Category Archives: Attraction

Time of Pharaohs

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The renovated Cincinnati Museum Center takes another step at getting back in the swing of things by hosting the U.S. debut of Egypt: The Time of Pharaohs. The exhibit is new but the objects in it are anything but. Some of the 350+ artifacts on display are more than 4,500 years old. 4,500 years isn’t old like a colonial era cabin, or a New Mexico pueblo, or even a European castle. No, we’re talking old like a pyramid which is, of course, where some of these items come from.

I was there Friday evening for a members only event. It was a well attended members only event. Part of me was really happy to see that lots of people support the museum with their memberships and that same part was really happy to see that lots of those members also support special extra cost exhibits such as this one. Another part of me kind of wished all those people would just get out of my way.

I was smiling when I wrote that last sentence. Timed entries kept the exhibit from being overrun but attendees were not being hustled through it. The crowd simply meant I had to occasionally wait a bit to read a placard or study an artifact up close. It also meant that most photos I took had one to twenty people in them but just about every one of those people was seriously curious and that’s a very good thing.

Based mostly on Hollywood movies, my idea of Egypt includes a lot of gigantic stone things like the Sphinx and those pyramids. But, almost immediately I found a wooden jackal, a bronze cat, and a clay cup. A sign next to the cup dates it to the 1st half of the 3rd millennium BCE. The 2nd half of the 3rd millennium BCE started 4519 years ago. By comparison, the cat is almost modern. It’s from the 3rd century BCE. The jackal is from around 1000 BCE.

These bronze statues are just a few inches tall and quite detailed. That’s Amun-Ra on the left and Isis on the right with a sun disk on her head and Horus on her lap. I didn’t catch a date for the Amun-Ra statue. The Isis statue is from the 6th to 3rd centuries BCE.

My Cecil B. DeMille based ideas weren’t entirely wrong; The Egyptians did do a fair amount of stone carving. The first stele features the crocodile god Sobek. It was carved sometime between roughly 1290 and 1190 BCE during the 19th Dynasty. I screwed up and got no information on the second stele. The third picture shows a plaster cast of a carved wall of the Temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak. The plaster cast is 135 years old. Like the first pictured stele, the wall was carved during the 19th Dynasty. The casting is a solid grey. The colors are from a projector that cycles on and off to show the wall as it was originally. A replica of a 13th century BCE chariot stands in front of the wall.

Of course, you can’t have an Egyptian exhibit without a sphinx and some mummies. This limestone sphinx is a baby just a couple of feet long. It’s from the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE. The coffin is from the 14th or 15th centuries BCE. It’s a mix of wood and plaster with gold trim. The mummified cat comes from the same time period as the sphinx.

There is actually plenty of modern technology mixed in with the multi-millennium old artifacts. An audio guide is available that provides commentary keyed to specific displays. There are several interactive exhibits that help explain timelines, hieroglyphics, and more. The final display is pretty high-tech. High resolution CT scans have recorded the details of every layer of a mummy from about 750 BCE. Holography is used to project a rotating 3-dimensional image inside a clear pyramid. The image cycles through the layers as it rotates. It’s a time warp that even Doc Brown might appreciate.

Egypt: Time of the Pharaohs is at the Cincinnati Museum Center through August 18.  

Max is Back

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I saw a movie on Thursday. I suppose I could have made this a movie review but I was really more interested in the theater than the movie. Besides, if I used this as a review to be posted on Wednesday, I’d have to resort to some canned article for the regular weekly post.

Thursday was the first day the newly renovated Robert D. Lindner Family OMNIMAX® Theater at the Cincinnati Museum Center was open to the public. It was partly luck that put me in the theater for the first showing of Volcanoes: The Fires of Creation and more luck that put me in one of my favorite seats near the projector. The seat was part of the renovation. It was new, a little wider than what it replaced, and quite comfortable. I took no pictures inside the theater. Some can be found online in professional reports. The picture that opens this article is the only one I took of any part of the theater. It’s a room that patrons pass entering and exiting. In the old days, huge rolls of 70 millimeter film laid on tables here to feed the big projector directly overhead. Nowadays the movie is digital and probably stored on something roughly the size of a grain of rice.

Not being certain that I would be in town for the opening, I’d made no plans and was surprised to see that loads of tickets remained for all showings. That produced a deep lack of urgency and I was equally surprised when I approached the museum and found a long line of cars working its way into the parking lots. I later learned from a staff member that it had been like this at the recently reopened Museum Center ever since schools closed down for the holidays. “And the rain helps”, she added.

I instantly realized that I should have committed to a specific time and bought my ticket online but, although the theater doors were opened well before I reached them, I was safely in my seat before the action began. As I entered, it was announced that the showing was sold out but there were still many empty seats when the lights went down. The wider seats have reduced capacity from 245 to 227 but I’m guessing that won’t often be an issue.

With the lights still up, differences in the screen were obvious. The old screen was more porous and the speakers behind it could be seen when nothing was being projected on it; A little staring revealed the seams where panels overlapped. The new screen is a little whiter and less porous; There is no overlapping of panels. Some darkish lines, which I believe are bits of the backing frame, can be detected if you look hard enough. There are still speakers behind the giant screen but now they can only be heard and not seen. They say that the new sound system sounds better and I believe them. It certainly sounds wonderful but so did the old one and a side-by-side comparison just isn’t possible.

The action on the screen starts, as it has since the theater’s beginning, with the attention gripping light tunnel. There are improvements but they are subtle and they remain subtle into the feature. The images seems crisper and a little brighter. The slightly fuzzy focus and warping that sometimes crept into the edges is virtually gone. I’m guessing that some of that is due to the theater, and some is due to the camera and recording technology. The movie begins with an animation of Earth’s collision with the planet Theia some 4.5 billion years ago. The images are sharp and crisp. They seem just as sharp and crisp when the scene changes to humans backed by a lake of lava. Although I know that the second scene came through a camera’s lens, that knowledge doesn’t prevent part of me musing about whether the lake is real or a man-made special effect. No doubt, the conditioning that comes from seeing action movies with similar scenes produced by CGI is partly to blame but it’s also a testament to just how good the “real” scene looks.

Most of the improvements are a matter of perception. One is an indisputable fact. The floaters are gone. No matter how hard theater operators tried, it was impossible to keep those over-sized rolls of film entirely dust free. Specks of dust would occasionally appear on the screen like floaters in your eye; Not with digital.

Using Volcanoes to reopen the theater was a good choice. According to the movie’s website this is the tenth theater to show it. A fair amount of science is mixed in with the dramatic visuals. Those visuals include lava lakes, billowing plumes of smoke and ash, startling eruptions, scenic landscapes, and even some animals such as elephants and giraffes on the plains of Africa. There is considerable footage of the recent lava flows in Hawaii. I found the shots of eruptions particularly impressive. Incredible power is very much in evidence here. Dark spots in the smoke and flame can appear to be floating upward like scraps of burning paper at a camp fire, but when they stop their climb and plummet downward it quickly becomes apparent that they are massive boulders tossed into the air by the volcano’s explosive force. Sometimes the recording equipment is close enough capture the thud of their landing.

A schedule for future movies at CMC has not yet been worked out. In fact, I found no information on when Volcanoes’ run here will end. Plans exist for the return of the popular Weekend Classic series In January. That will most likely start with a digital version of National Park Adventure which was the last movie to play here in the old analog days. My review includes a shot of the room at the top of this article when it was filled with gear and those big rolls of film.

Got the Hanger Before the Plane

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The title is my questionable attempt to make an aeronautical version of that saying about getting the cart before the horse. I started on a trip yesterday that is aimed at having me at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, for the 115th anniversary of the Wright brother’s first flight on Monday. In anticipation of that, I recently revisited some Wright related sites in nearby Dayton, Ohio. This was actually the main reason I was in Dayton when I made the Carillon Historical Park visit that yielded last week’s Christmas themed post. There’s been a bit of a squabble between Ohio and North Carolina over where this flying business got started, but my title is not a reference to that. I’m just acknowledging the fact that this blog post about the Wright brothers in Dayton is going up before my trip journal entries about the brothers in North Carolina. Dayton was the Wright brothers’ home and there are quite a few locations associated with them. Probably the most important single location tied to the Wrights and their development of human flight is Huffman Prairie Flying Field where a replica of their 1905 airplane hangar stands. A placard in the hangar is here.

Official input to the squabble included North Carolina putting “First in Flight” on their license plates in 1982 and Ohio following with “Birthplace of Aviation” in 1997. In theory, the argument officially came to an end in 2003 when the U.S. Congress recognized Ohio as “the birthplace of aviation” while acknowledging that the first flights occurred in North Carolina. The text associated with that recognition is here. It’s easy and maybe somewhat natural to think that Ohio got the nod because the Wrights lived there but that the actual “birthing” happened in NC. The fact is that the brothers did a lot more than live in Ohio. Tremendous amounts of research and experimentation occurred in Dayton both before and after the trips to NC, and almost all of it that took place after December 17, 1903, took place at this field near what is now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Both of those slogans are correct. The first flight — actually the first four flights — happened in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina; Aviation was born in Dayton, Ohio.

The reason for the Wrights’ trips to North Carolina was the strong and steady winds there. They had proven that their machine could fly, but further development was required. The brothers naturally wanted to avoid the time and money consuming trips to the coast but Ohio winds are weak and fickle. They might lay out as much as 240 feet of rail only to be forced to move it when the wind shifted. The catapult near the hangar is a replica of the one they used to shorten takeoff distance to 60 feet with less need for a headwind. The brothers improved on the machine they flew in NC and eventually learned to control the craft to the point of flying around the perimeter of the field. Their flight path is kept mowed and may be walked.

Not far from Huffman Prairie Flying Field, a Wright Brothers Memorial stands atop a hill that bears their name. The area containing the field is included in the view from the overlook behind the monument. There is a small museum and interpretative center across the road from the monument.

What I think is one of the coolest sculptures around stands in the median of Main Street in downtown Dayton. Called “Flyover”, it is a full scale representation of that first flight in Kitty Hawk. The sculpture’s length matches the 120 feet covered by that first flight. Each of the flight’s 12 seconds is marked by a set of wings showing the craft’s climb and descent. It’s really eye-opening to walk the length of the sculpture and realize just how short that first giant hop for mankind was. Another full scale sculpture stand just a few blocks away, on Monument Street. The plane depicted is the 1905 Wright Flyer III in which the Wright brothers improved their design and skills at Huffman Prairie. The real thing shows up in a couple of paragraphs.

The Wright Brothers National Museum is inside Carillon Historical Park. It’s been there since the park opened in 1950 but just received the “National” designation in August. More Wright brothers artifacts are displayed here than anywhere else. The bicycle in the second picture is one of five Wright brand bicycles known to exist and one of two on display in this building. The Wrights eventually built a wind tunnel and other devices for more accurate measurements, but some of their earliest testing involved mounting variously shaped surfaces on the horizontal wheel then peddling into the wind to see how they reacted. This may not be the most famous camera in the world but it is responsible for taking one of the most famous photographs in the world. Orville set up the camera before climbing aboard the flyer, Wilbur handed off the bulb so he could help steady the craft during takeoff,  and John T. Daniels pressed that bulb at the right time to head off the “pictures or it didn’t happen” crowd back in Dayton.

The story of how this display happened is almost as cool as the display itself. In the 1940s, when Colonel Edward Deeds was putting this park together, he had a chat with his good friend Orville Wright about making a replica of the first Wright Flyer. Orville had a better idea. Why not rebuild the real Wright Flyer III? This was the first truly practical flyer and the brothers considered it their most important aircraft. It had served its builders well in their 1905 developments at Huffman Prairie, then had been shipped to Kitty Hawk for U.S. Army trials in 1908. Following the trials it had been more or less abandoned although there were some pieces in various locations around the country. Orville knew where those pieces were and of course he knew everything there was to know about the original plane. What followed has been called “The first pilot’s last project”. Not only did Orville contribute to rebuilding the airplane, it was his idea to display it in a sort of pit so that visitors could get good views of the whole thing. It is believed that approximately 85% of the original machine was recovered and 60% to 80% was used in the reconstruction. Many of the original pieces that were not made part of the plane were used in making replacements. Some of these are displayed nearby. A placard with the plane’s specifications stands by one of its wings. 

National Veterans Memorial and Museum

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Ohio has a new museum. The National Veterans Memorial and Museum opened on October 27. I visited on November 30 and confess to being drawn more by the building than anything else. Pictures I’d seen made the circular structure look both beautiful and unusual. I was also intrigued by what might be inside. I’d skimmed pieces of the Museum’s website and noted what I thought was a slogan. “A national museum where veterans, not war, come first,” turned out to be the headline of a CNN report on the museum rather than a slogan. Before I read the report and while I thought the phrase a slogan, I wondered just how much could veterans be separated from war?.

Before I went inside to answer my question, I explored a bit of the museum’s exterior. The Allied Works Architecture designed building sits on the banks of the Scioto River near downtown Columbus. Despite its nearness to the city’s tallest buildings, it is surrounded by open space nicely landscaped by OLIN. Columbus has done a nice job of keeping the river banks open and green. Directly across the river from the museum is the field where I watched fireworks in July. The Rooftop Sanctuary is accessed by a ramp curving along the side of the building and offering views of the city and river. After soaking up the views from the top, I headed back down the ramp to the main entrance.

When the subject is military veterans, avoiding war references is impossible. The museum does not push details of our various wars, but those wars are major markers in our historic timeline. The focus is on people. One of the displays encountered early on talks about taking the oath that separates a person’s civilian existence from the military one. An oath signed by Alexander Hamilton in 1778 is featured in the display on evolving oaths.

There are several interactive exhibits in the museum and here’s one I found a little troubling. The touchscreen allows a slider to be moved from 1950, when the U.S. military was present in 74 countries, to 2018, when that number is 154. The Peace Corp is currently active in 65 countries.

There are several videos as well. Some are “on demand” while others, like this one about coming home, run continuously. The first picture is a screenshot showing a celebration at the end of World War II. The second is a much more recent scene of soldiers returning from the middle east. In between are images of many other homecomings including Vietnam where a soldier tells of leaving his uniform in an airport restroom to avoid “greetings” from protesters. A friend of mine tells an identical story. As we continue to get involved in wars even less popular and more poorly justified, we have at least learned to distinguish those promoting war from those caught up in it. I am not a veteran myself and have no homecoming experience of my own. Of the two veterans closest to me, I missed out on my Dad getting home from World War II but I was there when my son got home from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Many of the stories presented at the museum involve the struggles and accomplishments of veterans after their discharge. Some, like Tammy Duckworth and John McCain, are well known but there are plenty of unknowns who overcame just as much and made equally valuable contributions to society.

I was somewhat conflicted about this museum from the moment I first heard of it. Part of that was due to the obvious difficulty in celebrating the warrior without celebrating the war. That has been handled fairly well. Another part came from questioning the appropriateness of spending large amounts of money on the building when so many of the people it sets out to honor are in need of shelter, food, counseling, and more. The museum does promote various veteran organizations and its conference rooms and Rooftop Sanctuary will no doubt host many discussions and gatherings, but whether or not that was the best use of the money remains a valid question. I’m also not entirely comfortable with this sign on the wall of the museum’s third level. There’s not a whole lot there other than some space for contemplation, and I’m sure it’s tough to organize anything related to the military without someone bringing up the lives that have been lost, but many Americans seem to have a really tough time distinguishing between Memorial Day and Veterans Day and this probably won’t help.

I began this post by noting that it was primarily the stunning building that attracted me. I think I like it even more after seeing it in person. The building and grounds are a beautiful addition to downtown Columbus. The museum may also turn out to be a beautiful addition to the lives of veterans. Time will tell.

Relocated Cincy

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Attending the Cincinnati Museum Center preview last week reminded me that I’d sort of lost track of the murals that once hung in the terminal’s passenger concourse. When the concourse was demolished back in the 1970s, they were moved to the Cincinnati Airport in northern Kentucky. They once again became homeless when the airport terminal they were installed in came up for demolition. A new home was found on the west side of the Duke Energy Convention Center and they took up residence there about a month ago. You can read about the re-dedication ceremony here. Those panels above the murals form the city’s name tag. Anyone visiting or even passing through Cincinnati at night may have seen the name spelled out in lights. I apologize for this crappy picture being the only one that I own but I know there are some good ones out there on the web.

The nine 20 feet square murals are in a climate controlled space behind tinted glass. That’s good for the murals which deserve all the protection they can get, but not so good for taking photographs. That bit of glare is a just minor inconvenience, however, and I’m certainly not complaining. I’m really quite happy to see the murals both protected and accessible. Passersby can now study these nine images of Cincinnati history with out so much as a train or plane ticket.

And here’s a bit of relocated Cincinnati history I’ve been remiss in checking out. I saw sketches of this installation while Cincinnati Gardens, the letters’ original home, was still standing. I mentioned the plan when I wrote about the Gardens in this post. Then I read about it being completed here. I can’t say why it took me nearly three months to get to see it but sometimes that happens. Cool and clever.  

Rabbit Hash via Ferry

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The town of Rising Sun, Northwest Territory, was laid out on the north bank of the Ohio River in 1814. A couple of years later, the area containing the town was included in the new state of Indiana. Folks were also settling on the south bank about that time, and a ferry operated in the vicinity as early as 1813 to connect the two communities. In 1831, a large building was constructed on the Kentucky side to store cargo before and after being transported on riverboats, and a small village called Carlton grew up around it. Eventually, Carlton became Rabbit Hash and that 1831 building became the Rabbit Hash General Store.

A series of ferries operated here until 1945 when the Mildred was crushed by ice. The 73 year gap in service came to an end on September 29 when the MS Lucky Lady began carrying cars and people between Rising Sun and Rabbit Hash. I headed over to check it out on Tuesday and my first view of the new ferry is recorded in the opening picture which shows her leaving Kentucky. The picture at left shows her arriving in Indiana. I wasn’t ready to leave the state just yet so did not catch the next crossing. I would be back.

One of the things I wanted to do before departing Rising Sun was visit the Rising Star Casino. As many times as I’d visited and even stayed in Rising Sun, I had never been inside the casino. When it originally opened (as Grand Victoria) in 1996, the riverboat housing the casino was required to “cruise” so it hauled patrons a few hundred feet into the river and back on a regular schedule. Somewhere along the way, that requirement vanished. I passed through the building to which the boat is now permanently moored and onto the casino. It’s mostly slot machines with one area filled with some table games such as poker, roulette, and craps. The thing at least still looks like a boat and the top deck is accessible. On the far left of the third photo, the ferry (enlarged here) is approaching its Kentucky landing.

Crossings at fifteen minute intervals are advertised and that seems about right to me. I snapped that first picture just as the ferry approached the dock. Capacity is ten cars and one of the crew told me they were pretty much at capacity throughout both of the two weekends they have been open. I saw loads of four to six today. I was the last of five cars to board for my trip, but they split the first four and put me front and center. A round trip costs $8. I traveled one-way for $5.

This is the Kentucky side dock with a decent sized staging area. The crew member I spoke with said that travel had been pretty steady in both directions with a slight edge to Indiana, i.e., casino, bound traffic. I’m sure that’s what was hoped for when Rising Star decided to spend $1.7 million on the ferry and access roads. Play at the casino can earn free ferry rides.

In February of 2016, that building erected in 1831 caught fire and burned to the ground. It was rebuilt using pieces of other old buildings in the exact image of itself. My comment on walking in the door was, “It’s like you never left.” It really wasn’t gone very long. It reopened in May of 2017, less than fifteen months after the fire. I visited Rabbit Hash twice while the rebuilding was in progress but this was my first time there after the reopening. It’s rather embarrassing to realize that it took me longer to get inside the new store than it took to build it. The rebuild is a phenomenal accomplishment in not just time but in attention to historic accuracy. The town has a fascinating history and a very interesting present. A lot about both can be learned at the Rabbit Hash General Store website.

The Rising Star Casino is quite visible from Rabbit Hash although the two are not directly across the river from each other. Rabbit Hash is directly across from the heart of Rising Sun. The ferry does not connect precisely to any of the three. The Indiana landing is just under a mile from the casino and the Kentucky landing is about a mile and a half from Rabbit Hash. That latter measurement is along the narrow Lower River Road. The road is well maintained but not wide enough to support heavy two way traffic. The signed route to and from the ferry is longer but safer.

This is not associated in any way with the ferry or either of the towns it connects. It’s where I stopped for breakfast on the way to Rising Sun and I think it deserves a mention. The State Line Restaurant appeared in an online search and sounded interesting. It’s on US-50 on the Indiana side of the state line it is named after, and every bit as interesting as I’d hoped. The breakfast menu offered plenty of variety but listed a single “special” at the top. The special included goetta. Not “choice of goetta, bacon, or sausage”. Just goetta. No substitutions. That seemed significant and it was.

When I asked, my waitress said yes, they do make their own goetta. Goetta is an oatmeal and pork concoction served by most restaurants in the Cincinnati area but few make their own. Glier’s Goetta Company (formerly Glier’s Meats) has a near monopoly on the rest. The fact that the State Line Restaurant strongly featured the local breakfast staple told me it must be something special.

“It’s my grandfather’s recipe”, my waitress, who is also running the place at present, told me. The restaurant has been in operation since 1952. Her mother bought it twenty-two years ago. Mom is currently experiencing some health problems so the next generation is temporarily in charge. The State Line Special, minus an already downed glass of orange juice, is shown at left. It’s $7.50 including the coffee. In addition to the goetta, the excellent strawberry jam beside the toast is made on site. A tray of those little containers was being filled from a fresh batch at the other end of the counter. They also make their own blueberry jam and I was offered a sample to take with me but declined. Yes, I can be very stupid. I’ve already spent five days wondering if the blueberry jam is as good as the strawberry.

Riverside Rotator

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There’s a big wheel standing on edge near the Cincinnati waterfront. Its owner, Skystar, officially calls it America’s Largest Portable Observation Wheel, but even they know that it’s a Ferris wheel to most folks. The 137 foot wheel opened in Cincinnati on September 1 and will be spinning daily through December 2. It arrived in Cincinnati from Norfolk, Virginia, and before that was in Louisville, Kentucky. A friend and I went for a ride on Friday.

I parked on the Kentucky side and walked across the John A Roebling Suspension Bridge. Before heading to Ohio, I slipped down to the water’s edge to take a few pictures. I’m pretty sure that the bronze Mr. Roebling is gesturing toward his very permanent bridge but the sweep of his hand also takes in the temporary Ferris wheel positioned at its northern end.

The maze to the ticket booth and beyond would clearly accommodate a lot more people than were on hand early Friday evening. So would the wheel itself. Each of the 36 gondolas has room for six passengers which means 216 people could be simultaneously spinning in circles if the thing was filled to capacity.

There are a couple of things at play that make full occupancy unlikely. One is the policy of promising “a private experience for passengers” by not putting strangers together in a car. While I personally find chatting with strangers in this sort of situation to often be interesting and fun, that’s evidently not the case for most. Another thing I suspect will help fend off worries about filling every seat is the $12.50 ticket price for a fifteen minutes or so ride. I’ve seen a minimum of four revolutions advertised and we got six… or maybe seven. It’s a cool experience and one that individuals and couples will likely consider worth the cost. Families of any size with kids over two (under two ride free) likely won’t.

Addendum: A friend tells me that on the opening weekend the wheel was full, there were long lines, and strangers did indeed ride together. Here’s hoping that happens again someday.

With virtually no line, we were soon on board and in motion. The wheel stands between Cincinnati’s two stadia. That’s Great American Ball Park in the background of the second picture and Paul Brown Stadium in the background of the third. Yes, it is possible to see and photograph both of them without the arms of the wheel in the way. GABP (with cohort Great American Tower) is here, and PBS is here. The timing of our ride was such that the setting sun was aimed directly at us as we faced west. That’s why I used the neighboring gondola as a sun-shield and why the picture’s still extra crappy.

The most scenic views were away from the city and generally involved the river and the Roebling Bridge. The bridge was almost lined-up straight-on for the second photo. In the third, it’s in the background as we duck behind the “Sing the Queen City” sign.

As sometimes happens when your view is greatly expanded, we were witnesses to a bit of drama. In the first picture, the grey car on the left side is clearly facing the wrong way for the lane it is in on the two way bridge. A trailing black streak across the yellow stripe can be seen with a close look. We spotted the incident near the end of our ride and before long were walking past it. Apparently the right front wheel had let go and threw the car into the opposing lane. A head on collision was somehow avoided.

We ate dinner in Kentucky as the sun continued to set which made a brief stop near where I’d taken my first Ferris wheel pictures more than worthwhile. I had a tripod in the car and using it would have also been more than worthwhile but I was too lazy. Several photographers who weren’t too lazy were standing nearby and no doubt taking superior photographs. I put these here so that you’ll immediately know what those superior photos are superior to when you see them.

The Mighty Qin… and Friends

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I can’t really explain how the word Qin got turned into China, but it did. Some oriental linguistic transformations, such as Peking to Beijiing, are fairly recent but Qin has been China for a very long time. During a period actually called the Warring States Period, Qin was merely one of the states that warred. But it was better at it than most. In 221 BCE, under the leadership of Ying Zheng, Qin conquered the last of those other states to unify Qin/China. Although the Qin Dynasty was short lived (221-206 BCE) it gave the world its most populous country, biggest wall, and most mind boggling tomb.

Construction of that tomb, a 38 square mile complex clearly deserving of the name necropolis, began before China’s unification. Ying Zheng launched the project in 246 BCE after becoming ruler of Qin following his father’s death. He was thirteen. One of the best known of the many astounding aspects of the site is the army of nearly 8,000 life sized terracotta figures populating it. Ten of those figures are among the 120 items currently on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum. The chariot in the opening photograph is a replica of one found at the burial site. It is on display near the museum entrance separate from the actual exhibit.

The majority of items in the exhibit are much smaller than those soldiers and some predate the Qin dynasty  Many of the smallest are jewelry or other decorative items. A lot of the mid-sized items are more practical. The earthenware mask, believed to have been used by an exorcist, dates from 4000-3000 BCE. The metal cladding in the second picture was used to join construction timbers. The Chinese have long used ceramic tile for roofs and other construction needs. Both items in the third picture are tiles used in water supply systems.

This was the third time I’ve been able to gaze upon some of the twenty-two century old figures. The first was in 1980 at the Field Museum in Chicago; The second just two years later at the 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair. In Chicago, six soldiers and two horses were part of a large “Great Bronze Age of China” exhibit. In Knoxville, two soldiers and a horse accompanied a tiny piece of the Great Wall in China’s first World’s Fair exhibit since 1904. Both were remarkable in that the figures had been discovered just a few years prior in 1976. I find the fact that they were forgotten for more than two millennia as extraordinary as the fact that they existed at all.

The terracotta army contains a broad range of ranks and duties and every member is unique in some way. This exhibit includes a representative sample ranging from general to stable hand with foot soldiers, a couple of archers, and a charioteer. The cavalryman in the first photo does look like the one whose thumb was broken off in Philadelphia last December by some jerk from Delaware, but it’s not. That set of figures has returned to China. The Cincinnati exhibit was organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts where it had been displayed until mid-March. Those and other details are found in a press release here.

Terracotta Army: Legacy of the First Emperor of China runs through August 12.

There is another traveling exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum currently. It’s one I failed to do any homework on at all and I regret that — maybe. The main part of the exhibit is called The Visitors which is described as a “multi-channel video installation”. It’s the work of Ragnar Kjartansson. His Scenes from Western Culture is also on display. It’s possible to find descriptions of both of these works elsewhere but this is the only place to get a description of how I experienced them. Lucky you.

Ragnar Kjartansson’s name was on the entrance to a fairly large room that often holds traveling exhibits with several large video screens on the walls of the approaching hallway. I’d seen the name when visiting the museum website but I hadn’t been interested enough to do any reading and I really had no idea what to expect. I scanned a blurb on the wall about short movies that set a mood rather than telling a story before watching a couple kissing on a dock by a boat and a group of kids playing almost sedately in a park. A screen with a fire burning in what looked like the foundation of a house triggered a memory. I’d recently seen a similarly framed image of a cabin ablaze and realized it must have been on the museum’s website. The blurb next to the screen mentioned a 32 minute running time. I needed to kill some time and the cabin, if that’s what it was, had completely collapsed so maybe it was near the end. I sat down across from the screen to see if it would cycle to the remembered image of a cabin.

I checked email and Facebook and verified that City View Tavern, where I planned to eat, was open. The fire was still going pretty good within the outline of the building, so I decided to go on into the main room. Even bigger screens lined those walls with little activity on any of them. I studied each of them briefly then went back to the hallway to check on the “fire”. The flames didn’t hold my attention very long this time and I soon decided to walk on through the main room and exit. A couple of the screens were now dark but the others showed the same motionless scenes as before. As I paused near one of the screens, a man appeared and walked toward the camera. The screen went black when he presumably switched it off. I waited long enough for the same thing to happen to another screen. The pause gave me time to rethink things and realize that I still had time to kill and doing it here was probably my best option. I returned to my seat near the fire video.

I now noticed a blurb on the side if the door away from the “fire”. I learned that the installation inside, The Visitors, involved musicians, in different rooms of a mansion, playing and singing a song. The fire in the video didn’t seem to be progressing much, so, when I heard voices singing on the other side of the doorway, I went in and, for the first time, considered that Ragnar Kjartansson might not be a full on con-artist.

All the screens were lit and all the rooms occupied: a cello, a couple of grand pianos, an accordion, a banjo, several guitars. The show — I mean installation — had become interesting. Though the music wasn’t gripping, it was quite pleasant. It swelled and softened. In some of the mellowest spots, the drummer sipped a beer. After a while I noticed the bare shoulders of a young woman lying in the bed one of the guitarist sat on. The run time was given as 64 minutes, and, as far as I know, she didn’t move for the entire shoot. If so, that’s almost as impressive as her roommate contributing to the performance guided only by earphones.

The museum is free and so is this. I’m really thinking of returning to watch the whole thing in the proper sequence now that I know what’s going on. Through some belated homework, I learned that Ragnar’s the guy in the bathtub. A quite remarkable selfie.

The Visitors and Scenes from Western Culture run through June 17.

Santa Z’s Legacy

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Here’s a Christmas display that looks a bit more traditional than the one in last week’s post. And it doesn’t just look traditional, Zapf’s Christmas Display is a definite Cincinnati tradition with decades of history. In 1970, Bill “Santa Z” Zapf marked the first Christmas in his new home with some outside decorations and the house has been the site of an ever growing holiday display every December since then.

Bill died in 2008 but his son, known as Billy, keeps the tradition going. Billy was busy replacing some lights in his father’s name when I stopped by in the afternoon, but he still offered up a friendly hello and chatted a bit as he worked. It’s obvious that Billy gets a lot of pleasure from the display and a good deal of that pleasure comes from the memories it triggers. Memories of his dad and the time the two of them spent creating and maintaining the glowing wonderland.

Yes, there is a normal nativity scene among all those figures. I’m including both day and night views of the nativity because that’s what I did last week but it’s an undeniable fact that this is a display meant to be enjoyed at night.

In early December, Cincinnati Magazine published their Top 5 Holiday Light Displays. All five are commercial or municipal operations. Described as “…your average neighborhood light display…on steroids”, Zapf’s received the lone Honorable Mention. Four of the top five have fixed admission prices and the fifth requests donations. Although it might no be as obvious, the Zapf family does too. There is a “Thank You Box” by the porch and the North Side Bank and Trust accepts donations to the Keep Santa Z’s Lights On fund. Electricity isn’t free.

The porch itself is packed with smaller decorations including one that hints at the Zapfs receiving a well deserved Major Award.

The display is located at 2032 W Galbraith Road. A recent Channel 5 story on the display is here.

Time of the Season

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It was fun while it lasted. Jasen Dixon set up The World’s First Zombie Nativity Scene in 2014. He says he almost didn’t bring it back this year and definitely won’t next year. The display faced legal challenges and a certain amount of outrage during its first two years but it seems things were fairly quiet last Christmas season. From the beginning, the display had at least as many fans as detractors, and, while the number of those in favor has increased, the number of those actively opposed has fallen dramatically. For some it was a practical matter. After 27 misdemeanor charges and $13,500 in fines were dropped early last year, Sycamore Township officials decided “It’s not worth the expense…”.

In 2015 I included a couple of daytime pictures of the Zombie Nativity in some comments tacked onto a Christmas time blog post. This year I snapped both day and night shots. I ended my 2015 comments with the observation that I thought “…a new local Christmas tradition has been established.” Whether or not you think that was right depends on whether or not you think the word “tradition” has any business being associated with something something that lasts just four years.

The title for this post comes from a 1968 hit song from the band The Zombies. I listened to a lot of stuff from them back in the day but I’d been smitten by zombie music long before. I remember singing along to this Kingston Trio recording from an older cousin’s collection as a pre-teenager. In searching for that 1959 performance I discovered a really cool one by Rockapella and another by the great Harry Belafonte.