Where the Wild Things Are

I'm afraid a mere logo won't do.

That's better.

Spring has proceeded in fits and starts this year in Northeast Ohio. Rain followed by sun followed--I'm not kidding, this was just last week--a freeze alert. I had to scrape the ice off my car window that morning only to drive with the same window down later in the day only to roll it back up again when a thunderstorm passed by. Mother Nature is clearly into mind games. Nevertheless, there's been a few days where spring actually remained for a full 24-hours, and on those  days, when I had the time, I took full advantage of the Cleveland Metroparks system. 

Nicknamed the Emerald Necklace, the Metroparks is a series of nature preserves, some 25,000 acres, found not only or even mostly in the city of Cleveland itself, but throughout the suburbs as well, most of the parks, or reservations, linked by a parkway, allowing for a nice bicycle ride or drive in the country, as long as you stay on the parkway and don't make any lefts or rights onto a main road. I'll show what I mean in one moment, but first a few beads in that aforementioned necklace:

Ah, wilderness! How it does a person good to commune with nature and leave the demands of modernity behind. Though not as far behind as you may think, for just a few minutes' drive from any of these bucolic locations, you'll find sights such as these: 

 

 

 

I'm not showing these pictures with the intent of making developers, investors, and other capitalist types feel guilty (I'm not sure that's even possible) but to demonstrate why the Metropark system is such a treasure. As Cuyahoga Country becomes developed and overdeveloped, it does a soul good knowing that there may be a pastoral getaway just off the main thoroughfare. What I find ironic is to what extent the history of the Metroparks precedes so much of that development. It was a getaway before anything really needed getting away from.

 

This is what much of Cuyahoga County looked like in the first two decades of the 20th century. None of these pictures are of the city of Cleveland proper, which at the time was nearing its Industrial Revolution apex and looked very different from the scenes depicted here. The city was already a metropolis, but one without, really, "suburbs", just villages and townships with fairly sizable expanses of land between them. So how does the Cleveland Metroparks fit into all this? The system got its start in the 1910s when a self-taught engineer and surveyor for Cleveland named William A. Stinchcomb made this statement to city council:

"The importance of conserving our natural resources is now well recognized. Cannot it be truly said that these natural wild beautiful valleys and glens which lie adjacent to our rapidly growing urban centers are a kind of 'natural resource' of ever increasing value to the public?"

Stinchcomb said much the same thing a few years later to the lawmakers in Columbus, Ohio's capitol city, when objections were raised to the acquisition of land on the county level, but the engineer's reasoning prevailed. I'm just surprised that it did. Those pictures of early 20th century Cuyahoga County look pretty rural to me. It was a de facto Metropark. Nevertheless, that aforementioned...

.

  ...Industrial Revolution wasn't going to stay confined to the city of Cleveland for long. If not the factories themselves...

...then the products that emerged from them.

That's why I'm in awe of Stinchcomb. Just as Teddy Roosevelt did when he placed 230 million acres of land under federal protection, Stinchcomb in his more modest way looked into the future, clearly saw what was coming in the way of development and overdevelopment, and figured future generations would appreciate a respite. As a member of one of those future generations, I sure do. 

William A Stinchcomb

 I

 

 

Quips and Quotations (Flamingo Road Edition)

 

Trump did ruin bad taste. It's no fun anymore.

--John Waters

Orange hair back in the day.

 

This Day in History

 

Jackie Robinson famously broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947 when on April 15 of that year he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. All well and good, but professional baseball has a farm system. Before one can break the color barrier in the majors, someone first has to break it in the...

...minors.

Robinson did just that when he made his (non-exhibition game) debut with the Class AAA Montreal Royals on April 18, 1946, in an away game at Roosevelt Stadium against the Jersey City Giants. Robinson's first hit was a three-run home run in the game's third inning. He went on to score four more runs, drive in three, and steal two bases in a Royals 14-1 victory. And that was just the beginning. Robinson went on to lead the International League with a .349 batting average and .985 fielding percentage and was named the league's Most Valuable Player by season's end. By the next season's beginning, he was playing for the Dodgers.

Now, I don't want any of this to sound too rosy. As Pro Baseball's first African American player, Robinson had to put up with a lot of shit, to which, per Dodgers owner Branch Rickey's instructions, he turned the other cheek. There were hotels that his teammates stayed at that he couldn't. An exhibition game in racially segregated Jacksonville, Florida had to be canceled when the stadium was ordered padlocked by the city's Park and Public Property director on the day of the game. Other games were mysteriously canceled as well. 

OK, that was the Jim Crow South, but Jackie Robinson's home team in the minors was above the Mason-Dixon line. For that matter, it was above the United States' northern border. What did Canadians think of Robinson?

They seemed to like him. 

Graphic Grandeur (Lip Service Edition)

 

If Penguin sez it's a classic I guess it must be, though I confess I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I did see this Nick Anderson cartoon:

 That should tide me over until I can find time for Niccolo.

Quips and Quotations (Price of Admission Edition)

 

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.
--Oscar Wilde
The theater is a communal event, like church. The playwright constructs a mass to be performed for a lot of people. She writes a prayer, which is really just the longings of one heart.
--Marsha Norman
By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.
--Arthur Miller
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.
--Thornton Wilder

The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one's office for a job.

--Tennessee Williams

 

Vital Viewing (Falling Debris Edition)

 

500 meteors a year make their way past the Earth's atmosphere. This is a story of one of them:

I happen to live in the area where that meteor fell, but didn't see it because I was inside, and didn't hear the BOOM because I was in a noisy environment at the time, noisy enough that it even drowned out a meteorite. I didn't know anything about it until much later when I was scrolling through the news on my phone. I feel deprived. I didn't get to hear the BOOM. Where is my BOOM? I want to hear a BOOM!

So, by way of compensation:

Call out the National Guard!

Quips and Quotations (Frames of Reverence Edition)

 

They cheer me because they understand me, and they cheer you because no one understands you.

--Charlie Chaplin, upon meeting Albert Einstein.

Graphic Grandeur (Asymmetrical Warfare Edition)

 

The question must be asked:

Cartoon by Clay Jones.

Vital Viewing (Lost Causes Edition)

 

There's nothing worse than the end of a romance.

Except for maybe war, debilitating illnesses, natural disasters, famine, molestation, homelessness, political corruption, environmental destruction, genocide, etc.

But I digress:

Oh, so sad! Is there any way a positive spin can be put on this?

Tomorrow is another day.

1939-2026

Senate Minority Pride

 

You may have heard the Trump administration removed a rainbow flag from the Stonewall Inn, the site of the famous LGBTQ uprising ("the hairpin drop heard around the world" as journalist Dick Leitsch put it) and nowadays, per President Barack Obama, a national monument, a good thing until you realize that Obama is no longer president, and the man who is can do, or thinks he can do, whatever the hell he wants with a historic landmark. Still, his lackeys put in charge of running the National Park Service felt they at least should give a reason--thank you for that! --and the reason given is that "only the US flag and other congressionally or departmentally authorized flags," can be flown on "NPS-designated flagpoles." Well, then, the solution to that is to somehow make the rainbow flag authorized.

That's where Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) comes in. Like a lot of old guard Democrats, Schumer has been criticized for blinking when confronted with the threat of imminent dictatorship. Well, it looks like he might have been administered some eye drops recently. Schumer and U.S. Representative Dan Goldman (also D-NY) have introduced legislation making the rainbow flag a congrssionally-approved flag that can be flown at national monuments, including, and especially, Stonewall. Way to go, Chuck! Still, there's a rub. As the title of this post indicates, Schumer is Senate Minority Leader. The GOP control both houses of Congress. So you need bipartisan support, and let's face it, Schumer may occasionally blink, but those Republican eyes are epoxied shut. Thus, passage seems unlikely, but not impossible. Life is full of surprises. Just ask any NYPD cop who happened to be at the Stonewall on June 28, 1969. 

 

Vital Viewing (The Living Daylights Edition)

Rise and shine! It's the beginning of a brand new day!

OK, that's fine for the homefront, but what about our boys overseas? How should they greet the day?

As different as these two morning scenes are, they're both very well-choreographed.

1931-2026

Somebody

 

 

 

It's said Martin Luther King Jr was a bit leery of the man and hesitated some before finally bringing him into the fold. Jesse was a bit of a showboat, a bit of an attention hog. And so he was. I mean, he was everywhere, and in the thick of everything for a while, one of the most public of public figures of his time. And like anybody, no matter how smart or how serious or how well-meaning, who spends too much time in the public eye, he could seem buffoonish at times. For all of that, I'm glad he was around for all these years. As the country turned to the right...and more to the right,,,and more to the right still, Jackson reminded us that there was still such a thing as a Left. And not just the African American Left either. By the end of the 1988 Democratic primaries, Jackson had won 11 primaries or caucuses and had received 6.9 million votes. At least some of those 6.9 million voters must have been white! Michael Dukakis eventually prevailed, but that eventuality took a lot longer than any pundit expected. It would be another 20 years before a black man running for president made that strong of a showing again (in fact, that later black man did even better.) Jackson never ran for president again, and seemed satisfied in role as a gadfly, a political provocateur. Well, I'll take Jackson's brand of political provoking over God-knows-what we got now. 

And wouldn't you know it? Jackson was a bit of a poet! I leave you with some of his more memorable rhymes

Hope for the brains instead of dope in the veins.

It doesn't matter if you're black or white, only if you're wrong or right.

If my mind can conceive it, my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.

1941-2026