The message forum is an ongoing dialogue between classmates. There are no items, topics, subtopics, etc.

Forums work when people participate - so don't be bashful! Click the "Post Message" button to add your entry to the forum.

David Mitchell

Mike,

Thanks for that piece. I found it extremely profound. I thought the level of selfishness we reached at the height of the pandemic was simply appalling. And led by one of the most outrageously selfish men ever to hold public office. 

I have always wished I could confront the people who make the (mask)  "Government Overreach" complaint with three simple questions;

1) Do you drive a vehicle?   (I expect - "yes")

2) Which side of the road do you drive on?   (I expect - "the right side")

3) Why?

----------------------

Years ago I had a dicussion with a guy about the "draft" and he said he thought we needed to have it again, with some sort of compulsary service (of varying kinds - not neccessariy just military service). His reason has stuck with me ever since. He said, "We have millions of 19 year-olds, standing around on street corners, with absolutley no reason to decide anything about their future, or the world in which they will live".

Michael McLeod

It's so crazy, Dave. I hated being drafted. I spoke of going to Canada to evade it. Yet it linked me to my father and his sacrifice - with no complaints I ever heard - to risk his life on our behalf. And now there are people who refuse to get shots or accept a legitimate election because they didn't like the results and they think of themselves - masquerade, actually - as American heroes. 

I sure as hell hope the country rediscovers itself.

Joseph D. McCarthy

Mike, your father's story sounds almost like my own father's story.  You say he was to young for the Second World War and to old for Vietnam.  My father was to young for World War I, yes WWI, and to old for World War 2.

But he did spend a number of years working in Chicago during the Roarin Twenties and Buffalo New York and Detroit during the depression.

Michael McLeod

Joe. That story I posted was from another writer; it was not written by me. My father served in ww2 and was sent to okinawa, one of those godawful bloody hellhole islands we invaded and died for. I can still remember the sound in his voice when he said "Okinawa." 

The greatest generation, folks. Their example could teach us all a thing or two.

Your point is well taken about national service, Dave. Hey - Remember "the me generation"? Not sure how far back it was when that term was bandied about. Hope they weren't talking about us. 

John Jackson

Dave,  there is a long list of questions I’d like to ask the “knuckleheads”, as our governor, giving them the benefit of the doubt, refers to those who think that mask mandates violate their constitutional rights:

Do you believe in compulsory education laws for children – isn’t this is a gross government interference in a parent’s right to raise their children as they see fit?

How about laws requiring vaccination for school children except for religious (not political) exemptions?

And come to think about it, why can’t I take a loaded handgun in my carry-on when I fly? 

Seat belt laws?  Laws against indecent exposure?  And when you get right down to it, is there really a victim with public urination?  This is government run amok!!!

And what about those nanny state laws against driving with a blood alcohol level greater than 0.1%?   Everybody knows that some people can hold their liquor better than others - shouldn’t there be consequences only for those involved in serious accidents?

David Mitchell

Mike and Joe,

(I've told this story before)

Speaking of Fathers serving or not serving - and their ages at the time. In 1943, my dad was 32 years old, married, with two baby girls, and a full-time medical practice with his older (one-armed) brother. He got one of those letters from the Department of the Army that began with the words "Greetings".

He was away for almost two years. And I don't think I ever heard him complain about the uncomfortable seating back behind the cockpit of a B-29. 

He did complain about the heat (and the smell of curry and mutton cooking nearby the base) in India, but he fell in love with India (and China) anyway.

Timothy Lavelle

Just a tiny bit of this rhetoric reminds me of being very young and having old white haired men in Washington DC decide, without ever saying it out loud, that at least some deaths were unavoidable and a part of our generation was going to have to pay the ultimate price. For nothing whatsoever.

I always believed that those old pricks should have been stood up against a wall and shot. Still do.

I wonder if the Vets from WWI thought "these young kids have no honor" until droves upon droves of those youngsters voluntered for active service in WWII. 

As Americans, I know we will fight. We do what we know in life and fighting is something in our culture.

Those 19 year olds standing around that you are (sort of) bitching about?   I wonder if this question is fair...

"Who's been running the show in our America for the past 50 years?" 

Gotta mirror?

We have a wonderful country founded on and by money. We should never be surprised at how our children, wanted or otherwise, attack the desire for riches.

Fly that flag!

Joseph D. McCarthy

Jim here are my LAST attempts to photograph trees.  Unfortunately I could only send the second picture in a medium size so it shows up sidewise.  The first shot is of three redwood trees that sprouted  from one root, with a multitude of weed trees surrounding them.

The second, sidewise, photo shows multi trunks of Redwood trees from one root source.

James Hamilton, M. D.

Joe,

 Are those the type of redwoods that live for a few thousand years and grow to behemoth size? 🤔 

Jim 

Michael McLeod

Joe: There's a crick in that one picture.

Actually it's in my neck.

James Hamilton, M. D.

For Memorial Day

Whether you agree with the wars or not:

"All Gave Some, Some Gave All."

   - Billy Ray Cyrus 

Jim

Joseph D. McCarthy

Jim, "Give that person a Gold star", yes they may finally grow to be hundreds of feet tall and thousands of years of age.  However these are still "babies".

On another front.  I usually read ou local newspaper and the Wall Street Journal every day except Sundays and Holidays.  On Holidays my second paper is the San Franciso Chronicle.  When I turned the pagein the second section of the Chroniicle I saw the obituaries page followed by a full page of the obituaries of two singers.  B.J. Thomas was the first.  The second was Rusty Warren.

And for another front.  I learned last Saturday (nine days ago) that I will shortly starting my next "TRAVELOGUE."  Yes, my wife turned to me and said "do you think we can get reservations to go to Columbus."  First it was attempting to see about rental rates so that we would have two vehicles while in Columbus.  Last trip cost me approximately $900.00 (which included taxes and all add-ons.)  Checking the site I quickly learned that thay were able to provide a vehicle for only $2,745.00, PLUS taxes and add-ons.  While think about that for awhile.  Next was to see if the hotel in Columbus we have stayed at for years had a room available fr the time we would be there.  NO!  So checking further, and settling for next best we booked a suite in the Dublin area.  Finally left messages for the Sales Manager at our first choice location and after three days of phone tag talked to Ms. Lawson. She let me know that the On-line reservation systeem didn't reflect current conditions.  She said that a few of the days we would be in Columbus people were booked into the remaining suite; however she was going to provide them with other accommodations so that we, "Good, long-time customers" could be accomodated.  Then on to checking with my brother to see if he still had an extra vehicle I could use.  I quess I will have to settle for his Range Rover.

Now Janie, we've got to see about scheduling a luncheon or something.
 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Joe et. al., 

Just a note on sideways pictures: if you took those with your smart phones I would wager that most - if not all - have a preloaded small photo editing program that allows several functions such as tone, contrast, color adjustment, cropping etc. Perhaps the most important one is "rotate". Usually one just needs to select a certain photo and somewhere there will be an icon to launch the edit program. That will bring up other icons to perform the various adjustments. Be sure to save the results so that you can then keep, email, text, etc. The original photo will also still be kept in your gallery. 

Jim 

Julie Carpenter

Toni's obituary was in the paper yesterday. Here it is:

Cardi, Toni
1948 - 2021
Toni Ann Cardi, age 72, passed away peacefully on May, 8, 2021. Loving sister to Jack (Susan) Cardi and Mary Jo (Bruce) Katz; devoted aunt to Sam Sherwin and Aaron (Michelle) Sherwin; cherished great aunt of Cassidy, Charlotte, and Max. Proud graduate of Bishop Watterson, Class of 1966, and lifelong friend of Mary Kay DiNova. Toni is survived by many dear friends, including Nurse Jamie at Capri Gardens. A celebration of Toni's life will be held on Saturday, June 5, 4-7pm, at the Columbus Italian Club, 1739 W. 3rd Ave, 43212. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Bishop Watterson Family Scholarship in Toni's memory by visiting www.bishopwatterson.com. Arrangements entrusted to SCHOEDINGER WORTHINGTON, 6699 N HIgh Street, Worthington, OH 43085. For full obituary please visit www.schoedinger.com.

Michael McLeod

https://www.facebook.com/StoryCorps/posts/10159208184663622

hand salute.

Mark Schweickart

About a week or two ago I posted some videos of some artists' work that I found to be quite interesting. Some of you commented about how much you liked these, so I am revisiting this idea. One of them was a sidewalk artist working in chalk, named David Zinn, who makes these elaborate (and sadly temporary) characters doing comical things, but what is extraordinary is how these drawings, when viewed from a paricular vantage point, suddenly become three dimensional. Today, let me introduce you to another master of this technique, Julian Beevers. The mind-boggling thing about these pieces is how he (and David Zinn) figure out the perspective (which I still do not understand) so that if one looks at the drawing from a single vantage point with one eye through a camera (or at the subsequent video image or photograph) the image suddenly becomes hyper 3-D. If it is viewed from other vantage points, one sees that it is radically stretched out, which I guess is why they refer to this as being done with an “anamorphic” technique.

 A digression: When I was in the film camera business, "anamorphic" referred to the process used to create a wide-screen aspect ratio. The image area of a frame of film is only slightly wider than it is tall, a ratio of 1.33-to-1, which is what our TVs were when we were kids, or what movies looked like when we went to the theaters. But to make filmgoing more impressive than TV viewing, films began being released in a much wider aspect ratio, so that you would need to go to the theater to view it, and it would be far more impressive than what we could see on our TVs. To create this widescreen effect meant the cameras on set were using "anamorphic" lenses, which squeezed the image into a tall, skinny distortion that fit into the 1.33-to-1 space on the film. Then later, when projected, it went through a de-anamorphizing lens on the projector that stretched out the squeezed image to a 2.4-to-1 widescreen ratio, and the image looked normal again. This way, no film-frame real estate is wasted, which meant a sharper larger-screeen image is had, if compared to what you would have if just normal lenses were used and only a portion of the frame were used – cropped to a similar wide-screen ratio. This cropping approach (which was by far the more common approach) does suffer in comparison to an anamorphic image because it has to be enlarged so much more to fill the similar space on the screen. Therefore lack of sharpness and film grain becomes more apparent.

Back to the subject at hand: what these 3-D chalk artists are doing is sort of the reverse of that process. They are stretching their images on the sidewalks, which only looks normal from a single vantage point that our eye, when looking through a camera lens, or when viewing a photograph or video of the image from this vantage point, makes the image look normal. But remarkably, not entirely normal. Suddenly it is no longer a 2-D photographic image, but astonishingly, a 3-D one. This is the part I do not understand. The lens used is just a normal lens, not an anamorphic one. If it were anamorphic, the reality of the surrounding sidewalk area and people in the shot would look hopelessly distorted. Only the image  stretched out on the sidewalk might appear to be squeezed back into shape, while everything else would be tall an skinny. But even then it would still only be a 2-D image, not 3-D. So the mystery is: what is happening to fool our brains into suddenly seing this image as 3-D. Maybe a question for our resident Dr. Jim who wears both a photographer's and doctor's hat. (Wait, do doctors wear hats?)

Anyway here are a few video links to Julian's work. The first (inserted below)  presents a lot of his different pieces without commentary. The links below that are  documentary style videos showing him at work and talking about how he does it.

Extra links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECeGwg7Cm0A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLIpOo7fVe0

Mark Schweickart

Happy Birthday Larry!  This bug's for you.

Notice how one of the snails antennae is a physical post coming up out of the sidewalk, whereas the other is painted, and going off at a weird angle (when viewed from this non-3-D-effect vantage point vantage point). I can't imagine how he figures this out. Also, notice that part of the snail and its shadow are painted on the surface of the bench.

Michael Boulware

I noticed in yesterday's paper that Mike Radcliffe lost his battle with cancer. This has been a tough year. I alwzys thought mike was a good guy.

David Mitchell

Mike was a friend - maybe not close - but we shared some common interests. When I moved back to Columbus from Denver in the late 80's, we got together a couple times for a drink. By then he had formed his big real estate investment company. By "big" I mean "big money " - super rich clients from his days with Porter Wright. He almost hired me to begin an effort to get into some inner city re-hab projects. He was intrigued by th idea but had only a passing understanding of the concept. But it never happened. We lost touch with each other after that. I tried to reach him several times over the years but that never happened either.

My one most compelling memory was when we bumped into each other walking along Broad Street, near High, just after the news of his father's tragic murder. We stared awkwardly at one another and hardly exchaged a word, then walked on. Wish I could have found the right words to say. 

Rest in Peace Mike.

Michael McLeod

RIP Mike.

He was a good guy, a really solid, good-hearted guy, who saw way more tragedy than he deserved to see. 

I do not know if they ever solved the murder of his father.  I forget the circumstances but Dave, I did talk to him about it shortly afterwards, and expressed my sympathies, and I remember that he said his father was a realtor. And that at the time no arrest had been made and he had no clue about how or why it happened. 

I hope Mike found peace back then - and if it's out there to find, that he has it now.

David Mitchell

Mike,

I thought Mike's dad was an acountant, and kept the books for the old man who owned the amusement park at the zoo - and who Mike's dad had realized was a crook - and refused to "cook" the books for tax evasion purposes - and then it gets worse from there.

I seem to recall these are details Mike told me years later when I moved back to Columbus. Maybe my memory is a bit rusty. 

Mark Schweickart

So sad to hear of Mike's passing. I didn't even know he was battling cancer. We have not spoken in about 20 or so years, and I was always half-expecting him to show up on the forum one day, but sadly, no. Mike and I were pretty close during grade school at St, Michael's. We would walk home together, and occasionally I would be invited for dinner with is family. He lived in a very large, spooky-looking brick  building, that has long since been torn down. It was on High Street in Worthington adjacent to the big Methodist church that is still there. It was a large 3  or 4 story apartment building built before the Civil War, that, as Mike and I came to believe at the time, had been a stop on the Underground Railroad. I also remember it had a massive amount of coal stored in the large basement. (Can you believe we are all old enough to remember using coal for central heating?)

Mike and I were less close during high-school, but got reacquainted during our college post-graduate days, I remember when I was living in a large house on campus with my wife Jennie, and my three brothers and their wives, and four kids (the Schweickart Commune, as it was known), Mike used to drop by quite often. After passing his bar exam, he came over and trumpeted the announcement to us, and with a flourish added that we were now "all guaranteed free legal services for the rest of our lives." Quite a generous offer, although none of us had occasion to take him up on this through the years.

When I first moved to Los Angeles in the late 70's , Mike would sometimes call me when he was in town on business. By then he was already doing well as a tax attorney, and given the nature of his clients, was becoming well-aware of the world of high-finance. I recall having a drink with him at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood one night, and he said to me something like: "You know, a lot of people have ambition to become a millionare someday, but I think that is ridiculous. I want to be a multi-millionaire."  About fifteen years later, when the company I was working for was up for sale, I gave him a call and asked, "Say Mike, did you ever become that multi-millionaire you wanted to be?" I was looking for advice about how adventure capiltalists operate.  He was very generous with advice, and helped me understand how to look at the situation before me. Not that I was able to put together investors to buy the business, but I appreciated the time he gave me. Come to think of it, that was sort of like me taking him up on his "free legal services" offer from way back when.

And speaking of looking into buying a business, this obviously brings up the heart-breaking memory of Mike's father being murdered. And Dave and Mike, I am afraid you are not remembering this correctly. This is the way it went. It happened the year after we graduated, on July 19, 1967. Mike's Dad was an accountant, and he was sent by a prospective buyer, a Jack Smith, to audit the books of an auto specialist store for sale. After doing so, and heading home from Delaware, where the store was located, Mike's Dad was intercepted on a fairly lonely stretch of route 315. His car was found pushed over the embankment, and he had been shot several times. Shortly thereafter, a call was made to the prospective buyer, and was answered by the buyer's wife. The caller said something like, "This is Paul Radcliffe. The books at Graham's Auto Specialists look A-OK."  The wife, Mrs. Smith, who knew Mr. Radcliffe, told the police that this was definitely not his voice. This, coupled with eyewitness accounts from those who had responded to the sound of gun shots, and who had seen a car speeding away from the scene, led the police to the (not-too-bright) person looking to benefit from the sale of the store, a Ben Lewis. He was convicted of the murder on Mar. 28, 1968, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Incidentally, the price of the store was only $30,000. Hardly a sale worth murdering for. It almost makes the story sadder still.

In case you are wondering how I would know all this stuff, exact dates, etc., it is certainly not because of my  prodigious memory ( one that fails me daily), it is because I Googled it, what else? Here's the article I found if you want more in-depth info regarding the case and its subsequent appeals:   https://casetext.com/case/lewis-v-cardwell-2

Anyway, enough of my rambling. 

So long, Mike. It was so great to have known you.

Mary Clare Hummer (Bauer)

"Hold fast to that line, Grandpa!"  Funny. Kind. Smart. Rest in peace, Mike. 
Clare

David Mitchell

I guess I had it wrong also. Mark has apparantly found the source of the story. I just remember the details were strange and gruesome. 

Clare,

Again, my memory seems fuzzy here. Sounds like a line he spoke in the class play. Can you remind us what the play was, and who he played in it? Was it "Tammy Tell Me True"? (a play that starrred some cute little chick from I.C. as I recall - and had a very dramatic courtroom scene)

Peggy Southworth (Townley)

I've had reason to think about many things this past year.  No doubt y'all have as well.   With Toni Cardi's memorial coming up, it gives me pause.  We are all aging and getting nearer to meeting Abba Father, face to face.  Personally, I do look forward to it with excitement, anticipation, and no fear.  
I saw a quote that is important, to me anyway.  "I'm not interested if you've stood with the great.  I'm interested if you've sat with the broken."  Peace.