2019 Miscellany #7

 Lakewood 20 July 2019, temperature had reached 95°F  earlier in the day

 across from League Park

asphalt parking over the foundation of an abandoned building

 Rodin's The Thinker at Cleveland's art museum catching some good light

Dogberry

temporary watchman, Verges the constable, Dogberry the master constable

Shakespeare's play, Much Ado About Nothing, takes place in Italy; but Italy is really England. Shakespeare places his comedies, and tragedies abroad, in part, for his own safety. Too easily discerned criticism, or mockery of English society would be punished by government. Comedies have an happy ending, where everything is resolved, and people are married. 

Beyond the romantic comedy aspect, there is additional humour in the police force (farce). Dogberry is the master constable, and a fool, and is described as "an ass" in the play. Dogberry Allen Branstein) repeats the insult directed at himself, as evidence of a civil infraction.  

CONRADE:  Away! You are an ass, you are an ass!

DOGBERRY:  Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years? Oh, that he were here to write me down an ass! But masters, remember that I am an ass, though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.  

The local police force in England was rotated amongst the citizens. Here you see someone dressed like Chef Boyardee with comic moustaches, and a thick and silly accent. The cook is joined by a butcher, and another town conscript.

Dogberry attempts over serious legalese, that his tongue trips and twists, and confuses rather than explains. Something that is familiar in contemporary police. Dogberry charges his two prisoners with the same crime (lying) six times: 1-accusation, 2-"moreover" (same accusation), 3-"secondarily" (same accusation), 4-"sixth and lastly" (same accusation), 5-"thirdly" (same accusation), 6-"to conclude" (same accusation). Police and prosecution still do the same multiple charges on one action.

Saturday evening at Lakewood Park, the three watchmen with Borachio and Conrade.

3 conscript watchmen (butcher, baker, bearded man dressed as a granny), 

and Borachio (Spanish: borracho, drunkard; English: borachio, drunkard [obsolete])

Margaret

Ursula, Hero, Margaret, Beatrice

German murals

Above the altar of Zion Lutheran Cleveland is a five part mural in German. This was completed after 1900, but before America's involvement in the European War [World War I]. At that time, German churches in the United States usually had services in German. Materials were in German. Words were inscribed, painted, written in German. Gravestones were in German. Signs in neighbourhood stores were in German. Newspapers were in German. Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus were over a third German in population. St. Louis, and Milwaukee were heavily German too. The United States was more German speaking in the second half of the nineteenth century, than it is Spanish speaking to-day. 

In the 1850s, the American Party [better known, and aptly called, the Know Nothings] had agitated against, and physically attacked immigrants [both Irish and German]. But with the War to Save the Union, that bigotry was overcome so as to recruit and fight the war. The World War came to America, and a programme of Americanising to eliminate German everything came to be. New Berlin became North Canton. Ohio's Ake Law forbid teaching German before grade eight. Many Germans changed their names [Schneider became Taylor, Schmidt became Smith]. Family gravestones begun in German, are written in English after 1916. One can see the change cut into individual stones, Vater geboren...Mother died...

Das ist mein Leib. Das ist mein Blut.

This is my Body. This is my Blood. — from Luke xxii. 19-20.

Words of Jesus instituting the Eucharist.

  Gottes Wort und Luther’s Lehr

Vergehen nun und nimmer mehr

  God's Word and Luther's Teaching

Pass away now and never 

—Words on a Luther monument 

Luther's coat of arms, with Luther's rose

Des Christen Hertz auf Rosen geht, wenn’s mitten unter’m Kreuze steht.

 The heart of a Christian walks upon roses, even when it stands under the cross.

Lasse dich taufen und ahwaschen deine Sünde

Be baptised and wash away thy sins—from Acts xxii. 16.

The vulning pelican, is a symbol of Jesus and the Eucharist [not Baptism]

photographs of abandoned places #20

Central High

This theatre mask sculpture made me stop. It is above the boarded up north front entrance, and the ivy is high.

This sculpture is further along south on the building, a scholar with a big book?

The sign is gone. Perhaps a year stone is somewhere on the building under ivy.

Central High was the first secondary school in Cleveland. Its first home was the basement of an Universalist church in July 1846. A political fight ensued because there was no tuition, and there were people upset with government spending on such a matter. The world's first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller went there; the molder of the Republican Party of the turn of the XXth century, Marcus Hanna; Samuel Mather and other future millionaires. In 1856, 1878, and 1940 new school buildings were opened to new addresses. In 1952 it became a junior high, and the students went to East Technical. Thereafter it became a junior high for thirty years. Now it is one of the many closed schools.

I thought Central High was possibly named after the street, it wasn't, although it is on the corner of E.40th & Central. For a year, i worked at Beachwood Post Office. It was the second largest post office east of the Mississippi, people said. Over eighty percent of the people at that post office were Black Americans, and the really old guys used to talk about their old Central High days. Central Avenue was the first Black neighbourhood in Cleveland.

At the property line, this brick column is hostage to weather and nature.

Grand Dragon 2020

Recent statements of hate from Don-the-Con Trump were directed at [amongst others] four, first term, elected, progressive, female, Congressman 'of color'. Trump is using old language. He grew up with it. His father was arrested at a 1927 klan rally in New York, and the klan complained about the nasty Irish Catholic police who did assault good Americans.

So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly...... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019

....and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 14, 2019

We will never be a Socialist or Communist Country. IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY HERE, YOU CAN LEAVE! It is your choice, and your choice alone. This is about love for America. Certain people HATE our Country.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2019

Trump began his campaign on racism, lies, and hatred, and he has not stopped:

"....The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems...When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapers... — " June 16, 2015

 see: https://blog.newspapers.library.in.gov/tag/ku-klux-klan/

Fiery Cross was the KKK's newspaper printed for some years in Indianapolis Indiana. In Indiana the targets were often European immigrants, Catholics, and Jews. They wanted a real white, Protestant America. A justification for the religious bigotry was that Catholics were not 'America first' because of allegiance to the pope, a foreign prince. So it is true that Trump's language is racist hatred and bigotry, but it stems from a greater more expansive bigotry. 'America first', '100% American', and similar phrases, were used in advertising, and other propaganda to signal who was inside klan acceptability and who was not. The language of "go back where you came from" has been used continuously in the United States. I grew up in Cleveland, and often heard it directed at anyone who spoke with a non-American accent, and their children. I heard it directed at me.

 Wake Forest's1972 Howler yearbook foto of Johnston County North Carolina

[clockwise] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, born Bronx NYC; Trump's father was born there too
Ilhan Omar citizen since 2000, when she was 17; Melania Trump since 2006

Rashida Tlaib, born Detroit Michigan 

Ayanna Pressley, born Cincinnati Ohio

Monday at the Zoo

to see the windows

Surrounded by the main campus of Cleveland Clinic is a green stone church on Euclid Avenue. Recently, Cleveland Clinic has built on three former lots on Euclid that had impressive church buildings. Disciples of Christ's Euclid Avenue Christian Church went up in 1906. The inside work was done by J.R.Lamb Studios. They began before the War for the Union, and are still in business. First in Grenwich New York, and then during and after the Great Depression in several (mostly New Jersey) moves. In 1955 the church was sold to East Mount Zion Baptist.

Original year stone with the year the congregation began [1843], and the year of the building [1906]. In the lower left corner is a corner of a plaque noting the new ownership of 1955.

Often Sundays are the best chance for photography--access. This window was in a meeting room. Their Sunday service starts at 10.45am, and around 1 pm i drove by and saw cars leaving. I saw this as a chance to see the big Jesus window (and the interior), which is visible in reverse from Euclid Avenue. The church was built on the Akron Plan, with a balcony, and sloping upwards like an amphitheater, with adjacent rooms. So i was touristing, and an indignant fellow in a janitor's uniform gave me the bum's rush after i took this foto. There was a display case with material on the Wigwam (the East End Republican Club). The congregation began at the Wigwam (E.100th&Cedar) in 1908. Before the 1960s, Black Americans were Republicans.  Euclid Avenue had been the most prestigious street in Cleveland. For many years, Catholics were prevented having a church on Euclid, Black Americans longer. This congregation was the first.

Sunday foto safaris

The Cultural Gardens has a lot of picture taking possibilities. The new Ethiopian Garden has a five panel wall of mosaics on one side, and one large scene on the other side. The composition is of small tiles, most of the work is done. I read the Russian Garden will have their first statue, it will be Jurij  Aleksejevič Gagarin. When i was a child there was simultaneously a cold war, and a space race versus the Russians. Gagarin was the first man in space, and beloved and acknowledged by the world. It would have been hard to imagine, at the time, a statue of Gagarin in the United States.

a visit to Saint Sava Parma on festival weekend

 Jesus inside the cupola

 The pews have been replaced with carved chairs, almost thrones.

candles in sand

Murals on the ceiling: Cena, the Last Supper

 Jesus before Pilate

 Angel frees Peter from chains

 Above the floor: curtains

 In the narthex: St. Sava began the autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church 800 years ago, as first archbishop.

Stari kraj Barbi šiva na stroju. Ona nosi opanci (cipule).
In the dining hall, here was a folkloric display of traditional home life with dolls. 

Historical display and clean-up

Thursday, 11 July, a Parade of Sail of about ten tall ships came through the breakwall outside the mouth of the Cuyahoga. Ships are visiting for festivals along the Great Lakes. The final ship to come in was the most famous, Oliver Hazard Perry's recreated Niagara. He began the Battle of Lake Erie on the Lawrence, it was so badly hit, he transferred to the Niagara.

Outside the breakwall the ships had been staging, and waiting. The last time in Cleveland was in 2013 [click], they come every three years to the Great Lakes. Three years ago, the Republicans had their bacchanal in Cleveland, and the ships went to Fairport Harbor.

  Cassius looks through binoculars to see the ships.

Scaffold is neat, there is scaffold going up around the Garfield Monument, which is being cleaned.  A drone was used to count the number of trees growing on the monument (16). For a couple of weeks Lake View Cemetery will have the monument closed, while work is done above the entrance. After that, the work will continue with visitor access inside.