Z is for Zoo

Source: Cincinnati Zoo at Wikimedia Commons

The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden has been in operation since 1875, and is one of the oldest zoos in the United States. While I sometimes have mixed feelings about zoos and struggle with the idea of animals in captivity, I do believe the Cincinnati Zoo does a lot of amazing work. Of the zoos I have visited in the US, it is by far the best.

Every May, the Zoo puts on Zoo Babies, which is a celebration of all the baby animals born in recent months. Unsurprisingly, it is a very popular month at the Zoo, as it's hard for anyone to resist the baby animals. This year, I am in love with these baby wallabies, who are currently living in the Zoo nursery.

One of the things that impresses me the most about the Cincinnati Zoo is their Center for the Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife, or CREW. CREW is a state of the art research facility, and it is dedicated to saving endangered plants and animals from extinction. Their slogan is "Saving Species with Science."

In addition to working in the CREW facility here in Cincinnati, CREW scientists and researchers are dedicated to the protection of endangered animals in their native habitats. To that end, CREW has worked in Mongolia on an ecological study of wild pallas' cats and trained Mongolian students to work for the conservation of the cats' habitat, and founded an international consortium to work towards protecting the habitat of ocelots in Brazil. In addition, CREW has done groundbreaking work on saving the Sumatran rhinoceros from extinction.

Source: Cincinnati Zoo at Wikimedia Commons

CREW celebrated its 30th birthday in 2011, and I think their work is definitely something to celebrate here in Cincinnati. The CREW scientists are internationally recognized for their Signature Projects, which include small cats, rhinos, and endangered plants.

And with that, I am done with my A-Z of Cincinnati Challenge! Thank you to everyone who has stopped by here and read my posts, it's been great to meet new friends and catch up with some old ones along the way.

 Big thanks as well to the 2012 A-Z Challenge hosts:

Tossing It Out (Arlee Bird) Amlokiblogs (Damyanti Biswas) Alex J. Cavanaugh (Alex J. Cavanaugh) Life is Good (Tina Downey) Cruising Altitude 2.0 (DL Hammons) Retro-Zombie (Jeremy Hawkins) The Warrior Muse (Shannon Lawrence) The QQQE (Matthew MacNish) Author Elizabeth Mueller (Elizabeth Mueller) Pearson Report (Jenny Pearson) No Thought 2 Small (Konstanz Silverbow) Breakthrough Blogs (Stephen Tremp) Coming Down The Mountain (Karen Jones Gowen)


Kudos to all of my fellow A-Z participants. It's been a great month! :)

Y is for Yeatman's Cove

Yeatman's Cove is a park along the riverfront in downtown Cincinnati, and it is also the site of the founding of the city. Yeatman's is named for Griffin Yeatman, who arrived in Cincinnati in 1793 and was one of the city's earliest settlers.

The park is now the site of numerous summer parties and festivals and, along with it's neighbor Sawyer Point, it is a great place to go for a walk and enjoy the city.

I really don't have much to say about Yeatman's Cove, but this was all I could think of for a "Y" post. So I'm just going to leave it at that, and call it a week!

I hope everyone is having a great weekend. See you Monday for the end of the Challenge! :)

X is for St. Xavier Church

Source: Wikimedia Commons

St. Francis Xavier Church is located in downtown Cincinnati, and it has been serving Catholics in the downtown area since 1845. The present building, with its ornate clock tower, was built in 1860 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

What is interesting to me about the church is something I learned through my A-Z research. Francis Finn, an author whose books are still available today, was one of the priests affiliated with the church back in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Finn was a Jesuit priest, and he wrote the book Tom Playfair while suffering from insomnia. He decided to spend two of his sleepless hours each night writing, and ultimately produced the story about a boy at a Catholic boarding school.

Tom Playfair was published in 1893, and was an immediate success among school children. Finn went on to write 26 more books, with more school boy characters such as Percy Winn and Harry Dee, and all of his works were translated into numerous languages and published all over the world.

I'd never heard of Finn or his books before starting this Challenge, but it was interesting to me to learn about this little bit of Cincinnati literary history. And, because I struggle with insomnia quite often, I was inspired by the fact that Finn wrote his book during a spell of insomnia himself. That's something to remember the next time I have some sleepless nights.

Most of all, I loved this quote from Finn: "One of the greatest things in the world is to get the right book into the hands of the right boy or girl."

As someone who has loved reading since I was a girl, I could not agree more.

W is for Washington Park

Washington Park is the last stop on my mini-tour of haunted Cincinnati. The park dates back to the 1850s, and hosted such events as The Centennial Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Central States in 1888.

The park is located in the downtown neighborhood of Over the Rhine, and it had fallen into such disarray and was so crime-ridden in recent years that there was almost no trace left of the sophisticated park it used to be. The city has now embarked on a renovation project for Washington Park, with plans to return it to its former glory, and this renovation has uncovered a grisly history.

Before being acquired by the city in 1855, the land on which Washington Park was built held three cemeteries, one of which was a potter's field filled with unknown or indigent people. When modern day builders started digging up the park to build a new parking garage, they uncovered numerous human remains.

The skeletons have been studied by forensic anthropologists, and were featured in an episode of the National Geographic show "The Decrypters."

Among the remains found was a woman with a fetus found under her head, as if she had placed it there herself. Researchers speculate that the woman gave birth prematurely, and died of complications related to the birth.

One of the most puzzling finds was a coffin with two skeletons, one male and one female, buried inside it. The male was on top of the female, and the female's skull was crushed. Researchers found that the woman's skull was fractured by natural forces following her burial, but the mystery of why two people were in the same coffin will likely never be solved.

Most disturbing of the remains was a four year old girl found face down in her coffin. Experts say it could be an indication that the child was accidentally buried alive, something that was unfortunately not that uncommon at the time.

To the horror of those studying the remains, nearly half of them are the bones of children. There are literally hundreds of bones now in storage, and they will eventually be transferred to Spring Grove Cemetery for burial.

I have no idea when the renovation of Washington Park is scheduled to be completed, but I can't imagine ever visiting there without thinking of the remains of these long-dead people. 

This story was particularly eerie and disturbing to me, but overall I've really enjoyed learning about Cincinnati's ghosts and ghouls. I'm planning to continue exploring, and hope to post about more local ghost stories once the Challenge is over.

V is for Victory Bell

The Victory Bell is given to the winner of the annual football game between the University of Cincinnati Bearcats and the Miami University Redhawks. The series dates back to 1888 when the two teams met up on the Miami campus in Oxford, Ohio, and it is the oldest non-conference college football rivalry in the United States.

I love college football and, as an Ohio State alum, I bleed scarlet and gray for my beloved Buckeyes. But I have so many family ties to the University of Cincinnati that I enjoy rooting for the Bearcats as well, and I always root for them unless they are playing Ohio State. I've enjoyed the fact that the Bearcats have maintained ownership of the famed bell now since 2006.

The traditions of college football are one of the big reasons I love it, and I always get excited every year when autumn comes around. For me, no college traditions beat OSU's Script Ohio and "Hang on Sloopy," and no rivalry beats OSU-Michigan, but the UC-Miami rivalry is fun too. And, I hope the Bearcats don't give the Victory Bell back to the Redhawks any time soon.

If you're a sports fan, what are your favorite traditions or rivalries?

U is for Union Terminal

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Union Terminal is the next stop on my mini-tour of haunted Cincinnati. It opened in 1933 as a passenger railroad station, but the terminal is now the home of the Cincinnati Museum Center. And, as I've learned on my ghost studies of my home town, it is also haunted.

The building is known for its Art Deco style, and the terminal rotunda is the largest semi-dome in the western hemisphere. 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The dome ceiling plays a big role in one of the more famous ghost stories surrounding the Terminal.

The Museum Center is home to the Cincinnati History Museum, which features a World War II exhibit called Cincinnati Goes to War.  A replica of a WWII-era fighter plane hangs from the ceiling as part of the exhibit. The plane is empty, but security guards working nights at the museum have consistently reported seeing a young pilot in full military uniform at the controls of the plane. In rare instances, day visitors have also claimed to see the mystery pilot.

Union Terminal has a strong connection to World War II, as the railroad station was at its peak during this time period. Cincinnati became a "hub" for transporting soldiers both when they went overseas and when they came back home, and as such the station was always packed, both with people and with emotion, throughout the war years. Some speculate that Union Terminal could have been the last stop for the young pilot before he was shipped off to war, where he met his death.

A more recent haunting involves a woman named Shirley, who worked as a night guard at the Museum Center in the 1990s and was murdered by robbers who broke into the building. Current night guards insist that Shirley continues to protect the museum halls even in death, and they often hear her footsteps behind them while they are making their own rounds. In addition, guards have reported seeing flashlights coming from halls known to be empty, and doors that are closed and locked behind an invisible presence. According to legend, Shirley is still at work and will be guarding the terminal for eternity.

I thought this was going to be my last post for my haunted Cincinnati mini-theme, but came across another ghoulish site that I am going to use for my "W" post. I'm starting to think that if I had known about the ghostly places sooner, I could probably have done an entire A-Z on Cincinnati haunts. I never realized I live in such a creepy place!

T is for Taft Museum of Art

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Taft Museum of Art is a house on the eastern edge of downtown Cincinnati that was built in 1820, and was originally the home of Martin Baum, a businessman and one time mayor of the city. In the later 1800s, the house belonged to industrialist David Sinton, who lived there with his daughter Annie. Annie married Charles Taft, the half-brother of US President William Howard Taft, and she and Charles lived in the house from 1873 until 1929.

Charles and Annie were avid art collectors, and they eventually turned their home into a museum and donated all of the art within it to the city upon their deaths in 1929 and 1931. The Taft Museum collection includes European old master paintings and 19th century American paintings, as well as porcelains, enamels, decorative arts, sculptures, and furniture.

One of the highlights of the Taft collection is the work of Robert Duncanson, who was the first African-American artist to gain international acclaim and recognition. In 1851, Nicholas Longworth, who was the owner of the house at the time, hired Duncanson to create landscape murals to decorate the foyer of the home. Duncanson created eight landscapes, which are still showcased in the Taft today.

When I wrote about the Music Hall ghosts for my "M" post, I had no plans to end up with a mini-theme of Cincinnati ghosts and haunted places. But, that is what has happened, as I learned about the ghost stories of the Taft Museum after I read about the Spring Grove cemetery ghosts. Thanks to a book called Ghosts of Cincinnati, I've learned about so many haunted places here in my home town that I'm a little bit freaked out by all the ghostly activity that's supposedly been going on around me.

I remember going to the Taft Museum as a kid, and I'm well aware of the museum's reputation for gardens as beautiful as its art collection. But I had no idea that the house is apparently haunted by the ghost of Annie Sinton Taft.

Many visitors to the Museum, as well as employees, have claimed to see Annie's ghost in and around the premises. One such sighting occurred during a concert in the backyard garden, when two security guards reportedly saw a lady in an old-fashioned pink gown sitting on the balcony and tapping her foot to the music. The balcony was inaccessible to the public, and the guards insisted that the woman they had seen was Annie. It seemed to them that she was simply enjoying the concert going on below her in her garden.

Other strange happenings at the Taft include books flying off the gift shop shelves for no apparent reason, and guests being tapped on the shoulder by an unseen presence. Night shift employees have heard disembodied voices calling out names, and the spectral cries of a baby.

It's been fun, and more than a little creepy, to learn about haunted Cincinnati. I have one more haunted spot to share tomorrow for the letter "U" before I leave the Cincinnati ghosts behind.