Cleveland, Ohio, and the Gates of Argonath

"Two pairs of entrance pylons on both the west and east ends of the Hope Memorial Bridge (formerly the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge) have figural reliefs symbolizing the development of road transportation. These stylized 43-foot high pylons, carved of Berea sandstone, are well-preserved examples of Art Deco figures, all holding examples of road transportation." --
https://www.bluffton.edu/homepages/facstaff/sullivanm/ohio/cleveland/bridgepylons/hering.html

The Argonath, also known as the Gate of Kings or the Pillars of the Kings, was a landmark on the northern edge of Gondor. The Argonath consisted of two enormous rock pillars, carved in the likenesses of Isildur and Anárion facing to the north. Placed upon huge pedestals, each of the two figures held an axe in its right hand and its left hand rose in a gesture of defiance to the enemies of Gondor. The two statues stood upon either side of the River Anduin at the northern approach to Nen Hithoel. -- http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Argonath

"The Argonath ... marked the northern border of Gondor, as nearby down south were previous outposts, Amon Hen and the Amon Lhaw.
The Argonath was originally constructed about TA 1340 at the order of Rómendacil II to mark the northern border of Gondor, although the realm was greatly diminished in size by the time the Fellowship of the Ring passed the monument on February 25, 3019."  -- http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Argonath

"Perhaps the most memorable features of the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge are the 43-foot tall “Guardians of Transportation” which line its sides. These four huge double-sided pylons, carved out of sandstone from nearby Berea, Ohio, represent technological advances made in transit, with each Guardian holding a different kind of vehicle in its massive hands. Frank Walker designed the pylons and Henry Hering did the actual sculpting with the help of a number of local stonecutters."
-- https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/73

"In the 1970s, Cuyahoga County Engineer Albert Porter wanted to tear down the pylons in order to add lanes to the bridge. He did not get his way. So, when the bridge reopened in 1983 after nearly three years of repairs, the Guardians of Transportation were still in place. The bridge was renamed at this time, becoming the Hope Memorial Bridge, in honor of actor Bob Hope and his family - English immigrants who came to Cleveland in 1908. William Henry Hope, Bob’s father, was a stonemason who worked on the construction of the Guardians in the 1930s."
-- https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/73

"Henry Hering is well known for his work as an architectural sculptor. Much of his work consists of allegorical figures done in the Beaux-Arts tradition, although a few of his later works, such as the detailing in Severance Hall and the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge in Cleveland, Ohio, were done in the Art Deco style. Hering's reputation as a sculptor decreased as International Modernism dispensed with architectural, figurative and allegorical work. As with many other such artists Hering's oeuvre is now being reexamined in a more positive light. In 1928 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1937."
 -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hering

"Hering is further remembered in relation to the unfortunate crash of an American B-25 military airplane into New York City's Empire State Building on July 28, 1945. The largest sections of the plane remained lodged in the building, or fell directly to the streets below. However, one engine ripped from its wing and traveled some distance away, regrettably landing in Hering's top floor penthouse studio, located in a building near the crash. At the time, newspaper coverage of the accident reported that, although the artist was not in his studio at the time, about $75,000 worth of his work was destroyed." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hering

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For the Glory of Old Lincoln High

Next weekend is the 50^th Anniversary Reunion of the Class of 1967 of Lincoln (Lincoln West) High School of Cleveland, Ohio. A few things got in the way of my attending, among them Hurricane Harvey. I actually did not graduate with that cohort, having transferred to John Marshall High in the middle of the tenth grade. However, for odd reasons, LHS was 7-12, so I spent almost four years with my classmates. Of all the benefits of my education at LHS the greatest has been this, writing and editing.

 

Chandler & Price, Cleveland, Ohio, 1912
(LetterPressPrinting.com.au)

We boys had to take shop classes in the 7^th and 8^th grades; and the teachers could not fail us because it would keep us out of the junior honor society. I never did well at wood, metal, or mechanical drawing. But printing grabbed my attention. This is how books, newspapers, and magazines were made. I learned the arcane craft of creating the carriers of ideas.

In today's world of desktop publishing with Word, XML, and Madcap Flare, we do not know the Job Cases (upper case for capitals, lower case for little letters), the composing stick; the leads and slugs between lines, the molly quads and nancy quads to justify type; pulling proofs, the frames, furniture, and quoins; the kiss impression when cold type touches paper and you ride the pedal up, brushing out one sheet, and placing the next as your weight on the treadle brings the platen forward.

At the same time, I had journalism as a half-credit elective. Junior high schoolers were not allowed to actually work on the school newspaper. The next semester, I was in high school and on the staff with a semester of experience, counting headlines, and learning the special vocabulary of newspaper publishing. Today, very few educated people know the masthead from the banner, a tombstone from a gutter. Even though newspapers are as quaint as Amish buggies, the principles of good layout remain – even for tweeting.

 

Composing Stick
(Edinburgh City of Print. Wikimedia Commons)

I went from The Lincoln Log to the John Marshal Interpreter to the College of Charleston Meteor. A score of years and half a dozen life changes later, I was setting type on a DEC VAX in Donald Knuth’s TeX, the parent of SGML, the grandparent of HTML.

In Cleveland Public Schools, English classes alternated each semester between grammar and literature. In junior high, we had a lot of general reading. In the 11^th grade, it was American Literature and in the 12^th, English English Literature, by Jove. Although hormones lit up 

“Evangeline,” “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” “Annabelle Lee,” and “Lenoir,”  my secret passion was tracing word origins to their Indo-European roots. 

I became a technical writer when no one else on a database management project wanted to write the user manual.

"A Plan of Printing Instruction for Public Schools"
Library Catalog Card. Another root technology.

Twice, classmates from Lincoln High intersected my career path, Walter Rowinsky, and Greg Stricharchuk, both writers, formerly editors of the Lincoln Log. In 1987, I was writing user manuals for a start-up in Lansing, Michigan, when I saw a product review in PC Week or PC World by Walter Rowinsky. How many people could have that name? I sent him an email (via Fidonet most likely). It was he. Wally recommended that I write product reviews. I did place some, but sold more writing about the politics and sociology of computing, hacking, and informatics.

About 1993, I discovered numismatics. A few years later, I was the international editor of Coin World. Combing through the Wall Street Journal while researching fraud and theft in the hobby, I found an article about corporate crime by Gregory Stricharchuk. Not many people could have that name. So, I emailed him, probably via AOL. Greg said something like, “Where else would a kid from Tremont end up but under a street lamp on a dark night waiting to meet a hoodlum?”  

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Irene Louise Babos Marotta Joseph

Today would have been her 86^th birthday. My mother left me with two enduring learning points.

• Good music is cheap and cheap music is expensive.
• It does not matter how much money you have as long as you are educated. 

5th Grade Buhrer School
Miss McGovern, 1941

There were many others. She was given to maxims, glittering generalities, and statements of opinion as fact. From my point of view, she had about 12 or 13 good years, and then slid downhill for about 25, though she enjoyed a couple of counter-trend peaks. After she died, we cleaned out her apartment and two salient facts gave me pause:

• She had no mirrors (except for the one that is standard in the bathroom). When we were kids, we used to make Transylvania jokes about being Hungarian; maybe it was not so funny. 
• We found a candle that had been burned at both ends.

 

c. 1964

Mom played the piano and owned a couple of them over the years. She taught my brother, Paul, and me to play, though I soon stopped because he eclipsed me. Nonetheless, I learned to read music, and later did not learn to play the coronet and French horn. We had classical (mostly Romantic) music on high fidelity 33-1/3 rpm records. Interestingly enough, Mom was supportive of rock ’n’ roll. Mindful that good music is cheap and cheap music is expensive, she still paid for 45s of hit songs from Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, mostly at my brother’s request. I was not much for pop music until 1966, when I had my own favorites.

Cleveland Dental Manufacturing 
is now a residential loft space

Her best years started in 1956 to 1961 working for Walter S. Smith’s Cleveland Dental Manufacturing Company. Cleveland Dental did some overseas business, and Mom brought home envelopes with foreign stamps. She tried to get us interested in stamp collecting, but neither of us had much passion for it.

When Mr. Smith retired she worked a year or so more for the new president, but after the sale to Cavitron, she found another job. She then went to work for Dr. Robert Morgan Stecher who had offices at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital from its days as City Hospital. He was not a practicing physician, but an academic researcher whose passions included early horses and the genetics of arthritis. He was independently wealthy. His father, Fred W. Stecher, was a pharmacist who invented Pompeian Massage Cream  and built his home in Lakewood on a natural gas well that brought lease income.

 

No longer interested in politics.
City Hall Chambers 1998.

Working for Dr. Stecher broadened her horizons. She took us to the Cleveland Health Museum, bought me memberships in the Natural Science Museum, and split season tickets to Severance Hall with neighborhood doctors. (Our home was two blocks from City Hospital. Some of the rentals, ours and others, went to interns and residents. I benefited from a lot of extra-curricular education and exposure to the research labs at the hospital.)  She wrote Dr. Stecher’s international correspondence and prepared his journal manuscripts. Their office was next to the hospital library; and I bought some discards for a dime each.

After Dr. Stecher retired, she worked as an office temporary until she met her second disastrous husband. That marriage lasted no longer than the first, but the comparison is between the harsh voyage of the Mayflower and the gaiety of the Titanic.

When it became clear that neither Paul nor I was going to graduate from college, she took over management of our sister’s education and got Kelly through Baldwin-Wallace with a major in English and a minor in Biology, including a field trip to the Galapagos Islands. Mom did not live to see Paul and me go back to graduate with honors.

However, she did participate from the audience in the Cleveland punk music scene hanging out with Paul’s band, and billing herself as “Irene Styrene.”  

Her last job was as a full time administrative assistant at Cleveland City Hall. By then, she had lost her passion for politics. Forty years earlier, she had sent me to school with a Nixon-Lodge pin and the next time around, it was AuH2O in 64, which is how I ended up in Young Americans for Freedom in 1965, and ultimately wrote a blog.

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