foto safari—east side, west side

taken in the couple of hours after heavy rain had finished, and as wind gusts were to start, and cloudy days ahead

on Superior Avenue

much smaller, below supra

also on Superior, Ward 7

mosaic popped at St. Paul UCC, W.45th & Franklin

neat ornament on Franklin

art deco, at a time when Franklin Roosevelt was improving the country

Franklin Castle, currently popularised as haunted, to the left of front door

to the right of entrance door, taken seconds apart as the sunlight changed

on Franklin

time for Camus

Cassius is an existentialist. Camus is the best of the literary existentialists. We are in a time of  a new plague, and pestilence. Camus also wrote a play "Caligula", about a mad (crazy, insane) emperor. Cassius looked through the house, could not find it; and all the libraries are closed.

underside of I-480

I-480, Outerbelt South Freeway, Valley View Bridge spans the valley of the Cuyahoga River connecting Cleveland's southeastern suburbs with the southern suburbs. Begun in 1971, and finished in 1977, it is a pair of bridges. Currently the decks/driving surfaces are being replaced and a third 4 lane bridge is being built, in between.

 Looking upward, one sees the geometry of construction .

 The bridge is 4,150' long, and 212' high.

2020 Miscellany #3

 Great Blue Heron, Brecksville Station, Cuyahoga Valley National Park

 snowdrops 19 March Parma

 Brian M Zimmerman post  9:14 AM · Mar 20, 2020
https://twitter.com/CEO_CleMetParks/status/1240990182041673728

 About 3 o'clock 20 March, while driving up i saw two bouquets walking away.

 How much is that doggie in the window? [in Parma]

 door to Garfield Monument, Lake View Cemetery

seen in Lakewood, an imbalance in the force

dux

Harlequin ducks are small sea ducks from the rocky North Atlantic coast, and north Pacific.  Every few years one is seen here (before hunters' shoot for a trophy). This winter, three ducks have been near this spot in Rocky River Ohio. On some days they are there.

French Arlequin, Italian Arlecchino

Histrionicus histrionicus size comparison with ring billed gulls [infra]

Ohio passes

Humourous compilations of Ohio's delegation leader, Frank King, repeatedly saying "Ohio passes" at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago were shown at the time. Well, another vote, to-day in Ohio has been "passed".

The Ohio [Republican] Legislature scheduled primary day on March 17th, specifically to aid Trump. In July 2019, it was moved to after March 15th, so that, the Republican primary winner would receive all the delegates awarded. Democrats complained that a St. Patrick's Day election would interfere with parade festivities, Cleveland's parade has hundreds of thousands of spectators.

DeWine (a seemingly mousy demeanored individual, who has always been a scurrilous campaigner, and rabid partisan) took unprecedented steps in the hours before the election. There is no law allowing him to do so. He, and his equally rabid Secretary of State (Frank LaRose), went to court. The judge following the law, and not wanting to create some new extra-legal precedent, ruled on behalf of Democracy and over ruled DeWeasel. DeWeasel got a health order to get his way. Republicans are relentless. It is possible DeWeasel is being responsible, but Republicans are Republicans first. A supposed interest in public health is very new. Not one Republican voted for Medicare, or the Affordable Care Act, and on many other measures they have been in opposition. Arizona, and the more populous Florida, and Illinois are having elections to-day.

And remember Trump said on February 28th in South Carolina, in the hours before the Democratic primary, that the coronavirus was "a Democratic hoax" just like the "Russian hoax", and the "impeachment hoax". With Ohio as a precedent, other elections can be "postponed". There is an election scheduled in early November. Republicans have been very inventive in making it difficult to vote, and it is always done to benefit Republicans.
_________________________
POSTSCRIPTUM:  REMEMBER, both Trump and McConnell are opportunistic, vengeful, greedy liars; and show me the Republicans willing to cross them? Only Republicans who have left the cult can be given the benefit of the doubt.

photographs of abandoned places #25

Gordon Aquarium

William Gordon died in 1892. He bequeathed 122 acres with access to Lake Erie to Cleveland for a park.  Memorial Shoreway cut the park in two, and a bath house became a trailway museum in 1943. The museum held fish from Doan Brook, and Lake Erie. In 1954 the museum became the Cleveland Aquarium, and was operated by the Cleveland Natural History Museum. Trips to the Florida Keys brought salt water animals as exhibits, and improved man made sea water was used. In 1967 an octagon expansion tripled the building size, and tank space ten fold. In 1985 the building was in bad shape, and funding and admission money were too small, and talk of East 9th Street development with a new aquarium (that did not come then and there) killed the aquarium. The aquarium closed June 1985, the animals went to the Cleveland Zoo in April 1986. For some years, the police trained dogs in the building. A new Aquarium opened in 2012, in the flats in a former utility company powerhouse.

 top of the octagon

For many years, these three storm drainage pipes and pedestal have been on the slope between I-90 and the building.

This entrance was closed. There was an opening elsewhere, but not for me. From seeing other people's fotos, there were fish outlines on the walls, and a police car door inside. Light should stream through little windows of the octagon.

part of the roof caved in, and part of the roof has become sod

Rockefeller French Norman

Some 81 of an originally planned 600 French Norman houses were built on the former property of the richest man in the world. Many of these are on Brewster, not far away from the abandoned apartments on Chapman of the last post.

Much of East Cleveland is a ruin. One small portion is a beautiful residential area, that between McGregor Home for the Aged and assisted living, and the Heights Rockefeller Business building. Some of the current residents have tried to separate from East Cleveland. The former Forest Hill Estate was John D. Rockefeller's summer home. In 1923 Junior bought it, and began building a planned community. He hired Andrew J. Thomas as architect. The Great Depression stopped the project.

The car garage was in the basement, in the rear of the house. Thomas had all the properties landscaped. And in sign of a developed area, the electrical and telephone lines were underground; so there are no utility poles. There are other streets in East Cleveland that are also without utility poles.

sap buckets on an urban sugar maple

photographs of abandoned places #24

Chapman Avenue, East Cleveland

There are several empty apartment buildings on Chapman Avenue, north of Euclid Avenue in East Cleveland. After WWII, the town's population was 40,000; it is now 17,000. This addresses the population change. April 2018 a local teevee station ran a story about this abandoned block, which then had furniture, tires, and debris piled up in front of the buildings. Local amateur photographers and camera men had posted pictures and videos. Since then, that rubbish has been removed. Two years before that, a newspaper story was written about the properties, which all had reverted to the county because of non-payment of property taxes. About ten years ago, the East Cleveland Fire Department burned some of the vacant buildings for training.

Looking upwards toward Euclid Avenue, this block of Chapman is a ghost town.

A pretty new sign, it is a one way street.

 Maybe come back when the ivy is in leaf.

Behind an apartment building entry door, the rubbish includes empty hip flasks of cheap fortified wine.

The taller buildings were pre-WWII, the lighter brick building a generation later.

The clay hip roof tile was an attractive detail, the gun slit plywood—no.