Euclid Beach Pier

Around the 1st of December (maybe a little earlier) a new Euclid Beach Pier was finished. It has three metal arches designed by Brinsley Tyrrell, who has a number of metal, and forged steel works in public and private. The arches have several vignettes that reproduce what was at the park.  The park began in 1895, and beer was available. Dudley Humphrey ran a popcorn stand, and bought the park in 1901 and made it family friendly, and the beer was gone. The park closed in 1969, it began losing money a few years before amid racial tensions. Euclid Beach is looking much better under Cleveland Metroparks' management.

December on Cleveland's Lake Erie is not always inviting. Sunlight has not been that scarce this month, and it has not been very cold, and this Sunday it was convenient enough to go and see. The metal arches are modelled after the entrance arch on Lakeshore Boulevard (1921), which remained. The bollards were put up after a car hit and damaged one leg of the arch.

There on the far right of the first arch is "Laffing Sal". She was a mechanical automaton that laughed and shook forward. As many roller coasters, carousels, and other attractions she was made by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company. They subcontracted this to Canton Ohio’s Old King Cole Papier Mache Company. As a child encountering it was unpleasant. She was ugly, my Father told me she just looked like a farm woman, and there used to be another moving statue there that was male, and presumably her husband. I have written on this before [click]. She stood on a pedestal behind thin wire, i did not think the wire was strong enough to have stopped her pitching forward (on to me). My dear Father would bring me right in front of her, thinking this would extinguish my trepidations. Her head was made of papier-mâché, and nearly everything made of papier-mâché was not an elegant reproduction. Papier-mâché makes for grotesque carnival figures. She had a blacked out tooth, freckles, and uncombed head of Dorothy Fuldheim red hair. And she had this raucous laugh provided by 78rpm records. She must have disturbed other people too. I did not know her as Sal, but as Haha Baba. I am sure there had to be laughing ladies installed about the country, but this was the only one i knew of. Haha Baba was a better name. English was not our first language. 'Haha' is onomatopoeic, and 'Baba' means woman (and in some of the Slavonic tongues it is considered rude). 

The pier has seating bolted down. Some people think first of theft and vandalism prevention, but it gets windy on the lake.

This circle has been recently sodded. In the past there was sand here, and before that a water fountain, and before that a water swing ride.

Boar's Head Festival

Not every day does a well dressed camel enter church. Shadrach (his friends Meschach, and Abednego are back at the farm in Salem) came to be in the Boar's Head Festival with the Magi. For the 56ᵗʰ time Cleveland Trinity Anglican Cathedral has spent a day with the Christmastide service. A lot of fine costumes, processions, a Nativity play, and Christmas carols to see, hear, and sing. Good King Wenceslas makes an early appearance, St. Stephen was absent.

Before entrance, the Beefeaters (Yeoman Guard) gather with the rest of the cast.

 The waits (musicians) sing and dance the Wassail song.

 

 

 One of the Magi offers and smokes frankincense.

The boar's head processes out.

Jesus

Homeless Jesus makes a third stop around northeast Ohio, this time at Messiah Lutheran Fairview Park. This is one of several of Toronto sculptor Timothy Schmalz's bronze copies. This is a travelling one owned by Community West Foundation of Westlake, where it made its first appearance. Then it went to First Congregational United Church of Christ Elyria for a month. Since November 6th, and until the middle of January it will be in Fairview Park.

 “And the king answering, shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me. .” — Matthew xxv. 40.

Homeless Jesus at Old Stone Church Presbyterian Cleveland

Hungry and Thirsty by Timothy Schmalz 
previously posted on March 26th 2018

Then shall the just answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry, and fed thee; thirsty, and gave thee drink? — Matthew xxv. 37.

 Homeless Jesus at St. Matthias Parma. Hungry and Thirsty by Timothy Schmalz

previously posted on June 24th 2018

2018 Miscellany #14—some signs

Maple Lanes Cleveland on St. Clair

a simple, beautiful, sandstone ornament

[supra] c.1850 jar for medicinal leeches

at Dittrick Museum of Medical History

Allen Memorial Medical Library

Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland

[infra] physician's office mid 19ᵗʰ century

On Lorain by West 32ⁿᵈ Cleveland

The outline perimeter is a variant of St. Florian's cross. St. Florian is the patron of firemen.

 On Broadway, downtown Lorain Ohio

Holes in Protestant furniture

Church of the Covenant Presbyterian

On the backs of church pews there are sometimes shelves and racks for books, missalettes, papers , envelopes and stuff. On some are clips to hold hats.

Across the pews there were these. I did not recognise them...

Pilgrim Congregational

...until i got here for a concert, and saw a single, wee, wee glass resting in the slot. The ones at Church of the Covenant were bored through. These here stopped. The slots were to hold glasses for communion drink.

Communion practices are different in some Protestant churches as compared to those in Catholic and Orthodox churches. In the latter, Communion is a Sacrament wherein the Eucharistic miracle and mystery transform bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus. For the Orthodox, and the Catholics the bread must be of wheat, and real wine must be used. Protestants do not have this in their theology, and some use grape juice. For Roman Catholics, Communion is complete with one or both species (Body and Blood); and the usual practice is to first receive the Body, and then the Blood. The Body can be dipped into the Blood (indiction). For Eastern Catholics and the Orthodox, the species are taken together from a spoon. So for most Roman Catholics a shared chalice (cup) is used.  In some Protestant churches trays of tiny individual cups or glasses contain the wine or grape juice; the provision in the furniture allows for glasses to be used in the pews. I have no idea how often this is currently done.

 Broadway Methodist Cleveland (closed)

These were around the outside of the sanctuary containing the altar table and speakers area, and were meant to hold tiny glasses/cups for communion.

Advent and Gaudete

Flor de Noche Buena (Flower of Christmas Eve), Euphorbia pulcherrima, Poinsettia. These are at Rockefeller Greenhouse, and the foto was taken on a rare sunny December day.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is 12th December and is celebrated with roses and other flowers. This is part of the decoration of an altar at Our Lady of Lourdes Cleveland. Before sunrise people came to sing mañanitas to Our Lady.

 

Advent is a time of anticipation and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus. It is followed by the Christmas season. Advent begins on the fourth Sunday prior to 25th December. To-day, was the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday. 'Gaudete' means 'rejoice' and is the first word in the Latin introit (entrance antiphon) for the Mass on the day. For those who use an advent wreath, the third candle lit is the rose colored one. [supra: St. Casimir, infra: St. Stanislaus]

Suburban Symphony had a concert, on 9th December in Beachwood, with some sacred music and music touching Advent (and Christmas too). They played Ottorino Respighi's - L'adorazione dei Magi from Trittico Botticiliano, which is based on Veni, Veni Emmanuel (O come, O come Emmanuel), and includes the repeated "Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel (Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel)"

City Music had five concerts this week. Supra, they played Stille Nacht (Silent Night) as an encore at St. Stanislaus Cleveland.

To-day, 78 tubas played Christmas songs and carols at Tuba Christmas in Lorain.
____________________
postscriptum: 10pm 17 December 2018 

Burning River Brass played consecutive nights at a packed Pilgrim Congregational Cleveland, with over six hundred in the audience each night.  Eleven brass instrumentalists, and a percussionist mixed classical music, and Christmas music traditional and with jazz. Respighi's  L'adorazione dei Magi was played, a beautiful It came upon a midnight clear on four trombones and a tuba.  The Little Drummer Boy was a big surprise, with a little Pink Panther, and an extended and wild drum solo.

Cleveland's Christmas Story

Part of the film "A Christmas Story"[released 1983] was filmed in Cleveland. Someone has bought the house of the main characters in the film, and some surrounding property. It is now a tourist destination. And there is a yearly race, in which some of the runners come in costume. This year, two days before the race, a twenty foot balloon of Ralphie Parker in pink bunny pajamas appeared. People posed next to it, and this one on Friday was in uniform.

 

I missed to-day's activities, maybe next year.

The story was set in Hohman (Hammond) Indiana, much of the filming was in Ontario. A restored firetruck was added with a logo for the Cleveland campus.

The house in the near west side of Cleveland is on West 11th, the fictive street was Cleveland Street.

There were stained glass portraits of a bloodhound hanging in two windows, but the glare and reflection on the house windows on this dreary day did not foto well.

Behind, and below, the (Bumpus Guest House) next door neighbor house's fence is a steel mill.

Freedom of Speech murals

On Collinwood High's Gymnasium annex is Chris Darling's "Dialogue, Diversity, Democracy". Darling died in June.

Donald Black Jr.'s "Your silence will not protect you" is on the (Harvey) Rice Branch of Cleveland Public Library.

Free Speech Week this year was 22-28 October. Free Speech Week was created by The Media Institute in 2005. City Club of Cleveland commissioned three murals. Cleveland artist Elmer Brown (*1909. 1971☨) painted "Freedom of Speech" in 1942 for the City Club's Auditorium.

April Bleakney's mural was the first of the three put up, and it is portable.  It faces an ongoing construction project on East 17th and Euclid. Its future ability to be visible is questionable.

Art on a rare sunny November day

The old St. Luke's Hospital has a Walter Sinz 1929 statue carved by the Gandola Brothers. This was also a fountain at one time. People drive by and do not notice how many figures are there. Saint Luke the Evangelist is standing center, on one side there is a nurse, and the other side a woman and infant...and behind him a winged ox (the icon for St. Luke). There is a similar ox on the steps of St. Colman's church.

To-day was the first sunny day with near normal temperatures in more than a fortnight. It was a good day to walk and take pictures.

Baker Mayfield is fading away. Outside the Art Museum there was a chalk festival two months ago, even with all the rain there has been, the outlines of several drawings can be discerned.

David Deming. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones. 2010.

Yesterday the temperature ranged from 26 to 28 degrees Fahrenheit, and the last warm day before that was Election Day (6 November). The scarf warms the sculpture.

arts of thanksgiving

 symbols of the Twelve Tribes of Israel

Dirshu Hashem b'himatzo kra'ahu v'hu karov.

Seek ye the Lord, while he may be found: call upon him, while he is near.  — Isaias lv.6.

B’nai Jeshurun Pepper Pike was the site for the arts of thanksgiving. This multi-faith, and multi-cultural celebration of performances was inherited from InterAct Cleveland (East Side Interfaith Ministries). B’nai Jeshurun has hosted this in 2015, 2012, and 2011. This is meant to be an annual event, but sometimes it is not.

In the Jewish sanctuary a passage of the Koran was chanted, and a Sikh sang some verse accompanied by an harmonium. Antioch Baptist Mass Choir sang two songs beautifully. An American Indian sang an Eagle Honor Song with drum. They and a few dance, and music groups performed well. 

The only gripe is "Christian rock". White Evangelical culture gloms onto whatever is current. Even in earnestness, it is usually artistically deficient. The first song was too aggressively 'sectarian'. As a guest in a Jewish house of prayer, it was not the best number to perform. Very easily, it could have caused discomfort to people.

 Lincoln West High School Global Studies — Nepal, and Africa

 Cleveland Kiltie Band

 Yin Tang Dance Company — Paper Cut Doll

prayer shawl—tallit