Ohio RenFest

I'm seeing references to knights from sources as varied as my blog-buddy at The Archdruid Report to tonight's episode of House, so lest anybody think I'm all rant and no fun, here are my vids & pics from Ohio Renaissance Festival.  Huzzah!  Blogger is being finicky about letting me post more vids so I may have to add more music and jousting in separate posts.  Enjoy!

Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival, June 1970

It's hard to believe it really happened.  A year after Woodstock, moon landing and Manson.  Mere days after the Kent State massacre, with University of Cincinnati graduation ceremonies canceled and the campus on lockdown, just in case of sympathetic "unrest."  It was a major music festival held in the final days of Crosley Field, home of Cincinnati Reds baseball.  Better yet, the show was videotaped by WLWT-TV and the edited highlights aired later that summer as Midsummer Rock with simulcast audio on local FM rock radio stations.  This was of course before our once-great local media (with shows like Midwestern Hayride, 50/50 Club, etc.) deteriorated into generic corporate mush.  (I can't stand WEBN radio "personalities" and music programming, WLW is a haven for simpletons and blowhards, and local news is a shallow and uncritical repetition of corporate and government press releases spiced with sensationalism of murder, molestation and weather hysteria.  They should save the money they blow on weather radar and hire some real reporters.  Or for quality entertainment it would be great if Nick Lachey hosted a revived 50/50 Club broadcast live daily from the Aronoff Center, with Bootsy Collins leading the house band.  They both seem to care about the town.  How about it Nick & Bootsy, are you reading this?  Stan Aronoff, get the ball rolling!)

Marcy & I attended the screening of the video at the Main Public Library (which happens to stand on the site where her grandfather had the first-ever Cincinnati-style chili restaurant back in the 1920's, but that's another blog post).  I wore one of my special wild shirts as a magic charm to ensure the attendance of an old acquaintance of ours (Bevo) who also owned the same style shirt.  It worked:  he was there, but did not wear The Shirt.  The can be only one, and I am it.  In the meeting room where it was shown there were plenty of old hippies.  One nice chick moved her oxygen tank so we could have the end seat for the wheelchair.  She and her gal-pal had both been at the concert and it was a real kick to hear them reminisce.  Another nice hippy touch was the free slices of watermelon offered to all.

 

There were opening remarks from the organizer then video magic began.  There was a large lineup (Bob Seger, Mott the Hoople, Ten Years After, Zephyr, Savage Grace and more) at the all-day concert but the video included only 5 bands:  Grand Funk Railroad, Mountain, Alice Cooper, Iggy and The Stooges, and Traffic.

Grand Funk was first on screen.  My old band mates always liked them and we played a few of their songs even within the past year but after watching them flog away at "Inside Looking Out" for over 20 minutes I'm not sure if I can ever stand to see or hear them again so I won't bother you with any pics or video.  Mountain was up next.  They did some OK bluesy rock but the song "Theme For An Imaginary Western" stuck with me.  Enjoy.  I seem to have an aging hippy moment and goofed up my HTML code so click here for that video.

Next act on the vid was now-famous Alice Cooper but this was before he had any hit songs.  He goofed around with some unstructured sounds and silly theatrics and then started the old swinging-a-watch hypnosis bit on the audience until somebody flung a big hunk of cake that smacked him right in the face.  To his credit he smeared it around into his own face real good then flung it back into the crowd.  Move on.

The next act was what we had come to see:  Iggy and the Stooges!  They were not the most musically sophisticated band by any means but the simplicity and intensity of the performance earned Iggy the nickname "Godfather of Punk."  The Age of Aquarius is so over!  Iggy probably was the first to stage-dive and to crowd-surf, even crowd-walk as in this iconic still pic from the vid. So rock-n-roll!  They were long overdue for their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year.

Now watch this AWESOME vid and check out the square they got to host.  He doesn't know what to make of it!  Iggy got the best reaction from the crowd at the screening.

I would love to know what became of the sketch that one person in the crowd was doing, and I'd love to see snapshots taken by the kids that Iggy was diving amongst.  Are you out there kids, and can you share those with us?

Last act on the vid was Traffic, featuring Steve Winwood.  They were great musically, very eclectic.  I especially like this song "John Barleycorn" because it feels timeless and has some rather challenging harmony.

They say they pulled the plug on Traffic promptly at midnight.  The screening was over.  There was an intermission to be followed by a panel discussion of some people involved and then a book signing by Bob Seger's manager of his book of photos.  But we were ready to roll on out into the hot summer with songs of 40 years ago running through our heads.

Union Terminal Murals

These mosaic murals by Winold Reiss depict the history of Cincinnati.

Here's one for Lili.  Notice the potter's wheel is belt-powered from an overhead shaft that runs the length of the work space.  This was typical in early factories.  The shaft could be driven by a watermill or a steam engine.  Pretty much anything from a sewing machine to a saw could sling a belt over that shaft and get to work.

Union Terminal

Cincinnati's Union Terminal is such a beautiful place.

Sometimes it makes me think of a Crosley radio.  Where are the dials & knobs?

Mercury, Merchandise, Commerce.  It's the same root word in all of those.

Imagine - this was begun in 1929 and finished in 1933.  The Depression  made for less traffic than what it was designed for, but there were still alot of people coming and going.  Imagine the goodbyes.  Some people leaving, looking for a better life in another town.  Some headed for the Civilian Conservation Corp, some to college, some off to the military.

I saw a friend off on his Amtrak trip back to Milwaukee a few years back.  He had to catch his train at 3 a.m.  The Terminal was dark and empty, and we had to get buzzed in to a special door to get to the train depot.  The waiting area had wooden benches sort of like pews.  It had a real creepy lonely feeling, so I hung out with him until his train came.

About the time I was in elementary school, Union Terminal was home to a science museum.  When my class visited on a field trip I saw my first laser.  It was so remarkable that it felt like science fiction.  Now lasers are toys,

Is America's Heartland Prepared For An Earthquake?

So the Chicago area recently had an earthquake.  At 3.8 on the Richter scale it would scarcely be noticed in a place like Southern California but in America's heartland, so recently after the disastrous Haiti earthquake, it was a bit of a shock.

But it shouldn't be such a big surprise.  The earth beneath our feet is just a cracked crust floating on mushy molten magma.  Marcy & I often say "Everything's temporary" and our so-called terra firma is no exception.  We can get so caught up in the trivial distactions of the here and now that we may deny the evidence that things were not always as they are now, and won't be the same in the future either.  If we dig around, we find seashells in the bedrock.  How's that for an indication of change in the long term?  We may focus on the big snows that have fallen all over America and see that as evidence that global warming is a hoax, but ignore that fact that the ice at the poles is melting and providing more atmospheric moisture for snow.  Anyway earthquakes happen as part of an only partially understood natural process, not as a fulfillment of prophecy and certainly not as divine retribution for a deal with the devil as that hateful jackass Pat Robertson would have his followers believe.  Quakes happen all the time, especially around fault lines, and while we cannot yet predict them well, we certainly should do our best to cope with the possibility of experiencing an earthquake and its aftermath.

One place where we are pretty complacent about earthquakes is smack in the middle of America.  Located in Missouri, the New Madrid Fault Line was hammered by a series of quakes estimated to have been about 8.0 in magnitude.  Luckily, this happened in late 1811 to early 1812, less than 10 years after the United States bought this real estate from France in the Louisiana Purchase.  It was a very sparsely populated frontier area.  Also at that time we were a bit distracted by the British troops burning the White House and such in the War of 1812.  Missouri was way off the radar, so to speak.

That quake was massive.  It caused the Mississippi River to reverse flow for a time, sent a 30-foot tsunami-like wave running up it, created Reelfoot Lake, caused a lot of soil liquifaction and sand volcanoes, made river banks collapse, even rang church bells as far away as Boston and toppled chimneys in Maine.  But like I said, it was a sparsely populated frontier, mostly log cabins scattered about.  Stilll, it was bad enough for the governor of the area to make what is believed to be the first request to the U.S federal government for disaster aid.

This is a map in the public domain courtesy of the US Geological Survey, your tax dollars at work.  It compares the damage range of a moderate New Madrid zone earthquake in 1895 (magnitude 6.8), and a similar Los Angeles quake (1994, magnitude 6.7).  Lots of cities in the red zone:  Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, St. Loius, Indianapolis, plenty more.  Prepared for an earthquake?  I doubt it very much.

We have now have FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.  The more conspiracy-minded among us believe that they exist only to maintain government control.  If you believe that their job is to protect and rescue us and wipe our noses and make everything all better, then you should ask somebody from New Orleans how well they handled Katrina.  I don't want to fear them and I don't want to be dependent on them.  However, I do give them kudos for providing some very sensible information on how you can take action for yourself to be prepared for earthquakes and other hazards that may come your way.  READ THEM HERE AND GET STARTED NOW.  They have tips for lots of other scenarios too, check them out.  You can also order free hardcopy publications.  Good information and training are also available from The American Red Cross.  Leave a comment to let me know what you have done!