The above cartoon refers to budget choices Florida is making, but it does seem applicable to the situation in Virginia as well. Educational funding in the Commonwealth is being hit hard at both the state and local levels.

All around us are examples of Incredible Shrinking Education Budgets.

Here, for example, is one Charlottesville's Daily Progress most-commented on articles for last week:

County hears calls for low taxes, better schools

By Brandon Shulleeta
 March 31, 2010 

The crowd was split between residents thanking Albemarle supervisors for lowering taxes and those scorning them for not providing more education funding.

And then there's this Associated Press article posted last month on washingtonexaminer.com.

Virginia higher education faces more budget reductions; schools to raise tuition, cut back

By: ZINIE CHEN SAMPSON

****ED NOTE: Yuki is no longer in business******



We had to be in Castleton the other day and were trying to figure out a place near or at the mall that wasn’t a chain. Now this is somewhat difficult in this area, but we settled on Yuki because you can’t get any closer to the mall (it is actually located at the main entrance) and hey, I could review it too.

Honestly, I wasn’t really expecting too much from a mall restaurant, but we were fairly pleasantly surprised, at least with some of it. We shared a couple of things, a bento box and a specialty roll called the “Melting roll” which was actually really good. He promptly proclaimed it one of the best specialty rolls he has had in Indy.

This roll was enormous, and not cheap at $18, but it was quite interesting. At its center, it had a mix of crab (or “krab” as we call the imitation stuff), spicy mayo and crunch. That part was wrapped in seaweed, had the regular layer of rice, then on top a beautiful slice of avocado was covered with an amazing slice of white tuna which was then lightly singed with a kitchen torch. It was then topped with roe and little pieces of scallions and drizzled with more of the spicy mayo. Even I liked it. I really enjoyed the slight smokiness and warmth that the torching of the fish added. And the avocado was perfect and plentiful. Even with the fake crab, it was very tasty.

I had a bento box that came with chicken teriyaki and shrimp tempura as well as some California rolls and a couple of shrimp sui mai. The chicken was a little dry, but the sauce was nice—not too sweet. The tempura was really good, light and crunchy, some of the better tempura I have had in Indy. I also loved that in the mix of veggies included with the tempura, they had a piece of broccoli tempura. I love broccoli tempura and you rarely see it in Indy for some reason. In California, almost all tempura would come with at least a piece of broccoli in it. Not sure why no one does it here. And broccoli seems so Midwestern too. The other little bits were just okay, the sui mai was not bad (little shrimp and pork dumplings) and the California roll was just meh.


No, I would say the real standout was that fancy roll and the tempura. If I went back, I would just probably get an order of tempura or maybe try one of the Thai dishes (they also offer several Thai dishes). Pretty sure hubby would vote for this roll again too if they offer it. But hey, for a place literally in the mall, it is probably one of the best bets. And at least it is independent.

Yuki Sushi & Thai
6020 East 82nd Street, Suite 1406
Indy 46250
317-915-1338
(no website I could find)

Just to let you know, the WMRA blog is shrinking to five posts a week, Monday-Friday. Why? Because it's gardening season, and so time for WMRA's blogger-in-chief  to spend more time outside.

In celebration of relaxation and gardening, I offer you this:

Underneath the fume and fuss,
Life is just asparagus.

The blurry photo at the left shows the great Carolina point guard, Phil Ford, running the Four Corners. As a child growing up in Greensboro, North Carolina, I had the privilege (?) of watching Dean Smith's favorite offensive strategy in action. Which means I got to watch four Tarheels, standing around at the "corners" of their offensive half-court, pass the ball off to each other whenever a defensive player got close enough to possibly make it necessary to dribble the ball.

The Four Corners managed to make watching college basketball boring, even for me.

Cleveland State Coach, John McClendon, (pictured right, the first African American to coach at a predominantly white University) is credited with inventing the Four Corners, but Dean Smith certainly made good and frequent use of it. If any other University of Virginia basketball fans were active in 1982, I'm sure you remember the frustration of watching Carolina go into the Four Corners in order to protect a tiny lead over the 'Hoos in that year's ACC Tournament Championship game. Virginia lost 47-45.

The next year the ACC began to use a shot clock. And Dean Smith had to find another way to win. Which he did.

My point in talking about the Four Corners is that men's college basketball is always changing in response to what goes on on the court. And, in this blogger's opinion, a lot of these changes have been good for the game and good for the fans. The three-point line comes to mind.

Last night I watched a mystifying-ly turnover prone Carolina men's team lose to the Dayton Flyers in what will probably be the last NIT tournament final played in Madison Square Garden. The NIT, the National Invitational Tournament, the grandparent of all post season basketball play-athons, is probably going to be shut down by the expected expansion of the NCAA tournament from its current 65 teams to 96 teams.

Of course, the NIT has long been an afterthought; the tournament for all the teams who hoped to make the Big Dance, but didn't. The NIT is steeped in tradition and fun to watch, but if it goes, probably no one other than hardcore basketball sentimentalists will miss it.

It seems to be the consensus, however, that the reason for the NCAA's probable expansion of its men's tournament has little to do with what's good for the game, the players, or the fans, and a whole lot to do with money. This was made pretty clear at the NCAA's press conference held (ironically) on April Fool's Day. This is how ESPN's Dana O'Neil began her column,  Regrettably, expansion seems inevitable, 

INDIANAPOLIS -- Essentially, this is what we learned from NCAA head honchos here Thursday afternoon:
• They don't care about fans.
• They don't care about the regular season.
• They don't care about conference tournaments.
• And they sure don't care about student-athletes' being bothered by that pesky "student" portion of their hyphenated moniker by going to class.
What do they care about? Cash.

 A little later on in her piece, she goes on to say:

. . .Before making the official announcement to destroy what many consider to be the perfect postseason, the NCAA needs you to understand why 96 teams is good for you -- even if the folks in charge sound an awful lot like a mom trying to shove Brussels sprouts down a toddler's throat.

"In terms of context, it's important to point out that across the 88 championships that the association has, the majority of them have expanded in the last 10 years," [NCAA Senion Vice-President Greg] Shaheen said. "The topic of field size is an evergreen topic that is up to our membership."

The fact of the matter is, 96 teams is good only for the people cashing the checks, the ones who see an option out of the $6 billion deal with CBS as a greed grab for an even bigger financial windfall.

In other words, the idea of expanding the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament to 96 teams is about a bigger TV deal. Or as Vanna White would say, it's about Big Money! Big Money!

John Feinstein agrees. Here's an excerpt from his post-press conference column on the subject of tournament expansion

Look, this is about money and everyone knows it. Shaheen even made indirect reference to that when he talked about 88 other championships the NCAA conducts and the need to protect their financial futures. That protection comes from squeezing every possible dollar out of men's basketball. It was almost comical when someone asked if expansion was being contemplated for the women's tournament. The women's tournament costs money, so it isn't going to be expanded anytime soon. 

We Americans have watched Big Money take over almost every aspect of our lives. Now, it seems, we're going to have to let it severely damage one of our most eagerly anticipated annual sporting events, men's college basketball's March Madness.




As Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) put it in Singin' in the Rain, "I cayn't stand it.

(Strang Err's On A Train. Behlmann is falsely accused and making a break for it atop a speeding locomotive! Go, Behlmann, go!)

Last night it was my extreme pleasure to go see The 39 Steps at New World Stages. The play is in previews now and opens officially on 4/15. This is the start of the show's Off-Broadway run after a very successful two-year, Tony-winning run on Broadway. I had never gotten around to seeing the show on Broadway and was very excited to hear it was transferring to Off-Bway.

For those of you not familiar with the premise. the 39 Steps is an old Hitchcock movie from 1935, and the play is pretty much an exact retelling of the film in it's entirety - except on stage the 100+ characters are all played by only four actors. The film's plot involves a serious spy story, but onstage it is all smartly played for laughs. The play version is also filled with shout-outs to other Hitchcock classics, with sound and sight gags referencing movies like Psycho, The Birds and North by Northwest. There are also puns inserted throughout the script name-checking several more Hitchcock movies as well. As a Hitchcock nerd, it's incredibly fun stuff. As a theater-goer it's a jolly-good time.

(Kmac won't be swayed by his dashing good looks and actual innocence of murder... not yet anyway.)

Personally, what makes this show even more exciting than usual for me, is that two of my friends from college are starring in the show! Super-Congrats to John Bellman who plays the hero, Richard Hannay, and to Kate MacCluggage who plays three women whom Hannay becomes romantically involved with throughout the story. They both give such dynamic performances and share a wonderful stage rapport. I'm so proud and happy for them! The other two actors, Jamie Jackson and Cameron Folmar do an excellent job of playing every other character in the show (sometimes as men, women, children and even some elements of nature). Often times these two play multiple characters at once and wind up having conversations with themselves as they flip through assorted hats and accents. It's really fantastic and as an audience member you can marvel at the craft of the show without it ever overwhelming the experience of enjoying the story. The direction, the lighting and the sound design are all great, and used to superb effect in creating so many distinct environments.

I hope the play has a long successful run at New World Stages. You can go here to purchase tickets and look here for discount codes as well. This show is definitely worth it!

Garden season is here. It's time to plant early spring vegetables, peas, greens, broccoli. Yesterday, Michelle Obama was out digging up the White House lawn again and planting seeds with a bunch of school children.

You go, First Lady! I thought.


So this morning, when I read Dana Milbank's "Washington Sketch," I scratched my head. He called it Michelle Obama's garden-variety agenda, and he seemed to me to be taking the First Lady to task for futzing around and not jumping into more controversial topics.

Here's an excerpt:

Also hard to imagine is that this is the same Michelle Obama so many feared when her husband ran for the presidency in 2008. Then, many predicted that she would be an angry and divisive presence in the White House, based largely on unfounded racial accusations on the Internet and her poorly worded boast during the primaries that "for the first time in my adult life, I'm really proud of my country."

Compared with those expectations of a fiery first lady, Obama, beginning her second spring in the White House, has turned out to be Michelle Milquetoast.. . .She has shied from controversy, made relatively few public appearances, and stuck to an unobjectionable agenda of nutrition, exercise and good parenting. It is a domestic agenda -- extremely domestic. . . . Obama has been almost demure in her pronouncements.. . .

Avoiding controversy helps Obama keep her sky-high public standing. An Associated Press poll this month found her favorability rating at 71 percent -- substantially better than those of her husband and her two predecessors as first lady. But her low profile also means that she's been underutilized as an advocate of the president's agenda.

Wednesday, with two public events on her schedule, was a relatively big day for Obama. The issues were laudable -- workplace flexibility for parents and healthy eating for children -- but offered no possibility that the first lady would make news. 

Hmmmmmm.
Mr. Milbank, a couple of things I'd like to take issue with. . . .

1. In your column you seem to be finding fault with an agenda comprised of  "nutrition, exercise and good parenting." And, with respect, I'd like to ask you if you've poked your head inside a public school recently and seen the physical shape a lot (not all, by any means) of the next generation of Americans is in? Don't they need someone to tell them to quit eating junk food and get moving.
2. As for  making an issue out of "good parenting,"  Mrs. Obama can either travel around making speeches about it or do it. From a great distance away from the private life of the First Family, it seems to me Mrs. Obama leads in that department by example.
3. Doesn't your finding fault with her for not speaking out on more controversial topics that would make the news, speak more to our American addiction to controversy than to Mrs. Obama's good use of her time? 
4. And finally, we didn't elect her President, we elected her husband. Could it not be that, in these (hopefully) liberated days, rather than appearing in public as a kind of husband stand-in and political agenda cheerleader, Mrs. Obama wants to carry on as much the same person she was before the election. Which, in my opinion, sounds pretty durn healthy.

And finally, as a personal aside, and speaking as a card-carrying Boomer feminist, who builds a busy schedule around her "sacred gym time," because she considers it an investment in her health and productivity, I cannot tell you how good it is to have a President's wife who's unashamed to be physically strong and fit.

Anyone else want to chime in?

Just as I always thought I should try St. Elmo’s because it is such an Indy legend, I have also had Harry & Izzy’s on the list as well. Harry & Izzy’s, in case you don’t know is also owned by the St. Elmo’s folks (Harry & Izzy were two of the former owners of St. Elmo’s). They offer several steaks as well as the “famous” St. Elmo’s shrimp cocktail (of which I am not a fan). Anyway, we finally got there the other night when the in-laws were in town. I like the fact that the menu is much more varied than that of St. Elmo’s, although this menu is so large it might be a little too varied. But they have a decent selection of seafood as well as steaks. There are also sandwiches, pizza and pasta and several different appetizers and sides.