The First Day of Pompeii:
The Exhibition

Posted on February 18, 2024 by Denny

Pompeii: The Exhibition opened at the Cincinnati Museum Center on Friday. I would have been in the first group admitted and possibly even the first person admitted if a guard had not blocked the stairs and escalators until precisely 10:00 AM. That was the official exhibit opening time but an unguarded elevator a few feet from the stairs meant that a group of patrons were receiving their pre-entry briefing when I and the rest of the walkers arrived. It’s always good to begin the day with something funny.

Following our own briefing, we entered, received another short briefing beneath the screen in the opening picture, and were then treated to an introductory video on that screen. At the video’s end, doors opened on a life-size marble statue of the goddess Aphrodite. Much like the moon, this is the view of the goddess that we most often see although there is another.

Pompeii was a prosperous port city and art was plentiful. Public spaces and private homes contained decorative mosaics, frescoes, fountains, and more statues.

There were plenty of practical items too. Examples are scales used in the market, fishing hooks, and cooking utensils. I know I’m not the only one with a cast iron skillet that looks almost exactly like this bronze one from Pompeii.

I suppose these items are also practical in their own way. Gladiatorial contests were primarily held for entertainment but staying alive was definitely a practical concern for the participants. Next to the displays of weapons and armor, a holographic video about the various types of combat got its share of attention.

Also getting attention was a small room offset from the primary flow. Both entry briefings had described the special markings for this adult-oriented display in case parents wanted to make sure their charges avoided it. If any did, it wasn’t obvious. A sign begins with the astute observation that “Ancient Roman sexual customs were different from those of our contemporary society.” Back then arriving with bells on really meant something.

Theatrical entertainment was quite popular in all of Rome including Pompeii. Actors wore masks to establish their characters. Here is a fresco depicting a pair of masks and a full-size marble mask. Both of these were purely decorative as masks actually worn on stage were made of lighter materials such as linen.

Another set of warnings in those entry briefings concerned loud noises and bright lights in the “4D eruption theater”. I do not doubt that these could be disturbing for some but most will find them underwhelming. Same with the slightly moving floor which I assume is the fourth dimension. If you enter expecting a high-definition video of the eruption shown on a large flat screen you will see an extremely good one. Expect more and you might be disappointed.

Images of the casts of the victims of the eruption are the most familiar and also the most disturbing. These are not human bodies but shapes formed within the volcanic ask where bodies once were. The quote on the wall in the first picture is from Pliny the Younger who watched the eruption from a little more than a dozen miles away and then documented it. In this exhibit, many of the casts are displayed in front of large photographs which I assume depict the situation in which they were found.

Exit is, of course, through the gift shop where we are reminded that striking a good final pose will greatly increase your chances of appearing on a shot glass or refrigerator magnet in a couple of millennia.

Aphrodite’s butt and iffy shot glasses aside, this is an impressive exhibit that provides a detailed and accurate look at a real Roman city of two thousand years ago. Pompeii: The Exhibition runs through July 28.

Movie Review
Deep Sky
IMAX Original

Posted on February 7, 2024 by Denny

I have not followed every detail of the astounding James Webb Space Telescope’s beginnings but I have been aware of some of the bigger events. I knew when it left Earth atop an Ariane 5 rocket on December 25, 2021, and I listened to reports of its eighteen gold-coated mirrors being unfolded and aligned. I marveled at those first images shared with the world on July 12, 2022. They were impressive on the tiny 6-inch screen on my phone, more so on my compact laptop’s 13-inch screen, and better yet on my small-by-modern-standards 42-inch TV. I need a bigger word than impressive now that I’ve seen some of them on a 72-foot OMNIMAX screen.

Deep Sky was released on October 20, 2023, and has been playing in several theaters spread around the world for a while. It began its run at Cincinnati’s Robert D. Lindner Family OMNIMAX® Theater with an 11:30 showing on Friday, February 2. I was there.

The front end of the movie covers the telescope’s construction, launch, and deployment. Some big numbers were tossed out concerning distance, number of people involved, etc. One that caught my attention was the count of Single Points of Failure (SPOFs). A SPOF is something that causes an entire system to fail if it does. It’s a concept I’m familiar with from my working days in software. A definition found online ends with “mission-critical systems should not have a SPOF”. According to Deep Sky, the deployment sequence for JWST had 344 of them. Not one caused a problem.`

There is a fair amount of computer-generated graphics in the film to illustrate the operation of the telescope in space and other impossible-to-capture views. They are wonderfully done and visually quite stunning on the big dome. Giant images from computers are great and may even equal those produced by the telescope in terms of visual impact but knowing that something you are seeing is an actual capture of something in the real world generates a whole different type of awe.

There is a lot of awe present in the movie itself. It is apparent in every one of the program participants who put in an appearance. These are people who are truly excited to be part of a project that is advancing mankind’s knowledge of this world and their enthusiasm is more than obvious.

Much of the buzz generated by JWST comes from never-before-seen objects it has captured such as galaxies older than any previously recorded. These are well represented in Deep Sky. JWST has also provided better images of things that have been studied for some time. One example is the supernova of 1604 which was observed by Galileo. Another is the “Pillars of Creation” first imaged by the Hubble telescope in 1995. A JWST-generated image of the Pillars is in the movie poster that begins this article. A Hubble version can be seen here. NASA has made bunches of information about JWST and a huge number of images collected by the telescope available here. As I said, those images are truly impressive even on a display screen that fits in your pocket. You don’t have to attend a showing of Deep Sky to be gobsmacked by those awesome pictures but a 72-foot diameter dome jam-packed edge-to-edge with glowing galaxies will gobsmack you a bit differently and maybe a little harder.

While I was at the Cincinnati Museum Center, I took in Jane Goodall: Reasons for Hope which was showing ahead of Deep Sky and I snapped a picture of a promotion for the upcoming Pompeii: The Exhibition. All images in this article other than the first two are of a dynamic promotional display in the museum. I very much enjoyed the Goodall movie and there are some sections that take advantage of the IMAX format. I already have my ticket for the Pompeii exhibit which opens February 16. Coordinated with that opening is a return of
Volcanoes: The Fires of Creation which was the first movie shown in the Lindner Theater following its conversion to digital in 2018. I reported on seeing it here.

For both movies that I saw, the familiar psychedelic light tunnel video that traditionally kicks things off was replaced by a video that points out some of the theater’s features while entertaining eyes and ears much like the light tunnel. An attendant told me they have been using the new video for about a month and that the light tunnel is still around and used for some movies.

Bricktionary at Cincinnati Museum Center

Posted on April 30, 2023 by Denny

I’ve never had Legos. I’ve had Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs and even a hand-me-down Erector Set but no Legos. Both my Tinker Toys and my Lincoln Logs were made out of real wood but I had no Legos made out of anything. If having wooden Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs isn’t sufficiently impressive, consider that I also had a Mr. Potato Head that did not come with a plastic body but required a real potato and my family’s Clue Game had a real rope (string) and lead pipe. Knowing all that should make it abundantly clear why I had no Legos. My childhood occurred at a time so far removed from the present that Legos had not yet been invented.

The Lego company and something called “Automatic Binding Bricks” did exist during my childhood but it would be the late 1950s before the sort of plastic brick we now know would appear. Initially seen only in Lego’s home country of Denmark, they would not show up in the USA until 1961. That was a little too late for me but Legos were part of my sons’ toy collections. They were not a big part although they were around enough for me to experience stepping on them barefoot in the dark. The experience is certainly a memorable one but the pain level does not, in my opinion, equal that of stepping on a Barbie high heel under similar circumstances. Legos really took hold a generation later and at least one grandson dived pretty deep into the phenomenon.

Others took even deeper dives to become LEGO^® Certified Professionals. One of those professionals, Ryan “The Brickman” McNaught, is responsible for “Bricktionary: The ultimate LEGO® A-Z” exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center that I visited Friday. It is based on a book of the same name. Learning that A is for alligator is a good start.

The Seattle Space Needle just beyond the alligator had me stumped until I figured out it was part of the ‘B’ section. B is for buildings like the Space Needle and the Sydney Opera House.

There are several hands-on stations in the exhibit where lots of Lego elements are available to experiment with. At the earthquake station, visitor-built structures can be tested for stability on adjustable shaking platforms.

It took me a second to realize that G is for garden but knowing that H is for Harley Davidson was immediate. I was pretty impressed with the spokes made out of bricks and I thought the giant flower so cool that I used a shot of just the bloom for an Instagram/Facebook post.

I found this hands-on station extra interesting and spent some time talking with the two people operating it. In the end, I participated myself. It has some similarities with assembling a jigsaw puzzle except all of the “puzzling” has already been done. Screens display random sections of the big image for visitors to copy onto 6×6 panels. The pattern I followed to assemble my section is here. Completed sections are placed in their proper position by one of the station workers. The image being assembled here is a frontal view of the Museum Center. There are others including an awesome view of the Grand Canyon. It takes a number of days to complete an image but several have already been assembled and disassembled since the exhibit opened in March. There is talk of the Museum Center image remaining in Cincinnati when the exhibit moves on and I briefly had visions of my little panel becoming part of a permanent museum display. I quickly realized, however, that the Museum Center, the Grand Canyon, and every other image will likely rise and fall many more times before the exhibit closes in August.

This Lego model of the Museum Center, a.k.a., Union Terminal, sits at the line separating the big exhibit from the obligatory gift shop. One of the items available in the shop is the Bricktionary book mentioned earlier. I should have checked to see if it gives instructions for building all 150+ models in the exhibit. If so, then anyone could duplicate the exhibit with a little free time and about 3,000,000 Legos. If only my condo was a skosh bigger.

Dinosaurs of Antarctica

Posted on December 11, 2022 by Denny

I’ve never been to Antarctica but I’ve seen pictures and it sure doesn’t look like a place where dinosaurs would be very happy. A land that is 98% covered with snow and ice is a far cry from the plant-filled jungle-like surrounding I’ve come to associate with these prehistoric creatures. But hundreds of millions of years ago, things were different. There was a time when the entire Earth — even the poles — was free of ice and all sorts of plants and animals could thrive on the continent we now call Antarctica. In some regards, the fact that that continent has been frozen for so long helps preserve evidence of those plants and animals. Of course, it also makes accessing that evidence a bit of a challenge.

A lot of evidence has been accessed, however, and much of it is on display in the Dinosaurs of Antarctica exhibit at Cincinnati Museum Center. Visitors can look at actual fossils of prehistoric flora and fauna that have been preserved in the cold and dry conditions of Antarctica.

Experts have studied the real bits and pieces to make complete replicas. The most impressive of these are the skeleton and fully fleshed out full-size replicas of Cryolophosaurus, a dinosaur found only in Antarctica.

The exhibit is paired with an Omnimax movie of the same name. It is a mixture of camera footage and animation. The extremely well-done animation shows what Antarctica might have been like 200 million years ago. The live-action, which includes some great scenery, involves an expedition to collect fossils and such. Seeing the movie first might be the best sequence but it’s not at all critical and it’s not how I did it. I had sort of planned on catching the first showing of the day followed by touring the exhibit. I really could have done that but there were only eight seats left for the first showing and the attendant explained that the audience was primarily elementary school students. I love seeing kids in museums but decided not to join a theater full of them and opted for the second showing. In a chat with an attendant at the exhibit, I learned that the number of school kids in the museum today was the highest since before the pandemic started.

These photos were taken before I watched the movie and even before I toured the Antarctica exhibit. Once I had changed my movie plans, I had quite a bit of spare time so I checked out other parts of the Museum Center including the Duke Energy Holiday Trains, the standard American dinosaurs, and the Holocaust and Humanities Center. Holiday Junction, where the trains are, requires an additional ticket beyond museum admission unless you are a member. The Holocaust Center normally requires separate admission but not now. On Wednesday, the Center issued this news release announcing that admission would be free through January 2 “In an effort to address the recent surge in antisemitism”. This is a museum that absolutely everyone should visit and this generous offer makes it easier to do that. Even though the Center exists because of some truly horrific human history, I always seem to feel a little bit better when I exit.

Our Shared Story at CMC

Posted on May 8, 2022 by Denny

Joseph Jonas is thought to be the first Jew to actually settle in Cincinnati. That was in 1817. In 1821, he was one of a handful of men who purchased land for a cemetery so Benjamin Leib’s deathbed request that he be buried as a Jew could be met. The creation of that cemetery, the Chestnut Street Cemetery, is recognized as the event that formally established the Jewish community in Cincinnati. It was renovated last year and its rededication on September 26, 2021, marked the official beginning of the Jewish Cincinnati Bicentennial.

But it wasn’t a visit to the cemetery that led to this post. It was the “Our Shared Story” exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center that led to a visit to the cemetery. In 1821 Cincinnati really was a frontier town and the Chestnut Street Cemetery was not just the first Jewish cemetery in the state but the first west of the Alleghenies. In 1824, K.K. Bene Israel was established. Now known as Rockdale Temple, it is the oldest Jewish congregation west of the Alleghenies. Cincinnati’s Jewish community experienced great growth and had significant impact on the religion in the U.S. with things like major support for Reform Judaism and the founding of Hebrew Union College. The exhibit tells of this influence but has even more examples of the impact Cincinnati Jews had on the world at large.

Quite a number of community and business leaders are recognized. This picture is of a wall where several of those business leaders are identified. Some of the businesses are Manischewitz, Frank’s, Fleischmann’s, and Frisch’s. I got a kick out of seeing a “Jewish Cowboy” promotional record put out by Manischewitz. I got an even bigger kick out of listening to it on YouTube.

As befitting a place that started professional baseball, one Jewish business found success in sporting goods. The Cincinnati Red Stockings began play in 1869, the P. Goldsmith Sons Company was founded in 1875, and a Jewish player named Lipman Pike joined the Reds in 1877. Of course, there are now Jewish players in every professional sport and Jewish fans too as this Bengals yarmulke shows.

Chestnut Street Cemetery is less than a mile from the museum. A double-sided plaque contains information about the cemetery and the two centuries of Jewish history. The information panel visible in the opening photo says that Benjamin Leib’s grave is unmarked but believed to be “in the back left corner”. I’m guessing that means it’s in the left rear of this picture.

Science Behind Pixar

Posted on April 3, 2022 by Denny

The Science Behind Pixar exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center opened last October meaning I’ve had plenty of time to see it. There are two reasons that I waited until it had barely three weeks remaining before checking it out. The first is that I believe 2006’s Cars is the only Pixar movie I’ve actually seen in its entirety. The second is that I thought the exhibit was for kids only. Reason one is undeniable fact; reason two is pure nonsense.

The picture at left is of a divider in the exhibit. Some of the figures on it do look familiar to me because I’ve seen them in commercials or maybe in a movie that was playing somewhere I walked past. But I can’t connect any of them with movies or commercials they are in, and I sure don’t know their names. Characters are used to demonstrate different pieces of Pixar science, and I don’t doubt that knowing who they are would make things more fun — watching kids experiencing the exhibit proved that — but it’s not required.

The idea of a creative pipeline is central to Pixar’s operation. The steps that go from story and modeling to lighting and rendering are identified in an introductory movie and panels explaining them are arranged in a circle near the center of the exhibit.

The bulk of the exhibit space is filled with hands-on stations where kids and old men can pretend to participate in each of those pipeline steps in a variety of ways. I don’t know how many job openings Pixar expects over the next few years but I’m sure that, with this sort of recruitment tool, they will all be easily filled.

There are also a number of these smaller kiosks around with Pixar employees describing their jobs or how certain problems were solved. If neither the hands-on stuff nor the technical descriptions make you want a job at Pixar, maybe seeing the enthusiasm these employees have will do it.

Heck, after playing with some animation, lighting, and other pipeline steps, I was almost ready to ask about job openings myself. And I have no intention of ever working anywhere ever again. I am, of course, joking about this whole thing being a recruitment tool for Pixar — mostly. I am not joking at all about the exhibit showing how much fun and satisfaction there can be in science.

I attended The Science Behind Pixar on Friday, April 1. It is open through April 24.

More Cincy Reopenings

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Denny

The Cincinnati Reds opened their season on Friday instead of March 26 as planned. Friday is also the day I made the Cincinnati Museum Center visit I’d postponed a couple of weeks earlier. It was supposed to happen on the same day as my Maya exhibit visit, but a service appointment got in the way. The delay moved it from the members-only preview week to a week after the general opening and fountain turn on. Water now shoots high in the air and cascades down through that series of pools in front of Union Terminal. The marker in the foreground stands near where the world’s first professional baseball team had their home plate. Less than two miles away, in an empty stadium, the modern version of the team got the shortened 2020 season rolling with a 7-1 win.

The museum center is using timed entry to keep the number of people in the building below capacity although that hasn’t yet been an issue even though attendance has been slowly increasing. Three museums are part of the CMC. Because just about everything in it is hands-on, the Children’s Museum remains closed as do two of the major components of the Natural History Museum. Keeping the replica limestone cave and the Science Interactives Gallery sanitized just isn’t practical, and some interactive experiences have been temporarily removed as well. I know all of that makes things considerably less entertaining for younger visitors but the most prominent residents of Dinosaur Hall are still there and they’re still awesome.

There are currently two temporary exhibits that are included in CMC admission. I checked out “Inspired by Nature” first. If you’ve spent any time looking over downtown Cincinnati, there’s a good chance you’ve seen some of Charley Harper’s art. It appears in several murals with “Homecoming (Blue Birds)”, on Court Street, being the most well known. The placard at the left of the last picture contains a Harper quote that probably sums up the man as well as any.

This is the centennial year for the passage of the constitutional amendment that allowed women to vote. “An Unfinished Revolution: Women and the Vote” tells of the struggle that preceded that breakthrough as well as the struggle that continues today in pursuit of equality. The 19th Amendment was passed on May 21, 1919, and ratified on August 20, 1920. In between those events, Ohio legislators took steps to assure that women could vote in the 1920 presidential election even if the amendment was not ratified in time. In the center of the first picture, the 1919 and 1920 Hamilton County voter rolls give a visual indication of just how significant a change that was.

Some portions of the Cincinnati History Museum are closed but I think that has at least as much to do with establishing new and reworked exhibits after the big renovation as with anything COVID-19 related. I was excited to find that “Cincinnati in Motion” is now complete. New to me sights included Proctor and Gamble’s Ivorydale complex and Crosley Field where I watched several Reds games and one Beatles concert. Neither “Shaping Our City” nor “You Are Here” were entirely finished when I was here last, but they are now. As we (at least I) struggle to outsmart our phones, it helps being reminded that all new technology requires some learning.

Another thing that happened during the two weeks between my planned and actual visit, was the reopening of the Holocaust and Humanity Center. Entrance to the HHC is not included in CMC admission but it is is the same building and discounted combination tickets are available. This was my second visit and I again found the personal stories and keepsakes extremely interesting. The pictured Torah was saved from a burning synagogue on Kristallnacht. I had taken a picture of the only window in the museum on my first visit but I had not actually looked out of it and that is the whole point of it being there. It provides a view of railroad tracks which is how many holocaust refugees arrived in Cincinnati. The third photo is from the “Humanities Gallery” which deals with today rather than history. I took several pictures of the row of screens and their rotating set of images and picked one to include in this post. Then, as I actually put this post together, I discovered that I had unwittingly selected a picture that was a near duplicate of one I had posted from my first visit. That picture, which can be seen here, obviously made an impression on me undoubtedly because it is evidence of the bigotry present today. I did not want to just repeat that picture and decided I didn’t want to repeat the feeling either. I went with something much more hopeful.

Many things at Union Terminal are now open but absolutely nothing is back to normal. That’s true of the whole world, however, and the folks at CMC and HHC seem to be doing the right thing. Kids have it the worst. I can think of nothing equivalent to the learning that automatically comes along with all the fun in the Children’s Museum and Science Interactives Gallery. I’m sad that they are closed but know that the risk of having them open is too great to even think about. A few interactive displays exist in the Cincinnati History Museum but they are in places that can be constantly monitored and sanitized frequently. In the HHC, pushbuttons are used to activate displays and recordings. Everyone entering is given a rubber-tipped stylus to handle the button-pushing and they are encouraged to “take it with you when you vote”. Hand sanitizer is available throughout all the museums. Every employee and guest I saw was wearing a mask and many staff members also had a face shield. In some sense, this could be considered a good time for adults to visit. It’s not crowded and access to both displays and docents is easy. But empty museums are not, in general, a good thing at all. I really look forward to the return of flocks of noisy kids figuring out where that ball is going to fall and which direction that gear is going to turn.

The picture at right was taken two weeks ago on my way to the Cincinnati Museum Center to see the Maya exhibit. Sugar n’ Spice has operated on Reading Road, about five miles north of downtown Cincinnati, since 1941. They are taking COVID-19 seriously with limited capacity, masked staff, plexiglass dividers, and more. I had heard something about plans to open a second location but I hadn’t really paid any attention to details. As I finished up my original wispy thin pancakes, I struck up a conversation with a manager who showed me some pictures of the new location. I learned that 1) the grand opening was happening the very next day and 2) the new store wasn’t just near the old Sycamore Street diner, it was in the diner.

I stopped here on Friday on my way to see the dinosaurs and suffragettes. It’s a 1955 Mountain View diner that was moved from Massillon, Ohio, to the Over the Rhine section of Cincinnati in 1984. It then operated for many years as The Diner on Sycamore. Its most recent life was as Joe’s Diner which closed in 2016. In between, it had a couple years of life as Vinyl and was dormant for several years. I really like what Sugar n’ Spice has done here and I really like their chances of success. The middle of a pandemic is certainly not the ideal time to open a restaurant but everything was, of course, in motion well before the pandemic hit. Although it’s a family-owned business, Sugar n’ Spice is really an established brand that has brought their bright colors and slightly whimsical decor along with a reputation for quality to a classic factory-built diner. The counter is not currently being used but two outside dining areas are available along with plexiglass separated booths in the Mountain View and in the brick and mortar building it is attached to. I’d totally forgotten how big Sugar n’ Spice omelets are. Five eggs aerated. This is what I had for breakfast — and dinner.

Maya at the Cincinnati Museum Center

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Denny

March 14 was to be opening day for a huge exhibit of Maya artifacts at the Cincinnati Museum Center. March 9 was the day a state of emergency triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in Ohio. The opening did not happen. On Friday, nearly four months later than planned, I was among the first group of visitors to step into the exhibit. We all wore face masks and all staff members wore face masks in addition to clear plastic shields. We were all museum members as only members are allowed in for the first week. Our entry time was preselected which is pretty normal with major exhibits at the museum but the number allowed for each interval was considerably less than what it would have been in March. There were floor markings to encourage six feet of separation and a few interactive “experiences” were removed to eliminate contact. Touching the artifacts would be forbidden in any case and I don’t believe any were removed. All 300+ seemed to be right where they had been waiting for four months.

The Children’s Museum and the cave portion of the Natural History Museum are closed but most of the center is open. Entry, however, is now time-based and I had reserved a slot for checking other things out after the Maya exhibit. That was not to be as I immediately headed home. Missing an appointment with an AC service guy in July is not wise.

That scheduled service call did not actually make me rush through the exhibit but it did cause some shortcuts. As I entered, I learned that an audio tour was available through my phone, but in the probably mistaken belief that it might slow me down, I ignored it. No doubt that’s one reason I have so little information to share on specific items. I read every description but took no notes, not even with my camera, and my memory did not retain details very long.

I did not photograph many of the numerous small pieces in the exhibit and didn’t even do a particularly good job with the larger ones. The three items displayed here against the lighted and decorated pyramids can reasonably be called mid-sized. The picture at the beginning of this article is of the one at the front right of the wider view.

This stela is one of the largest items in the exhibit. It can be seen beyond the pyramids in the previous pictures. Created in 800 CE near the peak of Maya civilization, it documents some of the accomplishments of a Maya king. That’s something I happen to know because of some only slightly blurry photo notes.

Only four Maya codices, all written after the civilization’s peak, are known to exist. The Cincinnati exhibit includes this partial reproduction. It and the two stone carvings are among the items I wish I’d picked up more details on, and it’s likely they will become justifications for a return.

I have no details to share about the stone mask but I do have this for the jaguar man. The exhibit was originally scheduled to close on September 7 but the delayed opening has moved that to January 3, 2021. I hope to return and be better prepared with more time when I do.

As for the rest of the museum, I will definitely be returning, possibly as soon as this coming week, to see that. I sort of want to see what changes COVID-19 has triggered and I most definitely want to check out a special exhibit on women and the vote that is open through September 27. As everyone should know, this is the centennial of the first national election in which women were permitted to vote.

Signs of Summer (Past)

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Denny

This article first appeared on May 20, 2012. Recent memories and shared pictures reminded me of the places it features so I decided to repost it as close to its anniversary as possible. With concerts, museums, travel, and other story-generating activities currently non-existent, there will likely be more of this sort of reuse before the current summer slips into the past.

The fountain in front of Union Terminal, a.k.a., Cincinnati Museum Center, runs all summer and is turned off all winter. Therefore, one sure sign of summer in Cincinnati is the turning on of the fountain. That happened Friday at 10:30 AM. I had kind of hoped to see the stepped pools below the fountain go from bare concrete to a series of waterfalls right before our eyes but it wasn’t quite that dramatic. Whether the pools were primed in the interest of time or whether the standing water was simply left over from some secret testing I cannot say, but they started the day ready to overflow at the slightest provocation.

I still think bare concrete morphing to cascading waterfalls would have been cooler but watching the fountain go from zilch to a spurt to a full spray wasn’t bad.

All the kids, and there were plenty, were properly wowed and they also enjoyed the characters on hand to promote the ongoing A Day in Pompeii exhibit. I’ve seen the exhibit and it’s a duesy. University of Cincinnati Professor Steven Ellis, along with several UC students, has been instrumental in the current excavations in Pompeii and that was instrumental in making Cincinnati one of only four US cities hosting the exhibit. As you can see, security was tight.

The weather was obviously quite nice for the events at the fountain but Friday was just one of several consecutive near-perfect days. Perfect not only for fountains of water but for fountains — or taps — of root beer. I made it to three different root beer stands on three of those near-perfect days.

On Thursday it was the Jolly’s on the west side of Hamilton, Ohio. Back in 1938, Vinny Jolivette opened an A&W Root Beer franchise in Hamilton. He built this place in 1967 and, casting off the A&W identity, used the family name to inspire a new one for the restaurant. It’s west of the Great Miami River on Brookwood. Somewhere along the line, they added another on the east side of town on Erie. That one has a cooler sign but this one still makes its own root beer and that trumps the sign. The two remain officially connected (The car side signs carry both telephone numbers.) but are managed somewhat separately by two brothers. There is a third Jolly’s in Tiffin, Ohio, that was started, also as an A&W, in 1947 by Vinny’s brother, Roy, and it seems there was a fourth somewhere in Indiana (possibly Bloomington) but I know very little about it.

I stopped by The Root Beer Stand in Sharonville, Ohio, on Friday afternoon. It started life in 1957 as an A&W then went independent in 1982. It stopped using carhops in 1972. Originally built and operated by the Rideour family, it moved on to its second and current owners, Scott & Jackie Donley, in 1990. The Donleys have kept everything pretty much the same and that definitely includes making the root beer using water from their 280 foot well. Claims that “it’s something in the water” may very well be true here.

I got my Saturday root beer fix at the A&W in Union City, Ohio. Despite this being a place I frequented as a teenager, I know few details of its history. I do recall that is was owned by a fellow named Smith in the 1960s and that he operated a used car lot right next door. I have vivid memories of sipping root beer and drooling over a black 1956 Thunderbird that sat in that lot when I was about seventeen. At some point, it became Neil’s A&W Drive In and so it remains today. Curiously, this place doesn’t show up on the official A&W website nor does it have its own site but it does have a FaceBook page.

All three of these places make their own root beer using at least some of the original A&W equipment. Guess that stuff was made to last. All of them taste great and I’m guessing that the recipes are all the same or similar. The Root Beer Stand has its special water and both it and Jolly’s serve their brew in chilled glass mugs. I love ’em both and I do tend to dislike chains but “real” A&Ws (Not stuffed-into-a-corner-of-a-gas-station A&Ws.) are pretty cool and it’s hard to beat an ice-covered mug.

I’m guessing that some noticed the slightly red convertible in the center of the Root Beer Stand photo. That’s my 1963 Valiant and plans to drive it to Darke County and the A&W at the border led to the warm-up visits to Hamilton and Sharonville. The 200-mile round trip was the car’s longest outing since the cold drive home from Cambridge in early 2011. She done good. These pictures show her at Jolly’s and Neil’s.

I recently learned that the neighborhood Flipdaddy’s does brunch on Sundays so I walked over this morning to check it out. It was quite good. I’m always dismayed but rarely surprised to find myself alone on a restaurant’s patio. But, with the thermometer at 74 degrees, I was a little bit surprised today. Lots of people just don’t like any temperature I guess. To be fair, one couple and their home from college daughter did venture outside to eat. That was it. The restaurant was fairly busy inside but just one other outside table was ever used all the while I leisurely worked through my bacon & eggs and slowly sipped my Magic Hat dessert.

Home Learning

Posted on March 29, 2020 by Denny

Since 2009, depending on your definition of work, I have either always worked at home or never worked at home. But I’ve left home a whole bunch to eat, quite often to sleep, and a respectable number of times to learn something. Of course, I more often than not learn something every time I leave the house but right now I’m talking about those times I’ve headed out to a museum or lecture. At the moment, just like the bars and other music venues I wrote about on Wednesday, museums and lecture halls are closed.

The opening image is a screenshot of the Cincinnati Museum Center’s home page and its “Notice of Temporary Closure”. The Museum Center is a place I get to somewhat frequently for OMNIMAX® movies, the permanent exhibits, and world-class traveling exhibits. A traveling exhibit I was really looking forward to, Maya — The Exhibition, was set to open right when the COVID-19 related closures began. I’ve also attended several lectures there. In particular, I liked a series called Brown Bag Lectures. During the two-year-long renovation project, the lectures moved offsite and have yet to return although the building reopened at the end of 2018. Despite good intentions, I haven’t attended a single Brown Bag Lecture since the start of the renovations.

Sometime after the Holocaust and Humanity Center moved into the Museum Center, it began lectures of its own. The Holocaust Speakers Series only recently made it on to my radar and I had not yet attended one. I did, however, once attend a similar talk by the fellow, now deceased, that the HHC’s Coppel Speakers Bureau is named after. Like all other activities, the lectures were canceled when the building closed, but some lectures, like some musical performances, can be adapted to the internet. The HHC has done that with this series with the first “digital lecture” taking place last Wednesday. In the screenshot at left are HHC CEO Sarah Weiss and the presenter of that lecture, Ray Warren. I had expected to simply call up the website and watch a live feed but the lecture was delivered via Zoom which allows questions and other interactions. I’d not used Zoom previously and had to install the application but it was automated and quick.

Ray told the story of his parents who had survived the Holocaust separately then met and married after the war. His slide presentation was set up for use on a large screen in front of a real audience and there were a few glitches early on but problems were solved or worked around. Ray told us not only about his parents’ remarkable experiences but about his own experiences in discovering some aspects of their story. His slides included pictures of friends and family before and after the war. There was a picture of the earrings, now displayed at the HHC, that his mother managed to hide even during her time at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They were the only connection she had with her pre-war life.

I only took one screenshot during the lecture and it was very near the end. Ray talked about how people made decisions before and during the Holocaust. He spoke not only of how but when. Don’t be late, he said. He mentioned some more recent events that deserved decisions. He mentioned the white supremacist gatherings in Charlottesville and elsewhere and he mentioned the much closer and more recent incident in the photo. Just over two weeks before the lecture and barely ten miles from my home, someone painted “The Jews killed Christ. They are the enemies of the whole human race.” Don’t be late.

My post on the opening of the Holocaust and Humanity Center is here. The one on hearing Werner Coppel is here. For the present, there will be digital lectures each Wednesday at 11:00. Register here.

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