When Joseph Cintron begins a portrait, he sketches the essence of the figure.

The eyes are always last, explains the professor of foundation and painting at Cleveland Institute of Art.

Just as the Plymouth Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians did before us, American at-home cooks gear up this month to prepare for the Thanksgiving Day feast. Whether host or guest, selecting just the right quaffing wine is part of the job.

A colorful assortment of glass concoctions resembling jungle flowers peeks out of a place where you'd least expect them: the large, industrial-sized windows of a former warehouse fronting Superior Avenue, now the home of Burning River Glass.

Catch yourself whistling while you work? This month, Disney Theatrical Productions will open its fourth show, "On The Record," at the Palace Theatre as part of Playhouse Square Center's Broadway Series.

Holidays have you harried already? Then take a page or two out of "Great Inn Getaways from Cleveland" (Gray & Co., Publishers, $14.95), the new book by Kent author Doris Larson. From quaint Victorian mansions to artsy-craftsy bed-&-breakfasts and luxury hotels sporting state-of-the-art spas, Larson has a weekend tailor-made for you. Here are three of her favorites.

Christopher Diehl never expected to find his architectural muse inside a German coffee shop. But as he listened to his classmates at Frankfurt's tiny Stadelschule Academy of Arts debate filmmaking, he realized how much architects obsess about size and proportion.

Give them a team and they'll be happy. That's the sort of thinking veteran Akron-Beacon Journal sports columnist Terry Pluto says the National Football League used when trying to heal the wounds Art Modell inflicted upon the city of Cleveland.

They gave us an expansion franchise, with our name and colors, and we were satisfied. But after the fight-to-the-death-for-our-team buzz faded, the hangover took hold. In "False Start: How the New Browns Were Set Up to Fail" (Gray & Co., $19.95), Pluto points out the obstacles that have hobbled the new Browns ever since billionaire Al Lerner coughed up the $530 million ransom the NFL demanded for the franchise (which incidentally, as Pluto points out, was slashed from the truly unthinkable $1 billion the league initially bandied when trying to price the team).

Ten years after Beth Stolarczyk stormed into the nation's households as a cast member of MTV's "The Real World: Los Angeles," the Garfield Heights native has launched a new venture with the help of 23 other reality-television veterans.

On a scale of one to 10, the complexity of David Chippi's culinary creations fall somewhere between two and three. But that's not to say the Avon Lake resident and entrepreneur isn't doling out a big dish of cooking knowledge to clueless men.

Cleveland is famously rich in nonprofit organizations supported by a strong philanthropic infrastructure and spirit. Three of our area universities offer degrees in nonprofit management, and groups such as Business Volunteers Unlimited help connect committed executives with needy boards of directors. The Cleveland Foundation was the nation's first community foundation and, with current assets around $1.5 billion, it leads the region in charitable gifts.

Now that you're all grown up, you know it's time to bag the posters and look for some real art. But if the word "gallery" invokes images of creaky pine floorboards and white plaster walls, you haven't been to our city's galleries in a while. There's no need to don a beret before entering. Cleveland is not Paris. Even if it were, buying art shouldn't be intimidating. Buying a couch or a car is not much different. You've got to do your homework.

But what if you have the will without the way? How do you find that place where what's good and what you like intersect? What you need is an "eye" for art. And you can't buy, borrow or steal it. You must train it. Spend a lot of time looking at a lot of art. Pay attention to what captivates you. You'll find that buying art is a lot less complicated than understanding baseball, and it involves a lot less time sitting on the bench.

We're in a private room, but it's loud in here. Possibly because I am having dinner with seven bears and eight of their closest friends.

The bears — Grizzly (Ryan Tucker), Big (Paul Zukauskas), Little (Ross Verba), Brown (Jeff Faine), Polar (Kelvin Garmon), Young (Joaquin Gonzalez) and Panda (Melvin Fowler) — comprise the bulk of the playing time on the Cleveland Browns' offensive line. Tonight, they've brought along their backups and tight ends.

Warren Zanes: When did you first hear Lead Belly's music?

Robert Plant: I was at school, a grammar school in a town which had quite a lot of folk clubs. It was probably around 1962, and the town had a very big art college. And the art college attracted a kind of bohemian set of students and lecturers, and the spin-off from that was this: In what was normally a kind of blue-collar area, you had this little pocket of existentialist poetry and jazz, a folk scene. The very first acoustic blues bands that I got involved with — when I was playing washboard, before I even thought about singing — came out of such a scene.

Say you're a woman who's been married 30 years. In the early days, you and your husband — we'll call him Bob — struggled financially, but now you're worth millions. You've got the house in Hunting Valley, grown children with respectable degrees and your place on the social circuit. Then, one day, your husband comes home and tells you he wants a divorce.

As the life you've built crumbles around you, the minimum you want is your fair share of the money. But you know your husband. You've seen him at his cutthroat worst. And you have reason to worry.

Watch the security video once and you'll miss it. You'll see two boys wrestling on the checkerboard floor of the Westlake High School cafeteria. You'll see the boys' friends pull them apart. You'll see the spectators scatter.

You'll see what looks like a typical high-school fight. But if you watch the incident again, as Westlake police officer Scott Fortkamp has on replay after replay, you'll see something more troubling about this scuffle.

Our House is tucked away in a wooded, Westlake neighborhood, a rare 9-acre pocket sheltered from the suburban sprawl and rush-hour crush that jams The Promenade shopping district just around the corner. Inside the senior-living facility, modest rooms are close ringers for Hampton Inn suites and communal conveniences double as social hubs for its 76 residents, each of whom relocated from longtime roots for a supportive new home.

"I just had to go somewhere," says Marcella Henz. The 89-year-old's blue eyes are still lively behind silver-rimmed bifocals. "I'm prone to falling; that is what brought me here. After my last fall, my nephew said, ‘You can't go back to your apartment. You can't live alone.' "

The sound of a doorbell jolts me from a deep, dreamless sleep and sends me rolling onto my side to peer at the alarm clock. Six o'clock. Ah, the butler always rings once, I think as I stretch under the 600-thread-count sheets and down duvet, smiling at the idea of being served English breakfast tea and freshly squeezed orange juice in bed. My reverie, however, is interrupted by the nightstand telephone.

"Good morning," a soft female voice says with incredible sincerity. "Are you ready for your beverages?"