There has been increased interest in the 1920s and Prohibition.  So much so, that if it has not already happened, the major networks will start bringing out historic dramas set in the 1920s, similar to HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.  From a history lesson approach, Ken Burn’s documentary Prohibition retells the story in pictures.  In literature, there has not been an explosion of Prohibition-based novels that I know of, but ex-pats living in Paris at the time is having a moment with Paula McLain’s Paris Wife and the Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris. Paris at the time being the antithesis of Prohibition America. I thought I should jump into the conversation and talk about Ohio Breweries, again.  I know, always with the breweries, even when Ohio was the center of the Anti-Saloon League.  One day I will find the right book to talk about their story.

Prohibition is such a complex and odd issue.  The breweries were the evil big business with political clout, but at the same time the drys very much succeeded in much of the country running a KKK platform against immigrant, Catholics who were more prone to support the “wet” movement.   I find it hard to get my hands around it in a standard narrative.  But, one point that came up in Daniel Okrent’s Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition that I find fascinating is how undemocratic local government was at the time — even for white men.  In state government, there was no One Man One Vote.  Each county, regardless of population, had equal representation.  So, even though a majority of Ohio voters (white men at the time) rejected a referendum, the passage of the 18th Amendment steam-rolled through the statehouse (see Hawke v. Smith for the legalities – federal Constitution trumps state constitution in this case).  The ethnic, urban population, who was very wet, really didn’t have much say in the matter.

Curt Dalton’s Breweries of Dayton talks about the history of beer making in the Gem City up until 1961, but focuses a disproportionate amount of pages on Prohibition times (the lead up to the 18th Amendment and years after the 21st Amendment).  It is the American brewery history’s big moment.  In 1904 and shortly after, the major breweries in Dayton formed a local monopoly, the Dayton Breweries Company, on beer distribution in the city.  Dalton argues this was partially aimed at deflecting criticism from the temperance movement.  At the time, the breweries had the leverage in deciding which saloons would sell their product.

Included in Breweries of Dayton are two long articles produced by the Dayton Breweries Company to fight off the increasing prohibition talk.  The first was an argument against the prohibition of beer sale, which like many political arguments today, often focused on the economic repercussions that would occur with shutting down the industry.  (An argument later used for overturning Prohibition was that in doing so, it would get people working in breweries and connected business during the dark years of the Depression).  The second article outlines the modern and sanitary practices used by the brewers.  A detailed and interesting document for brewery historians and for those who wonder where lager comes from.

Most of the rest of Breweries of Dayton is a reference guide to the breweries and biographies of the brewers.  For scholars, the hundreds of German brewers mentioned are indexed.  Dalton’s collected images and cartoons are worth a look.  For those who cannot find a copy of Breweries of Dayton, I feel compelled to point out that the book is available on Dayton History Books Online, which is a wonderful, Project Gutenberg-like, collection of, you guessed it, Dayton history books (and newspaper articles), online.

And finally, speaking as a venture capitalist, why are there no active microbreweries in Dayton?  I’ve done no research, but I have come to the conclusion that Dayton has to be the largest center city without its own ale.  Dayton has famous natural disasters and inventors to paste on labels.  ”I will have the Wright State vs. Indiana U. 1993 Ale, bitte.”  Miami Valley Brewery (there was a Miami Valley Brewing Company after Prohibition)? Gem City Brewery (existed before Prohibition)? Wolf Creek Brewery or Old North Brewery, depending on location?  We can work on the name, give me a call.

As the subtitle says, Builders of Ohio is a history of Ohio told through short biographies of 25 Ohioans from early settlers to Dave Thomas.  As the editors state in the introduction, “history is not simply the interplay of impersonal social and economic forces: it is how individual actors responded to these forces to create the worlds in which they lived.” (viii)  Ohio is told through its builders.  In reading Builders of Ohio, it becomes quite apparent how difficult it is to tell 250+ years of history through the lives of 25 individuals.  But, the editors, who use a wide selection of academic historians to tell this tale, have strung together a series of essays the read well alongside the others.

There are many names left off of these essays: no Rockefeller (though B. F. Goodrich fills in for the Gilded Age industrialists), no Mark Hanna, no Wright Brothers, and no Pete Rose.  None of the presidents from Ohio make the final cut [though two failed wartime Vice Presidential candidates are included in George H. Pendleton (1864) and John W. Bricker (1944)].  We are given a diverse group of residents that cover a lot of ground.  (The editors do acknowledge there is a disproportionate number of white males).  I have read many books about the history of Ohio, and there were at least five names I was not familiar with and I’m not ashamed to admit this.  Cleveland from the late 1800s onward may get over-representation, but Cleveland was once the sixth largest city in America.

The editors do a good job of blending eras and events over multiple biographies.  This was apparent in two cases.  There are three biographies (John Cleves Symmes, Arthur St. Clair, and Thomas Worthington) dealing with early settlers and land developers that discuss the career of St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory.  None of these characterizations are very flattering, but you really get the feeling of the general chaos that existed in these years.  Sorry St. Clairsville.  Later, there is a great emphasis given to the Democratic Party during the Civil War era.   The Democrats being the opposition party during most of these years.  The bios of Clement L Vallandigham (leader of the Copperheads or Peace Democrats who were against the war) and Pendleton paint a less heard view of Ohio during the Civil War.  But, because the biographies overlap, if you read the biography of Benjamin Arnett (African Methodist Episcopal Bishop), who was active in the Republican Party of this era, we learn some underlying reasons for the Democrats successes of this era.  History is complicated.

If you are looking for a specific name in the 20th Century, you will likely be disappointed.  There are so many residents of the state and the world (and state) changed quite a lot in that 100 year span. In the little over a third of the book dedicated to this century, the reader experiences women’s suffrage, the great African-American migration and the segregation of many urban neighborhoods, the rise of organized industrial labor, and the general conservative nature of Ohio politics during this era.  There are three essays about Ohio governors (and politicians) of the 1930s through the 1980s, Martin L. Davey, Bricker, and James A. Rhodes, that go well together in telling a narrative.  The first two governors were very much against FDR’s notion of government intervention, while Rhodes embraced the idea of increased consumption increases social stability.  William Russel Coil’s “James A. Rhodes and the 1960s Origin of Contemporary Ohio” is a well crafted political discussion of Rhodes career in contrast to the conservative ideas espoused by former Senator Robert Taft.  Rhodes was governor for a long time (four four-year terms), yet you hear his name mostly in terms of the Kent State shootings (which the essay mentions, but does not go into detail).  You also learn that Rhodes co-wrote a book titled Teenage Hall of Fame (1960) – a title that should be rediscovered.

The chapters in Builders of Ohio are much more detailed than what you can find online or in an encyclopedia (even Britannica).  Each biography also lists a handful of full-length or longer biographies on each subject.  So, there is value in the individual names covered and there is no need to read the whole collection if one is not inclined.

And finally, though not least important, if you are interested in the life of  a 19th Century cooper, do read the chapter on early Cleveland labor leader Martin Foran.  Before industrialization, coopers had the life.

The title of Sean Safford’s Why your Garden Club Could not save Youngstown is not in jest.  This book truly is an attack on the Garden Club of Youngstown.  It is commonly believed that economic factors beyond the municipality’s control led to its economic demise in the late 1970s (it was known in the 1950s that manufacturing steel in Youngstown cost 55% more than in nearby Cleveland).  But Safford argues that economies like Youngstown did not necessarily have to devolve over the last few decades.

The author uses the steel-dominated Allentown region, the Lehigh Valley, as a foil to the Mahoning Valley.  He argues that in 1970, Allentown and Youngstown were very similar in terms of economic concentration, access to markets, education, state and federal policy, and even histories.  Today, Allentown is now one of the fastest growing cities in Pennsylvania.  Youngstown population in 2010 has dropped to under 67,000, less than half of its peak of 170,000 in 1930.  Why Allentown?  All of Youngstown’s social connectivity was tied up in the Garden Club.  

Safford comparison is based on social capital and networks and the connectivity of those networks using network analysis. This is a field of research that has occasionally made its way into mainstream discourse, notably with Robert Putnam’s often quoted Bowling Alone. While the author uses many statistical methods and graphs, Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown is pretty readable for those of us who are not sociology grad students.  Analyzing the communities in 1950 and 1980, Safford charts the board members/officers of economic and civic organizations and how they overlapped with other organizations.

Though I don’t want to ruin the ending (which is known very early), those participating in Youngstown’s civic and economic organizations were very similar.  Youngstown had an elite group that only saw other members within that group.  Allentown on the other hand, had significant groupings of leaders in civic and business matters, but they did not completely overlap.  Civic and economics were separate, but these differing communities came together with a few organizations (the Boy Scouts were apparently very important to Allentown’s success).  Because of this diversity (though connected) of community leaders, Allentown was better able to develop a plan for the future during the traumatic times during the 1970s.  In Youngstown, Safford describes how four different plans developed from four different groups, but none really took off because of a lack of consensus.

While the above paragraph outlines the main premise of Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown, Safford takes the time to describe how the development of social networks pretty much doomed Youngstown from its inception.  What Allentown had, and Youngstown lacked, was competition between cities (closely aligned with religious groups): Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton.  The competition between the cities brought people together in building separate, but competitive, churches and universities.  Everyone was trying to out-do their neighbor, and this was apparently good for the region in the long run.

This all begs the question of what should a reader take away from Why the Garden Party Couldn’t Save Youngstown.  Safford makes clear that this is a historic study testing an academic model, with limitations on providing solutions for Youngstown and similar cities.  Other than moving to the Keystone state, the book outlines several programs started in Youngstown’s doppelgänger that helped promote the building of successful connectivity.  In the end, maybe it should be argued that Youngstown did not need to become (or still avoid becoming) a shrinking city.

Overlooked in Safford’s analysis, probably for academic credibility, are Billy Joel’s “Allentown” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Youngstown.”  Both songs tell the post-war story of the respected city, covering the crisis of the 1970s.  After three decades “Allentown” sounds like a throw-away pop song.  Not bad, but in the end it is just an up-beat song about the mills closing.  “Youngstown”, from the under-rated Ghost of Tom Joad album (1995) [a collection of low-key ballads about migration] is much more terminal.  After Springsteen recounts the creation of Youngstown, the epic closure of the mills ends with narrator wanting to spend eternity working the furnace of hell.  Though it would be silly to connect the current situation of each city with these songs, I would submit that nobody is listening to “Allentown” anymore and “Youngstown” still sounds like how “most” people view the city.  With many of the old networks gone, it is time to build anew.   This time with some keyboards.

“They are just making music I would make, if I could make music”

- Steven Sodenbergh, from “In Lieu of an Actual Introduction”

One of the best bands to come out of Ohio (Dayton) over the last 20 years, Guided by Voices emerged on the national scene in 1993 — during the height of alternative rock — with the albums Propeller and Vampire on Titus.  Eventually GBV became an international cult classic, signing to Matador Records and gaining notoriety for their long drunken live shows.

GBV was a different sort of band.  Recording with 4 and 8 track technology, they were lo-fi before lo-fi was something. And perhaps more significantly, they were old: band leader Robert Pollard taught elementary school for 14 years before being “discovered” at age 36.  GBV has made news in the last year, regrouping with the classic lineup for a small tour in 2010 and recording new material for an album due out early 2012.  What better time to look at James Greer’s band bio, written shortly after the band’s “last” show on New Year’s Eve 2004.

Reading the beginning of Hunting Accidents (as it is referred within the text) is maddening: James Greer is not your typical rock biographer.  In fact he’s more like a cult member (“[...] free will is a thing granted both by God and by Bob, and like God, Bob will only smite you if you abuse the privilege” (36)).  To the uninitiated, the megalomania that goes into the description of GBV frontman Robert Pollard is over the top.  Before we even get to the band, there are lists of Pollard’s drinking buddies and endless stories of childhood athletics, even testimony from Pollard’s son about growing up with the man as your father and pee-wee football coach.   

It is debatable that Guided By Voices is the greatest band ever.  Using whatever logic deemed useful, two parties could argue for and against this point.  In Hunting Accidents, this debate does not exist and cannot exist.  Greer has not written a book based on quantifiable facts, and this is what makes Hunting Accidents truly capture the essence of GBV.   Greer’s close association with GBV (he even performed with the band in the mid-90s around the time of Alien Lanes) would make it difficult to write an objective story, but that is not the point with Hunting Accidents.  If you have seen Guided by Voices live or listened to Bee Thousand, this book tries to capture the feeling.

Eventually, Hunting Accidents does evolve into a more standard rock biography: we follow the band’s album production and label changes; some former members have harsh words to say about Pollard; and former members of REM say some kind words about Pollard.  (This makes Pollard seem more human, but at the same time I feel like you lose something of the mythical bravado that comes with GBV.)

Overall, Hunting Accidents is a great piece of art that throws together more information and praise than one would think necessary.  For those who don’t know all the lyrics to “Echos Myron”, Greer’s tale is much more interesting than your typical rock bio.  At one point, rock critic Richard Meltzer puts together a compact narrative of what rock means (sure, why not?).  And for those interested in such things, Greer also includes much about the Dayton music scene (bands, labels, venues) from the 1980s. Speaking as a Miami Valley native, I don’t think Northridge ever got this much ink in a nationally published book.

On a personal note, Hunting Accidents answered at least one question I’d had about the band’s radio airplay.  I was interning at an AAA (Adult Album Alternative) radio station in 2000, about the time TVT Records was promoting the Ric Ocasek produced Do the Collapse.  I had spent most of the previous few years telling anyone who would listen to check out GBV and there were two songs from this album that reached almost hourly play: “Teenage FBI” and “Hold on Hope”.  I liked “Teenage FBI” (which appears on a greatest hits package in a shortened form), but there was a keyboard part added to the radio version that always made me cringe.  “Hold on Hope” was an over-produced power ballad that sounded like something that could go on an album, but should not be a single.  It was hard to proselytize with this stuff coming out of the radio, so I felt vindicated that the real story of “Hold on Hope” is well documented in Hunting Accidents.  Read the book.

Stongsville is a rapidly growing western suburb of Cleveland; a town of less than 10,000 residents in 1960 and now a city of over 44,000.  I have driven through Stongsville on several occasions and it feels much more like the modern suburb that it has become than the semi-rural town that Jen Hirt’s great-grandfather set up the family’s greenhouse in 1915.  Hirt’s collection of essays, Under Glass, is not directly about the changes that have occurred to Strongsville, but it deals with the gradual upheavals and endings that generally follows youth into adulthood.

Though Under Glass has an overarching theme covering four generations of greenhouse keepers and the eventual sale and demolition of the buildings, the writing is very accessible to non-greenthumbed reader.  Essays on greenhouse design seamlessly discuss divorce, religion, and death.

Most of the essays are good enough to stand by themselves, but Under Glass as a whole is much better.  Unlike a memoir collection by David Sedaris, where the stories can be read (or not read) in any order, Hirt’s selections have a natural flow to them.  Though the author states in the introduction that the essays are “each on a theme, not at all chronological’, there is a straight (though expansive) story from the family history and childhood memories told in ‘A Girl with a Thousand Christmas’ to the reflective ‘Near a Fine Woods’, where she completes her grandmothers history of their home; several years after the home has been demolished.

The readability of the collection is enhanced by the varied writing styles used.  There is a diverse group of essays in the second half of the collection (“The Grotto of Redemption”, “Best Offer”, and “Ricinus Communis”) that almost leave the greenhouse and Ohio (in fact they take place in Iowa and the Pacific Northwest).  ”Grotto” is a spiritual travel essay.  ”Ricinus” starts as a case study on a federal ricin trial, with peripheral connections to Hirt’s family greenhouse, and evolves into a debatable question of fairness.  And finally, a personal favorite, “Best Offer” is a coming-of-age type of story of selling the car her parents bought for her with uncertainty.  The story ends with the perfect image of Hirt leaving the dealership with no ride.

An important element  of storytelling for the enjoyment of the readers is having the writer connect with the consumer, but at the same time giving the reader something new.  This is usually done (though hard to master) through universal truths such as growing-up, families (or lack of family), and death.  I am sure you can think of a few memoirs that deal with these topics.  The creative trick is to frame the story.  Hirt has used her greenhouse background (and extensive research in the history of the business) to relate a few years of her life on paper.  And there is much to learn about greenhouses here.  With the right writer, it can be a joy.

Under Glass is the second Gen-X memoir (or collected personal essays) about growing up in Ohio I have come across.  I have found that a non-universal rule for enjoying  The other being Donnell Alexander’s Ghetto Celebrity, which includes a very different social-economic background in Sandusky.  I would be interested to see if any other narratives are out there of this age.  If you read this and know of any, please let me know.  There are book clubs to form.

 You stayed home, so you don’t know what it’s like out there, do you? Amongst all those wolves. You don’t know how they are or what we’re up against. The only thing you know is Marion. Out there, they’ll take any little thing and bend it into something it isn’t. They’ll use everything they can to destroy the President, to destroy his good name. – Fictionalized Florence Kling Harding in In the Fullness of Time as she burns the late President’s public and private papers (271).

In 1920, Warren G. Harding won one of the most lopsided elections in U. S. Presidential history over fellow Ohioan James A. Cox.  Harding was Marion, Ohio.  His career before politics was as the editor of the Marion Star.  What is remembered from his electioneering is the “front porch” campaign, with speeches delivered from his home in All-American Marion, Ohio.  By 1923, the President has suddenly died and the Teapot Dome scandal, amongst others, has brought shame up on the White House.  Today, Harding’s name frequently appears on historians lists of worst presidencies.

Vincent Nicolosi’s In the Fullness of Time is about Marion at its peak and the town after everything falls apart.  It becomes Marion against the world for those left behind (at least for our narrator).  Told through the memories of Tristan Hamilton, a well-to-do busybody who sees the world through Marion colored glasses.  Or, at least, that is how he portrays himself.

This would make a great book club read because the author is so ambiguous about the truth that two readers could walk away with very differing views on Harding and the narrator.  Like any worthwhile historical fiction, In the Fullness of Time throws out plenty of historical tidbits, interpretations, and rumors, but does not try to prove anything.  This is fiction.

Told at the time of the Kennedy assassination, the story is about Hamilton’s life, his first love, and his sister Adeline.  The first half of the novel deals more directly with historical topics: Harding’s infidelities, the President’s bi-racial ancestry rumors, and conspiracies that he was poisoned.  Not surprisingly, Tristan has his hand in all of these dealings.  Sometimes in the dealings with Harding’s wife and mistresses, and frequently with the historians who try to tell the Harding story.

But, as the story progresses, it becomes more and more about Tristan protecting Harding and Marion from the world.  The idea is not to learn history (the narrator hates historians), but to protect Marion from receiving attention of any kind.  Hamilton, who organized the committee to create the Harding Memorial and now (in 1962) serves as the keeper of the remains of the President’s papers, asks questions but he doesn’t really want to know the answers.  Hamilton (and his father and grandfather, who owned a construction and real estate empire) made his fortune building the city on neighborhood at a time.  He spends his later life lamenting the evolution and destruction of Marion.  By protecting Harding’s legacy he is not sharing the modern world with the Marion of his memory.

Much of the second half of the story focuses on Hamilton’s memories of an enthusiastic young academic, Matthias Mende, who was writing a biography of the President’s time in office.  Matthias disappears under mysterious circumstances and this is a point that the narrator keeps talking through as in an attempt to make things right.  The book moves into a darker and more tense realm near the end.  But, as I confessed earlier, I am sure another reader could easily walk away with a lighter interpretation of Tristan’s story.  To me, this makes In the Fullness of Time worth reading.

One element of the book that is factually based is the existence of the Harding Memorial in Marion, Ohio.  As the narrator says, the memorial was “one of the last colossal monuments of the 20th Century” when built in 1926-27 and stands as comparable to the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials in many aspects.  Many great descriptions and images of the structure’s grandeur fill the In the Fullness of Time.  And it and its namesake rest there today in Marion, Ohio.

Though the title refers to 1860 to 1930, the bulk of A Little More Freedom covers the years leading up to the Great Migration (sometimes referred to the First Great Migration from approximately 1915 to the Great Depression.  The Second Great Migration would refer to the years 1940 through 1970) of southern African-Americans to northern cities.  The big question Blocker puts out is why the migration pattern switched from African-Americans moving to small towns and cities predominately prior to 1890 and then almost exclusively to larger urban centers (cities of over 100,000 people in 1900 — in Ohio, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and Toledo).

Reading the description of this title reminded me of another read a few years ago, James Loewen’s Sundown Towns.  In fact, just prior to the publication of A Little More Freedom, Sundown Towns was published (which was mentioned in Blocker’s introduction).  Loewen hypothesizes that starting around 1890, European American populations in many small towns and cities throughout America (but particularly in the Midwest) actively blocked and eliminated diversity through intimidation and violence.  This was the era of the end of Reconstruction, Plessy vs. Ferguson, eugenics studies, and European American initiated race riots (included riots in Springfield in 1904 and 1906 and Akron in 1900).  Blocker acknowledges Loewens argument and does not disagree with it, but argues that there are more reasons why migration patterns ended up as they were.  In general, where intimidation was absent (or not as immediate), economics trumped other reasons.  This was especially the case industrial cities in northern Ohio after 1915.

Blocker looks at the lower Midwest, which he defines as Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and more specifically at three municipalities: Washington Courthouse, Springfield, Ohio, and Springfield, Illinois.  All three of these cities were initially destinations of post-Civil war migration, but saw in-migration of African-Americans decrease, proportionally to the rest of the area, after about 1890.  In each city there was mob violence from European Americans.  In the case of Washington Courthouse, an attempted lynching was described by Blocker as a starting point in his research.  This event is well documented in A Little More Freedom.

But A Little More Freedom is more about the migrants than the place.  The South often is lumped together in this era, but Blocker goes into detail differentiating urban life in the south.  Blocker has gathered a wealth of documentation (oral history are juxtaposed with snapshots of demographics and statistics) on the individual and patterns in moving from the South to North.  It becomes evident that this history is much more complex than share croppers moving to the big city.  A Little More Freedom is as much about how migration patterns worked as to why, and is a welcome addition to the literature on the development of the lower midwest and Ohio.

One of the recurrent themes spoken by developers and civic officials in Columbus as reported in High Stakes was that getting an NHL team would make the metropolis a Major league city.  I don’t know if there is any way on measuring a Major League city (other than having a major league team), but Columbus landed the Blue Jackets expansion team in 1997 (starting play in 2000-01), adding it to the expanding list of new “Major league” towns.  These cities (such as Oklahoma City and Salt Lake City in Basketball) join the old guard of major league cities which were well established as major metropolis at the turn of the 20th Century (though maybe not so much anymore).

High Stakes tells the story of how Columbus landed a hockey franchise by looking  at one of the most instantly forgotten historic events – the failed referendum.  In 1997, the residents of Franklin County rejected a 50 cent sales tax increase that would go towards paying for an arena (for hockey) and a soccer stadium for the already established Columbus Crew of the MLS.  (The Crew played at OSU stadium at the time).  From the jaws of defeat, within a week, a new franchise owner and arena deal was procured through private (with some public) funding.  Eventually a soccer only stadium was built through mostly private funding on the state fair grounds.  Everyone won, including those consumers who would have needlessly (it seems) paid higher sales taxes to build such stadiums.  A main point throughout High Stakes, is that a strong opposition is healthy for referendum issues.  

High Stakes follows the events leading up to and after the referendum vote in a rather concise manner (the bulk of the book can be read if a few sittings or one long sitting).  Using an academic model, the authors focus on the major players in the stadium push.  This includes many of the established families in Columbus, corporations (Nationwide), and public officials (Columbus Mayor Gregory Lashutka and OSU president Gordon Lee).

Interestingly (maybe just for me), this is the second work I have looked at where the old guard, referred by the authors of High Stakes as the “Titans”, of Columbus comes together to fight for improving or saving face of the community.  In Getting Around Brown, the Gregory Jacobs points out how city elites in 1970s helped develop a plan to implement school busing without conflict.  The authors of High Stakes have put together an interesting overview of the The Columbus Monthly‘s power rating over a 20 year span heading back to the 1970s.  Can a book be written about the power elite in Columbus?

The final two chapters (written with Benjamin Cornwell) of High Stakes focus on larger matters than simply building the stadium.   First, ‘Beyond the Arena District: Downtown Columbus’ tries to take a snapshot of how downtown looked in 2002.  I could see this chapter being a must read for those familiar with Columbus.  The authors are of the opinion that the development of the arena and subsequent development in the direct area (known as the Arena District) were positive, but backed away from saying the stadium helped  the rest of downtown.

‘Other Cites, Other Games’ looks at how the stadium game played out in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.  Pittsburgh also had voters reject a sales tax referendum, but funding was later procured by local and state governments without voter approval (other than voting for elected officials).  Cincinnati was a different matter, and the authors are quite critical.  The Hamilton county voters approved a referendum for two stadiums overwhelmingly with very little opposition.  This lack of opposition led to little precise planning (it was not even determined where the stadiums would be built until much later with much controversy) and this led to amazing cost overruns.

The push for owners to demand new facilities has occurred in all major league markets (Try to name one where this did not occur).  The authors contend that Columbus was really the first market in the modern era where the voters rejected public funding and private funding worked out well.  High Stakes is book about development and city planning with a sports theme.  While a unique history of Columbus, the themes are applicable in major and minor league cities across the country, where a stadium was used in downtown redevelopment (Cleveland and Dayton come to mind.)

Seeing, drinking, and buying wine from the Winery:

Latimer, Patricia. Ohio Wine Country Excursions, Updated Edition. Akron, Ohio; Ringtaw Books, 2011.

Updated in 2011 (and printed by University of Akron’s Ringtaw Books imprint), Latimer has a concise overview of the wine industry in Ohio with information on 80 wineries.  The title would indicate that this is a travel guide, but I feel that the book covers the whole wine industry in Ohio and could be used as a reference source by a consumer at the liquor store and general geeks of the wine industry.  

The individual winery listing are quite useful in that they include every wine available with Latimer’s preferences given for best red and white.  I noticed that Latimer prefers the French varietals over Vitis labrusca [Concord, Catawba, etc.] and fruit wines.  (This is quite understandable for a serious wine guide, but there is no comparison of best Niagara or peach wine.)

If you are interested in the history of wine in Ohio, this guide has one of the more detailed overviews of pre-Prohibition winemaking in Ohio.  (There are also volumes written on early wineries, but those can be saved for another day.)

Overall, Ohio Wine Country Excursions probably will suffice as the one reference you will need for buying, visiting and thinking about wineries in Ohio.

Tadevich, D. L. A Travel Companion to Lake Erie Wineries.  Carmel, Indiana, Publishing-Plus, 2002.

As opposed to Ohio Wine County Excursions, A Travel Companion to Lake Erie Wineries is a travel guide first.  Tadevich includes two tours of Ohio Lake Erie Wineries – one tour focusing on the island region east to Cleveland and an eastern tour covering Lake and Ashtabula Counties.  While only covering 12 wineries, Tadevich’s writing is accessible and would be a good resource to all readers as she takes the time to explain the winemaking process and common terms heard (but never defined).

For those interested in only wines judged as deserving an award, I recommend checking out the list kept by the Ohio Department of Agriculture (http://www.tasteohiowines.com/award-winners.aspx#1).  Their website claims that there are over 150 registered wineries in the state.

Making and Selling Wine:

Even if you are not interested in starting your winery or wine bar, the guide Ohio Winery Basics (www.com.ohio.gov/liqr/docs/liqr_WineryBasics.pdf) put together by the Ohio Department of Commerce is a fun and informative read. Yes, fun is the correct term. This government document deals mainly with laws associated with selling wine and beer.  Such questions as “Why do some retailers not sell wine on Sundays?” (the short answer is money) and “How is the price of my wine determined?” are answered.

Also, for those wanting to start a winery, the Ohio Wine Producers Association posted a detailed article by Chris Stamp with many, many numbers and graphs.

Appellations of Origin and AVAs:

There is a tradition in winemaking to designate the region, or appellation, a wine was grown. This is supposed to (and does) group wines with a specific climate and soil.  Consumers may see a designation listed on the label for a Appellations of Origin.  These are very big in Europe (and much more stringent in terms of grapes and percentage of grapes used) and have seemingly always existed in the United States.  Traditionally, this process of designating an appellation was handled by local or state government, but this was taken over by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in the early 1980s.  These appellations are officially known as American Viticultural Areas (AVAs).

You can look up all your AVAs at http://www.wineinstitute.org/resources/avas

Why am I telling you this?  Ohio has five AVAs (wines can also receive the label appellation of simply Ohio): Lake Erie, Isle St. George (North Bass Island), Grand River Valley (parts of Lake, Geauga, and Ashtabula counties), Ohio River Valley, and Loramie Creek.  These do not quite align with the promoted wine trails.  Of note, there is a Laromie Creek AVAs that exists completely in Shelby County (county seat Sidney).  To my knowledge, there are no vineyards/wineries in this region.  If you are interested in starting a winery in Shelby County, please contact me.  I hate seeing an appellation going to waste.

Every time I pass the Malabar Farm sign on I-71 near Mansfield I think, “One day I will visit there.”  Instead, I finally got around to reading a work of the farm’s one-time operator, Louis Bromfield. Though known as an early conservationist and Ohio writer who knew many celebrities today, Bromfield was a literary star as a young man in the 1920s.  His novel Early Autumn won a Pulitzer Prize in 1927.  He continued to write, branching more into non-fiction, up until his death in 1958.  He established the before-mentioned Malabar Farm in 1939.

Over the last decade-or-so, The Wooster Book Company has reprinted a selection of Bromfield’s work, including many of his early novels and later Malabar Farm-related writings.   Many of these titles appear to have been long out of print, so now is a time to learn the Bromfield way.

The Green Bay Tree is the authors first published novel (1924).  For a first work, its scope aims towards the grand, encompassing the industrial revolution in the Midwest, a World War in France, and, to a lesser extent, truly knowing oneself.  This  all told through a reclusive widow, Julia Shane, and her two daughters, Irene and Lily.  Plot-wise, the novel can be over-simplified as the daughters choose (for completely different reasons) to not get married: Lily for the idea of love and Irene due to piety.  The Shane’s refuse to play by the Town’s rules.  Bromfield’s focus is on the female characters, with the few males left incomplete.

That said, a central character of the novel is the home, known as both Cypress Hill and Shane’s Castle (this edition says that Bromfield based the house on Oak Hill Cottage in Mansfield).  Before the novel’s story starts circa 1890, the land was part of Julia’s childhood farm and by the end of the action it is surrounded by steel mills covered in black soot.  Because of this, I originally thought The Green Bay Tree will become an industrial Midwest gothic tale, where the eccentric group of ladies is gradually consumed by the steel mills, but the story does not go that way.  I would classify it more as an epic family narrative of Modernism (Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, possibly).

The city where much of the story takes place is always referred to only as the Town.  It could be any number of the 1890s boom towns of NE Ohio.  The Town is given the LOC subject heading  of Mansfield (Ohio) — Fiction, but I don’t think Bromfield went out of his way to link a specific city with the Town.  Cleveland is referred to as another city at one point, but the Town also becomes the state’s biggest city in the end (which never quite happened to Mansfield) and became one of the world’s great steel producers (though this could have just been Town boosterism).  But there is really no good reason to carry on this argument as it is definitely a work of fiction.

The idea of industrial progress is not well received by the Shanes.  The mill owners are portrayed as greedy, with casual indifference to the plight of their immigrant workers, and by the end they are simply depicted as war profiteers.  One-by-one the Shanes, who represent the old pioneer way of the Town, align themselves with labor in a conflict they do not have a part.  The rise of union organizer Stepan Krylenko is a major plot point that greatly alters the second half of the book.  That said, Krylenko and the other immigrant characters comes off as more of an idea than actual people.  I would not necessarily consider this a drawback to Bromfield’s writing, but it emphasizes that this story is told from the point of view of the moneyed class.

I found the second half of The Green Bay Tree more challenging.  The quick pace of an American steel town is replaced with Lily’s middle age in France.  We lose a lot of the main characters from the early chapters and there are two extended conversations.  A reoccurring theme is that we never completely know others.  This becomes more in-your-face as Bromfield intentionally does not give insight into the resulting lives of many of the main characters.  But, in the end, Bromfield does a wonderful job weaving the hectic garden party opening the novel into its end.  There is a reason Bromfield made a name for himself in the letters.

As a side note, the mill-owners son, Willie Harrison, who is from the old Town of the Shanes, ends up rejecting the ‘progress’ of the industrial revolution and returns to his pioneer roots and starts a successful farm.  The Green Bay Tree was published in 1924, fifteen years before Bromfield moved to Malabar Farm, but he obviously had an inkling to go back to nature.

If you are interested in reading more about Bromfield, right now, I found the following Ohioana biography goes beyond the basic dates of the author’s life.