Documenting the Southgate House

A short documentary of the Southgate House, Newport, KY. produced by Sara Mahle.
HT, City Beat

How Important are Tax Rates ?
Interesting look at tax rates over the last century & whether they impact economic growth.
I swear it's got more to do with lifestyle products than taxes. We need a new product.

The city of Cincinnati ants to know what you think of their efforts to make a more bike friendly city.
Take the survey

Before there was the Northside Map of Awesomeness, there was the interactive Northside Business Locator Map
Just sayin'…..

State Auditor Yost, "uh, not so fast, Chrissy, Todd....."
State Auditor cautions county on Drake Sale

Another Saturday Night ?
Not in alluring Northside !
Starting Friday night in swank Clifton, Holidays in Clifton will be celebrated from 6-9PM with carriage rides, Santa & stuff around the Ludlow Avenue business district.
But I was talking about Saturday in Northside……
Did I mention the Northside Map of Awesomeness ?
Create crafts for kids & families all day long at Happen Inc. They will be working on fixing grub for Santa (my dad always told me Santa preferred beer & chips over cookies & milk).
Starting at 10AM at North Presbo, the Cincinnati Holiday Art Show features locally made arts & crafts til 4PM
Northside Second Saturday runs from 6-10PM with specials from any number of Northside businesses:
Fabricate hosts the opening reception of Natural Logic
There will be new works by Emily Moorhead 6-10PM
NVISION slashes prices 20% on handmade items
Take the Cake will serve dinner til 9PM
The Painted Fish is open late - 3:30 AM
The Vocal Arts Ensemble at St. Boniface present Christmas carols 7:30PM
Revenge Pinata, ShadowRaptr, Majestic Man, Mr. Brown’s Mysterious Sounds will play at Northside Tavern
2 Headed Dog, The Pariahs perform at The Comet
Boozing My Religion at Mayday
There will be music on the 2nd floor of the Hoffner Lodge from 6:30 PM featuring April 8, Laura Linville , Lisak and Rowe & The Hypnotic Jerks
Then, on Sunday, back up to Clifton with Second Sunday Family Showtime at CCAC with a performance of The Gift of the Magi
yup it's all happening on Metro Route 17!

How Ignorant are the Occupiers ?

While I agree with some of the OWS complaints about crony capitalism & such, I don't like their strategies much & this latest move is so totally fucked up I can't think straight.
Using the image of Guy Fawkes is deranged. Guy Fawkes is not venerated every November 5, he is vilified. The man spent most of his life killing fellow Christians and fighting against religious freedom & tolerance. He represented a church that many saw as autocratic, monolithic, greedy & corrupt and not respecting the needs of the people. Fawkes' solution? Oppress the blasphemers - kill, them, imprison them, torture them.
His final act was a Timothy McVeigh-like terrorist bombing that could have killed hundreds including innocents & his own fellow Catholics. Fawkes, unlike McVeigh, however, was a fuck up & his attempt at mass murder failed.
Is this really who they want to be the face of their movement?
Apparently people have bypassed legitimate makers of the masks so as to screw the rat bastards at Warner Brothers but doesn't this also screw the creatives that might be getting merchandise royalties, like Alan Moore? And should they really be buying from Chinese bootleggers who ignore intellectual property rights? To say nothing of the way laborers in China are treated - the ones who strike & cite Karl Marx as their social guide…
The image at the top of this article is particularly offensive. It was run on a City Beat article. Painting the image of this villain with the stars & stripes of the American flag is disgusting. The US stands for freedom of religion and, while it has been a rocky road, Fawkes was determinedly opposed to such concepts. Were he alive today, he would probably be terrorizing the US.
Occupiers, you really need to rethink this one. Murderous religious terrorists in America do not represent anywhere near 99%

Going to the Chapel
Cincinnati City manager Milton Dohoney has suggested a $4.4 million upgrade to city Hall to create a place to be rented out to the public for receptions, weddings & the like in an effort to raise revenue.
Seems like an odd business for the government to be in. Seems pretty competitive, too.
Music Hall has, besides the main auditorium rooms for 30 to 1,300 people. The Museum Center (owned by the county) is a pretty cool place for such events. Well, I'm a history geek. Parks & their lodges can already be used - dunno how the money is split between the city & parks departments, tho. The city could probably invest less into Wesleyan cemetery & maybe put a chapelish kind of facility in there for under $4.4 million.
Seems like letting all those people into city hall would freak out the Homeland Security types, too. How about remodeling a section of the convention center to make it kind of "special"?
Or even better - how about sprucing up a part of the subway? Transit center? The old SCPA?

Fishwrap story here

This guy is having too much fun.
If you were wondering what to get your favorite blogger for Christmas or the solstice gift giving holiday of your choice, look no further.

Scenic Clifton Mill for the Holidays

Clifton Mill in Clifton, OH (just east of Yellow Springs) is one of the oldest operating mills in Ohio and has for some decades now celebrated the holidays with their Annual light Display. Unfortunately, on 12/6 the flooding Little Miami River, that drives the mills wheel, rushed over it's banks & creamed some of this year's display. Operators canceled events for Tuesday night & hope to be back up & running ASAP. The owners are on the prowl for every strand of lights they can get their mitts on. Dunno if you should stand guard in your front yard or not…



Besides the 3,500,000 lights decorating the mill & old covered bridge, the mill also offers a Santa Claus museum & workshop, a miniature village & hot dogs, soup, cornbread, hot chocolate, cookies, pie & popcorn.

Noose Son story here

Hubert Sumlin - Blue Shadows

The Trollope Bazaar
The Fishwrap's "Our History" section, about the only thing worth reading over there has an article aboutThe Trollope Bazaar built by Frances Trollope in 1829, it was later demolished in 1881.
They don't mention it's use as the OMI building which CityKin brought up in this article which included
this pic, that I cannot display.
I cobbled together this model awhile ago but the proportions are off or my people are too big or or or
.
No idea about color either. I am guessing the OCAS guys know what they were doing. I need to hunt down that model. not that I know where mine is anymore..
:-)

Over 1,400 - Gone

When the Fishwrap announced it would require a FaceBook account to make comments on their site, they received over 1,400 comments, almost unanimously condemning the action.
They are now gone.
Complaints covered fear of reprisal, not wanting a FaceBook account & not wanting to use FaceBook for that purpose.
The Fishwrap said it wanted o do away with the ugliness.
ummmm…..
Is our health falling apart?
Dinkels deny assault claim
Driver killed in rollover crash on I-471
Woman used car as weapon
Homeowner held burglar at gunpoint
Murderer pleads for mercy
Mini crime spree in Colerain
Water, sewer rates shooting up
Priest at council event faced sex allegation
Moody's warns county on bonds
yeah, happiness & sunshine from the people who don't want
"ugliness". Perhaps ugliness begets ugliness?

Oakley Square Finished - Finally
After almost 2 years, a streetscape facelift in sultry Oakley is finally complete. Last year, this time, business owners asked the city to suspend work so they could actually do some business during the holiday season. This completion came just in time.
But why does it take so daggone long? It took about 4 years to widen a little over a mile of Hamilton Avenue in lofty College Hill. Fortunately there were no small businesses in that area because they generally don't have the finances to go without revenue for very long. Replacing the Ludlow Viaduct in 1991 shuttered a few stores in bucolic Northside. We will need to get the city's butt in gear if we expect to build a streetcar line and not shutter every existing business along the route.

WKRC story here

Gruss von Krampus !

Yes, it's that time again
KRAMPUSNACHT




yup, on St Nicholas eve, we make way for the fat man's demon, Krampus to scare the crap out of little kiddies all around the world. He seduces young women, tosses kids into streams & ruins the young men.

My kind of guy
While some people will dwell on Christopher Columbus landing in Haiti (that worked out well), true patriots will be out tormenting the wee mags, extracting revenge for the tantrums, barfing, pooping & sacrificed debauchery.


sigh, gotta love this guy

Weird Worship

Nationally & locally there's been some shake ups in the rituals of the Catholic Church. English translations led to the humorous Fishwrap headline about Mass Confusion and a local priest hammering down on the blasphemy of holding hands while praying seem kinda odd to a guy raised Presbo. But I do remember attending services at Catholic churches and the local Temple and, especially because they weren't all conducted in English, I was frantically playing catch up as people stood, sat, kneeled at seemingly inexplicable times.
Serendipitously, I received a DVD from Shlockbluster, The Rites of Magick.
While I thought I was going to sit down to watch The Rite with Anthony Hopkins, I was actually sitting down to watch The Rites of Magick with Poke Runyon. Not a special effects laden horror melodrama but a documentary / sales pitch from the Order of the Temple of Astarte located in sunny Pasaadena, CA. While initially impressed that Hollywood was quoting Hermes Trismegistus I quicly realized I had the wrong movie.
The movie shows some of the rites & rituals of a neo-Pagan group that follows Phoenician religion & the magickal traditions of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn as well as some Indian stuff previously pioneered by "Uncle" Al Crowley.
It shows a Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, an Enochian Watchtower Opening, a Solstice ceremony & a service that bypasses those pesky language translation issues by having no words. I was aware of all this kinda stuff but had never seen the rituals performed, especially with large groups of people. While these small groups don't have the hierarchy & orthodoxy of large religious groups so how "authentic" their rituals are is surely up to debate. Still, it gives one an idea of what those people do & dispels a lot of hysterical misunderstandings. Dunno about the glittery masks, tho…..
The solstice ceremony particularly interested me as it was a re-enactment in the round of seasonal changes with the seasons portrayed by people & the narrative in English. I hate the rhymy verse stuff but I guess it makes the words easier to remember, whatever. The thing is we have seen, at least through National Geographic, the same type of ritual performed by American Indians & primitive African groups where we cannot understand the language, the dress is totally foreign & the mythology is a complete mystery. In this case, it's a bunch of white anglo-saxon Americans speaking English and it's all pretty clear - the symbolism & mythology all being European in origin. I don't know why we quit this practice in our western civilized world. Maybe Pat knows.
Anyhoo, for a different perspective, here is a humorous review of the movie by a guy who also thought he was going to sit down to a horror movie.

Ohio GOP Eats it's own

Following on the heels of ousting committee members to pass legislation later overturned by the voters, the "true" Republican elite attempts to purge their ranks some more, this time targeting the head of the Ohio party.
How far off can total extinction be?

Fishwrap -er- USA Today story here

In the KYPost article Final suspect arrested in connection with Springfield Twp. homicide, it states:

Police deployed stop sticks at the intersection of Hamilton and Crawford, hoping to end the pursuit.

But, Crawford doesn't intersect with Hamilton…..
Map

MAPS !

About 40 years in the making, Kentucky unveils the most detailed state mapping in the US.
Take that Northwest ordinance.

UK story here

Berns to Challenge Chabot

Jim Berns, a Libertarian from College Hill, Cincinnati has filed petitions to run for the first congressional seat currently held by the anti American, pro corporatist, anti freedom of speech, anti innovation, pro war, anti-choice, COA T endorsed Republican career politician zombie, Steve "combover" Chabot.
As public dissatisfaction with the corporate beholden Democratic and Republican parties grows, it will be interesting to see if voters actually look at 3rd party candidates or just continue to vote for the same old pieces of shit over and over expecting better results.

WXIX story here