Week 1 in Lakeside, 2019

It's chilly in Lakeside this week, and we brought mostly summer clothes with us. But, I didn't even have to go to a thrift store, and under the bed packed away I found a turtleneck cornflower blue long sleeve t-shirt about 20 years old, and am wearing it under one of my new purchases. I love it when a plan comes together.

The 10:30 lecture today is on F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald: A Literature of Romance and an Age of Jazz with Taylor Hagood, Professor of English and Director of the Study of the Americas Initiative at Florida Atlantic University.  This afternoon at 1:30 he’ll lecture on What makes American literature American.  https://taylorhagood.com/

Here’s a link to the entire summer series. https://www.lakesideohio.com/education/lecture-series
Bob is having breakfast today with the Guys’ Club at the Patio where his paintings for this season are displayed. This is a club whose motto is “We’ll get around to it,” and they have no agenda or plan, they just get together and enjoy each others company.

Tonight is a silent movies organist program by Clark Wilson at Hoover. http://www.clarkwilson.net/.  We might stop in.

This morning on my walk along the lakefront I stopped to look at some of the new improvements finished since we left last Labor Day.  The Steel Memorial Bandstand where so many have been married and where we have some evening concerts and vespers had a complete facelift, thanks to "Giving Tuesday of 2017" which raised about $450,000.  The seating area is no longer gravel, it's been graded and paved with pavers, and has all new "attached" benches, with some open space where I assume people who bring their own lawn chairs, baby strollers or wheel chairs can sit. The bandstand is a memorial to Fritz and Karlyn Steele, Lakesiders who were killed in an auto accident in August 1978, so the memorial is now 40 years old, and needed some renovation.

Then I went over and looked at the new basketball courts--maybe six of them.  Also sand volley ball courts.  This is primarily to serve the teen-agers, although you often see little ones and older adults playing too. The money for this was raised on "Giving Tuesday 2018," so you can see things move very quickly once the money is available.  I needed to take this detour because the main dock is closed again due to high water--even a little wave action and wind stirs up the lake and it has to be closed.  The two side docks, called L dock and I dock (due to shape) are under water even without wind.

I heard from the Barris'  https://www.idlewyldbb.com/ when we visited there last evening, that the pool was being used yesterday despite the cold and wind.  It is heated and has good handicapped access. It opened the summer of 2017, and is getting heavy use.  And we're so fortunate it's there--and I was one of the nay sayers who said, "Why do we need a pool when we have Lake Erie?"  But donors smarter and richer than I knew--in 2017 the swimming area of the lake couldn't be used for a few weeks due to bacteria and algae bloom http://lakeeriealgae.com/, and this year the lake is too high to be safe.

The fun way to change behavior

Probably works better than lectures and finger wagging from the nanny state.

The story of small town recreation in 1957

According to a July 1957 issue of the Mt. Morris Index (a weekly newspaper that launched the printing career of the Kable Brothers), a movie company came to Mt. Morris, Illinois on July 3, 1957, to do a recreation advertisement movie. The filming crew returned on July 15 because they needed several more people to film another segment. A classmate of mine, Nancy, remembers being in the film along with her parents and brother and when we had coffee during my Easter visit to Mt. Morris, she mentioned it.

Coffee with Lynne and Nancy at the Mounder Cafe
She found the article in the Index which reported that it was a 20 minute color motion picture and the title of the documentary was "Town & Country Recreation.” The Director was Oz Zielke, Cameraman Frank Plieffer of Dallas Jones Productions of Chicago, and Gene Balsley, Unit Manager. The film was sponsored by the nonprofit Athletic Institute of Chicago and was designed to show towns and villages how they can offer their citizens the most recreational opportunity at the least cost per person. The fictional city in the story is "Spring Valley," however, most of the actors and the majority of the locations were to be taken from the Mt. Morris vicinity, since the sponsors of the film felt that Mt Morris was representative of what can be accomplished by a good recreation program, including both town & farm families.

I poked around on the internet and found a description of such a film in a database of old marketing and documentary films, from the 1930s through the 1980s. Films about bullying from the 1950s; and visiting an airport in the 1940s, etc. According to a description of Audiovisual Geeks on Internet Archive, it is: "The A/V Geeks Film Archive is an ephemeral film collection curated by Skip Elsheimer. What started as a hobby more than ten years is now a lifetime commitment. His collection has grown to over 20,000 films gathered from school auctions, thrift stores, closets and dumpsters. He presents themed film shows in his home base of Raleigh, North Carolina and he's taken his shows on the road across the United States. Films from Skip's archive have been released on DVDs. For more information about A/V Geeks upcoming shows, the DVDs, stock footage inquiries and donating to the collection, visit http://www.avgeeks.com. Skip is happy to be able share these selected films from his collection online - giving them a life beyond their intended purpose as little cultural time capsules of our immediate past. Enjoy!"

So we're waiting to hear from "Skip." My friend Nancy is hoping this is the film, and if it gets transferred to video and put on the internet, or to DVD, we’ll all get to watch “the way we were.”

I have never cataloged or described a film (I was a cataloger of Slavic material back in the 1960s), but I think the numbers tell how far into the film the description is. I don’t know what some of the abbreviations mean. They could be descriptors or tags for what the camera is doing or of the film quality--I just don’t know. I’ve looked in the Library of Congress Thesarus for graphic material, but don’t know if the person who did this description used it or something more simple like a homemade template for the video database. I think CU might be “close up,” WS could be “white space,“ FG possibly Foreground. But these are wild guesses. Maybe I’ll check with some other retired librarians.

There is no lake in Mt. Morris, so I'm wondering if that scene might have been taken at Lake Louise near Byron--because school buses may have taken children there. I remember it well--I almost drowned there!

“Shows how ‘RECREATION ROT’ was eliminated in the small rural town when a young doctor took the advice of a county extensionist and built a live-wire activity program around a paid recreational leader. Color 1957 Documentary-promotional film about town planning, cast as a drama. A young doctor decides that his town is so boring that a general depression is settling over the populace, so he resolves to involve the community in a plan to develop recreation facilities. Some good images of idealized small town Americana; the color is pretty good. 00:00:26:00 Color 1957 cu Sign: WELCOME TO Spring Valley THE TOWN THAT ENJOYS PROGRESS. 00:00:29:00 Color 1957 vs Montage of small town life: Suburban street, boys riding bicycles; PAN over Main Street; various houses and buildings; WS farm with cornfield in FG; farmer on tractor; two men greet one another on sidewalk; elderly man raking lawn, woman brings him water. 00:02:30:00 Color 1957 ms Man enters office, hangs hat and coat on coat rack, looks out window through Venetian blinds. 00:07:30:00 Color 1957 vs Community meeting: various men and women around conference table; CU faces - they read as ordinary citizens. Also at 0:13:30. 00:11:26:00 Color 1957 ms Two women hanging laundry on clothesline. 00:16:18:00 Color 1957 cu, ws Sign says CAR WASH $1.00; PAN to group of teenagers, mostly girls, washing cars. 00:16:34:00 Color 1957 ms Woman at mailbox, opens it, retrieves newspaper. 00:18:30:00 Color 1957 ws PAN from lake to school bus; group of children in bathing suits exit school bus, run toward CAM; children run across beach; bus driver blows whistle, they all stop. 00:19:00:00 Color 1957 vs Montage of community recreation activities, brief shots: middle-aged people square-dancing, good; adult-education class, man draws diagram on blackboard; teenage boys in shop class, jig saw; softball game, girl hits baseball; tennis instruction; skiing and sledding; camping, children emerge from tent; elderly men playing dominos; boy with stamp collection; badminton; golf instruction; family packing car trunk (a Buick station wagon, two-tone aqua & cream) for camping trip; Buick station wagon drives down country road."

Lakeside 2008--The end of summer

Golden August Sunset at Lakeside
We got here on July 5 after our lovely tour of Italy, and my brief stay in the hospital from a gastrointestinal bug which required lots of IVs and bedrest. But from that week on, we’ve had a wonderful stay at our summer home, particularly enjoying the many arts activities and seminars. Here’s a brief run down. I didn’t attend a lot of these, of course, since I needed a little time to paint, draw, read, visit friends, entertain, walk along the lake, and ride my 40 year old no-gear bike. Lakeside pulpit and programming leans a little too far toward liberal guilt (been there done that in my 30s and 40s) for my tastes--peace and justice, removal of Indians, global health--but I was still able to pick and choose some very interesting topics, especially local Ohio history. Over all, our Director of Education, Gretchen Curtis, did a fabulous job, and yesterday she reported over 9,000 in attendance at the daytime programming during the summer of 2008.

Week 1: June 23-25 Lives & Legacies of Charles & John Wesley
June 26-27 Religious Environmentalism in the U.S.

Week 2: Jun 30-July 3 Health & Wellness Week (with Nursing CE credit)

Week 3: July 7-11 U.S. Presidential Elections: Then and Now (10:30 a.m.)
Spiritual Biography (1:30 p.m.)

Week 4: July 14-18 Four Gospels with Tim Grannon (10:30 am)
The Great Lakes (1:30 pm)

Week 5: July 21-23 Historic Chautauqua
July 25 Historic Building Design and Preservation

Week 6: July 28-Aug 1 Middle East Foreign Affairs (10:30 am)
Global Health Challenges (1:30 pm)

Week 7: Aug 4-8 22nd Annual Peace with Justice Week

Week 8: Aug 11-15 Interfaith Week

Week 9: Aug 18-22 5th Annual Civil War Week

Week 10: Aug 25-27 Indian Removal from Ohio (Senior Venture Week)
Aug 28-29 Lakeside Neighbors

Thur 10:30 a.m. History of Camp Perry: 1907 to Now
SSG Josh Mann, Historian, Ohio Army National Guard
Thur 1:30 p.m. History and Operation of the Marblehead Limestone Quarry
Ted Dress, Night Supervisor, LaFarge Quarry, Marblehead OH
Fri 10:30 a.m. Bus Tour of LaFarge Quarry
Fri 1:30 p.m. Celebrating Chocolate: Sweet Ending to Lakeside’s 135th Season
Gretchen S. Curtis, Lakeside’s Director of Education

Also there were 3:30 seminars for book reviews, nutrition programs and Foreign Affairs Forum; Sunday history lectures; and week-day walking tours, tree identification walks and herb classes. Week-end events of plein air art, boat and auto shows, ice cream social, craft fair, and quilt show brought in thousands from outside the grounds.

The final week, Senior Venture Week, was open to all Lakesiders this year (in the past I think we had to pay a fee on top of our gate pass). Last week's archeological tour of Johnson's Island and this week's tour of the Marblehead Quarry were really some of the most interesting local events I've attended. A homeschooler from Port Clinton brought her 2 children for Ohio history credit. Wasn't that smart? Thursday and Friday I was very busy, and it was topped off with a delicious offering of CHOCOLATE!

Gretchen lectured on and served chocolate

More Signs of Lakeside

Many golf carts; many flags; lots of fun. Sometimes it's the only way to settle down some lively grandchildren--a ride with grandpa in the cart, followed by an ice cream cone.

It's been a lot of years since I dropped the little ones off at the staff supervised playground. Parents are also allowed, and I see there is a covered play area now. I had to move a few strollers to get this photo.

The sign says, Where the world comes to play shuffleoard, and it really does. There are international tournaments here, with a very impressive closing ceremony where the participants walk down the aisles of the auditorium carrying their flags. But usually we just see family groups--all ages can play this game together.

I hadn't seen this sign about profanity before--I guess Lakeside does eventually catch up with the "world." The only thing I've done on the court is square dancing, and you didn't hear anyone cussing with swing your partner round and round.

This sign is new too--probably a reflection of today's more cautious parents, or someone not accustomed to having their front door and street boundary so close. This is one of the oldest streets with a number of the cottages from the 1800s before there were set backs and footprint requirements. The newer areas have a bit more space between buildings.