If you could represent Salem in a font, what would it look like?

Any typographic artists out there? If you send me examples of an original font you create to represent Salem, I'll put it out there for people to see.

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Chattanooga Designers Take a Typographic Approach to Civic Pride TODAY'S GOOD 20% serifs 20% kerning 60% hometown love #beyondHelvetica

Around the world, only a few hundred people make a living as fulltime typeface designers. Two of them happen to live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, population 167,000, where they've embarked on an ambitious project to distill the city's artistic and entrepreneurial spirit into a font called Chatype. The goal is to help the city and its businesses forge a distinct and cohesive identity through custom typeface, sending a visual message to the world that Chattanooga—a rapidly growing city in the midst of a creative renaissance—is “more than just your average Southern town.” Chatype came about when D.J. Trischler, a brand consultant, discovered he'd been sitting next to typeface designer Jeremy Dooley at their local coffee shop. The two became fixated on a question: What if Chattanooga had its own typeface? The idea may sound strange from an American perspective, but it's actually the norm throughout Europe, where even small cities employ custom typeface to distinguish themselves. Joined by recent Chattanooga transplant and typeface designer Robbie de Villiers and Trischler's business partner Jonathan Mansfield, the collaborators met with a local historian to figure out what should inform the design of a Chattanooga-inspired font. They pulled from a diverse set of local visual references including the Cherokee writing system, Coca-Cola's first bottling plant, and, of course, that city's "choo choo," immortalized by the 1940s big band song. Chatype made its debut at a event hosted by the local creative community and quickly garnered public support. They've raised nearly $7,000 through Kickstarter from more than 100 backers. De Villiers says they now have "hard, firm commitments" from Chattanooga's public sector to work the typeface into local projects (they have yet to reveal which ones). While the designers still have more work to do to finalize the typeface, if all goes according to plan Chattanoogans will soon begin to see Chatype popping up on signage, business cars, emails, and websites published by the city government. “We want to let businesses use the typeface too," says Trischler. "It'd be awesome for startups in town that can’t afford a typeface, to give them a typeface to really set them apart.” Get the full story on GOOD.is

New Link in "Visit Also" list: Congregations Helping People

A resource for hard times.

Question

I walk around downtown near my office a lot.  For some reason, while on an errand today, I really saw something that I usually don't notice, which is how bad downtown looks because of all the trash strewn around.  Cigarette butts especially, but also cups, wrappers, you name it.  All throughout the core area.

Is there some special reason that the parking patrol guys and gals can't be given canvas sacks to collect trash with and little reach-extending grabbers so that they clean up downtown as they patrol for parking violators?

Salem police shoot, kill dog that bit officer

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20120119/UPDATE/120119063/1001

Let's see, where are we on getting the absurd annual fee for hen keeping abolished? If not, then we ought to have an ordinance that requires all canine owners to register their dogs with the city (and to spay/neuter them, or obtain a breeder permit) so that police can know exactly what animals they going to encounter at any address.

I (heart) local bookstores! More reasons to avoid Amazon

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/amazon/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917,0,2859554,full.story

Book Bin on Court Street is it for Salem, afaik. Does Salem have any other locally, owned, general interest bookstores that carry new books?

WORD: The Madness of a $500 Million+ Rivercrossing Project

Cops, psychologists, and lawyers and all the others whose professions bring them in contact with people at their worst become acquainted with the ravages that people can inflict on themselves when in the grip of addiction. Addicts often squander thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars and waste years of their lives, rather than admit that they can no longer service their addiction and that they have to change their self-definition.

Multiply the losses by 10^6 when a city is in the grip of addiction and denial, desperately seeking another fix of mainlining concrete, even as the children are ill-fed and the schools keep on advancing to the rear, cutting libraries and teachers.

Madness indeed.

http://breakfastonbikes.blogspot.com/2012/02/city-council-feb-13th-madness-of-500.html

Worth a million reads: ClubOrlov: A Million Gardens

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2011/11/million-gardens.html

The Truth about Violence : 3 Principles of Self-Defense : Sam Harris

Scary good insights.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-truth-about-violence

Let's start a yard share program in Salem! (GROWSalem, anyone?)

A dear friend is hobbling about this winter, wondering what she's going to do -- or, more likely, not do --- with her great raised beds this coming year. She's got at least one surgery on tap that will lay her up for some time, and she's struggling a bit with mobility anyway, which the surgery aims to fix. She has terrific beds, with water and good sun, and all the tools. All she needs is a gardener (or would-be gardener willing to be tutored some) to do the legwork for her in return for a share of the proceeds.

We we talking about it, and I suggested she call the Marion-Polk Food Share or Local Harvest about helping her with finding someone who had the gardening itch but no good place to scratch it. But then, later, I realized that both those fine organizations have more than enough to do to put food on others' plates already, and that there was really no reason that LOVESalem couldn't be helping this idea get growing in Salem.

So what do you think? If I put together a GROWSalem website, do you think that can serve as a matchmaking service to connect people with gardens at-risk of going idle (or, even better, with lawns they want to turn into gardens) and people with the need or the urge to grow some food but inadequate locations or access to garden space?

Anyone interested in heading this up? (Eagle Scout project? Capstone high school project? College internship? Self-directed study and opportunity to show potential employers or admissions officers that you're REALLY a self-starter and problem solver. Retirement activity and social mission?)

If you have feedback or ideas for this, drop a comment below, especially if you want to pitch in!

The Faces of Choice

thefacesofchoice.com

Making a decision to terminate a pregnancy or not forces women into emotional exile. I want to change that. I want a world where women are encouraged to talk honestly about difficult decisions with their friends and family without being ostracized. I want to live in a society where we don't shun each other during some of the most challenging times in our lives. I hope that, in sharing some of these painful and compelling stories, I can help move us toward a better understanding of how we can come together on a human level to help one another instead of using laws and moral judgments as barriers to honest communication.