RiverViewer

So how many people ended up winning the Triple Crown this year? ColDayMan and Rob were at all three meets - anyone else?

Nicely done! I'll have to try to make the next meet!

Wow - great shots...but I guess I'm glad I couldn't make it!

Actually, I went with some friends - my wife, Issue430 and his boyfriend, and our hosts for dinner...so no map, but guides! I definitely want to get a good map and go back on my own sometime, track stuff down... Thanks to everyone for the kind words!

Interestingly, the only reference to Taft relating to transit that I found was that he testified in congress the 50's for keeping highway funds in a trust fund so they could only be used for roads projects. Perhaps an ironical choice for a public transit naming honor... Here's the relevant text from a Congressional Budget Office background paper called "Highway Assistance Programs: A Historical Perspective," from February 1978 (starting on page 42 of this .pdf): Although the bill under consideration did not contain a trust fund provision, the bill's sponsor, Congressmand Hale Boggs of Louisiana, clearly agreed when he stated: The bill reported by the House Ways and Means Committee, and eventually passed by the full House, did contain a trust fund provision. The Republican members, possibly swayed by Mayor Taft's testimony, submitted "Supplemental Views" in which they assumed responsibility for the provision...

Maybe it's my wife's fault! The ball cap, or the wife... (Or maybe it's the defense...)

I had no idea who Charles P. Taft actually was...a little googling: http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/mep/displaydoc.cfm?docid=erpn-chataf Charles P. Taft, the son of President William Howard Taft and brother of Senator Robert Alphonso Taft, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and attended Yale University. After completing his World War I service in the U.S. Army, Taft opened a successful law practice and, like his father before him, became an influential, active Republican. Charles Taft was more liberal than his brother, with whom he practiced law, and his father, who was chief justice of the Supreme Court. Charles supported reform movements and fought against the political machine in Cincinnati. During World War II, he served in the State Department Office of Wartime Economic Affairs and in 1945 was an adviser to the U.S. delegation to the San Francisco Conference that led to the creation of the United Nations. Also that same year, Taft began his twenty-two year service on the city council where he worked closely with the city's Charter Committee Party's crusade for "better local government." In 1952 he won the Republican nomination for governor only to lose to Democrat Frank Lausche, who occupied the governorship until 1957. In 1955 Taft was elected mayor of Cincinnati and during his tenure pursued an agenda that included slum clearance, public assistance for needy citizens, and improved labor relations. After serving one term, he sought the governorship a second time only to be defeated in the Republican primary. He returned to his law practice and remained involved in civic activities, especially working to encourage the Republican party to end any support of racial discrimination. He died in Cincinnati in 1983.

I went to Spring Grove Cemetery for the first time today. I posted a thread here, but there were three monuments that really struck me, and I wanted to treat them in detail. These are monuments for the Edwards, Fritz and Erkenbecher families. First, Edwards: Next, the Fritz monument: And finally, the Erkenbrecher monument. This may have been my favorite - copper statuary has such a beauty to it, and this piece uses it so well...

Today was my first time in Spring Grove Cemetery. I took 200 pictures, and felt like I'd hardly taken any at all...what an amazing place. I'd figured a cemetery would be open and lawn-like, but Spring Grove is so well wooded, it's like a series of clearings in a beautiful woods. I'll definitely be back on a nicer day, but I was happy for today's rainy, chilly weather - I didn't have to dodge people to get pictures. I'm going to split this up into two threads - one the general Spring Grove thread, and then one that looks at three monuments in more detail - Edwards, Fritz, and Erkenbrecher. Those three really struck me, so I wanted to show them in detail, but with 43 pictures here, and 35 pictures in the detail series, I thought splitting them up was wise. That detail thread is here. So let us begin. Thanks for the park, Mr. Burnet! Stained glass from inside a mausoleum: Thanks for the tower, Mr. Carew! There are a few areas with soldiers from the Civil War buried around upright cannon barrels (a common monument at Civil War battlefields): Detail of an individual soldier's stone: I didn't get a shot of the field cannon, but this is its plaque: The soldiers' monument: The cemetery is also an arboretum, and has some amazing trees - some huge trees, and some rare ones. Some monuments - some with detail shots: A deer in the background: Thanks for the park, Mr. Alms! Thanks for the company you started, Mr. Procter! The stained glass piece inside the Procter mausoleum: Thanks for the high school, Mr. Hughes! The grave of Major General Joseph Hooker. I knew he was buried here, but I never understood exactly why. Turns out his wife was Olivia A. Groesbeck, who is buried next to him. They're under the smaller stones to the left. Salmon P. Chase's grave. Talk about a career - Senator, Governor, Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was among the strongest voices for abolition in the pre-war years, was the strongest abolitionist in Lincoln's cabinet, and was able to keep the Union's finances together during the Civil War. Thanks for helping preserve the Union and end slavery, Mr. Chase! This looks like it's a gothic church, but it's another mausoleum: What an amazing, gorgeous place...I will definitely be back...

Wonderful, on so many levels! Great pictures, and all of them great news! We'll have to remember to come back to this thread in a few months when these projects are all done, for a compare/contrast!

Well...you see, I think I was wearing my Chattanooga Lookouts hat to these games: ...so maybe that's what the problem was...I might just try one more game with a different ballcap on, wear the Reds hat, see if maybe that fixes it...

We were in 521, so we were almost neighbors!

Just a few shots from tonight's heartbreaking game... It's so wonderful to walk in and see this - the Reds atop the NL Central - even if it was just for two days this time: The sun setting: ...and some fireworks shots - the first features the moon: We walked to NOTL afterwards, and Jefferson Hall was packed to the gills:

Heartbreaker...

^No, it's the 1.61 Kilometer High Club!

Thank you! Actually, that's still a funny comment, even post-translation!

^And do you think the way to fix Main Street, then, is strong police committment plus moving social services to a more appropriate area (like Queensgate)? Do that, and the businesses won't get choked off like they are now? I believe that's been your position, just wanted to make it clear...or am I missing pieces?

...I don't get it...probably will lose the humor when translated, but do you mind spelling it out for me? Sorry... Regarding emergency coffee, a French Press is the ideal option, obviously, but I've actually found that, if you need coffee for purely medicinal reasons (avoiding the headache), that the simplest solution (say, for camping) are those coffee tea bag things. Just need hot water and the tea bag, and while it's not a savory cup of joe, it will keep the jonesing at bay...

Yeah, it was amazing. Couldn't have planned it if we tried. However, it did make me think there's no reason one couldn't plan it - like running up to Newport Central Catholic during the last inning of a game the Reds are winning, prepping the camera, then hoping Coffee completes the save...definitely something I'm gonna try to do...

Yes, two units per floor, each about 3200 square feet, if I remember correctly. I was told they had to presell 8 units before they could start construction. If you read back through the thread, I think everything we know about the deal is in here, including emails with realtors and all that...

Oh, I know! Two games so far, both losses...if they lose again tonight, that's it for this season - no more games for us...but EZ's been absolutely top notch lately, and the bats are alive again, and Maddux has been struggling on the road of late, so it looks good - but you never know...

I'm not sure I like the design yet, but I'm open to being won over by it. I just got really turned off to that general design idea by this bus-stop looking "Preview Pavilion" on UC's campus: Given that this is, in fact, a bus stop, and it's put together much more nicely, with suspension-bridge echoes and all that, I might well dig it when it's all in place...

Actually, it's even more extreme than that...23 units, total asking price of $21.2MM. Here's a post from upstream in this thread that outlines the prices and units, best I could figure them.

No, they're definitely on a 6:30am schedule...might have been loading dump trucks this morning? Something involving metal and rocks meeting one another...but hey, I'm not going to complain if it's actually being built!

It was trivia night at Indigo's in Ft. Mitchell last night, and we left there between the 8th and 9th innings...listened to the last three outs, by which time we were just hitting the cut-in-the-hill...went like this, bang-bang-bang: The Cut-in-the-Hill view of the skyline comes into view "This one belongs to the Reds!" Fireworks... OMFG, so beautiful, perfect timing...my wife and I were cheering and laughing, because it was just so flawlessly perfect - fireworks going off over the city, like it was planned just for us...