Solace after Solstice
Pictured above: Dr. Pfister enjoys the attractions of Wade Oval, Cleveland’s mecca of culture and art.
Cheers to all the snow skiers and snowboarders out there!
Poor snow conditions over the holidays kept most skiing to a minimum, but oh how that has changed this week! In high school and college I loved skiing, the most invigorating and thrilling adventure for the price. Nothing could beat racing down Boston Mills Tiger or Buttermilk runs with the cold brisk January wind in your face and traversing side-to-side without a care in the world. I miss those days. (And so do my knees!)
Now for those of you who say winter outside is not your thing…
Where does one go to find a happy place in January in Northern Ohio during Covid? I’m sure there are many possible answers to this question, but I’ll narrow it down to where I’ve gone since I was a mere lad growing up in Hinckley.
Wade Oval in University Circle on the East Side of Cleveland is a mecca of culture in this great city of ours. It has to be high on everyone’s list this time of year. Where else in the world can you go from a Madagascar dessert to a Costa Rican rainforest? Or see a full-sized horse in shining armor? Or experience first-hand the history of transportation through 170 antique automobiles and 21 non-car transportation artifacts such as bikes, motorcycles, boats, and sleighs? (Not to mention that all of the aforementioned can be viewed at your leisure, thermostatically controlled, indoors.) The answer — Wade Oval.
For a location to be a happy place (as you may have heard me reference in previous blog entries), I feel the location must pique your interest and stimulate your inner curiosity. These happy places help clear our minds of everyday baggage. Once you arrive at this plane of consciousness, your body relaxes and, hopefully, you begin to feel that euphoric feeling of happiness!
I’m hoping to find that one meaningful destination that will stimulate each of my readers… to push them off their mental couch and out into this exciting world of ours!
So come on in… take off your jacket… and let’s take a closer look at these larger-than-life, stimulating environments (or happy places), each 100 or so yards apart from each other at Wade Oval.
If you need living greenery to regenerate yourself during this minimal-time-of-solar-appearances but need something more exciting than a poinsettia, then the Cleveland Botanical Garden is your happy place. Carved into 10 acres of what was formerly the Cleveland Zoo and displayed under 18,000 square feet of greenhouse, two totally divergent plant ecosystems can be experienced under one roof.
First, find yourself immersed in a lush greenery of colossal strangler fig, chocolate trees, and papaya, to name only a few of the members of a Costa Rican rainforest. If you happen to be standing quite still, at just the right time, one of this rainforest’s butterfly residents might land on your head or shoulder.
Walk through a door to the second part of the gardens and be amazed as you feel the warmth and vibe of a Madagascar desert. This desert is complete with spiny succulents and quite alien-looking baobab trees. The chance to be surrounded and your senses stimulated by two separate and quite different floral environments from exotic homelands (all while never leaving Ohio) should be quite rejuvenating to many readers.
You say four wheels and gas combustion is what lights your fire?
Well José Feliciano couldn’t be more proud than to have you visit Cleveland’s Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum, directly across the street from the Botanical Gardens. The museum presents 100 years of technological innovations through its vast array of varying types of transportation — from hand-cranking to electric start and everything in between.
Many Cleveland companies from the early 1900s, who produced varying forms of transportation from two to six wheels, are on display. One of these companies, the White Motors Company, actually started out making sewing machines and ended up making the M2 half-track for WWII! Yes, one of the half-tracks is on display. Catch the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum on Facebook or Instagram and watch for their Crawford-Cars-Coffee lecture series.
I love all of the above venues at the Oval, but when I want to decompress (and when my boys are given a choice), we seem to always end up at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
It was founded in 1913 by three Cleveland Industrialists who were visionaries for the preservation and sharing of world class art for all to enjoy. The present museum opened on June 6, 1916, at a cost of 1.25 million. In 2012, the latest renovation with a piazza and 31,395 square-foot sky atrium was completed, at a cost of 355 million dollars. It is a superb addition to the already-world-renowned museum. As my son (who went to Paris with his high school) states, “It’s so much like the Louvre, it’s amazing!”
The three-story atrium just lifts you up, as you sip one of their special coffees and prepare to absorb 61,000 pieces of art that are on display. My mother took me there as a child and my favorite room has to be the Armor Room, complete with many fully decorated suits of armor and a centerpiece of a knight on horseback (both rider and steed are in full shiny armor). I was just there last Saturday, yes with wife and one son, and the Armor Room just made me smile and warmed my heart. However, the art presented in the sword design and armor plating was actually for the protection of the feuding knights during these less-than-tranquil times of mankind’s history.
When you think about the really bad conditions that the world was in when the various periods of art were created, it’s pretty amazing how art was produced and survived during the times of plagues, dictatorships, starvation, even incarcerations! One would think self-preservation would be paramount, not marble busts! In my opinion, I feel art transcends the painful reality of the moment and allows artists to find within themselves that stimulation — through creating — that can release the pain of their existence as they create their masterpieces. In other words, artists uplift and strengthen themselves through their creating and thus find the power to go on and face another day.
As one strolls through the museum’s various rooms and levels — each portraying a different period of mankind and the subsequent art that was produced — I cannot help but feel the depiction of power and hope that many of these works of art exhibit. As you absorb the positive vibes from the art, I feel you will not come away sad, but actually strengthened in the conviction that mankind has survived a lot through the ages.
We are a tough lot. That which has not killed us, has made us stronger!
I wonder what the art of today will portray to future generations…
Hopefully, they will understand that we may have made mistakes, but we weren’t afraid to try. We persevered and we kept a stiff upper lip (under our masks)!
So, stop getting swallowed up in the negativity of today’s television and news programming.
Get out, discover what relaxes and intrigues you, and find your happy place! Once there, absorb the positivity… and smile. Smiling — it’s a good thing. (As an orthodontist who’s in the business of creating the perfect smile, I ought to know!)
After all, each time you smile, you activate 205 muscles in your face. And each muscle releases an endorphin when activated.
Here’s to happy places that make you smile (even in the cold of winter),
- Dr. Pfister