The Ruffed Grouse Society Is the Future of Conservation

A great article about one of my store’s owners, Mark Jones – a hunter, conservationist, and locavore all rolled into one!

“If everything you know about guns, dogs, and wild animals comes from rolling through Bass Pro and loading up on Duck Dynasty swag, meet the small but hardy group of sportsmen in the Ruffed Grouse Society. With a deep respect for the birds they pursue and a vested interest in seeing the habitats they love stay healthy, they are the future of hunting. But when they’re gone, who will follow the trail they’ve blazed?

“Good, Daisy! Good! Good girl!” Ron Ellis exclaims in a throaty whisper. Behind his wire rim spectacles, his eyes glow with pleasure. “It’s her first point,” he declares proudly.

A Ruffed Grouse in the wild

PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN WILLIS

Daisy is a 10-month-old Brittany weighing in at just over 30 pounds, the granddaughter of a 32-time field trial champion from North Carolina named Nolan’s Last Bullet. Bought from a breeder in Bowling Green, Kentucky, early in 2014, she has just pointed a farm-raised quail Ellis released in a fallow field thick with wild grass on the outskirts of Bethel this frosty November morning. He’s training Daisy on a docile upland game bird now so that she will be ready when they encounter the more elusive ruffed grouse and American woodcock in the wild. Ellis’s fascination with grouse is a lifelong passion; over the years it has served as something of a muse as he built a career as an outdoor writer, upland game-bird hunter, and committed conservationist. His reverence for the bird that he first began hunting at 14 is strong. Now 65, Ellis has hunted for most of his life and his relationship to the animals he hunts and the habitats they thrive in is fueled by an abiding respect. He cares about the grouse that he and Daisy are after but sometimes wonders if he and his dog are the last of a breed.

Ron Ellis (left), Mark Jones and their dog Hope return from a training exercise.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN WILLIS

Daisy’s cognac-colored eyes have the depth of an old soul and match an exact shade in her orange and white coat as she glances up at her owner. She is the fourth Brittany he’s owned since he first brought home a spirited little bitch named Ellis’s Lady of Autumn—Lady for short—in 1976. Ellis, who lives in the Northern Kentucky suburb of Lakeside Park, summed up his life with and love for Lady a few years ago in “The Dog I Belonged To,” an essay published alongside work by such esteemed writers as Jim Harrison and Guy de la Valdène in Afield: American Writers on Bird Dogs: “I often counted myself lucky to have stumbled onto such a wonderful dog to partner with in loving wild birds and the beautiful places they called home.”

A hunter can own many bird dogs in his life, but his first one often looms largest in memory. Just talking about Lady transports Ellis back to other times and places. “She hunted her heart out for me, always, throughout all of our years together, with the meager expectation that at the day’s end she could remain close to me, maybe sleep curled up on the car seat beside me on the long ride home,” he recalls. “And I tried never to disappoint her.” But his attention today is on Daisy, whose own auspicious first has Ellis grinning from ear to ear. It’s clear that a dog has never been just a part of his sporting equipage. As he rubs her velvety ears, Daisy leans into his leg for more.

The Gilbert R. Symons chapter on a habitat reclamation project

PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN WILLIS

Out in the field—on one of the first cold days of autumn, necessitating both a wool cap and gloves—Ellis and his friend Mark Jones are putting their Brittanys through the paces. Jones has brought three of his own: Hope, a 16-year veteran with a greying muzzle and minimal eyesight but a nose that refuses to quit; Max, 12, the sole boy in the brood, who is fairly calm and collected throughout the morning; and Piper, a 4-year-old female who bounces through grass and brush with such relentless energy that she begs comparison to the Energizer Bunny. Both men, clad in khaki with orange hats and vests, wear whistles around their necks and give short bursts to keep the dogs on task.

After 27 years at Northern Kentucky University, where he served as assistant vice president for advancement, Ellis retired in 2001 to write full time. In 1998, as his father lay dying, Ellis submitted 25 pages of an intimate account of their relationship and mutual sporting connection with a “magical” tract of dense hickory woods in northeastern Kentucky to the University of Montana’s Environmental Writing Institute, taught by the novelist and environmental activist Rick Bass. On the power of his submission, Ellis was selected to attend the seminar and came away with both an active mentor and cherished friend: Bass wrote the forward to the book that grew out of those 25 pages—a fictionalized memoir called Cogan’s Woods, published in 2001. “In everything I write, landscape is a character, the primary character,” Ellis explains. “It breathes, loves, and smells. It is lit with sunlight and moonlight; animals come and go. And the landscape where I’m sure my heart is buried is Cogan’s Woods. I deeply love that place because my family’s history is there. My father’s heart is still there, I’m certain of that.”

A ruffed grouse specimen in the Brandt ornithology collection at the Geier Center.PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHNATHAN WILLIS

Drive about 50 minutes in any direction out past Cincinnati’s suburban sprawl and you’ll find yourself in a similarly wooded setting—acres of family farms, private stretches of forest, and state-sanctioned wildlife areas all begging to be explored. Certainly inner peace can be sought in a church pew or yoga class, but it’s also readily found in a contemplative meander through the woods. We ferry our kids to countless sporting events and activities, but all too often neglect their exploration of the natural world and a solid understanding of their place in it. Collectively, American consumers spend millions of dollars a year on fad diets meant to budge the bulges created by processed foods—the more affluent paying top dollar for “clean” meat and fish while talking a steady stream about sustainable food sources, never having killed or butchered a chicken, let alone a deer, currently the most abundant (read: sustainable!) source of animal protein available in our wilds.

Much of this fervor is generational. Many Midwestern baby boomers, including my own father, grew up spending significant time outdoors hunting, fishing, or simply observing the cycles of life. The largesse of these wild places, where relentless forces of predation are constantly, though quietly, battling for domination, has given many of our elders a lifelong sense of awe and a commitment to a brand of conservation that is rooted in scientific study and common-sense land management. But with ever-increasing competition for young people’s attention, the old guard worries that their children and grandchildren may not share their appreciation and take up the mantle of informed environmental stewardship. As Bass put it in his essay “Why I Hunt”: “All I know is that hunting—beyond being a thing I like to do—helps keep my imagination vital. I would hope never to be so blind as to offer it as prescription; I offer it only as testimony to my love of the landscape where I live—a place that is still, against all odds, its own place, quite unlike any other.”

A commendable stance to be sure. Except that sometimes it’s difficult to get that heartfelt respect and appreciation for the land across when all non-hunters want to see is a guy marching into the woods to blast birds from the sky.

Ellis’s deep love of wild places forms the bedrock of his friendship with Mark Jones, a 67-year-old retired City of Cincinnati development officer. “It’s a natural friendship,” says Jones. “We’re interested in words and ideas, dogs and hunting.” The two are active members of the Gilbert R. Symons chapter of the Ruffed Grouse Society (RGS), a national conservation group dedicated to preserving the habitat of the quixotic upland game bird that has fascinated them and other hunters for years.

Unless you hunt, or perhaps are into birding, you probably haven’t heard too much about grouse. They’ve got an avid fan base. In the anthology A Passion For Grouse: The Lore and Legend of America’s Premier Game Bird, the ruffed grouse is identified as a non-migratory, solitary bird that typically weighs a little more than a pound. Dubbed the “king of game birds,” it has been likened to a partridge but is notable for tufts of feathers at the base of the neck that look like avian shoulder pads. Both sexes share gray and red mottled crests at the crown of the head and are so similarly marked that it’s difficult to denote gender, even at close range. One of the few ways to tell is by the different dot patterns on their rump feathers—a single dot for females, two dots for males. The bird’s most distinctive characteristic, however, is something called “drumming.” Males establish and defend their territory by bracing their tails against a flat surface, standing upright on logs or stumps (referred to as drumming stages), and rapidly beating their cupped wings against the air. The low frequency sound reverberates in the thickly vegetated “early successional” habitat—that is, forest regularly disturbed by wind or fire every six to eight years—to attract females and warn off other males.

Ellis and Jones first met at a fund-raising dinner for the Ruffed Grouse Society more than 20 years ago and ultimately bonded over Ellis’s memoir. In addition to Cogan’s Woods, Ellis has since edited Of Woods and Waters: A Kentucky Outdoors Reader and In That Sweet Country: Uncollected Writings of Harry Middleton, on top of writing Brushes With Nature: The Art of Ron Van Gilderand numerous essays for various sporting anthologies.

Jones’s smirk is almost invisible beneath his bushy white mustache as he good-naturedly calls Ellis “the romantic.” It’s a mantle that Ellis accepts with a shrug and a rueful smile. “This guy’s all about deep introspection and effusive explaining. I just want to do stuff,” says Jones. A master of understatement and self-deprecation, Jones is a voracious reader and a regular contributor of literary criticism to Library Journal, but he’s also one hell of a do-er. If Ellis’s prose can entice a couch potato out into the winter woods in pursuit of an elusive game bird, Jones is a regular ringleader of the local sporting conservation movement.

This past April, the local RGS chapter staged a fund-raising benefit at New Riff distillery in Bellevue. Jones put the whole evening together. David Cook, chef and owner of Daveed’s Next in Loveland, and himself a hunter and lover of the outdoors, prepared multiple tasting courses with game provided by members, including rabbit à la King, Florida wild hog sausage with sauerkraut, Lake Erie walleye piccata, mallard duck confit, and sliced pheasant with peach compote and blackberry drizzle. The evening unfurled, slow and pleasant, an endless procession of food, tumblers of private-barrel bourbon, fly-fishing demonstrations on the terrace with Orvis instructors, and an extensive auction that included two guns—a CZ 20-gauge over/under shotgun and an Ithaca Model 37, one of only 10 ever produced, engraved specially for the society—both successfully bid on by women. Nationally renowned wildlife artist John A. Ruthven, a long-standing member of the society, always auctions off a signed limited edition print—this year it was “Dogwood Spring”—and he didn’t hesitate to toss in a charming anecdote or two, which helped ratchet up the bids. Jones estimated that that one night of good food and easy company netted more than $5,000, funds that will be used to finance habitat projects that the federal government can no longer afford to support.

Ruthven in his Georgetown studio with his painting Martha, the Last Passenger Pigeon

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHNATHAN WILLIS

Of course, it’s not just the federal government that finds itself strapped these days. In 2014, the Ohio Division of Wildlife reported spending 41 percent of its $59.6 million budget on fish and wildlife management; the remainder covered administrative costs, staff payroll, and outreach education. More than 60 percent of that working budget—well over $36 million—came from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses, deer permits, turkey permits, and wetland habitat stamps. Federal dollars accounted for only 28 percent of the state conservation agency’s working budget. Bottom line: Ohio’s sportsmen and -women are funding habitat management, and often pitching in on the work themselves.

The list of habitat reclamation projects that RGS volunteers have lent their time, money, and muscles to in southern Ohio is impressive. Jones happily gives me a quick rundown: thinning stands of trees in parts of Shawnee State Forest to help develop more early successional habitat; laying down seed mixes that provide clover and other wild grasses that feed deer, wild turkey, and a variety of other woodland creatures; using habitat machines (similar to a bulldozer) to clear trees in Wayne National Forest and Tranquility Wildlife Management Area, which enables fledgling plants that provide both food and habitat to repopulate former pastureland that is no longer fertile and typically supports little biodiversity, often only red cedar. “These huge tracts [of red cedar] have become a monoculture, meaning animals do pass through, but the land is not providing any kind of quality habitat for them,” Jones explains.

At Indian Creek Wildlife Area near Fayetteville, RGS has invested about 10 years of habitat maintenance under the careful eye of trained wildlife biologists (who oversee all of the society’s habitat projects). By clearing culverts and creeks, they’ve helped to maintain the moist soil that woodcock need for easy access to worms, their dietary staple. The area is also adjacent to open ground where the birds often sing and attract mates. “We’re only cutting and clearing about an acre a year at that location,” Jones says—a rate that supports a variety of habitats. Fellow society member Rick Bryan III and his son Rick Bryan IV, owners of Bryan Equipment Sales near Wards Corner, play a key role in getting the work done, donating the use of their equipment (chain saws, safety chaps, hard hats, face guards, and protective ear muffs), and providing training for volunteers.

But it’s not all bulldozers and chain saws. According to Mark Wiley, an upland game biologist with the Ohio Division of Wildlife, volunteers from the Symons chapter of RGS run three drumming routes in the Shawnee State Forest in southeastern Ohio. “There’s a two- to three-week period in April where these birds are at the peak of their drumming,” says Wiley. “We use 10 points along a roadside roughly half a mile apart—because the dense habitat can be tough to traverse—where a surveyor will get out of the truck or car and listen for a few minutes at each point. We train them to count how many drumming males they hear at each. Then they’ll move on to the next point, recording again, giving us an index as to whether there are more or less.”

In addition to drumming surveys—overall indexes are monitored at a state level and are publicly available—some RGS members also keep hunting diaries. “Since 1972, we’ve had a program where grouse hunters keep a diary,” Wiley says. “We send out about 200 to 300 diaries each year [in Ohio], some to guys who have been participating since the first year. Unfortunately not as many of the older hunters are in the field on a regular basis.” Indeed, as the average age of the grouse hunter has increased, the number of diaries the Division of Wildlife gets back has fallen to about 75. Still, the data is integral to understanding the health of the game bird population throughout the state. “For 100 hours of hunting, how many grouse are they flushing? In the ’70s and ’80s there were anywhere from 100 to 150 flushes in 100 hours,” says Wiley. “This year we are down to 22 flushes, and it’s all driven by [a loss of] habitat.”

Ruthven’s painting Jim’s Grouse

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHNATHAN WILLIS

Cutting down trees to help create habitats for multiple species may seem counterintuitive, but that has more to do with misconceptions that flourish in popular culture as opposed to well-researched and documented wildlife biology. “During the ’60s and ’70s, as much as 50 percent of Ohio’s forested land was in seedling and sapling stage,” Wiley explains. “That’s very young forest. Much of the non-forested land was in agricultural service and regularly plowed. As family farms were abandoned in southeastern Ohio and the land has reforested, Ohio has lost precious young forest—the exact habitat that is vital to the survival of ruffed grouse and American woodcock but also home to many songbirds, mammals, and reptiles. All species that are dependent on early successional habitat are currently trending downward.”

Wiley cites a study by Amanda Rodewald, formerly of Ohio State University and now at Cornell, who found that many species of songbird previously thought to be mature forest birds, such as the scarlet tanager, are
heavily utilizing these young forests. “Typically people think of a mature forest area—and I’ve seen this written—as a vibrant ecosystem,” says Wiley. “While that is the case, a young forest area is equally as vibrant and produces a lot of plant species that support wildlife, not only with cover but with foliage—like wild raspberry or blackberry.”

Wiley can also connect the dots further up the food chain. “[People] associate an animal like the bobcat with a forested system, but bobcats actually really benefit from early succession environments because that’s where you’ll find much of their prey,” he says. “We’ve been trained to think that no disturbance is a good thing for wildlife when in fact a wide variety of wildlife species are highly dependent on disturbance.” Human populations have purposely minimized the disturbances, especially when it comes to fire and disease; ironically, now that means the disturbances necessary to promote wildlife diversity require a human hand.

Wiley’s graduate studies at OSU involved a long-term habitat study of the bobwhite quail that continues today. The university’s terrestrial wildlife ecology lab is not the traditional stationary model. It includes four learning sites on different slices of private land with specific habitat characteristics located near Hillsboro, Sardinia, Belfast, and a parcel where Highland, Brown, and Adams counties converge. According to Olivia Smith, a master’s student currently working the sites, since 2008 OSU has fitted 774 birds with bands that utilize radio telemetry to zero in on habitat usage. Each tiny transmitter worn by a bird emits a specific frequency that can be tracked; birds must weigh at least 165 grams to offset the weight of the band. “Bobwhites usually move about 1.5 kilometers between seasons, depending on where they find good habitat,” says Smith. “While they can fly, they typically don’t unless they’re flushed.”

The results of Smith’s work help local conservation groups target habitat management projects; in turn, those groups provide funding and logistical support. “Both Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, not to mention Division of Wildlife, help us catch birds for tagging,” she says.

A member of the Gilbert R. Symons chapter on a habitat reclamation project

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHNATHAN WILLIS

If it weren’t for the knowledge and skill of sportsmen and -women who have devoted themselves to the layperson’s study and passionate pursuit of upland game birds, many more academics would be fighting a rear-guard action. A week after his blowout 90th birthday bash at the Cincinnati Club—hosted by Senator Rob Portman and Nick Clooney, and attended by RGS buddies Ellis and Jones, along with more than 400 other friends—John A. Ruthven is giving me a quick tutorial of Herbert T. Brandt’s ornithology collection at the Geier Center, the collections storage facility of the Cincinnati Natural History Museum. Row after row of metal double door cabinets are filled with drawers containing birds from around the world. Organized by taxonomy, each bird bears a tag around its ankle denoting its Latin and common names, age, sex, collection date and location, name of collector, and any special or circumstantial information. Ruthven’s familiarity with these birds stems from the fact that he collected a lot of them.

Ruthven’s fascination with birds started early. As a kid, he would walk from his family home in Walnut Hills down to the shore of the Ohio River. “In those days it was safe for a young boy and I often took my sketch pads with me,” he recalls. “I was always encouraged by my family to draw and learned much about the outdoors by just looking.” The more he looked, the more he wanted to get closer to the birds and animals that he spied. His parents allowed him to sign up for correspondence courses—a luxury during the Depression—from the Northwestern School of Taxidermy. “Every month I received documents on how to prepare bird skins. Not for scientific study, but just how to stuff them and put them on a post or a table,” he says.

Eventually, his bird obsession paid off. In 1960, a painting by Ruthven (“Redhead Ducks”) won the Federal Duck Stamp Contest, a competition started in 1949 to promote the highly collectable stamp required for hunting waterfowl. Like much to do with hunting, conservation, and wild game, the annual competition flies under the general cultural radar, but it’s prestigious enough that Ruthven went from hardworking commercial artist (he designed the iconic Play-Doh logo) to a nationally recognized wildlife painter virtually overnight. He’s made a good living painting birds and other wildlife ever since.

Ruthven’s success owes much to his rigorous study of the subject. For Herbert T. Brandt, scion of a Cleveland meatpacking family, bird collecting was a passionate hobby. But in 1918, Congress passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, making it illegal for a private individual to collect birds for non-research purposes, and Brandt donated his birds to the City of Cincinnati. Eventually, the collection was housed at the University of Cincinnati and Ruthven became fast friends with its curator, Emerson Kemsies, who allowed Ruthven access to it for his artistic research. It didn’t take him long to start adding specimens himself.

A devoted upland game bird hunter, Ruthven secured collecting permits from Kemsies to bring back samples of non-protected birds from his research trips to Africa and South America. Ruthven would typically shoot a male and female of each bird required, then immediately peel the bird skin from the carcass and reassemble the bird’s body form using whatever stuffing material was at hand (he often improvised with wild grasses) and plenty of borax. Ruthven would wrap the bird in cotton batting, then plastic, and pack it up for its journey back to Cincinnati.

“Taking one or two samples does not impact the population as a whole, but yields significant information and a better understanding of the overall population,” says Glenn Storrs, curator of vertebrate paleontology and vice-president of collections and research at the Geier Center.

In 1962, after the publication of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s account of the devastating effect that pesticides were having on North American birds, Ruthven traveled to Africa and collected a variety of common bird samples for UC under the careful eye of the Nairobi Division of Firearms. The idea was that collecting samples of birds from beyond our shores would help scientists in the U.S. compare and monitor pesticide levels on various continents.

From one of the cabinets, Storrs helps Ruthven locate the last bird shot on that trip, a large African crow they found near downtown Nairobi. Ruthven recalls it happened to have been regularly defecating on a car owned by an official in the Division of Firearms. Storrs places the bird in Ruthven’s outstretched hands. “Well, hello there, old friend,” he says, fondly.

As drawer after drawer is opened to reveal exotic parrots, backyard robins, and eventually a jackpot of ruffed grouse, Ruthven’s ability to identify birds he gathered nearly 50 years ago is uncanny; his emotional investment in the collection and his understanding of its importance as a reference for both science and art couldn’t be clearer. Storrs estimates that there were 75,000 specimens in the collection when it was first donated by Brandt; at last count, they had more than 100,000.

Ron Ellis (left), Mark Jones, and Jones’s dog Hope hunting near Bethel

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHNATHAN WILLIS

“In 1968, Emerson came to me one afternoon and said that he thought he’d die soon,” Ruthven tells me. “Well, I thought that was just crazy and I didn’t want to listen to him, but he sat me down and explained that he’d made me the executor of his estate. He was sure that as soon as he was gone, UC would up and sell the collection. He made me promise that I’d use what he left behind to make sure the collection stayed in Cincinnati. He knew I was as committed to it as he was. Sure enough, two weeks later he died, and about two weeks after that I got a call from UC that they planned to sell. I set that guy straight. I told him that I planned to use all the financial resources I could to fight them and make sure the collection never left the city.” Ruthven chuckles at the memory. “I really scared them.”

A few days later he got a call from someone at UC. “He said if I wanted the birds I had better come and get ’em,” he recalls. Ruthven rented three vans, marshaled a committed group of volunteers, and together they moved 75,000 bird specimens to the old Cincinnati Natural History Museum on Gilbert Avenue. Surveying the room and all the open drawers of birds, Ruthven puts his hand on my arm and looks me dead in the eye. “I’m so glad I could save it,” he says.

Ruthven’s legacy would, at first glance, seem to be his prolific art career. With more than 800 original works and multiple commissions waiting to be completed, it’s obvious. But the closer one looks, it’s his outstanding dedication to the scientific and artistic study of wildlife, primarily birds, paired with a commitment to habitat conservation, that forms the formidable backbone of his oeuvre. Ruthven is fiercely proud of a plaque from Ducks Unlimited that hangs in his studio, commemorating his personal fund-raising efforts of well over a million dollars for the organization. Mark Jones estimates that he’s raised at least $500,000 for RGS as well.

Much has been written of Ruthven’s admiration for John James Audubon, the early American wildlife painter who spent part of his career in Cincinnati. Ruthven has been known to use techniques similar to Audubon’s in his art, furthering the ideal of hyper-realistic wildlife painting, including personally procuring and preserving his specimens. The difference between the two is that when Audubon was shooting the birds he catalogued, the North American continent was teeming with wildlife. No one in the 18th and 19th century could conceive of the drastic effects that human hands would wreak on American soil and in the air. Ruthven and his fellow hunters in the Ruffed Grouse Society fully understand that impact. Their desire to hunt game birds is what motivates them to document, maintain, and sustain the wild bird populations and their dwindling habitats.

When I ask fellow RGS members Ellis and Jones about cultural touchstones that inspire their dedication, like Ruthven they point out the contributions of parents, teachers, and mentors who led by personal example. But the flip side of that reverence is urgent concern, especially as they age, over future generations’ seeming lack of interest, scientific knowledge, and exposure to nature as a whole.

“More and more young people are interested in sustainable food from close to home,” Jones says. But without a parent, friend, or mentor who hunts, access to the sport can be tricky. “We encourage people to come to the RGS events,” he adds. “I love to invite people to come out to my place in March and watch the woodcock mating dance or train dogs with me.” Other RGS members are active in youth programs, introducing middle-school-age children to hunting safety courses and arranging youth hunts—doing their part to expose young men and women not just to hunting but to the thrill and unexpected mysteries of life in the outdoors.

“We have to get young people and more women involved,” stresses John Eichinger, president and CEO of the Ruffed Grouse Society. Eichinger has dedicated much of his adult life to conservation. Before moving to Pennsylvania to helm the RGS in 2012, he spent years volunteering with the Michigan United Conservation Club, an umbrella organization of more than 250 conservation clubs throughout the state, and also served as a vice chairman of the National Wildlife Federation. Eichinger admits that RGS’s challenges are not unique. “We are experiencing what other conservation groups are experiencing,” he says. “We have found over the years that many of the youth members of RGS also have a parent who is involved, and while we want to continue that, it’s now time to reach beyond.

“We know that we cannot do this on our own,” he adds. “We are actively looking for a partnership or an alliance with an organization that has programs for youth, particularly in urban areas. In the last census, the results showed us that 90 percent of the population live in or near cities. That doesn’t mean we need to turn everyone into a hunter—that’s not our objective at all—but we do need to get people outdoors.”

For all their earnest attention to habitat management and respect for the birds, the fact is that a lot of RGS members rarely even kill many these days. Most came to hunting when grouse and woodcock were plentiful, and white-tailed deer and wild turkey were few and far between.

“Decreasing populations of upland game birds, loss of habitat, and the aging of the bird hunter population dims the outlook for this sport’s popularity. It’s a reality that’s hard to face. In southwestern Ohio—except for woodcock hunting and dove shooting—you’re going to have to travel good distances,” notes Jones, who routinely drives up to his native Michigan, as well as New Hampshire, where he and his wife spend most of the warmer months.

Both he and Ellis actively lament the way hunting culture is portrayed on cable television. “I’m appalled because the emphasis is always on killing—like it’s football. Hey look, I’ve scored a touchdown!” Jones says, shaking his head.

In the course of my conversations with RGS members, no one bragged about birds killed or tried to give me any kind of hard sell on gun rights; mostly they came across as devout disciples of conservation. Ellis summed up his point of view with a line from Wallace Stegner’s open letter to the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission in 1960, later entitled “Wilderness Letter” and published in his book The Sound of Mountain Water: “We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”

Ruthven, Ellis, and Jones all speak solemnly about hunting ethics. They pick up spent shells and litter left behind by less concerned sportsmen—“It’s just how I was raised,” says Ellis—and are committed to cooking and eating every upland game bird they bag. Ruthven, who says his mother laid down the law and demanded that he never waste a life, enthuses over woodcock “stuffed with a jalapeño pepper, wrapped in bacon, and cooked exactly two minutes on each side over a charcoal fire.” Later on, Jones e-mails me a luscious-sounding recipe for baked grouse breast with crème fraîche, fresh thyme leaves, and wild mushrooms.

Ellis credits his father with his introduction to game bird hunting, but Germanic hunting culture sealed the deal. Stationed in Berlin with the Army in his early 20s, he spent hours at the Grünewald forest and joined a rod and gun club, immersing himself in a group that often switched between four or five languages during the course of an evening, reliving stories from wilderness regions around the globe and sharing a common love for bird dogs, clay pigeon shooting, and fine food and wine. “I’m not finicky, but a good wine and a good game bird and I’m happy,” he says. “It just hit me there—these are my people.”

There was a hunting school he was required to attend in West Berlin to earn a hunting permit. “It was all about respect for animals,” he recalls. “What color are the eggs? What are the seven terms for the mating dances? You also had to break a certain number of clay pigeons, and then complete a written and oral exam. It was a very big deal. I remember that the instructor—who looked like Kris Kringle in lederhosen—made me identify the scent glands on a roebuck, and asked me how many eggs were standard in a mallard duck nest.” He earned his beautifully illustrated Jägerbriefcertificate at the end of the course. It hangs in his home office to this day.

Ellis says that his son completed hunter safety courses when he was young and often hunted alongside him, but he’s 30 now and not currently hunting. “When I asked him why he went then and not now, he said, ‘I always just wanted to be with you, Dad.’ These days my son sends me postcards from all over the world and they’re all of beautiful, wild country,” he says. “He’s not hanging out in cities—he loves nature and experiencing those very special wild places.”

For Ellis that signifies one thing: mission accomplished. Still, fostering an appreciation for the majesty of the outdoors and a commitment to the conservation of the land he loves remains his prime concern. Sometimes that includes responsibly harvesting a bird or two for dinner, but more often than not it’s about a quiet morning tramping in the forest with his good friend Jones and their four Brittanys.

“The woods are a magical place for me,” he says. “That’s why I still go there. That awe, that wonder, that splendor—there’s always the anticipation of seeing something that I’ve never seen before.”

Originally published in the January 2015 issue”

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“I had $77 to spend on food, transportation, activities and other personal expenses for the week,” the Ohio Democrat and current president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund wrote in Politico magazine. “I didn’t make it.”

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This article punched me in the heart. I want to hug every single one of these rays of sunshine.

Ohio bill would restrict abortion coverage

After reading the above article, I decided to write a letter to Rep. John Becker. For contact info, please visit http://www.ohiohouse.gov/john-becker.

 

Representative John Becker, District 65

77 S. High St 
12th Floor 
Columbus, OH 43215

 

Mr. Becker,

I recently read an article on House Bill 351 and your intention to ban public employees or those on Medicaid from having coverage for certain forms of birth control. As someone who was born and raised in Cincinnati, I wanted to add my voice to the others who are asking you to rethink your decision.

Firstly, IUDs do not cause abortions, they merely prevent pregnancy like other birth control methods. If you are not a medical doctor, your personal views on the matter are not relevant. You are literally forcing your personal, misinformed views on the Ohioan populace. If you want to rule Ohio effectively, you must use verified facts and evidence to back up your claims.

Secondly, if you’re still convinced that birth control should not be covered, then how do you feel about male-based birth control such as Vasogel? It’s a gel for men that renders sperm immotile and ineffective, thereby preventing the fertilization of an egg and consequent implantation of said egg. Nearly all birth control methods, whether for men or women, prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. If you’re going to ban IUDs, then it would follow logically that you would ban all forms that prevent implantation.

Thirdly, birth control is necessary for many women who have medical conditions like endrometriosis or for lowering the risk of cancer. If you’re so concerned about not wasting taxpayers’ money on prescription drugs relating to sexual activities, then why have penis pumps and other male-oriented sexual prescriptions received millions of dollars of federal funding over the years? Medicare has spent $172 million on penis pumps in the last five years alone. Viagra has also received $819 million and Cyalis (erectile dysfunction medication) more than $782 million. Should taxpayers pay for old men to have erect penises and not for women either to have sex without the risk of getting pregnant, to not get pregnant from sexual assault, or to treat a medical condition?

And, lastly, if rapists should be executed instead of the human products of rape, then it would logically follow that you intend to execute all rapists, including the teenage Steubenville rapists. Out of Ohio’s population of 11,485,910, there were a total of 4,419 reported forcible rape cases in 2008. And, in 2007, the average age of an arrested rapist (both men and women offenders) was 31 years old. The largest age range is 54.6% that were 18 to 29 years old, so you would be executing a significant amount of young men and women who are in the prime of their lives.

Please rethink your decision to pursue this bill. It could have huge, long-lasting consequences on the Ohioan populace. If your focus is “the right to life,” think about what quality of life you’re forcing these children and parents into. Just because they’re simply alive does not mean they are living. You are forcing these parents to forgo further education and to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, leaving no time for attentive and worthwhile child-raising. These children who are products of rape and incest put an enormous emotional and financial strain on their parents, possibly forcing them into a love-less and abusive marriage for the sake of the child. Children from unhappy families tend not to succeed in school or in life, thereby forcing down the success of the state of Ohio. If you were truly invested in their “right to life,” you would understand that it’s the quality of life that matters. Please rethink your decision.

Best Wishes,

Claire Jones

Steubenville Rape Victim Asks for Donations to Battered Women’s Shelter

by Laura Beck

 

“In the wake of the Steubenville verdict, many are feeling helpless about what to do now. Mobilizing around programs that teach everyone — especially children — the value of personhood, even if that person happens to be a woman, has become a very worthwhile cause — and it’s exciting to witness the powerful conversations happening around the subject. Let’s keep it going!

Another way people want to contribute is financially. Awesomely, loads of folks apparently inquired about donating to the legal fees of the victim. Back in January, Jane Doe’s attorney, Bob Fitzsimmons, who took the case pro bono, said that the family wished for all donations to go to the Madden House in Wheeling, an emergency safe-shelter for women who are rebuilding their lives. Since her legal fees are covered, this seems like a fine way to honor her wishes, and help ladies at the same time.”

2 Ohio Teenagers Found Guilty in Rape of Girl

Pool photo by Keith Srakocic

Ma’lik Richmond, right, and Trent Mays, foreground center, were found guilty of rape.

 

 

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

Published: March 17, 2013

“STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — Two high school football stars were found guilty on Sunday of raping a 16-year-old girl last August, in a case that drew wide attention for the way social media spurred the initial prosecution and later helped galvanize national outrage over the episode. The town’s obsession over its football team, many said, had shielded other teenagers who did little or nothing to protect the girl.

One football player, Trent Mays, 17, who had been a quarterback on the powerhouse Steubenville High School football team, was sentenced to serve at least two years in the state juvenile system, while the other, Ma’lik Richmond, 16, who played wide receiver, was sentenced to serve at least one year. Both could end up in juvenile jail until they are 21, at the discretion of the state Department of Youth Services. Mr. Mays’ minimum sentence is twice as long as Mr. Richmond’s because he was found guilty of two different charges.

After Judge Thomas Lipps read his decision, both boys broke down and sobbed. Mr. Richmond turned to his lawyer, Walter Madison, and said, “My life is over.”

Both Mr. Mays and Mr. Richmond apologized to the victim and her family. Mr. Richmond walked over to where they were sitting and said, “I had not intended to do anything like this. I’m sorry to put you through this,” before he broke down, unable to speak any more, and embraced a court officer.

The judge found that both boys had used their fingers to penetrate the girl while she was so drunk in the early morning hours of Aug. 12 that she lacked the cognitive ability to give her consent for sex. A picture that was circulated around classmates the day after the assault showed the victim naked and passed out. Ohio law defines rape as including digital penetration.

In sentencing the boys, Judge Lipps said that rape was among the gravest of crimes and that the case was a cautionary lesson in how teenagers talk to their friends, conduct themselves when alcohol is present, and in “how you record things on social media that are so prevalent today.”

On the witness stand on Saturday, the girl testified that during a roughly six-hour period when prosecutors said the rapes occurred that she had no memory of anything aside from a brief vomiting episode. She said she woke up the next morning naked in a basement living room – with no idea where she was or how she got there – surrounded by Mr. Mays, Mr. Richmond and another boy, and unable to find her underwear, shoes, earrings or phone. When the prosecutor handed her one picture of herself from that night that she had not previously seen, she broke down in tears.

The verdict came after four days of testimony that was notable for how Ohio prosecutors and criminal forensics investigators analyzed hundreds of text messages from more than a dozen cellphones and created something like a real-time accounting of the events surrounding the incident and aftermath.

Through the prosecution’s reconstruction and reading aloud of these messages, Judge Lipps heard Mr. Mays in texts from his cellphone state that he had used his fingers to penetrate the girl, who he also referred to in a separate message as “like a dead body.” In another text message, Mr. Mays admitted to the girl that he took the picture that had already circulated among other students of her lying naked in the basement with what he told her was his own semen on her body, from what he stated was a consensual sex act.

Other text messages read before the judge suggested that Mr. Mays grew increasingly worried within the first day or two, urging a friend to curb dissemination of a video related to the incident. He also seemed to try to orchestrate a cover-up, telling a friend in a text, “Just say she came to your house and passed out.”

Finally, the messages showed Mr. Mays pleading with the girl not to press charges because it would damage his football career – even as the girl grew angry that he seemed to care more about football than her welfare.

One classmate also testified that he saw Mr. Mays penetrate the girl while they rode in the backseat of a car.

Overall, there was far more evidence and testimony about Mr. Mays. Mr. Richmond mainly faced the testimony of one witness, Evan Westlake, another Steubenville High School student, that he had used his fingers to penetrate the girl while she lay in the basement. Like two other witnesses, Mr. Westlake had been granted immunity for his testimony, and he had been attacked for his role in the events of that night and for filming a now-infamous YouTube video in which he is heard laughing as another boy describes the girl as “deader than O.J.’s wife” and says, “she is so raped right now.”

The defense team offered three witnesses. Two were girls who had been lifelong friends of the victim, but have fallen out with her, who testified that she had a reputation for lying or that she drank more on that night than the victim said she had. The girl “lies about things,” said one witness, Kelsey Weaver.

An expert witness for the defense, Kim Fromme, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Texas, testified that by her calculations the girl did not drink enough to pass out. But Ms. Fromme testified that the girl did drink enough to suffer a memory lapse, implying that she could have given consent for sex and not remembered it. A prosecution expert witness disputed that testimony, saying there was no way of knowing how much alcohol the girl had ingested to make such precise calculations, or how alcohol physiologically affected her compared to other people of different tolerances.

Testimony also touched the high school’s football coach, Reno Saccoccia, who had earlier been criticized by some in the community for not doing more to discipline other players present that night. In the text messages disclosed by the prosecution, Mr. Mays stated that he felt he had gotten the coach to “take care of it” and that Mr. Saccoccia “was joking about it so I’m not that worried.” Another text message Mr. Mays sent to the girl suggested that he was quite alarmed when “Reno just called my house and said I raped you.” Mr. Saccoccia has not commented on the text messages.

In the end, the most powerful evidence may have been the two hours of testimony on Saturday from the 16-year-old girl herself. One state prosecutors, Marianne Hemmeter, led the girl through what seemed a carefully crafted narrative that combined the girl’s own testimony with the text messages.

Together, they told a story of the girl waking up confused, naked, shamed and worried, and then finding out that day that many of her friends had an idea what had happened to her or had even seen a picture of her naked the previous night. Throughout the next day, the girl began to reconstruct an idea of what may have occurred, using her friends and accounts of the night that were posted on social media, including the infamous YouTube video, which she said she could only bear to watch for a minute.

Then, the girl testified, she came to realize that Mr. Mays – who maintained all along that he took care of her while she was drunk and that they had only had non-penetrative consensual sex – had in reality done far more despite his insistences to the contrary.

“This is the most pointless thing,” Mr. Mays said in one text message to the girl. “I’m going to get in trouble for something I should be getting thanked for taking care of you.”

But after a while, the girl made clear that she wasn’t having any more of it, telling Mr. Mays in another text message exchange: “It’s on YouTube. I’m not stupid. Stop texting me.””

INSPIRED LOCALS: Shoes made responsibly, by hand

Written by John Faherty

Jan 18, 2013

Alisha Budkie, owner of Smartfish Studio & Sustainable Supply on Main Street in Over-the-Rhine, stitches together one of her footwear creations

 

Sometimes you need to be busy doing your own thing to notice that the world around you is changing.

Alisha Budkie is a cordwainer. She makes shoes from the ground up. She creates the outer soles, she cuts the fabric and then she bends over her antique Singer sewing machine – which she powers by foot pedal – and begins to stitch it together.

Then Budkie, 27, sells them from her shop on Main Street in Over-the-Rhine. It is difficult work, and requires her full attention. But it was from here where she noticed a shift.

When she started making her shoes four years ago, back before she opened her shop, people would sometimes buy them because they were unique, or because they looked good. And in truth, they are and they do.

Then her peers, other young people, began to appreciate them because they are responsibly made. The raw materials were local and sometimes recycled. The labor was treated fairly, because she was the labor. There was little waste or impact on the environment.

In the last couple of years, however, Budkie has noticed that it is no longer just a small group of people who appreciate how her shoes are constructed.

“Originally, for most people, it was just: ‘That’s a cool shoe,’” Budkie said. “And now all kinds of people are asking about how something was made, and about where the products came from. It’s great to have good answers to those questions.”

Budkie grew up in Fairfield and graduated from Ursuline Academy in 2004. She went to the University of Cincinnati, where she majored in industrial design in the school’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning.

One constant through those years for Budkie was running. She likes to be outside and to exercise and have the chance to think. This lead to an appreciation of running shoes. “I love the practicality of them,” Budkie said. “They are designed to do one thing, and they do it well.”

Eventually, Budkie served internships with two major shoe companies. She enjoyed learning about the design, but not the way the shoes are made. In the mass manufacturing of shoes, supplies are purchased for cost considerations only. The labor force is often overseas and underpaid. The process requires waste and shipping costs.

In a moment of consideration, Budkie had an idea common to many people who design and build and create: “I thought, there has to be a better way.”

So for the thesis needed to graduate from DAAP, she designed and built her own shoes. Not running shoes, just regular shoes. Shoes a person would wear around town. She realized almost immediately that she had a lot to learn.

So one day she walked into a shoe repair shop she knew from her youth, Tricounty Shoe Repair on Northland Boulevard in Springdale, where she found Gerry DiManna, an Italian-immigrant cobbler.

“He seemed really excited that somebody wanted to know that much about shoes,” Budkie remembers.

DiManna remembers it somewhat differently. “I thought she was crazy,” he said fairly gruffly, but you could tell he didn’t mean it. At least not too much. “Nobody makes money making shoes.”

She showed him her designs and asked for a better way to make soles.

DiManna said he would teach her everything he knew about shoes and soles and thread and the old ways to make them. “She does it good,” DiManna said.

In 2011, after two years of apprenticeship, she decided she was ready to make her own shoes and to start her own store. She also wanted to sell art supplies because she remembered how hard it was to find good supplies when she was in school. Over-the-Rhine would be near DAAP, the Art Academy of Cincinnati and the School for Creative and Performing Arts.

She would name her business Smartfish Studio and Sustainable Supply. The website is smarterthanagoldfish.com. The name is based on the theory that goldfish are thought to have such small little brains that their memory is only about three seconds long.

Goldfish might take some offense, but Budkie wanted to encourage people to remember that actions have consequences, and that building things in a responsible way is good thinking for business and the environment. “I thought,” she said, “that we can be smarter than a goldfish.”

But first, she needed money, so she used crowd funding, the practice of asking people, many people, for small amounts of money to help start a business.

Contributions ranged from $10 to some in the hundreds. They did it to help, not to buy shares. On a white tile wall, under a sign that reads: “This store would not exist without” are the names of the people who made small donations. The names are written in black permanent maker.

People who made larger donations had bags or shoes named after them. There are “Alex” boat shoes and “Lee” loafers and another pair of shoes called “The Otter.” Budkie is not exactly sure why. “I think they just wanted to name them The Otter.”

Eventually she came up with more than $5,000 and was able to lease a store that had been sitting empty for years at the corner of 13th and Main in Over-the-Rhine.

She sells supplies on one side, with a 20 percent discount for students. Some of the products include good paper, books for notes, and locally made ink and organic cotton thread.

And on the other side is where she makes and sells her shoes. The old black Singer sits against a wall, and people often think it is just for show. They love it when she explains that no, that is what she makes the shoes with.

The cost of the shoes range from $85 for a pair of moccasins to $195 for a pair of lace-ups. Some of the uppers are made from old blankets, others are from the leather she repurposed from an old coat she found at a thrift store.

And they are selling well. “I have finally got the turnaround time down to about two weeks,” Budkie said.

Budkie is making enough money to consider new products. And different types of shoes she wants to design. She was helped, she said, by an Over-the-Rhine Chamber Business First grant this year.

“People are saying they want something that is made well,” Budkie said. “And they like that they are made locally and that the sourcing is good. It matters to people more and more.”

I try to find stories that seem small, but speak to something larger. Reach me at jfaherty@enquirer.com.”

When Jesus Christ Visited Me in City Hall And Other bizarre and weird incidents

An article written by my father, Mark Jones. Very funny and informative.

 

Copyrighted 2012

Mark K. Jones

 

 

“Mention local government in casual conversation and you get responses ranging from outrage over the latest municipal scandals to discussions of the local tax increases, road construction delays, or maybe interest in who will run for mayor in the next election.   After retiring from 31 years in Cincinnati city government, what I remember is the strange situations and strange characters that City Hall seemed to attract.  My vivid memories of the weird and unusual characters who showed up in City Hall made a much deeper impression than the endless cycles of policy debates, political conflicts, and the like.

From the 1970’s to the early 2000’s, I worked in a number of different departments and offices within the City of Cincinnati:  Building Department, Department of Neighborhood Housing and Conservation, Economic Development Department, Community Development and Planning Department.  All involved administrative and operational work in housing development, neighborhood development, and business assistance programs.  It certainly had its ups and down from a career perspective, but I retired as a middle manager with a record of accomplishment.

But what is most memorable to me and catches the interest of my friends are the bizarre characters and situations that I encountered my years in city government.  Early in my city career I worked for the Building Department in an inner office with several other folks.  To enter that office, you had to walk through an outer office with three or four desks.  It was the typical warren you find in older city buildings where office space was cramped and jury-rigged to fit inflexible floor plans.  Both offices were busy places and the others were always coming and going.  

It was not uncommon for everyone to be out of the office with just one person remaining in the office.   One day, in the inner office, I looked up and a little balding man with a very red face was standing next to my desk.   He started demanding that I get the City to pay for fixing his car which had been damaged by a pothole.  “Sir,” I said, “I don’t have anything to do with that.”  I told him that he would have to go to another office and offered to show him the way.   He got very agitated and start shouting, “The City has to fix my car!”  All the time he was poking his finger into his forehead which was getting redder and redder.    Then he started shouting again and again, “There’s a plate in my head and it’s gonna blow!!”  Calmly I walked him out to the hallway and pointed him to the other office.   “Phew”…..I thought another wacko moved on and I could get back to work.

Back working on some report that everyone has long forgotten, I looked up again and there was a fireman in full gear and a big axe.  He asked me, “Where’s the bomb? There’s a bomb threat for this office.”   I gulped….”BOMB???”  I started to get up and evacuate.  But he stopped me and said I had to stay and identify any new packages or boxes that had arrived in the last day or so or those with unknown content.  The office was a mess as always with never enough file cabinets or storage, but it was the same recognizable mess and a quick look revealed no new or unidentifiable boxes.  He left within 5 minutes.  In retrospect, I guess that the fireman was playing with my mind, knowing that 99% of bomb threats were false.  But young, naïve me didn’t know that and I was frightened.   Then “Bingo”, I thought, it must have been the guy with the plate in his head!  I didn’t even get his name, but I called the Safety Director’s Office and shared my suspicions.  I never heard any more about this.

In the same office on another day, I looked up and there next to my desk was a young man in bib overalls, a plaid flannel shirt, and a bushy beard.   I started to ask him how I could help, but he interrupted me declaring, “I am Jesus Christ”.   I was dumbfounded….another nut, I thought!   So being quick witted (one of my only highly developed skill sets), I said, “Sir, because of the separation of church and state, I can’t talk with you.”   He wanted to know more about this separation of church and state.  I told him it was in the US Constitution and he asked where he could find more about this.  I directed him to the public library, hoping they had experience with nuts and could deal with him.  I ushered him out of the office with directions to the public library.   I grinned to myself and thought, “Another nutcase moved out of our office….”

Twenty or so minutes later, my phone rang and I answered still in a chipper mood.   It was the Mayor’s Office.  Did I send this “Jesus Christ” down to their office to ask about the US Constitution and separation of church and state?   “No…No, “I stammered, “I sent him to the public library for that information.”   Grumpily they accepted that answer and hung up.   One of the absolutes I learned early in my city career was about the chain of command.   You never directed anyone blindly to see the Mayor or City Manager; only higher management dealt with these exalted personages.

I am a big reader and in those years I often spent my lunch hour at the public library.  I would check books out and they would get tossed on the side of my desk or floor, where I would retrieve them upon leaving the office at the end of the day.    One of those books sitting neatly aligned upside down to me on the door side of my desk was an expose of the Teamster Union.   I recall that I had finished reading it and planned to return it to the library at lunch.  Again, busy another unread, useless report, I looked up and a large man in a very shiny and stylish suit stood next to my desk.  In a gruff voice, he announced that he was Joe (or Frank, Sam, etc.) from the Teamsters to see a Councilmember (name also forgotten).  I indicated that he should retrace his steps and walk down the hall further to the left.   He looked down and saw the book.  Accusingly, he asked, “You read this book?”   I lied (another example of my quick witted nature) and answered, “No, I just checked it out.”   As he turned to leave, he barked, “It’s a waste of your time; it’s garbage!”   I breathed a sigh of relief, no beating for me.    I was an alarmist and there surely was no beating or anything subtly or otherwise threatened, but he scared wimpy me.

These were some of my memorable encounters in a career than mostly prospered in my early years in city government.   In the early 1980’s when the housing development functions were moved into a new department, Neighborhood Housing and Conservation, I moved with the functions to another building about a block from City Hall.   It was very common for projects to fall far behind schedule because of delayed negotiations, tardy document preparations, and slow movement of paperwork through City Hall for execution and implementation.  I would then visit the Law Department, Budget Office, Finance Department, etc.  to persuade, cajole, beg, my fellow city employees to move projects along to the next bureaucratic stop.  This meant a walk down the block instead of down the hall.  

One beautiful spring day, I walked into the back door of City Hall.  I saw a young boy of 6 or 7 run up to the wall fire alarm and stand on this tip toes to pull the alarm.   The alarm blared and a neutral voice started giving instructions to evacuate the building.  I gently grabbed the young boy’s arm to hold him for the authorities.  A young woman ran around the hallway corner and shouted “Let Go of My Son!!!”  I retorted, “He pulled the alarm”.  She smacked the side of my head with her fist, grabbed her son, and ran out of the back entrance to City Hall.  Stunned, I watched the hundreds of city workers stream down the stairway and out the back exit of City Hall.   Defeated I walked out to the sidewalk and waited for the fire truck.   I told the first fire fighter what had happened and he laughed, “It’s nice day for a fire drill.”  It had happened so fast I couldn’t give much of a description of the mother and son and the firemen didn’t seem to care anyways.

But those were also the years that I was a close observer to some less benign incidents.  One very dramatic one involved a character named Jimmy Hardy.   According to talk around the office, Jimmy had been in and out of prison on a number of charges.   He had notoriously organized a downtown march celebrating local hero and Olympic and Pro boxer Aaron Pryor, secured a parade route, and invited local politicians to honor Pryor.  Of course, Pryor had no knowledge of the event and didn’t show up, though there still was a Jimmy Hardy parade and prominent officials scrambled to avoid embarrassment.  On another occasion, Jimmy announced on the local African-American radio station that teenagers needing summer jobs should show up at that week’s City Council meeting.   Hundreds showed up and City Council unaware of the job promise tried to proceed with its normal meeting.  A near riot broke out. 

In the mid 1980’s, I was assigned to development efforts in the West End neighborhood and the Betts-Longworth Historic District Project (BLHD) and became directly involved with Jimmy Hardy.   Cincinnati is a city of strong neighborhood identifications.   Neighborhoods have local community councils with strictly advisory powers, but council politics can be highly contested and conflictive.  Jimmy Hardy was involved in the West End community.   It had a small, sad business district and occasionally one of the two competing neighborhood business district groups would ask me to go door to door to the local businesses and discuss the City’s small business assistance programs with the business owners.   At that time, the West End housing was overwhelmingly public housing and the neighborhood’s residents only had cash to spend at these businesses the first week of the month, after welfare checks arrived.   It was incredibly difficult to run a thriving business when your customers only had money to spend in the first week of the month.   Jimmy let me know several times in asides during meetings that he had seen me making my business development calls to the West End’s small businesses.  That is, “through the scope of my high powered rifle” he told me that he had watched me making these calls.  Being young and probably naïve, I dismissed these comments and kept fruitlessly passing out brochures on City small business assistance programs. 

Getting shot became a topic of concern again a few years later, when we met with the police about safety at another local community council meeting.  We discussed whether it was prudent for us to wear Kevlar vests.  The police thought that the meeting would be peaceful and the shooting threats were just idle talk.   We didn’t wear the vests and the meeting was placid.  Another day in a meeting in the Budget Office, we heard four or five loud bangs.  I thought out loud, “Were those gunshots?”  They were; it was a West End businessperson murdering a West End activist in the street in front of City Hall. 

But Jimmy Hardy was not out of my City Hall life yet.  The BLHD was a collection of early vacant, historic 19^th century row houses and apartment buildings that remained after Urban Renewal and construction of public housing had demolished most of the historic buildings in the West End.  These were scheduled for demolition until the historic conservation movement gained currency in the early 1970’s and the City pledged to get these historic buildings restored.   A decade or so of plans for rehab and restoration had failed and I was assigned to get this neighborhood brought back.   At the time I thought that this would be impossible and this would be the end of my career. 

The next plan called for a Chicago developer to redevelop all properties.   This was understood to be the last chance; failure, we thought, would mean demolition of all the buildings and light industrial development.   We held the inevitable evening meeting with the developer, neighborhood representatives, and Vice-Mayor Ken Blackwell (African-American and chair of the Council Finance Committee).   Jimmy Hardy was one of the neighborhood activists.   The Chicago developers proceeded to outline their plan and answer questions.   Ken Blackwell is a large man; he played college football and briefly pro football.  Jimmy Hardy was a small man, slight and barely over 5 feet tall.   As the meeting progressed, Jimmy and Ken keep exchanging what I perceived as “FUCK YOU” looks.  Suddenly Blackwell and Harding stood up and started fighting!!  Blackwell had Harding in a head lock and was smashing uppercuts into Jimmy as best I could tell as they rocked and stumbled around.  Another lady West End activist jumped on to Blackwell’s back repeatedly shouting “You’re gonna kill him!!”  The rest of us were absolutely stunned and immobilized with shock.  Then suddenly, they stopped fighting.   To my amazement, everyone sat back down at the large conference table and the meeting resumed.   I could only sit there and wonder….”What the HELL was going on?”   Within a few minutes, a policeman walked into the room and said, “What’s the problem?”   I can only guess that someone must have called the police during the fight.   Blackwell calmly told the officer that everything was under control and the officer left.   The meeting soon ended and everyone went their separate ways.

For days afterwards, I kept waiting for the press to call me.  Surely, a fight between the powerful Ken Blackwell and a neighborhood activist would merit press interest?  And I absolutely did not want to be part of any press interest or media story concerning a fist fight involving the Vice-Mayor.  But the press never called and I never discussed the incident again until years afterwards.   This Chicago developer proposal for BLHD never got funded.   Instead the BLHD project went forward with a different, but very successful rehab and new residential construction program for BLHD that won a number of national awards.   Despite the huge success of this redevelopment, I was never able to interest new Councilmembers, City Managers, and new Department Directors in trying the same model in other neighborhoods.

Later in my career, my job responsibilities were more in the areas of small business development and small business loans.  I would regularly get calls from the receptionist and walk out to meet with some small businessman or aspirant small business person.  Often, they declared, “I want some of that Free Money!”   There was a public perception that the City had money to give out with no strings attached, no interest, and no repayment for small businesses.   City Council members would often refer citizens interested in small business assistance to our office.   This could lead to some amazing meetings with these applicants.

The applicants were a real hodgepodge of types and qualities.  Some had extensive business plans; others had financial information on scratch paper or note pads.  Many proposals did not seem to have any chance of success.  Several stand out.   One gentleman came in with a proposal to start a bakery.  He had an extensive business plan with detailed financial projections.   As a colleague and I perused his documents, it was clear that this proposed start-up had a very large number of employees, especially supervisors.   Usually successful small businesses kept employees to an absolute minimum and the owners overworked themselves in the first few years to insure success.   We reviewed the roster of proposed employees with the applicant:  Bakery Supervisor, Bread Supervisor, Snack and Donut Supervisor, etc.  We asked where the he fit into this matrix.   “Oh no,” the prospective bakery proprietor replied, “I’m allergic to flour.  I can’t work at the bakery.  But I love the idea of bread, donuts, and the like.”  We politely concluded the meeting and told him we would review his proposal in detail.   

It was always difficult to finance restaurants.   Restaurants have a very high failure rate and usually involve substantial investor funding.   I always cringed when aspirant restaurateurs opened a meeting with, “I love to cook.”  Running a successful restaurant is so much more than just “loving to cook”.  An applicant came in for an introductory meeting one day with a proposal for a chic Manhattan/Soul Food fusion restaurant in a neighborhood business district setting.  There was a business plan, financial projections, and a very professionally printed elegant menu.  Except that many items on the menu were misspelled.   “Fried Chiken Mahettn” accompanied other items like “Grets and Greyns”.   The spelling was inconsistent.  He seemed offended when we asked about the spelling errors.  He assured us that they were just minor mistakes.  This restaurant did open without City assistance and lasted a couple of years before closing.

I always argued that when we (as the City’s representatives) failed to say bluntly and honestly that a proposal made no sense and had no prospect for success in our opinion, we were just raising false expectations.  Instead we would tell the applicant that we would carefully study their proposal.  If the applicant was persistent, we would ask for market studies, more financials, more of something in the hope that they would go away.   Some applicants would persist for months and years as we strung them out with requests for more information.  But the City just could not muster the courage to be honest and frank, that was too confrontational and risky from a political perspective.   Saying “No” to citizens did you no good with the City Administration and politicians.  Denied applicants complained to the politicians and the higher administrators feared the backlash from these complaints.  So we strung out the applications that had no chance of approval with requests for more information or more documentation.

There are probably local government employees in back offices that rarely interact with the public.  But I expect that the many employees that do interact with the public have stories similar to mine.   So next time you have any contact with municipal officials, please remember that they may have just had to deal with someone who is not as rational and calm as you are.  Be a little forgiving.   The post 9/11 security measures may have lessened the number of nutcases and weirdo’s that visit municipal facilities.  But the tradition that local government is open to everyone will probably keep these types walking into local government offices.”