The Savannah Apartment-Week One

I arrived in Savannah, GA, on Tuesday March 1, after a 700-mile trip from Stow that I stretched into two days. I arrived in mid-afternoon and followed directions for parking and getting the key to the AirBnB rental I have booked for about five weeks. The studio apartment is in an eight-story brick building that is about 100 years old and located in Savannah’s historic district. 

I picked the unit because of its location within walking distance of the historic sites and attractive parks that dot this part of town. The closest park is Chippewa Square which features a statue of George Oglethorpe, the founder of the Georgia colony. It was the location in the film “Forrest Gump” where Gump sat on a park bench and said the film’s most iconic line: “Life is like a box of chocolates…” So many tourists wanted to take pictures at that bench that traffic was impeded and the city eventually removed the bench and placed it in a museum. 

Another feature I like is that there is a decent size balcony that has a great view of downtown Savannah and the historic district. However, some of the view is blocked by a 12-story apartment building that is directly across the street. This newer, modern-looking structure is made of gray stone with large glass windows and it seems architecturally inconsistent with rest of the 18th and 19th century structures in the area.

I am not a voyeur, but the large windows provide a good view inside some of the apartments, especially at night. I haven’t seen any crimes or murders a’la Hitchcock’s film “Rear Window”, but some residents—the majority of them female— might be more careful about what they do or wear while in front of these large windows. Just saying…

So far, I’ve just been getting settled into the apartment and getting to know the surrounding area. The streets are lined with large oak trees with lots of Spanish moss hanging from the limbs. It is still early spring, but I’ve seen some pink azaleas blooming on the boulevards. 

On Wednesday, I decided to get a good brunch and I wound up at the Collins Corner Cafe. I had a delicious meal of sausage gravy over poached eggs and biscuits, chicken sausage links and fennel slaw. From my table on the sidewalk, I could observe the horse-drawn carriages and tour busses going by as well as multitudes of tourists on foot. It was a very pleasant, sunny day and a wonderful experience. When it came time to pay my check, I told my waiter to notice the last name on my credit card, and he asked me if he could get a raise. Couldn’t give him a raise, but I did give him a nice tip. 

Then I had nice walk back to my apartment and spent the sunny and warm afternoon on the balcony reading a book that Pam had bought and recommended. It’s called “Spymistress” by William Stevenson and chronicles the tale of Vera Atkins who was one of Great Britain’s most prominent spies before and during World War II. One of her colleagues in the British intelligence system was Ian Fleming who said Atkins was an inspiration for his character James Bond. Fleming later recounted that when he was at a dinner with Atkins, she ordered a Martini with Booth Gin, very little Vermouth, a twist of lime and wanted it “...shaken, not stirred.”

After two warm sunny days, I thought about going to the beach on Friday. However, the weather turned considerably cooler and it was cloudy so I found a nearby coffee shop and read and did some people watching. March is a very big tourism month here as the spring-like weather attracts large numbers of “snowbird” tourists. Most of the visitors I saw were couples in their 40s and up and a surprising number of groups of only women. 

The major event in March in Savannah is the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade which draws tens of thousands of visitors and is billed as one of the largest in the country. Later in the month, there is a significant home and garden tour in the historic district that draws thousands of visitors. It wasn’t held in both 2020 and 2021 because of the Covid pandemic, but the website said the tour will be back on this year.

My last two sabbaticals in El Paso and Las Vegas were in the dry, desert-like southwest. The low country of the southeast coast couldn’t be more different. So I plan to share more experiences in my next blog, so stay tuned.   

The "Post-COVID" Summer

It’s been a while since I posted anything to my blog—about five months—so I think it’s about time for me to update what’s been happening these last few months. 

Pam, our son Brian (both Pfizer) and me (Moderna) were vaccinated in late February and late March, so by mid-April we were ready to emerge from the self-quarantine cocoon that had lasted over a year.

In mid-April my monthly poker group resumed with all of us vaccinated and it was great to exchange stories between hands about how we survived 2020 and our plans for this summer. A couple of the guys planned to meet with their kids, spouses and grandchildren at the beach during the summer. Several of my friends were booked on a train trip sponsored by AAA through the Rockies, but that was cancelled in June.

Pam and I had planned to go to Europe in 2020 for our 50^th Anniversary, but the pandemic blew away that trip. This summer, we discussed a trip to Hawaii, but that state still had travel restrictions for most of the summer. We then planned a trip to New England in mid-July, but a couple of intense downpours cancelled those plans.

Our 22-year-old roof had a serious leak at the rear of our house. We got estimates from several roofing contractors and had the roof replaced two weeks ago. so that was the end of significant trip this summer. We also decided to replace our 11-year-old water heater. Our 41-year-old house is entering its third repair and replacement cycle and we replaced all of our windows last December.  We have decided to defer any significant trip to 2022. 

We have been able to do some good things this summer including attending a few concerts at Blossom. I’ve gone to six Akron Rubberducks games with my friends. Pam and I have gone to the beach at Vermilion on Lake Erie twice and we’ll to go up there again before the fall weather begins.

And that won’t be long. We’ve noticed that sunset is about 45 minutes earlier than it was on the Summer Solstice on June 21. The leaves on the red maples in our back yard are beginning to turn brown—these are the first to go—and I’ve noticed some leaves on other trees starting to lose their green color.

It has been very warm and humid for the past couple of weeks, but the nights seem a bit cooler, so I know that fall is not too far away. Our lawn cutting service has skipped cutting a couple of weeks in the last month as the growth rate of our lawn slows down.

I was hoping for a more significant emergence from the pandemic this summer, but the distressing increase in cases in recent weeks indicates that this fall will bring more restrictions as the unmasked and unvaccinated get infected with the Delta variant. 

I’m not going to say much about masks and vaccines, but in the last week or two, I’ve begun to wear my mask again when I enter a store. I’m over 70 and have several risk factors from COVID-19. But, I also recognize that my vaccine protects me from getting ill or protects me from getting seriously ill if I am exposed to COVID-19.

So, we will muddle through somehow. Pam will be teaching an accounting class online again this fall at the University of Akron and I will be taking an acting class at the Beck Center in Lakewood and taking a couple of non-credit courses online.

I’m also beginning to think about where I will take a winter sabbatical in early 2022, but I am concerned about the re-emergence of COVID in the southwestern states I am considering.

So, it remains a time of great uncertainty. I hope the next wave of COVID doesn’t affect my plans as much as in the past. But, the virus will never go away until the appropriate number of people get vaccinated. And we aren’t nearly there yet.

 

 

Exiting COVID-19

It’s been almost exactly one year since I joined millions of Americans in a self-imposed quarantine to protect ourselves from the COVID-19 pandemic that is particularly dangerous for older people. For the last year, I have mostly stayed at home except for the two or three times a week when I would go out for a drive or my once a week trek to the liquor store. The only other time I have been going out is to a parking lot service at our church on Sunday mornings.

But, there is hope for a return to normalcy in the next few weeks. First, spring is approaching and the first crocuses have bloomed in our front yard and the high temperature is forecast to be in the low 60s for the next few days. 

Second, as I write this I got my first COVID-19 vaccination shot about 10 days ago and will get the second in about two and a half weeks. When I add two weeks for the vaccine to reach full efficacy, I expect to be ready to get out and resume some normal activities by mid-April. 

Our minor league baseball team the Class AA Akron Rubberducks will open their season on May 4 and my group has ticket vouchers from last year that will be good this season. My monthly poker group has decided to get together again after a 14-month hiatus on April 16 assuming everyone is fully-vaccinated by then. And, I’m awaiting an announcement about the summer schedule for the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center.

All of these activities were cancelled last summer and am really looking forward to them this summer. I’m also looking forward to going the nearby pharmacy where I usually purchase hearing aid batteries, disposable razor blades, allergy medicine and other things that I have had have my son Brian get for me this past year.

I’m looking forward to visiting my barber Margie for a professional haircut and good conversation about her two daughters who are both in media. One is a production assistant for ESPN in Los Angeles and the other is editor of a small-town weekly newspaper in Mississippi. My wife has been cutting my hair for the past year and I am grateful for the work she does, but Margie the barber does a better job with my hair than my wife the CPA.

I’m looking forward to hanging out at a coffee shop with a friend or my laptop on a cloudy, drizzly day. I want to take a car trip later this spring, but I will be careful to avoid any place that is too crowded or is a state where the governor has eliminated a mandate for wearing a mask. I want to visit the Rock Hall and the Cleveland Museum of Art. 

When the weather warms, I want to head for the beach. I want to have a sit-down meal in a good restaurant, something I haven’t done in about a year.

But, most of all, I want to be able to get together with family and friends and exchange hugs and handshakes. Earlier today, I read an article about seven adverse effects of quarantine on mental health and my dangerous spots were having a little too much Bourbon some days and occasionally blowing up in anger at the news on TV. Thankfully, I’ve already cut back on one and will cut back on the other once I get my second vaccine dose.

A couple of weeks ago a dear friend from our church succumbed to COVID-19 after a two-month struggle. He is survived by his wife of 41 years, three children and four grand children. More than half a million Americans have died in the last year from the disease and they are survived by millions of family, friends and co-workers. This has been a horrible experience for the country and here’s hoping it can be committed to history by the end of this year.

On a positive note, I feel a sense of renewal is coming. In the past few months, three new families have moved on to our street, each with young children. Yesterday afternoon, two kids who live next door got off the school bus and their mom waved at the bus driver and hugged her kids. I admit it gave me goose bumps to see something so normal, yet so beautiful.

I believe the quarantine and pandemic have made me stop and appreciate the little things more: the bright sunshine, the crocuses blooming, the chirping of birds—all ordinary things that make me think will get through this trial. And that can’t come a moment too soon.

 

Rejection Letters

I am still self-quarantining because of COVID-19, so I decided to try to clean up my home office and get rid of files and papers I don’t need anymore. As I went through my file cabinet drawers, I found a two folders containing rejection letters I had received over the years after applying for various jobs in Public TV, video production and journalism.

Including the rejection letters, my cover letters and initial job listings, both folders were a couple of inches thick. The documents covered the dates from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. After that, job searching moved online meaning fewer paper rejection letters.

As I sorted through the papers and put most of them in a bag to be recycled, I did retain a few letters from people I knew through mutual acquaintances or who had worked at someplace where I had worked. Most of the job listings came from two sources: “Broadcasting” magazine’s weekly classified listing of positions available and the job search service of the National Association of Broadcasters. It was through a listing in the now-defunct NAEB that I came to work at the University of Akron in 1975.

I also was a member of the International Television Association during the 1980s and 1990s, a group composed of mostly corporate and educational video production professionals. That organization also had a job listing service for members.

During the late 70s and 1980s, I concentrated on positions in the Southeastern US because I wanted get away from the brutal winter weather in Northeast Ohio. In 1990 enrollment at UA began to fall due to a decline in the number of high school graduates in the region. I sensed that the university might eventually close my department for budgetary reasons and that happened in 1995.

In the early 1990s, I began to cast a wider net and apply for positions all over the country. I got some serious nibbles from employers in Florida, Tennessee, the Carolinas and even Washington state. I also interviewed for positions in Northeast Ohio, but there were no offers. 

Early in my career, I was dedicated to the concept of television as a source of good for the audience through my work in Public TV and educational video. I believed in the programming philosophy of public television to inform and entertain. I hoped to get a program director’s position at a PBS affiliate, but that never happened.

After UA closed the TV Center in 1995, I decided to repurpose my career away from video production. I was a reporter for Sun Newspapers, the chain of weekly papers serving suburbs of Cleveland and for Tire Business a Crain Communications publication. Both jobs allowed me to improve my writing skills and learn more about local government and business. I remain grateful to the editors and co-workers who helped me learn a new career. 

Then in 2001 I returned to UA as a multimedia specialist and remained there until I retired in 2011.

Looking through the stack of rejection letters was humbling, but it also made me feel relieved. I am so glad I don’t have to go through the apprehension and disappointment of searching for a job anymore. During all the decades of job searching, I discovered that often it wasn’t necessarily what you knew as much as who you knew. In six of the eight full-time jobs I had during my career, I knew someone who knew someone about the job opening that I was applying for.

Some of the rejection letters ended with the phrase: “Best of luck in your future endeavors.” I’m so glad I don’t have to read that anymore.

  

 

The Tired Town

On a recent sunny and cold day, I decided to go for a drive. Because I am self-quarantining due to COVID-19, one of the few times I leave the house is when I decide to go for a drive to alleviate the boredom. 

On this particular day, I decided to drive to Warren, Ohio, about a 45-minute trip via the Ohio Turnpike and Route 5. I haven’t been there often and the last time I remember visiting this city was in the early 1990s when I produced and directed a TV show for Channels 45/49 about the city’s annual summer festival on square surrounding the Trumbull County courthouse. The highlight of that weekend was two free performances by the Ohio Ballet, a once nationally recognized dance troupe based in Akron. 

The night we videotaped the performance there were thousands of spectators and the weather was nearly perfect. During the festival weekend, streets surrounding the square were closed to vehicles and there were dozens of food and arts and crafts booths. It was an interesting mix of those selling everything from corn dogs to artists selling hand-crafted jewelry and paintings. City officials estimated that tens of thousands of residents visited the festival. 

The first time I visited Warren was in 1969. Pam and I went to see a production at the Packard Music Hall by the Kenley Players. Producer John Kenley attained fame in the 1960s and 70s by putting together a summer stock touring company to present Broadway comedies. The tour usually began in Warren and then moved on to Akron, Columbus and Dayton. Kenley’s formula was to cast a prominent actor from Broadway, TV or the movies to draw crowds. 

That night Pam and I saw “You Know I Can’t Hear You When the Water is Running” starring Arte Johnson—who appeared on “Laugh In” as the wise-cracking Nazi solder peering out from behind a bush with a cigarette dangling from his lips. That hall did not have air conditioning and it was so hot the crew opened a large back door of the stage during the second act to provide some cool air. 

Fast forward to 2021 and the picture was entirely different. As I drove down West Market street towards downtown, I was struck by how deserted the street was on the cool but dry Saturday afternoon. A couple of convenience store-gas stations, a single restaurant and a dollar discount store were the only businesses open. 

There were a large number of vacant lots with remnants of parking lots for business buildings that had been torn down. Off to the north, I could see the dilapidated remains of what looked like a large steel mill. There were some large houses lining Market Street, but many of them looked abandoned with broken and boarded-up windows and peeling paint. It wasn’t always this way in Warren. 

Originally settled as a mill-town in 1798, the original 400-acre plot of the town was once part of the Western Reserve section of Connecticut. Warren remained a small city until the first half of the 20th century when Republic Steel and the Packard Electric Company produced steel and electrical components for auto manufacturers. These companies and others provided thousands of well-paying manufacturing union jobs and Warren’s population swelled to more than 63,000 by 1970. 

Then Warren suffered from the de-industrialization that affected hundreds of other towns and cities in Ohio and the Midwest. Companies closed up factories and mills and moved production to non-union states or other countries. And many Warren residents also left, too. There are now about 39,000 residents according a 2019 estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly a 40-percent decrease from 1970. 

The economic and social problems caused by the loss of jobs and shrinking population of cities like Warren can’t be minimized and I think this is the major cause of the turnabout in the politics of Trumbull County and Warren. In 2012, the county provided Barack Obama with 60 percent of the votes in his re-election victory. Four years later, 50 percent of the voters went for Donald Trump and the President won that county by more than 10 percent last year. 

In the 1976 hit movie “Network”, actor Peter Finch won an Oscar playing straight-laced newscaster Howard Beale. He became a rabble-rousing TV personality, a precursor of current cable news network hosts and garnered huge audience ratings. During his show, Beale would urge his viewers to get off the couch, open the window and yell: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” 

My guess is that sentiment put Trump in the White House in 2016 and angry voters in depressed cities and towns like Warren are likely to continue to roil the electoral landscape until their economic lot improves.

Summer is a Bummer

 

When I began a new job at the University of Akron TV Center in 1975, I first encountered the phrase “…summer is a bummer.” The staff and students used this phrase a lot when I started there in August of that year.

 

I found out the meaning of that phrase when I looked at the weekly production schedule. There was studio shoot almost every day for the first three weeks of August. At that time UA was offering most of its General Education courses on a closed circuit video system that transmitted the videotaped lectures to large lecture halls throughout campus.

 

For the TV Center staff and students, summer was the busiest time. Each professor who taught one of these courses worked with a staff producer-director to record more than a dozen 40-to-45-minute course lectures between mid-May when the spring semester ended and early August. These lectures were fully produced TV shows with visuals, charts, graphs and some film clips to support the subject matter. The idea was to complete the lectures a couple of weeks before the fall semester so each faculty member would have a couple of weeks off before fall classes started.

 

UA’s enrollment was exploding in the mid-1970s as the former municipal college grew from about 10,000 students in the mid-60s to about 23,000 students in 1975. In 1967, UA became a full-fledged state-supported university and that fueled the tremendous growth.

 

The point is that the first few years I worked at UA Pam and I didn’t take long summer vacations, but would schedule them for other breaks in the year. Because, Brian hadn’t been born yet, we didn’t have to consider his school schedule in our vacation plans.

 

What I’m trying to say now is: “…this summer is a bummer…” because of the things we’ve missed due to the COVID-19 pandemic: a planned European or Asian trip for our 50^th Anniversary, a 50-year class reunion at Miami University, Cleveland Orchestra concerts at Blossom Music Center, Akron Rubberducks baseball games with my season ticket group and our monthly poker games, have all been cancelled.

 

Because most of my friends are 70-ish and some of us have other health problems, we are leery about going where there are crowds. So, I spend most of my time at home.

 

So, how do I keep occupied? I do have occasional freelance writing assignment and I have a personal goal of posting a blog at least once a month. I begin each morning perusing the local newspaper (yes, I still read the Akron Beacon Journal every day!) and then looking at news, email, Facebook and Linked-In on my phone while I finish breakfast and have a second cup of coffee.

 

Then depending on which day it is, and that takes some thought sometimes, I decide on other things I want to do. Twice a week, I visit Akron General Lifestyles for strength training on the machines. On other days, I use the exercycle in our basement while listening to classic rock on Amazon Prime. Two or three days a week after lunch, I get in my car and go for a drive through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park or some other area nearby. Occasionally, I will take my laptop along and stop and do some writing. I have met friends for coffee a few times, but always outside at a safe distance.

 

Two things I wanted to do this year were make my debut as a standup comic and complete a book project I started last year while I was in El Paso.

 

Last fall, I took a basic acting class and an improvisational acting class at the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood to prepare for this. I have written three five-minute monologs for my debut. While I was in Las Vegas, I scouted a couple of places that had amateur nights and was close to getting up the courage to perform at one of them when the news of the pandemic made things more urgent and I decided to return home a couple of weeks early.

 

Now, even though a local comedy club that has an amateur night is open again, I consider going to a bar too dangerous. I am considering video recording these monologs and posting them online and I will be sure to let you know when I do that.

 

The book is pretty much written, but I am looking for a professional editor to correct errors in grammar, punctuation and syntax before it it published. It is a work of historical fiction and I hope I can get it done by the end of the year. I’ve had a couple of relatives and one former coworker read it and they gave mostly positive reviews and some good suggestions. But, I still want a dispassionate, professional editor to evaluate it.

 

I know a lot of people have suffered a great deal and 175,000 people have lost their lives because of COVID-19, so my issues during the last few months are pretty trivial. But still, the lost opportunities of this summer are disappointing. However, Pam, Brian and I have all remained healthy and that’s the most important thing.

 

Stay safe and I hope the rest of your summer is a good one, not a bummer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reflections on a Coronavirus Summer

Today I am sitting by a pond at Longwood Park in Macedonia, Ohio. The park is about 20 minutes by car from my house in Stow. The centerpiece of the park is a pond that is two to three acres in area and is surrounded by a wooded area with picnic tables and a fishing dock.

 

It’s a spacious park with several baseball and softball fields, the pond and the city’s recreation center. On this warm July Saturday afternoon, the park is not particularly crowded and seems to be a very laid back place.

 

This summer, I’ve been exploring parks like this around the area as I attempt to escape boredom of staying mostly at home because of COVID-19. Frankly, it’s not like I have anything else to do. I discovered this park several weeks ago when I took 10 bags of papers to one of the monthly free paper shredding drop-offs provided by the county at various parks during spring and summer months.

 

Thankfully, the gym I belong to, Akron General Lifestyles in Stow, recently reopened with pretty strict safety protocols. Everyone wears a mask—staff and those working out—and the machines have been spread out so there is about six feet of separation between them. There a plenty of bottles of hand sanitizer and cleaning solution for wiping down the machines after use.  It will probably take another two weeks, but I am gradually working my way up to the workout I did before the gym shut down in mid-March.

 

I try to keep engaged by calling family and friends and I’ve had a couple of coffee dates meeting outside with former co-workers. A group of couples we know has been gathering every couple of weeks in a park for a group picnic where everyone brings their own food. The first one was okay, but during the second one, people started chatting with each other without masks at less than six feet of separation. We were invited to another one last week, but I declined. Pam went and told the others I didn’t feel safe meeting in such a large group where people got too close together.

 

As I look around Longwood park, I see several people with fishing poles trying their luck in the pond. On the other side of the pond, I see a couple of groups in picnic shelters and a few hikers on a short trail.

 

No one is sure of the lasting social effects of this pandemic. This week, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine instituted a state-wide order for people to wear masks in public. Both college and high school sports are in doubt as several major college conferences have either sharply curtailed or canceled fall sports completely.

 

I see more and more articles about workers enjoying working from home and that their companies are satisfied with the arrangement. There is a lot of debate between parents, administrators and teachers about how K-12 schools will meet safely and most universities are grappling with the same problem as we are about a month or less away from the start of the new school year.

 

If this pandemic upsets most of the next school year, we may see an accelerated and permanent shift towards online instruction even after COVID-19 runs its course. If I were looking to invest now, I would not invest in commercial real estate because significant numbers of workers won’t want to return to the office full time if it isn’t necessary even after the pandemic ends.

 

If workers don’t have to commute on a daily basis, this will lead to increased demand for housing in suburbs and diminished demand for close-in housing near the center of the city. Many sit-down restaurants and bars will go out of business and will not return.

 

The original projections were that a vaccine might be ready in the first couple of months of 2021. If there is a delay much beyond that, the changes to work and society will be even more profound and things won’t return to the way they were.

 

It’s difficult to predict the future, but I think things could be different once the COVID-19 pandemic ends, a lot different.