Wednesday, March 21, 2007

'Walks Around Akron' coming out in June

Walks Around Akron: Rediscovering a City in Transition will be out in hard and soft covers in June. The book, published by the University of Akron Press, is on the walk features by Russ Musarra and Chuck Ayers which appeared in the Beacon Journal magazine and elsewhere through the end of 2000 and continue in Akron City Magazine, which is published three times a year by the City of Akron.

Here’s the description from the University of Akron Press:

Walks around Akron: Rediscovering a City in Transition celebrates the simple pleasure of seeing a community at a slow pace from ground level. In March 1987, the Akron B
eacon Journal began publishing a series of articles about Akron and its environs, written by Russ Musarra and illustrated by Chuck Ayers. These popular essays-with-art continued in the newspaper through the end of 2000 and can now be read in Akron City magazine. Musarra and Ayers soon realized that many places shown in Ayers's artwork had disappeared or were permanently altered not long after the articles were published--they had been inadvertently documenting Akron in transition. Anyone who enjoys walking or discovering overlooked sites will appreciate the informative charm of these stories and pictures that embrace Akron's history, its downtown and neighborhood development, its institutions and parks, and interesting nearby communities. Musarra and Ayers take the reader along to explore familiar and out-of-the-way places, whether it's Canal Park baseball stadium in the snow, a tiny cemetery in Copley whose graves date back as far as 1818, or a blue heron rookery in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. And readers can see all these things for themselves, using Walks around Akron as a guidebook for their excursions.

Russ Musarra retired from the Akron Beacon Journal in 2000 after thirty years of service. He edited the books Along the Towpath and Greetings from Akron with his colleague, Chuck Ayers, who illustrated the books. In addition, he wrote Akron Symphony Orchestra: Celebrating Our Fiftieth Anniversary Season and coauthored Sleep with the Angels.

Chuck Ayers began his career as a staff artist and editorial cartoonist at the Akron Beacon Journal. His cartoons have appeared in such newspapers as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Forbes Magazine. He cocreated the nationally-known comic strip, Crankshaft. In addition to illustrating Crankshaft, Chuck Ayers has also illustrated the books Along the Towpath and Greetings from Akron. He earned his bachelor’s degree in graphic design from Kent State University.

271 pages, 7 1/2 x 9 1/2
Cloth 978-1-931968-42-3 $42.95
Paper 978-1-931968-43-0 $19.95

1 comment:

Ott Gangl said...

Congrats to both of you. The six years I was the Beacon Mag photographer a "Walk" feature lightened my load for that week and was a feature our reader looked forward to reading.

I worked with several editors, Larry Bloom and Bill Bierman, later with Ann Mezger who was more business-like, but Larry and Bill were a hoot to work with and the reporters were Chuck Lally and Russ Musarra.

The best years were with Russ and Bill. We had so much fun they even banned us to the back of the stock room for a while. Larry had the habit of getting coffee on my color prints on his desk, usually with a cigar but smear and no matter what I did I couldn't wean him off it. He remembered submitted stories by the color of the paper or other characteristic they were printed on and with his desk stacked about two inches high with papers and a half dozen paper coffee cups partially filled and used to snub a cigar on top of it all, Larry would grab a corner of the paper he sought and try a table cloth trick, yanking and in the process dumping a couple of cups and soaking all the stuff beneath, including my pictures, and he would come to the photo dept. with that sheepish grin of his and I knew he messed up again. Oh the good old times.
Larry's desk was so messy that several times he lost his paycheck on it and we had to help him find it.

Now with Russ and Bill there are so many stories, we could write a book, one of them when Bill
Winters fired Russ, Bill, me and
Chuck for running the that tiny giraffe logo on that golf shirt.

....Ott