Patty and I moved to Central Ohio in 1996. We had just gotten out of grad school when Patty got a job in R&D for a very large company. Large doesn't quite cover it, let's say soul-robbingly huge instead. But I digress. We settled in Dublin, a wonderful suburb of Columbus located about midway between the city and Soul-robbingly Huge, Inc. After spending a year at Indiana University (commuting on weekends), I got a position at Ohio State. We bought a house, had a couple of kids, bought a station wagon with fake wood paneling on the side. Life was good.

The "Central" in Central Ohio indicates that it is located, more-or-less, in the middle of the state. About two hours to Cleveland and a little less to Cincinnati. We'd been to Cincinnati years earlier when Patty's sister lived there for a time but we had never visited Cleveland. After living in Ohio for several years, we still hadn't been to Cleveland. Locals were beside themselves. "You've never been to Cleveland?! Why not?" We didn't have a good answer. We weren't avoiding that fine city, we simply hadn't gone.

"What about the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame? What about Jacobs Field? What about Lake Erie?" Somehow I've managed to live my entire life without seeing the guitar pick that The Edge used during the Achtung Baby tour. Now, I love museums, and rock-n-roll, but those two things together don't hold much appeal. As for baseball, I swore off of the Major League version soon after the various strikes and lockouts. It's a great game but bickering bazillionaires are unseemly.

One outta three ain't bad -- we had been to Lake Erie, though not in Cleveland. I think it was during our second year in Ohio. It's a fine lake. It's big and blue (well, blue-ish) and wet. We never went back (conclude what you will). Which leaves us right where we started, never having visited Cleveland. If the R-n-R HoF couldn't get us there, and Jacobs Field couldn't get us there, and even Lake Erie couldn't get us there, what could? The answer, of course, is Greene & Greene.

"But David, surely you mean Pasadena, center of the Greene & Greene universe - though your references to the HoF and Jacobs Field are somewhat confusing," protested the observant reader. No, Cleveland. I went to Cleveland for Greene & Greene, or, more correctly, WE went to Cleveland for Greene & Greene. Patty is very tolerant. Perhaps indulgent. And beautiful, of course. But I digress. As I mentioned in a previous post, the Cleveland Museum of Art owns a secretary from the Cordelia Culbertson house. Once gained, that knowledge mad a trip to Cleveland inevitable.

In the course of researching Poems of Wood & Light, I scoured museums across the country, in search of Greene & Greene furniture and lighting that I might include in the book. I'm certain that I didn't find everything but I think I found most. Of course finding the pieces and getting permission to photograph them are two very different things. I was unsure what response to expect when I first made contact, with the curators at the Detroit Institute of Arts, home of the dining-room table from the Robert Blacker house. The response was friendly, helpful and accommodating.

I received similarly friendly, helpful and accommodating responses from every museum I contacted. Stephen Harrison, Curator of Decorative Arts at the Cleveland Museum of Art invited me to visit to photograph and discuss the piece in their collection. Patty and I decided to combine that trip with a weekend getaway for our anniversary and a trip to Cleveland was born, a mere 13 years after we moved to Ohio.

What we found was a wonderful city, at least the small part we saw. We limited our exploration to the area around the art museum, botanical gardens and Case Western Reserve (home to a first-rate history museum). The Cleveland Museum of Art is phenomenal. If you find yourself nearby, go -- you won't regret it. The botanical gardens are quite nice as well. An Italian neighborhood not far away provided a wonderful restaurant for our anniversary celebration. And I got to see a marvelous piece by Greene & Greene.

We didn't visit the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame. We didn't visit Jacobs Field. We didn't even see Lake Erie. But we had a thoroughly enjoyable several days. In Cleveland. Yes, Cleveland. Why didn't someone tell us about it sooner?

(PS - I intended to use a Cleveland slogan as the title for this entry but they are all so incredibly horrible that I opted for the simpler title above. "The Best Location in the Nation" Really? Fire the agency that came up with that, demand your money back and send them all to jail. That's criminally bad.)