Author Archives: Denny

Book Review
The Tinker of Tinkertown
Carla Ward

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I guess my purchase of this book fits the technical description of an impulse buy, but I sure don’t think of it that way. Yes, I bought it without a hint of hesitation the instant I learned of its existence and there was certainly a lot more emotion than logic involved in the decision. But I sincerely believe that the logical part of my brain had long ago decided that acquiring this book was something I needed to do as soon as it existed. If it ever did.

It was the last day of June 2011, almost exactly nine years before I heard of this book, that I first heard of Tinkertown. As I sat in an Albuquerque hotel room working on the day’s journal, a friend sent a message saying, “Don’t forget to checkout Tinkertown”. In the morning, I did just that and was immediately blown away. Ross Ward, the tinker — and creator — of Tinkertown had already been gone for many years but I got to see many of his artworks, meet Carla, his widow, and tour the museum that the two of them had built in Sandia Park. It was a place that simultaneously reminded me of some of the many one-man folk-art installations I’d seen while being completely unlike any of them.

As I’m sure is the case with many visitors, it was the mechanized carvings that made the biggest impression on me. It’s the sort of blending of engineering and artistic creativity that tugs at both the analytical and the aesthetically driven parts of my brain. There was ample evidence of Ward’s other talents in some flat paintings, the bottle filled walls, and the sometimes whimsical but always artful signs appearing throughout the museum and grounds. There were enough hints of Ward’s life outside of Tinkertown to seriously arouse interest. That interest really can’t be satisfied with a single book, but this one does a remarkable job of trying.

Sometime between the book being ordered and its arrival, I revisited its description and noticed its length of thirty-six pages. I wasn’t worried but I did wonder how Carla could tell Ross’ story in just three dozen pages. The answer, as I think I already knew, is “Just fine.” She tells it with pictures and just enough well-chosen words to properly place those pictures in Ross Ward’s life and to tell some details of that life that the pictures do not.

There are several delightful photos of Ward, but the bulk are of his art and the bulk of those are in a section of “2D Work”. It’s a section I found quite interesting as most of its contents are things not displayed at Tinkertown. Items range from posters to etchings to fine art paintings representing nearly every period in Ward’s life. A personal favorite is a circus parade that he drew on thirty feet of adding machine paper at the age of eight.

A “Tinkertown” section follows. The pictures in it are of things I’ve seen but that doesn’t make me enjoy it any less. The well-done photos provide an excellent look at the exhibits that got me interested in Ross Ward to begin with. A timeline of Ross Ward’s life appears on the final page. 

There might be just thirty-six pages in The Tinker of Tinkertown, but they are really great pages. I’ve learned that images of the flat artwork came from high-resolution scans and that Carla (with an iPhone 11) is responsible for most of the modern photos including those shots of sideshow attractions and trapeze artists in Tinkertown. The images are well served by the fairly heavy semi-gloss paper they are printed on. That paper, by the way, is Forest Stewardship Council certified which speaks not only to the quality of this book but to the quality of the people at Tinkertown.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused Tinkertown to miss its traditional April 1 opening this year but the museum and staff are ready for the reopening when it is permitted. The book, of course, will be available there when that reopening occurs, but until then an online purchase is the only option available. Order your copy here.

The Tinker of Tinkertown: The Life and Art of Ross Ward, Carla Ward, Tinkertown Press, June, 2020, 11 x 8.5 inches, 36 pages, ISBN 978-0-9793124-8-9

Return of the Signs

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Concerts, museums, festivals, and parades have all made frequent appearances in this blog but not lately. They have all been impacted by the COVID-19 shutdown. I”ve tried to keep my concert cravings in check by watching online live streams and even did a post about it back in the early days of the quasi-quarantine. The closest a museum has come to being the subject of a post in the last several months is when I covered the new stairs at the closed Cincinnati Art Museum. Until today.

The Cincinnati Art Museum opened to members on June 18th and to the public two days later. Parts of the Cincinnati Museum Center will be open to members on July 10 and to the public on the 17th. The American Sign Museum allowed members in on July 1 and will open to the public on Wednesday, July 8. Preceding a general opening with a members-only “soft opening” isn’t the only thing these three have in common. All will operate at reduced capacity enforced by advance reservations. Employees and visitors will be screened for high temperatures. All employees will wear masks and masks will be required for all visitors to the Sign Museum. The other two stress the wisdom of wearing masks and ask that visitors comply but apparently won’t actually require it. Hopefully, anyone not wearing a mask will be glared at intensely until they at least start smoldering.

Almost as soon as I heard of the Sign Museum’s opening, I went online to make my reservation. I had expected to be asked to pick a day and time but was simply assigned the first slot on the first day. That was just fine with me but I’m guessing a phone call is required if a specific time and date is needed. Before entering, I stepped out front to get a look at the recently added Burma-Shave style signs. Here is the font-appropriate finale. The big letters atop the building were rescued from Cincinnati Gardens just ahead of its 2018 demolition. The ‘S’ was moved and three lower case letters added to make the perfect sign museum topper.

Once inside, it was scan, scan, scan. My temperature was checked with a forehead scan, my ticket was scanned on my phone, and I scanned a QR code for the self-guided tour. The free live tours have been temporarily halted to help maintain social distancing. I’d never tried the audio tour and figured I should since the live tour I always recommend won’t be available for a while. The audio tour is accessed through a smartphone by scanning the QR code or entering the URL. It then plays through the phone (earphones recommended) and is controlled (start, stop, etc.) through it. I was quite impressed and will have no qualms about recommending it in lieu of a live expert. With or without a guide, I almost always find something new when I visit although sometimes it’s something that’s been there since day one and I’d just not noticed. These signs on the floor were definitely new. They are placed throughout the museum as reminders about social distancing and to provide visual hints as to just how far six feet is.

Of course, all the old favorites are still there. The audio tour talks about the history of signs just like a live guide would and describes many of the more interesting signs on display. It doesn’t cover every detail of every sign and that’s just like a live guide, too. Exploring and reading on your own is part of the fun. The audio tour does come up short when it comes to answering questions but the folks at the front desk and roaming staff members are happy to do that.

A favorite spot of mine is this workshop area which is usually open with contents constantly changing. Some signs leave here to return to their proper homes in the wild while others are on their way to be displayed in the museum. The big camera, a highlight of my day, is one of the latter. A lot of space remains unfilled in the building housing the museum and a major expansion is in the works. As told here, the neon trimmed Pentax, complete with working flash, will be part of that expansion.

As I mentioned, I sometimes think something is new when it isn’t but I’m pretty confident that both of these items are recent additions. The “color chart” was once used by Cincinnati’s Holthaus-Lackner Signs who donated it. I’m absolutely certain that the neon sculpture is new because I watched the comment card being taped to the window as I approached. For any who miss the Dan Aykroyd connection, there’s this. The Neonworks sign shop can be glimpsed in the background of both of these photos. Guided weekday tours usually included a visit inside the shop. Those visits are on hold along with the tours but you can still watch through the windows.

Before leaving, I made a pass through the gift shop where I spotted this book by a couple of friends in Oklahoma. I then posted a picture similar to this one to a Route 66 Facebook group. It has received about fifty reactions (including from one of the authors) but no comments. I really expected someone to jump all over the Kentucky tagged items on the left and those on the right tagged Ohio. Route 66 ran through eight states that are listed on an out of frame sign, and neither Kentucky nor Ohio is among them. Those two states do, however, supply the majority of museum visitors and gift shop customers. There is a Stanley Marsh 3 (the Cadillac Ranch guy) sign on the cover of the book that reads “ART IS WHAT YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH”. Clearly, those candles are art.

Blocked

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Back in December, I was unfriended on Facebook for what I believe to be the first time. I can now add being blocked to my list of Facebook experiences. On the occasion of the unfriending, I noted it in a Facebook post, and my first thought was to do the same for the blocking, but I decided to do a blog post instead. For one thing, I did not have a post planned for this week, and for another, I thought something longer than what comfortably fits in a Facebook post was appropriate. It also lets me include a few more details about both the December unfriending that surprised me and the recent blocking that didn’t.

As I said in that December post, I am conflict-averse. I don’t go out of my way to stir up trouble or to seek it out. Very few (possibly none) of my own posts are overtly political and I don’t even respond to all that many which are. I do occasionally hit the “Like” button on posts I agree with and find especially clever or insightful. I think I may have tapped “Angry” on a post or two I didn’t agree with, and I know I’ve punched in “Haha” on some posts linked to satire that I’m pretty sure the poster did not recognize as such. Those are enough, I would guess, that, even though I haven’t shouted out my political position, anyone who cared and was paying attention could make a tolerably good guess.

I almost never get any more aggressive than providing links to items debunking claims I know to be false. This is what got me unfriended and blocked. The fellow who unfriended me is someone I’ve met in real life and with whom I share some interests. Our politics probably don’t align perfectly, but they lean in the same direction. The end of our cyber-friendship began when he posted a meme comprised of a picture of Donald Trump with a quote that started with, “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country.” It was something I’d seen before and which I knew was a fabrication. I commented with a link (possibly this one) providing some evidence of that. In very short order, the comment was deleted, and I was unfriended within the next few hours.

I was very surprised and thrashed around for a while looking for other explanations but eventually decided that I had actually been cut loose because of that comment. Part of my surprise was due to the meme being one I’d probably welcome if it were true. But misinformation doesn’t become truth by being palatable.

This was hardly the only time I’ve posted corrections to items I might have wished were true, though I’ll admit to there being even more times I’ve offered corrections to posts I was very happy weren’t true. A common response is simply silence, but reactions range from thanking me and deleting the post to disparaging my sources and attempting to justify the post. If I respond at all to people denigrating fact-checking sites such as Snopes or Politifact, it is to encourage them to be as selective in the sources they do believe as in the sources they won’t believe. I accept that some fact-checking sites can be perceived as having a bias, but it makes no sense to me to automatically dismiss a statement that offers some supporting evidence in favor of a meme that offers none. At the extreme, and I’ve only seen this a couple of times, people have claimed that something must be true purely because a disliked fact-checking site says it is false.

Rarely does the defense of a post I’ve responded to involve evidence. It’s almost always along the lines of “Well, it could be true.” or “But, that’s what they want to do.” I really find that disheartening as it’s saying that it doesn’t matter if something is true or not, as long as it’s for “my side”. In my mind, defending your position with falsehoods does more harm than good. Those attempted defenses aren’t quite as disheartening as being unfriended or blocked, though. Taking those steps seems to be saying that, not only don’t I care about this particular bit of truth but I don’t want to hear about any others, either.

This week’s blocking wasn’t much of a surprise at all. The blocker regularly posts multiple pro-Trump memes and comments, brimming with misspellings, and errors in grammar and punctuation, every day. The majority are simply rah rah opinions, but once in a great while, he posts something that makes a claim of fact. Once in a greater while, I’ll offer a correction.

Once was in May of last year when he posted a somewhat popular meme about the repeal of a 1952 law that prevented Muslims from holding political office. It is debunked here, which I linked to in a comment. At that time, I didn’t even know that anyone other than the originator and Mark Z could delete a comment so, when it disappeared, I assumed I hadn’t posted it properly and tried again. It disappeared again. That day I learned that the owner of a post can delete comments, then grinned, and moved on.

On Tuesday, I happened to catch a post of his with a quite old meme claiming that ABC had banned the wearing of US flag pins. I recognized it instantly and spent a few seconds to pass along this link that debunks it. It wasn’t long until both my comment and the post disappeared, and I eventually figured out I’d been blocked. On Wednesday I learned that blocking is kind of like unfriending-plus, then grinned and moved on.

I’ll admit that the guy was kind of fun to watch and in some odd way, I might even miss his strings of commas and other “creative” bits of punctuation now and then. But in my heart, I know this breakup was for the best. I’ve never unfriended or blocked anyone, but during the leadup to the 2016 election, I did temporarily stop following some people. I suspect I’ll have to do that again in the next few months. Unless, of course, some more trash takes itself out.

Book Review
Roadside Pics and Picks
Tim O’brien

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The subject of my most recent book review was also a photobook and it also included things at roadside, but the similarity doesn’t go much further. That other book (A Matter of Time) dealt with a specific highway. This one features stuff beside a bunch of different highways and exactly which highway is hardly ever important. Maybe that hints at the basic difference between the two books. (And before I write it out loud let me say I’m a big fan of both approaches.) One book is serious; The other is fun.

To continue my comparison of the two books just one gratuitous step further, one identifies with fine art and proceeds to deliver. The other book also mentions fine art but it’s really just in passing. Here’s what O’Brien says:

I am not a studio photographer. I am not a fine arts photographer. I am here to document something.

There aren’t all that many more words in O’Brien’s book. There’s a foreword from RoadsideAmerica.com’s Doug Kirby and an introduction of sorts, titled “Prelude to an Exhibition”, from O’Brien. I lifted the quote from there. The rest is almost all images. Collections of similar items and sites with multiple photos get a few descriptive paragraphs. Individual photos are captioned with their location only. There is no narrator.

I’ve probably milked all I can from the coincidental reviewing of two photobooks in a row so let’s take a serious look at this fun book. It is softcovered. All images are printed in full color which allows them to “document something” quite well. It is divided into sections for the three categories promised by the subtitle plus a bonus fourth.

The bonus section comes first. “Roadside Art Parks” documents seven of the more famous examples of the genre with quite a few pictures of each. I got an exaggerated opinion of my own worldliness when I counted two of the first three as ones I’d visited. I was put back in my proper place when I ended the section with a score of 3 out of 7.

The “high” of the subtitle appears next in “Things-On-A-Pole”. I’d quickly learned my lesson and made no attempt to count and compare what I’d seen. In addition to tires, there are pictures of elevated fish, airplanes, cars, trucks, boats, etc. Et cetera includes a category labeled “Stuff”.

In addition to famous installations such as Cadillac Ranch, Carhenge, and the sadly vanished Airstream Ranch, “Half-Buried” includes quite a few of the not so well known examples of things poking out of the ground. The pages pictured at left show a personal favorite. When I visited Combine City in 2007, there were ten retired machines planted in the Texas field. There are fourteen in O’Brien’s description so it apparently kept growing for at least a while. On the other hand, the dedicated website that existed in 2007 has gone missing.

Section four, “Roadside Giants” fulfills the promise of the subtitle’s “huge”. There are subcategories like animals, donuts, people, and the ever-popular stuff. The donuts category offers a find-the-bagel challenge you can play at home.

I met Tim O’Brien at the 2019 Society for Commercial Archeology conference where I learned just enough about his career as a photojournalist to become jealous. He spent years in public relations for Ripley’s Believe it or Not!, more years editing Amusement Business magazine, and even more years free-lancing and authoring his own books. Those years were often overlapping. Maybe some of the photos in Roadside Pics & Picks are outtakes from past projects. Maybe some are from side trips slipped into totally unrelated assignments. In fact, both situations seem rather likely. Something that seems absolutely certain, regardless of how he came to photograph each of these huge, high, and half-buried pieces of roadside art, is that he was having fun doing it. Also certain is the fact that I had fun looking at the pictures regardless of whether they brought back memories, triggered an addition to my To-Do list, or made me mourn something that’s gone. And it made me jealous again.

Tim O’Brien’s Roadside Pics & Picks: The Huge, the High, the Half-Buried, Tim Obrien, Casa Flamingo Literary Arts, April 24, 2020, 11 x 8.5 inches, 174 pages, ISBN 978-0996750455
Available through Amazon.

My Caboodles — Chapter 2
Madonnas of the Trail

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The Madonna of the Trail statues were one of the first things that entered my mind when I initially started thinking of sets of things I had seen all of. When the era of named auto trails came to an end, a couple of the major auto trails undertook projects aimed at keeping their names alive for posterity. The Lincoln Highway was marked by nearly 2,500 concrete posts that literally guided travelers along the entire route. The National Old Trails Road Association’s project was, in some sense, less ambitious in that only twelve markers were placed; One in each state the highway passed through. The markers themselves were much larger and more intricate than direction markers and all twelve still exist at or near their original locations which makes seeing the whole caboodle possible. Photos of the statues follow in the sequence in which I first saw them with the exception of the photo at right. That’s a 2018 photo of the Madonna in Richmond, Indiana. Comments accompanying the pictures include the date of dedication, its position in the sequence of dedications, and the coordinates of its location.

1. The first Madonna of the Trail monument I ever saw was, unsurprisingly, the one in my home state of Ohio. It originally stood about three miles west of downtown Springfield but was moved a little closer to town in 1956 or ’57. The first picture was taken in 2004 at the second location. I never saw her at her original location. The second picture shows her at her current home in downtown Springfield where she moved in 2011. Dedicated 1st, July 4, 1928. N39° 55.496′ W83° 48.677′

2. Of course, there’s also no surprise in the fact that my second Madonna was the one in Richmond, Indiana. Not only are these two Madonnas the closest to me, I believe they are closer to each other than any other pair. The first picture was taken in 2004 on the same day as a preceding picture of the Ohio Madonna. The second picture, with a clearer and brighter Madonna and a new walkway, was taken just two years later. Dedicated 9th, October 28, 1928. N39° 49.835′ W84° 52.334′

3. In 2005, I ventured one state beyond Indiana to visit my third Madonna of the Trail monument in Vandalia, Illinois. A festival that I never did identify, was in progress in the former state capital when we arrived. As part of the festival, raffle tickets were being sold at the base of the monument which sits on the grounds of the old capitol building. Dedicated 7th, October 26, 1928. N38° 57.649′ W89° 05.671′

4. A month later, I added two Madonnas in the states just east of Ohio. The sightings occurred on the way home from a business trip to central Pennsylvania so that state’s Madonna, at Beallsville, was encountered first. Dedicated 10th, December 8, 1928. N40° 03.630′ W80° 00.776′

5. West Virginia’s Madonna of the Trail came next. It is positioned a little east of Wheeling. At this point, 80% of the Madonna monuments I had seen were situated on or very near golf courses and I began to think there might be some sort of symbiotic relationship between the two. Dedicated 2nd, July 7, 1928. N40° 03.362′ W80° 40.157′

6. In September 2005, I bagged my fourth Madonna of the year and sixth overall. The California monument is not near a golf course or any other open space. It is in the city of Upland in the median of a busy street near an intersection with an even busier street. I would, in fact, never find another Madonna and golf course pairing. Dedicated 11th, February 1, 1929. N34° 06.434′ W117° 39.073′

7. In 2006, I drove the full length of the National Road in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the legislation that first authorized it. That took me past all of the Madonnas east of the Mississippi but only one of those was new to me. It was also missing. A sinkhole had endangered the Bethesda, Maryland, monument prior to my visit and it was stored a few miles away awaiting site repairs. That turned into an opportunity for my absolute favorite Madonna of the Trail photo ever. I was able to get a shot of the lady in her rightful place in 2011. Dedicated 12th, April 19, 1929. N38° 59.046′ W77° 05.655′

8. On the west edge of Lexington, Missouri’s Madonna of the Trail became my eighth in May 2007. Getting to two-thirds of the caboodle took just four years but it would be another four years before I would even get started on the last third. Dedicated 4th, September 17, 1928. N39° 11.197′ W93° 53.177′

9. A two Madonna day started in 2011 with the monument in Springerville, Arizona. Here the idea of Madonna of the Trail monuments being given scenic pastoral settings really took a beating. This lady occupies a small plot adjacent to a MacDonald’s. The marker behind her identifies this as a stop on a historic driving tour. Dedicated 7th, September 29, 1928. N34° 07.993′ W109° 17.108′

10. The second Madonna of the day was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I’d been in Albuquerque before but had missed the monument. I had previously driven through the city on Historic US 66 which was the National Old Trails Road successor in these parts but I had not driven the original pre-1937 alignment which had followed the NOTR and on which the statue had been placed. Another complication was that the monument had been moved to the north corner of the area it was in which put it nearly a block away from even the old Sixty-Six alignment. To make up for missing it on earlier visits, I’ve included a picture of Madonna with a friend. Dedicated 6th, September 27, 1928. N35° 05.572′ W106° 38.991′

11. The count stayed at ten for another five years. I reached the final pair on consecutive days in 2016. The Madonna of the Trail monument in Lamar, Colorado, is next to an old train station now serving as a visitor center. Dedicated 5th, September 24, 1928. N38° 05.360′ W102° 37.147′

12. In Council Grove, Kansas, the setting for the Madonna of the Trail monument is pretty open. It’s a bit reminiscent of the park-like settings of my early Madonna visits even though there isn’t a golf course in sight. Dedicated 3rd, September 7, 1928. N38° 39.724′ W96° 29.212′

ADDENDUM 14-Jan-2024: After gathering the coordinates of all the Madonnas for another project, I decided to add them here.

Music Review
Blues With Friends
Dion

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I started off my recent review of Willie Nile’s latest album by talking about my initial experience with it and I’m going to do the same thing here. I ordered both CDs ahead of their release dates but my experiences with them do not have much in common beyond that. I kind of keep up with Willie and placed my order while the music was being recorded. I ordered Dion’s CD in response to an ad on Facebook. I honestly believe it’s the first thing I’ve actually bought through a Facebook ad despite the platform’s tendency to flood my feed with eerily well-targeted items. There was nothing even slightly mysterious about why this album appeared. Just look at its list of guests. Predicting that I might be interested really could have been a no-brainer.

The only thing even remotely eerie occurred on the day it arrived. June 5 was the official release date. On the morning of June 1, I got a message saying my order was out for delivery. Preordering can have its advantages. In the afternoon, I took a look at Facebook and saw that a friend had shared a link to a video that had been posted a couple of days earlier. The video was of Dion singing one of the songs on the album and as I watched it the mail truck pulled up to deliver my copy.

I don’t doubt that current events had something to do with the posting of that particular song. By current events, I mean the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and protests over racial inequality and police brutality. The protests were triggered by the death of a black man at the hands of police although racial inequality was already a major topic of discussion because of the uneven impact of the pandemic on people of color. The black man was George Floyd. He died on May 25. The video was posted on May 29. The song is about Dion’s friendship with Sam Cooke, a black man who died in 1964. The video is extended a bit with some comments from Dion. I suggest watching it regardless of what you think about Dion, the blues, or any of the friends he recorded this set with. It’s here: Song for Sam Cooke (Here In America)

So what about the CD? I once reviewed a CD with a single word and I’m tempted to do the same thing here — with the same word. That CD was Love for Levon which was recorded live at a 2012 benefit concert following the death of Levon Helm. I justified not giving it a real review by telling myself that it was a big enough deal that my tiny voice would be totally drowned out by real reviewers, but the real reason was that there were so many wonderful performances by so many excellent artists that it would be nearly impossible to do justice to them all. Both arguments definitely apply to Blues with Friends. The word was “Wow!”

But it’s obviously too late to do a one-word review and there are some significant differences. The biggest is that, while Blues with Friends features an astounding roster of musicians, every song was written and sung by one man.

Dion DiMucci is eighty years old. His career is sixty-three. That’s a lot of time to pick up talented friends and Dion seems to have done better than most and he’s done it all along the way. Some of the friends contributing to this album, such as Joe Lewis Walker and Jeff Beck, have been performing since the 1960s. Samantha Fish began recording in 2009. None of them had to be begged and Joe Bonamassa didn’t even have to be asked. Joe wanted to play on “Blues Comin’ On” from the minute he heard it demoed. Dion credits Joe and his enthusiasm as being the catalyst for the album. As Dion tells it, “So I sent out invitations to my friends — and would you look at the names of who said yes!”

I have a feeling that all that talent could make some pretty crappy material sound good but what it does here is make good material sound even better. Saying that every song was written and sung by one man wasn’t entirely honest. Dion actually had a co-writer on each of them. It was Buddy Lucas on “Kickin’ Child”, Bill Touhy on “Hymn to Him”, and Mike Aquilina on everything else. Dion is the lead singer on every track although he does get help on a few. Of course, when that happens it’s people like Van Morrison, Paul Simon, and Patti Scialfa doing the helping.

I’m going to stop it with the details since I know that my tiny voice will be totally drowned out by real reviewers and there were so many wonderful performances by so many excellent artists that it would be nearly impossible to do justice to them all. Wow!

Coincidence at Play (Again)

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This post originally appeared on April 3, 2016. A few weeks ago I predicted that I would be recycling more blog posts as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restricted real-world interaction, but I didn’t think that would be the case this week. I had a pre-canned series post selected when coincidence struck. I was trying to figure out when I had visited a particular museum and resorted to searching this website for some record. The museum is one with many Civil War artifacts so I used those words in the search and this post appeared in the results. I had all but forgotten it but a reread made me think that a repost might be appropriate. As I wrote four years ago, “there’s still plenty of crap going on.” I did, incidentally, read “To Kill a Mocking Bird” within a couple of weeks of seeing the play.

tcamb1I’ve yet to read To Kill a Mockingbird. I have seen the 1962 movie multiple times and now I’ve seen the play. I had hoped to read the book between learning that the play would be performed this season at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and actually seeing it but that didn’t work out.

The Friday night performance would be the biggest event of my week but I didn’t expect it to lead to a blog post. I anticipated that a canned Trip Peek would be published this morning. A Friday morning email got me to thinking differently.

The email was the April E-News from the Smithsonian. One of the topics was “The Scottsboro Boys” with this two sentence tease: “The case of the Scottsboro Boys, which lasted more than 80 years, helped to spur the civil rights movement. To Kill a Mockingbird, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, is also loosely based on this case.”

I read the article referenced in the email and could easily see similarities between the 1931 real world incident and the fictional one Harper Lee set just a few years later. Both involved black men accused of imaginary crimes against white women and both occurred in a world where color mattered a whole lot more than truth. Later I read that in 2005 Harper Lee said this was not the incident she had in mind when writing To Kill a Mockingbird but that it served “the same purpose”. Despite there not being an official connection between the Scottsboro Boys and To Kill a Mockingbird, reading about the incident and its repercussions served a purpose for me, too. It provided an unpleasant picture of this country near the midpoint between the Civil War and today. The accuracy of that picture is reinforced by a contemporary pamphlet, They Shall Not Die!, referenced in the Smithsonian article.

tcamb2I took my seat on Friday with the Scottsboro story fresh in my mind. The stage was bare except for a single light bulb which would actually be removed at the play’s start although it would return later. The stage consists of a large circular center and a surrounding ring both of which rotate. Sometimes they rotate in opposite directions which can seem to expand the distance between actors or the distance they travel. Set Designer Laura Jellinek states that “our main goal was to eliminate any artifice between the audience and the story” and this set certainly accomplishes that. As one audience member observed during the discussion that followed the play, she briefly looked around for the jury during the courtroom scene before realizing that “we were the jury”. At its most crowded, the stage holds nine chairs for the key figures in that courtroom scene.

The discussion I mentioned happens after every performance. Anyone interested moves close to the stage to listen or participate. There were naturally questions about this specific production but there were also questions about the story. There is a sign in the lobby that I now wish I’d taken a picture of. “Don’t read books that think for you. Read books that make you think.” might not be 100% accurate but it’s close. Friday night’s discussion was evidence that this play is prompting some thinking and I’ve no reason to think that discussions following other performances are any different.

tcamb3There is also a set of blackboards in the lobby. As I assume is true at every performance, the blackboards started out empty except for a question at the top of each. By the time people started heading home, the boards were full. It’s pretty clear that some thinking is going on here, too.

It was the coincidence of the Smithsonian email showing up on the day I was set to see the play that nudged me towards making it a blog entry. There is another coincidence of sorts that I find interesting.  Each week, the blog This Cruel War publishes an article on lynchings. The article is published on Wednesdays but, since I subscribe via RSS and I seem to always be behind in my RSS reading, it is often a day or more after publication before I read a specific article. I read this week’s post the morning after my Playhouse visit. In it, the source of the series’ title, “This Disgraceful Evil”, is given. It comes from a 1918 Woodrow Wilson speech in which he calls upon America “…to make an end of this disgraceful evil.”

We don’t have to deal with actual lynchings now as much as in 1918 but there’s still plenty of crap going on. “It cannot live”, Wilson continues, “where the community does not countenance it.”

Originally scheduled to end today, April 3, To Kill a Mockingbird‘s run a Playhouse in the Park has been extended through April 9.

Book Review
A Matter of Time
Ellen Klinkel & Nick Gerlich

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There’s not much point in counting the number of books published about Route 66; The likelihood that the count would increase before you were done is just too great. An Amazon search simply says “over 2,000”. So why review this one? What sets it apart from the others? The most obvious reason for reviewing it is a simple one: I know one of the people whose name is on the cover. The things that set it apart are not as obvious (or benignly biased). In fact, I’ve only found one thing about the book that I think is actually unique, and I’m not really sure about that. The book has no author; It has a narrator.

Nick Gerlich’s role choice is significant. This is a photobook. Its reason for being lies in Ellen Klinkel’s photographs. They could exist without any accompanying words at all and still tell a story. That certainly doesn’t mean that Gerlich’s words aren’t welcome and useful. It’s simply an observation that the words are narrating a story — really just one of many — present in the pictures. Gerlich, whose day job is as a college marketing professor, is extremely knowledgable on Route 66. In the past, he has filled the role of narrator, in the more traditional sense, for KC Keefer’s series of Unoccupied Route 66 videos. Regardless of whether he is narrating on screen or in print, he writes and researches his own scripts.

The photos are black and white, which is unusual but not unique. What may be unique is how they came to be at all. Klinkel tells that story in the book’s preface. It begins in 2013. She lives in Germany and was in the western U.S. with her husband for a four-week vacation which she describes as “the first time I ever had a serious camera in my hands”. Planned visits to several national parks fell victim to the sixteen-day government shutdown in October of that year and driving a portion of Route 66 was substituted. Klinkel credits this very first time on the historic highway coupled with the “serious camera” as having “instantly sparked my passion for photography”.

No pictures from that 2013 trip made it into A Matter of Time. All photos in the book were taken between 2015 and 2017. Klinkel refers to the images as “fine art photography”. It is a phrase I tend to associate with wall mounted prints or coffee-table-sized books with extra thick pages, but that’s wrong. A piece of the definition of fine art photography is something “in line with the vision of the photographer as artist”, and that fits the images in A Matter of Time very well. They are not artsy in an abstract pattern of shadows way, but in a way that works to capture a “vision of the photographer” and encourages the viewer to mentally reproduce that vision.

Most, but far from all, of the photos are of places I recognize from my own travels on Sixty-Six, and some of those nearly reproduce visions I’ve had myself. There are plenty of pictures of places I do not recognize. Sometimes that’s because they are from a location where I’ve never stopped or maybe even passed, but sometimes it’s because Klinkel sees and shares a vision that never occurred to me even though I’ve stood at or near the very spot she did. I don’t mean to imply that I expected anything else. It’s great to be shown something you’ve never seen, but it can be even better to be shown something known in a new way. Although it is a place I instantly recognized, a favorite example of being shown something in a new way is the early morning shot of the Bagdad Cafe with the coming sun just a tiny but significant twinkle. Another is the low-level shot of a protective wall of tires at a long-abandoned gas station at Texas Exit 0 of I-40.

I confess to initially not understanding the meaning of the word “time” in the title. I guess my first thought was of the elapsed time covered by the popular technique of using old and new images in “then and now” pairings. There is none of that here where no photo is more than five years old. Despite having read Klinkel’s preface, I early on settled on the time element being Gerlich’s words that placed the images in their proper time in history. Those words are certainly important. The often detailed and always accurate telling of how the subject of a picture came to be and where it is located provides both education and mooring.

However, something clicked on a rereading of that preface that hadn’t quite registered on the first pass. Klinkel explains the title quite clearly:

It is a matter of time in a historic and photographic sense; a mattter of being in time before a location fades away; a matter of being in time to capture the sunrise or sunset; a matter of having enough time and patience to wait for the right light and moment.

The historic sense is fairly common. Capturing things fading but not yet completely faded is something that many photographs do. The photographic sense is less so. Being in time and having enough time is not unique but it’s not all that common and it sure is refreshing. And it explains the impressive percentage and variety of truly interesting skies in A Matter of Time.

A Matter of Time: Route 66 through the Lens of Change, Ellen Klinkel and Nick Gerlich, University of Oklahoma Press, October 10, 2019, 10 x 8 inches, 272 pages, ISBN 978-0806164007
Available through Amazon.

Cincinnati Art Climb

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It probably would have been a low-key opening in any case, but in the middle of a pandemic-driven shutdown, the opening of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Art Climb seemed extra muted. Even so, I was aware of the May 7th opening of the first phase and wanted to check it out. Then, just about the time that enough restrictions had been lifted to make me start thinking seriously about a visit, nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police caused me to back off. I finally made it on Wednesday. Broad steps now connect the museum at the edge of Mount Adams with Gilbert Avenue. For road fan readers, Gilbert carries US-22 and OH-3. The steps end at the museum’s parking lot, about 450 feet away. There are 166 of them, covering roughly 100 feet of elevation change.

The project isn’t 100% complete. There are empty niches where works of art will someday be displayed, and additional tables, benches, and landscaping might appear as time goes on. Dave Linnenman, the museum’s Chief Administrative Officer, notes that “It will be a thing to enjoy, not just a way to get up and down.” Right now, it is fully functional as a way to get up and down and even as a thing to enjoy for many. Plentiful lighting and numerous security cameras are there to make it safe. The lighting will be certainly be appreciated when the popular Art After Dark events resume.

People simply enjoying the steps on Wednesday included parents with young children and some athletic types going up and down multiple times for exercise. A few were even running up some empty sections. What might at first look like someone celebrating making it to the top is actually one of the people making multiple climbs. The young woman had passed me on her way down and again on the way up and was just stretching a bit before starting back down.

The closest thing to sculpture currently on the steps is this tri-level not-yet-operational water fountain. I’m sure that a cool drink of water would be a great reward for the climb especially if the temperature was a bit higher. Today, looking back over where I’d been was reward enough.

The museum was closed, of course, but I walked across the nearly empty parking lot anyway. As usual, Jim Dine’s Pinocchio (Emotional) lets us know how happy he is to be alive and he always makes me feel that way, too. Banners at the museum’s entrance let us know some of the things we’ve been missing during the shutdown. On the day after I took these pictures, it was announced that museums were among facilities allowed to open next week. The day after that, the Cincinnati Art Museum announced plans to reopen on June 20 with reduced capacity and some other restrictions. That announcement is here.

This “steps” sign has nothing to do with the new Art Climb. It has been at the east edge of the parking lot for years and I’ve walked past it many times. I was vaguely aware of where the other end of the steps it refers to was located, but I’d never had any reason or desire to travel them. When I first thought of taking in the new stairs, I figured I would park at the museum and go down them then return. However, when I saw I could park near their lower end, I decided it made more sense to do it the other way around. Not only would going up use the steps as intended for museum visitors, it would have me headed downhill when I was likely to need it more.

I know that all downhill paths are not equal, but decided that today was probably my best opportunity for checking out the old steps. The route does have steps on both ends and there are some in the middle, but they are nowhere near as wide or as even as the new ones. In between is a sometimes paved and sometimes not path that is always narrow. There are no lights on any of this. The lower end of the Art Climb is at the intersection of Gilbert Avenue and Eden Park Drive. The old steps emerge on Eden Park, maybe 500 feet away. I’d parked on Eden Park Drive about midway between the two sets of steps, so using the older ones for my return was somewhat sensible. I suppose I might come down them again sometime, but I’m rather certain that I’ll never go up them.

Music Review
New York at Night
Willie Nile

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I didn’t actually try to produce a flashback last week but I thought about it. Because I’d pre-ordered the CD, when Willie Nile released World War Willie back in 2016, I got a digital copy before the actual CD arrived. It was early spring and I took a nice walk around the neighborhood with the new music playing in my ears. The walk and the songs both made an impression. A similar situation existed with New York at Night. A digital version became available before the physical version arrived. My World War Willie introductory walkabout was powered by a 2011 vintage iPod. It still works fine but I no longer have any way to maintain its contents. This time I downloaded the music to my phone and set out to enjoy some fine weather and new music.

I’d previously used the phone for some podcasts and music but had not really mastered its operation. I tapped the first track listed; The phone played it to completion then stopped and waited for me to select another. There’s probably some way to get automatic movement between tracks, but a small screen in bright sunlight did not lend itself to figuring that out. So, as each track ended, I stopped walking long enough to tap the next one in the list. The screen size and bright sun also didn’t exactly help an old man’s eyes read each track name. I just tapped each track in the sequence displayed. Back home, I discovered that the list was not in the intended sequence. I’ve not deduced an actual pattern so maybe it really is random.

I quite enjoyed the warm and sunny walk and even stepped inside a store for the first time in several weeks. It was a United Dairy Farmers store where I bought an ice cream cone to help me get home. I also enjoyed the music and noted some tracks I looked forward to hearing again. But I did not feel the same kick and elation as on that 2016 walk. I started this article by saying I had not set out to intentionally reproduce a flashback. That’s technically true, but I think I must have expected one and was disappointed when it didn’t materialize.

Then the CD arrived. It was in the player when I set out on a drive long enough to hear it all. There was no flashback, but the kick was there and the disappointment was not. There’s no real need to dig for an explanation. Many things — and maybe music most of all — strike us differently for no more concrete a reason than it’s a different day. I’ve thought of some reasons for the difference and most have to do with my personal attitude and the fact that driving was less common than walking during the COVID-19 impacted 2020 while the opposite was true in 2016. But I honestly believe that the different sequences also had something to do with it.

The CD opens with “New York is Rockin'” which is, as you might have guessed, a solid rocker. The rockin’ continues through “The Backstreet Slide” and only lets up slightly with “Doors of Paradise” and “Lost and Lonely World”. It pretty much rocks, in fact, all the way through with a couple of exceptions I’ll get to later. Two of those first four CD tracks were among the first four tunes of the scrambled list on my phone but they are in reversed position. “New York is Rockin'” was the fourth song I heard on my walk and “Lost and Lonely World” was the first. The tone that was set was quite different and I think that walk vs. ride and my state of mind are only partly responsible.

Not only is the album heart-pumpingly uptempo, it is heart-warmingly upbeat. At its own heart, it is a love letter to New York City with the city celebrated in both the opening and title tracks. While I’ve often shared that NYC is not one of my favorite places, I very much recognize its concentration of art, culture, and energy, and it has been Willie’s favorite place for a long long time. He certainly captures that energy as well as anyone, and even makes me wish I appreciated the city more. That’s what happens with images like “Barishnikov is puttin’ on his blue suede shoes” and “Pavarotti’s singin’ up at Carnegie Hall” from “New York is Rockin'”.

“Under This Roof”, which I’d heard previously via an online video, is one of the two non-rockers I mentioned earlier. The album was recorded prior to the COVID-19 isolation and well before the ongoing national outrage triggered by the death of a black man in the custody of police in Minneapolis. Its generally lighthearted tone can be seen as a welcome and hopeful distraction and this tune’s message of love and sanctuary even more so. The other softer track features Willie alone at the piano doing a song, “A Little Bit of Love”, that was born in a conversation with his 102-year-old father.

Nile’s current touring (if only he could) band, Johnny Pisano, Matt Hogan, and Jon Weber, anchors the album but there is plenty of help. Perhaps the most notable comes from Jimi K. Bones, who was with Willie when I saw him most recently, and the Eagles’ Steuart Smith. Also notable, in my opinion, is the listing of not only one but two tabla players (Pisano and Frankie Lee). That’s something you don’t see every day.

As I considered the importance of sequencing, I may have discovered a subtle return to the past or I may be imagining it. Back in the heyday of vinyl, the first and last tracks on each side, often called the “four corners”, were considered important. Assuming a split with a half dozen tracks per side, the four corners of New York at Night are the two songs with New York in their titles, “A Little Bit of Love”, and something called “Run Free” which was recorded in 2003. “Run Free” is one of those rock ‘n’ roll anthems that seem perfect for ending a concert — or an album. Are the “four corners” on this album real or imaginary? Betcha know what I think.