Tag Archives: Cincinnati Ohio

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.  

The Holocaust and Humanity Center is Open

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The Cincinnati Holocaust and Humanity Center reopened in its new location last Sunday on the 74th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I had seen the space it moved into on a “hardhat tour” during the Cincinnati Museum Center’s member’s preview in November. At the time, I noted my failure to visit the center in its current location despite it being on my list and relatively near my home. I once again resolved to get there “before they start carrying stuff out” but I failed. I tried after about a week had passed, but it was already too late. The move had already begun and the operation at Rockwern Academy in Kenwood had already closed.

I would not get inside the Center today, either, but it wasn’t because I was too late. I arrived about half an hour before the 1:00 opening ceremony when the space around chairs provided for holocaust survivors and family members was wide open. I could have staked out a spot right next to them but didn’t. By the time the procession of survivors and descendants began, my best view was via the giant screens at either side of the stage. The processional was quite moving not only for those participating or watching familiar faces enter the rotunda, but for folks like me who recognized no one. Some in the procession may have been experiencing memories of when they first saw Union Terminal. This was where many people escaping Europe or recently freed from Nazi concentration camps arrived in the 1940s to begin a new life in Cincinnati. The last picture shows the center’s Executive Director Sarah Weiss cutting the ceremonial ribbon along with Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley and Nancy and David Wolf for whom the center is named.

Entry to the Holocaust and Humanity Center was free on Sunday via time stamped tickets. I doubt that people were actually being forced out of the center after fifteen minutes, which was the interval on the tickets, but it was pretty obvious that this was not the day for a leisurely stroll through the exhibits. I thought it absolutely wonderful that the opening had attracted so many people, but quickly decided to take advantage of one of the perks of being retired and come back sometime during the week.

Incidentally, the HHC opening wasn’t the only thing bringing people to the museum center on Sunday. The picture at right, taken long before the crowd appeared for the opening ceremony, shows a line of people stretched across the front of the rotunda waiting to get museum and movie tickets. There probably wasn’t a lot of overlap with the HHC crowd; Most of the groups in line included young children. I noted in my post about the theater reopening that families with school age children were flocking to the renovated Union Terminal during the holiday break, and it looks like that flocking continues on weekends. I bet it’s the dinosaurs.

I made it back on Tuesday. Entry to the Holocaust and Heritage Center is not included in Cincinnati Museum Center membership, but tickets are sold through the CMC kiosk in the rotunda and there is a discount for CMC members. These sculptures were at the front of the rotunda and usually surrounded by people on Sunday. At present, they are near the stairs leading down to the HHC. The HHC is right next to where the Cincinnati History Library and Archives was and will be. The library closed in 2016 along with the CMC and has not yet reopened.

We were given a peek at a small portion of this mural on that November “hardhat tour” and I had been looking forward to seeing the whole thing. It didn’t disappoint. The 63 foot mural covers more than one wall of the center’s lobby area. I had some time to look it over as I waited to enter the “Winds of Change” theater that separates the lobby from the museum galleries but know I have some more looking to do. I believe all of the mural’s twenty-six scenes come from stories that are told, at least partially, inside the museum. Inside the theater, holocaust survivors now living in Cincinnati tell pieces of their stories in a video. The local connection appears throughout the museum in the display of artifacts and quotations from local survivors.

The first gallery beyond the “Winds of Change” theater begins with the story of the rise of Nazism. It’s a story of relatively small steps that go from Jews being valued members of their communities to their extermination being seen as a solution to something. The HHC utilizes two types of interactive exhibits. One uses touch screens to allow selection from a small set of recorded first person accounts related to the display they are part of. The second uses sliding panels operated by push-buttons. This not only provides more surface area for images and text but involves visitors ever so slightly. At first I thought this was a little hokey but I quickly became a fan. If you don’t press the button, you will miss out on something, and when you do press it, you’re kind of committed to studying what is revealed. 

In addition to the big mural, I believe that every description of the center I have seen mentions the bullet picture and the train window. The bullet picture is an image, reproduced with empty shell casings, of Jews being gunned down in a burial pit they had been forced to dig themselves. The train window is simply a window in the museum wall that opens onto the active tracks behind the building. Only a tiny bit of passenger traffic trickles through Union Terminal but freight traffic passing through the yard is quite significant. Visualizing human beings stuffed into box cars isn’t difficult.

The aftermath of the holocaust is also examined. I was on the leading edge of the Baby Boomer generation. The war was over and the death camps liberated before I was born. Some of the war crimes trials occurred in my lifetime but I certainly don’t remember them. However, I do remember seeing the movie Judgement at Nuremberg in a theater during its first run and same day TV coverage of the Eichmann trial. This was in 1961 when the events they dealt with were less than twenty years in the past. The holocaust was just outside of my own memory but was rather fresh in the memories of the adults in my world.

The “Points of Light” theater marks the end of the Holocaust Gallery and the beginning of the Humanity Gallery. From here on out, the exhibits deal more with today’s world. People called “upstanders” are identified and their stories of resisting hate or doing something else to improve their part of the world are told. The last picture is of the “Make Your Mark Wall”. Visitors can leave their thoughts and impressions via the touch screens and add their selfie to the wall if desired. On the day I was there, a portion of one of the large screens was blacked out, but I’m guessing that was just from someone leaving their coffee in front of a projector or something similar.

The Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanities Center is an impressive and welcome addition to the Cincinnati Museum Center. I entered the “Winds of Change” theater by myself, but took my time going through the galleries, and found myself in the presence of several other visitors by the time I exited the museum. Even so, I know I need to go back. It is really impossible not to see similarities between the increasing hatred seen in some corners today and some of the events described in the center. The centers’ creators were certainly aware of these similarities, and I don’t doubt helped make them more apparent here and there. That sure doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me.

Signs and Suds

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The American Sign Museum almost always has something on the schedule that interests me but there have been way too many scheduling conflicts of late. Not so on Thursday and the Signs & Suds event with Rhinegeist Brewery. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but I like Rhinegeist and love the sign museum so I signed on just as soon as I realized I could make it.

I used the event at the museum as an excuse to have dinner at the nearby Camp Washington Chili. Traffic was nowhere near as bad as I feared so I got to the chili parlor, enjoyed my 4-way with absolutely no time pressure, and arrived at the museum just after the doors opened at 6:00. The event was scheduled to start at 6:30 so I had plenty of time to look through the gift shop, chat with a few of the other attendees, and speculate what might be inside those growlers and crowlers. I also spent some time contemplating the growlers themselves. The tight sealing insulated containers certainly bear little resemblance to the glass jugs my buddies and I would lug back from the neighborhood bar filled with 3.2 beer back in the day.

The beer tasting would take place during a fairly normal guided tour of the museum conducted by Kevin Wallace. No one will ever match museum founder Tod Swormstedt as a tour guide, although Kevin is getting pretty close. I failed to get a head count, but an after the fact guess is around 40 attendees. Before getting rolling on the tour, Kevin asked how many were in the museum for the first time. It seemed to me that about 3/4 of the hands went up. Maybe I should have expected that but I didn’t; Neither did Kevin.

Of course, this was not an entirely normal tour. Its other guide was TJ DiNino from Rhinegeist, who poured and described four different beers throughout the tour. The beers were Amelia Belgium, Existential Apple, Odd Job, and BA Big Willie. TJ spoke about the ingredients, process, and taste of each in an easily understood layman’s language although he was perfectly capable of speaking in more esoteric terms when called for.  

The event’s description included the phrase “will pair iconic American Sign Museum signs with rare Rhinegeist beers”. As someone who has toured the museum multiple times, I admit to sometimes wandering off and not always paying close attention to what was being said. I did not hear all of the pairings but I did hear “Since we’re drinking a California style IPA, here’s a sign from California.” Good enough for me. 

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.

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.  

Musical Review
Cincinnati King

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Although it didn’t feel much like it, this was actually something of a repeat. I attended a reading of KJ Sanchez’ Cincinnati King in Washington Park back in 2015. It was during a King Records celebration and drummer Philip Paul was among the musicians performing before the reading. There was music during the reading, too, but it didn’t make me think of the play as a musical. They’re calling it that now, and they’re right. I don’t doubt that my 2015 perception was off a little. In fact, I’ve probably forgotten more about that performance than I remember. But, as enjoyable as that Washington Park reading was, Cincinnati King sure has sure come a long way since then.

From the long list of colorful and talented people associated with King Records, Sanchez picked three to tell her tale. Syd Nathan, the label’s founder and beyond colorful owner, had to be one of them, of course. To represent Syd’s stable of singers, she chose Little Willie John whose story contains some of King’s best and worst. To help keep that volatile pair on point, she picked the guy who did the same thing for much of King’s product, long time session drummer Philip Paul.

Those great characters are portrayed by great actors. Neal Benari is a convincing and properly blustery Syd Nathans, Stanley Wayne Mathis nails Philip Paul, and Richard Crandle made me wish I could have attended just one Little Willie John performance. Benari and Mathis do sing one song each, but it’s Crandle, along with Cullen R. Titmas and Anita Welch, doing the heavy vocal lifting. Titmas and Welch kind of work their way through the King roster from Cowboy Copas to Moon Mullican and Annisteen Allen to Lula Reed. Welch has a wonderful voice and her dancing certainly adds to the show as well. The singers are backed by a top notch quartet comprised of Music Director Richard Livingston Huntley on drums, Terrell Montgomery on bass, Ralph Huntley on piano, and Seth L. Johnson on guitar.

Cincinnati King doesn’t tell the complete King story but it does paint a representative picture. From our current perspective the King Record story may seem rather sad but that could be mostly perception. King Records was successful: the sixth largest record company in the country. It was innovative: the first record company to record, manufacture, package, and distribute its product. It was progressive: generally colorblind hiring practices and minorities in key positions. It was trend setting: Little Willie John preceded James Brown, Moon Mullican preceded Jerry Lee Lewis. It was inspired: Fever, The Twist, The Train Kept A-Rollin’, and other long lived songs originated there. It was noticed: Syd Nathan is in the Rock & Roll and Bluegrass Halls of Fame and several King artists are in one or the other. KJ Sanchez gives us a feel for all of that in a highly entertaining two hours.

It’s also an informative two hours, and I could tell that parts of the story were real revelations to some of the audience. I’m no authority but I have read a fair amount about King Records and Syd Nathan over the years. Still, one piece of the story was entirely new to me. Syd Nathan, in the very early 1960s, traveled to Hamburg, Germany, to see the Beatles. It’s implied that he could have signed them but missed his chance. Whether or not an actual signing was likely, the reason for Syd not even making it to the club is telling. At some point on the day he was to see the Beatles, he watched a group of German boys walk by from his hotel room window. It’s not clear what it was about the boys that seemed menacing but the sighting caused Syd to stay in his room until time to return to London the next day. The Third Reich had been defeated little more than fifteen years earlier. Germany was not a place the Cincinnati Jew wanted to be.

I think it was the day after I saw Cincinnati King that I read a review written a few days earlier. It was very positive. I’d enjoyed the show immensely and the review reinforced my impressions. It praised the story, the actors, the musicians, and the staging. It was all flowers and sunbeams until the very last paragraph. Describing the show as “anchored in local history”, it concluded that it is “not a show that’s likely to move on to other cities and venues.” Maybe so, I thought. King was definitely a Cincinnati company. But I almost immediately started questioning the review’s conclusion. The company’s influence sure wasn’t limited to its home town. People all across the nation were once interested in its music; Why wouldn’t they be interested in its story? There’s a quote from former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Director Terry Stewart on that panel I photographed:

There are only three places in the country that can claim to be the birthplace of Rock and Roll: New Orleans, Memphis, and Cincinnati.

I’ve no idea what plans may or may not exist for Cincinnati King. I’ve a hunch that KJ Sanchez doesn’t believe that “other cities and venues” are out of reach. I don’t.

Cincinnati King is at Playhouse in the Park through December 23.

Our Terminal Returns

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Back in July of 2016 much of the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal shut down for a major renovation of the 85 year old building. On the building’s lower level, the Children’s Museum stayed open through most — but not all — of the work and some traveling exhibits were presented, but the rest of the building was essentially closed while $228 million in renovations took place. That ended yesterday when the building officially opened to the public. In the days preceding the grand opening, some special receptions and other sneak peeks occurred. A biggie was Friday’s Members Only Preview which is when these photos were taken.

The renovation of the building is more or less complete but reestablishing the museum displays and other features is still in progress. The technically open Natural History Museum is just a skeleton of what it once was and will eventually be again. But it’s a really nice skeleton! Dinosaur Hall, the main display in the museum space currently, is brand new which is one reason it gets a jump on the return of some older exhibits. A crowd favorite, the artificial limestone cave, is scheduled to return in the spring.

Next stop was Holiday Junction where the Duke Energy Holiday Trains are in operation. The last photo is of a 1904 Carlisle & Fitch street car. The Cincinnati company introduced toy electric trains to the world in 1896.

Although the Cincinnati History Museum will not actually be open until April, there is a connection to its Public Landing area from Holiday Junction. Before the closing, a painter sat on top of that scaffolding perpetually engaged in completing the sign for my hotel. He’s apparently been given some time off during the renovation but I expect him to be back at work when the museum officially opens. Scheuman’s Bierhalle is a new addition that recognizes Cincinnati’s big time brewing history and fits in with the current resurgence of brewing in the city and across the nation.

Two traveling exhibits are currently active at the museum center and I was presented with a 2-for-1 offer when I registered for the preview. One I was rather anxious to see but the other hadn’t really stoked my interest. This, Chocolate, is “the other”. I guess I expected a bunch of frilly boxes and bonbon praising placards. What I got was the interesting history of this product of the cacao tree as it spread from Central America to the world and went from being the drink of kings to an affordable, though sometimes guilty, pleasure for everyone. I was pleasantly surprised though I should have realized that you never know what you’re gonna get with a room of chocolate.

I had rather high expectations for the Guitar exhibit but I was pleasantly surprised again. The history of the instrument was presented and there were several interactive displays on some of its technical aspects. There were also plenty of examples of its current role as the face of rock and roll and a popular symbol of music in general. Of course, one such example is the first generation Les Paul in the third picture and it’s not alone. There’s more Les here. I could fill much more than one panel with pictures from this exhibit but I’ll stop with two more. One is this industrial grade Rostov Stella from the USSR that I’ve never seen before. The other is an all in one rock star kit that I (and just about every dreamer of a certain age) have seen plenty of. By the way, that 43 foot Flying V in the first picture is the Guinness certified largest playable guitar in the world.

After the two traveling exhibits, I took part in two tours. The first was through the space where the Holocaust and Humanity Center will be moving in January. Despite its current location being only about five miles from my home and on my radar for some time, I’ve yet to visit the Center. Seems like something I ought to do before they start carrying stuff out. In the last picture, we’re getting a peek at a corner of a mural that wraps around the entire room and will be unveiled at the Center’s reopening on January 27, the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

As I waited for my Rotunda Tour, I snapped a picture of another tour group as the crossed the walkway high above the floor. The pictures of the murals were taken from about where that group is standing. This tour was somewhat abbreviated from Rotunda Tours I’ve taken in the past since some areas, like the offices, are not quite ready. Those areas will eventually be added back into the tours but even without them the tour is certainly worthwhile for the views of cleaned and repaired features and inside information passed on by the guide.

The Winold Reiss murals in the half dome had been cleaned at least once before; The two in the hallway behind it: never. Our guide mentioned that she always thought the brown suit in the mural on the south side was one of the most unattractive she’d ever seen. Now, all cleaned up, it looks pretty good. She then pointed out some small figures in the background of the mural on the other wall. I’d never noticed them at all before and I guess they were nearly impossible to see before the cleaning. I believe she said there were a total of seven. I had no trouble finding the four in this section. I’d also never seen the Pierre Bourdelle murals in the dining room before. The twenty-two canvas murals have been in storage since the late 1980s and have just been cleaned and restored. I guess I’ve probably never seen the actual floor of the dining room either. When this was an operating terminal, a serpentine counter filled the room. The counter was gone when the museums moved in and the area where it once stood was three inches lower than the room’s terrazzo floor. The depression was filled with concrete and the whole thing covered with carpet. Now green terrazzo marks where the counter once stood.

The terminal looks fantastic. This was no hurried patch job. Much of the building was more or less disassembled then put back together. Huge steel beams and other major components were replaced. The next several months, as the museums populate their areas, the Holocaust and Humanity Center moves in, the Historical Society Library returns, and the theater reopens with the latest digital technology, are going to be exciting. After the tours, I relaxed in the rotunda for a bit preparing myself for what I planned on being a cold but quick walk to the car. It wasn’t very quick.

The biggest surprise of the day waited outside. I clearly had not been paying enough attention to plans for the reopening. A projection mapping display, the technology used in the city’s Lumenocity and Blink events, covered the front of the terminal. This was the sixth and final show leading up to Saturday’s official reopening. Each night featured a different theme in a fifteen minute loop. Tonight’s theme was “Thanks Cincy!” Every scene in the loop was incredible but I’ve held myself to the “Thank You” display and two of my favorites. I guess I was most impressed with the 3D aspects of the display. The perfect shadowing made the moving dinosaur skeletons appear to be several feet in front of the terminal. The moving satellite in the Saturn scene also appears to be some distance from the building. The walk to my car was about twenty minutes longer than I’d planned but I’ve got absolutely no complaints.

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.

Another Sesquicentennial

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The American Civil War began with the shelling of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and for the last several years we have been commemorating the 150th anniversary of events that led up to it, were part of it, and were precipitated by it. There are many theories about the origin of what we now call Memorial Day, and, while specifics vary, almost all place the roots in that devastating conflict. The most recognized story of a formal beginning places that beginning a hundred and fifty years ago on May 30, 1868.

I attended two Memorial Day events this year. The first was a parade in nearby Loveland, and the second a gathering at Ohio’s largest cemetery, Spring Grove.

In Loveland, a police cruiser with flashing lights cleared the way with members of the local American Legion Post leading the actual parade. A group of firefighters, looking exactly like I’d want my fire department to look, was close behind. Love the mustache.

What followed was everything a parade should have: high school marching band, classic cars, and freshly polished fire trucks. The parade ended near Veterans’ Memorial Park where ceremonies were to take place. I was watching the time, however, and left just as they were getting started.

The setting for the Spring Grove ceremonies was the Civil War section where 999 Civil War dead are buried in three circular plots containing 333 graves each. These are not, of course, the only Civil War soldiers buried in the cemetery. There are 41 Civil War generals buried at Spring Grove. For the majority, however, it is an honorary (brevet) title. The cemetery’s website has some words about the war’s impact and a link to a list of those generals here.

Although individual events were certainly held earlier, 1868 is the year that the observation of Decoration Day was wide spread and coordinated. That was when Grand Army of the Republic Commander, John A. Logan, issued an order calling for gatherings on May 30 “…for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades…”. Spring Grove was one of 183 cemeteries participating that first year. There were 336 in 1869. Michigan made Decoration Day a state holiday in 1871 and other states were not far behind. It was made a federal holiday in 1888. I was unable to find a date for an official change from Decoration Day to Memorial Day. It seems to have happened somewhat naturally shortly after the first World War.

The G.A.R.’s successor, The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, played a major role in the day’s activities and the 6th Ohio Volunteer Infantry helped maintain an awareness of the holiday’s Civil War era roots. They presented the colors at the beginning of the services and fired a twenty-one gun salute near their end.

Spring Grove Cemetery was barely sixteen years old when the Civil War broke out.  An excerpt from Spring Grove: Celebrating 150 Years talks about the war, the cemetery, and those early Decoration Days. In describing the very first, it states that “To end the program the Ladies of the Floral Committee led the crowds around the mounds of graves, strewing them with flowers.” Today, The Auxiliary to the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War filled the role of the Floral Committee in helping everyone present reenact that ritual from 150 years ago.

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.