Still haven't picked up the pen for a heart-to-heart with our elected officials? Last week, I reminded everybody that Cincinnati City Manager Valerie Lemmie and Co. are deep in setting the next city budget and now is the time to speak out about the need for supporting our exciting and acclaimed local arts.

Your voice matters and this is why: THE STATUS QUO ISN'T WORKING.

One of the reasons for the budget deficit looming over the city is that there isn't enough revenue coming in. In part, that's because Cincinnati is losing its young workforce at a frightening rate - down 10 percent (some demographics are down 20 percent) from 1990. Our 65 and over population is the city's fastest growing.

Of course other issues are important, especially jobs, but in re-invented cities, arts are a revenue generator. So please tell everybody that we need to steer a new strategic course now.

Explain how a lively arts scene can help: Two of the best ways to bring the workforce back to the city is to make housing available and to turn on the lights and give them something to do at night.

Arts Advocacy Initiative offers this suggestion: Include a ticket stub with your letter to let politicians know that you're spending arts dollars where they count the most - in Cincinnati.

Get those cards and letters going. If you need addresses for the mayor, city manager and members of city council, got to www.rcc.org/contact.html.

Score 6 for the arts: Well, we know how the Bengals are stacking up on the field. (And we wish them well today). How do they stack up against the arts?

More than 3 million people attend Cincinnati's arts and museums every year. Bengal's attendance could clear 600,000 this season. Looks like a touchdown for the arts!

Cultural organizations employ 3,091 people. The Bengals employ 65 (and about 25 part-timers). Yea! Arts score! Way to go!

Arts are pouring more than $125 million into building projects over the next year. Isn't that about the same number as the over-runs at Paul Brown Stadium?

Put down that coffee cup, it's time for an Arts Wave!

And if you really want to cheer the arts, go to a performance and take a friend. A great show can be a stress-reliever.

Summer skip: There won't be a summer season at Playhouse in the Park in 2003. After three summer seasons, Playhouse will take a vacation from year-round producing.

"It's too bad," says producing artistic director Ed Stern, but he doesn't have any immediate hopes for an economic turn-around and "let's be realistic."

Wingfield Unbound just about held its own, and main stage entry The Reducers tanked. The summer is supposed to help fund the season, but it didn't work in 2002.

"There aren't a lot of Smoke on the Mountain and Always . . . Patsy Clines (both past summer hits) out there," says Mr. Stern.

For the time being, he says, the theater will stand guard over its mission during the economic downturn and live to play another summer day.

Slogan doesn't say it: Early last week, Fine Arts Fund announced details of a new marketing campaign that will showcase visual and performing arts over seven weekends, from mid-June through mid-October 2003.

I'll applaud any and all attempts to promote the range of Cincinnati's arts offerings while our city is in the spotlight for not one or two but three museum openings next year.

But where did they get the slogan? "Go ahead, take it all in"? That's it? Take what all in? They've been working on this for how long?

Next summer the arts scene in Cincinnati is going to be fun and exciting and a Don't Miss, right?

Nothing about the generic "Go ahead, take it all in" would move me out of my comfort zone and in search of downtown parking. Somehow, I don't think it would get top marks for new product placement at P&G.

Kathy DeLaura, project director for the Fine Arts Fund, says everyone is thrilled with the results.

The slogan supports the logo, she explains. "Specifically, Landor created an identity symbolizing arts organizations coming together to celebrate. The symbol could be used as a repeat pattern to convey arts patrons coming together to enjoy the arts. The (amoeba-like) identity allows for people to develop their own interpretations."

(Here's my question: Would you buy the T-shirt?)

"Landor created the brand line ("Go ahead, take it all in") to support the logo and the brand's proposition. Succinct brand guidelines were created since major partners with very diverse backgrounds would be implementing the brand. Landor also assisted with identifying powerful applications to bring the brand to life."

I think this might translate to "too many cooks spoil the broth." It explains why the campaign feels corporate rather than creative; the arts we will be seeing next summer will be filled with passion, bold ideas, and a sense of fun. It deserves something more than a staid marketing campaign.

All this started me thinking about how much Cincinnati needs a terrific "arts slogan" and I hereby declare a contest. There will be a prize. (I'm working on it; and I'm not saying it will be a good prize.)

Feel free to "borrow" from successful ad campaigns (Got Art?) Tie it in with next summer's baseball-themed Big Pig Gig sequel tentatively titled Hit Parade.

Get rhymin'. Get political. Cut loose: "What's big and new and arty all over?"

Cincinnati arts need you. E-mail me with suggestions.

One-woman show: She's got Feathers, but she's not a chicken. That's Amanda Monyhan and that's more or less the title of her one-woman show that starts next weekend at Plush, the cabaret space above Carol's on Main.

The Northern Kentucky University grad ('99) always wrote poetry, she explains in her attractive drawl. "I'm from Louisville; we have a different way of talkin'."

But there was an evening of monologues, and it needed one more piece. Even though she'd never done theater, Ms. Monyhan (who talks long and not necessarily with punctuation) wrote "Dying for Love."

"It was a freakin' hit," she laughs, "and the more positive the response, the more confidence I felt."

Confident enough to write an hour-long collection of vignettes, encouraged by Queen City Off Broadway artistic director Lyle Benjamin, whom Ms. Monyhan met because she stands on his stoop when she's waiting for her bus. They both live in Newport, which she loves.

She put in some time with Friends of Lucy, but they didn't laugh at her jokes, and when they nixed one about Bette Davis working at a McDonald's, Ms. Monyhan knew she and Lucy weren't to be.

"Every piece (in Feathers)," she says, "is about what people say and do to be loved and accepted, by strangers, lovers, the world. And what we don't say and do. The objectives are the same."

Over the next two years, Mr. Benjamin says he'd like to turn Feathers into a full-length show.

In the meantime, Ms. Monyhan is busy on local stages in shows including Know Tribe's summer hit Anton in Show Business.

Feathers plays Friday, Saturday and Nov. 15 at 8 p.m. For reservations and information call 681-2043. Tickets are a friendly $7.

Young playwrights: Student playwrights can still sign-up for a free writing workshop scheduled for 9 a.m.-4 p.m. in the Aronoff Center rehearsal hall. (Lunch will be free, too.)

The workshop is a prelude to a new high school playwrights competition sponsored by Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative and School for Creative and Performing Arts in cooperation with Cincinnati Arts Association. Play submission deadline is Feb.1.

To register and for competition information contact Mary Lenning at SCPA, 632-6941.

CCM grads on Broadway: College-Conservatory of Music alum Aaron Lazar (Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha) changes Broadway theaters this month. He moves from understudying Raoul in Phantom of the Opera to understudying cowboy Curly in the Broadway revival of Oklahoma!

Pick the right night, and three out of five leads (including Jessica Boevers and Justin Bohon) are CCM musical theater grads.

The New York Times reports that D. Michael Heath (CCM '75), who has toured through here singing Andrew Lloyd Webber, will take the lead tenor role at Carnegie Hall in a Nov. 19 performance of Leonard Bernstein's Mass.

According to the Times, the audition was pure coincidence. Mr. Heath was teaching a voice student in the room next door to the auditions, noticed the sign and sang it cold. He was part of a CCM production of Mass almost 30 years ago.

E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com.