Monthly Archives: March 2022

Getting Springy in Cincy

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When spring arrived on Sunday morning, the only item on my calendar for Monday had nothing to do with the season. That quickly changed and I went to bed with a full day planned for the first full (i.e., 24 hour) day of spring. The annual butterfly show at Krohn Conservatory had just opened on Friday and I was happy to see that plenty of tickets remained for Monday. I grabbed one for the time slot with the most remaining which happened to be noon.

The Egyptian-styled columns near the entrance hint at this year’s “Butterflies of the Nile” theme. Last year I was the first of my group to enter the Butterfly Showroom so was able to snap a picture of the room with only plants, butterflies, and a single attendant. I wasn’t that lucky this year. Not only were there more people in the room when I entered but there would also be more throughout my time there. Attendance is limited to 100 per hour this year compared to 40 per hour in 2021.

As in previous years, I made no attempt to identify the butterflies but merely photographed them.

Unlike previous years, I did not see lots of sugar water dispensers. There has always been fresh fruit available to hungry flitterers but it seems to really be emphasized this year. Maybe that will help the butterflies keep their weight down as the show goes on.

Everyone is given a scratch and sniff card for use in attracting butterflies but clearly, not everyone needs it. This year I was one of those and had a hitchhiker for more than half of my time there. Several people mentioned it to keep the fellow from being prematurely flattened but a young girl was the first. I think that might be her hand slipping the card under the fence. It was her mother who took the picture of my passenger and I think I only stuttered slightly as I asked.

My next stop was in Ault Park to check on the cherry trees. Butterflies at Krohn have been a sign of spring only since 1996. Cherry blossoms at Ault go back to the 1930s when 1,000 Japanese weeping cherry trees were given to the city and planted in the park. In 2008, these were augmented by 121 Somei Yoshino trees.

Not all of the trees were in bloom on Monday but enough were to make my visit more than worthwhile. Plus, it’s quite obvious that more blooms are on the way.

The trees full of white and pink blossoms are certainly beautiful in their own right but they can sometimes be used as a backdrop for something even more beautiful.

 

The day’s third stop, and the item that was on the calendar first, was at Playhouse in the Park. The theater is in the middle of a $50 million expansion that includes a new main stage. Monday’s event was one of several aimed at raising the last million of the fifty. I’m not a big donor or even a season ticket holder but do usually attend one or two performances each year and am on some mailing list somewhere. I enjoyed getting the update and look forward to the opening of the new theater which is planned for March 2023.

Pi at Phi

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The Golden Ratio is represented by the Greek letter Phi (Φ). The ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is represented by the Greek letter Pi (Π). The Fibonacci Sequence, where the sum of each consecutive pair of numbers equals the following number, is closely related to Phi. Mount Healthy’s Fibonacci Brewing takes its name from this sequence. The first three digits of Pi are 3.14. Because this looks like March 14 when written American style, that date has become known as Pi Day. Because Pi and pie are homophones, it naturally became popular to eat pie on Pi Day. At Fibonacci Brewing, great honor is bestowed on the person consuming an entire pie the fastest without using their hands. Yes, everything about this, starting with Phi and Pi, is irrational. But it sure is fun.

Betty Bollas, who owns Fibonacci Brewing along with her husband Bob, says the idea for the event came to her in a dream. The brewery held its first Pi Day celebration in 2018. Mark from Brink Brewing, the guy in the opening photo, won. He won again in 2019. He didn’t get a chance in 2020 because the event was canceled with just days to go. Ohio’s official COVID triggered shutdown of bars and restaurants occurred on March 15 but it was already obvious that a big gathering at that time would not be a great idea. The event did not even reach the planning stage in 2021 but it’s back for 2022 with a nice white table cloth and a line of boxes filled with North College Hill Bakery cherry pies.

I apologize for not knowing who’s who but I do know that Urban Artifact, Humble Monk, Higher Gravity, Marty’s Hops N Vines, and Brink are all represented and that the guy in the center is a last-minute volunteer from the crowd recruited to tackle an unassigned pie. One of these pictures was taken at 7:05 and the other at 7:06.

Andrew Desenberg, a.k.a. The Gnarly Gnome, MCed while two unidentified fans cheered on the competitors. I have to wonder just how much standing while eating helped Zane from Humble Monk munch his way to victory. His name will now be added to the Fibonacci-Pi trophy just like Indy 500 winners are added to the Borg-Warner trophy. The Borg-Warner is currently valued at $3.5 million. Give it time.

I did my own pie eating before and after the competition. The before part was at Mom’s Restaurant where I got the next to last piece of apple pie. The after part was at the brewery with a pie from Big Dog’s Pizza truck. I sat down for both, used my hands, ate slowly, and enjoyed every bite.

Leo da Vinci and the Forty Machines

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I’ve read that, once upon a time, ordinary people rarely needed to count past forty and that forty became another way of saying “a whole bunch”. That implies that Noah and family might not have watched it rain for precisely forty days and nights and that Ali Baba may not have encountered exactly forty bad guys. We have outgrown that, of course, and today use numbers like gazillion when we are tired of counting even though that probably occurs long before we reach forty. That is not, however, the case with this post. The Leonardo da Vinci: Machines in Motion exhibit currently at the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton contains exactly forty of Leo’s “machines”.

I took in the exhibit on Friday. It is set against the wall farthest from the entrance which means there is some walking involved. Not only does this provide an opportunity for a little exercise, but there are also plenty of opportunities for getting distracted on the way by the many other, mostly permanent, displays in this wonderful museum. I skipped my favorite gallery, Early Years, and focused on the da Vinci exhibit and still spent at least as much time getting to and from it as I did experiencing it. It’s simply impossible to ignore all those unusual planes and their engaging stories.

A fair number of the displayed machines have to do with flight. That is certainly appropriate for the Air Force Museum although the exhibit’s makeup was not tuned for the location. In fact, this appearance seems to be a recent addition that is not yet listed on the schedule at the Machines in Motion website.

The high ceiling at the museum allows some of da Vinci’s concepts to be suspended overhead as if in flight although they sometimes have to share space with flying things of more recent vintage. The overhead displays include the “parachute” in the opening photograph. The version here is not quite full size. A full-sized version and a description of a real-world use of the design were part of the Da Vinci the Genius exhibit I saw in Cincinnati in 2016.

Leonardo’s flying machines may not have been practical but many of his other ideas certainly were. I don’t believe it is a proven fact that he invented ball bearings but his design of a revolving stage using them might have been their first practical application. His designs for converting one form of motion to another (e.g., rotary to linear) were definitely practical. Check out the kid getting a real hands on education in the background of the second picture. The third picture shows a machine combining several devices to raise heavy pillars.

Seeing this machine for grinding concave mirrors was a real learning experience for me. The sign next to it talks about burning mirrors and mentions that one of their uses was welding. Believing that welding was at best an eighteenth-century concept, I had to look into that and discovered that the welding of soft metals like gold and copper goes back much further and was rather common in da Vinci’s day.

The exhibit runs through May 8 and, like the museum itself, is free.

Bock Bock Goat

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Cincinnati’s Bockfest has fared relatively well during the pandemic. It slipped in just ahead of the big shutdown in 2020 and muddled through 2021 with a few venues and some coordinated at-home celebrations. I believe there was even a very short parade around Dunlap Cafe but I can’t find any record of it. For 2022, it’s back in all its glory including a full-size parade with staging at Arnold’s just as it should be. ERRATUM 10-Mar-2022: My memory of Dunlap Cafe staging a short substitute for a canceled parade was only partially correct. It did happen but it was for the 2021 Cincinnati Reds Opening Day Parade, not the Bockfest Parade,

Lenten fish fries suffered a bunch because of COVID but it looks like they will also be operating somewhat like normal this year. In the past, I have walked past the fish fry at Old St. Mary’s Church as I followed the parade. I’m going to try patronizing a fish fry every week this year and got things started by reaching downtown early enough to stop by St. Mary’s before the parade. I munched on the tasty sandwich as I continued on to Arnold’s.

At Arnold’s, I grabbed a Moerlein Bar Bender bock to wash down the sandwich as the parade was being organized — and I use the term loosely — in the street in front of the bar.

The parade began to move a few minutes ahead of the scheduled 6:00 PM start. Seeing Cincinnati legend Jim Tarbell near the front helped make things feel normal.

Of course, Jim wasn’t the only familiar and reassuring parade entry.

And there were plenty of new entries and old entries in new guises.

I always appreciate the touch of glamour that the Court of the Sausage Queen and the energetic dance troupes add.

The parade’s endpoint has been moved to Findley Market Playground from the closed Moerlein facility on Moore street. Despite the structure’s obvious lack of both bricks and mortar, it is still called Bock Hall rather than Bock Tent.

Perry Huntoon and his son were in town for the festival and we met up outside Bock Hall. After one Hudepohl Bock, we walked up the street to the slightly less crowded but at least as noisy Northern Row Brewery. Northern Row was actually serving their bock at a stand outside the big tent but, even though the brewery was rather full, the beer line was much shorter.

Rhinegeist Brewery is sort of just around the corner and Perry and Erik turned in there while I headed on to the car and home. I extended my Bockfest involvement just a little on Saturday with a visit to Fibonacci Brewing. That’s Honey Doppelbock on the counter. It is named after the goat with the splash of white on her head. I also tried Fiddlehead Maibock, named after the white goat. I guess Buttercup, the third goat, doesn’t have a beer named after her yet.