Becky Payne (Shockley)

Thanks to Dave and Dale for the beautiful but frightening photos. (Please don't try raking leave in this weather!) I hope more people can begin to understand the effects of climate change and take action... Stay well!

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

I cannot imagine trying to breathe that air, not to mention the threat of approaching flames from the fires.  It's so frightening. Take care!

Margery Erhardt (Feller)

Jerry, Great pic finally!!! What I remember the most about you is your quick wit and humor. But there was one day where there was no humor. You and I were in Mr. Gregory’s afternoon class, the sixth period I believe, and as we flowed in before the bell, you came in rather solemnly … so unlike you. A couple of us asked you what was wrong and you said, as you went to your seat toward the right rear, that the President had been shot (or died as I can’t remember which one at that stage) and we looked at you and said “stop putting us on.” And then we got the announcement over the loudspeaker. We all just sat there in silence not comprehending what had actually happened. That said, they say none of us will ever forget where we were that day as well as 9/11. I believe that to be true!

Jerry Ochs

Judy: Thank you.        Margery: Thank you, too, but "finally"?

Bruce Bittmann

David, having been on your porch (which is wonderful), that really brings your horrible fires and air home.  Sad. And, from the news, the future doesn't look to bright (no pun intended) either.   Hope you two stay well.  Dale, you also. 

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

The pictures from California are horrific! How long has it been like this, or close to this?

Bonnie Altman (Templeton)

pB was. The name of the instructor at the community center

Dale Gieringer

  Judy - Yesterday's orange skies were unique in Bay Area memory.  They have faded to a dull smoky gray today.  Cars had headlights on midday;  I felt like I was a driving on Mars.  Oddly, the air quality wasn't  that bad at ground level.  The lower elevation was all fog;  the red smoke, blown our way from 100 miles up north,  was trapped in an inversion layer above.    But as to the larger picture, every day the Bay Area is setting new records for consecutive days with poor air quality.   It's been some three weeks since the first fires started, and now they're raging all the way up the Pacific Coast to Oregon and Washington and southwards to LA.  When I first moved here in 1972, I was impressed by the blue skies and pristine air quality in San Francisco, where the wind blows in from across the Pacific.  Things started going sour around 2008 -2010 and worse yet in 2013-17 when we had severe droughts that killed or weakened gazillions of trees around the state, turning them into tinder.   Then came the CAMP Fire that destroyed Paradise in 2018, and last year's deliberate power outages to prevent further fires.     Meanwhile, California has had all-time record-setting heat spells in recent years, including this month's 130* in Death Valley.     All of this fits precisely the expert predictions about  global warming due to CO2 emissions that I recorded at Congressional hearings on climate research  in 1976.  At the time, they were predicting that warming would first become noticeable in 15 or 20 years, and only get worse thereafter.  By the 1990s it was becoming clear that their predictions were accurate.  Here we are thirty years later, and we still don't have a climate policy or leaders who take it seriously.  Enough said, not enough done - this is just the tip of a huge melting iceberg.

David Buchholz

Once again following Dale...after posting the photo yesterday I walked down to the little shopping area of Kensington and took the following images.  The first is an homage to Edward Hopper.

Drew, taking a takeout order at the Inn Kensington. His business is down 75%, and the Inn, which has been a Kensington Institution since long before we moved here, is “barely hanging on.” Jadyne and I ordered lamb and jambalaya for dinner tonight, planning to wash dinner down with a bottle of Oxford Landing, our favorite cheap-o Chardonnay.  Behind Drew are Picassos, Matisses, Miros, and others.  They change them monthly and sell them at slightly reduced prices. A gallery provides them, grateful for the exposure.

The orange is gone today, and the sky is the color of baby shit.  Perhaps we'll see colors tomorrow that we've never seen.

Philip Spiess

David and Dale and others are showing us the truly scary results of the failure to seriously address the very real worldwide environmental crisis that we have been facing for (at least) the past 50 years, and which the Congress has yet to address.  Here is how one serious environmental clean-up project (however local) has attempted to deal with the situation:

ALONG THE GREAT MIAMI IV:  NATURE RECLAIMED:

The Fernald Debacle:  Part III of this series, “Infernal Fernald,” covered what happened over 39 years and 1,050 acres of western Hamilton County land at Fernald, Ohio.  To review:  in 1984 the Department of Energy (DOE) reported that a faulty dust collector in one of its plants had released nearly 300 pounds of enriched uranium oxide and millions of pounds of uranium dust into the atmosphere, causing major radioactive contamination of the surrounding environment.  This was followed by the DOE confirming that contamination by uranium of three off-site wells had been found in 1981. Thus the numerous small local communities surrounding the site, which draw their water from its major underlying aquifer [see Part III], were badly contaminated.  Community residents were exposed, among other things, to cancer (including kidney, urinary, and breast cancers), via ground water saturation, soil contamination, and air dispersion of emissions, to ionizing radiation and soluble and insoluble forms of uranium; workers at the site were exposed as well to non-radiological toxic substances, such as chlorinated and non-chlorinated solvents, metals and metal salts, and nuisance dusts.  A class action lawsuit was filed against the Department of Energy, and the State of Ohio also filed suits against the DOE and National Lead of Ohio (NLO), the company which had been awarded the contract in 1951 to operate the site.  Westinghouse was later brought in (1986) to take over the site.

Remediation of the Site Begins:  The four biggest nuclear weapons plants in the United States have now been shut down.  These are the Hanford facility in Washington state; the Savannah River complex near Aiken, South Carolina (which produced tritium, a hydrogen isotope that boosts the explosive power of our nearly 22,000 nuclear warheads); the plutonium-processing plant at Rocky Flats near Boulder, Colorado; and, of course, the aforementioned facility at Fernald, Ohio.

But after the 1984-1986 uproar and lawsuits over the Fernald site’s contamination [see Part III], a citizens’ group, Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health (FRESH) spearheaded the call for remediation of both the ground site and the subterranean aquifer.  Thus the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) added Fernald to its Superfund National Priorities List in 1989 (production of uranium ceased that year), casting it as one of the nation’s worst waste sites.  Then in 1991 the Department of Energy changed the mission of the site entirely to environmental remediation, and the site was renamed the Fernald Environmental Management Project (FEMP).  In 1992, Westinghouse was replaced as manager of the site with the Fernald Environmental Restoration Management Company (FERMCO); the name was ultimately changed to Fluor Fernald [see Part III], which was charged with the cleanup and final closure of the site.

Thereafter, the DOE followed the minimum regulatory requirements for communication with the public, but the involved local communities demanded (naturally enough!) their own greater involvement in cleanup decisions.  Therefore, in 1993, the EPA established a forum, the Federal Facilities Environmental Restoration Dialogue Committee (FFERDC), to develop, with all stakeholders – the public, the regulators, and the regulated agencies –  creative solutions to the challenges set by the environmental pollution at federal facilities such as Fernald.  Planning for the Fernald Citizens Task Force began in early 1993; this group of stakeholders changed its name to the Fernald Citizens Advisory Board (FCAB) in 1997.  It provided advice to DOE during the remediation, which concluded in September of 2006.

Help Is On Its Way?:  In response to these local activities, the Department of Energy (DOE) based its future actions on the recommendations of the Fernald Citizens Task Force and pursued a “balanced approach” to its cleanup at the Fernald Environmental Management Project (FEMP).  Soils and debris with the highest concentration of radiological contaminants were to be shipped to licensed disposal sites in Texas [see Part III].  A much larger volume of lower concentration materials was to be placed in a specially engineered onsite disposal facility [see below].  Contaminated groundwater, sinking into the aquifer from Paddy’s Run on Fernald’s west side, was to be pumped out of the aquifer, treated to meet cleanup targets, and then reinjected into the ground or discharged into the Great Miami River.

Cleanup targets for the soils on the site were reached by 2006.  But these targets do not allow unrestricted use of the site – no residential or agricultural activities are permitted.  The onsite disposal facility requires both monitoring and upkeep, and so management of the site was transferred to the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Legacy Management for long-term monitoring and maintenance.  Therefore, under agreements with the State of Ohio and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Fernald Environmental Management Project site must remain under federal ownership in perpetuity.

A New Beginning:  So once where there was an off-limits nuclear industrial complex at Fernald, today there is the wheat-colored prairie growth of a nearly prehistoric Ohio.  What happened?  What is at Fernald now, really?  Once, all too recently, there were K-65 silos and barrels of radioactive waste.  Are they really gone?  What is going on here, anyway?  Once the K-65 silos held a peanut butter-like sludge, a weighty mix of radium and other radioactive materials.  Dangerous and deteriorating ferrous-concrete buildings dotted the landscape.  Radioactive dust in the air above ground and contaminated water below ground threatened the local communities surrounding the site. 

But now the 1,050 acres over the Great Miami Aquifer, which provides drinking water to nearly two million people, has more than seven miles of trails for hikers, bird watchers, and nature photographers.  Local school children come here on science field trips, not to learn about the production of low-grade uranium, but to witness and learn about the wonders of nature:  a great blue heron swallowing a frog; group participation in owl banding; different kinds of birds and varied wildlife to be seen.  A small dairy farm is just outside the site’s boundary; a private amusement park, available for weddings and family reunions, is located about two miles away.

Before the coming of the Europeans to the Ohio Country, this area was covered by the eastern deciduous forest, populated by transitory Native Americans [see Part I].  Then came the white pioneers from Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere, and farming occupied the land.  Throughout these long periods of time, rabbits, beavers, hawks, kingfishers (symbol of the Fernald Preserve), wild ducks, white-tailed deer, even bobcats and coyotes roamed this land and made it their habitat.  But then the law of eminent domain, used by the Atomic Energy Commission, pushed out the local farmers.  The concrete buildings, used for nuclear production, went up [see Part III].  Yet now the waste pits and footprints of the former buildings, cleansed of their corruption, form the wetlands and ponds which draw the wildlife here.

The Fernald Preserve’s Visitors’ Center:  Nature tours now gather in the brightly-lit community room of the Fernald Preserve’s Visitors’ Center, a $6.6 million renovation of a former concrete warehouse, one of only two of the nuclear complex’s buildings not demolished in the site’s remediation in the early 2000s.  Floor-to-ceiling glass windows in the lobby look out on the site.  On the walls, photographs give evidence of the (now) local wildlife one can see by hiking the trails; a giant aerial photograph maps the irregular boundaries of the green space as it exists today – with a ghostly overlay of white rectangles representing the industrial buildings that once produced nuclear destruction [see Part III].  And, indeed, visitors can hold metal ingots, examples of sample fuel cores, silver cylindrical-shaped objects (about the size and thickness of the batons used in track events, though thicker and heavier), once produced here as the first step for uranium “feed” (only these examples, of course, are not uranium, so they are quite safe to hold and examine).

The Mound:  But all is still not quite serene and natural at Fernald, even yet.  From the Visitors’ Center, one can see a 65-foot-high natural-looking mound.  Although about 85% of the contaminated soil and about 15% of the contaminated debris from the Fernald site was excavated, containerized, and shipped to a permanent containment facility in Texas [see Part III], nearly 3 million cubic yards of the less hazardous, low-level radioactive waste materials and other debris was compacted into this mound, trapped within a protective liner, and capped with a grass-covered knoll.  At the base of the mound eight small lights shine out at night:  they are from the eight valve houses which continue to collect water drainage from the industrial waste stored in the mound; pipes conduct the water to an on-site wastewater treatment facility, which tests the water for uranium contamination.  A large column-shaped visual display in the Visitor’s Center helps interpret how the highly-engineered layers of the contents of this mound, upon which one can stand (if you dare), knee-deep in prairie grasses and buzzing insects, will permanently preserve the compacted debris.

Conclusion:  So, much has changed in the western portion of Hamilton County, along the Great Miami River, in 300 years or more, just west of our hometown of Cincinnati.  The ancient forests, home to the local Native Americans, gave way to the farmlands of the white pioneers from the Eastern seaboard.  These produced the small towns and communities that still dot Hamilton County west of Cincinnati proper.  Eventually, modern industrialization came into the area, producing not only an electrical power plant at Miami Fort and gasoline manufacturing at Hooven, but also the forces of potential total annihilation as represented by the nuclear materials manufactured at Fernald.  Nature, it is true, has reclaimed much, but in the present day, nature remains fragile.  If William Henry Harrison were alive today, and knew what had gone on on his very doorstep, he’d die.

Nevertheless, the Great Miami River just keeps rolling its stream of waters on to its final destination, its communion and connection with the waters of the mighty Ohio.  And it will likely do so for ages to come.

Becky Payne (Shockley)

Dave: Thanks again for the incredible (and horrific) photos. Makes me feel almost guilty for living in Minnesota, where we have no smoke, fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, or even earthquakes at the moment. Just chilly fall-like weather. Hope you can all stay safe!

Florence (Now Jean) Ager

Phil, 

YOUR WRITING

How amazing that the 39-year-old "debacle" of Fernald was occurring during our time in Cincinnati!  It would be interesting to do a documentary on the subject as it would be of national interest. I enjoy not only your grasp of history but also your seemingly effortless and yet powerful writing style. 

I look forward to reading each new post, but feel a little guilty, too. It seems that your talents deserve to be shared with a wider audience. I am quite serious in predicting that any book you wrote would soon be a best-seller. 

LONGVIEW HOSPITAL 

 I was wondering whether you have ever studied the history of Longview Hospital? I am curious as the hospital seemed in terrible shape when I volunteered there in the 1960's. Was it under-funded or were funds misused?  I took children on a trip to the zoo. It was a horrible experience as the children were frightened to ride on the expressway (screaming their fear of crashing), worried about zoo animals attacking them or of other visitors thinking they were from a mental hospital. I was relieved to pause for a picnic lunch. This, too, was an awful experience. The lunch, packed by the Longwood dining staff,  consisted of sandwiches made only of white bread, ketchup and mustard!

I heard that a child therapist came with a very permissive attitude, encouraging groups of children to express themselves freely. The story was that on her first day a group of adolescents tore off all her clothes! I didn't have any association with adult patients so don't know if their treatment was substandard. I did learn that most of the children were considered to be "dumped"  by families who did not want them. 

Ira Goldberg

Phil et al: in your last post you mentioned the arrival of Euros from points East, downriver from Pittsburg to the Ohio Valley. I recently readThe Pioneers by David McCullough. Interesting, it chronicles settling the "Northwest Territory," i.e. Marietta and vicinity, including remarks about developments further west - Cincinnati, Chillicothe. Confident you read the book, I recommend it to classmates interested in bringing our area's early history alive. 

Philip Spiess

Jean:  Thank you for your encomiums; my desire at the moment is to entertain, and perhaps inform, my fellow WHHS classmates about the city which I love and constantly explored during my WHHS years.  I also wish to connect through memories and experiences with my classmates, whom I respect for ther own knowledge on a wide spectrum of subjects.  I can only say that I learned much from them, 1958-1964, and that I'm still learning from them on this Forum.

I know only four things about Longview Hospital:  where it was located; that the columns that formed its portico in front of its dome were from the (very) old Greek Revival U. S. Post Office and Custom House on the south side of Fourth Street; that I once flew over it in a helicopter with Lieutenant Art Mehring (my only helicopter ride to date); and that the stories you relate about it are horrendous.  I will try and check into its history and see what I can find out.

Oh, also:  that our next door neighbor on McAlpin Avenue in Clifton was in and out of Longview for insanity; she was one of the early 1950s recipients of electro-shock therapy (and a frontal lobotomy as well); though it did not quite turn her into a vegetable, it turned her into one who imagined conspiracy theories, i.e., a paranoiac.  (Personally, as they say, "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.")

To date the only book I've actually published was my little history, Sights and Scenes in Clifton:  An Historical Tour (1965), which got me my job at the Cincinnati Historical Society, which in turn started me on my professional career in museums.  However, I've written a number of book-length tomes which are mostly buried in government and university files and archives and various articles and speeches which are buried in scholarly journals, as I was more heavily involved in administration and teaching than I was in writing (hence my writing now).  One such was The Industrial Archeology of Cincinnati:  A Guide for S. I. A. Tourists (1978), from which I've drawn a number of my posts on this WHHS site.  (You can find some of these publications by looking up "Philip D. Spiess - publications [WorldCat Identities]I" on the Internet.)  I am currently working on an actual book on London's South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Science Museum), the world's first truly educational museum (it even adminitered Britain's national examinations in science and art).

Ira:  I must admit that, although I enjoy David McCullough's books, I have not read The Pioneers; alas, I must admit that I am old enough that the books I read in my undergraduate and graduate days on the Western migration precede his by a good number of years.  One such was Richard C. Wade's The Urban Frontier:  Pioneer Life in Early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis (1965), a book which was seminal to the first part of my Master's thesis ("The Cincinnati Industrial Expositions (1870-1888):  Propaganda or Progress?", 1970).  And, indeed, during my years at the Cincinnati Historical Society, I read much earlier books on the subject as well, some by the actual "Founders of Cincinnati," such as Jacob Burnet.

Paul Simons

Jean I can say a few words about Longview, the state mental hospital that was at Paddock Rd and Seymour Ave, because I worked there. I got a BA in Psychology from UC in 1969 and worked as an “Activities Therapist” there for about 6 months, winter of ‘69 into spring of ‘70. I worked with teenage boys who were considered to be unqualified for the school program. In some cases it was some type of brain damage, in some cases unwillingness to accept school discipline, in some cases it wasn’t clear what the problem was. I never got anything like a case folder on these kids. It was an equal mix of black and white. So anyway I found other things for them to do. 

The place had a music room with drums, other percussion instruments, an early electric piano, and they kept it locked. I finally got permission from my bosses, one miserable bunch about which more later, and got the kids into a simple one-chord funky rhythm jam. There might have even been some rudimentary precursor of rap going on. That was fun for all. There was also a gym with a basketball court and mats for calisthenics which was also kept locked. I managed to get the keys to it and again apart from having to intervene in a bit of a skirmish it was fun, for me as well. Several of those kids were good at basketball, far better than I ever was. The mats could have been used for wrestling but I don’t remember thinking that would be a good idea. 

But mainly the days were spent fixing broken bicycles. There were about 15 kids in my group and in a basement storeroom about 30 broken bicycles. Flat tires, bent wheels, chains off, twisted handlebars, missing seats, etc. I got them into salvaging good parts and putting them where needed to come up with working bikes. But then, where to ride them?

I gave those kids permission to ride around the grounds. There were paved roads connecting the various buildings, almost zero cars ever moving. The kids had a bit of freedom that they’d worked for themselves. But my bosses - here it comes - who were in some cases closeted lesbians, in some cases religious zealots that would have been comfortable with the replacement of Constitutional law with religious dogma that you see in some places today, and in the case of the psychiatrist in charge of the ward those kids lived on, a person who had no empathy and who didn’t care about side effects if the drugs made the ward easier to manage. The head nurse on that ward was a lot more of a human being than the bosses over her.

So, was it “One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest?” In some ways, yes. Many adult patients were sitting or standing, all day, likely on Thorazine. I got fired for allowing the kids to ride those bikes wherever those little drives went, although nobody ever got hurt or left the grounds. The place is now an Iams pet food manufacturing and management complex. I never heard about the attack you mentioned, maybe it happened after I was gone.

Jerry Ochs

Looting as a national pastime.  The British Museum.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Paul, this is a very sad commentary on Mental Health facilities of the late 60s early 70s.  You did those kids a lot of good in your short employment and they must have been sad to see you go.  In that same time frame I was a probation officer in the Family Court system.  It was disturbing to me that so little real help was available. It was mostly punitive and often kids were sent to institutions.  I eventually burned out. It was before I had my own children and it was stressful and upsetting. Not all parents love their children was a lesson I learned. 

Paul Simons

Barbara I liked the kids a lot and I felt like they liked me as well. And the rest of the staff were warm, compassionate people like I'm sure you were too. We were lucky to have come from homes where violence, substance abuse, criminality,  racism and neglect were not present. But others are not so lucky. Apparently money, even a lot of money, and "success" don't guarantee a healthy family environment. Obviously.

The problem at Longview, as I saw it, was that those in positions of power - that is, administrators and psychiatrists - were too involved with themselves and with each other. A lot of "palace intrigue". And not enough involved with the day and night, minute by minute experience of the patients over whom they had complete control. 

The saying is, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Longview is closed, torn down, demolished. I wish the same for corrupt abusive people and institutions. I'm sure we all do.

Paul Simons

Dave - about some previous photos - I bet nobody ever figured the sky would turn, for days on end, the color of Cincinnati Bengals helmets. Or if it did, that it would be in the context of, oh, I don't know, the end of the world?

Too bad about the missed field goal, speaking of the Bengals. Maybe Cincinnati should have stuck with flying pigs. There are pigs that fly you know. On 747's.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

The Family Court system was not corrupt as I knew it but some at the top were political appointments of course. It was the antiquated thinking of the day.  They have changed the categories and practices now. I didn't have my first child until 1972 and by then I was gone. It would not have been possible to do today what I did then with all the home visits.  I have no idea how they are functioning these days but some of the laws have been changed for the better. 

I have no doubt that you were a breath of fresh air inside that institution and the children you worked with missed you very much.  Unfortunately that was not the primary concern of those at the top.  

Paul Simons

 I bet your clients were glad when you visited. Re: Longview - I’ll give you one egregious example: there was a fellow about 14-15 years old, kinda big for his age, not mean, not hostile, really the term is gentle, just kinda loud when he spoke and what today would be called bipolar. They had him on a drug that caused him to develop breasts. You can imagine the ridicule he got when adults weren’t around. He begged to be off of it. I begged for him to be off of it. The psychiatrist and the managers refused to change his medication. Barbara you mentioned political appointees in positions of power. I don’t think the bosses at Longview were that but then people can “play the  “game” and get themselves to where they have no business being. Either way the saying is “it isn’t what you know, it’s who you know.”

Philip Spiess

This whole Longview discussion sounds like something out of Dickens -- and it is!

Paul Simons

I don’t know about that Phil except as in “What the DICKENS are they doing in those places?” And the references to “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” are accurate in a general sense. There have been movies about it all - “Thr Snake Pit”, “Frances” about actress Frances Farmer who wound up institutionslized. There are of course actual crazy people, some of whom attain positions of power and influence, and these days the autism spectrum is more widely known and understood than it used to be. But this was just a short-term job for me, just one of a number like for many of us in the 1960’s and ‘70’s so I don’t have much more than this to report.

Jerry Ochs

I think the most human of traits is to form an organization dedicated to doing good, but then mission creep sets in after a few years and the organization's main purpose becomes protecting the organization at all costs and advancing the careers of the main players. A few examples are organized religion, the United States Congress, many police departments, and the welfare system.  The true do-gooders are quickly put in their place or harassed until they quit.  

Paul Simons

I agree Jerry. This makes me wonder what’s going on with education these days and makes me grateful for WHHS. Putting politics aside I don’t think anyone who graduated from WHHS then or now would have a problem with basic science. We read our scriblings here on screens which wouldn’t exist if electronics and metallurgy and physics and chemistry didn’t work. And yet apparently some educational systems are unable to impart that to students. It’s a failure of teaching the ability to reason. People today couldn’t read an Internet conspiacy theory that science is wrong without the products of science in their hands which proves that it does work. But they don’t make the connection. Maybe we’re having it too easy. So much of what has taken us from travel by covered wagon and communication by pony express to travel by Toyota Prius and communication by Google Duo has been done that we take it all for granted. Again putting politics aside we’d better get it straight regarding science in general and meteorology and medicine in particular because people are dying.