Tuesday, August 17, 1999
Designer in run for Ky. quarter
BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Talk about a survivor . . . Ron Inabnit's quarter is.
Inabnit, a Northern Kentuckian and designer at Millennium Marketing, is one of five finalists in the Kentucky Quarter Project, a design competition for the state's commemorative coin.
Some 1,800 people entered, forcing the committee, led by Kentucky first lady Judi Patton, into a monumental elimination process.
Shouldn't have to mention this, but for the thick among us: Designs were mostly thoroughbreds, My Old Kentucky home and Daniel Boone.
The committee narrowed it to 11, then had a three-day Internet vote that logged 10,000-11,000 hits a day. That narrowed the field to five. Inabnit's design, a horse behind a plank fence with a house in the distance, was one of them.
Survivors are under review at the U.S. Mint before going to Gov. Paul Patton for final selection. The winning design will be announced in December and released in October, 2001. It will be the 15th state quarter (Kentucky was the 15th state. Ohio's competition will be announced next summer.).
TELL A TALE: Cincinnati attorney Dave Altman continues on his mission to “bring storytelling out of the woods, and into the bars where it belongs.”
Seems he read a recent New York Times story about how trendy Manhattanites get together for story sessions. Informal groups, he says, coming up with unstructured stories about most everything.
So, going against the wisdom that trends get here 20 years late, he set out to try it.
Less formal than the Storytellers Guild, Altman's group is the bar and coffeehouse set. The first meeting was in Mount Auburn at Cafe Tazza. Altman expected a few people and got 30. “Everything from ad execs to farmers,” he said.
“No one was more surprised than me,” Altman says. “Not just by the size, but that we could produce entertainment on a sustained basis. It became clear that there's a lot of urban storytelling going on around town, but it hasn't entered the mainstream yet.”
Altman is organizing a second session. No times or dates (the group doesn't even have a name) but he's composing the group's next chapter. 721-2180 for info.
TOMORROW'S NEWS TODAY: And this for everyone wondering what Scorpio, the local mentalist, did last week.
He showed up at Union Terminal Monday and wrote what he said would appear in Friday's Enquirer. Then he had it dated, sealed in a box and left at the Terminal.
“Only I know what it is,” he said at the time. “If I'm way wrong, I'll admit it, but I don't want anyone to know how wrong.”
The rest of the world found out Friday at an ESP demonstration he did at the Terminal. He predicted a guy in yellow with a brush. That appeared on the front page in a photo with a story about the Dalai Lama's visit to Indiana. He predicted a story on a new medication. Duramed's oral contraceptive was at the top of Page 1. And he predicted a proposal for the REDS 9, PIRATES 2 stadium. A story about extending the riverfront was on the right of the page.
How did he do that? “You sit, wait, it comes. Don't know how.”
We don't either. If we did, we'd take the week off and let this column write itself.
Knip's Eye View appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
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