Cleveland Rocks - Sort of.
In which we spend some time by the side of a Great Lake, look at paintings and guitars, plus the usual updates on words written and spoken.
I never thought Cleveland would be a city that I’d spend a lot of time in but over the last decade, I’ve visited it at least once a year, mainly for work, either conferences or for a few years working for a company whose headquarters was in the outskirts of the city. But despite the frequency of those visits I never really felt I got to know the city that well.
That changed a few weeks ago, when it was once again conference time in the city, but this time I had Gill with me, and because I didn’t read the schedule correctly, we also had a few free days to take in the sights.
Having someone with me who was taking everything in for the first time made me look at things with fresh eyes too.
On our first day, we spent the afternoon just walking the city between our hotel and the harbor area on the shores of Lake Eire. Gill remarked on the number of open green spaces in the downtown area. We also had fun picking out interesting architectural features (such as the vine lamp standard on one building corner) and all the impressive statues and art installations.
Although I will say that for a city center, it was seemingly devoid of coffee shops. There were plenty of restaurants, but we didn’t find any places to just grab a snack and sit and relax. To follow up on that our Starbucks app kept saying there was a Starbucks near our hotel, but I could never find it - speaking to someone at the conference we eventually found out that it was located on the second floor of the Casino next door!
Day Two saw us heading out to the University Circle area in the company of one of the most entertaining Uber drivers I’ve encountered so far. Curtis was eager to talk about a variety of subjects from the Cleveland traffic system, to the speed of life, as well as his revelations after the Eclipse about how the Sun is actually blue in color, plus his life lessons from reading the Hulk as a teenager. He was well worth the tip we added.
We spent most of the day at the excellent Cleveland Museum of Art, checking out the various galleries and shows. I will give the museum props for being arranged in such a way that if you followed the main galleries in order you walked through a chronological journey on the development of art styles over the centuries.
Among the special exhibits we enjoyed the Focus on Monet, and the Fairytales and Fables exhibit on book illustration, it was great to see so many recognizable commercial artists get their due alongside the usual fine art suspects in a high-profile museum exhibit.
I had fun in the armor hall as many of the displays related to the era I’m researching for the current short-story project. Plus any chance to throw out Monty Python movie quotes makes for a good day out.
We rounded out the day with a quick stop at the Natural History Museum to say hello to Lucy, the famous hominid human ancestor named after a Beatles song, and Balto, the famous vaccine-carrying sled dog of animated movie fame.
Day Three was devoted to the must-visit Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame. I have visited the museum on several occasions over the years, and to be honest, have always had an ambivalent feeling about it. Mainly because I’m not sure it actually belongs in Cleveland in the first place, and secondly because it’s all a little too self-congratulatory and doesn’t do a very good job of representing the story of Rock (the museum in Memphis does a much better job of that.)
So I was interested to see what Gill’s take on it would be as a first-time visitor. While we spent a good two to three hours in the Hall of Fame, she too felt it to be somewhat underwhelming and disappointing. I think the length of our stay was more because of our interest in the subject than the way it was presented. As Gill said: ‘You can only look at so many guitars and jackets before your eyes glaze over.’
In retrospect, this trip did indeed give me a new appreciation of Cleveland overall, but ironically the one area that Cleveland failed to rock us was with Rock itself.
Alan
Other Stuff
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Word Slinging
Words continue to be flung at the current short-story project. I plan to get the first draft completed over this coming weekend. So fingers crossed.
Podcasts
I recently enjoyed another fun visit to the depths of Sherwood Forest with the Longbox Crusade podcast crew. This time to discuss the captivating Queen Eleanor - You can check it out at the link below.
Pages and Screens
Books Read in 2024-- “Agincourt: A New History” by Anne Curry
Anne Curry’s work on Agincourt is often cited as the most detailed and researched account of the 1415 battle in which a small English army defeated a much larger French force. A battle immortalized by Shakespeare in his Henry V play.
As such I was looking forward to reading this volume. Unfortunately, I found it tough going as the impressive amount of detailed research and presentation of alternate accounts of the events at Agincourt gets in the way of the narrative.
If you want to know who was where, how much they were paid, and every conceivable current theory around what happened, then this is a great resource. But if you want to know the story of Agincourt, then there are other (perhaps less accurate, but more readable) volumes out there which might work better. - I have a couple of others on the shelf to try, so I’ll let you know when I get around to those.
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Bond Briefings
In the latest edition of our bi-weekly James Bond Lexicon newsletter, we discuss recent encounters with the numbers, 0, 0 and 7.
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Before They Were Beatles Updates
The next episode of THE FORGOTTEN BEATLES podcast now live and available on your podcast platform of choice or directly at the link HERE.
In this episode, we uncover the man with the weeping guitar who was credited as "Eddie Clayton." (aka Eric Clapton).
The April issue of the Before They Were Beatles newsletter in which we take a sidebar and look at the history of the Liverpool suburbs that John, Paul, & George called home.
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Weekly Web Round-Up
Batman On The Cover - The journey through Batman’s comics publishing history continues this week we continue with February 1969 and books published in Brazil and Denmark. No stand-out covers this time around as they are all straightforward translated reprints of existing US covers.
Where on the Web is Alan?
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See you next time
Alan J. Porter
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