Jeff Daum

John, wow what a compelling photograph!  

Nelson Abanto

Hey folks, I just finished a weirdo, sicko Stephen King novel, Mr. Mercedes.  I guess you would call it a murder mystery.  In any case, our Alma Mater, yes, Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati Ohio is mentioned by name.  

The book is a good read.  It has pace and tension and lots of surprises but, as I mentioned has lots of Stephen King weirdness.

What kind of a person reads that stuff?

Jerry Ochs

To counterbalance John's somber shot.

David Buchholz

Hooray!  For two more wonderful images!  We need an art tsunami on the Forum!  

Nelson, welcome back!  (Um, as a former English teacher I won't even admit to some of the stuff I read, but yes, I have had a subscription to the New Yorker ever since I was in college...)

And I loved "Carrie"...

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Jerry- "HUH?" In answer to your question about old socks. You photo, reminds me of the opening to old tv show Ben Casey, ' Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity....'

John - A story in a picture.  Quite reminiscent of Danny Ransohoff's collection http://library.cincymuseum.org/aag/history/ransohoff.html

Nelson - I'm not ashamed to admit that I happen to be a Stephen King groupie.  I even follow him on Facebook and he just sent out his first TWEET .  I always thought that he was writing his books "just for ME" by his references to music, or places, or events that were familiar.  I think he has been truly underrated by critics. I have Mr. Mercedes on by table right now thanks for the review. I've never liked any of the movies or tv shows based on his books. SK has the knack of taking the ordinary and twisting it in some way to make it memorable. Sunny side up eggs and strawberry "licorice" as described in a couple of his short stories still give me pause.  Among is many novels, Rose Madder and Misery are still my absolute favorites.

Nancy Messer

I can't add to the photo collection here.  Since I get around using a walker, taking pictures now isn't practical.  The camera I have is a Cannon Sure-Shot that I got around 40 years ago.  Not being very smart on this subject, I probably left the batteries in the camera so the inside is probably rusted away.  I thoroughly enjoy the photos that everyone puts here and will continue to check this site forever.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

To all the photographers: your pictures are amazing. They either lift my spirits or make me think (not very easy task lately). 

Phil: you are giving me a huge inferiority complex, so cut it out! You make me realize how I have stagnated in Israel, which may be a bright star in the start-up, high-tech, and scientific worlds, but intellectually - pfui. Not really mad at you, much more at myself for a lot of things.

To Ann and the dog woes: Nearby airbase was conducting night exercises last night. From 03:30 until 05:30 when I finally somehow dragged him outside, poor BG was in a total panic from the literally constant sound of booms, which he of course hears much better than I do. He kept pawing at me and pacing in my room, but the final straw was when he made pee and poop IN MY BEDROOM right next to me. This was a first. I always managed to calm him before just with my presence and speaking softly and calmly. Cleanup was disgusting and painful, needless to say..... I was groggy and pretty much out of it all day. There was a time I could handle something like this with no problem. Guess I'm not so young any more......  :(

Philip Spiess

Jerry:  I call my old socks "golfing socks" because I got them in a "fair way," and because they're heavy woolen socks, when I wear them I feel like I'm "in the rough."  (I know, you thought I was going to say "because they have 18 holes.") 

Jerry Ochs

Phil,

Do you "putter" around the house in them?  I thought your answer would be "because there's a hole in one".

Jerry Ochs

This one's dedicated to Cyndi Lauper. 

I call it "Gulls Just Want to Have Fun".

John Danner

Thanks, Jeff

Philip Spiess

Ah, Jerr, good one! -- but you must have missed my joke to Larry Klein a while back, which is my favorite along those lines:

"It is the morning of the great bull fight in Madrid!  And Juan, the most glorious and famous bullfighter of them all steps into the ring!  And the bull charges!  And the dust clears!  And the bull has made a hole in Juan!"

Another:  "A Sunday morning at the golf links:  As Fred and Ferd step up to the 9th hole, which happens to run close to a highway, a funeral procession hoves into view.  Fred, who was about to tee off, stops mid-swing and solemnly removes his hat and holds it over his heart.  He keeps this pose until the funeral procession has disappeared into the middle distance, and then he takes his swing.  After he's done, Ferd, who has been watching the whole procedure in disbelief, exclaims, 'Fred!  That was astounding!  I can't believe it from you, a guy who rarely shows such feeling!  I'm stunned -- that was beautiful!'  And Fred responds, 'She was a good wife for forty years. . . .'"

Another (worse):  "A guy is out on the golf course and slices one into the woods.  Eventually he finds his ball, and he is just about to take a swing to knock it back on the fairway, when -- POOF!  Mother Nature appears!  'Ah!  Ah!  Ah!' she says; 'You are standing in my buttercups!  And I don't allow ANYBODY to stand in my buttercups!  SO. I'M. GOING. TO. MAKE. SURE. YOU. NEVER. GET. ANY. MORE. BUTTER. IN. YOUR. ENTIRE. LIFE!!!'  'Oh, thank god!' says the guy.  'I was damned near standing in the pussy willows!'"

Yeah, I got a million of them on golf, which I rarely play.  But I am a miniature golf freak (though there are no longer any great courses like there were in Cincy in the 1960s, except maybe in Pennsylvania Dutch country, outside of Lancaster, and maybe in parts of Florida -- oh, there's a great one not too far from Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, near Gen. Braddock's grave -- the miniature golf course is inside Laurel Caverns, and includes an earthquake room!).

And great photo, Jerry -- commentary?  (Is that an apartment building or a rocket ship?)

Philip Spiess

Jerry:  The photo of the birds looks peaceful.  Must be the end of the Gullf War (Golf War?).

Judy:  It was one of my "treats" during my eight years teaching 5th Grade History/Geography -- World Religions included (we were a private school) -- to teach "Introduction to Judaism."  I had perhaps less Jewish students in my school than I did Christians (obviously), some Muslims, and (occasionally) Hindus, but I made sure that the Jewish students helped me teach the religion (same with the students of other faiths).  Why did I feel privileged to teach Judaism?  Because so many of my friends at Walnut Hills were of that faith, so I thought I understood something of it (besides the fact that Christianity -- through the Old Testament -- has its origins and traditions in Judaism).  Because I was teaching it in tandem with History, I was able to combine it (given the curriculum) with the history of ancient Egypt (as I did with combining Christianity and Rome in the 6th Grade), and so a highlight of the course was showing (in its entirety) the second half of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (his second, 1956 version).  Because I had seen it when it first came out (as a 10-year-old), I felt it would have a greater effect on students of that age than just reading about the plagues of Egypt, the Passover, the liberation from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, the Golden Calf, the giving of the Ten Commandments, and the passing into the Promised Land.  It did; the one thing I had to explain to them was that, when the film was made, there were no computers to create the "special effects"; they were done by much more primitive (artistic?) means.  And in the following class session I fed them matzoh and "bitter herbs" (this varied on what Whole Foods had to offer that day); the rest of a Passover meal was more problematic, given kids' allergies, health restrictions, etc., and what local laws allow you to serve in schools these days.  The kids loved the matzoh -- they cleared me out every time -- but were far more circumspect about the "bitter herbs" ("Yuck!" I think, was the general consensus).  Only once in eight years did I have a mother correct my study guide on a point of Jewish doctrine; I corrected it immediately.

On a related point (or not), in 1972 (1968?), when the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery opened for the first time, most of the paintings and sculptures in the opening exhibition were borrowed from elsewhere, because the museum had almost no collection of its own at that time.  I went through the exhibit with great interest, being a historian (and it is both a history museum and an art museum), and suddenly I saw a familiar face:  it was a bust of Isaac M. Wise, father of Reformed Judaism in North America, and builder of Plum Street Temple in Cincinnati.  (I forget who loaned the bust; probably the Cincinnati Art Museum).  And I will add, as an architectural historian, that Plum Street Temple is one of the truly great glories of architecture in Cincinnati, designed by James Keys Wilson, who also designed "Scarlet Oaks" on Lafayette Avenue in Clifton (the George K. Schoenberger residence, where Thomas Cole's great series of paintings, "The Voyage of Life," hung for a century till Frank Dale, owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer and trying to curry favor with President Nixon, got them transferred to the National Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian in 1972), the Gothic castle which has been for many years the Methodist Home for the Aged (did I parse that over-long sentence correctly?).  Wilson was also the man who founded the Cincinnati chapter of the American Institute of Architects, sometime during the Civil War period.  And he also designed the Dexter Mausoleum in Spring Grove Cemetery, a little gem of Gothic Revival (though somewhat damaged by time -- and maybe vandals).

David Buchholz

Thanks Phil and Jerry,  I can go to bed now, knowing that all's write with the world.  From the Serengeti to the South Island of New Zealand.  Here's what you see as the ferry nears Picton.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Judy - The late Chloe often had the crap scared out of her by fireworks, thunder and other loud noises.  She was also taking prednisone for an autoimmune condition that made drink a lot and pee a lot.  I solved both problems with a Thundershirt and doggie diapers.  Of course, being the diva that she was, she coordinated her outfits with denim pants and a bandana.  Thundershirts and diapers are available on line.

I always thought Chloe looked like The Flub-a-dub from the Howdy Doody Show in this get up.

Philip Spiess

John Danner:  I was really pissed as hell when the railroads closed Union Terminal for stupid (fake) reasons; it is one of the great railroad stations of the U. S., and an Art Deco masterpiece.  So, when I wrote the article on it in 1978 for my S. I. A. Guide to the Industrial Archeology of Cincinnati for that year's national convention of the Society for Industrial Archeology, I described the then-Amtrak station for Cincinnati (down behind the garbage piles along the Ohio River; is it still the station?) as entering the Queen City by rail "through its nether cheeks"!

Nelson:  I read almost anything, from high cultural philosophy (I'm currently reading, in modified form, the works of St. Thomas Aquinas) to low "classical" pornography.  (It is a fact I've discovered, that museum curators and rare book librarians collect "classical" pornography; I've seen many of their collections -- usually over late-night brandy.)  I would have collected pornography myself, but I never had a pornograph to play it on.  (Actually, having been a museum curator, I do have a collection of "classic" pornography; you know, things like Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the poems of Catullus, Petronius's Satyricon -- great 1969 movie by Fellini -- Boccaccio's ribaldries, Aretino's poems, Fanny Hill, the bawdy poems of Robert Burns, the novels of de Sade, Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs,  several of the early works of Baron Huysmans, Aubrey Beardsley's Under the Hill, Oscar Wilde's Teleny, etc, etc. -- you get the picture -- to say nothing of historical erotic art work, from the Greeks on to the present -- well, I am, folks, a cultural historian!)  However, to go with the theme of Stephen King, the most horrific, grotesque story that is my favorite, is Ambrose Bierce's "Oil of Dog," from The Parenticide Club (he's got several other really bizarre tales; it's no wonder he disappeared in Mexico in 1913, going to fight with the forces of Pancho Villa); a second is Russell Fitzgerald's "The Last Supper" (1971), about a guy who makes a gourmet meal of his best friend.  And then there are some of the not-for-children stories of Roald Dahl. . . .

Jerry Ochs

Happy Autumnal Equinox!  This robot is used to clean out the leaves clogging the gutters of very tall buildings.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Ann, bless you for trying, but...... after a lot of self-debate, I got a Thundershirt over eBay, but unfortunately did not have good results from using it. As far as I know, there are no doggie diapers in Israel, and I would have a problem putting them on since I cannot bend for more than a few seconds, unless they are very, very easy to put on, and of course BG has to cooperate and not start playing with me, thinking it's a new game. Nearly 11 years old, and still a party boy ;) My vet gave me something called Calmex to try, and I had mixed results with it. And of course, I never know when the air force will have middle-of-the-night training exercises with bombs falling every minute. I never made even private in the army, too old.

Phil, you almost made me wish that I had been your student instead of your classmate, but then I thought "naaaahhhhh". If you would like to add to your collection of Jewish trivia, here is one that pretty much blew my mind. You probably know that Jews circumcise their newborn sons at the age of 8 days, but why 8 days and not 7 or 10? At 8 days, the human body begins to produce platelets, so the blood can coagulate and the wound of the operation can close without the child losing much blood. In return, could you tell me why Moslems circumcise THEIR sons at the age of 13 years? I have always wondered about that.... Thanks. You can send answer to my "profile" since circumcision is a rather hot-button issue..... and probably because parents mistakenly have it performed too early, before platelets are forming, like at one or two days of age, so there are more problems and people oppose the procedure, but for the wrong reason. There are still health benefits both early and later in life.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Jerry, that robot is very scary!!! Yeah, I know...probably only to old coots. My grandkids would probably giggle and try to figure out how to climb all over it.

David Buchholz

Phil, I've always loved this place, especially when I was a little boy, and I would run to one end of the giant arch, my uncle would walk to the other end, and we could whisper to each other.

David Buchholz

And the view just looking up...

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Your pictures of the Union Terminal are great Dave.  I too remember whispering in the rotunda and also talking from one drinking fountain to the one on the other side of the entrance way to the train waiting area.  We held our 40th reunion dinner at the terminal.  I have pictures that I can post.

But first, how about the cover story in the Cincinnati Business Courier yesterday, featuring the "Wondrous Walnut Hills Class of 64' ".  Somehow James Levine and Steven Spielberg were mentioned in the article, so would someone please invited them to join us for our next birthday bash.

Here's the link http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/gallery/81231?r=http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/print-edition/2014/09/19/here-s-how-one-neighborhood-produced-some-of.html

and here is a picture from the Courier.

Philip Spiess

Dave and Ann (and others):  YES -- talking across the arch from one drinking fountain to the other:  that was the mysterious lure of Union Terminal (aside from its overall luminous presence -- captured so wonderfully in Dave's pictures!); my grandfather used to take me there just to demonstrate that, and I thought that his voice must be coming out of the square openings that used to dispense paper drinking cups, or else out of the Art Deco air vent grilles nearby.  The Terminal's acoustics work far better than Statuary Hall's in the U. S. Capitol (old House of Representatives), where John Quincy Adams, former president, but later a U. S. Congressman from Massachusetts, had his chair placed at the appropriate drop of sound from the arched ceiling, where he could hear his political opponents, on the other side of the room, plotting their (doubtless) nefarious actions.  (By the way, John Quincy Adams' last formal public appearance before his death was in Cincinnati, at Wesley Chapel on 5th Street -- don't get me started on the preservation battle over its destruction in the 1970s! -- giving a speech dedicating the Cincinnati Astronomical Observatory on Mount Adams; he considered such an observatory essential to the United States, and tried, unsuccessfully, to make the Smithsonian Institution become just that.)

The National Trust for Historic Preservation (for whom I worked at the time), in the mid to late 1970s, published a nationally-distributed book on varieties of Historic Preservation and its building types in the United States, which included a frontal picture of Union Terminal -- the "Philco Radio" front (much like Dave's, whose photo shows the fountains in good shape and running; when was it taken?), saying that it had been torn down in 1972.  I rose up in high dudgeon (as I often did at the National Trust, the low dudgeons being filled with peasants) and sent the Trust's editor-in-chief a one-word note:  WRONG!  (They were also wrong, in the same book, about a photo of the postal drop box in the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia:  the sculptured metal head on the box they said must have been "Buffalo Bill" Cody, because of his goatee -- maybe he stayed there -- but it was obviously William Shakespeare -- the "Stratford" part of the hotel's name should have been a dead giveaway.  There was a reason my former boss at the Cincinnati Historical Society had hired me to be his Research Coordinator at the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington.)

Later on, in 1978, the Society for Industrial Archeology (I was president of the Washington, D. C., chapter at the time) half-way through its national convention, moved its entire convention from Louisville to Cincinnati at my insistence, because I said that Cincinnati had much better architecture (the pitiful tykes running the convention thought the two cities were across the Ohio River from one another!).  Among other things, I was able to get the entire Union Terminal, top to bottom, offices, storage, and all (this was before the museums moved in), open for the S. I. A.'s inspection (and have the slides to prove it).  The Art Deco semicircle motif of the dome was everywhere present:  in door knobs, in the lamp on the executive director's desk (and the desk also), in some of the clocks, and so on, and so on.  It was one of the (several) triumphs of the Cincinnati portion of the convention (others were the Cincinnati Suspension Bridge, Procter & Gamble's "Ivorydale," and the Melan concrete arch bridge over the main drive in Eden Park, the world's first real reinforced-concrete arch bridge; Cincinnati also has the world's first reinforced concrete "skyscraper," the Ingalls Building, northeast corner of 4th and Vine Streets -- and yes, it's still there.).

Anyone who would like me to send them a copy of the Union Terminal portion of the manuscript book I produced on Cincinnnati's industrial archeology, please send me your postal mailing address (the pictures, from 1933, are important, and I'm not sure how they would reproduce electronically); my e-mail address is atkinson55pnh@verizon.net.  [Ann:  I was about to send out the Tyler Davidson Fountain portion of the book to you, so I'll include Union Terminal before I send it.]

Philip Spiess

Fellow Class of '64ers:  Am I going on too long?  I don't want to bore you, or dominate the conversation, but I get excited by the topics, and want to share my knowldege.  Let me know (we're so into transparency these days in Washington -- um, if not honesty!).

Jerry Ochs

Phil,

The colorful building is an apartment building in Bilbao, Basque Country.

To answer a more recent question: you are not going on too long.  The history of Rome wasn't written in a day.