Cleveland - Aunt Ethel - Terminal Tower - Cleveland Clinic - John Carroll U

Here's my Aunt Ethel's apartment, Essex House, on Van Aken Blvd in Shaker Heights. I got outa the car and peeked in the lobby which once housed two birds in a fancy cage. My mom still has 75 percent of Aunt Ethel's furniture in her family room. It ain't going anywhere.

Brick buildings like this one were prevalent when I grew up.


Back in the old neighborhood. For me, a feeling of estrangement...is that the right word? I sure didn't belong there. I could've been a trick or treater pretending I was a 64-yr-old wanderer.


Even the curbs had a singular beauty in the way they curved round.



I'm waiting to show you John Carroll University, a Jesuit coed college, founded in 1886, in University Heights, Ohio. All these little cities are contiguous w/one another, like the former city-states that finally became Italy.


Let's cruise around.

Religion has always fascinated me. Once when I was about 12, I was listening to a Billy Graham sermon on TV. When he asked followers to come f/w to accept Jesus, I was ever so tempted , I was next door in the Turnocks' family room, but something stopped me. "C'mon," they said. "We dare you."

I settled for buying Handel's Messiah and listening to it obsessively at home.

One of my favorite tracts on religion is Edmund Wilson's introduction to his book on the then newly-discovered Dead Sea Scrolls. He writes w/incredulity about the Mormon religion.


Cleveland's theater district. Selma has had season tix for 50 years. She's trying to get used to being blind but it's not easy.


Our old movie theater is still standing. We'd go to the movies nearly every weekend for a double feature. My favorites were the Universal International swashbuckler films w/the likes of Stewart Granger and Rhonda Fleming. We'd buy all the great candies: good n plenty, mounds bar, baby ruth, licorice nibs, payday, forever yours.




Cleveland Museum of Art. Their head honcho was recently hired by the Philadelpia Museum of Art in a nationwide search. All I can remember about the museum is that it's located in beautiful Wade Park.

Let's do Wade Park! (oh, don't you hate people that say that?)

Wade Park was clean. No one was about.



Hello little mermaid, are ou the same one as in the Hans Christian Anderson story?



Will you accept this woman as your lawful wife?



Architect Philip Johnson designed this sculpture that Donna hurrying thru.

I was in no rush at all. What a great feeling. Nowhere to be.

The ornate Terminal Tower building. The Cleveland skyline features only five prominent buildings. This is b/c businesses and colleges are located in all the little 'city-states' that are spread around.

Places are close enuf together so you needn't spend a long time traveling. Lemme try to find some pix of the amazing Cleveland Clinic.

This lovely bldg could be the Clinic but it's not. I think it's a library.



Found this on the Internet. The clinic helped revitalize the city. Block after block is filled w/b'ful Clinic buildings adorned w/little ponds and sculptures. Let the infrastructure grow and bring work to the people, my struggling Mr Obama. Nancy Pelosi brilliantly touted his accomplishments on Charlie Rose last nite, dodging Rose's trademark interruptions and finishing her own senences.

I was in never never land myself, last nite, falling asleep to the effex of legal heroin and my newly added Neurontin, having transient psychotic thots as I fell asleep.

Hey! Are you up for some great food at a Jewish deli? Make mine a tongue sandwich at Corky and Lenny's.



For dessert I went up to the case...



and ordered one apricot rugelach for myself. I also got a boxfull of pastries for Mom and Ellen who will freeze em and dole em out: coconut squares, Russian tea biscuits, coconut macaroons and more.

Had enuf? Let's see what's on PBS or the retro channel.