I already love the CHPL, as I am a “Proud Library Person™”… I even have the sticker on my laptop!
The branch in Mt. Washington is small, but lovely. It reminds me a bit of the Bertram Woods branch in Shaker. Which reminds me: Now as an Ohio resident, I can start getting library cards all throughout the state, just because I am resident.
Normally, I’d look up the statute1 and tell you why that’s the case, however, a depressing reality is that in trying to find this bit of information, most of the results are about Ohio Republicans proposing to defund libraries if they ___________.
Sad.
Cleveland and Shaker Libraries here I come.
The Anderson library is great for our girls, and both have eagerly embraced it as a play-place with the cousins. They’ve even got into some book series.
I’ve been excited to learn about local history, and am especially eager to learn more neighborhood history. Being employed as a newsman, the local databases are like crack.
Claudia Anderson, a former boss of mine as our managing editor at The Weekly Standard, was the opinion page editor at the late Cincinnati Post until 1989, before heading to Washington to briefly work at Scripps, before getting snapped up by TWS. She retired before the end and still lives on Capitol Hill. (And was a great source of advice about moving here.)
I found here, her final column as a Post staffer, reflecting on leaving Cincinnati for Washington, while I’ve done the opposite.
Here’s Claudia, who is a real treat to read:
Parting thoughts
Claudia Winkler
Hills and prosperity —those are what struck a new-comer from Buffalo in 1983. Buffalo, you see, is flat as the tundra, as I put it back then in a column called “First impressions.”’ Flat, and in 1983 economically stricken. Cincinnati, with four down town department stores (remember?) and two daily papers, looked like the promised land.
Now, six years on, my perspective is different. My point of reference is Washington, D.C., where I move next week. And Cincinnati’s traits that are foremost in my mind are manageable scale, cheapness of housing, and civic spirit.
I am about to trade a seven-minute commute for one that will take 50 minutes. I am giving up a city where you can decide at 8 p.m. to go to the symphony, change your clothes, drive to Music Hall, park, buy tickets and be in your seat for an 8:30 performance. I’ve done it. On a Saturday night.
For twice the price of my unrenovated house in Mt. Adams, I will live deep in the suburbs, with the same amount of space as I have here and half the charm. To me, Cincinnati means 12-foot ceilings and Eden Park.
It means something intangible as well.
It means a city conspicuously cherished. Its stable neighborhoods, where religious traditions and love of history are strong, have bred a kind of Midwestern noblesse oblige.
This shows in something as small as the fanciful round mosaic planted in a sidewalk on West Fourth Street by a local artist spontaneously honoring the city’s bicentennial.
It shows in something as pervasive as the extraordinary tissue of volunteer organizations and citizen boards and charitable agencies that is the principal channel for Cincinnatians’ participation in community life.
Before these remarks are dismissed as abject flattery, let me note that some manifestations of Cincinnati’s public spiritedness seem quaint to an outsider. I may never again hear opera introduced by the Star Spangled Banner. Where I am going, believe me, not every major luncheon begins with a prayer.
And I must strike a graver note: I wonder whether even this city’s vital volunteer sector is equal to resolving Cincinnati’s hardest problems —education and the underclass.
Both problems are present, of course, often worse, in other big cities. Both demand a sea change in the culture at large, beyond what local agencies or governments can achieve alone.
On both fronts, Cincinnatians are working valiantly. The Cincinnati Youth Collaborative is am impressive alliance from the private sector, government and education, mobilizing hundreds of volunteers to attack the 40 percent drop-out rate in Cincinnati Public Schools.
Admirable and distinctive social service agencies like Cincinnati Union Bethel, Seven Hills Neighborhood House, Sign of the Cross, and New Life Youth Services, to name just a very few, are repairing individual lives.
Yet the experience of this year’s flurry of “education reform” in Ohio has the inertia at the top: in the department of education, the legislature, the colleges of education, too many superintendents’ offices, too many elected schools boards. One powerful senator, defending a major “reform” bill he hadn’t read, protested: “But everyone signed off on it.” It satisfied the vested interests and rocked no boats.
Meanwhile, the underclass— itself an appalling drag on the public schools — is ever more isolated. In inner-city communities, which are often black or Appalachian, enterprising people move up and out, and many who are left are not reached even by churches.
Family breakdown, drug use, early school-leaving and welfare dependence are chronic. Local social workers, judges and corrections professionals all say the same thing: that child abuse in this stratum is rising markedly, and more young criminals than in recent memory seem devoid of all humanity.
By Washington, D.C. standards, perhaps, Cincinnati’s urban problems are small time. Yet they must not be minimized. On the contrary, these are the challenges that must stimulate this city’s great civic resources in the 1990s.
Claudia Winkler, editorial page editor of The Post, leaves that position today to become chief editorial writer forScrippsHoward News Service in Washington, D.C.
What a neat find. You can find the PDF of the full page (including some vintage Doonesbury) below. I also found a local CityBeat news clip, that had a fun DC tie-in, as well.
