METROPARKCENTRALIS TONIGHT

This is a picture of MetroParkCentralis from across the lake. The camera is atop the Pier W. The Cuyahoga River hardly ever catches fire anymore. It's very cold but there is almost no wind at all. I just moved the car and it's actually quite nice outside given that it's 11 below 0. I have some awesomely warm and robust pajamas and slippers.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

In that vein, a word of advice from Big Brother and the City Mothers.

I always wonder what The Heights were thinking when they post these signs at lakes and libraries

BLUE TRUCKS MATTER

The jackass who parked this truck in front of the auto parts store yesterday clearly thought that Blue Trucks Matter and he didn't hesitate to show his dedication to the worthy cause by taking up 4 parking spots in front of the building he came roaring out of just as I was snapping this picture as he delivered his Parthian shots over his shoulder to the workers inside whom he castigated and rounded on in the most hateful matter that only a BLM sympathizer could appreciate as he screamed abuse at them and headed for his blue symbol of BTM.

BTM JACKASS

I've seldom seen such privilege and disdain for ordinary mortals as what is expressed by the BLM crowd and this guy was pretty typical for the type I BLM activist.

TAKING IN CIVILIZATION AT METROPARKCENTRALIS

We went out this evening to attend one of the last guided tours of William Shakespeare's First Folios which has been on display at the main library in Cleveland which is a wonderment in itself but I'll let Anne blog about that since she was the one that took roughly 2000 very artful and composed pictures of structures right out of Cleveland's Great Age when it was the 4th or 5th largest city in America and definitely one of the wealthiest. The rich turned out to be huge patrons of the Arts and they gave with a liberal hand what was theirs to give and their institutions and endowments continue to glean from the whole wide world some of the best of art and history. I really can't believe that in my secret heart I used to mock this incredible place.

After we left and headed home from a guided visit to the wonderful Shakespeare Exhibit and First and Fourth Folios on display there lead by a most incredible librarian, we went home my way which I'm pretty sure Anne would describe as sideways, dangerously fast/slow, and with ramming speed. We didn't actually head home so much as prospect down superior avenue in search of Case Western Resurv University to get her car which she ruthlessly left behind and which we found, as usual, at the end of the line. I think the British called it the Pale back in the day.

We suddenly rejoined the 21st century at the Wade Oval which is where a lot of the patrons lavished art and history on an unsuspecting populace a long time ago. All of which is in a continuous flux of making it more and larger and better and adding parking of all things! We happened to drive through the Wade Oval Wednesday this day and it was my very first time seeing it. There were literally thousands of people out on the green by the Botanical Garden, Art Museum, wildly expanding Natural History Museum and all for some band they all appeared to be happy to listen to and maybe dance the night away to.

All said, it was eye opening for this rube from California.

I've been taking a page out of the genius of Scott Adam's blog and I'm kind of amazed at the animus against crooked Hillary. Three out of three that might have been reliably counted as very firm democratic party voters told me at lunch that they could not and would not vote for Hillary. Mind you, they won't vote for Trump either but it makes for an interesting cascade of votes on the other side this time as many of the republicans couldn't bring themselves to vote for Romney or McCain and stayed home and gave the election to a complete flubber. It was weird to see it in effect going the opposite way. I was so torn I had to lie down for a couple of hours.

I kind of look forward to next week. Most of the worthwhile buildings are built of stone and the Federal Reserve Building of Cleveland was built to fight off up to 60 days of civil insurrection and they guard the library's east, north and south approaches from across the block. It's an amazing place with buildings and statues designed to house gun turrets.

My kind of town.

CLEFT STICK

The forces of order have gotten themselves into a cleft stick. Nobody trusts them or fears them anymore. They created the space they occupy.  I spent a bit of time today looking into the abyss. It's easy to jump in and damnably hard to get out of. You really don't want to go there. WRT our uniformed goons who, other than the military, are way beyond any and all reproach, like Hillary, I'd invite your attention to WACO. Just google it. Why are all the bikers in jail and none of the people that burned little kids to death?

For our fallen I'd offer this. They were all good men.



It really is our job to decide who the good guys are. The police never feel any responsibility to eliminate the killers from their ranks. They still don't. They never will. I live in MetroParkCentralis. We will shortly be joined by all the goons that want to riot peacefully, burn down the city peacefully and get away with murder. The forces of order are going to enjoy that. What, after all, could go wrong?

WHY NOT A DARK HORSE NAMED MIDNIGHT?

I realize that the premier law of the land states,

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident ...

but since the actual law doesn't matter anymore, I think Trump should consider Nigel Farage for his Vice Presidential running mate. It's not like anybody could realistically hold up the rule of law in some lame denial of Trump's right to choose his own running mate. It's not like it's an actual crime. And, let us be honest, the VP job is the best sinecure on earth. All you have to do is appear sober once or twice a month, gabble something pointless and meaningless and retire to your garden. Funny how some people consider Biden's experience as VP qualifies him as a possible DNC rival to the anointed one.

Meanwhile, here in MetroParkCentralis, the city darkens. I went downtown this afternoon only to find many of the major roads had been completely resurfaced with fresh blacktop an inch deep or were in the process, to make it all look all shiny and new in the square mile that the TV coverage will show of the city that has enjoyed an overwhelming explosion of dynamic capitalism and resurgent enterprise!

Still, it does look impressive and little different from the city I remember of 5 years ago when I went through it the very first time, lost and alone and it struck me then, as it strikes me now, that the casual vandalism and litter that marked the cities of my youth isn't there. I don't know what it will look like after Occupy and the rest of Bolsheviks and anarchists have spent a week or two making their own distinctive mark on the place that I have no doubt budgeted for the events leading up to the event, the event itself and security for the event but probably didn't even think about the post occupation cleanup. Phase V always escapes most planners.

If the title makes you think of a cherished Consul of Rome appointed by Hillary, that's not my fault.

IT'S NOT A SMALL TOWN

I did end up getting the hair cut yesterday. As I walked in I commented that it was my first entrance without other patrons present in the little 2 chair shop and the owner smiled and said that not only had she managed to finish her lunch undisturbed, she also managed to sweep up. I admired the room and mentioned it was also the first time I'd ever been there without finding myself ankle deep in hair, and then I bravely sat down for the usual.

As I sat there on the receiving end of a very good haircut, I asked if she was going to be at dinner that evening and she was answering when the phone rang with her husband asking her what time they were leaving. I arrived a little early, to shop, and the MC/owner asked me something that got us discussing that my barber would be there that evening. He shook his head and said, "she isn't on the list." I told him I was pretty sure she was going to be there. She's shows up pretty much every month. He went off to call her but it was too late. He set a place for them anyway.

When she showed up, in good time, it turns out that 70% of the men present know her very well since they also get their haircuts in that little shop. Sheeesh! No wonder it's so crowded. These people drive in from all over MetroParkCentralis to get their hair cut at her chopshop where I got this, slightly modified by me, masterpiece.

I'd tell you more about the dinner,  but it's a secret.

ART

"Where is the San Diego Art Museum," she asked.

Damned if I know. I mentioned that I had heard that the art at the Guggenheim or the LA Craft Center with Tar Pits was good but that I had, sadly, never been to either. She thought there must surely be a rival in San Diego to MetroParkCentralis and the Oval but I had to confess that the best we had for almost a decade was an exhibit of Torquemada's Implements of Torture and sadly, it had moved on. Gentle readers, she was not impressed with America's Finest City's Art. It's just not the same.

Art in Metro Park Centralis in yonder building

I mentioned the jet fighter that landed on water skis on display at Balboa but she demurred. Women are fickle.

I lived there for over 30 years. I visited the Louvre countless times, the Smithsonian, the Prado, any number of museums all over the world, every single building in Balboa and the Art? It escaped me. There was Images of Nature long ago next to John's Waffle Shop in La Jolla but it had its counterpart at Stapleton which had the same art but is long gone and she used to fly through Stapleton. I know, just birds, polar bears, penguins and giant mosquitos.

We were forced to confess that San Diego was artless.

A WALK IN AUTUMN

I went for an Autumn walk before winter adds its dimension to walking in MetroParkCentralis. It was a simple uncomplicated walk through the wilderness, downtown and then back up through the lakes. It's a nice place.

Crossing the Stream outbound

Cutting through the Swamp

Management Offices at Think Box

Over the rail look at the Art Museum

Tourists throng the Lagoon

The Artist and his Paraphernalia for recording his Garden 

A Glorious Red Tree in MetroParkCentralis

On Dam Looking Downstream to Bridge

Shark

Bloodsucker going after my burned and broken arm

After the Zombie Apocalypse

This is what I missed living all the years in the Middle East and SOCAL. It's not better, it's different.

BETTER RED

HI AND TIGHT IN METROPARKCENTRALIS

I walked up the road today for a haircut at the usual place and joined in the conversation. It was a little surreal talking to the man who brought us:

Turns out he lives two streets over.

SEASONAL LIKE EVERYTHING HERE

Here in MetroParkCentralis we have wonderful food that rolls to places convenient to us for lunch or breakfast but sadly, they are seasonal and they fade away as the leaves begin to fall and summer draws to an end.

Farewell foodtrucks

CLOUDS

Because,

we go to this place a lot. It is a dive but it is our kind of dive. It currently sports the name of the American Tavern, prior to that it was the Blue Star and, oddly enough, before that it was the American Tavern. The staff always remains and the peppercorn bacon cheeseburgers and steak quesadillas are awesome. One can dine and watch basketball or baseball or football. Yeah, it's one of those places that eschewed cable and decided to go with 27 satellite dishes on the roof.

There is a backside to it but we've never investigated. We are quite happy with the front side.

SWAT

What's that?

Look at that alice gear for a police visit.

Just how many grenades and magazines do you Rambos need  to take down a house in America?

The gestapo and stazi didn't bring this much firepower to a house raid.

METROPARKCENTRALIS

We are basking in the warm embrace of the big media. I don't think I remember the city and environs of Cleveland ever making it into the press in such a good way. We have food!

Cuisine second to none!

Seriously, it's a nice place. Speaking as one who inhabited the West Coast for ages, who knew? We also have some really fine cultural attractions. I won't mock them. They are treasures. I'll buy any reader a beer who comes to the MetroPark. Well, maybe just 3 or 4 of you. Get here early, beat the scrum.

LEAVING AS I FOUND IT

This will slowly turn green over the next couple of months and then it will be a cool and leafy place with a small river running through it and it's about a 5 minute walk from home so I can drop by anytime I want even when I'm not passing through and just going to somewhere else. I'm looking forward to it more and more.

It is a park, but not a MetroPark. It lies bounded between 4 roads with confusing names that don't match the surroundings and mislead with false allusions to directions they don't go. It is, nonetheless, a very peaceful place. Still, there are small poignant signs of immortality that show that others have wandered a little farther than I.

I'll catch up some day. As it happens, the young lady was the granddaughter of a man with an atrocious cockney accent. We are fortunate that he publicized the affliction that carried off this young lady and that the echoes linger long after I remembered why it was dangerous beyond belief to give small children any aspirin. We certainly don't give any little girls we know aspirin. We didn't even have it in the house.

The news these days is grim. I'm tired of it. I have taken a 6 year hiatus from televised news, can I do no less with internet news? I don't really think I can. The whole world is bound up in earth shaking events that set the future stamp of history plainly for any with eyes to see. It is clear to me that nothing will change the outlook or opinion on any particular matter for those who are slaves to their own beliefs and ideology. There's really no point in trying anymore which is largely why I have left off antagonizing Skippy and a great host of others.

This being the day and age for it, I simply wonder how the good socialists can fail to accept the truth of this:

unless they have some other explanation for how the most industrialized and advanced city in the world turned into ruins while the slightly radio-active ruins of another city blossomed into a beautiful industrial city at the same time.

I'm just going to skip over the bits I no longer care for. I'll be fascinated in the weaponization of RC aircraft and I'll be interested in learning what the Korean ferry collided with before it sank. Won't we all be amazed if it was an old Russian submarine? I have to admit I'm much more used to hearing about our submarines accidentally ripping the bottoms out of ships but it's a growth industry and who knows, maybe it was just a rock.

I CALLED SPRING

It wasn't much. We went out to the farm this weekend to visit with relatives and the alpacas, llamas, camel, goats, ducks, chickens, cats and bees and it snowed. We drove home to find the snow almost 4 inches deep. That is just wrong so I called Spring and it came.

Not only did I get blue sky for the first time in 5 months, our Man of Winter (plow guy) came today and pulled his marker stakes out of the driveway. He will not be back to plow until next winter. It's official now. Spring has finally arrived.

METROPARKCENTRALIS

There are a couple of places that have become happy ports of call here in MPC. One is the Blue Star Tavern in Solon on Miles Road. It has a nice atmosphere, plenty of TV to watch sports, good company and you cannot beat the steak quesidilla. Seriously. They make the best steak quesidilla in the western hemisphere. If you are fan of just steak and cheese ask for without the sauce.

Another great place is Moosehead Hoof and Ladder in North Olmstead Falls. It has a deck outside for dining and watching the river and the railroad traffic. The food and service are great. Both are friendly to military veterans.

ADVANCING THE BANNERS

I took a short break from reality as it exists in my corners of the interwebs and visited most of my family for a few days. I had a good time and had a chance to reflect on how different we all are in just about all of the ways that one can be and still be a member of the civilized and educated first world. Nothing bad or wrong with any of us, just different. And the same.

I have not liked the news since I returned home. It is filled with things that are deeply amusing because I find that mostly these days I laugh at the human condition that the West has so invested itself, its integrity and its treasure in defining and shaping. Not only did a ship of fools manage to trap themselves against a lee shore and become surrounded by ice in high summer in the Antarctic seas, they raised such a fuss they got all of their rescuers stuck in the ice too. All have now had to call upon the USCG to come and rescue them after the Chinese, Australians, and Russians failed. These were global warmists out to prove the undeniable global warming in response to mankind by demonstrating that there was no ice at all in the Antarctic summer.

The problem is though that there are a million stories every day just as bad and just as ridiculous. I don't make lists and I don't read conspiracy theories but ask yourself what kind of civilization elects a man who can show nothing at all in his past or background to justify electing him mayor of a small town in Alaska? What about Benghazi? What about the IRS actively investigating "enemies of the regime?" What about the NSA spying on literally everybody in the world?

The New Yorkers have elected themselves a wonderful progressive to lead them into the wild years. They will no doubt be shocked to discover that crime skyrocketed in the Big Apple right up until the media actively goes along with the politicians in charge there and suppresses the data on the crime rate and the victimization of the middle and lower class by new thugs. If you ever wanted to experience NYC, you should go soon since it will increasingly come to look and feel like Detroit.

What I like? I drove from Washington DC to the edge of the Laurentide icesheet here in Metro Park Centralis into the teeth of a winter storm that dumped about a foot of snow on the roads and didn't blink an eye because the highway departments in Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio not only know how to do their jobs properly, I expect them to do them properly all the time. And they do. The roads were fantastic.

The respun news is filling with stories about Russian scientists and others discussing global cooling and its potential effects on humanity. Personally, I prefer the hot to the cold but then I spent years basking in the Persian Gulf and Middle East. It does become a constant trifling annoyance though to avoid countering the utter lack of science with another pack of "scientists" who present different conclusions from what MUST be the same facts. I mean, we all agree on the facts right?

I read a story in the Air Force Lifer Times about a B-1B that crashed and left one hell of a smoking hole in the ground back in August. It seems that the plane was on its way after that last flight, to the great Air Force Depot where it would enter a 60 month overhaul. Yes yes, I know. Nobody spends 5 years overhauling an aircraft and it was a misunderstanding of the life cycle maintenance concept for B-1Bs but nevertheless, I thought it funny. Because nobody was seriously injured. I watched a B52 crash not far from my house in Emeryville once. It was one of the saddest things I've ever seen.

I hope any smart crafty Air Force guys who read this blog would assure me that the USAF really doesn't spend 5 years overhauling a single aircraft.

And to all my critics I must point out that, yes, I know they are sentence fragments but I am trying to hone my press credentials so I can attend the Modern Language Association's annual party in Chicago next week with press credentials and since they don't write so good, I should try not to show them up. I draw the line at misspelling words though and any made-up words are obviously spelled correctly. The MLA has been a source of great merriment for over two decades, ever since I met my other brother-in-law who actually attends them from time to time.

I hope that all are healthy and enjoying the new year! I am.

BLUE BIRDS

There was a man who lived in MetroParkCentralis and missed the blue birds of his youth and didn't care much for the birds in his neighborhood.

So he made his own and put them everywhere, where they have stayed for quite some time. You see them scattered throughout the neighborhood in ones and twos, perched for the long haul.

People around here reckon you need a passport to cross over to the western bank of the formerly flaming river. I argue that you don't actually need a passport to cross over to the west.
You just need it in order to get back to this side.