I had the opportunity to read 4 books received from publishers Gray & Company that Clevelanders - past and present - would enjoy. With the Christmas holiday fast approaching, any of these four Cleveland-based books would be a welcome gift for that special Clevelander in your life!
My favorites – “Cleveland TV Tales” and “Cleveland TV Tales Volume 2”, both authored by Mike and Janice Olszewski (Gray & Company, Publishers). The first book gives an extensive background on the start of television in Cleveland, laced with stories about people whose names are easily recognizable to Clevelanders: Ghoulardi, Dorothy Fuldheim, Page Palmer, and Captain Penny, just to name a few. Volume 2 looks into more recent TV personalities of the 1970s-1990s. Being a lifelong Clevelander, born here in the mid-1950s, these books were a delight to read and brought me back to the time when there were few TV channels from which to chose and how local TV stars came to be. While these books are nostalgic for Cleveland “lifers” like me, they would still be very interesting to anyone who has spent any time in our wonderful city.
My husband is reading “Glory Days in Tribe Town: The Cleveland Indians and Jacobs Field 1994-1997” by Terry Pluto and Tom Hamilton (Gray & Company, Publishers). This book covers the Cleveland Indians in their first years in Jacobs Field and the period of winning seasons. (I remember it well!) Pluto and Hamilton give a great behind the scenes look at what made the team tick, plus interesting commentary on how “Indians Fever” gripped the city. Sports fans will certainly enjoy reading these insights and reliving such an exciting time in Cleveland’s sports history. (As all Clevelanders know, winning seasons here for any sport have been hard to come by!)
And on the subject of sports: Every Cleveland Browns fan knows The Bone Lady. In fact, even non-Browns fans knows of her. She’s hard to miss on game day with her creative dog bone and Browns themed attire, an homage to the Browns “Dawg Pound.” Her book “The Bone Lady” by Derba Darnall (Gray & Company, Publishers), has the subtitle “Life Lessons Learned as One of Football’s Ultimate Fans.” This story tells how she evolved, both as a person and as The Bone Lady. It’s a fun read that tells of sports but also of personal discovery.
So if you’re stuck in what to get someone for a holiday gift, any one – or all four - of these books would make an affordable gift that would bring some Cleveland joy even after the holidays are over.
All four books are available in most local bookstores and at the following links:
(Please note: The link to Amazon is provided for your convenience: I receive no compensation or consideration from Amazon or anyone else if you purchase these books!
A midge, greatly enlarged They don’t bite. They don’t sting. But they can still annoy. They’re midges (some call them muckleheads), and every year around this time when it starts to warm up, they come out in full force. And sometimes in the fall they return again if the conditions are right.
These insects are largely ignored, until they come out in such numbers that they can’t be avoided. Just ask anyone who played in the October 2007 Cleveland Indians vs. New York Yankees playoff game, when a freak mass swarming of midges into Jacob’s Field (now Progressive Field) seemed to completely unnerve the New York Yankees. The Yankees were close to tying the series when the insects descended, like something out of a horror film. Yankee team members complained of bugs in their hair, nose, ears, well, just about any place a tiny bug can get. Some of the Yankees tried to spray themselves with insect repellent to no avail.
This wasn’t the first swarm of midges into the ballpark, but it was one whose timing was impeccable. The Yankees lost the game. Score one for the bugs.
Last spring, the midges were so bad that when my husband returned from work downtown, the front of his car was so covered in midges it looked like the car had grown fur. He said while that driving home on the Shoreway he had passed through many dense clouds of midges. I immediately took his car to the drive through car wash, not wishing to touch the car myself. (I still shudder just thinking about it.) I also used to work in the Tower at Erieview, and one morning during my first spring working there, I came in to the office and opened my blinds to find the window almost black, covered with moving midges. Thankfully they were all outside, but it was still a shock.
But, while many people living in the Cleveland area probably have their own midge encounter, many may not really understand much about these harmless bugs.
There are many kinds of midges (in the family Chironomidae), and they can be found worldwide, having over 700 species in North America alone. They have no mouths and no stinger, so they are really of no harm to people. Their nuisance is just in their sheer numbers. They spend most of their life as just larvae near the Lake Erie shoreline, and hatch usually in large numbers when the temperature, humidity, and light are just right. Midges are an excellent food source for fish, and the larvae also help keep lakes clean by consuming organic debris. They are also highly attracted to light and bug zappers. So, if you know there was a midge hatching, keep your outdoor lights off and your bug zapper either off or away from where you plan to be, because it will only attract them to you.
Here are two videos on midges. The first is a little more educational, and shows the life cycle of a midge. The second is a video taken by someone at the Indian/Yankees playoff game, which, if you can stand a little shaky-cam, gives you an idea of how the Yankees, and the crowd, handled The Attack of the Harmless Midges.
So that’s it for Cleveland’s secret weapon, the midges. Don’t say you haven’t been warned!
Learn about Midges
The Midges, I mean The Indians vs. the New York Yankees
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The Cleveland media announced yesterday that Jacobs Field, the home of The Cleveland Indians, would now be called Progressive Field. Progressive Insurance purchased the naming rights for the playing field, in a 16 year, $3.6 million a year deal. The length of this agreement coincides with the Indians’ lease with Gateway.
If you listen to the media reports, one would think that Progressive was planning on having the venue demolished. For example, USA Today’s website headline says “The Jake is gone: Indians name it Progressive Field.” Local outrage also ensued, more from television news outlets, whining about the name change, and reporting that fans wanted to still call it “The Jake.”
If I were Progressive Insurance, who employs thousands in the Cleveland metro area, I would be a little annoyed that the local media is dismissing the name change and being less than supportive. Full disclosure here: I don't own Progressive stock, I don’t have Progressive Insurance ,nor do I work there, so I have no motivation for defending them. But I think the media has gone a little too far in simply reporting the story, and in this case seems to be unnecessarily starting a fire, or at least fueling one.
Personally, I don’t care who’s name goes on the field where the Indians play. The can call it Progressive Field, or The Prog or The Pro or whatever. OK, don’t call it The P just because it sits next to the Q. I don’t want jokes about minding my Ps and Qs, thank you. But anything else is fine with me.
Those people who still feel that they want to call the place “The Jake” need to get over it and move on. . Naming rights are common in professional sports. Clevelanders should be grateful that Cleveland is still able to support a major league baseball team. Many cities would love to have a team like ours, and probably could care less what the name of the stadium in which the team played was called.
I would just like them to have winning seasons and maybe bring home a World Series title. At least in my lifetime!
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