Every year at this time I return home to New Orleans over the anniversary of the levee failure that most people attribute to Hurricane Katrina. One of the biggest reasons I do so is because I am one of the organizers for the Rising Tide Conference. Started by our local bloggers and premiering the first anniversary of the disaster, this is a bloggers conference that is not only for bloggers. Just take a look at the lineup below the webcast embed. From Dave Simon, who most of you know through The Wire or Treme, to this year’s debut of Rising Tide’s Tech School there is a lot here for everyone.

I know this is not Cincy related, but since I live here now and it’s an important part of my story I’m sharing it here. Enjoy the webcast and please leave comments below if you have any questions. (Click the read more link to go to the webcast itself. It is contained within the post and does need need any external players or apps.)

I first encountered Cincy Voices founder Loki thru the world of shared social media acquaintances. Quickly I found myself engaging Loki in sporadic social media banter about anything from politics to iPhones, and became drawn to the CincyVoices blog. I finally met Loki in person by chance in the way many people in Cincinnati meet each other-over a tasty beer.  Many great discussions about various topics ensued after this meeting, not limited to but including talk about beer and its importance in Cincinnati.  From time to time, Loki and I discussed the idea of my doing a guest post in Cincy Voices. Instead this idea has evolved to my becoming a regular part of the Cincy Voices team, working in tandem with Josh Osborne.

Josh and were introduced via Loki via twitter, where we quickly found we shared a similar obsession with craft beer and homebrewing. Josh and I bring different perspectives to the format we are embarking on.  I am a lifelong Cincinnati resident, while Josh and his new bride are recent Cincinnati imports. Josh brings to the table a much-needed objective outsiders view of Cincinnati and it’s beer scene.  While Josh might be a bit newer to Cincinnati than I, this does nothing to dim his enthusiasm for Cincinnati and all things beer. His formidable writing skills, can only serve to help me improve my own ability to share with you my views on all things beer. You can check out some of Josh’s musings on his other blogs as well- A Boy and His Books and  A Beer A Day.

By working with Josh, I will have the opportunity to see things from a valuable, fresh perspective I would have otherwise not have had the experience of enjoying. While Josh and I will also write individual pieces, I am very much looking forward to the banter back and forth over our joint projects and reviews. Josh and I are thoroughly committed to seeing our efforts through, no matter how many delicious beers we are forced to consume in the process. Hey, whatever it takes to do the job, um, “properly”.

What do I enjoy besides beer? Spending time with my wife and children, exploring urban Cincinnati, playing the occasional game of disc golf, enjoying Cincinnati’s live local music offerings, hiking in parks, indulging in my social media obsession, meeting new people, and travel. I am often found loitering in favorite neighborhood haunts in Northside or OTR, both with my family and on my own. Other pursuits I enjoy are reading, consuming excessive amounts of good coffee, and a watching an occasional movie. I’m not much of a television person, having found real life far more interesting than bad reality television. For more about me or my involvement with various beer organizations and events, check out my bio here.

It is an honor for me to have the opportunity to work with Josh. I am privileged to be part of the team of creative writers that make up Cincy Voices.  I hope you enjoy what I share with you half as much as I am going to enjoy creating it.

If you follow me on Twitter, then you already know that my other passions are news, politics, and sports. Politically, I’m a lefty on just about everything, but I find that distinction less important than any debate itself; I’m interested in making my own judgments based on the best facts available. It’s my ardent belief that folks who simply parrot the talking points of their cable news network-of-choice are just adding the background noise and preventing meaningful discourse. Most media pundits do it too, and if you made me list things that were gumming up the political process in this country, that would rank close to the top. You’ll likely see me address things like that on occasion as well.

Ask a Cincinnati sports fan to describe their fandom in a single word, and you’ll likely get “frustration”, or another F-word closely related to it, as an answer better than 50% of the time. It’s not that I don’t share that frustration; I most certainly do. As I write this, I’m watching the Reds’ season end with the most humble of whimpers, and I’ll comment on that sort of thing from time to time. However, I also like to remind the pessimists that Cincy is also home to the Cincinnati Cyclones, a team that has captured one more national championship than both of their major league Cincinnati counterparts combined since they were founded in 1990. It’s not all bad, and I’ll likely chime in on that from time to time as well.

That’s me and what I typically like to write about in a nutshell. I’d like to thank Loki for this opportunity to comment at length regarding our fair city, and I’m looking forward to doing just that. Cheers!

As it says in my bio, I am a life-long Cincinnatian who moved Downtown 3 years ago. I have lived in various places in the Tri-State region, but Downtown is my favorite area of residence. I love the growth I have seen Downtown (and OTR) and look forward to more progress being made in the region. Whenever I tell someone I live Downtown I get a wide range of reactions and questions, so I will have many posts about city life.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I am a big sports fan. Of course being a Cincinnatian most of my sports fandom has been filled with disappointment. “Wait til next year” is a common reality that a Bengals and Reds fan faces. Along with watching sports, I try to stay active. One of the most shocking developments in my life is I have become a runner. When I attended the best high school in Cincinnati (Walnut Hills, and I will fiercely argue with you if you disagree!) I could barely finish the mile in gym class. Fast forward to 2011 where I completed my first marathon and now consider a 5k a short run.

I studied Radio/TV at Northern Kentucky University, but lately I have discovered a passion for photography. I have a lot to learn and am by no means a professional, but taking the camera out and taking photos of the various sites in town and the country has become one of my favorite hobbies. Of course I still do have a love for TV and motion pictures. I do enjoy a lazy day on the couch watching a marathon of my favorite shows and movies.

One of my favorite subjects to take photos of is my dog Dexter. My girlfriend and I adopted Dexter the Pug from the SCPA in January and he has become a very welcomed addition to our household. Dexter had a rough life before we adopted him, he was a stray and almost died at the SPCA with a severe case of kennel cough. Luckily he survived and we arrived to rescue him! After this experience we highly recommend adopting from the SPCA if you are looking for a pet.

Food, downtown, sports, digital media and my dog Dexter, that basically sums up who Clint Spaeth is.

Over the next week or two you’ll be meeting our new team members, today I’d like to introduce a new voice covering music in Cincinnati. Jenn will be looking at aspects of the Cincy audioscape that I feel escape notice far too often. So, without further ado, meet the composer! -Loki

You’re probably wondering what I do. I could tell you that I’m grad student at CCM and I teach music theory and orchestration on the side, but those are my day jobs. Ultimately, I’m a composer.

What I do is simple enough—I write music. Of course, the next thing you will probably ask me is what type of music I write, and this is where I start stammering.

I have a hard time describing my musical style because I don’t want you to think that I write stodgy old-fashioned music performed in concert halls. I do write music that can be performed in concert halls, but my music isn’t two hundred years old, and thankfully I’m not dead yet.

Instead of initially sharing what type of music I write, I should probably tell you how I stumbled upon writing music.

I began my piano studies when I was six due to my fascination with the instrument, and when I was in high school I took my piano studies seriously. At the time I learned and memorized standard piano repertoire, which included classics like Beethoven sonatas and Chopin études. Unfortunately I did not have the discipline to become a concert pianist; instead of practicing what I was supposed to, I changed what Beethoven and friends wrote on the page. In other words, I improvised ditties based on music I should have been practicing.

At the time I didn’t know that improvisation is a form of composing: I believed all musical compositions were completely original and didn’t stem from doodling on the piano. But after I realized that composing was the creative outlet I was looking for, I thought it would be the coolest thing to write music for films. I thought, “I can write music like that!” and decided that my music would be best heard on Dolby Digital 7.1 surround sound.

And now, over ten years later, I still write music. I don’t write music for films (although I’m still open to the idea), but I’ve been mainly writing music for the concert hall, art gallery, or whomever wants to play and listen to my music.

Here’s a sample of what I’ve been writing lately.

concert:nova asked me to write a response to a movement from Camille Saint-Saëns’s The Carnival of the Animals; I wrote a response to “The Aquarium.” (With Annunziata Tomoro conducting.)

The Silent World (2010) by jenniferjolley

A couple years ago I wrote a piece for nine violas. Nine! As one of my professors mentioned, the next time nine of his viola friends get together, they have something to play besides baseball. (With Vince Lee conducting.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POUFlRan-3Q

And here’s a piece I wrote for a solo percussionist and narration. I used text from the poem “How to be a Deep Thinker in Los Angeles” written by my librettist Kendall A. (Tyler Niemeyer, percussionist)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZlzMIA-oB4

JennJolley, a composer from Los Angeles, moved out to Cincinnati in 2007 to attend the College-Conservatory of Music. When not composing music like she should be doing, she’s probably at the CSO, the Cincinnati Ballet, the CAC, or a Reds game. She blogs at Why Compose When You Can Blog? to further her procrastination.

Image by WilliSlim on Flickr, Creative Commons License v. 2.0 

I inadvertently had one of those instances today. I saw a fantastic tweet run across my dashboard:

The true tragedy about SCOTUS blocking California’s violent video game law is now parents will have to pay attention to what their kids buy.

This was tweeted by @ChooChooBear who writes the wonderfully demented Something Positive web Comic. Being fully in agreement I retweeted it. Now you might notice that the tweet was exactly 140 characters long, which did not leave me room for the obligatory “RT @ChooChooBear.”

So I retweeted it without attribution so as not edit it and weaken the comment. Just as I was typing a “The prior was an RT from @ChooChooBear” I lost electricity for about twenty minutes. When the lights and Internet came back up I found a wave of justifiable outrage. I quickly tweeted apologies and credit to the originator of the tweet and we ironed things out rapidly. Once I explained he was really great about it and actively used his tweet stream to call off the dogs.

There are LOTS of nimrods out there passing off the content of others as their own. If I had not been dogpiled about this I would have been shocked. As a content creator myself I consider plagiarists to be parasitic scum. Even thought the situation was caused by something out of my control it still calls for more lengthy apology as it was my account.

I’d also like to actually thank those on twitter who leaped into the fray when they saw someone else’s work seemingly plagiarized. You are some of the good ones! No offense at all taken on my part, you did the right thing under the circumstances. Huge kudos to @PopeRichardCory @Radelin @DUSTINFRIEL @devlogic @jer_ @muymanwell @lisafunone1 @scorpstar77 @sonochamp @RunsLikeBadger for stepping up! While the circumstances could be better I’m always happy to cross paths with people of integrity.

Take note people, if you screw up online take ownership and make it right. It really is that simple.

Now, go and embrace some twisted humor over on Something Positive!

The conversations that I have with my boyfriend, Dave, when we are lucky enough to walk our dog in the daylight, inevitably turn to how many homes in our neighborhood are ideal for solar collection.  Northside is old enough that many of the houses were built to maximize the light and heat from the sun, like ours, which is nearly perfectly positioned east-west.  We have a lot of south and east-facing windows, allowing plenty of natural light into the house.  Half of our roof faces south-by-southwest, which, for those who have never looked into it, happens to be PERFECT for solar energy collection.

Dave has been a solar dabbler/enthusiast for over 20 years.  His family has an island in Georgian Bay, on Lake Huron, that is five miles from anything. It has a modest photovoltaic array to provide electricity to the cabin, and to run the water pump for the cabin’s water supply.  Dave assisted his grandfather with the install of that set-up, and he’s been dreaming of getting himself off the grid ever since.

Northside has a new housing development not far from us, the model has an impressive photovoltaic solar array on the south-facing roof and a grid-tie-in system.  In layman’s terms, that is a series of solar panels that generate electricity that feeds back into the existing utility box.  Theoretically, such a system could make your meter RUN BACKWARDS, when the panels are producing more energy than your household uses.  Dave had the opportunity to tour the model back in October, and was so impressed with the system, that he decided to get a similar rig for our house.

After some research, Dave discovered that Ohio was offering serious grant money for folks like us who wanted to do some alt-energy improvements … here’s the math:

11    Panels
275    Watts per panel (ET Solar 275 Watt)
3025    Watts
$7.00     Per watt installed
$21,175.00     Cost of materials and labor
$(8,621.25)    State grant
$12,553.75     Cost Installed including state grant
$(3,766.13)    Fed tax credit
$8,787.63     Total after tax adjustments
$(2,887.08)    5 Years Energy Savings
$(5,040.00)    5 Years SREC’s
$860.55     Total cost after 5 years

11    Panels
275    Watts per panel (ET Solar 275 Watt)
3025    Watts
$7.00     Per watt installed
$21,175.00     Cost of materials and labor
$-       State grant
$21,175.00     Cost Installed including state grant
$(6,352.50)    Fed tax credit
$14,822.50     Total after tax adjustments
$(2,887.08)    5 Years Energy Savings
$(5,040.00)    5 Years SREC’s
$6,895.42     Total cost after 5 years

Assumptions:

350    Average kWh/mo produced by system
0.13748    Average cost per kWh (Duke)
0.24    SREC price per watt (Sol)
0.95    De-rating of state grant

Our roof could support enough photovoltaic panels to generate roughly 3kW during peak times, enough to offset roughly 30% of our usage.  Not too shabby.  Add to that the bonus of the SREC program, where the energy units we produce and feed back into the grid are bought and traded in the form of renewable energy credits from our local utility company (so they don’t have to do it themselves).  We were excited about this winter project that would start paying us back as early as this summer, which is considerably better than many other investments.

We signed a contract with the same company that did the job on the model home nearby.  Dave had roofers lined up to replace our roof immediately before the solar company would start the installation.

Then came the call that the Ohio grant program was over as of November 5, 2010.  Kaput. Finished.  No more buckos left for us.  The solar company we had been working with did not hold us to the contract – both parties were bummed out about the loss of that one piece of the puzzle that made it all work.  And here is my HUGE gripe about most of this renewable energy nonsense – IT IS PROHIBITIVELY EXPENSIVE.  If our country is serious about curbing our fossil fuel usage, it needs to get serious about the incentives for the alternatives.  The tax credits are nice (30%+ in some instances), but that still doesn’t get it into a price range that makes it available to most of us who want to invest, nor does it make a dent against the massive subsidies that the oil, gas and coal industries enjoy.  (Although, if our government makes good on what was mentioned during the State Of the Union address… those subsidies may be on the way out.)  Dave told me a horror story about a similar grant / incentive program in Florida that went belly-up, leaving some homeowners owing even more money for already-completed installations.  I hope that didn’t happen to anyone here when the Ohio grant went under.

So now, on these sunny days, we think about how our roof could have been generating electricity, about how we could have invested some money into our community in the form of hiring roofers and the solar company and about how we could have been the first on our block to make a serious contribution to the alt energy pool.  The project isn’t completely off the table.  The solar company wants to meet with us again, to see if they can afford to come down in price enough to make it worth our while to move ahead.  I know their business must be suffering.

Cheers-

Dark Martha

http://www.consciousurbanliving.com/

PS – I will be featured in the only coast-to-coast gardening radio program, In The Garden with Ron Wilson, this Saturday, 1/29!  Have your coffee with Ron and I as we take call in and online gardening questions 7-8 am 55WKRC (AM radio).
If you miss it podcasts can be found here: http://www.55krc. com/cc-common/ podcast/single_ podcast.html? podcast=Ron_ Wilson.xml

Her passion moved me.

As I crossed Hamilton Avenue at the pedestrian crosswalk in front of Northside Tavern, a truck sped up when he saw I would do the unthinkable and actually use that pedestrian crosswalk with traffic speeding past. He opened his window, shouting meaningless obscenities.

I’m a bit of a militant pedestrian, I know that I do in fact have the right-of-way, so I kept walking. He stopped, though in reality he would have had to have stopped in another fifteen feet regardless, there was another car ahead. I smiled at him, somehow drawing power from Aung San Suu Kyi. I felt her passion.

Onward towards Take the Cake for lunch. As I crossed Blue Rock Ave, I looked up and realized Northside is blessed with two Shepard Fairey murals, and one features Aung San Suu Kyi, and that Aung San Suu Kyi mural was right in front of me. This made me smile.

I took a picture. It made me smile.

Shepard Fairey mural, Northside, Cincinnati, OH featuring Aung San Suu Kyi

After a Take the Cake lunch, I walked back past the mural, turned around and looked again, and thought about how Aung San Suu Kyi, even after fifteen years of political detention under an oppressive regime, had such positive passion about her life and those all around her. She saw change as inevitable and still possible and still happening despite the negative political forces still all around her. I smiled again.

Again crossing Blue Rock, I noticed some Northsiders playing in the snow. With tools. They’d tapped into their passion. They’d built a fantastic snow unicorn at the edge of Hoffner Park along Hamilton. I took a picture. And it made me smile.

Snow Unicorn, Hoffner Park, Northside, Cincinnati, OH

The snow builders then eagerly showed me their other creation, a snowman, a snowman who had been taken down by snow sharks. I took a picture.

The snowman that had been consumed by the snow sharks: (look closely)

Passion. This made me smile.

GeekJames

These are questions I am familiar with. Usually asked at a dinner where the dialogue is lively, the good food is abundant and the wine is flowing. And like instinct, it beckons. As if some force suddenly animates my body for me, I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. Immediately I’m taking pictures, touchscreen-tapping away, head turned down in a blank un-blinking gaze at the glowing vice in front of my nose. When confronted with these questions – usually after the full minute of silence from the head of hair staring back at my dinner companions – I presume their words enter my ears and eventually reach my brain, where a tiny blip of self-control appears and disappears at the same moment in a microscopic fizzle, the byproduct of which is expelled from my lips in a mumbling guffaw, trying desperately to resemble a somewhat intelligent response. In this thing normal, healthy homosapiens have collectively agreed to refer to as a Human Conversation, my eyes have never blinked, despite the chemical reaction happening directly behind them, and this physiological response has been unable to alter the flow of undoubtedly useful information rocketing from my brain cells to my fingers, translating those bytes of data into thumb spasms, performing their dutiful expression on a bright digital keyboard:

“im gonna eat the crap outta this chicken, yo lolz”

Hit send. Pure poetry.

Satisfied at my soliloquy, I return my phone to its resting place and gaze upon the empty table in front of me, as my guests have certainly left hours ago. In fact, I think the restaurant’s closed.

I have no doubt this is exactly what happens. In moments like these, what force is it that navigates my body, telling me that internet conversations are more important than the actual conversations happening right in front of me? I wondered out loud “could I actually control it? Is it ADD? ADHD? Stupidity?” Clearly all of the above. So after one or two episodes similar to this not-so-exaggerated story, I decided to take a week off to test my discipline. No Twitter. No Facebook. No Phone. No Internet.

Now before you go and shout “BORING!!!” or “SIMPSONS DID IT!”… I know. Of course it is. It’s been done. This is stupid…. but then again it isn’t. It depends on you as a person, no? Some people do multiple things at once, be the effortless multitasker, juggling puppies and swords while reciting War and Peace from memory. On stilts. On a treadmill. (anything else?) Then there’s me: while typing, I get distracted from the letter N by how cool the letter M is. So for me, naturally, trying to carry on a conversation while a.) watching anything on the TV, b.) reading anything on a page, or c.) holding my iPhone, is an attention-loss guarantee. Some people can do it. I can’t. Also, I lack discipline, and I needed to see if this would “cure” my procrastination.

Planning ahead, I decided to test my habit-breaking skills on a Monday to Monday schedule. This would give me a full work week and full weekend to see if my lifestyle was altered. When Monday finally came around, I noticed how drastically it affected my morning routine. Usually the first thing I reach for in the morning is my iPhone to check my news alerts and RSS feeds, and of course say something profound on Facebook or Twitter like “good morning!” or “RT if you hate mondayz lol rofl bbq”. This is usually followed up at work with a more thorough scouring of news and commenting on local blogs and articles, but mostly sharing on the Networks, with my morning coffee. These were the most difficult habits to break: reaching for my phone, and opening web browsers in the morning. I also found I had to turn off notifications on my phone and email, as they informed me of social mentions and news.

So there I went. And believe it or not, I didn’t break out in a cold sweat, shuddering in a corner. By Wednesday, I didn’t even miss it. I found myself frequently hearing something, and thinking “oh man, that needs to go on Twitter!”, but then I remembered my commitment and purposefully forgot it. More than that, I really, really had a hard time refusing to visit my regular news pages. In retrospect, I believe I lost whole minutes devoted to making myself not instinctively switch over to Google Reader. I know. It’s sad. I recognized exactly what I was addicted to: not people… but information. I’m  an information junkie. A knowledge junkie. I just gotta know.

Here’s the other thing I noticed about me:  at the office I found other ways to screw around and avoid doing things, but I did work at home… just on things I wanted to. I got more done on my backyard in one week than I had in the whole previous month. So I wouldn’t conclude that Twitter & Facebook affect my work performance… because I have a fundamental issue doing other people’s work. I also noticed that I can’t commit to personal goals. When Sunday came around, and I considered breaking my fast early because it was so soon till it ended, a gentle nudge from my wife reaffirmed me… and that bugged me that it was needed. What if no one was there to do that for me? Even though it’s stupid, and not a problem for most people: to me it was and is, and I don’t want it to control me.

Some final  thoughts (because I want to keep this short): we live in an amazing time in history; technology has allowed us to involve people in our exchange, even though they’re not physically there. I take my virtual conversations seriously, because usually I’m talking to people I know and love, just like you at the table in front of me. So I don’t feel bad in the least taking a second to share what I feel’s important with my other friends. More often than not, I’m with people who are doing the same thing too, usually with mutual friends. I think it’s pretty damn cool.

But please: slap me across the head if I start to drool, because my brain’s probably come dislodged again.

As a river city surrounded by levees I would offer that it behooves my new neighbors here in Cincy to pause and think on this subject.

-Loki, Founder and Publisher, Northsider and Native New Orleanian