Grandfather Olesky – that’s me – will be going on Grandfather Mountain near Linville, North Carolina so I won’t be posting articles on this blog till at least Tuesday.

I’m giving up golf at the Sunny Hill senior league in Kent on Friday and the Brookledge senior league in Cuyahoga Falls on Monday – right when I’m in the middle of a hot streak of 7 par holes and 1 birdie hole for the 13 most recent holes – to be with my younger daughter, Monnie Ann, and her husband, Bob, at their vacation home about an hour from Charlotte and maybe a little closer to Grandfather Mountain.

It should be an interesting hike up Grandfather Mountain, since the temperature forecast is for the 60’s once you hit the peak at 5,946 feet. That’s almost twice as high as any mountain in my native West Virginia. The journey at the bottom is forecast to begin in temperatures up to 90 degrees.

I remember going from 72 degrees at the foot of Mount Washington in New Hampshire to 20 below zero wind chill by the time we got to the peak at 6,288 feet. There are markers on Mount Washington of climbers who froze to death within 400 feet of the safety cabins because they couldn’t see them in the blinding snowstorms that pop up without warning.

Interestingly, nearby is Grandmother Gap. I wouldn’t touch that line with a 5-foot-8 Pole, which is my height at the age of 83.

Mount Washington is the highest peak in the Eastern United States. Grandfather Mountain, 70 miles from Asheville and the famous 255-room Biltmore mansion of the Vanderbilts, is the highest peak on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I’ve traveled to 54 countries and 44 states, so I’ve been to the mountaintop before.

The Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon, the Alps in Italy and Austria, the Great Wall of China, Harry Potter’s Middle Earth setting in New Zealand.

But it’s always a thrill to enjoy Mother Nature when you can see her work for miles and miles when you get to the top.

Or a master painter who puts Michelangelo and Picasso to shame when He created Yellowstone National Park's rainbow of colorful pools and the thousands of “sculptures” in Bryce Canyon in Utah.

While I am gone August 18-22, please direct all BJ Alums blog inquiries and information to Ken Krause, former BJ sports editor who lives in Medford, Massachussetts. Send the emails to Ken at kenneth.krause@comcast.net with your information or inquiry.

August 23^rd you can resume notifying John Olesky at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com

One of the Fiddlers passes away

It's sunset time for one of The Fiddlers on the Roof.

Brooklyn native Philip Fyvush Finkel, 93, died today.

Fyvush Finkel

He started as the innkeeper when Zero Mostel played fiddler Tevye in the 1964 Broadway show.  For the 1981 Broadway revival, Fyvush played the butcher. He played Tevye when “Fiddler” toured the country.

Topol was Tevye in the “Fiddler on the Roof” movie.

Finkel began his career more than 80 years ago.

He was in “Little Shop of Horrors and won an Emmy as eccentric public defender Douglas Wambaugh on “Picket Fences” TV series.

His funeral will be Wednesday at Sutton Place Synagogue in New York City.

Sunrise, sunset. Birth, death. I guess that sums up all our lives.

Ol’ Blue Walls reunions are never blue

BJ reunions happen all over the country every year. The latest was Aug. 6 at the joint convention of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists at Washington Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C.

The Ol’ Blue Walls gathering was by former graphic artist Jemal R. Brinson, former reporter and columnist Carl C. Chancellor, former reporter Delano Massey, former reporter Andale Gross and current BJ executive news editor Mark Turner.

Brinson is with the Chicago Tribune, Chancellor with the Center for American Progress in D.C., Massey with Cleveland’s WEWS-Channel 5 and Gross with The Associated Press in Chicago.

Massey had a couple of stays at the Lexington, Kentucky News-Leader, including as Metro editor, after his BJ days.

Chancellor left Ol’ Blue Walls in 2008.

Gross went with the AP in Kansas City, 100 miles from where he grew up in Mobley, Missouri, immediately after leaving the BJ in 2006 along with 14 staff members with 264 years of experience at 44 E. Exchange Street. Later, he migrated to AP in Chicago. He started at the BJ in 1997 and was Guild unit chairman.

For years Siesa Key, adjacent to Sarasota, Florida, was the reunion place for BJ folks. The late printer Bill Gorrell had a rental complex across the street from what annually is on the list of top 10 or 20 beaches in America or the world, so a lot of BJ types, particularly printers, would gather there for poker and golf.

In my 20 years in Florida, I stayed all of February in Sea Castle, a vacation complex across the street from Gorrell’s Poor Bill’s rentals, and had reunions with Dave and Gina White, Terry Dray and Hugh Downing from Composing and Don Bandy and Jane Snow from the newsroom.

Printers Dick Latshaw and Sid Sprague and business department’s late Harold McElroy went even beyond that. They moved into retirement together on Pawleys Island, South Carolina, for a couple of decades. Dick and wife Pat live two blocks from Harold’s widow, Linda McElroy, and Sid wasn’t far away till he moved to Loveland, California with his new bride after Sid’s first wife died.

I guess we had so much fun together at Ol’ Blue Walls that these reunions are like a homecoming.

I’ve been retired from the BJ for 20 years but, when I see Jim Carney in a Summit County park or Joan Rice in a restaurant or former Features Department co-workers at Primo’s Deli, or play golf every week in the winter with retired printer Hugh Downing and former BJ State Desk reporter Bob Page (turned pastor), it’s like I never walked out the door on 44 E. Exchange Street.

The bonding lasts a lifetime.

Arianna Huffington

Arianna parting ways with Huffington Post

Arianna Huffington, Greek-American founder of The Huffington Post, will step down as editor-in-chief to start a new venture, Thrive Global, which will launch in November and provide content and training seminars on wellness.

Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, which owns The Huffington Post, said an interim editorial committee of other top editors will perform Huffington's role until her replacement is named. AOL paid $315 million in 2011 for The Huffington Post.

After that sale, reports were that Huffington and Armstrong were repeatedly at odds over the direction of the Post. Things got worse when Verizon paid $4.4 billion for AOL last year, then another $4.8 billion this year to buy Yahoo's Web properties, including Yahoo Finance and Yahoo News.

Huffington Post was started in 2005 as a liberal alternative to the conservative Drudge Report.

In 5 years, no World War II veterans?

According to statistics released by the Veterans Administration, World War II veterans are dying at a rate of approximately 492 a day.

This means there are approximately only 855,070 veterans remaining of the 16 million who served our nation in World War II.

Boy, do we owe those veterans a HUGE debt.

If they and millions of others who fought Hitler’s insanity hadn’t prevailed, I would have had to write:

Junge, tun wir die Veteranen einen riesigen Schuldenberg zu verdanken.

If 492 a day on average keep dying, then the last World War II veteran will die in less than 5 years.

God bless them all.

6 companies control 90% of the news you watch and read

Six corporations control 90% of what you watch on TV (cable and broadcast), at the movie theater and in magazines.

And they're working their way into controlling more and more of what's on the Internet.

I’m not concerned about who owns the Cartoon Network, but I am worried about a handful of companies pumping news information and political agenda into your mind 24/7.

For example:

Comcast owns CNBC and MSNBC.

The Walt Disney Company owns ABC.

News Corporation owns Fox News Channel, which is to the right of Attila the Hun because it is run by Rupert Murdoch, Fox Business News, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Smart Money and Barron’s.

Time Warner owns CNN, Headline News and Fortune magazine.

CBS Corporation owns CBS, CW network, Simon and Schuster and Westwood One Radio Network.

Viacom doesn’t own any news outlets among the big 6, which means the other 5 can form an unofficial cartel and pile on with their agenda.

The Internet isn’t immune, either. 10 publishers with their 60 news sites account for 47% of total online traffic to news content. The next 140 publishers in size account for the rest. That’s 53% split into 140 pieces compared to 47% split into 10 parts.

I’m not big on guilt by association, but these are interesting facts provided by those out of scuttle Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign:

ABC News executive producer Ian Cameron is married to Susan Rice, National Security Adviser. 

CBS President David Rhodes is the brother of Ben Rhodes, Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications. 

ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman is married to former Whitehouse Press Secretary Jay Carney 

ABC News and Univision reporter Matthew Jaffe is married to Katie Hogan, Obama's Deputy Press Secretary 

ABC President Ben Sherwood is the brother of Obama's Special Adviser Elizabeth Sherwood 

CNN President Virginia Moseley is married to former Hillary Clinton's Deputy Secretary Tom Nides. 

When there’s a Republican president, you see the same incestuous relationships, so it’s not a Red or Blue State thing. It's a bad-for-democracy thing.

Ask yourself: It is good for a democracy when 90% of the news come from a handful of conglomerates? If those five/six put their heads together, they could elect a ham sandwich as President.

Republicans or Democrats aside, is that what you really want for America?

Five teens and young adults (four from Springfield Township and one from Akron) have been arrested for arson of Green's one-room schoolhouse and for vandalizing another area park.

Police said they found items stolen from the park in one of their homes.

A sad day for Carol Eubank

This is an unhappy time for BJ Marketing Communications Department retiree Carol Eubank.

She is involved with the Green Historical Society. One of its prized preservations, the 1885 Lichtenwalter Schoolhouse, was destroyed by fire Monday night.

Even worse, the state fire marshal ruled it was arson. What scum would do that?

Carol Eubank

Lichtenwalter was the fourth one-room schoolhouse built in Green Township.

Carol reported:

“I have very sad news to report to you all. Last night Lichtenwalter Schoolhouse was destroyed by fire.”

Lichtenwalter served children living in District 13, which covered part of Green Township and Jackson Township in Stark County.  It was originally on Mt. Pleasant Road on land owned by Robert Boettler.  Boettler moved the schoolhouse to his land, which became Boettler Park.

The renovated schoolhouse had been used by the City of Green Division of Parks and Recreation and Historic Preservation Commission and Green Local Schools to host educational programs. 

Carol, a 1957 Coventry High grad, lives in Portage Lakes, where she also is involved with the Portage Lakes Historical Society.

Carol also is the “queen” of BJ reunions. She’s always getting Ol’ Blue Walls escapees together for fun gatherings. The Circulation Department veterans keep circulating among each other.

I once ran into Carol while attending an event at the Greystone Building in downtown Akron several years ago. This woman gets around.

Kim lured back to BJ

Kim Hone-McMahan

Kim Hone-McMahan just couldn’t stay away from Ol’ Blue Walls, even though she retired from the BJ April 5.

She’ll be writing for Savor Magazine, which the BJ is shelling out if you shell out $9.99 a year to the BJ for four issues.

After being a BJ correspondent for 9 years and a BJ staff writer for 26 years, I guess Kim just couldn’t quit the BJ cold turkey.

Kim replaced Jewell Cardwell as a BJ columnist in 2014.

Kim says Savor “encompasses all things in life we want to savor, from stories of people who are doing something interesting with their lives to places with the best food for dining out to experiencing a culture that is different than our own.”

Monica Thomas is the Savor editor.

Kim is married to Chris McMahan.re that is different from our own.

Ah, Kenny, we hardly knew ye when this 1947 St. Vincent-St. Mary High School senior photo was taken.

Ken later became BJ sports editor.

Still later, he left Ol’ Blue Walls to become an advocate for culture, art, clean river and parks in Medford, Massachussettts, where he lives on Mystic River with former BJ business editor and writer Maura McEnaney, who works for Fidelity Investments, headquartered in Boston.

Syracuse University graduate Maura had a hand in one of the BJ’s four Pulitzers, for “A Question of Color.”

Ken almost didn’t get his senior photo taken.

Let him explain it

”I wasn't planning to get a senior picture taken, but my sister Karen Becker (St. Vincent Class of 1969) insisted I should, and hauled me down to the portrait studio at O'Neil's in downtown Akron. And my sister Connie Kluender (St. V-M Class of 1973) made the sport coat I'm wearing!

Ken has four other siblings.

Ken and Maura wound up in Medford because Maura has a lot of family in the Boston area.

Since leaving the BJ, Ken has been free-lancing for civic causes and charities.

Ken received the Ripple Award from the Mystic River Watershed Association for his efforts in protecting the integrity of the Massachusetts river. He’s also involved with Friends of the Mystic River, Medford Green Line Neighborhood Alliance and the Communications Committee of WalkBoston.

While visiting in Ohio last year, he and Maura rode bikes in Holmes County behind Amish buggies.

Former BJ Features editor and pet columnist Connie Bloom, a quilt art guru in Ohio circles, did an art quilt for Maura as a Christmas gift for Ken of the late and lamented Belle, a lab mix that Maura found tied to a fence in Firestone Park in Akron years ago.

It was the first Christmas in 20 years without a dog in the Ken and Maura household.

Maura wrote “Willard Garvey: An Epic Life.” Garvey built homes in the USA, South America and Asia for people with low incomes, is owner-operator of the “world’s largest” grain elevator, is the “largest private landowner in Nevada” and builder of Kansas’s tallest building—the Epic Center with its slanted copper roof.

When BJ legend Harry Liggett passed away in January, Ken and John Olesky put their heads together with the authority that Harry had given them and kept this BJ Alums blog you are reading going as a tribute to Harry – and Pat Englehart and Fran Murphey and Ben Maidenburg and John Knight.

 

Hear Connie Schultz roar

Connie Schultz, who has a Pulitzer Prize amid her accolades, takes on those who accuse her of supporting Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton because the former Secretary of State is a woman.

You know, the “Don’t vote with your vagina” insult.

Connie writes:

“We women have moved on, you see, and one of the things we left behind is men like Donald Trump,” patron saint of racism and misogyny.

To read Connie’s take on Trumph, click on

https://www.creators.com/read/connie-schultz/08/16/voting-like-a-woman

Is America on the road to fascism?

I try to avoid politics on this blog, but Washington Post contributing columnist Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, scared the beejeebus out of me with his article.

The title: How fascism comes to America.

The subject: Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump.

I don’t want to get into Hillary Clinton’s emails or what Donald Trump did with a 13-year-old girl here. This has nothing to do with Republican or Democrat. It has to do with America.

But if you’re interested in Kagan’s frightening word portrait, click on https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-how-fascism-comes-to-america/2016/05/17/c4e32c58-1c47-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html?tid=a_inl

Even if you’re not among those who wonder how the German people allowed a maniac like Hitler to embroil the world in a war, this is must reading

Russell Pry dies

Summit County Executive Russell M. Pry, 58, died Sunday of colon cancer.

Pry was the leader of the Summit County Democratic Party and the county's executive for almost nine years.  Just recently, Pry announced he was not going to seek re-election. 

Jack Davis, 91, an illustrator for Mad magazine’s “Usual Gang of Idiots” for decades, died Wednesday on St. Simons Island, Ga.

His other work includes posters for “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

He began in 1950 selling drawings to EC Comics, which published “Tales From the Crypt.”

In 1952 Mad magazine began with Davis in the “Gang.”

Navy veteran Jack Burton Davis Jr. was born in Atlanta on Dec. 2, 1924, the only child of schoolteacher Callie Davis and salesman Jack Davis.

The National Cartoonists Society honored Davis with a lifetime achievement award in 1996 and he was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2005.

Former Beacon Journal managing editor Mizell Stewart III and wife Valerie are celebrating their 22^nd wedding anniversary today.

Mizell wrote:

“Through challenge, change and adventure, you are always there. I'm so proud to be your husband and am incredibly blessed that you said 'I do' on this day 22 years ago. Happy Anniversary, Valerie!”

Mizell is USA Today Network vice president of news operations, working out of its McLean, Virginia headquarters.

Valerie and Mizell live in West Chester Township, which is near Middletown and Hamilton and Cincinnati.

Current BJ vice president and editor Bruce Winges succeeded Mizell, then the managing editor, as the top newsroom executive at the BJ in 2007.

Mizell went to the Evansville, Indiana Courier and Press as editor. Later, he became vice president/content of the newspaper division of E.W. Scripps and Journal Media Group managing director of content. 

Twinsburg native and Bowling Green graduate Mizell worked in Tallahassee, Florida before coming to the BJ in 2006.

John McMullan, NOT John McMillion, dies

John Edwin McMullan, who began his Miami Herald career in the 1920s as a carrier boy and  ended it in 1983 as the Miami Herald’s executive editor, died Monday night at East Ridge Retirement Center in Cutler Bay. He was 95.

During two terms as the Herald’s highest-ranking news executive, McMullan’s  staff won five Pulitzer prizes.

Don’t confuse him with John McMillion, the former BJ editor whose main purpose seemed to be to chop down the Guild’s power when he arrived in 1986 to "stop the erosion of profits."

He eliminated double time for Sunday work with the statement, “Sunday is just another day.”

After supervising the BJ switch from afternoon to morning paper, he retired from the BJ at age 59 and moved to New Mexico.

Former BJ newsroom editor Webb Shaw and Katie Gaab-Shaw are celebrating their 40^th wedding anniversary. They live in Fremont, Wisconsin.

Northwest University grad Webb, who retired in 2014 after 22 years with J.J. Keller, where he was director editorial of resources, is one of four people to get the Oscar of the digital content industry, the Software & Information Industry Association Peter Jackson Innovation Award.

Webb’s father, the late Ohio native and Fremont Ross High football star Bob Shaw, was an all-American end on Ohio State’s 1942 national championship team coached by the legendary Paul Brown, who eventually guided the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals in the NFL.

Later Bob Shaw was a tight end with the 1949 Los Angeles Rams and was receivers coach with the Baltimore Colts in 1958 when they beat the New York Giants to win the NFL championship in what has been called "The Greatest Game Ever Played."

He still holds the NFL record he set in 1950 of 5 TD passes in a game. Jerry Rice and Kellen Winslow, Sr. later tied it.

Webb’s mom was Mary, who caught Bob’s eye when she was selling candy as an usherette at the Ohio Theater while the Buckeye players were downtown to watch a movie.

Bob Shaw coached briefly at Cuyahoga Falls High School. 

Paula Stone Tucker and I went to Branson, Missouri, which bills itself as “The Country Music Capital” (Nashville might disagree), and it was stupendous!

10 shows in 4 days and not ONE word of profanity in any of them. Just music, comedy and friendly fun.

One or two stars would come aboard our bus as it pulled into the parking lot, ask where we were from, chat with us a while, then welcome us to their show.

After the show, the star performers would be in the lobby for free autographs and photos of us with them.

When we went to the bus to prepare to leave, more stars came aboard and thanked us for coming.

This is the friendliest show casts I have encountered in all my years. Most stars perform, then walk off the stage and out of your life.

The 1,723 miles on the bus, air-conditioned as it was, is a mite tough. Once we passed through St. Louis and The Arch and got to Branson, Gad-About took us to and from our hotel, to breakfast and a show, to lunch and another show and to dinner and still another show.

And then back to our hotel where it was easy to fall asleep after all that activity.

We liked the Gad-About experience so much that we already have booked the Ocean City, Maryland-Assateague Island wild ponies tour in September, between WVU’s game with Youngstown and BYU. That Mountaineers open date always opens us up for a trip somewhere.

Next trips:

July 25-28 flight to Alpena, Michigan for golfing on the Rogers City golf course and chatting with Bob Kasper, Monongah High (West Virginia) Class of 1950 like me, an annual summer event for two guys who have exchanged the same two Christmas cards every year since 1955 and who have been best friends since we first met in first grade at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic School in Monongah. Bob comes to our home in autumn and we go to a WVU game together – Oct. 22 TCU game in Mountaineer Field this year.

Aug. 18-22 in North Carolina with my daughter Monnie Ann of Brunswick and her family on their 2^nd home about an hour from Charlotte near Grandfather Mountain. I’ve always been partial to mountains and Mountaineers.

Sept. 11-14 at Ocean City, Maryland and roaming with the wild ponies of Assateague Island and Paula, who like West Virginia is wild and wonderful.

Dec. 5 flight to Orlando, Florida to re-join Paula, who will drive to her 2^nd home in The Villages, Florida in October. We’ll return to Ohio for the holidays, then drive down together to The Villages where we’ll stay till late April.

I was Paula’s boss, as assistant State Desk editor under Pat Englehart, the wonderful whirlwind, in the 1970s before she went to California after her husband’s early passing to raise her son, a jazz musician in New York City nowadays. We got together after my wife Monnie passed away in 2004, and will be celebrating our 12^th anniversary Sept. 17 … on the road again, just like Willie Nelson.

When I think about all this, I still can’t believe that a coal miner’s son from Monongah has been to 54 countries and 44 states and will play 100 rounds of gold this year.

Life is good. The undertaker can wait.

If you want to see my online photo album of my trip to Branson, Missouri with Paula, click on

https://picasaweb.google.com/115483244393507838338/6310588231974007185