Blog
Sometimes those old buildings you pass have lived other lives
Sometimes you can find old “friends” when you go down history’s rabbit hole. After the recent death of my Dad’s cousin, I ended up with a small pile of family papers that she left behind. Among them was great grandfather Albert Hornung’s purchase agreement for a new,...
Old North Graveyard a place that really should be haunted
When I saw the rendering of the impressive 31-story building that will rise just to the east of the city’s North Market in Saturday’s Columbus Dispatch, my first thought was of the long-time “residents” of that block. This seemed like something they wouldn’t take...
An empty lot breathes new life into Recreation Park
The Giant Eagle grocery store on Whittier Street in Schumacher Place in Columbus is gone, replaced by a, uh, giant lot surrounded by a chain link fence. My deepest condolences to the neighborhood folks who have beautiful memories of time spent trolling for fresh...
James Thurber. . . so he was a writer, then?
Thurberville was one of the three books I signed and sold at the Buckeye Book Fair in Wooster, Ohio, last weekend, and it sparked considerable conversation with browsing customers. “Thurberville?” a middle-aged man in an Under Armour sweatshirt asked. “Is that a real...
Fenlon changed city’s sports journalism
Dick Fenlon’s death won’t get the notice it deserves this week. That is both sad and understandable. Probably half of today’s working population have never read a newspaper and most of the others have moved on to faster, more exciting (if less reliable) forms of...
A picture is worth a thousand broken backs
Back in 2017, Columbus Dispatch librarian Julie Fulton approached the Columbus Historical Society to see if it would take hundreds of bound volumes of old Columbus newspapers that the Dispatch wanted out of its printing plant. The danger to the volumes, which took...