The bridges of Cleveland

     As a child, I was terrified of the bridges in Cleveland. I have a hunch why. They must have loomed into my subconscious during our family's regular drives from the suburban flatlands of the West Side to the industrial East Side to visit my grandmother. As we drove across them, they vectored out in all directions, the city a vista of factories and steelwork and smokestacks, with no comforting ground in sight. I would have nightmares about these bridges: me, lying sprawled face down on the deck of a bridge, without guardrails, as it quickly lowered like the elevator of an aircraft carrier. They were so scary I remembered them for the rest of my life.

     Maybe it was because there are so many Cleveland bridges: more than 100 within Cleveland proper. And Cleveland bridges are enormous. The city sits on a series of bluffs that rise steeply from the lakeshore, requiring bridges that can span a half mile, a mile, or longer.

View from the Veterans Memorial Bridge

     Chicago bridges are puny by comparison, as dictated by the easy hop from one sandy bank, over the trickle of a Chicago River, to the marshland on the other side, barely above the water itself.  The Wabash Avenue Bridge is 345 feet across. 

     Compare that to Cleveland's Main Avenue Bridge, running a mile and a half—8,000 feet across.  Chicago bridges are mainly bascule bridges—bisected stubs that open and close—while Cleveland's are high fixed spans, huge multi-deck concrete viaducts, steel edifices, along with lift bridges with their massive superstructures.

     I was covering the convention last week, not studying bridges. Though of course I saw them, and thought about my unease about them. Then suddenly, at one point, Wednesday night, before dinner, I found myself standing at the foot of the Veterans Memorial Bridge at sunset and, sensing my opportunity, impulsively decided to walk to the other side, a journey of some 3/4 of a mile. 

     It was not stressful. A lovely summer evening stroll. There was little traffic—you'd have to be insane to drive into downtown at that point—and I easily scampered across the four lanes to see the view from the other side. It wasn't isolated though—other pedestrians and bicyclists were there as well. I was rewarded with beautiful views of the city on both sides. 

      The Veterans Memorial Bridge's steel span is 591 feet long, and contains 4250 tons of steel, the work all fabricated by the King Bridge Co. of Cleveland, founded in 1858, which built three of Chicago's earliest bridges, which no longer exist.

Hope Memorial Bridge

     There was nothing scary about the walk across the bridge, no sense of vertigo, no fear of the railings. I felt I was finally making my peace with Cleveland bridges, and that they'd trouble me no more. 

      That really is the only way: address what frightens you, overcome it. Had I just stood there and stared, trembling, at the bridge and not crossed it, had I fled in fear, were this were a screed, railing ignorantly against the scariness of bridges, cataloguing their proven dangers, that would be, well, in a word, stupid.

      The next day, I found myself on a march across the even more beautiful Hope Memorial Bridge—named for Bob Hope's father, a stone mason in Cleveland., I considered my trek across Hope Memorial as a kind of reward for conquering my fears. Then again, there is usually a reward in overcoming your baseless anxieties toward unobjectionable entities like bridges. I only wish the people at the Quicken Loans Arena could figure that one out.  

     

     

It's always smart to pop into the library

    At the risk of suggesting that I wasn't Johnny-on-the-spot in Cleveland I did, to quote the Tammany Hal hacks, see my opportunities and took 'em. Such as, killing time between the 1:30 p.m. protest fizzle and the 6 p.m. protest squib (all the hard core protesters stayed home, I realized belatedly, saving themselves to flock to Philadelphia to howl at Hillary for not being Bernie Sanders) I saw that the Cleveland Public Library had Shakespeare's First Folio on display, so popped in to take a look, 20 minutes before the place closed.

     It was just a book, open to Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and I couldn't photograph it anyway. But the special collections department had a number of interesting displays, such as the spread of campaign literature above, or gems from its John G. White Collection of Chess Memorabilia. I particularly liked the "Sultan Peppah: Gourmet Chess Set," not an artwork, but a mass market gift item sold 20 years ago, but the collection, which has over 30,000 books and bound periodicals, has everything from Bobby Fischer's score sheets to Emanuel Lasker's medals.
    I mentioned the Lewis chessmen—a personal favorite, and they pointed with pride to their British Museum reproduction which is, I was pleased to note, exactly the same reproduction as my father brought back for me from London in the mid-1970s, a few pieces at a time, since he took so many trips there.
     The Cleveland Public Library is looking good, in part thanks to Cracking Art, an Italian art cooperative that has installed enormous, brightly-colored creatures around downtown, including a pair of bright sky blue birds in front of the library—I probably wouldn't have noticed that the First Folio, the least interesting part, was inside, had I not stopped to admire the big birds.
    They also have a card catalogue, and we talked about that. The librarian said though they've stopped adding to it about 2004, they still use it, as many of the notions are in a variety of foreign language and they have not had the resources to digitize it, a blessing, as we fans of Nicholson Baker know, because the cards carry all sort of information — scrawled on the backs, for instance — that tend to get lost in the rush to get them online. (Baker wrote a piece in the New Yorker, "Discards," in...ulp ... 1994, as a call to arms to stop disposing of these records, an argument he extended to bound newspapers in general and the British Library in particular in his cri de coeur, Double Fold). 
     Besides, the cabinets are really beautiful, are they not? 

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

   It's been a busy week. Not only in Cleveland for the convention, but last weekend, Dallas, which made for four flights in seven days. Whew. Then again, the whole year has been like that, jetting around from Japan to Joshua Tree. Not complaining—it's fun to go new places, and keeps life interesting, as well as providing fodder for the Saturday challenge.
     With that in mind, who is this guy, waving with such stolid affability? And where is he? While I can't hope to stump you, as I did last week for the first time, he's obscure enough, at least now, that I can hope you won't just see his face, snap your fingers and go, "Of course! It's good old..."  I had enough hope to airbrush out the name of the building, which was generic, but still gave a way the game on Google. So maybe I won't have to go to the trouble of putting a prize in the post, which this week is ... well, let's go with the 2015 poster. I really have to get rid of those things, and don't want to just burn them. 
     Place your guesses below. Good luck. 

If a protest falls on a bridge and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a noise?

The largest protest march at the Republican National  Convention Thursday, in context.

     Good to be home, and have a chance to catch up with a few postings that didn't make it here. Such as this, which is in today's Sun-Times. I'm pleased that though the New York Times had two reporters working the march and the day's protests, their article missed what I believe is a salient point: there were no observers whatsoever, beyond press and media. 
     I also just enjoyed walking across the bridge, right down the yellow line—how often to you get the chance?—and seeing the "Guardians of Traffic" protectively clutching their various modes of conveyance. 

     CLEVELAND—The protesters were there, about 200 meeting at the historic Hope Memorial Bridge, just west of downtown Thursday, the last day of the Republican National Convention.
     The signs were there, “Don’t Trump America” and “Stop Trump” and “Our Political System is Sick”— the protest was organized by Stand Together Against Trump, or “STAT,” formed by medical personnel.

      There were medics and Amnesty International observers and volunteers from Seeds for Peace handing out water and chunks of homemade banana bread.
     There were megaphones, used to shout chants, such as the classic, oddly syncopated, “The people, united, will never be defeated! The people, united, will never be defeated.”
Many media, even more police, everything you’d expect at a protest. Except for one thing:
     There were no bystanders; nobody there to see it.
     The march proceeded across the mile-long bridge, past a pair of art deco stone pylons with their "Guardians of Traffic" scowling indifferently, across the uninterested Cuyahoga River, and beyond apathetic mills and industrial wasteland, past the east guardians, also blasé, and then through the ubiquitous eight-foot tall metal fencing found anywhere near the Quicken Loans Arena, where the convention itself is taking place.

"Without reading, you don't have access to freedom"

     There were actually some very positive things going on at the Republican National Convention, so long as you kept your attention away from what was happening inside Quicken Loans Arena.           

     CLEVELAND—Even in a Public Square jammed with colorful advocates of every cause, both marginal and mainstream, Jonathan Harris stood out. 
     "I'm spreading the love of reading," said the branch manager of the Aurora Memorial Public Library in Portage County, whose jerry-rigged bookmobile—a milk crate filled with paperbacks strapped to the back of his bike—was simple yet effective.
     No sooner had Harris paused before the Terminal Tower when M'Ryah Holmes, 11, and her sister Rameerah, 10, were upon him, eagerly looking through his selection, being given away to anyone who would take them.
     Why do they like to read?

Mavis Holmes with daughters M'Ryah, (left) and Rameerah.

     "They don't have no choice," said their mother, Mavis Holmes, with a steely inflection that suggested much get-your-butt-in-that-chair-and-read guidance on her part.
    Why is reading important?
     "The reason it's very important is for them to understand their civil rights," said Holmes, an assistant instructor at a high school. "To get an education and understand the process. You can't have access to freedom without being literate. Without reading, you don't have access to freedom."
     An hour later I ran into Harris in the park next to Public Square, when he stopped his bike for Muireall Brown, 19, of Florida.
     "Do you have anything?" she asked.
     "What do you like to read?" asked Harris. His white baseball cap declared "Make America Read Again" and Babar the elephant peeked out from the tattoo on his right bicep. Harris has been working in libraries since he was 16—his father Mike was also a librarian. 
     "I like a lot of historical-fiction," Brown said.
     This is kind of a busman's holiday for him—taking off work as a librarian to peddle a bike around, working as a librarian. Why?
     "It gives me a chance to talk about reading, about libraries, about funding.
     Brown didn't find a book she liked. But a fellow medic—she was at the convention with Rust Belt Medics, tending to cases of sunburn and dehydration among the protesters—did find a book to his liking.
    "The Time Machine by H.G. Wells," said Taylor Morris, 26, of Atlanta. "I almost took the prequel to Dune that Frank Herbert's son wrote. But I didn't want to take too many books."
       
    
     

Cops on bikes wall off chaos at Cleveland convention

 

  

     The flood-the-zone technique the police are using to control protest at the Republican National Convention is not without its hazards: I watched how a scuffle that broke out after an attempted flag burning turned into a densely-packed mob scene that might have been more dangerous than the incident that sent scores of cops—and members of the media—running to the same spot. (The would-be flag burner, for fans of divine justice, ended up setting fire to his pants, and 18 were arrested in the resultant scuffle. I did not see the incident itself, so can't judge whether 10 cops would have handled it more easily than 100; my hunch is that more isn't always necessarily better). 

    But in the main, it has been very effective for the first three days of the convention, and watching it in action, I thought I would try to describe what struck me as its most noteworthy feature, the use of bicycles as a crowd-control device.

     CLEVELAND — The Bible Believers are back, standing at the edge of Public Square, haranguing the crowd.
     “Your parents hated you,” screams one, through a megaphone. “They spared the rod! They sent you to public schools! Look at you now! You’re pathetic in the eyes of God!”
     The crowd shouts back, makes obscene gestures, pushes closer for a better look.
     Within minutes, Cleveland police start rolling their bicycles around the speaker and his cohort.
     “Make way, make way,” says one. Soon there are 80 officers with bicycles circling the platform, separating the incendiary group from the rest of the square.
     It’s called the “Barrier Technique” and was pioneered by the Seattle police department, which sent officers to Cleveland to train its 280 bicycle cops. The convention is the first time they’ve used the tactic, to direct marchers, to close off streets, and diffuse angry crowds. If the Republican National Convention’s last day ends as peacefully as the first three, credit will go first to the police — 4,500 from 40 departments across the country, though not Chicago (“They have their own problems to worry about,” quipped one high Cleveland police official).
     But the humble bicycle, skillfully deployed, also deserves praise.
     “Absolutely wonderful,” agrees a Cleveland police officer. “Saved the day.”

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"Father God, Bless Mark and his family...."

     Officer Mark Young and seven fellow officers from the equestrian unit of the Fort Worth Police Department drove with their mounts from Texas to Cleveland this week. As they lined up in front of the Terminal Tower, as part of 4,500 police officers providing security for the Republican National Convention, they were approached by Cathie Burson, of Mt. Gilead, Ohio, a member of Hope Is Here, an organization that brought 100 of the faithful to the convention to pray with people they encounter here. She thanked Off. Young for being here, protecting everybody, and asked if she could pray with him. He said yes.
    "Father God," she began, "bless Mark and his family and all your fellow officers." When she was done praying with him, she asked if there was anything I wanted to pray for. I thought about it, and told her that my mother is worried about me, being in the thick of the protests, and perhaps we could pray for my safety, with her in mind, and we did. It was a nice, quiet moment, and a few minutes later, when I found the Bible Believers in the square, again, spewing their Bible-based poisonous hatred, I was glad I had run into people who were trying to use their faith for good, to aid and comfort humanity instead of harassing it.  Isn't that what religion is supposed to be all about?