A TANK AWAY FROM TOLEDO
Louisville. Conjures up horse racing, mint juleps and baseball bats, doesn't it? A mere six hour drive from Toledo puts you in the heart of the city. Main Street has a number of restaurants and museums. We visited three: Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory, Kentucky Museum of Art & Craft and Frazier International History Museum. The first offers a half hour factory tour as well as a museum filled with baseball memorabilia. A highly enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours even if you are like me and not a big baseball fan. The arts and crafts museum, to our surprise, was filled with antique motorcycles. This included a Yale made in Toledo. Lastly, the international history museum turned out to be quite an enjoyable experience. Third floor contains exhibits from the Royal Armouries dating back at least a thousand years to the late 19th century, second floor history of guns and gunmaking, first floor, um, well, we ran out of time. You easily could spend an entire day at the Frazier. While walking between the museums you can view bronze bats and bases describing famous baseball players. These are found at various intervals on Main Street. Also found throughout downtown are horse statues decorated by artists. These are reminiscent of the frog statues Toledo did a few years ago as well as the cow statues found in Chicago. Speaking of horses, the Kentucky Derby Museum is a must see for those traveling the city. Located south of downtown at Churchill Downs, the museum contains not only memorabilia but also exhibits on raising racing horses. A 30 minute tour of the track is included with longer tours available for an extra fee. There are a number of other attractions, such as the zoo and science museum, which we did not have the time to visit. Louisville definitely lived up to its slogan of doing something original. Contributed by Bowling Green, Ohio reader

It was a "beer summit" without apologies in Washington, D.C. on July 30, as Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates sat down for a beer at the White House with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. President Obama released a statement on Thursday night: "I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart. I am confident that has happened here tonight, and I am hopeful that all of us are able to draw this positive lesson from this episode." Gates and Crowley were planning future meetings, but did not tip anyone off as to where or when those would occur, saying that the next time the press would not be invited.
http://www.necn.com/Boston/Politics/2009/07/31/Beer-summit-behind-them/1249036803.html

S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Factsheet
S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices Methodology
S&P/Case-Shiller® Home Price FAQ
May 26, 2009: S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Values
July 28, 2009: Historical Values

An Orwellian gaffe involving the Kindle e-book reader just won’t go down the memory hole for Amazon.com. On Thursday, a Chicago-based law firm filed a suit in federal court in Seattle against Amazon on behalf of Justin D. Gawronski, a 17-year-old Michigan high school senior. The suit, which seeks class-action status, claims that when the company wirelessly deleted a copy of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” from Gawronski’s Kindle earlier this month, it also deleted the notes he had taken. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/30/lawsuit-amazon-ate-my-homework/

The U.S. Newspaper Industry in Transition, July 8, 2009
"The U.S. newspaper industry is suffering through what could be its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Advertising revenues are plummeting due to the severe economic downturn, while readership habits are changing as consumers turn to the Internet for free news and information. Some major newspaper chains are burdened by heavy debt loads. In the past year, seven major newspaper chains have declared bankruptcy, several big city papers have shut down, and many have laid off reporters and editors, imposed pay reductions, cut the size of the physical newspaper, or turned to Web-only publication. As the problems intensify, there are growing concerns that the rapid decline of the newspaper industry will impact civic and social life. Already there are fewer newspaper reporters covering state capitols and city halls, while the number of states with newspapers covering Congress fulltime has dwindled to 23 from the most recent peak of 35 in 1985."

Economic Effects of Health Care Reform on Small Businesses and Their Employees
Council of Economic Advisors: The Economic Effects of Health Care Reform on Small Businesses and Their Employees, July 25, 2009

If the forthcoming movie Julie & Julia starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams has you curious about the real Julia Child, head to Washington. There you can see the famous chef's actual kitchen at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
The display, called "Bon Appetit," first opened in 2002 but is receiving some new items this summer, including memorabilia from the movie and Child's copper pot collection, which was originally loaned to a museum in California. The 14-by-20-foot kitchen—small by the standards of many modern American homes—includes her cabinets, counters, cookbooks, Garland commercial range, and hundreds of well-worn utensils and gadgets. http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2009-07-29-julia-child-kitchen_N.htm

Food in film Julie & Julia with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams
A good food stylist will take care of the actors, whether they are demanding or not. Ms. Spungen made huge bowls full of glossy, cooked Swiss meringue for Ms. Streep to whisk during a scene at Le Cordon Bleu. But she didn’t bother to flavor it with vanilla until she saw that the actress would be dipping a finger into the meringue and popping it into her mouth. “I wanted it to taste good,” Ms. Spungen said. (There was so much left that she turned it into tarts for the crew.) Chris Messina, who plays Julie Powell’s husband, had a great appetite and never complained, even on the day he had to enthusiastically eat bruschetta topped with tomatoes 36 times. But Ms. Spungen had mercy on him. In another scene, he has to dump salt into a bowl of navarin of lamb during a fight and then eat it. She made sure he was using an off-the-shelf salt substitute. There are a thousand little ways to make it easy on the actors.. Parsley needs to be used sparingly so it doesn’t get stuck in teeth. Toast can’t be so toasty that it crunches too loudly. Low-fat options like apple slices need to be tucked on top of a high-calorie dish that an actor has to nibble on repeatedly. Food stylists also need to know when they can get by with something from a store or a restaurant and when they can’t, and when they can veer off the script a bit and when they can’t. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/dining/29movie.html