Spring flowers

Muddy wants you!

The one and only Muddy.

Toledo Mud Hens team mascot Muddy is ready for the Home Opener. Are you? Muddy wants you to come out and root, root, root for the home team Thursday, April 11.

Hill of thrills

Grounds crew chief Jake Tyler, right, and crew member Jake Dippman pause from mound-building to peer into the dirt for any imperfections in the pitching bump at Fifth Third Field.


Will the 2013 Mud Hens “amound” to something? See for yourself at Fifth Third Field in Downtown Toledo starting Thursday with the team's Home Opener, the first game of a nine-game homestand.

----- Birdbrain

Spring weather & baseball in the Glass City

Workers recently installed a brand new Budweiser bow tie and other ads along the outfield fence at Fifth Third Field in Downtown Toledo. The Mud Hens open play there April 11.

Sustained spring weather has finally descended on northwest Ohio – just in time for the Toledo Mud Hens Home Opener, Thursday at 5 p.m.

Unfortunately, local meteorologists Sunday were calling for plenty of spring showers leading up to game day. But it is doubtful any amount of precip will spoil the fun of baseball-starved fans in the Glass City, especially with parties planned all around the friendly confines of Fifth Third Field. Besides free beer on Huron Street, plenty of Downtown watering holes will open their doors mid-morning to accommodate pre-gamers and Hens’ friends of every feather.

Those Mud Hens Sunday booked their first win of the 2013 campaign and avoided being swept by the Louisville Bats. They now head to Indianapolis for a three-game series leading up to the Home Opener. It’s a cinch the players will feel a sense of relief to get home to Toledo and finally play on their home field in front of their fans.

----- BirdBrain

in your face

Bert Davis comes face to face with modern art as he helps hang the 2013 Area Artists exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art. The exhibition is free and on display until April 14.

corpus christi

It was still dark when the eighth grade boy walked up the three stone steps to the back door of the church, leading into the sacristy. The door was unlocked. Inside, his classmates Rick and Tom, the president and veep of the altar boys, were already in the black cassocks they wore for serving Mass. The two were rummaging in the cabinets that lined the narrow room behind the church’s main altar. The boy dumped his book bag in the corner by the door.

“Hi guys, what’re you doing?” he asked.
Ignoring the latecomer, Tom brought forth a cylindrical metal canister as big as a Cain’s potato chips can. “Here it is,” he said with the air of serious effort he gave all his undertakings.

“Dave, c’mon,” Rick said in a high-pitched voice, finally acknowledging the third boy, who served as secretary of the altar boys. Rick’s dark hair was slicked down, a cotton ball wedged into one ear against a chronic earache. “We found the hosts,” he squeaked.

Dave had taken off his jacket and was searching the cassocks hanging from a long rack against the outer wall for one big enough to cover his long legs.

“You ever eat the hosts?” Tom asked Dave as he pried the lid off the container.

“Are you crazy. Where’s Monsignor O'Connell?” Dave had perhaps a deeper respect for the grandfatherly priest. After all, had not the monsignor once taught him a law of the universe?



On that particular Saturday about a year earlier, Monsignor O'Connell had asked Dave to go with him into the school on some errand. The door was locked and the monsignor took a small key ring out of his pocket. There were two keys on the ring. As the priest slipped the first key into the lock he turned to the young boy and whispered it was a law of the universe that if you had two keys and one lock, and you didn’t know which key fit, the first key you put into the lock will always – always – be the wrong one. As if there could be any doubt about something Monsignor O'Connell said, sure enough on that afternoon the first key would not turn the lock on the school door and the priest had to use the second key to open it.

Dave also knew he had something in common with the elderly cleric. Both had slightly crooked lower front incisors, perhaps not pronounced enough back in the 1960s to warrant the expense of corrective braces, but crooked nonetheless and in precisely the same way. The monsignor’s lower teeth were noticeable to an altar boy kneeling close to the altar when the church leader prayed the Mass. The boy did not know what significance to attach to that shared orthodontic peculiarity but felt it conferred on him a kinship with the revered priest.



“Don’t worry,” Rick was chirping, “When I went to the rectory to get the key, Father Morgan told me Monsignor O'Connell wasn’t feeling too good and would be about 15 minutes late.”

“Mass is going to be late?” Dave said aloud, trying to imagine the consequences of such an unimaginable disaster.

Tom was already crunching away at the hosts, in his typical self-absorbed manner. He passed a handful to Rick. Dave approached them slowly. It was nearly half past six, the time Mass was scheduled to begin. Dave had walked half a mile to the church and hadn’t eaten anything that morning but any natural hunger the 13-year-old boy might have felt was suppressed by a sense of sacrilege. Meanwhile his peers were munching loudly.

Dave came close and looked into the canister. Thousands of the thin white wafers – like a pile of giant fish scales – glistened, eerily translucent. The smell reminded him of that part of the Mass when the hosts were distributed.
“Try some,” Tom urged.

Without warning, the door to the sacristy – the priests entrance – opened and shut, and scuffling footsteps headed toward them. Tom quickly shoved the can back into the cupboard, banging the doors closed while Rick walked swiftly past Dave toward the far end of the long room where the cassocks were hanging. Both Tom and Rick had mouthfuls of hosts they were desperately chewing and in a panic to swallow. But those dry wafers, which the boys had been taught became the actual body of Christ, tended to stick to the roof of your mouth. During the Mass you could kneel and pray for a good minute waiting for a single host to dissolve in your mouth – you were taught not to chew. It was clear an entire kisser full of those hosts was not going down without a struggle.

“Gosh, we’re late today.” It was Gary who had come in through the priests doorway. He was the fourth and final server to arrive for Mass. “Where is Monsignor O'Connell?”

“We all thought you were him,” Dave said. Tom concurred with his eyes as he turned to face his classmates, his bulging jaws still working on the hosts. Rick reappeared with his silly smile and with his black-framed glasses off center. He raised his hands chest high, palms out, to punctuate the scare Gary had given them. Tom went back to the cupboard, finally able to speak. “Look, we were eating the hosts.”

Gary trudged past them toward the cassocks. “I’ve done that,” he muttered. Gary was treasurer of the altar boys. He hung up his pea coat and grabbed a cassock. “It’s OK. They’re not blessed yet.”

that 'object' is outa here!

Fifth Third Field in Toledo, Ohio, is the home of the Mud Hens.

Objects leaving the playing field...Hmmm, that would make a good "Family Feud" category: What did people say when asked to name 'objects' that might leave the playing field, specifically over the centerfield fence at a hint hint 'baseball' park?

Town Hall

There used to be a burlesque theater on St. Clair Street in Toledo, Ohio, called the Town Hall. I remember it from the late 1960s and early 70s, mostly from the daily ads it ran in the newspaper but there was also one particular Saturday matinee that I will never forget.

I used to marvel at the eighth-of-a-page ads for the Town Hall that appeared in the Peach Section of The Toledo Blade, "One of America’s Great Newspapers," as its masthead proclaimed and still does, even if like most papers that broadsheet today is flimsier and not as broad as back then. When I was in high school the Peach Section was printed on soft orange-colored stock and contained the TV listings, movie guide, features and a number of columns.

In one column that I loved to read, the author recounted life's mundane struggles and invariably credited his day-to-day triumphs to sage advice from his wife, referred to only as “Green Eyes.” As a boy I fell in love with Green Eyes. My reader’s imagination created an ideal woman around those emerald windows to the soul. To this day I am weak for women with peepers of that hue.

Other aspects of the female anatomy were alluded to in those Peach Section ads for the Town Hall. The strippers performed under tantalizing stage names and were hawked using impressive sets of measurements. One heralded headliner, for example, -- and the only act I remember by name -- was known simply as Irma the Body.

While I was in high school my best friend Blair had the genius idea of actually going to the burlies. So one Saturday afternoon four of us high school students rode downtown in Blair’s white Camaro. We lived in West Toledo. Before the interstate bypass was completed in the early 1970s, you drove downtown via a venerable artery like Monroe Street, which connected the western burbs with Toledo's historic churches and central city merchants.

I think we parked the car near the theater, possibly in a surface lot by Ted’s Hamburger Shop. Ted’s looked like a miniature White Castle, a small white box on a corner surrounded by parked cars. I think it could seat half a dozen at its counter and there might have been a few booths as well.

As we approached the ticket window beneath the marquee that jutted out over the wide sidewalk, there was a small line of old men purchasing tickets. Having observed this, and even though automobile traffic was sparse on St. Clair, Blair cautioned us to hold back. He didn’t want to be seen standing in line to buy a ticket to the striptease in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon. A few minutes later, with the ticket booth clear of other patrons we boldly walked up and bought our tickets, not even sure they would sell them to us. But they did and we quickly ducked into the dark lobby. Inside the theater were a couple dozen older guys scattered in seats around that vintage hall. Many held overcoats on their laps. Led by Blair, we took our seats in the second row at center stage.

A comedian came out in a plaid suit and did his shtick, old time vaudeville jokes. We laughed a lot probably more nervous than amused. After about 20 minutes of that corn the real show began. From the wings a woman danced out onto the stage to piped-in music while a real live drummer sat in a cage left of the boards and furnished the beat, the rim shots and high hat flourishes. The woman took her costume off while the old men squirmed. We sat eyes wide open, soon admiring for the first time a real live, nearly naked woman. When she was finished the audience applauded and the stripper dressed only in a g-string and pasties bowed and disappeared behind the curtain.

After a brief pause the next stripper would be introduced and begin her striptease. The women all looked alike to me: curly haired brunettes, in their 30s, kind of plump to be strutting nude on stage I thought. But what did I know. Still, I was secretly disappointed. I had expected to see women like in the movies, only finally without their clothes, stars like Rita Hayworth or that blonde in La Dolce Vita. I still applauded each one as did my friends. Only Blair was too cool to clap.

Then the headliner came on stage. Was it Irma?* I don’t remember. But she was a different class of woman. Her skin was pale, translucent. She had light colored hair, was lithe and pretty and appeared to be a half dozen years younger than the others. That burlesque star made the strippers who came before her look old, flabby and heavy-footed. When she was finished, standing before us in g-string and pasties, the applause was enthusiastic.

While the audience was still making known its collective appreciation she looked down at us from the stage – down at Blair sitting with his hands on his knees – and spoke, “What’s a matter? You didn’t like it?” Immediately flustered, Blair nodded his head and began furiously clapping his hands as the beautiful, nearly naked stripper, standing above us with arms akimbo, smiled and walked off the stage. We all agreed she was our favorite. And we decided to stay for the second show.

After a break, during which time other old men took their seats in the theater, the comedian came back out on stage. We of course remembered all his punch lines and yelled them out loud before he could spring them on the new audience. He soon got mad at us and began to threaten us under his breath, all the while setting up his next joke. But dressed in his silly suit he did not scare us. Besides, we were a gang of four, fearless of adult men, if not women.

The dancers returned in the same order as before and we continued to marvel at their twirling tassles and curvy flesh. When the pale-skinned princess returned on stage before us, no one, not even Blair, needed encouragement to applaud.

* Some Internet research convinces me I did not in fact see Irma the Body that Saturday afternoon. I must even wonder if my memory is accurate regarding the venue because the Town Hall apparently was razed before we ever got our driver's licenses.

stumbling along memory lane with Eddy Manet

It is all part of the cultural mosaic, baby.


Edouard Manet has been called the Father of Impressionism. The Toledo Museum of Art, which boasts a famous Manet work in its permanent collection, the portrait of Antonin Proust, is currently showcasing a few dozen more of this 19th century French Daddy-O’s portraits from collections around the world in what is billed as a major exhibition running through the end of the year.

There was plenty of foot traffic in gallery 32 earlier this week for “Manet: Portraying Life” and perhaps that is why the exhibition space seemed cramped. Or maybe museums these days no longer have the luxury of abundant space that I became accustomed to in my own heyday as an art museum rat on the Old Continent.

Indeed gazing on those impressionist portraits as well as several sketches of Manet himself by others that are included in this exhibition took me back to the early 1970s when I studied l’histoire de l’art at the Institut de Touraine in France. It was part of a curriculum designed to teach me French language and culture. I supplemented those classes at the venerable institute with a crash course in café conversations and locker room lingo as a part-time right wing for the St. Pierre-les-Corps soccer team. Sadly, my poor soccer skills never benefitted from the international exposure. Still, I got in some good evening workouts on that all-dirt pitch in the Tours banlieue. When I would get too gassed to go on I used to look up at the constellations, consider my fortune at being able to live in Europe, and push on past fatigue.

On the other hand, considering the lamentable level of my French knowledge upon arriving in France for that year of study abroad, the upshot was a success. I acquired a basic fluency.

In the exhibition's gift shop there is for sale, irony of ironies, a tee sporting Manet's stylish portrait of his longtime friend Antonin Proust. Of course, there ain't nothing ironic about ringing up 30 bucks for one of these V-necks.

Our art history prof was a Monsieur Girard, if I remember correctly. He was a middle-aged man with that French beefiness that accumulates from decades of the moderate intake of red wine and butter-fried horseflesh. M. Girard’s disheveled appearance, his worn blue suit and rakish silk scarf, the ragged clutch of papers he carried under his arm, his thick and longish black hair held in check by the requisite black beret, all belied a rigorous approach to his material. He instructed according to a well hewn syllabus but it was obvious the man’s knowledge of the history of art was wide-ranging and filled with inexhaustible details. Besides being a scholar he was certainly an artist in his own right although his dedication to his students never permitted him to talk about his own work. But he would draw voluminously each day in class to illustrate and explain the lessons and he demanded his students do likewise in their notes.

Initially this seemed an interesting challenge for me. When I was younger my father used to sketch and was very good at it. I hoped I might have inherited some of his talent. But I hadn't. Soon Monsieur G’s emphasis on drawing – those notes constituted a major portion of the final grade – became a deal breaker for me.

I did not fare well in art history class. But some 40 years later I still remember the way M. Girard explained Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix’s classic arrangement of figures in such masterpieces as "La Liberté guidant le peuple." And I still see the passionate M. Girard twist his fist in an unintended riff on le bras d’honneur and hear his throaty tenor exhorting us to observe la torsion in a particular work of the Baroque period.

See the Manet exhibition for the inspiration of it all. The Toledo Museum of Art is the only place in North America where the exhibition can be viewed. If you miss "Manet: Portraying Life" in Toledo you would have to travel to London to see it at the Royal Academy of Arts beginning in late January.

So for me, the trip to TMA’s major exhibition was well worth the price of admission. The experience nudged me to unearth some college memories and with them some of the humanism that characterizes learning at its core and is a good thing. And like the protagonist in Stephen King’s “The Shawshank Redemption” says: “…no good thing ever dies.”

gimme horn

Driving over to Starbucks in desperate need of caffeine, I readied my camera. For what, I didn't know, perhaps a landscape of the vast Westfield Mall. Usually I spy something of interest as I captain my Corolla around the not so mean streets of West Toledo.

In fact, a picturesque bearded old guy was sitting on the wooden bus stop bench in front of a deserted section of mall parking lot. Meanwhile, a solitary passer-by was, uhh, passing by and stopped to speak with the seated man. Perhaps picturesque guy was not about the bus but about a handout because I saw the passer-by dig into a pocket. Alas, although I was cruising cautiously, I missed that photo op.

O well, I was certain there would be others on this gorgeous fall Sunday. I drove on and another Kodak moment quickly presented itself. At the corner of Talmadge where a new store is under construction I saw a small cluster of people facing the intersection. I readied my camera. It could be union members, I thought, since I had seen the inflatable and inflated rat at this corner some weeks back. I snapped a picture as I pulled up to a red light. There I saw four persons protesting the war or war in general. Their signs said bring home our troops and stop drone strikes. One woman was holding a sign with an image of Jesus Christ on it. Jesus Christ, I muttered.

The guy closest to my passenger side window held a sign that said to honk if you were for peace. I pointed my camera but it wouldn’t shoot. Sometimes I have to fiddle with the on/off switch to get it to work. That’s what I was doing when the light turned green. On cue, the guy behind me honked. Was he declaring his solidarity with this scruffy gang of street corner peaceniks? No, I’m pretty sure he just wished I would step on it. I got the camera working and snapped a picture. Ready to proceed, I waved to the pacifists and added my own beep-beep to what by now had grown into a smattering of horns behind me. Of course, I also took a moment at the expense of those impatient motorists to enjoy the irony, before putting the Corolla in gear.

Buckeye chic

Recently I visited family in northwest Ohio and southern Michigan. While the latter is rightly celebrated in rock 'n' roll music, the subtle charms of the former may be less familiar to those who live in other parts of the country.

The weather this summer has once again been brutally hot. The key to survival outside the AC is simply to move slow. One unintended consequence of all that 100-degree heat is that no one dares to look at you askance if you are drinking a cold beer.

The landscape is flat, dotted with quarries and lakes. Don't be surprised to see the green stalks of an Ohio cornfield stretch for miles in each direction. Often, if a road or lake appears on the horizon, it proves to be but a thin caesura to Ohio's cash crop. On the far shoulder or shore, the corn rows resume their emerald monotony.

In order for people to pass by those miles of cornstalks and get where they're going, the speed limit on Ohio's highways is set at 65 mph or 70 mph. And if you're on a motorcycle you can let your hair fly in the breeze: there is no helmet law in the Buckeye State. That nickname by the way is taken from the state tree, which is characterized by inedible fruits similar in appearance to chestnuts. The buckeye also lends its name as a slang term for a resident of the 17th state. And just so you know, at least according to a trucker traveling along I-80 near Youngstown, and known by the CB handle Paper Bag, the definition of a buckeye is "a worthless nut."

As for angling, that hobby is just as popular on the shores of the Great Lakes as elsewhere around the country. And while freshwater fishing means smaller catches than saltwater angles may be accustomed to, the dietary rewards are not necessarily less toothsome. Lake Erie yellow perch, priced at $10.99/lb. by Toledo-area fishmongers this summer, make the sweetest filets you'll ever taste.

Some may claim Toledo is but a shadow of its former self. While it is still home to Jeep, one of the world's most distinct automobile brands, Toledo was once a more bustling Great Lakes port, often called Hood City — a reference to the impact of organized crime from nearby Detroit. Now the primary nickname that has stuck is The Glass City, after the bottle and glassware manufacturers that were based there. Toledo used to be home to an array of international companies that have since moved away — even Toledo Scale is now based in Columbus. Toledo was also known around the region for its hometown Buckeye beer. "When you're dry," the slogan went, "Drink Buckeye." Perhaps not quite catchy enough--the brewery closed in the 1970s. In recent years, however, the Buckeye label has been reborn by a local craft brewer.

Back in the day, T-town also boasted memorable entertainment venues like the Town Hall, a burlesque palace where Irma the Body was queen, and the Agora nightclub in West Toledo, where a young Bob Seeger gigged on summer weekends before hitting it big. Of course there is still plenty to do in Toledo today. The city has more summer festivals than Klinger had dresses. (He was from the east side.) The university offers sports programs and cultural performances. The world-class art museum has Van Goghs and mummies in its permanent collection.

The famous Toledo Mud Hens baseball team plays its home games at a beautiful stadium downtown. I paid $9 to sit three rows off the field behind first base. The price of admission included dogs catching frisbees in the outfield between innings.

Then there is the Toledo Zoo with a large array of exotic animals, including a juvenile giraffe, yearling tigers, some very buddha-esque ourangs, and a killer elephant. A pair of bald eagles, the very symbol of our free country, provide an incongruous and sad site in their cage.

Hood City even has is own brand new casino, built along the Maumee River. And if all that's not enough for you, in Ohio you can buy wine and booze at the grocery store. Talk about civilized.