Creative Me
Entrepreneurs help state of black unemployment …
CLEVELAND – Dave Parker ignored the naysayers. Parker, a 35-year-old entrepreneur, knew he had a good business idea that would work – an idea that would bring a dozen or more jobs to Cleveland. He wasn’t about to let anybody deter him from investing in an upscale downtown nightspot. His Xecutive UltraLounge, which hogs a chunk of Prospect Avenue, opened to raves Friday night. Parker looks at this nightspot as playing a role in the city’s revival. “I see the city moving in a positive direction – business-wise, especially in the downtown area,” said Parker, who also owns DLP Enterprise, a maintenance company. “I saw a great opportunity, and I wanted to reinvest in the city of Cleveland.” Such optimism reflects the spirit of this city. While outsiders might talk about urban decay, many people who call Cleveland home speak of opportunity here.
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MY MUSINGS
Why pick dying over living?I still wonder why Jay took his life. Not that I have a right to know the answer, because Jay and I had be absent from each other’s lives for close to 20 years. Jay and I had built a friendship in my early days as a journalist, and he, at the time we met, was an intern at the newspaper I was working for. We became fast friends, and we stayed friends as his career – and mine — flourished. |
ABOUT FRIENDS
The cruelest hurt of all …I could hear the hurt in his voice. I had heard it before a couple of months earlier when he called late one night to talk to me. His call this time came midmorning. The night earlier started merrily, he said. He attended a scholarship program at his college with his parents, who drove in for the event. |
POP CULTURE
Saving the free press has a costI wonder what will happen when the newspaper business is even less of an institution than it is these days. The public’s watchdog isn’t asleep; it’s on life supports. I’m the last person to suggest the business was perfect even in its glory days; it had flaws and conflicts of interests and biases and carelessness and downright frauds. Yet the industry did more good for the public than bad. No institution has been more mindful of this democracy and its excesses than the newspaper business. |
FAMILY AFFAIRS
Ties to game bind dad, sonBUENOS AIRES — The love of baseball starts with a father and his son tossing a baseball in the backyard. The love grows stronger as the father teaches his son to hit. It grows even stronger as the father volunteers to coach his son in a league with other fathers (or, sometimes, mothers). |
