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Archive for the ‘Cincinnati’ Category

Last day in Cincinnati

Posted in Cincinnati, Ohio, Wilmington NC on July 27, 2011| 1 Comment »

Today is our last day in Cincinnati before Jenny joins me in Wilmington, NC. I love Wilmington, but there’s a lot about Cincinnati that I’ll miss.

Starting with our house. I’m sitting on our deck, having breakfast, watching the sun rise over the trees and hearing the birds chirp. The nasty heat and humidity of a few days ago have given way to very pleasant mornings and tolerable twilights. We’ve made so many improvements getting the house ready to sell that it’s a shame we won’t enjoy them.

Yes, new adventures await. But today, I’m thinking about some of the things we’ll miss (in no particular order):

  • Friends in Oxford, especially at Holy Trinity
  • Wyoming, OH, the best place to live in the Cincinnati area
  • The Roebling Bridge
  • The Reds
  • Chili, both Skyline and Camp Washington
  • Saturday lunch at the Wyoming Meat Market
  • Our house

So, today is a day for remembering. Tomorrow we look forward.

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Shape-note singing at the Society of American Music

Posted in Cincinnati, Sacred Harp on March 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’ll be in Cincinnati on March 10th. The Society for American Music is having its conference there this year, and they always have a shape-note singing. The Cincinnati group has been invited to join in.

It’s not listed on the conference schedule, as far as I can see, but we’ll be at Salons B&C of the Omni Netherland downtown, Thursday May 10th at 5:45 pm. This looks like an interesting conference, with lots of good stuff to do in Cincinnati.

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Reds make history

Posted in Cincinnati on August 20, 2010| Leave a Comment »

1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team

Actually the title of this post should be “Reds and Cardinals make history,” but St. Louis gets enough press.

I can’t find a link to this, but Tom Singer of MLB.com says that according to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals have been locked in a battle for first place in the 2010 NL Central division for 101 games where they have never been greater than 3 games apart. There have been 19 lead changes during that stretch. It’s the longest such stretch in major league baseball history. Last night’s sweep by the Reds over the Diamondbacks brought their lead to 3.5 games, so that stretch is over now.

Even if you don’t like baseball, it’s hard to live in Cincinnati and not be caught up in this. It’s really fun. Every night has a different hero. This is our 14th season in the area, and only the second winning season for the Reds during that time.

Go Redlegs!

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Catching thimble fever

Posted in Cincinnati, Misc. on August 14, 2010| 2 Comments »

Enquirer photo

Our local paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, had this article about Thimble Collectors International that has been meeting here. This quote from Bobbie Howard, Master of Ceremonies, caught my eye:

“It only takes exposure to one thimble to catch the collector’s fever,” said Howard, of Baltimore.

Fortunately we have escaped this dreaded disease. What really sold it for me, though, was this photograph of Howard.

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Salvaging reusable material

Posted in Cincinnati, Environment on July 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here’s a short, obviously non-professional video about recycling building material. It spotlights Building Value, a nonprofit social enterprise in Cincinnati that salvages reusable materials for sale to the public.

Building Value’s mission is to help the environment, reduce the cost of disposal, and give architectural gems a second life. In addition, each donation empowers people with disabilities and disadvantages to increase their independence through the work of their parent organization, Easter Seals Work Resource Center.

This is one of several short videos produced by CincinnatiMaintenance.com, a for-profit cleaning and maintenance firm that describes itself as Eco-Friendly. I don’t know anything about this firm other than these videos. But there are some intriguing ideas here and I hope non-profits and for-profits alike will continue to explore ways to reduce, reuse and recycle.

I also posted about this on Ohio Interfaith Power and Light. Thanks to New Media Cincinnati on LinkedIn for this tip.

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A bumper crop of lilies

Posted in Cincinnati, Environment on July 26, 2010| 1 Comment »

This has been a great year for our fish pond. Normally I have to stop the pump every 3 or 4 days and clean it out, a messy task. Early in the summer it quit working and I never got around to replacing it.

Even though we’ve had some very hot, sunny weather the pond hasn’t had the algae blooms we often get. This water is dark and reasonably clear. You can even see the fish, which is unusual for us. I assume it’s because these great-looking lily pads block out so much of the direct sunlight. I might even have to go in and trim them a bit.

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‘Why do we mourn departing friends?’

Posted in Cincinnati, Episcopal Church, Music, Religion, Sacred Harp on July 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The Sacred Harp community of Cincinnati has lost one of our dearest friends. Christine Cox died last Wednesday at 87, following a serious stroke in March of this year. Singer Eloise Clark was with her when she died, singing some of her favorite hymns. John Bealle has a wonderful tribute to Chris on his website.

The Cincinnati singers will sing at her visitation this Sunday night and her funeral Monday morning. Isaac Watts’ lyrics to “China,” which we will sing, read in part:

Why do we mourn departing friends,
Or shake at death’s alarms?
‘Tis but the voice that Jesus sends,
To call them to His arms.

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Ferry cross the Ohio

Posted in Cincinnati, Possibly neat stuff on June 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It’s been a long time since I did this, but leaving a meeting in Kentucky, I decided to take the Anderson Ferry across the Ohio instead of the interstate. As you can see (looking back to Kentucky), it’s not a particularly high-tech operation — maybe 12 cars at a time. And even if all the cars are turned off as mine was, maybe not good in terms of a carbon footprint. That would be a good question to calculate.

A ferry has been going back and forth from Ohio to Kentucky at that site since 1817, and it’s a national historic landmark. Perhaps not as adventurous as Pirates of the Caribbean. But it’s relaxing, even if over too soon, and costs only $4.

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‘Enhancing your brand with a blog’ presentation

Posted in Blogging, Cincinnati, Computers, Job search on June 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I received several questions following my presentation on Blogging today at the Cincinnati Job Search Focus Group. Here’s some more information:

What presentation software did you use?

Neat, huh? That was created at the Prezi.com site. This is a web-based software application that is definitely not PowerPoint. Where PP is linear and ultimately text-based (with some graphics and bells and whistles), Prezi.com aims to be intuitive and graphically-based. It is usually created on-line, and can be run either on-line (not recommended in critical situations in case connectivity is lost), or as a downloadable Flash animation, which is what I used.

Because I work part-time for Miami University, I was able to get a free educational account with 500 Mb of server space, and I’ve hardly used any of it. Other free accounts are possible. There is a paid version which allows you to do content creation on a local machine, but I haven’t tried that.

Prezi would have you believe that you can get going in just a few minutes, but that hasn’t been my experience. I spent a LOT of time creating this, far more than a Keynote or PowerPoint would have taken. With time I’m sure I can work faster, but I’m not there yet. I doubt if I will use it for run-of-the-mill presentations.

There are definitely some drawbacks. The backgrounds and font styles are limited to those that Prezi offers, and there are not many. Some things that are easy in PowerPoint really can’t be done well in Prezi. They’d probably say that such things, such as lists, shouldn’t be done at all.

I learned about Prezi from Dean Carine Feyten of the Miami U. School of Education, Health & Society, where I’m doing some work. Check it out.

Is the presentation available on-line?

Yes, but not for download. Go to http://prezi.com/o4l-3l2hlplu. In case of utter failure at JSFG, I also created a backup version in PowerPoint that has much of the same material, so you could compare the differences if you really have time on your hands.

What are the URLs for the websites you showed?

Here they are:

See more of my presentations (including earlier versions of this one) on my Presentations Page.

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Popping primroses at last

Posted in Cincinnati, Family, Possibly neat stuff on June 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here’s a photo of our night-blooming primroses, aka evening primroses. I tried to make this a video but couldn’t get my BlackBerry to record it. (I’ll try again).

If you’ve never seen one pop, it’s pretty amazing. Just like a time-lapse movie, except that once the quivering starts it only takes about 30 seconds for the sepals to peal back and the blossom to emerge.

We think the mild weather and frequent rain in Cincinnati this spring have finally done the trick. We were inspired to do this by evenings spent on the patio of our friends the Davises in Winston-Salem, who seemed to have dozens of them going.

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