una alfombra de Semana Santa

Miriam, designed, and her friends at LaSagra Familia helped to create this alfombra.

The parish has done these before [click], [and], [and].  La Sagrada Familia began this Holy Week celebration in 2014, Sacred Heart in Lorain for a score of years prior. Last year when this accursed virus hit, the custom was interrupted. Before they would do three columns of alfombras. This year, one alfombra only. St. Edward High is also doing one. Early this afternoon, the center was done, and work was being done on the edges. The bottom will say, "Jesus is Our Savior". The center circle is a clock with the co-vid 19 virus on the hour marks. There is a quote from Isaias, "Do not fear: I am with you and will uphold you with my victorious right hand".

We are living, and try to keep living, in this time of plague. On top of the circle are our nurses, doctors, and other "first responders" who first combat the virus to save lives, and promote our health. In the center is the Eucharist, and the young people in the lower left are our hope for a continued future.

In Meso-America these rugs are made with flowers; here in the sometimes cold North, it is colored saw dust. The rugs are trod upon Good Friday.

bum wine

 

I snap fotos in the daytime.  Sometimes i see empty bottles on the ground. It is bad when they are broken, especially for my bare footed hounds. Depending on the location, different bottles are there. Recently, i have noticed cube shaped, tequila bottles; almost always without the stopper. There are also Hennessy brandy hip flasks. The most common is that star of winos, Richards. Again, it is also a four sided bottled. To my surprise, on an internet image search, the fotos were of whiskey bottle shaped 750ml, and 3L jugs. I had remembered them all being four sided, and having the old label [supra]. The label looked like the back of playing cards. The labels have changed, and there are more "flavors" or colors. Normal wine bottles are round. These bottles are not, this is so they don't roll.

This is maybe the premier bum, screw cap, gutter, skid row, indigent, brown bag, sidewalk, and ghetto wine. In 1954, the federal government changed the definition of wine, and flavored, fortified (added alcohol), fruit wines were made. Gallo Brothers made Thunderbird in '57, and Marvin Sands had this 1954 concoction named after his son, and an old song. Ireland had no viticulture, the climate was not able to sustain grapes. Family was damn well not Irish either. The grandfather, Mordechai Sands, was an old bootlegger though, and New York State had vineyards.  I read a figure of two million cases a year of Wild Irish Rose. The other bottles, i used to see were Night Train (Gallo Brothers), and MD 20/20 (Mogen David 20 ounces, 20 percent). 

For a time MD 20/20, Mad Dog, was the most common on the sidewalk in town. It is now neither 20 ounces, nor 20 percent. They exist as the cheapest ways to get drunk, and since quality is so low, the profit margin is high. Once, as a teenager, my boss bought a bottle of Mad Dog after work. It tasted like grape juice and vinegar. Have not had any of the others. I think i remember seeing Wild Irish Rose, as a kid, at Pick-N-Pay, and Gray Drug; i did not know there were specific bum wines then.

Many times, i have heard that George Jones was the most, bestest country singer. The only song of his [click] i liked was "White Lightning", a Big Bopper song. It was a rockabilly number he sang with Johnny Cash's band. This is when he had his Marine crew cut, which made his ears look really big, and people twisted them as he sang. Later he sang "Tennessee Whiskey". George had a bottle problem, he was called "No Show Jones". He was also called "Possum", on account of how his eyes sat.

In 1998 he recorded Bobby Braddock's "Wild Irish Rose" [click]. That song was serious. So many street drunks are war veterans.

"He lies there holding his Wild Irish Rose
This crazy old fool in the smelly old clothes
He could have had something much better, God knows
Than a half-empty bottle of Wild Irish Rose."

The song also has the line, "You know, they found him at Clark street, West 25th".

Stop Asian Hate

Sunday, 1 o'clock 28 March there was a Stop Asian Hate rally on Payne Avenue Cleveland by the closed Dave's store.

brrrring...brrrring...

 

Italian Renaissance style terra cotta

Home Telephone Co. Cleveland 1895 > Cuyahoga Telephone Co. 1898  
Ohio State Telephone Co. absorbed Cuyahoga Telephone Co. 1914
Ohio Bell absorbed Ohio State Telephone 1921

This building on East 81 was built in 1909 as a telephone exchange. Before 1906, this street was Princeton. For a new business that was competing with the national Bell System, they had some architectural taste. Eventually it did become a part of the Bell System.

 

For a time before 1983, Icabod Flewellen had his Afro-American Cultural and Historical Society here. He had previously had it in a classroom at St. Marian's starting in 1968. Recently it has been converted into a residence. This is in the Hough neighbourhood of Cleveland.

west of the churches eaten by Cleveland Clinic

 fotos of churches from East 82 to East 77 on Euclid Avenue 

[Click] for churches on East 86 and Euclid. Euclid Avenue Congregational at East 96 and Euclid burned from a lightning strike in March 2010.

Through St. Agnes' campanile, chimneys and a stone finial of old Calvary Presbyterian is seen.

Charles Schweinfurth, the architect of Cleveland's millionaires, began Calvary Presbyterian in 1888. It sits on the southwest corner of Euclid and E.79th. The year marker is elegant, it does show why Hindu-Arabic numerals surmounted Roman numerals. MDCCCLXXXVIII [spell check doesn't like it either]. The church merged with Glenville New Life Presbyterian in 2013.

Now, we use anno Domini [in the year of the Lord] dating. Sometime this generation, it has also been called "common era". In 1178, the scholar Moses Maimonides calculated that Creation happened in the year 3761 b.C., or year 1 anno mundi [year of the world].  Anshe Chesed is Cleveland's oldest Jewish congregation, they have had several addresses. In 1910 they began their third, a brick building, the Euclid Avenue Temple. In 1957 they continued east to Beachwood, and Liberty Hill Baptist had a new home, where they continue.

 looking shabby 

Originally Second Church of Christ, Scientist 1916; and then a Cleveland Playhouse's Seventy-Seventh Street Theatre 1949-83; now True Holiness Temple [Pentecostalist]. The black banner no longer goes all the way across, the letters "IENTIST" are visible.

2021 Miscellany #4

early daffodil blooms, Greek Cultural Garden, 24 March 2021

Sometimes, between programmes on WVIZ-25 (Cleveland PBS) they show visuals. One is of these Roosevelt's WPA steps and full bloom of bulbs. They also show the Ukrainian garden across the street.

Isn't great when they put your name above your dorm room?
Cory United Methodist, originally Cleveland Jewish Center 1922-47.

Kevin the Sandhill Crane

People are calling this bird, Kevin. He is one of three such cranes found at Sandy Ridge Loraim Metropark. He is extremely tolerable of people, and is known to the local birding community. Several people have shared fotos of him on the internets.

Eastern Bluebird at Sandy Ridge

 

Republican speak: election integrity = voter suppression

Republicans are against Democracy. They can only win by cheating, they will not say this in public clearly. So they create diversions, subterfuges, fictions, and bald faced lies to trick people. They want a reduced pool of voters. They want to select their voters. In a democracy voters select politicians.

2021 Miscellany #3 — east side old Cleveland

head of St. Michael Archangel

Cracks in Time

At one time at the top of the center facade of the church there was a statue of St. Michael. The statue crumbled over time. The head was placed in the courtyard. Yesterday, i saw the fotos of another photographer, and i was appreciative of her profile shot. Over the years, the head was further cracking. The cracks gave a pleasing pattern to the eye. I have photographed this statue in the past, and went back to-day. 

15 March 2021

30 September 2011

30 December 2012

7 June 2014

15 March 2021

15 March 2021

 

downtown ornaments

Colossal Cupcakes was attacked during last year's (May 30) downtown Cleveland riot. The windows were smashed, and the place trashed. This marquee cupcake was up above it all. This location is yet to re-open.

 

 

There is an apartment building on Huron, with grotesques above the entrance.This is of a goat.

These two are repeated on the Kendall Building, the oldest building (1887) of the Colonial Arcade. At one time (1929), the building was refaced with "granite terra cotta".

2021 Miscellany #2

Two side entrances of closed Henry W Longfellow School, W. 140th Cleveland, have a pair of owls. Here is one of the four.

Also on W. 140th, at Aspinwall, former Lindsay Wire Weaving. Behind the factory there had been a Little League Baseball field, left field was cemented concrete. Both were next to railroad tracks.

door of an architect's home

Cassius, center; Karma, right

Hounds were tracking a real big man, after he dropped his smoke, they lost the scent.