| Schools’calendar familiar
Columbia Public Schools students would start the 2008-09 school year on Tuesday, Aug. 19, and would have the Nov. 4 presidential Election Day off under a calendar being proposed by the district. The calendar essentially mirrors this school year, with a mid-August start date, a two-week winter break and a weeklong spring break. The calendar also has four built-in snow days that, if used, would require students to be in school until June 3, 2009. The calendar would end first semester before the winter break, a schedule change implemented for the first time this year. "We asked teachers on a survey if they liked the semester ending prior to the winter break, and they were just overwhelmingly supportive," Assistant Superintendent Lynn Barnett said. "Parents and children weve talked to have been very supportive of it, too, so it looks like something well continue." The public can weigh in on the calendar through a survey posted on the districts Web site, www.columbia.k12.mo.us.
Wheeler Dealers
On a parallel track, philanthropist Peter Goldman, an environmental lawyer and board member of the Bicycle Alliance, had a heart-to-heart about city cycling with Mayor Nickels and Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis. The Mayor's Office phoned Cascade Executive Director Chuck Ayers: Let's meet. "The log jam burst," Hiller says. "There was finally a recognition that the city's bicycling community was large and active, growing and sophisticated, and not asking for anything unreasonable, just equal access to our public rights of way." The mayor announced a $300,000 Bicycle Master Plan to improve bike friendliness on urban streets and better connect the city's often discombobulated bike routes. His nine-year, $365 million transportation proposal, scheduled for the Nov.
Secret sharer
In L.A., Nathaniel avoids the obvious as long as he can, avoids his grad-school notebook on the floor of Coolberg's car. When, finally, the subtext becomes the text, the novel resolves itself around two documents, one a sealed letter, addressed to Nathaniel, from Jamie. He's never opened it. In that way, he claims, he keeps hope alive. In that way, we think, he keeps the wound open and the delusion alive. (Perhaps we're too harsh.) The second document you hold in your hands, dear reader - "The Soul Thief," but to say more would be to say too much. Except this: Whoever wrote "The Soul Thief" knows that we write about what keeps us up at night, that a writer gets to inhabit many lives, and that he who tells the story makes the meaning. John Dufresne's most recent book is the story collection "Johnny Too Bad." .
The incredible, edible ice cube?
When Kyle Burkhalter gets up in the morning, he goes into the kitchen and fixes himself a nice cup of ice. The 24-year-old director of research for a Web site chews the ice in the car on his way to work in Atlanta. He downs two or three more cups before lunch. He orders ice from drive-thru windows and dips into the office ice machine. Sometimes, his tongue gets so numb he can barely talk to clients. Still, he munches on. "It's something that you want to do and you think about doing on a constant basis," he says. Ice isn't just for chilling drinks anymore, or for packing fish and treating sprains. It's a hot snack. Some Sonic Drive-In franchises sell it in cups and in bags to go. Ice-machine makers are competing to make the best chewable ice, with names like Chewblet, Nugget Ice and Pearl Ice.
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