Old friends, Family and Frank Lloyd Wright

After the rousing success of Sunday night at L'Antibes, we rose and had a small breakfast knowing that we would eat later in the morning with John's old friend from Boys Choir and Boy Scouts in Barrington, RI. John had not seen Tom since they headed to different schools in the early 1960s, but he did have an old picture that brought some smiles from Tom and his wife Lynn, both professors of Classics at Ohio University in Athens. Our lunch at Two Fish on High Street in Columbus was not notable for the food, but the conversation was full and filling as we reminisced about what we have both done in the past 50 or so years. Both Lynn and Tom spend lots of time in Greece, Turkey and Italy, as well as a recent visit to Egypt on their archeological travels. Fascinating and good to reconnect.

We headed out in the rain mid-afternoon to Springfield, Ohio, to visit the Westcott House, Frank Lloyd Wright's only prairie style house in Ohio. It's not overwhelming, but it has been well-restored and it is a fine example of the low roof line, low ceiling, Japanese style home he built across the mid-west in the early years of this century. We were pleased to take the tour.

That evening we enjoyed our last dinner at Level, a gay restaurant around the corner from our Bnb in Columbus, and packed up ready to leave the following morning. On Monday we spent the morning looking for coffee in all the small towns we had missed across Ohio to the West Virginia border. Most of the small towns are depressed, with little to recommend them after the coal mines closed and whatever industry they had departed. The small town centers are often boarded up except for a few offices around the local court house or county office. We can report that there are no other coffee shops on the roads we traveled that could provide us with cappucino. Even Steubenville on the Ohio river couldn't help.

But we enjoyed our sushi and sashimi lunch at the Osaka in Greentree near Pittsburgh with Ben's cousin Joyce, and the afternoon with her daughter, son-in-law and grandson at their home in Bethel Park. We did manage a good coffee on the way to their place.


Our final destination, Monday, was our friend Jack and Dave's house in Bethel Park, and a good evening of conversation, discussion of Dave's developing business and dinner at Bistro 19 on Washington Road in Mt. Lebanon. This was John's second visit to Bistro 19, which he enjoyed both times. The food is very eclectic and well prepared. The wine list is fun and not very expensive. Food ranged from sauerkraut and chorizo soup to grilled salmon, so the range is quite extensive. All of it rated highly from four trenchermen.

Tuesday, once again in the pouring rain, we drove to Kentuck Knob, another Frank Lloyd Wright home owned by Lord and Lady Palumbo of the UK. They bought it a few years ago from friends of Edgar Kauffman who had built nearby Fallingwater. The home is a 50s period piece from Wright's architecture, once again low-slung, but now incorporating the hexagons for which he was very famous. It is on a superb natural site, once able to command views in many directions through the Appalachians, but now surrounded by second growth forest and very private. The Palumbos keep their art collection in the house. The proceeds from the tours go to maintain the property. Worth a visit. This is a view from the low roof deck, and the main entrance.


Home sweet home: We now await the opening night of Stephen Sondheim's Follies at Kennedy Center on Saturday.

Columbus, the Wexner and L'Antibes

Today was our day for exploring Columbus before our birthday dinner with Terry and her friends at L'Antibes. This is a restaurant where we have dined before and we expected a superb dinner for all eight of us. Five of her friends joined us for the repast.

Our goal today was the Wexner Museum at Ohio State University where there were three exhibits that we enjoyed with a docent. It was a very small tour of just three and the docent, looking at works by Louise Bourgeois and Hans Bellmer, a contemporary pair for some of their lives in Paris, Bourgeois was a dada sculptor, while Bellmer, a German, who spent much of his life in France, was an influential part of modern art. We also watch several "claymation" pieces done by Nathalie Djurberg, a Dutch artist who joins with Hans Berg, a composer, to produce very disturbing plasticene claymation videos. The pieces we saw were strident attacks on colonialism, fashion and the Roman Catholic Church. The third show by Pipilotti Rist, a Dutch video producer. This third piece was much more "enjoyable" from the sense of actual beauty than pieces by the other three artists.

We got to the museum on the local no 2 COTA (Central Ohio Transit Authority) bus up High Street, on which there are no discounts for the over 65 crowd. Surprisingly, though, the busses on this route run every ten minutes during the day and are generally full.



We walked back from Ohio State to the Short North, lunch at the Happy Greek on spanakopita and falafel, and had our afternoon coffee at Mojoe Cafe.

Dinner was a rousing success. Even those who "don't know" or "don't enjoy" French food seemed totally satisfied with the dishes they ate. From halibut, grouper, and beef filet mignon, three of us ventured to sweetbreads (John included for the second time in a week), to two halibuts and a grouper, beef steak and all downed with a couple of bottles of lovely vouvray and then a Cotes Du Rhode gigondas it was a lovely meal. Terry's cake from Yum Yum Bakery was good for a sugarless cake, but not really to our taste. All in all, L'Antibes with its foie gras, lovely salads and a lobster starter for Ben was a fine place to celebrate a 60th. Congratulations to Terry.

Pittsburgh, Columbus and the in-between bits

Pittsburgh came and went very quickly and we enjoyed virtually every minute of the trip. From arrival Tuesday evening through departure yesterday morning (Friday), we visited, toured and walked throughout the city. We even rode for free on the bus system, for John over 65s go for free just by showing a Medicare card, and for Ben a very reduced rate. So instead of forking out $6.75 each to move around town, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania provided us with convenient travel for $1.60—and this included traveling the East Busway downtown, stopping at our cousin's restaurant in East Liberty on the way home and then completing our trip to Edgewood.

Dinner Tuesday night celebrated two birthdays—Ben's 59th and Tom's 57th. We enjoyed dining at the Brasserie 33 on Ellsworth Avenue for the fete. This restaurant has had several incarnations, but seems to be quite successful in its latest. The Maitre D serves as the wine list; there is nothing printed, so he works with you to pick the best wine for the meal.

Since we were having fish, beef, sweetbreads and shellfish he recommended pinot noir from Burgundy. Ben tasted, Tom tasted, John tasted, John tasted. This John opted for the pinot but was overruled when a Loire Cabernet Franc arrived and became the choice after tasting a third wine, a Cotes-du-Rhone. When I remarked later to the Maitre D that I would have chosen the pinot, I was whisked a glass of it. I am sure it didn't hurt that my entire conversation was conducted in French, but it was a lovely touch.

The portions are huge, but the spicing was excellent and the presentation lovely. An appetizer of white anchovies was exquisite, and sweet breads, available both as appetizer or as a main were soft and lovely, just done perfectly, and smothered in sauce. Mashed potatoes with a cheese netting and a roasted tomato made a lovely plate.

Ben's starter of oysters was superb, followed by a bouillabaise that was complete from mussels to salmon and scallops to whitefish. His bowl was quite empty when he finished.

Tom enjoyed a boeuf bourgignon and potato leek soup, which we joked was warm vichysoisse. John had poached salmon with a seafood sauce and began with a fine mixed green salad.

We rolled back to their house.

Wednesday was visit friends and family day. Ben spent the morning with his law-school chum and John went for a ride around the city.
In the 31 years since John first moved there the place has changed dramatically. No longer a manufacturing center, downtown is sprouting as an educational, finance and health care centert. The US Steel Building is now topped as UPMC, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and the Gulf, Koppers, Equibank, and Mellon towers are now offices for numerous companies and law firmsinstead of corporate headquarters. No streetcars on the streets anymore; those are underground. And many older buildings are part of Point Park University now. New condos along the rivers make a completely changed scene. Even the PNC building has a living wall.







Our evening was with cousins Kathy and Cary who have moved into Shadyside from the North Hills. Salmon with another lovely pinot noir, this time from California, and good conversation with Ben's cousins (Cary's folks), Ruth Ann and Gene about everything from politics to religion. A grand evening spent on their back verandah overlooking their formal garden. Finished off with a lovely bourbon. The following Thursday morning was a bit slow.


Thursday we took the bus downtown to lunch with our old friend Bob at Elements in Gateway 4. I had expected this to be a fairly ordinary businsess lunch place, but instead my chef's salad was superb. No guacamole, said the waiter, but since there were white anchovies available, I got a substitute. They made the salad of prosciutto, fresh mozzarella and good lettuce even better. Ben and Bob enjoyed mini-pizzas and an excellent chicken soup slightly reddened with a tomato mix.



The conversation of course was excellent. Bob does significant PR in Pittsburgh and had been a good friend for years when John was at WPXI in the early 80s. We get in touch from time to time and it is like picking up a conversation from yesterday rather than five or six years!

We stopped by cousin Cary's new restaurant venture, the Mad Mex on Highland, just across from another of his establishment, the Casbah. Mad Mex is fun. Very much for a younger crowd but at mid-afternoon had plenty of multi-generational patrons. John had one of the place's margaritas, Ben and iced coffee.

Dinner, of lovely porkchops and conversation at home in Edgewood with Tom and John and thence to bed.

Thursday we headed off for Columbus. It's about 200 miles and can be done in just over three hours, but we took Ben's sister Terry's route through Cadiz, Dennison and Coshocton instead of I-70 for the run and enjoyed it. We had done part of this before, so we were tracking known trails for half of it, but the other half had new experiences.



Unless we had lived in Ohio we would never have known that Dennison, now a sleepy village of 3000 was once a huge railroad center with over 3000 employees alone in the valley. What is now a grassy field held foundries, shunting yards, round houses and coaling shutes for over 35 scheduled trains per day. During WW1 it was a major passenger center and canteen site for soldiers heading off to Europe.

We had stopped in Dennison for coffee after our first attempt at a diner on the shores of Lake Tappan proved fruitless. The diner served ordinary coffee but also catered to bikers, fishermen and hunters, even offering holster repairs! Tappan Lake, a dammed reservoir, nestles in the eastern Ohio hills and is very pretty with its little pontoon boats and the winding road along its shore.

In Dennison we found Ruth Ann's Holy Grounds Coffee in the rectory of the old Presbyterian church in the village's old downtown.



She had never heard, of course, of Ben's highly special extra-dry skim textured cappucino, and much to the amusement of several women enjoying their coffee and sandwiches asked Ben if he'd like to make it. “You are joking?” she said. Of course not, so we explained and she began to make it while we talked with the lunchers about our trips. Two were teachers at the local middle school and lots of fun to chat with. Unfortuntately, Ruth Ann's espresso machine conked out as she was making Ben's second shot, so it will be off to Cleveland for repairs. Ben's capuccino standards can be costly and dangerous. We enjoyed what she made though, and will put Holy Grounds Coffee in Dennison on our list of coffee centers in the country—like Lasso Coffee in Gothenburg, Nebraska.

We arrived in the Short North to our BnB late in the afternoon, rested a bit and then headed off to Terry's for dinner—magret of duck, fresh asparagus, orange ginger rice, apricot mousse for dessert, and steamed mussels to start. What a lovely finish to a full day.

Weddings and birthdays

This Spring has been busy with birthdays and weddings. Our friend Moira married her long-time beau Jerome at Thorpewood in Thurmont, MD,up in the Catoctin Mountains about an hour and half outside Washington. A former neighbor married them in a ceremony that pointedly noted that two people can get married, rather just a hetero couple. Needless to say we were not the only same sex couple at the wedding, but by far the oldest! The wedding site was a grand success despite the pouring rain that occurred during the reception. Dancing in a beautiful wooden hall in the middle of a thunderstorm can be quite a trip. Congratulations to Moira and Jerome.

We are in the midst of celebrating a series of birthdays. Ben's birthday makes him one year shy of 60. So we are enjoying the celebration with a performance of "Art" at Signature theater and a birthday breakfast to follow of asparagus (in season of course), eggs, Eastern Shore smoked turkey bacon, unique available at Market Poultry in Washington's Eastern Market, and toast. We have seen Art before at Kennedy Center, several years ago, and expect it to be equally as interesting as the previous performane. Then Tuesday we depart for Pittsburgh to see friends Tom and John and celebrate Tom's birthday. At the end of the week we go to Columbus for sister Terry's birthday.

We are not only using French restaurants in both cities for dinners but are doing an architectural trip with visits to Frank Lloyd Wright's Westcott House in Springfield, Ohio, and Kentuck Knob in Pennsylvania near Fallingwater (not one of John's favorite's, even though it is world famous). The restaurants are Brasserie 33 in Pittsburgh, where we hope it will be warm enough to dine al fresco in Shadyside, and L'Antibes in Columbus' Short North.

We will also visit with friends and family in both cities, and do a walking tour of the Wexner Museum at Ohio State.