Liberty versus Anarchy in our community

I’d like to take a moment to address the series of incidents which took place several days ago at the Sacred Heart of Jesus festival.

First, a bit of history: My parents moved to South Euclid in 1971.  I went to Anderson elementary school, then Memorial and Brush.  After graduating, I moved to Massachusetts - returning nine years later and living in various parts of the Cleveland area.  I moved back to South Euclid in 2008.  The convenience of South Euclid for me, in terms of being close to my job and an easy drive to our area’s cultural and entertainment hub, is an attraction that’s very enticing.

I have never felt unsafe walking my dog or otherwise going about my business in South Euclid. My neighbors are polite and friendly.  But it's appalling to learn of the sort of behavior reported at the festival taking place in our city.  Two years ago, a resident was murdered in front of her home, and the perpetrators’ presence in the city may have been connected to the festival.  Last year, there were multiple incidents of violence at the festival.  And this year, the incidents involved more people, covered many blocks, and there were even reports of shots fired.  Even though the majority of the perpetrators were from outside South Euclid, it's alarming to learn these events are on the rise a short walk from where I live.  The pastor at Sacred Heart of Jesus church, Father Ireland, has been seen in several interviews complaining that the activity of these youths threatens attendance at the festival.  He seems less concerned about the danger to the community as a whole.  I’m certain that Father Ireland wants what’s best for the community.  But, as President Kennedy said “Sincerity is always subject to proof” and the efforts of this church, thus far, have fallen short.  I’ve read that the church provided only 12 security personnel at this year’s festival – and it’s unlikely that all 12 were on duty at any given time.  If Sacred Heart of Jesus church is unable or unwilling to provide adequate private security for their festival, then permits for future festivals should be denied.  There is now a pattern of neglect on the church’s part and they should not be accorded more lenient treatment simply because they’re a church.  If this festival had taken place at a mosque and there had been similar incidents, it would have been shut down long ago. 

I supported Issue 65, South Euclid's safety forces levy – and I shudder to think what might have happened if there had been fewer officers available over the weekend.  But I do not want our cops put in harm's way when it's avoidable, and I want to live in a community where citizens have a reasonable assurance of safety.  I also demand, as a citizen, that our police department be permitted to post information without censorship by city officials.  It disgusts me that the South Euclid Police Department, for whatever reason, deleted their post about the events Saturday night.  

Above is a screen grab of a post made by a South Euclid police officer which appeared on the department's facebook page, then was deleted.  Thankfully, a citizen saved this picture before the post was yanked.

As I mentioned earlier, I moved back to South Euclid six years ago.  For the first time since I moved here, I am questioning the wisdom of that decision and seriously considering leaving - and I know I’m not alone in that regard.  South Euclid cannot afford to lose more taxpaying, law-abiding citizens.

New and upgraded shopping centers, pocket parks, and neighborhood rebranding are all very well and good – and I have supported these efforts.  But we also need to focus on basic issues like safe neighborhoods and crime prevention.  There is a growing feeling that South Euclid is no longer a safe place to live – at least in certain areas.  The events over the weekend demonstrate that this is more than an issue of mere perception.   I don’t blame anyone in South Euclid’s government for what happened.  But how we respond is key.  We have to face these issues head on and combat them.  Chief Neitert must not be selective about which laws he enforces.  He needs to start applying the broken windows theory.  When we tolerate activities such as allowing dogs to roam unleashed, people texting while driving, speeding on residential streets, "music" blasting from car stereos at all hours of the night, aimless loitering - it leads to a general impression of disorder in the community.  There is a fine line between Liberty and Anarchy, and we must not allow South Euclid to cross that line. 

Lorin Maazel: 1930 - 2014

Lorin Maazel, principle conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1972-1982, died on Sunday, July 13^th, at the age of 84. 

Sadly, I never saw Maazel conduct in person.  He was scheduled to conduct in Cleveland several years ago, but he cancelled.  I saw him on television numerous times and took note of his unshowy, natural baton technique.  Not for him the marionette on strings approach of Furtwangler or orgasmic histrionics of Bernstein.  Maazel was a born conductor, and probably the most prominent example of a prodigy conductor in history.  He was also, according to those who heard him, a damned fine violinist – and was fluent in at least six languages.  The man was off the charts brilliant.

I also have many of his recordings – most with the Cleveland Orchestra.  It cannot have been easy for Maazel to take over the orchestra, which had been without a regular conductor for two years after George Szell’s death in 1970.  His selection, made by the board without consulting the orchestra, was controversial.  

 

Maazel maintained the technical quality of the orchestra (first raised to top five in America status by Artur Rodzinski, then elevated to top five in the world by Szell), while broadening its sound and diversifying its repertoire.  With a few exceptions like the Barber Piano Concerto and selected works by Dutilleux, Szell left most newer music to guest conductors like Pierre Boulez – while he concentrated on the core 18^th and 19^th Century Austro-Germanic repertoire.   Thus, when Maazel started programming showpieces like Respighi’s Pines of Rome and championed Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, the more conservative types in Cleveland’s music scene brought their knives out.  One critic even took to referring to Maazel as “childe Lorin” – a snide reference to his prodigy years.  The truth is, Maazel was magnificent in these works, and his recordings of them - along with his Shostakovich 5^th Symphony, Tchaikovsky 4^th and Romeo & Juliet, and Scriabin Poem of Ecstasy - remain well-nigh definitive.  But there were other instances where he seemed to be going through the motions, such as the 1970s Beethoven Symphony cycle and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.  Further, some interpretations were downright wayward, including Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.  Everything was, of course, fabulously played.  While it may be fashionable to give all credit to the Cleveland Orchestra, it’s also worth pointing out I heard numerous fluffed brass notes and splattery entrances under Maazel’s successor, Christoph von Dohnányi.  As an NBC Symphony player once remarked about Toscanini, “He spoke with the stick, and you just couldn't miss with that stick”.  The same could have been said of Maazel.  The New York Philharmonic and Pittsburgh Symphony seldom played for anyone else as well as they played for Maazel.    Most conductors bust their behinds to memorize scores and arrive at an interpretation.  Not so for Maazel.  In a way, it could be said that Maazel’s incredible facility – the ease with which he memorized scores, his perfect rhythmic sense, his unerring ear for balance – came at a cost.  Without the struggle inherent in the work of most musicians, his music making sometimes lacked the last sense of depth in the music that most required it.  But when he was “on”, it was an astonishing experience.

I am including here reviews which I wrote for three of Maazel’s Telarc CDs.  They provide an interesting glimpse of his Cleveland years.

ShostakovichSymphony No. 5 / Tchaikovsky Romeo & Juliet

TchaikovskySymphony No. 4 / Stravinsky Rite of Spring

Berlioz SymphonyFantastique / Tchaikovsky Nutcracker 

LeBron's return - icing on the cake

It was inevitable, I suppose, that I would comment on what’s been hyped as the Cleveland news story of the century (which, I remind all, is only 14 years old): LeBron James is returning to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

I am neither elated nor particularly surprised by his return. The story of LeBron’s departure, self-discovery, and return to the home of his birth is neither revelatory nor especially unique. Even as he made the announcement four years ago that caused Cavaliers fans to set his jersey alight, I thought "he'll be back". I know of countless people who left Northeast Ohio, only to return when they realized much of the rest of the country is too expensive, too congested, and populated with people less friendly than we.

I’m one of those boomerangs. I left the Cleveland area, fresh out of high school, for New England. For nine years, I studied, struggled, sowed my wild oats, loved, had my heart broken, enjoyed a brief taste of success, experienced failure, and generally learned those facts of life which weren’t taught in school. Family obligations brought about my return to Cleveland, and when I came back, I had an air of condescension along with a new assertiveness that bordered on abrasiveness – the result of living nine years in greater Boston. The place, like any place, rubs off on you.

 A year before I returned to Cleveland, I visited to bury my mother. Even through my grief I could discern the beginning stages of the rebirth of downtown Cleveland. That rebirth continued in starts and stops over two decades, and in the four years before “the Chosen One” announced his return, became a juggernaut. That’s why I object to the notion, perpetrated by the national media, that LeBron James' return is single handedly "rescuing" Cleveland's economy. Rescuing it from what? Cleveland’s decades long resurgence has continued whatever the performance of the local sports teams - and that recovery would have continued even if James' hadn't made his very welcome announcement. The national media's tendency to focus on one man merely betrays their ignorance of anything that happens in flyover country. There's more to America than the I-95 corridor on one side and California on the other, and in the final analysis, James’ return is icing on the cake.

I have blogged before concerning my reservations about how Cleveland and Cuyahoga County have given away the store to recruit/retain professional athletic franchises. Despite my happiness at LeBron James’ return, I continue to hold those opinions. Sports teams are only one aspect of downtown development. First Energy Stadium has a capacity of 71,516. Last season, the Browns played 16 games, about half of which were played at home. Assuming the stadium is filled to capacity, that’s about 572,000 visitors over the course of a year. That’s the equivalent of 2,200 employees working in Cleveland five days a week – a figure which is easily accomplished if Cleveland’s civic leaders put their minds to it. As I've said elsewhere, Cleveland needs to do a better job of recruiting businesses, in which people come downtown for work every day.  George Voinovich really blew it when he wouldn't play ball with Peter Lewis, who wanted to build Progressive's headquarters downtown - and there are other examples. It's all very nice that Progressive’s east side employees can enjoy an easy commute to Mayfield Village, not so nice for those on the west side. That is but one of many examples. But enough griping about the past. We can file that under “lessons learned”.

 On behalf of the boomerang club: Welcome home, LeBron.  At least his return is a distraction from that annoying Johnny Manziel.

My review of Opus 13

David Aladashvili is a most promising young pianist. Click here to read my review is his new CD, Opus 13.

JFK's other Berlin quote.

Home Projects - bathroom

The Hippocratic Oath cautions doctors to “do no harm.” I wish home renovators, from Do-It-Yourselfers to professionals, were required to take such an oath.

Our home was one of the last houses begun in South Euclid before the United States entered World War II on December 7, 1941 - and was completed in 1942. From then until VJ day in 1945, very few private homes were built in the United States. Following the war, the baby boom led to a need for many houses in a limited timeframe, which led to the suburban housing boom. Frankly, the build quality of those rushed houses was generally lower than their pre-WWII counterparts.

There are a number of advantages to living in an older home. For one thing, an older house has stood the test of time. Pretty much every natural event that can happen, has happened: Severe thunderstorms, minor to moderate earthquakes, severe heat and cold, along with huge piles of snow and ice – our house has withstood it all. True, even the best built houses are not immune to the ravages of time, and our home has its share of character lines. The hairline cracks in our plaster walls remind us we’re not the first family to live here. Nor do the many changes made to the house over the years, including a 12’x16’ extension built around 1970 which serves as our media room. Unfortunately, not all of the “improvements” were satisfactory. The damage a succession of owners has done to our home, under the guise of improvements, makes the damage wrought by nature pale by comparison.

For example, the bathroom. Our home has only one, and it has required more attention than any other room in the house. As originally built, the bathroom had a toilet (American Standard, Cadet model, with the year 1939 stamped on the underside of the tank lid), one sink, and one bathtub – no shower. When we moved into the home in fall 2008, the bolts that hold the toilet tank onto the bowl had rusted and a small amount of water dripped from the tank onto the floor, and the mechanicals were worn down resulting in an improperly seal for the valve flapper and a noisy, leaky tank. That was the first item we fixed – with new bolts and new innards for the tank. Same toilet, new parts, with quiet operation and no leaking. Further, we were able to make it more water efficient by simply adding a filled bottle to the tank. Over the sink was a mirror hanging from a peg, covering a hole in the wall where the medicine cabinet should have been. Correcting that was the next step, and fairly easy.

Rusted light fixtures above the sink were activated by a wall switch – but there was neither an outlet nor a vent fan. Since experiencing an electric shock in childhood I’ve avoided working with anything electrical. I made sure the power was turned off, gritted my teeth, and installed new light fixtures. But left the installation of the vent fan and a new outlet to our neighborhood repairman.

But the bathtub was the real challenge, and it was nearly six years before we got around to fully correcting the numerous issues. At some point, a previous owner added a shower to the bathtub, along with plastic tile cut with an X-acto knife, poorly fitted around the glass block window – so that when warm the tile separated from the glass block, causing water to leak down the wall. This left a lovely stain on the living room ceiling, which is beneath the tub. No amount of caulking or duct tape could reliably seal the tile, and it was so tacky looking.

Part of being a successful homeowner is knowing whether a job is a DIY candidate, or whether the professionals need to be called in. Repairing a toilet, I can handle. Installing a medicine cabinet, check. But I knew the bathtub/shower renovation was beyond my DIY abilities. After checking several options, I settled on Cleveland Glass Block. After viewing their brochures and speaking with their consultant, I made it clear I did not want a “modern” looking bathroom. Instead, I wanted to make the bathroom appear as if it always had a built in shower, with subway tile to near the top of the stall. A classic look suited for a home built in the 1940s. Cleveland Glass was able to walk us through the process of what would be done and how long it would take. They suggested replacing the existing glass block with a new, better sealed version; also, the cupboard door was in poor shape and needed to be replaced; finally the whole room would be brightened up with a coat of lighter paint.

The process of re-tiling the wall was the most time consuming. The old tile was removed, as was much of the degraded plaster. New plumbing was installed allowing for new faucet controls and a higher showerhead – I frequently bumped my head on the old one. New drywall was installed, and the tile was then meticulously placed and grouted. We had our choice of grout colors, and opted for a traditional off white. After the work was completed, we had to wait for two days before we could use the shower. Fortunately, we have gym memberships. The final product was worth both the cost and the wait.

Health and the Presidency

The bulk of this post was written before Karl Rove made several idiotic comments relating to Hillary Clinton's health.

Today would have been the 97th birthday of John F. Kennedy. Even if JFK had not been stolen from us, he would almost certainly not have lived to our era. He suffered from a genetic defect (probably Autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type II – also known as Schmidt’s syndrome) which decimated his immune system and adrenal glands (Addison’s disease), and caused a plethora of other maladies – leaving him subject to every bug that came along, and chronically deprived of energy. Kennedy was also born with one leg shorter than the other – the root cause of his back pain, which was exacerbated by a football injury, a war injury, medications he took for his Addison’s disease, and two steel rods which were inserted in 1954 to shore up his spine. He was given Last Rites three times during the course of his short life. The host of medications necessary to keep him functional - including Cortizone (both oral and injected), Lomotil, Peregoric, Phenobarbital, Testosterone, Trasentine, Tuinal, and various amphetamines – would keep your local pharmacist in business. Needless to say, very little of this information was shared with the American people during Kennedy’s lifetime. Just as most Americans of FDR’s time thought the 32nd President had mostly recovered from polio and merely walked with a limp, JFK’s contemporaries thought he was in fine health, save for back pain he suffered as the result of war injuries.

I share this information to make two points:

1). Historically, a President’s physical health has had almost no impact on job performance. Consider our leaders who faced serious illness while in office: Grover Cleveland (cancer), Franklin Roosevelt (paralysis, heart failure), Eisenhower (heart attack, stroke, ileitis), and Kennedy. Now consider those who were physically healthy: Herbert Hoover, Jerry Ford, George W. Bush

2). Whatever the defects in JFK’s character, and they were considerable, he was still a great and heroic man. It would have been the easiest thing for JFK to live the life of a charming invalid; coasting on his father’s success and money, and taking a meaningless desk job. No one would have questioned if this sick young man chose to languish in quiet insignificance. Instead, Kennedy pursued what Theodore Roosevelt (another sick young man who willed himself into action) called “the vigorous life”. During World War II, Kennedy pulled strings to get into the Navy despite physical issues that disqualified him, and became a genuine hero when his ship was sunk by a Japanese destroyer. As President, he projected an image of youth and vigor that was in contrast to his sad medical reality. President Kennedy inspired a generation to national service, fought for civil rights, skillfully negotiated a peaceful settlement to the Cuban Missile Crisis, encouraged the arts & culture, and set man on a course for the moon. Can anyone imagine what would have become of the United States, the world, if Richard Nixon - a physically healthy but mentally and emotionally unstable man – had been elected in 1960?

Our nation is better off for having had JFK’s leadership – and worse off because he left us far too soon.