A Cleveland Adventure

It can be a funny old life, the things that happen to you, the people that you meet. My wife Audrey and I experienced a chance encounter when we took a brief pause in the routine to visit the great city of Cleveland a few weeks ago this past June. We wanted to spend some time slowing down, walking along Lake Erie, hiking in the metroparks, and doing some urban psychogeography in their wonderful downtown, where we stayed. It was a great visit.

After a first day of visiting the lake, eating at the excellent Cleveland Vegan, and exploring the old Arcade downtown, looking at the architecture, and finding a late night pho shop, the next day was spent once again hitting the streets. There were two places on my list I really wanted to go, though Audrey would tell you there are way more and that there are always way more. She wouldn’t be wrong, and it can be hard to put up with, that drive to go see or do one more thing, after which there is always one more thing. She puts up with a lot.

​The first stop after dipping our toes back into the lake at Edgewater Park was Zubal’s Books. Harvey Pekar had been on my mind since we were in Cleveland, as it rightly should be. I knew about Zubal’s from an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, where they visited the great store, that is housed in part, in an old Twinkie factory. We made some great scores there, a great book haul. I wouldn’t have known about that store if I hadn’t seen the clip. I’m really glad we went, and made it in time for the two hour window they are open to the public. Most of their business is mail order.

One of the titles I found was by Paul Feyeraband called Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, which proposes that it is counterproductive to have a single methodology with regards to scientific practices.  It's closer to the top of my list now because it seems to me, we are witnessing the endgame of the one true science. I also found a novel by Penelope Fitzgerald called Blue Flower about Novalis, which I knew nothing about before.  It seems to me the Romantic expressions of science via Goethe and Novalis are worth investigating as another thread or way science that could have been followed. These readings ought to go well alongside Henri Bortoft’s The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way Toward A Science of Conscious Participation in Nature.

After visiting Eclectic Eccentric and the neighboring Loganberry Books, where I also nabbed some more titles, we ate Michael’s Diner right on the Rapid Transit tracks in Shaker Heights. I should have gone for the Polish Fish Boy. Then we went to the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes and walked around the protected wetland as the rain drizzled. Finally we wound up at our last stop for the day, Lake View Cemetery. This place was designed by landscape architect Adolph Strauch who designed Spring Grove cemetery in Cincinnati, just a few blocks from where we live. Strauch had been inspired by the book Kosmos by Germany polymath Alexander von Humboldt who had written in it about Chinese garden cemeteries.  Kosmos can be considered part of the German Romanticist tradition in the science vein. Something was in the air.
 
After stopping at President Garfield's memorial, there was just one more thing I wanted to see in the cemetery, the Haserot Angel.

We drove up to it and after I got out of the car, a guy noticed my plates were from Hamilton County and he struck up a conversation saying he'd gone to the University of Cincinnati. He was very friendly and we had a nice conversation. He mentioned that he'd been the partner of Harvey Pekar's widow, comic writer Joyce Brabner, for fourteen years before she had died last August. He told me his name and the like, and that he'd just been visiting their gravesite (Brabner is buried next to Pekar but doesn't have a headstone yet).  His name was Lee Batdorf and he was a journalist at times. In meeting him it felt like we'd gotten a handshake from the city. If the timing of our day had been just a little off, and if I hadn't gone to that one last spot, I might not have met him. Meeting Lee Batdorf and having this encounter really charged me up and I'm very grateful for his friendliness.

When we got back home, and I got back to work at the library the next day, I put the graphic novel history "Harvey Pekar's Cleveland" on hold. When it came in, like some many other people in Harvey Pekar’s life, Lee was a character in this final work.  Zubal's books was also featured in the book. I hadn't read this one before, even though I'd read some segments of Pekar’s long running American Splendor and other works.

That was some of our Cleveland adventure. I recommend the city for anyone looking for a modest Midwest getaway. When you go, make sure you take the time to go visit Pekar and pay your respects to him by leaving a pen or pencil at him and Brabner’s grave.