Sketches from Dayton, Ohio

Sometimes, it is just not nice to take a picture... and also, it's wonderful to test your memory and draw what you saw a few days ago....

I flew back to Dayton, Ohio because a friend, mentor and my professor was retiring. Also, I wanted to say 'hello' to two other professors (one emeritus, now) who were also important to me as a human and a scientist.

Getting cheap tickets for flying is a chore.... not the buying but the using. Most of the time the flight is packed and I get the seat that doesn't go back... Horrible, because I can't fit in the seat. My legs rub the chair ahead of me and I usually need to get up and stretch out my body parts after a half an hour or so.

So, here we were, squashed, flying, and now it was time to offer us our dinner hotdogs.... ugh! This poor little stewardess, who at the ripe age of somewhere in her 60s, was having to look the part of the 'cutie' and push that damn cart. She newly had her hair done. The hair was bleached. The eyes were well outlined - perhaps a couple of times. The lips were smeared liberally with bright red goo. Poor little lady. The hair may have been an idea to make her look like she had lots of hair but, it really made her look ... "Bozo-esque". She never looked up at any of us. She just offered the penile formed mystery meat and then took the plastic boxes from our trays.... I hope she finds a day when she doesn't have to do this kind of work...

This is a different story... this is what has happened to Dayton, Ohio. Here is a post from a blog I read all the time.... The conversation began about Verizon attaching bill for unwanted products and 'services'. then someone asked about where does all the money from these big corporate scams.... and I said...

The easy part, really... "Where does the money go?"

Executives in BIG Co.s get many kinds of 'retirement funds'. Many in the millions. We are talking in the tens of funds way back in my day... who knows what they get NOW!!! IT's no longer the stock options any more... it's the 'special' investments' that go to the top few.

I just returned from Dayton - where the husk of NCR remains, to find a community of people either on one side or the other of the money fence. The other, I met trying out their brand new bus hub service - they are hungry. I find it interesting that the majority of long time residents, depending on what ethnicity you are - do not venture into the 'other' part of town. It goes both ways for a reason... I experienced this when I lived there. Anyone with pigmentation in their skin that drove down the Main street (the upper crusties spot) was summarily pulled over and told to go back to 'their' side of town. Now, we are talking about a town that at one time had a couple of million or more people. A town that invited George Carlin because of the 'in-grove' communities....

I don't know what happened, except that most of the big companies left for third world workers, and now after GM Truck division and NCR moving (top executives live in the more 'tony' New York... who don't want to accidently rub anything with the lower crowd). What is left is a Pepsi factory somewhere (I talked to a few folks on the bus about that)... and maybe... ??? I went to Cuba at the end of Nov. and they are hungry (lost 1/3 of their calories after the 'special period' when the USSR took a nose dive)... but, they were working and were obviously not as starved and wild for food as the Dayton lower class.

I did buy a family a month worth's of food in Cuba when I was asked. The mother and daughter dragged me into a tiny grocery store and they piled on the dried milk and soup. The little girl wanted a package of cookies.

We are looking at disasters here in the US>>> It's not just the Rust Belt anymore... I just don't understand those jolly bunch at the top who turn their back on so many.