Bobby Floyd Trio at Bexley's Monk. Annelise Maurer review for Bexley Public Radio.

Friday evening, December 18, 2009. I have never been to the Monk before but tonight I’m going there to listen to a jazz group and write a review of the music for Bexley Public Radio. This will be my first visit to the Monk and my first radio report ever, if the radio station accepts my review.

Bexley’s Monk. The “monastery” across East Main Street from Trinity Lutheran Seminary.

I'm a musician but not really into jazz. This is a new experience for me and I’m going to hear the Bobby Floyd Trio as a favor for friends at Bexley Public Radio. The review is extra. I wonder if the radio station will broadcast my review.

I don’t know what to expect but upon approaching the Monk’s front door, the members of the band welcome me with smiles and nods through the window. I am glad to have come.

I arrive perhaps five minutes late. The house is full. What a beautiful venue! Warm, tasteful, polished. The atmosphere is a perfect match to the alternating carols and standards wafting above the highly sophisticated din of the main bar.

I circle the house several times slowly, in the hopes that an open seat might somehow appear. “This is a classy place,” I note to myself, “and I am glad I dressed well.”

Not that it matters in any practical sense, since, having secured the corner seat most longitudinally distant from the band, try as I might, I can not get a drink.

Instead I get stares. Has some disaster befallen my hair, my scarf ... no. Am I young, alone, and unable to afford more than one modest well drink? Indeed, and it is as if the accomplished and affluent have sniffed me out. I love you, Bexley, I'm one of yours. Why the attitude?

I recall the half-year I lived on Martha’s Vineyard: once in a blue moon I’d put down my farm-work for a cocktail and some fresh catch in town, only to be stared at, and stared at, and stared at, or simply gazed straight through as if I didn’t live and breathe at all. Massachusetts royalists, Massachusetts Tories. But I don’t expect this attitude in Ohio. There are no Tories in the Midwest.

At the Monk, a couple standing behind me ask for some beers, and are quickly acknowledged, and served. Yet here I sit, and all I’ve managed to garner is a wine list plus absolutely no kind of practical attention from patron or staff.

Until, miraculously, half an hour later, an older distinguished gentlemen shows up: my father. Within seconds we are waited upon. Magically, two better seats free up.

I let my feelings of inadequacy slide and get down to the pleasure of really listening to the music.

The Bobby Floyd Trio, featuring Columbus’ own Bobby Floyd at piano, Reggie Jackson on drums and Derek DiCenzo on bass. These musicians wear the absolute calmest, happiest expressions as they toss melody and key change back and forth like casual banter among old friends.

That's one way to tell a good ensemble: they move as an organism. Symbiosis.

You can also tell that Individually, they’re accomplished artists, completely at home in their medium, as evidenced by their solos.

A classical pianist myself, I focus my attention on Mr. Floyd, and find the experience akin to hearing a foreign language: the reason and meaning are lost on me, but the sound-shapes and expressive subtleties are just curious enough to grab a good hold of my attention and keep the interest going.

Admittedly, I leave before the trio’s three-hour set is up; after one very excellent Rob Roy my stomach reminds me that I'd skipped dinner, and I think I can’t afford to feel hungry here.

The trio plays on, a medley of Christmas carols now, and the crowd mellows, as I pull on my hand-me-down coat and gloves.

Outside it is snowing. A charming evening for a Christmas prelude.

Editor’s note: Annelise writes “once in a blue moon” about dining out during her summer of farm labor on Martha’s Vineyard

On Thursday December 31 this year there is a blue moon. The full moon that will appear on the last day of calendar year 2009 is the second full moon of that month and hence it is a blue moon

Editor’s second note. Annelise’s father should have arrived earlier and offered his daughter dinner that evening at the Monk.

Editor's third note: The Bobby Floyd Trio returns to Bexley's Monk Friday January 15, 2010.

Bexley Public Radio Foundation broadcasting as
WCRX-LP, 102.1 FM, Local Power Radio
2700 E. Main St., Suite 208
Columbus, OH 43209
Voice (614) 235 2929
Fax (614) 235 3008
Email wcrxlp@yahoo.com
Blog http://agentofcurrency.blogspot.com

Bexley Public Radio Foundation is exempt from federal taxes under IRC Section 501(c)(3). Donations are deductible from federal income taxes for individuals who itemize. Checks may identify the payee as Bexley Public Radio Foundation or WCRX-LP, 102.1 FM.

Design is copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Bexley Public Radio Foundation. Text is copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Annelise Maurer.

Laura Franks. What is the market value for California script in Bexley?

The State of California ran out of cash in July and used “script” to pay its bills. State employees, third party vendors and service providers received pieces of paper that look like checks as payment of wages and invoices. Although called “script,” and “California IOUs” the papers are more properly called “warrants.”

Warrants are one official instructing another official to do something within their authority as officials. An arrest warrant is a judge telling a law enforcement officer to take someone into custody. The California warrants are the state controller telling the state treasurer to pay money on a particular future date. In this case the date is about two months in the future.



Some California banks, Wells Fargo and Bank of America are the most prominent examples, accept the warrants for deposit into checking and savings account. Some banks are accepting the warrants but discounting the face amount of the warrant by two or three percent. The discount represents an interest charge by the bank for the time the script is unpaid by California.

The California script is due on October 2, 2009 and carries an annual interest rate of 3.75 percent.

Speculators are offering to buy the script at discounts on Craigslist. There are internet exchanges where holders of the warrants can offer them for sale. One of these exchanges is the creation of Brandon Schlichter who is a resident of Columbus.

Does this California script have any value in Bexley? Will Bexley restaurants and other retail establishments accept the California script as a form of payment. To find out Bexley Public Radio called three Bexley restaurants: The Top, Bexley Monk and Guiseppes Ritrova. Bexley Public Radio also posed the question to the home offices of Walgreens and CVS, two national chain drug stores serving the Bexley community. Both Walgreens and CVS have retail stores in California.

The manager at The Top Restaurant said unequivocally that they “can’t accept” the script as payment.

The host at Bexley Monk left the question open but said that none of the California script had been presented and then, as an after thought, said that he didn’t think it was likely that anyone would offer the script as a form of payment. We take this response as a polite “non.”

The position of Giuseppe’s Ritrova was also unequivocal about the California script. The host said that “we won’t accept it.”

As to the drug stores, emails were sent to the home offices asking whether California script would be accepted in payment for purchases at the East Broad Street Walgreens location and the East Main Street location of CVS.

Neither home office has replied to the email. After five days of no response, we are taking the silence as “no.”

CONCLUSION. California script has zero value in Bexley.

The credit score of California seems to be below one hundred and fifty points in our Midwestern paradise.

This is Laura Franks reporting for Bexley Public Radio.

HELP BEXLEY PUBLIC RADIO UPGRADE ITS ANTENNA. SEND YOUR MONEY PROMPTLY. BE GENEROUS.

Bexley Public Radio Foundation broadcasting as
WCRX-LP, 102.1 FM, Local Power Radio
2700 E. Main St., Suite 208
Columbus, OH 43209
Voice (614) 235 2929
Fax (614) 235 3008
Email wcrxlp@yahoo.com
Blog http://agentofcurrency.blogspot.com

Bexley Public Radio Foundation is exempt from federal taxes under IRC Section 501(c)(3). Donations are deductible from federal income taxes for individuals who itemize. Checks may identify the payee as Bexley Public Radio Foundation or WCRX-LP, 102.1 FM.

Design is copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Bexley Public Radio Foundation. Text is copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Laura Franks.

Social work, Bexley-style.

The adult daughter of a Bexley resident was speaking regretfully to a member of the WCRX-LP editorial collective. The daughter said that her mother misses the early evening cocktail hour.

The daughter lives in a distant city, almost a third of the way around the world. The mother’s residence is in a Bexley neighborhood of double-income professionals who have nannies for their children.

The daughter said that she felt there was nothing she could do to restore this small but significant pleasure to her mother.

In a recent mother-daughter phone conversation, mother got wistful for the evening social life she enjoyed in Bexley. It began during Camelot, the few brief years of JFK, and continued through two maybe three subsequent decades.

At six o’clock. A Manhattan, a Scotch and soda. Sometimes a Tom Collins. A gin & tonic. Even an Old Fashion.

Cocktails for two. Sometimes two cocktails for two.

Then sometime, maybe during the Clinton administration, when no one was paying attention, the cocktail hour disappeared.

The mother still has fond memories of this simple pleasure but the daughter saw no practical way to restore the cocktail hour.

Enter the media. The daughter wonders if suitable cocktail companions might be in the WCRX-LP listening audience.

Daughter has offered one or two convivial Bexley residents a weekly tab at the Bexley Monk, Giuseppe’s, Rusty Bucket. The cocktails can be preceded by a stroll with her mother to these spots.

An occasional ride to the Top and Wings might also be in order.

Candidates may express their interest at the address listed below for Bexley Public Radio.

Minimum requirement is good manners. An appreciation of gossip, malicious and otherwise, will be considered.

A demonstrated record of wit, malicious especially, is a plus.