Cincinnati's Flying Pig Marathon

My dad's foundation, Journey: The Ed Colina Foundation, is piggybacking (pun intended) on one of the top marathons in the United States, the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon. When you register for the event, enter a coupon code (email me at perfectsand @ gmail.com for it, or my dad at ed @ edcolinafoundation.org), and 10% of your registration fee will go to the Foundation. According to the Flying Pig website, using this code will give you the "lowest possible price for Marathon, Half Marathon, Open Relay, 10K and 5K" through April 18.

If you're participating in the race, please consider entering the code. The foundation directly supports education, empowerment, and nutrition in Kenya. A little goes a long way.

Edit: I've been getting lots of emails requesting the coupon code.  Unfortunately, the Ed Colina Foundation isn't involved with the Flying Pig Marathon this year (2013).  Best of luck in the race!

January 30, 2010: The Last Time I Saw Jesus

Have I mentioned how much I love storms? The more the trees sway, the more the house rattles, the happier I get. Last night we had a doozy of a storm. The flashes of lightning were nonstop, and, for a time, the thunder was simultaneous. I got some shots from my porch, but this is the best I could get.

The big story in Cincinnati today has been the demise of Touchdown Jesus. Touchdown Jesus was a bit of a landmark off I-75, about 30 miles north of the city. Six stories tall, it was a sight to see. It was struck by lightning and, shortly thereafter, was only a steel frame. It was large and gaudy and slightly absurd; the statue was also referred to as "Butter Jesus" because, in the right light, it certainly looked like sculpted butter. Following his untimely demise, of course, the jokes poured in. "Don't worry," some said, "he'll be back in three days." Another said, "You're next, Creation Museum" (that Kentucky museum dedicated to refuting science). A friend said it's now "Corpus Crispy."

Below is a picture I took as I traveled north on I-75 a few months ago. You really don't get a good idea of just how big he is (was).

NPR wrote about it here; it includes some up-close pictures.

It's storming again tonight. I keep hoping the rain and wind will bring some cooler weather, as I'm still AC-deprived. I find myself lounging lazily around my apartment as any kind of exertion makes the heat unbearable.

One last note, and one I'll return to: just as my dad gets back in the next couple of weeks, my mom and her husband are preparing to go to Palestine. Paraphrasing what my mom told me, they will be part of a group working with children affected by the violence there as well as the adults who teach them. Because of the turbulence, many students have severe emotional and behavioral issues that teachers there may be unaccustomed to dealing with. Hopefully I'll be able to get a website and more information to link to in the future.

Edited to change "say" to "sway," although trees that talk are almost as cool as trees that bend!

Weekend Fun

Another busy weekend, although it certainly had fewer subplots than the last one.

Friday, instead of our usual trip to the grocery store to taste wine, a group of us went downtown to Fountain Square for the kick-off of Midpoint Music Festival's indie concert series. The main act? Camera Obscura! The rain held off, and the weather was beautiful - perfect for

this lively and quiet band from Scotland.

The concert ended with an encore of one of my favorites of theirs, "Let's Get Out of This Country." Below is the video I took with my phone - you can find some great footage of their music with far better sound quality, but it wouldn't be nearly as authentic, eh?

Last night, a good friend of mine visited the city. I always enjoy showing off the best parts of Cincinnati (which, ironically, often include trips across the river to Northern Kentucky).

I hate posing for pictures, but my awesome red peep-toe wedges don't mind at all.

This one is called "Cincy's Arches"

Here, my foot is posing alongside one of Shepard Fairey's murals (he of the Obama "Hope" poster fame).

Flyover Country

In February's issue of Vanity Fair, author A. A. Gill describes his trip to the Cincinnati area to visit the Creation Museum. The Creation Museum, Gill says, "isn't really a museum at all. It's an argument." It boasts huge, elaborate displays of dinosaurs riding Noah's ark and seeks to explain how fossils, ostensibly 10 million years old, are actually only a few thousand years old.

To Cincinnatians, the museum (and I use that term loosely) is a curiosity, like Miss Emily in Faulkner's classic story. We suspect there's something strange there--a corpse in the attic, perhaps--but no one's really being hurt.

What made Gill's article so offensive wasn't its ridicule of the museum. I get a little uncomfortable when questioning someone or something based on faith alone, but any place that charges its patrons money and then stretches and denigrates science should be subject to challenge and criticism. No, what was most outrageous about the article was the ridicule he reserved for the people who make Cincinnati their home.

Gill begins, "It's not in the stoic nature of Cincinnatians to boast, which is fortunate, really, for they have meager pickings to boast about."

Huh? Blogger Kate the Great responded best when she listed a plethora of cultural and entertainment opportunities in the Queen City and favorably compared a Cincinnati restaurant to a famous one she recently visited in San Francisco. Also, she made the excellent point that "while Cincinnati ranks 32 in media market size, our metro ranks fourth in the nation in per capita giving."

With one broad stroke, Gill paints an entire region the same color as that ridiculous museum. He seems to suggest that we all believe Moses palled around with a T-Rex. Because when we live in flyover country, clearly we don't understand facts and reason - otherwise we'd be smart enough to move to one of the coasts, where we could pay triple the rent for a third of the space and where our friends would all be as tolerant as Mr. Gill.

While Mr. Gill's piece was just one man's opinion - he certainly doesn't speak for all of Vanity Fair or for everyone from whatever coast he comes from - it struck a nerve. From our libraries to our zoo to our museums and beyond, culture abounds in this city and region. And the people are as varied as our landscape, sprinkled with hills and valleys, parks and forests, rivers and lakes, new homes and old homes. Like any city, we have our knuckleheads and we have room for growth.

We're not a destination city. Kids in other parts of the country don't think "I'm gonna move to Cincinnati when I grow up!" like someone might for New York or Los Angeles. But we have a vibrant community that is on the rise. We deserve to be a destination city. Those of us who grew up here may move away for a bit, but many of us return to the city we love.

I'm already late to this conversation. In fact, Gill's piece showed up about three weeks ago. Tom Callinan sums up the blogger reaction to the article. But it made me angry enough that I had to respond with my two cents.

Teachers' Dirty Little Secret

We like snow days just as much as students. We stare at the scrolling list at the bottom of the screen; if our school's not there at first, we keep watching. And when we do see it, we cheer.

A full 3-5" of snow is supposed to fall tomorrow morning across the Greater Cincinnati area. If you're from Michigan or northern Ohio, you would snicker at our reactions to snow here in southern Ohio. In addition to schools closing left and right (granted, most of these schools are rural -- city schools close far less frequently), people stock up on supplies like it's Y2k.

So I head to bed to read more of Barbara Kingsolver's "Lacuna" and dream of the pending snowpocolypse.

Monday Morning Quarterback

I learned a long time ago that I'm not cut out for sports. My throws are awkward and if you yell at me to catch something, I'm much more likely to duck instead. In other words, you don't want me on your team.

But something strange happened when I took a biology class in high school. If we reported the score of the previous night's Cleveland Indians baseball game on our quizzes, we could earn extra credit. (This seems much stranger to me now than it did at the time!) By checking that little box score every day, I became a baseball follower. And I quickly transferred that to our home team, the Cincinnati Reds. I learned stats, abbreviations, records. Soon, my competitive nature took over. While I couldn't throw to save my life, I could do it vicariously through Barry Larkin. Hal Morris. Jason LaRue.

Cincinnati is a wonderful sports town, full of passionate and dedicated fans. From the Bearcats to the Bengals to the Reds, the success of our teams lifts the spirits of an entire city; it certainly lifts mine.

JWP4PSH8R5JF

It was a dark and stormy night...

When I set off on foot to return an overdue video to Blockbuster this evening, a part of me must have known that the sky was going to break open some time during the next 30 minutes. I was halfway there -- about half a mile from my house -- when it started to sprinkle, and I had just dropped off the video when it started to pour. So what began as a leisurely walk through the neighborhood to return a DVD turned into a mad sprint: if I get violently ill tomorrow, this is why.

This past Sunday I participated in the 30th annual Cheetah Run at the Cincinnati Zoo. Along with 1100 other runners - including moms with strollers, amazingly fit marathoners, and people of all shapes and sizes - I followed a very hilly path inside of and around the zoo. I managed to run for the first mile (a very hilly mile, I must say) and then alternated walking and jogging the rest of the 5k.

I was surprised by how much I was able to run, given that I've only run sporadically this summer. But having so many people around, including friends wanted to walk when I did and run when I did, provided a lot of motivation. Were I by myself, I wouldn't have gone as far. The rain this evening provided me a different motivation, but it worked just as well.

"I try to leave out the parts people skip"

~ Elmore Leonard

I went this afternoon to Taste of Cincinnati downtown. While Taste is an annual tradition here in Cincy, today was my first time going. Forty or so restaurants set up booths up and down fifth street and sell small portions of their menu at a cheap price. This way, theoretically, I can sample all of what Cincinnati restaurants have to offer. 

I had a pulled-pork sandwich from Montgomery Inn as well as a couple of small samples from Graeter's Ice Cream (they're letting taste testers help decide whether or not to remove the green food coloring from their mint chocolate chip!) I wish I had a bigger stomach, because there were many more things that looked appetizing, from chicken curry dishes to shish kebabs.

There were three separate stages with music, but it seemed like whenever we went near one, the musicians were still in the tune-up stage. Before we left - sitting, baking in the sun - we hung around Fountain Square by the middle stage. A quite skilled cover band was playing songs from the 80s and 90s (and maybe a couple more recent ones). 

One of the most important things the fiction writer has to do is "get them out the door": move characters from point A to point B. The writer might have great descriptions and a great way with language, but if he or she can't get them out the door, then it's probably for naught. Anyway, that's where I might be failing: I'm hanging out in the living room and the hallway - I haven't even gone near the door. I don't know if it's locked, and I don't know what's on the other side. 

Anyway, I'm home now from Taste of Cincinnati, slightly burnt but content. Anxious about all the work and grading I have to do tomorrow.