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.

College Football and COVID-19 and the MAC

As we approach the middle of the summer, in most years I would begin to pay more attention to college football. It is my second favorite sport, after college basketball, and I love its pageantry and intensity. As the cool fall weather moves in, it seems the perfect sport with helmeted, and armor-clad (of sorts) gladiators clashing in front of thousands of excited fans.

I really enjoy watching the big boys of the sport battle it out in packed stadiums in places like Columbus and Tuscaloosa. I also enjoy the spectacle of the marching bands, cheerleaders and the crazed fans dressed in the colors of their school.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I fear there will not be any college football this year. The so-called “Power Five” schools in the major conferences (Big Ten, Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Southeast and Pac-12) will lose millions in revenue because of empty stadiums and cancelled lucrative television contracts. It will hurt, but most of them are large enough to absorb the losses for a single season. The schools that will really suffer if the season is cancelled are the so-called “Group of Five” schools that make up the bottom tier of Division I college football.

One of the five conferences in the Group of Five is the Mid-American Conference (MAC) which includes my alma mater, Miami University and the school where I worked and taught for 30 years, the University of Akron. While MAC schools play in the FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) of the NCAA’s Division I along with the Power Five schools, most MAC schools don’t compare in terms of revenue, fan base and attendance with the big schools.

Ohio State routinely draws over 100,000 fans to each game to the “Horseshoe” on the banks of the Olentangy River in Columbus. In contrast, most MAC schools don’t draw that many fans in a home season of six games. OSU’s annual athletic budget of $205 million in 2018 was six times greater than the annual athletic budget of about $35 million for UA.

Licensing of merchandise, ticket sales and income from television of Ohio State’s football games provides enough money to support the university’s entire athletic program. About two-thirds of the University of Akron’s annual athletic budget comes from campus activity fees that each UA student pays every semester—the rest coming from ticket sales, licensing of merchandise, concessions, parking fees and broadcast rights.

In order to remain in Division I-FBS, member schools need have an average “attendance” of at least 15,000 per home game at least once every two years. Actually, the requirement is for tickets sold and at some MAC schools, the university further subsidizes the football program by purchasing additional tickets to make the limit and then gives them away in the community. Many MAC schools miss the actual 15,000 attendance mark for most home games.

Also, every MAC school schedules two or three “money” games each season against Power Five schools that provide a six- or seven-figure paycheck. The MAC’s Kent State football team is scheduled to play three games at Penn State, Kentucky and Alabama in 2020 and will receive $4.5 million in guaranteed income. This amounts to more than 15 percent of the school’s total athletic budget for the year. According to Crain’s Cleveland Business, the 12 MAC schools receive about 68 percent of their athletic budgets from student fees.

In the MAC and many of the other Group of Six schools, football is a money loser that needs additional funding from the school to continue—mostly in the form of student fees and tickets purchased. NCAA rules also stipulate that schools may offer up to 85 full scholarships for football but they can’t be divided among more than one athlete. Schools routinely give partial scholarships to athletes in other sports like track and field, baseball, volleyball, softball and so on.

So, what’s the point here? The point is that the COVID-19 pandemic will deal a serious blow to MAC schools that will have to pay the scholarships for the football players and other athletes even if the season is cancelled. Also, nine of the 12 members of the MAC are located in Ohio and Michigan, two states with stagnant population growth and less than stellar economies. These state-supported schools are facing declining enrollments due to a drop in the number of high school graduates and their budgets are being rocked by the effects of the pandemic.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has ordered state-supported schools to cut their budgets by 20 percent for the upcoming school year. If the pandemic lasts into 2021, then there will be more budget cuts for the next school year.

I think it is time for the members of the MAC to consider moving their football programs to the Football Championship Series of Division I. The savings would be significant. First, FCS programs are limited to 63 football scholarships and have no minimum attendance requirement. Also, there are smaller coaching staffs and lower travel costs with fewer athletes. Such a move would save the University of Akron over $2 million per year in scholarship costs alone. There also would be other savings by not buying “phantom” tickets to meet the attendance requirement. And there could be savings by reductions in athletic department staffs.

It would also reduce the some of the embarrassing losses that MAC teams suffer at the hands of Power Five schools in the first two or three weeks of the season. While there are always a few signature wins over big schools by MAC football teams in these “money” games, the majority of the time, the only consolation for MAC schools is the size of the check they bring home after being blown out.

On Oct. 20, 1990, the UA Zips football team travelled to Gainesville, FL, to play the Florida Gators of the Southeastern Conference. Akron lost 59-0 and reportedly six players suffered season-ending injuries in that game. These money games are often a travesty and some season ticket holders for major college programs wonder why they should pay for these games.

On Sept. 20, 1966, Miami University defeated Indiana of the Big Ten by a score of 20-10 on the road. I was a freshman at MU and had finished my second week of class. That sunny Saturday afternoon, I was hanging out with new acquaintances in the East Quad. We played some touch football and mostly enjoyed the beautiful weather and attempted to de-stress from our first semester in college.

Suddenly, word began to spread that Miami’s football team was leading Indiana in the second half. One student moved his radio next to an open window and dozens of us listened as Miami’s announcers described the end of the game. Dozens of us headed for nearby Miami Field to try to take down the goal posts and march uptown with them. When we arrived, the Miami Police department had opened the gates of the stadium and one officer on a bullhorn was giving instructions on how to lift the goal posts out or the ground to minimize damage.

Hundreds of students marched up High Street carrying the goal posts to the center of Oxford. I helped lean one of the goal posts against the front of the Purity, then the most popular bar in town. At four in the afternoon, the bars lining High Street were packed and the party went on late into the evening. It was a great display of school spirit.

Fast forward more that 50 years, and most MAC teams are no longer competitive with Power Five teams. And most MAC members are in states with diminished numbers of high school students and poor economic prospects for the next couple of years. When schools are being forced to cut academic programs and reduce faculty and staff, a voluntary reduction to step down to the FCS division for football would be a good political and economic move on most campuses. It’s time for the MAC schools to consider it.

The Beautiful Day

“It's a beautiful day

Don't let it get away

It's a beautiful day”

--from the song by U2

It was a beautiful day—the best day I’ve had in about three months. On March 16, I returned from my winter sabbatical in Henderson, NV. I have been self-quarantined at home with only an occasional drive through the farm lands of western Portage County or the nearby Cuyahoga Valley National Park to break the monotony. I also make an occasional trip to a nearby state-licensed liquor store to get another bottle of bourbon.

But, this day was different. The weather forecast predicted a sunny, warm day with virtually no chance of rain. So, Pam and I decided to go to our favorite beach in Vermilion, OH, on the south shore of Lake Erie. It takes a little over an hour for us to drive to this quaint beach town that is about 35 miles west of Cleveland.

Vermilion was founded in 1837 and has become a summer resort town of about 11,000 with numerous boat docks and condos lining the lagoon where the Vermilion River empties into Lake Erie. It has a quaint park in the center of town and if you follow Main Street about three blocks north you arrive at the Main Street Beach on Lake Erie.

It’s not a large beach, the public part is only a few hundred yards wide, but there is free parking along Main Street. There is a small replica of a lighthouse at the west end of the beach in front of a building that used to house a museum about the Great Lakes that has since moved to Toledo.

The day we arrived, the beach was fairly crowded with mostly families and a few younger couples. Fortunately, we were able to find a spot that allowed us to keep more than six feet of separation. I set up our beach umbrella and we unfolded our beach chairs and settled in.

The sky was nearly cloudless and gentle waves lapped up on the beach. Because it was mid-week, there wasn’t a great amount of boat traffic, but I did notice several boats enter and exit the lagoon harbor entrance about a half mile east of the beach.

There were a few people on kayaks a couple of hundred yards from shore and a rider on a jet-ski whizzed by during our two hours on the beach. Near the water a few kids played with toy buckets and shovels digging holes in the sand and making sand castles. One teenaged boy came out of the water holding a three-foot wide inflatable raft that looked like the face of a cat.

I always enjoy this beach because of the laid-back atmosphere. I enjoy just relaxing, reading a book, listening to music in my iPod and soaking up the atmosphere. This beach is the exact opposite of the crowded resort area beaches I have visited on the east coast and Gulf of Mexico.

Towards the end of our stay, about a dozen high school kids showed up to join several girls who were already there. The noise level increased markedly as the group talked and laughed close to where we were sitting. They decided to go further down the beach and we packed up our stuff for the ride home. In these tense times, it was great to see a group of kids having fun. It was normal.

We have visited this beach at least a couple of times during the last several summers, but this visit was particularly enjoyable. I realized how much I had missed just being around people. Because we were outside, there was a gentle breeze and people were not getting too close to each other, I didn’t feel concerned about being exposed to the COVID-19 virus.

As we rode home with the sunroof and windows open, we both remarked what a great day this had been. Yes, it was a beautiful day.

The Cruel, Cruel Summer

“It's a cruel, (cruel), cruel summer

(Leaving me) leaving me here on my own

It's a cruel, (it's a cruel), cruel summer

Now you're gone…”

--recorded by Bananarama, 1983

This is shaping up to be once of the cruelest summers I have every experienced and a lot of you can probably say the same thing. Thankfully, so far our family has avoided the cruelest fate of all this year, the COVID-19 pandemic. Ever since mid-March, we have been sheltering in place at our house.

Because I am over 70 and have a history of asthma and pneumonia, I am in the high-risk category. So, the only times I have gone out have been to take a short drive and stop occasionally at a drive through to pick up something to eat. Pam and I are fortunate that our son Brian is available to run errands for us and we purchase most of our groceries online using curbside pickup.

But, last Friday was “Black Friday” for a couple of reasons that made me even more depressed about the upcoming summer. First of all, we had several snow squalls on Thursday including one that left about a one-inch layer of wet, slushy snow on the ground on Friday morning. Not a big deal for us during the winter, by this is May! This snowfall tied the all-time record in Akron for the latest measurable snowfall.

Since I moved to Northeast Ohio in 1975, this is the first time I can remember we had a measurable snowfall in May. So that means, I’ve seen measurable snow here in eight of the 12 months of the year. Only June through September have been spared.

It has been much cooler and wetter than average from mid-April until nearly mid-May and the lack of good weather is contributing to my worsening case of cabin fever. It seems as if the clock has turned backwards and we are moving through March not May.

The other depressing thing is that the Cleveland Orchestra announced on Friday, May 9, that it is cancelling the summer season at Blossom Music Center. This world-class orchestra and concert venue has provided me with some of the best concerts I’ve ever attended. I was eagerly awaiting the opportunity to have a picnic dinner with Pam and friends on the lawn before hearing some great music.

Blossom is only about a 15-minute drive from our house and we have usually attended four or five concerts there each summer for the last 20 years or so. But, this summer the stage will be dark and the only sounds will be the birds chirping and the wind whistling through the trees and the empty pavilion.

Also, I usually attend about a half-dozen Akron Rubberducks baseball games each season in downtown Akron with a group of friends. We buy a couple of books of ticket vouchers and pick games as the season goes along. Our favorite night is “Thirsty Thursday” with two-dollar beers.  It’s a lot of fun to hang out with a bunch of friends on a warm summer evening sipping a cold brew and enjoying baseball. Although the season hasn’t been cancelled yet, my money says it will be.

At this writing, nearly every summer event in Northeast Ohio including concerts, festivals and the like, has been cancelled. As the weather improves, I’m hoping to be able to meet friends outside where we can practice social distancing.

Because this summer is our 50^th anniversary, Pam and I were planning a major trip to to Europe or possibly Asia to celebrate. Those plans are now in the dumpster. I didn’t want to risk flying home from Las Vegas in March, so I definitely won’t risk spending twice as much time in an airplane to travel overseas.

I hope we can take some short day trips later this summer if conditions improve, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, stay well and best wishes to all of you.   

Covid-19 Quarantine Top Ten

The first coronavirus stay-at-home order in Ohio was issued about five weeks ago and it has changed a lot of things. From the home office in Stow, Ohio, here are the top ten things I’ve experienced because of the quarantine:

10. Did I take a shower yesterday? Or was it the day before? Or was it even longer?

9. I have forgotten how to button a shirt.

8. “Social Distancing” also could refer to my high school years.

7. Hair, hair, hair!!!

6. Need to recharge my phone battery twice a day because I’m using it so much.

5. “TGIF” has been replaced by “TGFN”…Thank God for Netflix.

4. Discovered that I don’t need to wear pants when “Zooming” with my relatives

3. Once this is over, I’m going to need to “flatten the curve” on my gut.

2. I’m spending so much time on my front porch, I’m thinking of taking up whittling. (If you live in the South, you know what that means.)

1. My new best friend is Evan Williams (Bourbon!)