDATE] This is classic. There’s a Brent Musburger drinking game. “It may be the only way to listen to a Musburger broadcast without throwing a hammer through the screen,” says its propagator and fellow Big 12 fan.

Here’s one of the rules of the game:

Rule #8: Mentioning a Big 10 school during a non-Big 10 game. Whenever Brent does this, the first person who names the Big 10 school’s mascot gets to make somebody drink for 11 seconds, since there’s 11 schools in the Big 10.

Frank Solich, the Nebraska head coach who was fired after decades of service to his alma mater by a brash young AD, is back. And the new head coach of the Ohio University Bobcats has the town of Athens, OH abuzz. There’s real excitement in the air, and with only two winning seasons since 1982, the Bobcats haven’t had much to cheer about, gridiron wise.

Billboards around town declare, “Got Frank!”—an emphatic play on the dairy question. Solich is probaby embarrased by the media coverage, but it must feel good. The guy went 9-3 in his final season and had the Huskers in the Rose Bowl national championship game a few years before, and he gets tossed out. Things have changed in Lincoln in more ways than one. The program has a glossy feel now, a certain smugness. Whatever it is, it feels foreign. It’s not Nebraska.

Right now, I’m watching Solich’s team on ESPN2, and they’re tearing into Pitt. The players believe and the fans believe and that type of positive thinking can work wonders. Pitt’s down 10-7 at the half.

Solich grew up in Cleveland and spent a lot of time recruiting Ohio players while coaching in Lincoln. My guess is he’ll do even better getting these players to come to this classic college town to play in front of 24,000 psyched fans. Yes, it’s an intimate setting. But that’s what I’d want as a player. The chance to learn first-hand from a coach who helped Eric Crouch and Mike Rozier win the Heisman Trophy.

Go Bobcats!

USA Today is running a favorable piece on my hometown in today’s edition.

Omaha has tremendous wealth, industry and influence for being in the middle of nowhere. It ranks eighth among the nation’s 50 largest cities in both per-capita billionaires and Fortune 500 companies. San Francisco is the leader in billionaires per 1 million people, even after the dot-com bust trimmed the list. Atlanta is the leader in Fortune 500 companies per 1 million people. But no city, not even the major coastal giants, can claim a ranking as high as Omaha on both lists. Not San Francisco. Not Los Angeles nor New York — nor Houston. Philadelphia and Baltimore haven’t a single billionaire between them, nor do 15 other cities in the top 50 by population. Honolulu has no Fortune 500 companies, nor do a dozen other cities among the largest 50.

Metafilter picked up on a SF Weekly article on writer and artist, Weldon Kees.

During the 1940s and ’50s, Kees was a moderately famous artist, known mostly for his poetry, who quit the New York literary scene in 1951 and moved to the Bay Area, where he played piano in San Francisco jazz bars, wrote newsreel scripts, and produced a North Beach poetry and music revue before disappearing in an apparent Golden Gate Bridge suicide 50 years ago this past July 18.

One of Kees biggest fans is none other than Dana Goia—music critic emeritus of San Francisco magazine, former General Foods marketing vice president, opera librettist, laureled poet, translator of Latin, Italian, German, and Romanian literature, university instructor, widely published literary essayist, and current president of the National Endowment for the Arts. Gioia has published essays on Kees, edited books on and by Kees, written poems fashioned after Kees’ style, and discussed Kees at symposiums, in classrooms, and with journalists.

1926
by Weldon Kees

The porchlight coming on again,
Early November, the dead leaves
Raked in piles, the wicker swing
Creaking. Across the lots
A phonograph is playing Ja-Da.

An orange moon. I see the lives
Of neighbors, mapped and marred
Like all the wars ahead, and R.
Insane, B. with his throat cut,
Fifteen years from now, in Omaha.

I did not know them then.
My airedale scratches at the door.
And I am back from seeing Milton Sills
And Doris Kenyon. Twelve years old.
The porchlight coming on again.

Of course, I was interested to note to that Kees is another in a long line of famous writers from my home state, Nebraska. Kees is a native of Beatrice, atttended Doane College and graduated from Univ. of Nebraska at Lincoln.

University of Nebraska Press has been instrumental in collecting and distributing Kees’ work and keeping his flame alive for future generations.

Thwenty-three year old entrepreneur, Darren Johnson, recently got to spend some quality time in Omaha with the world’s second richest man, Warren Buffett.

On his blog, Johnson outlines five key areas Buffett addressed.

No. 1 - Be Grateful
Warren spent about an hour talking about how grateful we should all be for the circumstances we were born into and for the generous ticket we’ve been offered in life. He said that we should not take it for granted or think that it is the product of something we did - we just drew a lucky ticket. (He also pointed out that his skill of “allocating capital” would be useless if he would have been born in poverty in Bangladesh.)

No. 2 - Be ethical & fair
No. 3 - Be trustworthy
No. 4 - Invest in your circle of competence
No. 5 - Do what you love

Thanks to Seth Godin for the pointer.