Winter day in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park

So I took a little hike on the Towpath Trail in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, thinking I’d have the place pretty much to myself. I was mistaken. The place wasn’t especially crowded, but there were cars in the parking lots, a few hikers and a few more cross-country skiers. Plenty of birds too. More on that later.

But first, pretty pictures!

I saw a fork in the stream.

The colors in winter are often so muted, it's hard to tell if the image is color or black and white. Bluish clouds kinda give this one away.

Plain lady cardinal. Seems kind of cruel that in the world of birds, the guys get all the looks.

These nuthatches are surprisingly aggressive!

About the chickadees and nuthatches. I noticed as I was walking from the Bolanz Road trailhead toward the beaver pond that the birds seemed to be following me. Which I thought was a tad odd — usually they scatter, especially goldfinches. But he chickadees were definitely following me. “Maybe they’re curious,” I thought. While returning from the pond, I noticed the birds were following me again. Then one swooped right out in front of my face. Then it did it again. Kind of freaked me out. They can’t be protecting a nest in winter, can they? I mentioned the chickadees to a woman on the trail and she says, “Oh, they think you’re feeding them. They’ll eat right out of your hand.” Memo to self: Next time bring bird seed. I initially identified the bird above as a chickadee, which if my too-big-to-be-field-portable field guide is correct, is actually a nuthatch. They’re similar in size and coloring and they often can be seen in the same places. I believe there were chickadees around as well.

The snow and ice make the beaver dam more obvious.

The transition from land to pond is in various degrees of freeze and thaw.

OK, I tweaked the contrast on this a bit (OK, a lot) to make the image more obvious.

Some critters were light enough on its feet to cross on this thin ice.

Indigo Lake

The train was running today. I didn't see it, but I heard it.

Watch out where the huskies go ...

Winter sky

SOPA is DOA, RIP

Buh-bye, SOPA, we hardly scorned ye.

So just for the fun of it, let’s do a poll!  *

* Not a scientific poll. Results likely to be unreliable and far removed from reality.

 

 

What I said two weeks ago about SOPA: Swatting skeeters with a bazooka:

A fracking dilemma

Faithful readers of AkronDave, all three of you, probably know that I have written from time to time about hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a drilling technique to release natural gas trapped in underground rock formations, particularly certain shale beds.

Generally, my posts have been framed in the context that fracking might not be a good thing, that there have been lots of anecdotal bits of evidence, if not much (if any) empirical evidence, to support claims that hydraulic fracturing poses a big threat to the environment. Complaints of fracking wells contaminating well water on neighboring properties have been around for years. Worries that sewage treatment plants can’t adequately treat fracking wastewater before it is released into streams where it can contaminate drinking water downstream have been around for a while.

And most recently, a series of low-grade earthquakes over the past year in the Youngstown (Ohio) area have been pretty convincingly traced to a wastewater injection well, culminating in a rather large (for here) 4.0 quake in December that prompted (oil-friendly Republican!!) Gov. John Kasich to shut down the well until further study.

So, just to sum up: Fracking wells themselves are seen by critics as threats to environment. The effluent from these wells are seen as a threat. And the injection wells, that is wells in which fracking wastewater is injected deep underground as a means of “safe” disposal, are now seen as potential threats.

Defenders of the injection wells say (correctly, apparently) that this is the first injection well among hundreds to have any such trouble.  Apparently there is some sort of undetected underground fault that may have been “lubed” by the injected brine. OK, fair enough. Let’s beef up geological surveys for these wells, take a little more cautious approach, and make sure this stuff stays in the well and doesn’t seep (or God forbid gush) out.

Defenders of the fracking wells have said (much less convincingly, in my well-reasoned and carefully thought out opinion) that the fracking techniques pose no threat to neighboring wells, that the chemicals (most of which they decline to specify, although that’s about to change) in the saline solutions they inject into the ground won’t harm farm animals, Bambi or your grandchildren.

Sorry, not buying it.

But … 

The Vallourec seamless pipe mill is going up in Youngstown.

The fracking boom is creating jobs.

There are so many fracking wells going into the ground in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and West Virginia that demand for steel pipes for these wells has spawned plans to build a new steel plant in the Youngstown area. Real jobs. With good pay. Not some crap jobs schlepping pizzas or slinging burgers for minimum wage. You can’t live on that, and in your desperation to take those jobs you’re (by “you’re” I mean “I was”) stealing those crap jobs from teenagers, who end up without even a crap job.

How many jobs? Industry estimates claim 200,000 jobs will be generated by hydraulic fracturing wells. The Youngstown plant will employ about 35o workers. For an old Rust Belt city that has nearly disappeared altogether, that is some badly needed good news.

And 21,000 tons of steel is going in to build the pipe plant itself. So there’s that. More jobs.

So I’m pretty conflicted about this.

We sure could use the jobs. We could use the oil and natural gas, to reduce our dependence on imported oil even a little bit.

But …

There’s that contemptible But again – we can’t continue to frack if it’s going to poison the water hole or trigger more earthquakes, release a plague of locusts, etc.

And so I’m going to say it, even though it’s sure to send oil-industry types eye-rolling themselves dizzy:  We need better regulation of the whole hydraulic fracturing industry. And we need to restore home rule in places like Ohio, which took that away while the general public slept a few years back.

Let’s embrace what science — real science, not industry whitewash — finds and embrace it, one way or the other.

Pardon the disruption

Nothing original from me here. Just your basic cut-and-paste job. Which SOPA would make illegal (except that Eloqua actually wants us to do this). I’m just being an obedient servant to their marketing will.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) – swatting skeeters with a bazooka

So there’s a bill floating around in Congress. It’s called the Stop Online Piracy Act. The idea is to protect the intellectual property rights of artists, studios and large media companies.

But beneath the covers lie some pretty interesting unintended consequences – or maybe they’re not unintended. Maybe there’s a killjoy who really wants to destroy YouTube and any other Internet-based social medium that thrives on sharing of photos, videos, audio clips and so forth.

Wikipedia describes some of the provisions (Because I’m too lazy to drill down deeper, let’s be honest): “The bill would make hosting unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for 10 pieces of music or movies within six months.

“Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws especially against foreign websites. Opponents say that it infringes on First Amendment rights, is Internet censorship, will cripple the Internet, and will threaten whistle-blowing and other free speech.”

Once some observers realized what might happen, they started making noise. GoDaddy publicly supported the bill, which triggered a wicked backlash of customers dumping GoDaddy as their web host. GoDaddy quickly backpedaled, but enough former customers are angry enough that the PR damage has been done. And they’re trotting out Danica Patrick to save the day.

And the big social media companies are contemplating thoughts of uncorking a “nuclear option” – going dark simultaneously to demonstrate their displeasure with the bill. Of course, they risk annoying users left in the cyber-darkness unless they rally the troops to join in solidarity.

But now that a lot of voices are rising in opposition, the chances that this bill will pass look pretty slime.

When people pay attention to the crap that’s being done in palaces in the Middle East or corner offices on Wall Street or the hallowed halls of Capitol Hill, when we actually pay attention and decide we’ve seen enough of this crap and make some noise, real change can happen. Not always, and not always right away, but enough to give the knuckleheads in charge pause.

Maybe this time the voting public will remember come November.

Nah, who am I kidding?

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Late night

We stayed up past our bedtimes. Tried to stage a group photo and all we got was this:

Up too late. Joe yawned himself right out of the picture. From left: Joe Kreuzman, Matt Wilson, Molly Wilson Kreuzman, Yvonne Wilson Horstman, AJ Linzell, Rose Linzell, Lindsey Wilson, Bob Linzell, DeAnne Wilson, Dave (the midget) Wilson, Cindy Davis Linzell, Tom Linzell – who somehow was immune to the yawns.

Christmas Eve

And so this is Christmas, or at least one version of it.

And the Grinch himself carved the roast beast (or turkey substitute)

Ready to skate or ski

Bumbles bounce! And now they hang around in artificial trees.

This is just a first sampling of the 250-plus photos taken in the past 24 hours. And we ain’t done yet.  Yes, this is a bit of overkill.

Season’s bleatings

See the Wilson Chronicles.

Click on the photo for this year's painfully lengthy version of The Wilson Chronicles

“El Camino” another great ride with The Black Keys

We’ve had more than a month of build-up to the new Black Keys release with the video of “Lonely Boy” popping up on YouTube in October, and plenty of industry buzz, and then early pronouncements by critics from coast to coast of “best album of the year” (2011 AND 2012!) and The Black Keys’ “best yet,” so expectations have been pretty high. After all, “Brothers” picked up a few Grammys in 2010 and was a virtual tie for my fave with Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs.”

The Keys have been darlings of the music biz literati for the last decade and built their following the old-fashioned way (touring, touring, touring and recording, recording, recording) and the new-fashioned way (via YouTube, Facebook and picking fights with Lady Gaga’s “little monsters” on Twitter. Hilarious exchanges between Pat Carney and some of those monsters and a Tweet or two by yours truly).

So it no longer surprises to hear The Black Keys on the radidio and on TV in commercials and show soundtracks. But that viral video of “Lonely Boy” (3.6 million views since Oct. 25!) has raised the bar for the duo from Firestone High School (my son Matt is a sophomore there now – no expectations for rock stardom, but, hey, you never know, right?).

While unmistakably Black Keys, “Lonely Boy” is definitely part of a gradual departure from the (mostly) straight-ahead electric blues of the early days of “The Big Come Up” and “Thickfreakness” to bringing in Danger Mouse to help produce “Attack and Release” and its signature track “Strange Times” to the breakthrough “Brothers” (viral hit “Tighten Up”)  and now “El Camino.”

And it’s great to hear “Lonely Boy” in higher fidelity than what my laptop’s meager speakers had to offer.

Dan Aurbach and Pat Carney have moved to Nashville, which seems to be a good move on several levels. It’s a a music “industry” town, which lately has become much more than just a country mecca, but it’s not L.A., so far removed from Akron that the boys can’t easily come back and arrange a photo shoot with the old hometown as the background for the quirky artwork directed and shot by Michael Carney (yes, brothers) and maintaining that Akron connection on many levels.

In a Facebook chat with Jim Carney, Pat and Michael’s dad (and a former colleague of mine at the Akron Beacon Journal), Jim said he believed the minivans photographed in the CD cover art and booklet inside represented their upbringing riding around Akron and its ‘burbs in minivans of a certain vintage. And some kind of rustbelt humor, I suspect.

Papa John's delivers to the Remedial Traffic School.

True story: As I leafed through the booklet with photos in very subdued color (they almost look black-and-white) of rusting minivans with wood panels and duct-taped windows, I noticed that the houses and streets had a distinctly old Akron look. No surprise, right? Then I saw the photo of a dark blue minivan (early-mid-’90s Chrysler “grand” variety) parked in front of a sign that said “Remedial Traffic School.” Yup, on East Tallmadge Avenue. And if you look through the  minivan’s front window, you can make out Ohio Route 8 signage. I have deep inside information that the Remedial Traffic School takes pizza delivery almost every weekend from Papa John’s. Pretty decent tippers, too, I’m told. I have my sources.

So, “El Camino,” a title named for a hybrid car/pickup from a few decades back, is an album featuring pictures of minivans of the ’80s and ’90s, itself a hybrid of pop music and a decreasingly apparent influence of blues (and, Auerbach reveals in an NYT article, that Carney hates the blues!! WTF!).

Which brings me to “Little Black Submarines,” the fourth of 11 tracks on “El Camino” in this rambling mess of a review. It (the song, not this rambling mess of a review) starts out as an acoustic dirge, almost, then shifts abruptly from mourning to anger.

Over the years the Black Keys have been compared to the White Stripes, another guitar-and-drums duo (one) out of a Midwestern town (two) that came up in the early 2000s (three) with some roots in the blues (four) but which rarely actually sounded much alike. The White Stripes’ Jack White tends to occupy the higher ends of his guitar’s range when he goes on a shredding tear, which is often, whereas Auerbach tends to dwell in the lower end (which served them well when The Black Keys performed as a pure duo — in early live shows at, say, the Lime Spider in Akron, you scarcely noticed the absence of a bass player because Auerbach filled it it well). This tune sounds just a little like the White Stripes when it shifts from acoustic to electric, but only until Auerbach starts singing, at least two octaves lower than Jack White. Plus, the White Stripes are kaput, which is neither here nor there.

The Black Keys have always been more muscular, and often a bit sinister, in their sound; this is not to imply that The Black Keys are somehow better than the White Stripes (I’ll save that argument for another time), just to state that they’re bloody different. Like Scotland and Ireland. How do you take your haggis? I like the White Stripes, I like the Raconteurs, another Jack White project. It’s just that, well, stop trying to compare them. OK?

Once again, I digress.

In “Money Maker,” Auerbach makes the best use of the talk box since Peter Frampton in “Do You Feel Like We Do.”  The riff toward the end has a kind of Southern Gothic vibe, as if something Faulknerian is about to occur. Hide the women and children! Oh, wait, they’re in on it. Southern blues have always had a kind of underlying sense of gloom and doom, and maybe that’s part of what fuels The Black Keys song.

“Sister” seems like a self-conscious effort to provide a companion for “Unknown Brother” from “Brothers.” Maybe it’ll grow on me. Maybe not. And, as you’ll see in track-by-track notes below, it does indeed grow on me.

And now this thought.

The Black Keys have been together longer than the Beatles were together. The Black Keys have been pretty darn prolific with seven albums as The Black Keys plus side projects such as the excellent Blakroc and other ventures by Auerbach and Carney, but the industry has changed. Pop culture has changed. In the ’60s, The Beatles transformed pop music, along with a few other giants, contemporaries such as The Who, the Rolling Stones, Led Zepp, the Kinks (and let’s admit the Brits were dominant) and the Beach Boys. OK, let’s mention the Doors, I guess.

Those kind of Revolutions aren’t likely to happen now, at least not in pop music as fragmented as it is now. Few radio stations will put The Black Keys on the same playlist with Katie Perry and Lady Gaga or Black Sabbath or Kid Cudi or Hootie and The Blowfish or (God forbid) Britney Spears or Shania Twain. Maybe Adele, until we’re all sick to death of her.

So where do we end up with this?

The Black Keys, El Camino.

Great album? Yes. Best of the year? Matter of taste, but it’s certainly among the best. Best by The Black Keys? I dunno, I’m still a tad partial to “Brothers,” but this is only on the third-and-a-half listen of “El Camino.” “Lonely Boy” is an instant classic, so that gives “El Camino” some momentum.

Keeper? Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I have to believe that the best is yet to come from The Black Keys. This duo’s growth from the early (and quite impressive) stuff to now has been nothing short of phenomenal. U2′s best came at about the 10-to-15-year mark (“Joshua Tree,” “Achtung Baby.”)  R.E.M.’s best, too (“Automatic for the People,” “Out of Time”).

I was a tad worried that The Black Keys would get stuck with the “blues phenom” tag and forever be marginalized, which mercifully has not happened. The 11 tracks on “El Camino” add up to a strong album, but I can’t say they’re all gold standard. That’s incredibly hard to do.  How many albums, whether vinyl, CD or other, are absolute gold from start to finish? Two, three, maybe four? How ahout Springsteen’s “Born to Run”? Pink Floyd’s “The Wall?” Nirvana’s “Nevermind”?  Even titans like the Beatles, U2 and R.E.M have had some dogs.

I believe the Keys can achieve a transcendent kind of greatness. This one comes close.

One more thing: Heed the sticker note: PLAY LOUD.

Track by track

1. Lonely Boy

Oh-oh-oh, I’m just a lonely boy. Love the dancing dude in the video. This is gold.

2. Dead and Gone

Starts out with a drum beat and bass line reminiscent of The Pretenders’ “Mystery Achievement” but shoots off into a chorus now familiar to Black Keys listeners. This one doesn’t do a whole lot for me.

3.  Gold on the Ceiling.

Yup, got those fuzzy keyboards, Auerbach vocals kind of in the back of the track. Catchy tunage. The Black Keys have mastered the catchy riff, verse and refrain.

4. Little Black Submarine.

‘Oh, can it be, the voices calling me, they get lost in and out of time. Told my girl I’d be back, operator, please, this is wrecking my mind. Everybody knows that a broken heart is blind.” Then bad things happen. This is a kickin’ tune.

5. Money Maker

“Oh, she wants milk and honey, she wants filthy money.” Subject to interpretation: Well-heeled suburban housewife or something else altogether? And there’s that filthy talk-box guitar solo. Full of malice and menace. It’s something The Black Keys do better than almost anybody.

6. Run Right Back

“That pretty head of hers. She’s the worst thing I’ve been addicted to. I won’t jump the track, I’ll run right back to her.” … Yup, been there, even when I know she’s not good for me. You’d think we’d know better by now. We don’t learn, do we? Auerbach’s guitar keeps this song interesting.

7.  Sister

Remember when R.E.M. was branded as the “jangly” guitar band of the early ’80s? Under 30? Nevermind. This might be the Black Keys’ bluesy guitar-riffy-with-organ-chord thang that they fall back on when nothing else presents itself. Not that it’s a bad thing, just that, well, it’s not setting the house on fire. * Now on the fourth or fifth listen, I’m picking up a groove on this tune that I didn’t early on. Some songs grab you at the very beginning, while others take a little time to grow on you. This is from the latter group. Patience, children. Patience.

8. Hell of a Season.

See 7. Sister. In this hell of a season, give me one more reason to be with you.

9. Stop Stop.

“You got an evil streak. They told me to stay away, but I was much too weak. This love was so strong it shoulda been against the law.  You gotta stop stop what you see me for.”

10. Nova Baby.

“You take it cuz you don’t know what you want. You waste it cuz you don’t don’t know what you want.” Nifty guitar solo, very tuneful.

11. Mind Eraser.

Starts out with one of those classic Black Keys menacing guitar riffs. And Auerbach announces, “I am the mind eraser, anything goes.” Woe, don’t let me me over, let me over ohhhh.

This is the kind of album that I’ll probably revisit, again and agina, then take a look at this “review” and wonder, what the hell was I thinking when I thought it was less than perfect. Which is to say it may yet prove to be perfect, or damned near so.

Matt’s friend Phil

Matt has a friend named Phil.

Matt says Phil is a good listener.

Matt says Phil doesn’t judge him.

Matt wrote a poem about Phil for an English class project.

His teacher was mildly amused.

Until Matt made another project featuring Phil.

Meet Phil. He likes to play pool. He's not very good at it.

Phil likes to swing. If only he could.

Phil's a little nervous on the slide.

It's so far down!

Matt’s kind of a goofy kid.

I don’t know where he gets it.

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving with family in Canal Winchester, Ohio, a charming little village southeast of Columbus. This was the first Thanksgiving at brother John’s.

I managed to take a few photos between rounds of overeating and games of euchre – and Eric and I even managed to squeeze in a run (well, what qualifies for what I call a “run”) – before we all collapsed in a heap.

It was a Good Day. It capped off a Good Week.

Let's see: Striped blue-and-white shirt: Check. Blue sweater vest -- oops, one of us is out of uniform. WWTS -- What Would Tressel Say? Well, he's kinda out of favor, so it doesn't matter.

Aunt Cici, our host Uncle/brother John, Weas (aka Mike), Eric The Small. And that's part of DeAnne to the far left.

Aunt Cici, Grammy (mom), Uncle Jim, Your Humble Blogger

Derek and Kim picking over the carcass as host John yells "Sweeney!" Not entirely sure what that's about. Not gonna ask.

Woulda been a nice family portrait except some idiot photographer cropped out half of dad's head. This is why we take multiple shots.

And this time Yvonne finds a way to crop Eric out of the picture. Maybe the big guy should take a hint?

Well, here's a motley crew: Grammy, Matt, Logan, Lindsey, Scott and a partially obscured John (yeah, buddy, you can hide, but we'll find you!).

Goofing with Lindsey, John, Nat and Logan

Matt, DeAnne and Lindsey

Matt n Nat. So who's the bigger ham?

And what a handsome couple (not that I'm kissing up for any particular reason)

About this #rapestow hashtag business

A few young near adults, most likely students at Cuyahoga Falls High School, have engaged in some social media activity that has “older” folks a bit concerned.

In the run-up to the big rivalry football game between two mediocre-to-bad teams in neighboring towns of Cuyahoga Falls and Stow, some youngsters have taken with great vigor to posting Tweets with the hashtag #rapestow. It rated a Twitter trend. A Twend, if you will.

Well, imagine the uproar that has erupted at Stow and among grown-ups everywhere.

Some of the kids (we assume it’s the kids) pushed back via Twitter, essentially saying, “Lighten up, old people, it’s just a joke — nobody’s actually raping anybody.”

Kids being kids, especially the teenage variety, like to push the envelope when it comes to what is considered acceptable behavior and language. I did it, you did, kids did it in the 1950s (remember rock ‘n’ roll?), even the cave-teens did it. Well, maybe not the cave-teens. They were too busy trying to avoid saber-toothed tigers.

But I digress.

The point being here is that sometimes in pushing the envelope we go too far.

Perhaps we have an example of the envelope tearing a bit here. The principals and administrators are in damage control mode now, trying to steer the students away from the hashtag war that has emerged out of this (now tags such as #trashfalls and the like are popping up).

The question of how, or if, to discipline these naughty Tweeters has come up. And administrators are in a bit of a pickle as to what, if anything, they can do to stop the offending Tweets. It’s a social medium, which has certain First Amendment protections, and it’s outside of school activity. Falls Superintendent Todd Nichols called it a “touchy” situation.

I guess the only thing to do is ask the kids, What if you or someone you loved were raped? Would this still be funny to you?

A bad day of golf …

… Still beats a good day at the office, at least in theory.

But if you believe that, you haven’t seen Ken and Erik golfing, or as I call it, galoofing.

To wit:

If you look closely you can see the ball flying by the golf cart, though a tad fuzzy, captured by my antique Nikon L1.

Erik takes a hack.

Torisky speaks at the pre-tournament conference.

The next sound you'll hear is the sickening "ploop" of dimpled ball meeting pond.

A postmortem finds that no animals were harmed in the shooting of this farce. But as our partner in grime Mr. Hauser said, the trees were crying for mercy.

This adventure brought to you by Wilson Hauser Torisky and Associates LLC.

So I had a class reunion

The turnout was a little disappointing, but those who did show up seemed to be having a good time.

I haven't paid for my copy of the picture yet. I'm working on it!

We were way past the pretenses of bragging about careers  (Me: Career? What career?). We bragged about our kids instead. No, really, I talked to some people in the space of those hours Saturday night perhaps more than I ever did while in school. Which might be the biggest regret I have about high school. I wish I had made a little more effort to get to know a few more people then.

Not that I was unfriendly. We had a friendly, pretty harmonic class. The jocks and the nerds and the stoners would actually hang out at parties and stuff. I floated among several circles – I hesitate to even call them cliques, because our class wasn’t very cliquish. At the reunion I recognized almost everyone instantly, which I thought was pretty cool. Didn’t make it to other “unofficial” events that had different groups turn up — I would have liked to hit the football game. Maybe wear my old #62 game jersey.

The smaller turnout (Still the best of the several classes that organized at the high school – which I thought was a bit odd, until the tours made apparent that the school viewed this as an opportunity to raise some $$$, cynical me) – where was I? Oh, yes – the smaller turnout gave everyone time to talk a lot more than a big crowd would permit. No hiding from exes and the like.

Some of the conversations got pretty deep – life struggles, marriage, death (I don’t recall much discussion about taxes). It wasn’t really the stuff I’d expect from a class reunion, but I felt like we were kind of in a comfort zone. So we talked.

The subject of nicknames came up (I’ll not state mine here, but it related to an aquatic rodent), which gave us all some laughs now decades later.

Decades.

Jeez, maybe that’s the part that bothered me most. We’re all getting older. Some of us aren’t of this earth anymore. We’re not fresh, shiny and new anymore, although most everybody looked terrific (I’m just happy to have all my hair intact). In one touch of vanity, I wore contacts to the reunion, which I don’t wear very often because they dry out my eyes. By the end of the night my eyes were toast.

Given my particular financial situation, I didn’t know if I could or if I even should go, but I did and I’m glad I did. Maybe next time I’ll have more to brag about.

Sept. 11, 2001

The second jet is about to strike.

Ten years ago an unthinkable evil unleashed its horror upon America.

Ten years is a long time, yet at times it seems so recent, the wound still fresh. Four hijacked planes changed the nature of the country, in some ways for the better but mostly for the worse.

For a brief period, we retreated from the increasingly rancorous public discourse about how we should live our lives or be told how to live our lives. For a short time we were united as Americans in our grief and the world was (mostly) united in its support for a deeply wounded nation.

But then fear and anger and even greed took over. Our government imposed ever-more intrusive measures to protect our “freedom” in the name of “safety” and “security.” We were on Orange Alert with an Islamofascist terrorist cell lurking on every town corner and mosques packed full of terrorists chanting “Death to America” and Saddam Hussein was leading the charge. Or something like that. So we went to war in Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, then started another war in Iraq with that known al-Qaida collaborator, Saddam Hussein. That, we now know, was utter crap. Yet we are still being groped, subjected to peep-show X-rays and made to remove our shoes at airports. We are spied on. We are still stuck in hostile areas in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Pakistan).

A bright, sunny day

I had just started my new job as day slot editor at the Akron Beacon Journal a week prior. It was Tuesday morning and I saw what seemed to be a small hole in the side of one of the World Trade Center towers. It was a bright, clear late summer day. Cloudless in Akron and New York. I thought, how on earth does a Cessna get lost in broad daylight? Instrument screw-up? I had no idea that it was actually a jetliner that had struck the tower. That soon changed. Then the second jet struck, and we knew something was seriously, horribly wrong.

A quick look into Google showed the World Trade Center could have as many as 50,000 people in those buildings or more. That number made me fear for the worst as smoke billowed from the towers.

Soon we were thrust into terms like Tower One and Tower Two, Boeing 767 and Flight 93. When the AP Newsalert came about an “explosion at the Pentagon,” there were audible gasps in the newsroom. This unknown enemy had struck at the heart of our military might.

I was aware of al-Qaida and pretty well acquainted with Osama bin Laden, but at this point we didn’t really have an idea of who could be behind this attack. It just seemed so brazen. Shocking.

People were jumping out of the buildings. And then one tower collapsed. And then another collapsed. I remember images of ash-covered people running for their lives as clouds of ash and rubble bore down upon them.

In the ensuing hours the news broke fast and furious and was often inaccurate or incomplete. Such is the nature of big, breaking news events.

We quickly decided to produce an extra edition, the first (and only) that I had directly played a part in. Columnist Bob Dyer stitched together an account of the events including some erroneous reports (See: “nature of big, breaking news events.”) Terry Pluto wrote a column, “Creation groans. Again, and again.” Rich Heldenfels wrote about what we were seeing on TV, and other hastily assembled staff and wire reports described the chaos of the day. The main headline, by committee, was “OH, MY GOD.” My subhed, cranked out in about 20 seconds (it fit on first try): “Unprecedented attack strikes U.S.”

A photograph on the back page of the wrap-around Extra edition showed the look of shock and horror on the faces of New Yorkers. Looking at it now gives me chills. It still shakes me.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Journalists live a strange dichotomy: Our finest hour, our best work, often comes on the very worst of days. Think about Pearl Harbor, or JFK’s assassination: Those moments are frozen in time with iconic images and headlines.  In my career I have been on hand for Hurricane Hugo on the South Carolina coast, both the Desert Storm and Iraq War (Son of Desert Storm, I sometimes call it), the recent murderous spree in Copley Township (I covered this at the scene) and of course 9/11 – an event so awful that it got its own date.

A strange quiet fell over us in the days and weeks that followed 9/11. The skies were empty. No vapor trails. Utterly empty. Bruce Springsteen wrote Empty Sky, a haunting song in his 2002 album The Rising, his response to 9/11.

The blame turned to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Military forces massed. Security measures were beefed up. Commissions were formed. And so forth.

No doubt there will be tons of other bloggers, columnists, pundits and know-it-alls putting in their 2 cents’ worth. But sometimes I just want to join the cacophony. Because I can. They haven’t taken away that freedom yet.

I grew up in the height of the Cold War, with the specter of nuclear annihilation always looming. Then the Berlin Wall fell and a New World Order came to be. My kids are growing up in a post-9/11 world. My son was 6 when it happened. Not long after, while playing with a toy jet, he blurted out, “Plane attack!” and swooped down with his plane and crashed it into an imaginary building.

He was imagining something that had been almost unimaginable days before.

 

Life goes on

Planks for the memories.

It was about 6 p.m. today, and I was returning from a decidedly somber event (viewed from a distance) – the wake for a 16-year-old girl who had been shot to death in one of those senseless slaughters you read/hear about in other places far, far away but not here, except this one was here.

I did not know her, or any of the other victims who were shot to death in a killing spree that lasted  less than 10 minutes, but you don’t have to know them to have been affected by such a shocking turn of events. I was there as an observer, keeping a respectful distance, to report the facts of the event and retreat back into my little life across town.

On the way back home I happened to notice two teenage boys in a parking lot near the intersection where my car idled as I waited for the light to change.

One of the kids climbed onto a utility box, about 10 feet high, and “assumed the position.” He and his buddy were laughing and I shouted out the window, “You planking?”  He and his buddy laughed and I started digging for the camera, yelling, “do it!” and just as the light turned green I snapped the shot.

My first spontaneous planking.

Even as we’re engulfed in the saddest moments of our lives, life goes on. Amid sorrow, there is joy. The world doesn’t stop. It waits for nobody. This thought occurs to me every time I see a funeral procession plod through traffic, holding up the busy folk nearby from going about their busy ways, if only for a few moments, before lurching back into motion.

I’m not one to get into “God’s will” and that sort of stuff, but sometimes you have to wonder why of all times I’d run across this little moment. And I wonder if anyone else at the intersection of Merriman Road and Portage Path noticed at about 6 p.m. on a Thursday in August that two young guys were having a goof on an electric box just for the hell of it, and got a good laugh out of it.

Still smiling.

My first mass-murder scene

The calls and emails starting pouring in shortly after noon on Sunday. Reports of gunshots fired near Copley Township, a mostly sleepy community outside of Akron, sandwiched among Fairlawn, Bath Township and other Akron suburbs. Initial reports from a couple of my editors was that there had been a shooting incident at the Fairlawn Swim and Tennis Club on Ridgewood near Schocalog. And off I went.

All's quiet at the swim and tennis club.

I stopped at the Swim and Tennis club, expecting to see stretches of yellow tape and crowds gathered around the chain link fence. Instead there were five cars in the parking lot, including mine, and less than a dozen people at the pool. No crime scene. One lady there said she hadn’t heard a thing.

Then Kymberli Hagelberg had an update: The scene was on Schocalog, but over by Copley Road, more than a mile away. Four, possibly five had been shot. I came across at Bath Township police officer manning one of the roadblocks and asked if there had been gunfire and how bad was it. It’s bad, he replied, and shied away from my camera. He directed me to the other side of the roadblock where authorities planned a media staging ground (insert eye-roll here).

That initial report was a mile or two off target. I hesitate here, thinking “target” is a poor word choice given the events that unfolded, but maybe it should stay. What happened amounted to a cruel, psychotic round of target practice.

Apparently, one man came unhinged and, with two .45-caliber handguns (including one he bought just last week), went on a crazed shooting spree that left seven innocent people dead and then he was shot by police. It all went down in about 10 minutes. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop-pop. Pop. Pop. Pop-pop-pop. Pop-pop-pop.

SWAT and uniform police gathered after the carnage in Copley had ended Sunday.

I ran into some old friends and former colleagues from the Beacon Journal, Jim Carney and Karen Schiely, near the media “staging” area, but most of us hung out near the barricades hoping to get a glimpse of what was going on. A couple of media types said they heard four dead. Five dead. Police uniforms and plain clothes from Copley, Bath, Akron and Summit County Sheriff’s office were all over the place. Then the CSI truck rolled in. That was all I needed to see to know that this was a major crime scene (watch enough crime drama?). Then someone shouted “Here comes the bus!” It was an RV with “Mobile Command Center” inscribed on the side. People caught in the traffic jam creeping by kept asking, “What happened? What’s going on?”  I started saying, “We don’t know,” though we actually had a pretty good idea.

Roger Sommer and Kymberli arrived separately at the scene and Roger tried some back road looks at the scene while I hung out awaiting the chief of Copley to issue a public statement.

More media gathered, lots of tripods and TV crews, and they started setting up camp along the roadside by the barricades, across the street from the designated media “staging area.” What can I say, organizing reporters is like trying to herd cats. Good luck with that.

Roger came back from his scouting trip with news that he whispered to me: Eight dead. He had managed to talk to some witnesses at and near the crime scene. One of them, who was too rattled to talk to him, had barely escaped with her life.

Copley Police Chief Mike Mier.

Copley Chief Mike Mier finally came to the makeshift press conference and told us a few bare-bones facts: Eight dead, including the suspected gunmen, spread out over four crime scenes on Goodenough and Schocalog, and one shooting victim hospitalized in intensive care.

As  is often the case with breaking news, the facts were still a little dicey and new information seemed to materialize every five minutes – the tricky part is discerning what is reliable information and what is speculation, rumor or wild conjecture. The number of victims at each “crime scene” as well as the number of crimes scenes changed as more reports poured in. Was it a domestic dispute gone wildly out of control? A dispute with a neighbor? Was the shooter known to the victims? Did the shootings occur inside the houses or out? Both?

Slowly, the awful truth unfolded: Three of the shooting victims were kids, including two students at Copley High School. They were in a parked car.  The killer chased an 11-year-old boy, the nephew of the killer’s girlfriend, cornered him in a neighbor’s basement and shot him in cold blood.

A SWAT team, a CSI team and hordes of other law enforcement teams swarmed the area but the carnage ended almost as quickly as it began: A responding Copley officer was joined by a neighboring former Copley cop and the Copley cop took the gunman out. The killer was later identified as Michael Hance, a Goodenough Avenue resident.

We’ll spend the next few months trying to make sense of something that inherently cannot make sense. Why did all those people have to die at the hands (and guns) of some guy described as a bid of an oddball who at the particular moment went off the deep end? Who is to blame? And then the what-ifs will turn up. What if one teenage girl had not been visiting her friend at the time? Might they both have somehow avoided the carnage?

I can only imagine what the survivors of this must be experiencing, just as on Sunday afternoon I could only imagine what had happened on Goodenough and Schocalog. And then I knew. I wish I didn’t.

Crisis? What crisis?

The above headline was the name of an album by Supertramp, a fairly popular ’70s pop-rock group (Wikipedia called it “progressive rock,” which seems a bit of a stretch). The joke title referred (or so I thought) to an entirely different sort of crisis or set of crises – you had the energy crisis, with cars lined up around blocks waiting to gas up and pay a buck a gallon, outrageous at the time; you had the ever-brewing Cold War with the sting of defeat in Vietnam still fresh; you had Nixon embroiled in scandal and resigning in shame; you had pollution, and so on.

This time around we’re trying to recover from a the Great Recession and now 3-year-old financial debacle largely of our own doing in real estate and finance/banking/insurance; we just inched back from the edge of defaulting on our national debt this week; we still have stubbornly high unemployment, a fact that remains acutely painful to many Americans. We have ever-more strident opposing sides squabbling over whether raising taxes or cutting costs deeper and deeper is the solution to the federal deficit and debt, etc.

It all seems a tad forced. Contrived. Of course I’m not the first to notice this. We’ve heard “manufactured crisis” and similar phrases popping up a lot lately in the news. A little less shouting at the camera and a little more cooperation could fix a lot of these things. But that would be too simple. Nobody wants to be seen as ceding any ground. At all. The accursed media continue to look for “winners” and “losers” amid the brokering over this latest calamity-to-be. The media tend to serve as enablers for shouting heads who are looking for the most “did she really say that?” sound bite.  All parties involved seem more interested in protecting their interests than solving problems and making this country a better place for everybody. And the discourse just seems to be getting worse and worse. We don’t talk to or with one another. We shout at one another.

CEOs and billionaires and big corporations are doing GREAT! They’re making money by the bucketful. The rest of us? Eh, not so much.

Conservatives complain that the liberals want to “redistribute wealth” as if it’s a bad thing. Hell, the rich have been doing it for 30 years! Look at the stats. The rich have grown increasingly rich with the middle class and underclass falling further and further behind. The middle class continues to shrink. That’s redistribution of wealth – it’s trickling up, not down.

Can you blame the rich for wanting to keeps what’s “theirs”? Well, not really. I bet even your garden-variety limousine liberal doesn’t want to get too carried away with all this “crazy talk” of goosing the tax rate on the rich to 50 percent or more. Why, that would kill my dream of a third home in the Hamptons. Where will I store my yacht?

Of course the conservatives don’t trust Obama – that socialist nouveau riche kid from Kenya.* He simply doesn’t belong, as Judge Smails would have said in Caddyshack.

A few among the super rich – Warren Buffett and Bill Gates come to mind – are putting their billions toward improving the world, but too many of them haven’t asked themselves, How much is enough?

Me, I’d settle for an even billion. I think I could live on that. I might even become a “job creator.”

* This is a joke, of course. Obama isn’t from Kenya. He’s from Indonesia. 

Birds of prey

Ospreys have taken up residence at the Water Works in Cuyahoga Falls. The young ospreys are about ready to fledge. In the meantime, mama and papa osprey are busy hauling in food for the younins. A passing bicyclist was happy to point out the nest when he saw my handy-dandy camera this morning. With the Cuyahoga River and Water Works ponds nearby, there’s plenty of food for the raptors. Hope they keep coming back. Further up the trail, I heard but did not see a hawk near the river

Mama or papa osprey. How can you tell?

Mirror, mirror ...

Fracked up

So whose bright idea was it to dump waste water from a hydraulic fracturing well onto forested land?

Did it not occur to anyone that the salt content of that waste water would kill most if not all vegetation in the forest? Anybody? Nobody? Bueller?

A bit of background: Waste water from a hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) natural gas well was spread “legally,” says the New York Times, in an area of the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. Two years later, more than half the trees are dead, as well as most other vegetation.  About 75,000 gallons were spread over an area less than a half-acre in size over the course of two days in June 2008.

And we’re surprised that it killed virtually everything there? I have a memo. It says that salty water will kill most non-marine plant life. I’ve seen it work.

Were there no biologists or botanists available to offer some advice (“Uh, don’t do that”) ? Apparently a soil scientist, The study’s author, Mary Beth Adams, was watching this. Apparently this was done in the name of science. Or something like that. Maybe it’s the headline that annoys me. It’s a “No sh!t, Sherlock” moment: “Fracking Water Killed Trees, Study Finds.”

But the salt water is not even the half of it.

“Although the exact composition of the fluids was not disclosed by the companies that manufactured them because they consider that information proprietary, her study noted, the main constituents appeared to be sodium and calcium chlorides because of their high concentrations on the surface soil.” So, um, we can tell you there’s a lot of salt in that water but we’re not going to tell you what else could be seeping into the drinking water supply because, well, it’s a secret.

Really?

We may not know exactly what’s going into those wells, here’s what’s coming out: Benzene. Methane gas contaminating drinking water. Chromium, arsenic and lead in numbers that exceed EPA limits. In some instances, people who live and farm with well water near fracking wells have reported overpowering petroleum odors in the water, or a slimy texture, and some house explosions have been blamed on methane gases leaking into homes.

The drillers deny and deflect. Their lobbyists and spin doctors tell a different tale. It’s clean, it’s safe. Don’t worry.

Of course the irony this is that natural gas is touted as “clean energy.” Until you see how it’s extracted from these enormous shale beds. Then, not so much.

Hydraulic fracturing has been around for 70 years or so. The techniques have changed a bit, the equipment and chemicals more sophisticated. But there are still too many unknowns. The chemical and gas leaching, the odors, the downstream threat. And yet it’s full steam ahead as Pennsylvania and neighboring states (including Ohio) greenlight these Marcellus shale wells.

Cuyahoga – a river, a song, a city

R.E.M. is releasing a special edition of its breakthrough album “Lifes Rich Pageant” on July 12 to mark the 25th anniversary of that album. R.E.M. had already achieved status as darlings of rock critics and college radio, but this album, with its radio-friendly hit “Fall on Me” and a solid set of tracks, including my favorite, “Cuyahoga,” propelled R.E.M. into the mainstream. “Document” followed, and then came a big fat contract with Warner Bros. and superstardom.

The song “Cuyahoga” really resonated with me in 1986, when I was a college senior (sort of) and aspiring writer/photographer (again, sort of).

I grew up in Columbus, some 100 miles south of the Cuyahoga, but I knew the river’s story. And I saw firsthand how Columbus and vicinity treated the Olentangy and Scioto rivers (note the Native names) like sewers. When “Lifes Rich Pageant” came out, I was taking a photography class. One of my projects was to go through a 24-hour day’s cycle and photograph it. One of my stops was along the Scioto River. That song kept ringing through my head as I took the photo, not an especially good one, and developed and glued it to a board. It’s a mournful song; at least that’s how it came across to me, lamenting the way these once-pristine waterways had become putrid industrial cesspools that ran brown with filth. Before Europeans came and settled in the Northwest Territory, Natives lived in the ancient forests of Ohio, with no boundaries to speak of except the rivers and lakes and mountains. The land and water were revered as sacred beings.

Michael Stipe later confessed to mispronouncing the name “Cuyahoga,” a word of indeterminate Indian tribal language that is supposed to translate to “Crooked River.” It was a heartfelt ode to the river and to the Natives who used to live near and live on the bounty of the river, and a plaintive mourning for the shabby way modern America had treated the river to that date. (“This is where we walked, this is where we swam.”)

The river has made a remarkable recovery since 1986. That recovery is even more remarkable when you consider that only 17 years prior, that same river had caught fire because it was so grotesquely polluted with industrial filth. More improvements are needed, such as rebuilding the sewer system so that heavy rains don’t dump raw sewage into the river. Blowing up the old dams helps oxygenate the water. Then let nature take its course. The Crooked River is returning to life.

“This is where they walked, talked, hunted, danced and sang. Take a picture here. Take a souvenir. Cuyahoga.”

Cuyahoga Falls, taken from a pedestrian bridge near the gorge.

The photo above (and several others here) was made possible by the demolition of old industrial buildings along the river in Cuyahoga Falls. The restoration of a bridge at High Bridge Glens Park gave access to this part of the river, which had been hidden from view for years by the industrial buildings. A century before, this had been the site of an amusement park visited by William McKinley at one point.

In this “Unplugged” video, Stipe correctly pronounces the river (KIE-ya-HOE-ga). In the original recording he pronounced it “KOY-a-HOE-ga,” which I thought might have been closer to the original Native language. It sounds more lyrical. But I’m no linguist.

I believe this is actually Chippewa Creek in Brecksville, but it's certainly part of the Cuyahoga Valley.

At Brecksville Station. That's the Route 82 bridge in the background.

A fawn on the Bike and Hike Trail. The Cuyahoga River is just to the right of this frame. There is an abundance of deer and chipmunks all along these trails. I'm thinking a coyote or two would be a good thing. Food is plentiful.

The river occasionally floods.

A fork in the river. They didn't call this the crooked river for nothin'.

125 feet above the river. It just seems higher. Another of a multitude of crooks and bends along the Cuyahoga.

The mighty Cuyahoga.

Relatively clear water runs north of Peninsula.

Filthy geese. More food for the foxes and coyotes. Are you listening, Wile E. Coyote?

The water is still a little brown, but it's 10 times cleaner than before.

This heron got skittish when I stopped to take its picture.

This heron was too busy hunting to be bothered by me.

A moving river never freezes. In the background you can see an artificial dam. The rest of the way down is natural rock. Apparently the namesake Cuyahoga Falls were obscured by a concrete dam. That just seems unconscionable.

Check out that blue ice! It's refraction, I'm told. Same principal behind why the ocean looks blue.

This is not far from that 125-foot overlook. A lot closer to the river, of course. It runs clear here.

This dam used to be part of a mill, I believe. There were dams like these all along the Cuyahoga, which contributed to the decline of the water quality with stagnating pools of low-oxygen water. When they knocked out the Munroe Falls dam a few years ago, I noticed an almost immediate improvement. A year later I caught a smallmouth bass about a mile downstream.

From Songfacts

“Cuyahoga” is the name of the river in Northern Ohio that the city of Cleveland was built around. There were many tribes of Indians which used to live in the region (“This is where they walked, swam, hunted, danced and sang”), and they simply called the river the Crooked River due to its zig-zag nature and many U-shaped turns. “Cuyahoga” is an Indian word meaning “crooked.”

The lines, “This land is the land of ours, this river runs red over it,” “Underneath the river bed we burned the river down” and “Bury, burn the waste behind you” refer to how the once-pristine river became so polluted that it famously caught fire several times between 1929 and 1969. The last river fire in 1969 garnered much national attention, and helped expose the problems industrial waste was having on our environment. This helped spur the creation of the Clean Water Act as well as led to the formation of a new government agency, the Environment Protection Agency (EPA). (thanks, James – Cleveland, OH, for above 2)

R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe explained in the November 12, 2009 issue ofRolling Stone: “It’s an Indian word I mispronounce in the song. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire in 1969 because of pollution dumped into it. The song addresses environmental devastation and our history with Native Americans, which isn’t pleasant.”

Green. This was shot with a Nikon Coolpix L1, early generation digital point-and-shoot. I think the lens was a little smudged, making that soft-focus effect movie makers use to keep older actors and actresses looking younger. They use Vaseline on lenses. Sometimes the soft focus has interesting results. This might be one such example. It looks kind of misty.

Side note: The Cuyahoga River ends at Lake Erie in Cleveland, and Cleveland’s water intake, the “crib,” is only a couple of miles offshore from the mouth of the Cuyahoga. There is a very real and serious interest in making the water in the Cuyahoga safe for sustaining life. Entire cities depend on it. At long last, we’re beginning to recognize that.

Bambi on the bike path

Bambi wasn’t in imminent danger, but he needed to scoot out of the way before I got to the bottom of the hill. There was at least one other fawn scampering about with mama doe, I guess crossing from the river side of the Bike and Hike path between routes 59 and 91 in Silver Lake/Munroe Falls toward a woodsier section. Gangway!

The deer gave me that usual puzzled look, as if asking themselves, “What’s that dude doing? Is that a gun or food?” Wish I’d had the D-90 with me; it would have given me a nice close-up of Bambi on the bike path. This’ll have to do.

If Bambi thinks he can stop me from coming down this hill, he's got another think coming.

He thought better as I got closer.

With mama, safe and sound. Baby still has his spots.

Burial at sea

On Saturday, my family held a brief memorial service for my stepdad. Because he was a veteran, the Coast Guard provides a courtesy voyage to scatter ashes on Lake Erie. It was a bittersweet moment. There was laughter. There were tears.

Mom with Dad's ashes. Natalie is curious.

Debbie and Griffin.

Cleveland Browns stadium. And the Rock Hall.

A sailboat passes between Eric and Matt.

It was a hazy day, so a clear photo of the city skyline was not in the cards.

Mom and John with Cleveland skyline in background.

Eric, Matt, Lindsey and Scott.

CeCe at the captain's seat!

Natalie maybe not liking the ride so much.

Griffin, Dave, Dabbie and Uncle Jim lurking in the background.

Lindsey emerges.

Yvonne, Derek, Mom.

Cecilia, your humble blogger, Derek, Mom.

Lindsey and DeAnne.

Yvonne, Jim, CeCe.

Derek does the honors.

Group hug.

Roses had a special meaning to Mom and Dad.

Here’s an earlier post about this approaching trip.
Cecilia led us in the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled, as to console;

Not so much to be understood as

To understand; not so much to be

Loved as to love;

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

It is in dying that we awaken to eternal life.

To everything there is a season …

It’s been a year and a half since my stepdad died. This Saturday, we will take a Coast Guard ship out on Lake Erie to scatter his ashes. A burial at sea.

At the time a year and a half ago, I posted a little thing I called My Two Dads. I don’t want to repeat that because, well, that would be redundant. And it seems kind of silly to plagiarize myself, although it wouldn’t really be plagiarizing.

It was fairly well received at the time, so mom asked me to write something for the occasion of scattering his ashes. And so now I’m waiting for that flash of inspiration. Come on, inspiration, I’m working on a deadline here.

Maybe this will help:

Ecclesiastes 3, King James version

¹To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

²A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

³A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

⁴A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

⁵A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

⁶A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

⁷A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

⁸A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

And now some music inspired by this passage. The Byrds were surprisingly true to the King James version. The King James Bible can be a little difficult to an untrained ear (including mine), but it certainly is more elegant than some more modern translations.

And, finally, something:

John W. ‘Bill’ Siegle

Dad joined the Navy at 17 so that he could sail the seas and see the world. In its infinite wisdom, the Navy sat him behind a typewriter. Today we are here to right that wrong and to finish that unfinished goal. Let’s give Dad a proper send-off to sea.

Dad – or Pops or Grampy – was a man of lots of action and few words. Paradoxically, he was a prolific reader and an avid crossword and jigsaw puzzler. He possessed a vocabulary that would be the envy of an English professor.

He had an enormous heart but needed a donated kidney to continue his good work for the better part of two decades. His heart finally gave out after years of working overtime.

He was born in Columbus, Ohio, and spent most of his life in Columbus. He lived in the Denver area for a period before returning to Columbus, but he often spoke fondly of Denver.

So he started a family, with a wife and three adopted kids. This was long before it was vogue to adopt babies from China or Mozambique. Apparently God had other plans for Dad: His first wife, Betty Siegle, died suddenly, leaving Dad with three kids. Call it divine intervention, luck, fate. In 1972 he took Janis and, yes, four more kids to feed and shelter (and fix their cars). Where he saw need, he stepped up to the plate.

He’d complain about the weather and the Buckeyes, but not much else.  And he had a soft spot in his heart for dogs.

Dad lived an exemplary life of hard work and steadfast loyalty to his family and friends. He had an extraordinary work ethic. He was honored with The Integrity Award and The Golden Wrench among other recognitions. He did not seek adulation or praise; he won it through his selfless service and humility. He was a great man. His was a quiet greatness, a greatness borne out of hard work and dedication. He led through example.

He was licensed as a master plumber and was a longtime member of Plumbers and Pipefitters Union Local 189, and he was skilled in many other trades as well.  He had a hand in building skyscrapers, high schools, neighborhood swimming pools and in restoring cars – engine and body. Hardly a week passed by that didn’t involve either a moonlight plumbing job or neighborhood project. He built things and he fixed things. He raised skyscrapers and families. He made the world a little bit better each time.

It was hard watching him in his last years, as age and a failing heart sapped his strength. That’s not the Pops I remember. I’d rather remember him as the strong man who bore enormous burdens and led an honorable life with grace and dignity: I remember a giant.