Unconvinced

I watched rather a lot of television in February, thanks to the Winter Olympics. So much, in fact, that I think I'm all TV'd up until the French Open. While it's not a hobby that I'm into, I do at least admire other people's resolve to sit still for that long. 

In the course of all that TV, I saw many, many car ads. That was a lot of car ads. Some of the tactics used to try to sell me a car are silly, some are funny, and some are downright wrong. For my amusement, I started keeping a mental list of all the people who were enlisted to sell me a car in the month of February:

Sharlie is not impressed by all these attempts to replace
her. She doesn't have anything to worry about, of course.
Oh, by the way, the Ohio River just had its biggest flood
in 20 years.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.;
Jesus, Moses, and Muhammad;
Real people, not actors;
Sesame Street Muppets;
Six women on snowboards;
Every Paralympian;
Ashley Wagner;
A high school band;
William Henry Harrison; and
(my personal favorite, by a car company that is a sponsor of USA Bicycling, for heaven's sake)
Bicycles.

Needless to say, they were unsuccessful. Better luck next time, advertisers. Don't worry; I'm sure you convinced someone. Just not this someone.

You want to see a great ad, one I never got tired of seeing in two weeks of Olympics? Check out this one from St. Elizabeth healthcare. My favorite is the young man struggling with his math homework who's ready to give it another shot after his dad says, "You got this." Love.

Just Be

I took a couple days off at the beginning of the week, which turned out to be a fantastic choice when Cincinnati got up to 79° on Tuesday. My bicycle was happy to finally go somewhere interesting after weeks of sitting around when we set out to run a few errands.

Despite my tendency to forget it from time to time, I was remembering well that I live in Cincinnati now, and this week's warm temps were not here to stay quite yet. So, to avoid bitter disappointment later, I kept reminding myself, "Don't get carried away. Just be here in this moment." Normally, that is a strategy that doesn't work well for me.

I ended one of my errands at an intersection of two one-way streets, both going the opposite direction from where I wanted to go, so I thought I'd just go a block and then turn.

Well. This is one of the few times in my life I've managed to convince myself of something and make it stick. A few blocks later, I realized I'd completely forgotten to turn because I was having such a good time rolling right along. There's a great deal to be said about being in the moment and ignoring everything else--not thinking about what I'm doing later or making a mental grocery list or imagining the stack of paper my coworkers were cooking up in my absence. From time to time, it's a good thing to just be.

It's less of a good thing when your sense of direction depends on you being able to think at least a couple minutes down the road, but one can't have everything. But going the wrong way meant I found a thing. Last spring, I did a Cincinnati-themed A to Z Challenge, and when I got to Union Terminal I learned about the mosaics that were specially commissioned for the building. I read at the time that some of them had landed at the Duke Energy Building, and I lodged it in the back of my mind to go look harder for them one day, since I'd been around and inside there a couple times and had never seen them. Guess where my wrong turn took me?

I had crossed the street and was admiring the Firefighters Memorial Park when I happened to glance over and, had I been walking, I would have stopped in my tracks. As it was, I said aloud to absolutely no one, "Wait! Is that them? It has to be!" And crossed back over to see them. They are every bit as amazing as I had imagined they would be.

I only took pics of these two, because the glare made them not look so great.
I'll head back on a cloudy day and get them all.

So there's one more thing to be said for being in the moment. You never know what you may find.

You Are Here

A couple months ago at work, I was expressing my difficulty in climbing stairs while carrying something that blocks my view of where I'm stepping. I asked, "What's the word for knowing where you are in space? Prio-something?" A coworker called back, "Proprioception!" I said, "Yes. That. I don't have it."

An exhibit in MOMA. I like it.

That's just a little story for you, and not really what this is about. No, this is about my ongoing struggle to build a map in my head. Places I go often--work, church, Kroger--I could find in my sleep, if necessary. Downtown has been a bit more tricky, even though I'm down there a lot. (Parts of downtown are tricky. I can find the Aronoff Center just from the excited twinge that comes over me when in range of live theatre.)

But when I try to visualize where things are in relation to other things in Cincinnati, I often realize I'm picturing a different city. Perhaps this is my brain rebelling against my forcing it to learn its way around a fifth city. How do people who move a lot do it?

There's research that suggests that people who walk and people who drive have similarly accurate mental maps of a place, while regular transit users lag behind them and folks who are exclusively passengers lag even farther still. And there's a cool study on how the brain changes and builds synapses on repeated exposure to the same route. The research mentions neither bikes nor how many cities you can pack into your brain before it explodes. Obviously that's a gap for academia to address.

I'd like to see more research on
Hemingway's experience of building a
mental map. I agree anecdotally, but I'm
all about gathering more data.

Here's one that's even more interesting: kids who live in walkable and bikeable neighborhoods have not only a better sense of place--as in, where things like the park or their school are--but they also feel better about the place they live. Kids who are driven more and rarely walk are they opposite--they have a harder time knowing where they are, and their neighborhood seems more scary. I wonder if being scared of their surroundings is entirely because they haven't gotten the chance to know them well, or if it's also from internalizing the fears of the adults around them. I'm not a kid and I absorb other people's feelings, so it's not hard to imagine that less emotionally developed people do it.

And one more before I go: many studies have found a connection between exercise and thinking/memory skills. So it is the right choice for your or your kids to walk rather than drive when the opportunity presents itself? Only you can answer that question, but even if you can never head out for school or errands car-free, at least try to build in a walk around the block a few times a week.

Your brain will thank you.

What I Read: August

After I finished the blanket I'd been working on since April at the end of July, I suddenly felt like I had all this time for reading. Which I promptly filled with other things, because I'm still me in here and my brain is apt to wander off from time to time to see what's happening in the next room, so to speak.

However, August was at least better than the last few months have been, so that's something.

As always, all links and images are from Goodreads. Let's be friends and you can see all the things I've read. Books are in alphabetical order, not the order I read them in, because chronological is so 2016.

First-time reads:
Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism, Daisy Hernandez & Bushra Rehman
Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World, Bob Goff
Nurse Matilda: The Collected Tales, Christianna Brand
Our Bodies, Our Bikes, Elly Blue & April Streeter


Re-reads:
Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy, Elly Blue


Books by women:
Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism, Daisy Hernandez & Bushra Rehman
Nurse Matilda: The Collected Tales, Christianna Brand
Our Bodies, Our Bikes, Elly Blue & April Streeter


Goodreads challenge: 20 of 52 books in 2017


What are you reading?

Meanwhile

Last week, by some miracle, I managed to get out and run two days in a row! And I was like, "Hey, body, remember when we used to do this all the time? Maybe we can do it some more!" and my body said, "I hate you and can always devise weird pains you can't even imagine yet to stop you from doing something so stupid."

So. We're a work in progress.

Nothing says "running" like a picture
of my feet standing still, yeah?

Meanwhile, I'm looking for a spring half marathon. I'm planning to be in Austin for my 40th birthday--yay!-- but that means both the Flying Pig (Cincinnati) and the Indy Mini (Indianapolis) are out, because I'll be 1200 miles away that weekend. Bummer. The Hoosier Half in Bloomington in April is an early favourite, if they get their act together sometime soon and update the registration page.

Meanwhile meanwhile, in the excitement of the Hotter'N Hell Hundred this weekend (Texas had its biggest bicycle event of the year in the hot-and-dry northern part of the state at the same time that the southeastern side was being washed away by a hurricane. Everyone I know is safe, but it was a long and anxious weekend all the same), I started searching training plans for a lengthy bicycle ride--namely, the Ride Across Indiana. I'm pretty sure one has to be not entirely in possession of all one's faculties to even consider doing such a thing, but that happens to be my exact description, so it's totally fine.

Oddly enough, the distance (160 miles in one day) and the completely different approach to training than I've ever done before (you know, wheels instead of feet) isn't what's giving me pause about this. I've been going back and forth about it for weeks now, because I've always been strictly a utilitarian cyclist, and when anyone's asked me if I train for these massive bike events, I've always said, "No. That's what running is for." To make this change feels like I'm giving up a fundamental part of my identity. On the other hand, I'll be 40 next summer, and isn't that what 40 is for?

So I wrote a plan down and will see about adding some intentional riding miles to my intentional running miles in the next few weeks. This may be a thing. We'll see.

Are you trying anything new with the final third of 2017?

Hazards

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has access to, and shares, vital data about safety on U.S. roads. They're spot on with things like speeding or distracted driving, although it should be said that they tend to come out not-swinging about those things and their recommendations can sound more like gentle suggestions which drivers are free to ignore. Still, the recommendations exist.

So it's frustrating to people who engage in active transportation that the same NHTSA (people who deal with them a lot pronounce it "nit-sa") does come out strongly in one area: victim-blaming people who aren't in cars. This week, it's kids riding their bikes to school, and how the "best" protection they have is wearing a helmet and obeying traffic laws. To be clear: kids should absolutely be doing those things, and parents should be modeling and teaching that behaviour.

To be clearer: both are as far as they can be from the best protection kids on bikes could have. See, for example, the hierarchy of hazard controls when it comes to active transportation:

Source: Don Kostelec on Twitter.

It's not like NHTSA doesn't have access to this data. If advocates have it, then certainly the U.S. Department of Transportation has it. The problem is what they do with it, which often is not a freaking thing.

It's bad enough that kids are bound to fall down sometimes while learning to ride a bike. (Those are exactly the kinds of falls helmets are designed for. Keep those little heads protected!) It's a lot worse that our transportation organizations are so unwilling to do anything to support those kids, and their families, and their entire communities, when the act of riding bikes to school is a simple solution to a wide range of issues.

I hope, although I'm not holding my breath, that NHTSA will eventually listen to the advocates who keep pressing them to do better things with their data than browbeat people who are already doing their part to make traffic less painful for all.

Cold Light

I deleted a tweet that I regretted yesterday.

If you come visit me, I will take
you to admire this. I will probably
not take you to OTR, because it's
a pricey place to hang out.

The New York Times ran an article this week about things to do in Cincinnati, which has been doing the rounds of all the local Twitter accounts. The article includes many local things I love, namely Red Bikes, the Purple People Bridge, the Roebling Bridge, and Cincinnati Shakespeare, so I wanted to share it. However, it also refers to Over the Rhine (OTR) as "the gentrifying district" with no other comment except to enthuse about all the fun things one can do there.

Factually, that's true. Not only is OTR gentrifying with lots of new (expensive) stuff popping up all the time, but if you keep walking north, you can practically see the line where the money runs out. I haven't been here for most of this process, but goodness knows I was in Austin long enough to see how many folks, usually people of color, had to push back against being priced out by developers from the neighborhoods where their families had lived for generations. A community with its own social cohesion and culture being scattered to the four winds by the "drive 'til you qualify" mentality is not exactly worth celebrating, no matter how many hip bars spring up where children used to play.

Last month, the Austin Statesman ran an online advertisement blatantly glorifying gentrification, which was pulled and replaced with an apology after the social media uproar engulfed them. I don't know if anyone in Cincinnati has made similar complaints about this NYT article. Maybe because they're not a local paper, maybe those who would complain have better things to do than reprimand every touristy column that gushes about OTR, maybe I just haven't seen them yet. I don't know. I tweeted the article with a comment that though the recs were solid, there was no need to be so happy about gentrification.

And then about 18 hours later I realized what a stupid thing that was to say and took it down. If praising--or even just being totes cool with--gentrification is a bad idea, then it doesn't matter how good the recommendations are. I don't know what OTR was like 10 years ago, but I do know that real people used to live and work and play there and now they don't. Outsiders may not have wanted to spend time there, and some bad things probably happened there. You know what? That's true of almost everywhere.

I don't have a solution to this web of issues. But if my way of entering the world is with words, then I have a responsibility to be careful with them, even in a casual tweet about a city I'm growing to love. And sometimes, as now, my responsibility is to shut up and listen to people who know more about this than I do, people who've been hurt and displaced and disconnected by an influx of "cool" into what used to be their home.

One might ask, "what took you so long?" and one would be correct. It takes me way too long, always, to remember that there are other people whose experience of the world has been dramatically different from my own.

8 Years, 4 Cities, 9000 Miles

Facebook was kind enough to tell me that yesterday was my 8th anniversary... with my bicycle. Yes, Sharlie (short for Charlotte; she's named after Charlotte Brontë) entered my life on August 1, 2009, and we've been BFFs ever since. This is my first proper bike of my entire life--up until that day, I'd only owned department store specials. Not really the best thing for someone who rides as much as I do, which is probably why I've never owned any other bike as long as Sharlie.

She's a lot less shiny now. Also, it looks like it was rainy
in Lubbock on the day she came home, so clearly she's a
good-luck charm.

Mind you, she objects to my characterization of the relationship (yes, my bicycle has a Twitter account):

Oh, sweetie. That's cute. Have I never explained to you that it's the other way around? https://t.co/zGREWoDEge

— Sharlie the Bike (@SharlieBike) August 1, 2017

Chadwick and I went to two different bike shops before I finally settled on Sharlie being the one. (He was pushing me toward the equivalent Trek model. I held firm on wanting a Giant.) I asked the gent in the shop to air up her tires so I could ride her home, mostly because there was no way we were fitting her in our tiny car, but also because I couldn't wait another minute for our first ride together. Also, Chadwick was convinced that hopping on Sharlie would magically make me faster and he wanted to see just how quick the ride home would be. She has some magical qualities, to be sure, but that hasn't been one of them so far. (He thought that it was, though. That day and every day after.)

We've ridden over 9000 miles together, and barring any dangerous/careless/just plain dumb drivers taking either of us out, we plan to carry on for another 9000.

She likes Cincinnati so far, although we both agree that
the bike parking around here leaves a great deal to be desired.

Feet's Desire

My first experience with the idea of desire lines was when I was in high school and the relevant authorities finally decided that it was time to build a sidewalk over the drainage ditch between the library and the school. In the local news article announcing the construction, the gent in charge said they chose the siting based on the worn spots in the grass. Good choice.

When presented with a space like this, I absolutely
will walk straight through the middle rather than around.
When you walk everywhere, following desire lines is
as much a matter of conservation of energy as it is
convenience. Source: sugoru.com.

Of course, since then in my professional life as an active transportation advocate, I've heard about desire lines many times, most notably at the 2014 Texas Trails and Active Transportation Conference, where Mikael Colville-Andersen spoke quite a bit about his work researching desire lines. Basically, if you've ever seen a straight line worn across a grassy area by people who'd rather not take the long way round via the officially designated route (i.e., the sidewalk), you've looked at a desire line. Wise municipalities keep an eye on desire lines and keep them in mind when it comes time for updating infrastructure. Senseless municipalities do things like putting up fences and otherwise trying to further inconvenience citizens who have rejected inconvenient design.

Of course, as has often been pointed out, sometimes the users are wrong. And sometimes so many desire lines pop up that it would be silly to officially legitimize all of them. Cities have to strike a balance--neither chasing after every desire line nor categorically ignoring them all is the correct answer.

One of the most interesting conclusions from Mr. Colville-Anderson's research is that when adequate and safe infrastructure is provided for people who ride bikes, then the actions that people on bikes take to keep ourselves alive and safely moving from point A to point B on infrastructure not designed for us--actions drivers frequently resent and complain loudly about, all while doing nothing to make people on bikes safer--those actions go away when infrastructure is adequate. When each road user had sufficient space and room to breathe without having to carve our own desire lines, positive interactions from all is the result.

I ran across a great statement in the book Shakespeare's London On 5 Groats a Day: "In England, roads are not made--they happen, whenever a sufficient number of people and horses tread out a track to wherever they wish to go." Many of these original desire lines across not only England, but also Europe, and indeed across the parts of the US where most roads predate automobiles, have been codified into the road system now. Desire lines are a life hack spread across entire cities, showing the real ways humans interact with their environment.

Finding a Family

I'm away from what is rapidly becoming my beloved church home (right now it's just my really really really like a lot church home, which takes a lot longer to say) this morning, and reflecting on something Keely and I talked about earlier this week: What is church?

She's going through the same fun-fun finding a new church thing that I just finished. (We've been doing things at more or less the same times for at least 15 years now. Not on purpose--it just happens.) Through our conversation, my phone was buzzing with "mouse updates"--someone at church was having some unwanted critter problems last week and regaling a couple of us with the more hilarious details. So, naturally, when Keely asked, I said, "People who will willingly read each others' mouse updates." She said, "That's a really good definition."

I spent half an hour this morning
swearing at my phone and the
Flying Pig Marathon, trying to
get the runner tracking to work.
After all, it's only fair for me to also
track my running friends in return
for all the kind texts and tweets.

And I like that it is. I'm sure there are many folks with so many support networks that all they're looking for from church is the encouragement from the Sunday morning gathering. If that's you, fantastic. On you go.

If it's not, for those who are looking for more than that, then "what is church?" is the question we have to ask ourselves, perhaps several times. I was not specifically looking for people who would send me congratulatory texts after I finish a half marathon, or their mouse updates, or suggestions for the best places to ride a bike, but that's what I found once I found a church family that was kind and welcoming and not weird about me being widowed with no children. (It's remarkably sad how many church folks are weird about that. More the "no children" than the "widowed", but still.) What is church for you?

The church I'm visiting this morning is the church I grew up in, and once upon a time they were my people, but I can feel the years between us when I visit. Some of them still see the kid they once knew, which is only natural. Some of them still say, "Oh, Billy and Denise have a sister?" every time they see me, as though I'm one of The Silence. Some of them are every bit the delightful folks they've been my whole life. I'm happy to seem them on every visit, but I readily admit I'll be happier to be back at Echo next Sunday.

Because they're church for me.

Z is for Zoo #AtoZChallenge

Last one! I hope you've enjoyed this little glimpse of Cincinnati with me. My favourite thing about this series has been all the locals who've read a post or two and then told me their personal histories with the things I wrote about. And the folks who, having read about one thing, asked if I'd been to another. And the ones who've filled in the gaps left after I read the info available on Wikipedia. Maybe the kindest thing I heard was from a coworker who said, "It's been fun rediscovering Cincinnati through your eyes." And that is, indeed, the most I could possibly have hoped for.

So! The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. You've probably heard of it. (And if you're not following the updates on Fiona the baby hippo, you're wrong.) As with many other posts in this series, I didn't go inside, but instead took a few pics of the entrance. And attracted the attention of a couple Zoo employees, who probably wondered what the heck I was doing. C'est la vie here in Su-Land.

The Zoo opened in 1875 and is the second-oldest zoo in the U.S. One of the original buildings still stands (it's the Reptile Building now), and is the oldest zoo building in the U.S. Admission on opening day was 25¢ for adults and 15¢ for children. I believe it's gone up a bit since then.

This historic entrance has an elevator inside, so colour me skeptical.
Also, at what point do you change your sign to read "Historic Entrance"
instead of just "entrance"? There have to be data on that.

The Zoo's first guidebook was printed in 1876 in German, because that's what a sizeable portion of the population at the time spoke, with the English guide coming in 1893. Clearly, the English-speaking folks weren't in too much of a hurry to print a guidebook.

Bike parking: approved.

Red Bike kiosk: thumbs up. Although riding one of these heavy bikes
back up the hill from here towards the University area cannot be pleasant.
Unless the rider has legs of steel, I suppose.  There are a couple more stations
further north than this one, but once you're at the Zoo you're closing in on
 the northern edge of the Red Bikes system.

Bike rack shaped like a snake: thumbs way up. I love it.
Not pictured: the Zoo is served by two local bus routes.
Public transit: also approved.

I'm not normally one to get excited by car parking, because why would I?, but this is pretty cool. The Zoo parking lot has solar panels on the covered parking roofs that provide 20% of the Zoo's energy annually. There was another sign describing it as a "demonstration project," but at that point the zoo dude was staring at me pretty intensely so I decided to skip that one and move on.

Sign describing the project + panels as seen from the pedestrian overpass.

I will probably save any actual visiting the Zoo for such a time as my sister comes to visit, because of the two of us, she's more of the Zoo one. (I'm the libraries and museums one.)

Plants at the entrance. As you can plainly see, this is the tulips' way of
telling me I should have come by a bit sooner.

And that, my friends, is the 2017 A to Z Challenge. Tomorrow I'll resume my usual nonsense. See you then.

Y is for Yeatman #AtoZChallenge

Join me on the A to Z Challenge: I'll share a different thing from my new home, Cincinnati, every day for 26 days in April.

Yeatman's Cove is, according to the sign I read while down there, the place the first settlers landed from the Ohio in what would become Cincinnati. However, good luck finding confirmation of that anywhere on the internet.

Yeatman's Cove these days is one of a string of linear parks that stretch for two miles along the river, and if I weren't still in mourning for my beloved Town Lake Trail I would probably appreciate those two miles a lot more. As it is, well, it's still a nice spot even if I am unfairly comparing it to something 1000 miles away.

At Yeatman's Cove, we have the Serpentine Wall:

So named because it looks like this: ~~~~~~~~ Except it doesn't have quite that many wiggles, but you get the idea. The wall, in addition to looking like a set of bleachers and therefore being a great place for sitting, is also for flood prevention--Cincinnati's past contains some historic floods that resulted in loss of life and property, and obviously that's not a thing we want repeated. So the wall is one of several levees that keep the city high and dry in case the river gets a bit antsy and overflows its banks.

There was some nasty-looking debris that had washed up here that I didn't
want Sharlie rolling through, so here's where I stopped. Incidentally,
here's where the water stopped, too. So it's working great.
That's the Taylor Southgate Bridge, which lies between the Purple People Bridge
and the Roebling Suspension Bridge. It has a bike/ped path, so I still like
it even though it's not my favourite.

Flood stage for the river is 52 feet, measured from the Roebling Bridge, and I don't really know how they do that (which is probably why I'm not in charge of it).

Yeatman's Cove got its name, not from the first settlers, but rather from Cincinnati's first tavern, which Yeatman built here near the river, presumably for easy access for the men who wanted to get drunk after working on the river all day.

It's a city park now, so getting drunk here is highly discouraged. There
are two sports stadiums just a mile up the road that can help with that.

X is for Xavier #AtoZChallenge

Join me on the A to Z Challenge: I'll share a different thing from my new home, Cincinnati, every day for 26 days in April.

I was about to skip over X and go to Y. That's twice this challenge I've done that. Clearly, the alphabet and I are having a critical difference of opinion.

Xavier University is one of many institutes of higher learning in Cincinnati--I tried to nail down an exact number, but apparently no one has bothered to count them. (Okay, actually, everyone has bothered to count them, but can't agree on the number.) Basically, if you want to learn things, you're in good shape here.

I read this guy's label, then promptly forgot who he was,
although reason would suggest he's Frances Xavier.
Anyway, he's at the entrance to vaguely gesture at people
as they arrive.

Xavier is a Catholic university, among the oldest in the country, and while I'm wildly out of the loop re: Midwest universities and how they've been getting on in my 20-year absence from the region, Xavier seems to be not too shabby in either academics or athletics. A handful of my coworkers went there, if all one hears is true, so I can at least vouch for some of Xavier's graduates being awesome.

I don't know what this is, but I kind of expect the Doctor
to turn up and point a sonic screwdriver at it.

Their mascot is D'Artagnan, certainly Chadwick's favourite of the Musketeers, which softens my heart toward Xavier already, even if they didn't have excellent bike parking.

But they do! Very well done, Xavier. So, re: the lack of human
activity... this was one of the stops on Susan's (not me; the other one)
Easter Sunday Tour of Cincinnati, but being as it was Easter
the Catholic school was on holiday. It was kind of creepy
wandering around not seeing any students.

Not sure about the presence of any bike lanes nearby, because I didn't look, but if the rest of the city is any indication it's lucky for Xavier students who travel actively that there are nice wide sidewalks surrounding them.

Like the one next to this sign, for instance.

Bellarmine Chapel on campus has a hyperbolic paraboloid roof (note to self: look up those words), so that even even if the walls were to come a-tumbling down, the roof would stay up, which I would call witchcraft except this is a Catholic university, so I'm thinking the roof has its own patron saint. I admit that would be useful to have.

The thing on the front is cool, too. I wonder if it's ever open to the public?

V is for Vontz #AtoZChallenge

Join me on the A to Z Challenge: I'll share a different thing from my new home, Cincinnati, every day for 26 days in April.

On Easter Sunday my friend Susan willingly participated in a day of "hey, I need to gather some pics for my blog," and we drove past this building that I'd never properly looked at before. All I read of the sign was "molecular studies," so I asked, "Is that building supposed to be shaped like a molecule?"

From what I've read: no. It's just some cool Gehry architecture. 

So, because reading the entire sign is for other people, I said something about how it was too bad I hadn't seen it before my M day, and Susan said, "You can still use it. That's the Vontz building."

Hey, what do you know! It's right there in great big letters.

By the way, Susan and I have this recurring habit of introducing ourselves to visitors at church at the same time, after which I have an unfortunate tendency to say that we don't usually travel as a two-pack of Susans, because I have yet to learn the art of saying hello and then shutting up. Also this:

Anyway, I don't actually know anything about architecture--my appreciation for buildings mostly extends to, "hey, that one is pretty!"--so for further anaylsis you'll need someone else. The Vontz Building is part of the University of Cincinnati, and is across from the UC hospital, so lots of cool and smart things are happening here. The building is already in need of some repair/renovation, despite being less than 20 years old. Bummer.

But seriously, how great is a building that looks like it was built
by one of the Animaniacs?

Outside the building, there's this:

I saw it and thought, "Wait, that Sabin? The polio vaccine guy?"
So, good job, history teachers! I hadn't realised until now that
Cincinnati was Dr. Sabin's home.

And this:

Great plaza space that was being used by approximately zero students,
But since this area is where science students learn things, I presume they're all
studying hard for finals. Or maybe they just don't like going outdoors that much.

I want one of these:

It's a giant leaf. I can't believe no one was sitting on it.

In the department of less-spectacular things found nearby, there's this ridiculous sign right at the intersection where the Vontz building (and the hospital!) is. I certainly don't want to ascribe ill will to the hardworking city planners and traffic engineers of Cincinnati, but who looks at an intersection that will be serving thousands of students and transit-dependent folks and thinks, "Let's not bother with a crosswalk on this side"? I mean, seriously.

Welcome, pedestrians! Please enjoy your walk all the way around
the intersection instead of going in a straight line. We certainly
hope you're able-bodied and not at all in need of the hospital's services.

People cross midblock near this intersection all day long, and who can blame them? I did the same thing coming back because I couldn't be bothered waiting for three light cycles instead of just one. Get it together, Cincinnati.

It's all the more egregious when you consider these things are within
a few feet of the "no pedestrians" sign. Talk about your mixed messages.

T is for Tyler #AtoZChallenge

Join me on the A to Z Challenge: I'll share a different thing from my new home, Cincinnati, every day for 26 days in April.

The Tyler Davidson Fountain, despite having a gent's name, is actually a lady, also called The Genius of Water. I will say this for Cincinnati: they're very good at giving credit where credit is due for the city's growth and prosperity. First to the pigs, now to the river.

The lights on the fountain change colour a bit. We don't have nine of them.

The Tyler Davidson Fountain is in the middle of the appropriately named Fountain Square, which (if the frequency with which people mention it is any indication) is certainly in the top five of most beloved spots in the city. The fountain was in the opening credits of WKRP in Cincinnati (I remember the show, but I'm pretty sure I remember it in reruns. Also, I just watched the title sequence for the first time in about 30 years and the city hasn't changed a lot).

On one of our three snowy days
last winter. I'm not complaining:
that's exactly the right number
of snowy days.

The fountain has been moved around a bit since her dedication in 1871, and has been in her current location since 2006. She was placed on the National Register in 1979. The water is switched on every spring (after being off for the winter months) in time for the Reds' first home game.

Also on Fountain Square: some nice landscaping, an enormous Christmas tree at Christmastime, an ice skating rink for a few months, a stage the rest of the time, tables and chairs, big signs with all the rules for the plaza. And an alleged bike rack. Seriously, bike parking is listed as an amenity on the Fountain Square website, and they are mistaken.

I think you misspelled "disgrace" on that website, y'all.

But at least there's a Red Bike station just off the square, so all is not lost.

On a chilly but well-lit evening last weekend.

Keep it as a Treasure

I was rolling along this morning on a pre-church errand (when church doesn't start until 11am, you can get a lot done in the morning, especially if you're an early riser), and enjoying the glorious blue of a sunny morning, which was a nice contrast from yesterday's grey and overcast. And also from right now on Sunday evening, as I sit and type this, in fact. Apparently that little bit of sun has to tide us over until the next sunny hour.

There's a song from a musical for everything, y'all, and this morning's "nice day" soundtrack was Oliver, which I haven't though about in years: "Who will buy this wonderful morning? Such a sky you never did see! Who will tie it up with a ribbon and put it in a box for me?"

I seem to have rather a lot of cloudy-day
photos. Maybe Oliver was right and
 it really *can't* happen twice.

It's a rare nice moment for Oliver in the musical, especially since everything is about to start sucking again as soon as the applause for the song ends, but the song itself has always felt strange to me. London street vendors are hawking their wares, needing to make enough sales to keep despair at bay for just a little longer, and in walks a kid who is, at the moment, full of hope. He sees a beautiful day and streets filled with activity. He of all people knows how bad life can be, but for the moment it's great. For the moment.

"There'll never be a day so sunny," he says, "it could not happen twice." An oddly cheerful song with not-entirely-cheerful lyrics right in the middle of what is a fairly dark story, and also an odd song for my brain to fix upon on a Sunday morning. We live in a world that is filled with despair, and it's easy to look around and see no way to make it better. The sunniest of days can't brighten a life that's filled with darkness.

But in Jesus we have hope, and that's what makes "Who Will Buy" such an appropriate Sunday song. Hope mingles with the despair and brings light to dark places. The sun shines into a life that sees more bleak days than beautiful ones.

It's easy, in the busyness and bustle of life, to forget to be a light. But be the light we must, because the world has plenty of darkness. To make the sunny day happen twice, to tie it up with a ribbon--this is the gift God has given those of us who call on his name, and it's a light we carry within that doesn't darken when the clouds roll in. And that's worth singing about.

Post title is a line from "Who Will Buy".

S is for Smale #AtoZChallenge

Join me on the A to Z Challenge: I'll share a different thing from my new home, Cincinnati, every day for 26 days in April.

Today was going to be about Cincinnati Shakespeare, but being as I already gushed about them here and here, and shared a pic of their piggy here, I decided to go with this excellent park instead.

Sharlie was just happy to pose with all the things.
She's the best park-exploring buddy there is.
Behind her is the Labyrinth that appears to not be named after anyone,
which is unusual in public-private projects like this one.

Like most things that serve the public good but aren't for cars, this park was in the planning and funding stages for a looooong time. (In fact, if you look at Smale Riverfront Park on Google maps, the satellite images of the western side are still from when it was a parking lot & stretch of ugly dirt.) The first stages of the park opened in 2012 and it was finally completed in 2015.

Yeah, Cincinnati, I'm going to be needing a few more of these
around town. Great touch to an already awesome space.

Among other great things, Smale Riverfront Park is home to the Cincinnati Bike Center (that I have not yet been in), a playground I desperately want to try if I can find a time to visit when every kid in town isn't there, and restroom facilities that are called the Portland Loo. Y'all. I swear some days this entire city was purpose-designed for me. Then I remember all the miles of bike- and pedestrian-unfriendly, car-dependent sprawl, and all the places I can't get to unless I get a ZipCar, and that feeling passes.

More great stuff. I may spend my entire summer in this park.

Also in the neighbourhood: the Ohio River Trail, which will one day stretch all the way west to Indiana and all the way east to the Little Miami Scenic Trail (!!! Yes, please), and then onward to somewhere not important to me. (No offence meant to those who live farther east, of course. Please feel free to not care about where I live, either. It's only fair.)

This mural reads, "Hats off to Cincinnati," for the local support of the park.
At the far eastern end of the mural are the bike racks that serve
the Great American Ball Park. I don't think a lot of people ride to Reds
games, but enough do that the racks were full the night I was there.

P is for Purple #AtoZChallenge

Join me on the A to Z Challenge: I'll share a different thing from my new home, Cincinnati, every day for 26 days in April.

We made it all the way to the 19th without me mentioning bike/ped infrastructure once! And let's not talk about one of the reasons being that there's not much worth writing home about. (Cincinnati is a Bronze-level Bicycle Friendly Community, but I've no idea how they managed that.)

It's kind of a greyish-purple. I hear it used to be purpler.

But today's subject, the Purple People Bridge, is apparently worth writing something about. At various points in its lifespan, it's carried trains, horses and carts, streetcars, motor vehicles, and people. One by one, all conveyances except humans (and the bicycles, rollerblades, skateboards, etc. that carry us) were banned from the bridge, which was placed on the National Register in 2001.

My sister-in-law Jennie, who I naturally dragged onto the bridge when she was in town, says she remembers driving over it (or more accurately, being passengered over it) when she was a kid. I have no such remembrances, probably because on family trips we never went deep enough into Cincy to get to that bridge. My grandpa stuck to the interstate and hauled caravan as fast as he could through all population centers to get us to Somewhere On a Hill Where His Parents Lived, Kentucky. (I treasure the memories of my visits to my great-grandparents' home. I do not treasure any thought of the drives there and back again.)

Clockwise from top left: The ever-gorgeous Sharlie enjoying her bridge
visit; some people can't see a bridge and not put a lock on it;
unintentional selfie when I was trying to take a pic into the sun
without getting off  my bike and hadn't noticed that I'd flipped my camera;
evening sun over the Ohio River.

Where was I? Purple People Bridge, right. In addition to being a car-free passage between two entertainment districts, it also connects the bike/ped paths on either side, such as they are. Plus you get nice views of the Cincy skyline (sorry, Newport, but you don't have one of those) and the other bridges over the Ohio. Most importantly, it's a direct path to the nearest Barnes and Noble, on the rare occasion that Joseph-Beth doesn't have what I'm looking for.