Author Archives: Denny

Allegheny, Monongahela, Ohio, and Nile

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No river actually runs through Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Allegheny and Monongahela flow into the city where they combine to form the Ohio which flows out. On Monday, I drove US-22 from near my home to where that wet magic takes place.

And Willie Nile isn’t a river at all. He’s a rock and roller who is performing in Pittsburgh on Tuesday. I’m here to see that and some of the city too.

This entry is to let blog only subscribers now about the trip and to provide a place for comments. The journal is here.

Cincy’s Belated Opening

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Sometimes the Findlay Market Opening Day Parade marks an opportunity to forget a less than stellar previous season. People braving Monday’s cold temperatures were trying to not only forget last season’ 68-94 finish but this season’s 0-3 start. You see, to avoid interference with crucial pre-Easter sales at the Market, the parade happened, not on Friday before the Reds’ first game of the season, but on Monday before their fourth.

Actually, that first game wasn’t exactly when it was supposed to be, either. Scheduled for Thursday, it was moved to Friday to avoid predicted severe weather.

I reached downtown in time to poke around the staging area a little bit before the parade start. The giant Mr. Red at the top of this article belongs to the National Flag Company. The snowman at left, who I believe made it all the way through the parade, is made of real snow. He’s riding on the 911Steel float with a real piece of the World Trade Center and replicas of the twin towers.

Cincinnati was, and is again becoming, a major brewing center. There are plenty of stories about the city’s pre-prohibition Beer Barons. Beard Barons are a more recent development. Distilling, rather than brewing, is involved in the product shown in the second picture and made a little more than a hundred miles to Cincinnati’s south. Cincinnati brewing does get some notice in the picture of a Crosley Field bound bus in front of Rhinegeist Brewing. Crosley Field was the Reds’ home until 1970.

Rozzi Fireworks is certainly capable of starting things off with a bang but they decided on a pillar of fire instead. Maybe they’re saving a big boom for the centennial next year. I guess there’s something pretty cool on the other side of the street because Grand Marshalls Danny Graves and Sam LeCure didn’t look my way even once as they passed.

Here are some long time Cincinnati legends. That’s King Records drummer Philip Paul and wife Roberta in the red convertible. The fellow in the top hat is entrepreneur and politician Jim Tarbell dressed as departed legend Peanut Jim Shelton.

Breaking up all the locals in the parade were some easily recognized out of towners. Budweiser isn’t my favorite beer but these guys are my favorite horses.

There’ll be nothing but locals from here on out. Like some folks from Findlay Market, the Red Hot Dancing Queens, and Kahnie from the American Sign Museum. I even got a shot of Tod piloting the big black truck.

The Kroger Company still has one of Barney Kroger’s delivery wagons from the 1880s and Arnold’s has a passenger bathtub although it’s not one I’m familiar with and it’s not quite self-propelled. On the 25th the bar made a plea for a “go-cart mechanic” and on the 29th there was video evidence that repairs had been successful. However, the tub in the picture is neither of those I’ve seen before, has a rear mounted bubble machine, and is being propelled by a couple of laughing footmen. And it was still way cool. The third picture is of a new-to-me float from Rhinegeist.

This is the bus I had a pre-parade partial shot of in front of the Rhinegeist Brewery. It wasn’t really the last thing in the parade but I thought it would be an OK thing to use for the closing panel. A few hours after the parade wrapped up, the Reds got  their first win of the year by beating the Chicago Cubs 1-0. The three loses were to the Washington Nationals. A second Cubs game scheduled for Tuesday was postponed by rain then, after a pre-planned day off, the team headed to Pittsburgh for a four game stand. They lost the first two, won the third, and one remains to be played. The Reds begin 2018 with a 2-5 record.

Easter Fools Day

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Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me annually, it’s a holiday. This year, Easter and April Fools Day coincide making things like Easter Snipe Hunts something to be on the lookout for. I always post on Sunday and, although the reasons are somewhat different, Easter always happens on Sunday. That means there have been several Easter anchored posts in the past. Despite them all being pretty shallow, I’ll post links at the end of this article.

April Fools Day is a different matter. This is only the second time in the life of this blog that April Fools Day has fallen on Sunday. The first time, in 2012, I attempted a joke, Product Review – Dial2Text, but it received virtually no attention. So, no joke this year. Instead, I looked into the history of the prankish holiday.

Like so many of our holidays, including the currently coinciding Easter, April Fools Day has several possible origins. My personal favorite involves the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar that started back in 1582. The change didn’t happen instantly. After Italy, France, and several other countries made the switch, 344 years passed before Turkey fell in line in 1926. Others switched at various points in between with England and her colonies, including those in North America, adopting the no-longer-very-new calendar in 1752. Depending on when the switch was made, 10 to 13 days had to be eliminated to get into sync. A more detailed description of the process is available here.

The Gregorian calendar places the start of the year at January 1. Prior to the switch, most Europeans considered a new year to begin at the Catholic Feast of the Annunciation on March 25. For some, this was a week long celebration which meant the party didn’t wrap up until April 1. The theory goes that, like folks who get to work an hour late when Daylight Savings Time kicks in, some people failed to adjust to the new calendar and continued to think of the first of April as the start of a year. They were laughed at and called April Fools by those more in tune with the times. I also suspect there were those who celebrated both dates and thought everyone else fools for missing out on half of the partying.

Of course, not everyone buys into this theory and some point to what may or may not be references to April 1 foolishness made well before 1582. Read some other theories and other details about the day here and here.

If the calendar story is true (and I really hope it is), then modern day April Fools differ greatly from the originals. People who celebrated a new year at the wrong time did it on their own and those who laughed at them were just enjoying the goof. Today it’s all about intentionally making others look foolish. The transition happened a long time ago. The image at the top of this article shows a “ticket” to see the non-existent “Annual Ceremony of Washing the Lions” at the Tower of London. It’s dated 1856 and there are records of the prank being played — probably without tickets — as early as 1698. Once everybody got on board with the January New Year thing, waiting for something like another calendar change to watch large groups of people do something dumb just wasn’t acceptable. Pranks, both big and small, quickly became the order of the day.

I’ll be on my guard, of course. There’s no way I’ll go looking for a left handed monkey wrench or polka dot paint… again. My only concern is whether or not I’ll be able to distinguish the snipe eggs from the bunny eggs.

Easter posts:
2012 East, Easter, Eastest
2013 Happy Eostre
2014 Must Be the Season of the Fish
2015 A Special Day
2016 Happy Easter Island
2017 Happy Easter Island (redux)

Double Play (Red Velvet & Othello)

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Like last week’s post, multiple events are involved. Unlike last week’s post, the events involved are similar and connected. They are not only connected to each other but to one of last week’s as well. On Wednesday, I attended an Ensemble Theater of Cincinnati performance of Red Velvet. I’d seen nothing but positive reviews and comments and I’ve now verified them. The entire cast is excellent but Ken Early stands out in the lead role of Ira Aldridge. I’d seen Early before as Phileas Fogg in ETC’s production of Around the World in 80 Days. He was good as Fogg but is truly impressive in the more challenging Red Velvet.

The play is fact based. In 1833 Ira Aldridge became the first black actor to play Othello in London’s Covent Garden. He was not well received. Even though he had been praised for his portrayal of that and other Shakespearean roles in other parts of England, Londoners expected their Othello to be a proper Englishman in blackface.

Lolita Chakrabart wrote Red Velvet in 2012. I got three things out of watching it. One was learning something of a man who, while rather famous 200 years ago, had pretty much disappeared from history and was totally unknown to me. Another was being led to focus on the fact that the racism of the nineteenth century may have been tamed a bit but it certainly has not been eliminated. The third thing I saw in the play was the absolute passion that actors can develop for their craft. I don’t know that Shakespeare productions involve more passion than others but it seems more visible there.

Shortly after purchasing my ticket to Red Velvet, I received an email offering a discount to another play at another theater. The Cincinnati Shakespeare Company is overlapping ETC’s run of Red Velvet with a production of one of that play’s subjects, Othello. Cooperation between the theaters included discounts to one for attendees of the other. The eagerness with which I jumped on the offer was partly due to something I’d heard last week. During the Q & A session at last Wednesday’s Words and Music event at the Mercantile Library, Steve Earle was asked about his favorite authors. He cited a few (including J. K. Rowling) before naming William Shakespeare as the English language writer he most admired. He added that, if you personally didn’t care for Shakespeare, it might be because you’ve only read the words and didn’t experience them in a performance. That made sense to me and, realizing that I probably hadn’t seen a performance of any Shakespeare play as an adult, resolved to correct that. The opportunity came much quicker than I expected.

One night after seeing Red Velvet, with its Othello excerpts, I saw the real thing in its entirety. Overall, it supported Earle’s observation that seeing the Bard’s creations beats reading them. The CSC production uses a modern setting which could be either a plus or minus but which I thought rather neutral. The presence of cell phones, computer tablets, and TV news broadcasts did not intrude on the scripted words in any way although I suppose it could make the early seventeenth century language seem extra archaic. On the other hand it could serve to underscore the timelessness of the themes of jealousy and betrayal. I didn’t know enough to be affected one way or the other.

All of the principles displayed plenty of passion in their “big scenes” but otherwise often seemed to be in a hurry to deliver their lines before they forgot them. The exception was Nicholas Rose as Iago who struck me as being attentive to the pace of every phrase and the timing of every pause.

Overall it was a very good week in which I learned to appreciate William Shakespeare a little bit more and also learned a little about how much Cincinnati appreciates its live theater. I’ve attended a few ETC shows in the past and, while the basic layout remains the same, improvements in the theater itself and the greatly enlarged lobby indicate a solid future. This was my first CSC show which means I never saw the previous home on Race Street. I cannot, therefore, appreciate how big an improvement the brand new Otto M. Budig Theater is, but I can still be impressed with the really cool venue.

Both shows I attended were sold out or nearly so and these are not the only professional and semi-professional theater companies doing well in Cincinnati. Playhouse in the Park (where I attended Marie and Rosetta a couple of weeks ago) just announced that a new theater will be built at the end of this season. Landmark Productions opened its all new Incline Theater (where I’ll be seeing Spamalot on Thursday) in 2015. Although there’s no new theater on the horizon, Know Theater is now in its twentieth season and the Aronoff Center continues to present “Broadway” touring companies and such. Anyone wanting to see a play in Cincinnati definitely has choices.

CSC’s last performance of Othello was March 24. Red Velvet runs through March 31 at ETC.

The spring equinox occurred at a quarter past noon on Tuesday making Wednesday the first full day of spring. That’s when I took this picture in Washington Park as I walked past on the way to the Ensemble Theater.

Library, Gardens, Uke, and Eggs

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No single big thing happened this week but it sure wasn’t empty. If it had been, I’d be posting a Trip Peek or some other pre-canned asynchronous bit. Instead, I’m making this post from four things that happened during my non-empty week. The picture at right was taken Wednesday at something I’ve been anticipating for quite some time. It’s Steve Earle appearing at The Mercantile Library as part of the Words and Music Series.

The library was certainly full but everyone had at least a little breathing room. Steve’s song introductions were insightful although they probably weren’t any longer than normal. He often provides a good background for what is about to be  heard. About the only song he didn’t provide much introduction to was the surprise opener, F the CC. Anyone wanting to hear that in a library missed a rare opportunity. Steve played several songs, read a complete story from Doghouse Roses along with excerpts from his novel I’ll Never Get Out of Here Alive, then stayed on stage to take questions. It was exactly what I’d hoped for.

Cincinnati Gardens opened in 1949 and closed in 2016. On Monday, Ronnie Salerno posted some pictures of the recently begun demolition. That article can be read here and it should be. In addition to pictures from a very recent visit, it contains links to other pictures and other memories. It prompted me to take a few of my own pictures when I was next in the neighborhood which turned out to be Friday. Of course I have my own memories of The Gardens.

My first visit was in 1966 to see Cavalcade of Customs; My last in 2012 to watch the Cincinnati Roller Girls. In between were numerous concerts, sporting events, and shows. I did not see the concert that is almost always cited when someone talks about the place. The Beatles played here in 1964. However, I do remember seeing the Jefferson Airplane (with opener Cincinnati’s Lemon Pipers) in 1967 and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (opening for The James Gang) in 1971. The venue was never known for its acoustics and I’ve told everyone who would listen that ELP was the only group that actually sounded good in there.

I played The Gardens twice myself. From 1957 to 1972, the NBA Royals called Cincinnati home. The University of Cincinnati supplied the pep band for their games at The Gardens. I joined the UC marching band my freshman year carrying a lot of equipment while taking part in a single parade and no halftime shows. When an upperclassman couldn’t make the first two games of the NBA season, I was picked to bang a drum in a crowded corner of the floor while watching Oscar Robertson and friends do their thing.

The letters whose outlines can be seen in the third picture have been given to the American Sign Museum where they are expected to eventually be mounted on the building as “CINCINNATI Sign GARDEN”.

On Friday night I took in some music at Cincinnati’s oldest bar, Arnold’s. A normal Friday night for me is playing trivia but, with the NCAA tournament getting revved up, that was canceled due to lack of interest and space. I looked online to see who might be playing and the fact that John Redell would be at Arnold’s caught my eye. Learning the Erin Coburn would be with him made it even more attractive and I’d already pretty much made up my mind to go when I found out the Dixon Creasy would also be there. Too cool. John is the ultimate mentor and, when not performing solo, spends a lot of his time making other people look good. That was the case when I last saw John and Erin together but not — at least not entirely — tonight. Erin can now readily hold her own and John permits himself to shine a bit more. A most enjoyable evening that included hearing a ukulele through a wah-wah live for the first time. That’s something everybody needs.

The fourth and final event to contribute to this post is my Saint Patrick’s Day breakfast. With its name inspired by the original owner’s pet chimpanzee, the Monkey Bar and Grill, on the Little Miami River, is undergoing what newspapers have referred to as a renovation. Transformation might be more accurate. One of the renovations not yet completed is the kitchen and the bar has been relying on food trucks for weekends and special occasions. Crappy weather threw a wrench (What kind of wrench was it?) into some outdoor plans but it didn’t keep Big Al’s BBQ from offering breakfast inside. Not the fanciest Saint Paddy’s breakfast I’ve ever had but it did the job and eating at the penny bar (20,000+ they say) was pretty cool.

My Wheels — Chapter 30
1992 Chevrolet Lumina

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The Storm was fun to drive but was completely inadequate in terms of people hauling. As the 1992 model year came to an end, a bright red Chevrolet Lumina Z34 sitting unsold at the dealer where I’d bought the Geo caught my eye. Enough time had passed since the divorce to let my credit recover to the point I could buy it even though I still owed on the Storm and wasn’t trading it in. It became a graduation gift to my oldest son and he drove it to his new home in San Francisco.

I suspect there were several reasons why the Z34 was hanging around. One may have been price. The typical Lumina was a mid-sized reasonably-priced family-friendly car. The Z34 model not so much. As the performance model it carried a premium and having just two doors somewhat reduced its utility. The bright color and the manual transmission may have also eliminated a few perspective owners. While those things may have made it less desirable to some, they were — except for the price — the very things that attracted me. In the end, the need to “make room for the ’93s” made even the price kind of attractive.

The Chevy was an almost ideal vehicle for me at that time. It held four adults in tolerable comfort which made chauffeuring my daughter and a friend or two absolutely painless. I could even do the lunchtime driving for small groups of coworkers and that was something that had simply not been possible with the Storm. Plus it was fun.

I’ve always liked shifting my own gears. That’s something I’d been reminded of with the Mazda as well as the Storm so the 5-speed manual was a big plus for me. The front wheel drive Storm didn’t handle quite as well as the rear drive Mazda but it was pretty good. The FWD Lumina was bigger than either of those so did not handle as well as either but it was a long way from bad. Plus it could go — and stop — quite well indeed. The 34 in the model designation came from its 3.4 liter V6 engine. With two overhead camshafts on each cylinder bank, this was a pretty exotic engine for General Motors. To this day, it remains the only car I’ve owned with just as many cams as wheels. Output was 210 HP. Four-wheel ABS discs did the stopping. I’ve since owned other cars with this brake setup but the Z34 was my first. I was impressed.

The picture at the top was taken after I’d had the car just a couple of days. I did not tow the camper there. It was one of several rental units in a Kentucky campground bordering the Ohio River. I took my daughter and one of her friends camping there almost as soon as I picked up the car. The trip included a visit to the Kentucky Horse Park where the girls  enjoyed some gentle horseback riding. I quit smoking.

It wasn’t exactly planned, but I had finally reached the point where I was mentally ready to quit. What tipped the scale was that smoking had just become too much of a hassle and the acquisition of a new not-yet-smoked-in car seemed a good occasion to go for it. I took no cigarettes on the trip but did take a pack of Between the Acts cigarette style cigars to use in dealing with major nicotine cravings. I essentially finished the first few I smoked but it wasn’t long before a couple of puffs would make me light-headed. I resorted to the little cigars a couple of time after we got home but I never finished the pack and I never smoked in the Lumina.

I did go racing in it though. Once. Kinda. This was the first car I went autocrossing in. Autocrossing (a.k.a. gymkhana) is a race against the clock on a course marked by orange cones. Some friends were into it and I decided to give it a try. A common arrangement is for half of the entrants to line the course as corner workers while the other half raced and then switch roles. I had never even seen an autocross but figured I’d get to watch for awhile before launch time. Nope. Not only was I in the first drivers (rather than workers) group, my slot was so early that I was in line and unable to see much of anything when the few cars in front of me made their runs. To no one’s surprise, I didn’t do well. It wasn’t horrible but it sure  wasn’t competitive. I did a little better on subsequent runs but not much. The FWD Lumina was not a particularly good autocross car and I had no idea what I was doing. I would be back, however  — in a different car.

My Previous Wheels: Chapter 29 — 1991 Geo Storm
My Next Wheels: Chapter 31 — 1994 Chevrolet Camaro

Bock’s Back

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Anytime you spot a Trojan goat being led down the street by a self propelled bathtub, the odds are considerable that you’re at Cincinnati’s annual Bockfest parade. It happened Friday for the twenty-sixth time. My attendance has been frequent but imperfect. While I have no statistics to prove that Friday’s parade was the biggest yet, it felt like it might be. Sunshine and relatively warm temperatures (high 40s) helped.

The bathtub belongs to Arnold’s Bar and Grill. It’s Cincinnati’s oldest tavern and the parade’s starting point. The traveling tub is a reference to the legend that the bar’s bathtub was used to make gin during prohibition. As I recall, the goat was created by the defunct downtown Barrel House Brewery but is now in the care of the Moerlien Brewing Company.

Goats are traditionally associated with bock beer and they appear at Bockfest in many forms. However, no matter how many legs a particular goat might have, it still has only two ends.

If you’ve read any of my parade related posts over the last few years, you know that the Red Hot Dancing Queens became instant favorites of mine from the first time I saw them. Nobody has more fun than these gals.

Two friends attended this year’s parade with me. It was Dave’s first time and he accompanied me along the route dodging goats, dancers, and Segways. As it turned out, he also dodged my camera. Clyde, who attended his first Bockfest parade with me two years ago, has since joined Die Innenstadt, a support group for FC Cincinnati, the local USL team. Although it initially took a little urging to get him to participate, once committed, he not only marched with the group, but did an outstanding job waving one of their big flags.

Dave and I made it to the parade route end and reunited with Clyde for one Schoenling Bock inside the super-crowded Bockfest Hall. I admit that I sometimes lead my friends to the beer taps, but I don’t make them drink. That’s all their doing.

Trip Peek #68
Trip #98
South from the Crossroads

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This picture is from my 2011 South from the Crossroads day trip. One of many intersections to lay claim to the “Crossroads of America” is the place in Vandalia, Ohio, where the National Road and the Dixie Highway once crossed and the pictured sign is posted. Although I imagine I’ve driven all of the Dixie Highway between there and Cincinnati over the years, it was piecemeal at best and I needed to do it in some sort of organized manner. In July I used an Ohio National Road Association dedication of an interpretive marker near the intersection as an excuse and starting point for undertaking the drive. I drove south on one of two alignments and north on the other. I was quite happy with what I’d done. However, before the year was over, I learned of a rather significant marker I’d missed because I had made a wrong turn. I would correct the error In January by driving the proper route.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Magazine Review
ROUTE Magazine

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The premier issue of ROUTE Magazine reached my neighborhood last week. Online chatter — from the publisher, some contributors, and quite a few anxious readers — had been building over the last few months. By the time I held a copy in my hands I’d seen the front cover and had a pretty good overview of the contents. Flipping casually through my purchase verified that this was a quality product with lots of photographs nicely reproduced on semi-gloss pages and plenty of inviting text. It also verified something that I was a little slow in realizing: ROUTE Magazine, or at least this issue, is 100% devoted to Route 66. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The name of author Michael Wallis occupies a prominent spot on the cover. Inside he is the subject of a far ranging interview. Wallis and Route 66 have been tightly tied together since his book, Route 66: The Mother Road, was published in 1990. On one hand, there’s an awful lot of “us too” in spotlighting him like this. On the other, there’s probably a fair amount of credibility to be gained from the interview.

An interview with restaurateur Albert Okura is also listed on the cover along with a set of photographs from David Schwartz and some reminiscing by Jim Hinckley. Okura founded the highly successful Juan Pollo chain and has put his own money into saving bits of Route 66 including the town of Amboy, California. The basic story is well known in the Route 66 community but the interview shines some light on the man behind the story. David Schwartz is an extremely talented photographer living in the no-where-near-Route-66 town of Cleveland, Ohio, who is rapidly getting a reputation for capturing his love for the road in his photos. Author Jim Hinckley is responsible for the best writing in this issue with his memories of six decades of personal experience with Route 66. Some were familiar but some — especially those of Ed’s Camp proprietor Ed Edgerton — were fresh and fun to read.

In addition, the magazine contains a few nuggets from Ron Warnick’s Route66News.com, a “Women on the Route” article, a piece on route-side lodging, and a short form interview with former Midpoint owner Fran Houser. “Women on the Route”, written by Katharine McLaughlin, talks about Katrina Parks’ documentary project and draws information from it. There are some historic mom-and-pops (e.g., Wagon Wheel, Boots) included in the lodgings article but there are also some fairly upscale boutique establishments that don’t often appear in Route 66 listings. The Fran Houser interview appears on the end page under a “Parting Shot” label so I suspect something similar will be a regular feature.

I mentioned that I was slow coming to the realization that this is essentially a Route 66 focused publication. Posts on the magazine’s Facebook page made in the lead-up to publication included at least one Lincoln Highway and one US-50 reference and they apparently caught my eye more than they should have. Looking a little closer, I now see that 90+% of the posts were Route 66 references and all of the magazine’s posts not on its own page were in Route 66 oriented groups. Again I say there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m personally a little less interested than I would have been otherwise but there seems to be significant interest from others and the first issue does look good.

Distribution is currently through Barnes and Noble stores although it appears that not every store is carrying the magazine. Of the two closest to me, one is and one isn’t. Subscription details are still being worked out but are to be available soon at the magazine’s website,          www.routemagazine.us. That website is not yet operational making the aforementioned Facebook page (facebook.com/ROUTEMagazine) the place to check for status and news for the time being.

UPDATE 21-Feb-18: Only a few hours after this review was published, ROUTE Magazine announced on Facebook that the website at www.routemagazine.us had gone live. The site includes a page supporting subscriptions.

Bibliophilia at the Mercantile

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Despite natural first impressions, the title is one of of my most accurate and straightforward. Bibliophilia is the name of a Cincinnati Museum Center CurioCity program that was held at the Mercantile Library of Cincinnati on Thursday. The Museum Center (a.k.a., Union Terminal) is currently undergoing a major renovation and numerous events that would normally be held there are being spread around the city. The Mercantile Library is one of the city’s oldest institutions and it is with considerable chagrin that I admit to this being my first visit.

Bibliophilia exhibits included Sarah Pearce’s artistic creations and a letter press from the Museum Center. Pearce made that dress out of pages from a book of patterns following one of those patterns. The letter press was fully operational and even I managed to produce something legible with it. There was also a station with manual typewriters that attendees could use to write Tweet sized (140 character) stories and a place where they could bind their stories into pamphlets. A rather major activity was a scavenger hunt that had people prowling all through the library to answer a set of questions.

I didn’t take part in the scavenger hunt but prowled nonetheless. The Young Men’s Mercantile Library Association was founded in 1835. It lost a couple of homes to fire and moved around a bit during its first seven decades but has occupied the purpose built upper floors of 414 Walnut Street since 1904. It’s here under a $10,000 10,000 year lease that guarantees space even if the building is replaced.

The place looks exactly as a library should. In fact, it looks a lot like what it did in 1904 and some of the furnishings and many of the books predate that considerably. But there have been changes over the years. You can now be neither young nor male and still join and, even though “mercantile” is still part of the name, a connection with commerce is no longer required.

The library was recently the subject of a great Cincinnati Refined article accompanied by some marvelous photos. Check it out here.

A surprise bonus was running into a couple of travelers I hadn’t seen in quite awhile. We’ve sometimes joked online about probably meeting each other beside a narrow road in some semi-distant state. Although the Rowlands (Chris & Katherine) and I both live near Cincinnati, a crossing of paths on two-lane roads seemed more likely than the meeting in a library in the heart of downtown that happened Thursday. I tried to get a candid shot of the two of them but my attempts turned out to be the blurriest of the blurry so I asked to use a picture that Katherine took of Chris & I. Catch up on their travels and learn a lot about Reubens here.