2020 Miscellany #13

desiccated frog between pane and a sheet of screwed plexiglass

Parma parish advising wearing face mask

Lorain Avenue, Cleveland

 outside on a Protestant church on Broadview in Old Brooklyn

stained glass

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nota bene: Blogger has changed its composing template. At first, it allowed to post slightly bigger fotos, it has stopped that. Now, every change i see is WORSE. It less responsive to personal formatting, and slower. It has been some time since they tinkered with it. But here is the rule of the business model to users and customers: first make something good, then continue to make it worse.

the road towards Literary Bridge

 

 Saint Augustine's

 still feeding the hungry in the Tremont neighbourhood around Lincoln Park Cleveland.

Karma, Greyhound first class with oak clusters

Cassius, Greyhound first class with oak clusters

Bridge delivered this week, bicyclist asked me whether it could be driven over.

 

 

Part of the artwork leading to the bridge, and other railroad sculptures next to a bicycle path of Cleveland Metroparks.

view

field of coreopsis

In the movie, Field of Dreams, ball players come out of the corn onto a baseball field, here people with a field of coreopsis.

large milkweed bugs on milkweed pods

some asters in the field

Cassius

Cleveland Metroparks, Huntington Reservation, Bay Village

Many photographers are at Wendy Park to snap fotos of the monarch butterflies coming from Canada.

I was told, this was the second year for this field.

first Sunday in September

 Mass at Saint Mary's Polish National Catholic observing health protocols.

 To-morrow is Labor Day, the traditional start of campaign season.

 Cassius inspecting flowers

 Cataract Falls at Mill Creek, tallest falls in Cuyahoga County

 people come and drink at parks leaving the empties behind

Underground Rail Road

 15 August 2020, across from the Bedford Post Office

Stina Aleah, Davon Brantley, and Christa Childs are painting a mural, "the Road to Freedom".  Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Julius Caesar Tibbs are portrayed. Tibbs was a resident of Bedford, all were escaped slaves. The organisation Graffiti HeArt commissioned this project.

 
  21 August 2020, some of the faces are appearing

24 August 2020, Frederick Douglass shows up, and paper falls from window

 30 August 2020

completed scene with live hounds 5 September 2020

following the North Star to freedom

This is a great mural. It blends local history with national history. I was schooled in the north, and our history books and classes covered Douglass, Tubman, and Sojourner Truth; and it was understood slavery was a bad thing thoroughly. There was no talk of southern heritage and pride. The schools have been re-politicised throughout the country, i don't know who gets taught what. This revisionist narrative began under Reagan, who was interested in his story and not facts. Reagan destroyed the Fairness Doctrine 1949 for broadcasting license holders in 1987, which gave way to mouthfoamers on radio (Rush Limbaugh, who Trump has given a Presidential Medal of Freedom), and the anything but "fair and balanced" Fox News Corp., and other lying propagandists. At this time, also, Newt Gingrich sewed absolute division in national politics that has continued unabated. His Republican propaganda partner, Frank Luntz, is still doing that campaign. The current climate is exacerbated, in the extreme, by the Orange Caligula who occupies the presidency. So, this paean to history is a very political work in this poisoned atmosphere. Certainly, there are people who will resent, and hate this work. It should be no surprise if this painting is vandalised.

details

Next weekend there will be a public ceremony to inaugurate the mural.

with morning sun (foto may be replaced by one with late in the day sun)

sunflowers in Avon

 

 #MariasFieldofHope #PrayersFromMaria 2020

 

click on previous years:  2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2016a, 2015

                                                Karma surveys the field
 

we're in the jailhouse now

We're in the jailhouse now, we're in the jailhouse now
I told the judge right to his face
We didn't like to see this place
We're in the jailhouse now — Jimmie Rodgers

THE OHIO STATE Reformatory was closed by federal judge Frank Battisti, the Boyd Consent Decree. Prisoners sued on account of inhumane conditions.  It was to go in effect 1986, but the new prison in the back was not finished until 1990. The land that it sits on was a Civil War camp. Building began in 1886, and was completed in 1910 with several buildings, a courtyard, and a perimeter wall. The first prisoners came in 1896. During the 1960s, it became a maximum security prison. The smaller buildings, and the exterior wall are gone. This gate was saved and moved.

This was a reformatory, and then a maximum security prison. To-day, there are schools built that are more depressing buildings. The original architect was Levi Scofield, who designed the limestone  (partly) in Richardsonian Romanesque. Scofield was a Clevelander, who designed the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument on Cleveland's Public Square, and also the Lunatic Asylum in Athens, which was called "the North Green" by the students at THE OHIO University.

The dedicatory stone on the warden's porch says "Intermediate Penitentiary", as it was called in its first five years. It was for young offenders too old for the Boys Industrial School in Lancaster, and not as criminal as the prisoners at the State Penitentiary in Columbus.

Mansfield Reformatory Preservation Society bought the remains for a dollar in 1995, and have made it a museum. There are tours, for several weeks a year it becomes a Hallowe'en haunt, it has had concerts (country western), Murder Mystery Dinner, and other events. The prison is available to be rented out. It has become a tattoo parlor: "Hey honey, i'm going to get a prison tattoo at the prison".  It has been filmed for shows on ghosts, and the paranormal. Movies, and music videos are filmed there. "The Shawshank Redemption" filmed in 1993, being the most noted.