Pittsburgh joined Cincinnati and St. Louis as a favorite city on my trip. It made a lot of money – and a lot of soot and pollution – on coal, oil, gas, iron and steel, but it has eliminated most of those ill effects and used the money for a lot of public buildings and parks. And the three rivers, the bridges and the hills make it visually dazzling.

My first attraction is unique. The Cathedral of Learning is a 42 story classroom building at the University of Pittsburgh where the first and third floors consist of 30 “nationality” rooms, each designed as a classroom designed in the style of a specific country. I show a couple of examples which will give you a slight feel of the concept.

Henry Clay Frick developed the production of coke from coal, which was so crucial to steel production that Andree Carnegie made him a partner in US Steel. The resulting fortune enabled Frick to build a public park housing an art museum and a mansion that I toured. If the name is familiar, his daughter donated his even larger mansion on 5th Avenue in New York as the Frick Collection. And he had a summer “cottage” in Pride’s Crossing (Beverly) Massachusetts, but it burned down so we never heard of it.

The confluence where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers form the Ohio was a strategic military location for the French Fort Duquesne and then the British Fort Pitt during the French and Indian War. I visited the Fort Pitt Museum that tells the history and the Block House, the only remaining building from the fort. This area is now Point State Park and I spent quite some time taking pictures of the big fountain, the downtown skyline and the bridges and stadiums.

My last stop was the History Center, with a special exhibit on Vietnam and a lot on the development of Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania, including Mister Rogers.

The songs of the day will be the ones with Rock and Roll in the title. I thought of two more, so I have 13.

Rock and Roll. Led Zeppelin

Rock and Roll Music Chuck Berry (and the Beatles cover)

Rock and Roll Fantasy Bad Company

Rock and Roll Woman Buffalo Springfield

Rock and Roll is Here to Stay. Danny and the Juniors

Rock and Roll Hootchie Coo. Rick Derringer

Rock and Roll Soul Grand Funk

Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution AC/DC

Old Time Rock and Roll. Bob Seger

It’s Only Rock and Roll Rolling Stones

It’s Still Rock and Roll to me Billy Joel

A Little Bit Country and a Little Bit Rock and Roll Donnie and Marie

I’ve Got a Rock and Roll Heart. Eric Clapton

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A year ago today, my brother Jay and I boarded our overnight flights to Minsk that started our journey to the places where three of our grandparents were born. Now I am getting near the end of my exploration of the country to which they emigrated.

This morning was one of the absolute highlights of my trip – the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the Cleveland waterfront. The lower level has the heart of the exhibits – the roots of Rock and Roll (blues, country, gospel, early R&B), Elvis, key cities (Memphis, Detroit, Liverpool/London, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle) and whole sections on a dozen of the biggest names in rock history. Then there’s the Hall of Fame itself. Eligibility for election starts 25 years after release of the first recording, so looking at the year-by-year inductees is a timeline of the soundtrack of our lives. Upstairs were exhibits on the impact of TV on rock and roll, all the way from Anerican Bandstand, Ozzie and Harriet (Ricky Nelson) and Ed Sullivan to MTV and American Idol. The best thing of all for me was a half hour compilation of clips from American Bandstand over the years, seeing a hundred or so performers singing songs we have all listened to and speaking with Dick Clark. I got emotional watching Chuck Berry picking and strutting to “Johnny B Goode” and stayed that way for quite some time, especially for the stars that are no longer with us.

I winded down in the afternoon at Mill Creek Park in Youngstown, walking around a turtle-filled pond, formal gardens, an old log cabin, a covered bridge and a gristmill.

I attended services with the congregation of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the victims of the shooting last October 27th. They were so welcoming to me as I brought them my support on behalf of B’nai Torah in Sudbury. They are using another synagogue while the repair of their building goes on (see picture). They remind me of the small but growing number of Jews Jay and I saw in Lithuania and Poland – the survivors will rebuild and move into the future.

The Andy Warhol Museum (he was a Pittsburgh native) is open until 10:00 on Friday night, so I couldn’t resist.

The song of the day is my friend Chuck Berry and “Sweet Little Sixteen”, where the first line is “They’re really rocking in Boston” and the second line is “In Pittsburgh PA”. And now a bonus question. Without googling, how many rock songs can you name with “Rock and Roll” in the title? I have 11 and I am sure I am forgetting some. If you can top that, please send me your list. I will try to remember to send out my list tomorrow.

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I almost made it through my whole trip without any car trouble. But I got a flat tire today. I had just started to drive away from Kent State when a light and indicator came up on my dashboard. I pulled over to a gas station parking lot and sure enough the driver’s side rear tire was flat. I called AAA and fortunately spoke with a woman who had lived in Kent. She told me that there was a Firestone store about a mile away so I inched the car over there. I got 4 new tires (which seems to be required for all-wheel drive cars). With all my driving, I probably would’ve needed new tires not too long after I get back. So now I should be all set for my last 11 days. And I should have already publicly praised my trusty Impreza for making it this far unscathed, through dirt roads, mountain switchbacks and all kinds of weather.

My first two stops recognized Canton’s home town hero, our 25th president William McKinley and his wife Ida. They had two daughters but both died very young. McKinley had much better luck in politics – 10 years in the US House, two terms as governor of Ohio and then two presidential victories over Democrat William Jennings Bryan. But he was assassinated by an anarchist at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo (though he probably would have survived with better and quicker medical care).

There is a large monument up on a hill where all 4 McKinleys are interred. The museum down below has some exhibits on him but more on life in the Canton area from the 1800’s to the present. My favorite section had posters which each consisted of a 1956 photo of a different street block in downtown Canton and a shot of the buildings in the same block today. I would love to see something like this in Boston.

In downtown Canton there is a First Ladies Museum, whose current exhibit is on the seven first ladies from Ohio, only one of whom, Mrs. Harding, could vote for her husband. Then I had a tour of the Mckinley’s home. The house was built by Ida’s grandfather and was greatly enlarged, as when William and Ida were not in Washington, they shared the house with her parents, her sister, brother-in-law and their seven children!

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Then I drove to Kent State. There is a visitor center on the National Guard shootings on May 4th 1970, killing 4 and injuring 9. Tensions were high over the weekend and that Monday morning, as students gathered on the Common by the Victory Bell to protest Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and the presence of the National Guard on campus. The armed guards got the students to vacate the Common for a parking lot and it appeared that the troops were leaving. Suddenly they turned and fired on the students.

After the stress of the flat tire, I was in the mood for a national park – the 19th of my trip with one left to go in Maine. Just as Mammoth was all about caves and Hot Springs the hotels with the natural springs baths, Cuyahoga Valley National Park is literally centered on its namesake river that runs through it and the canal that used to. After the Erie Canal was built to direct all of the products of the Midwest to New York City, the brand new state of Ohio got into the act by constructing the Ohio and Erie Canal from Cleveland on Lake Erie to Portsmouth on the Ohio River, so that the state’s manufactured goods and food could be shipped either through New York or to New Orleans via the Mississippi River. The canal had dozens of locks and many towns grew around the canal activity at these locks.

The coming of the railroad supplanted the canal and then a huge flood in 1913 sealed its fate. Since the national park was created in the 1960’s, the canals have been filled in and a 110 mile bike/hike trail (called the towpath) has been built. I saw a covered bridge, strolled on a boardwalk through a Beaver Marsh and hiked around some waterfalls. The park was jammed as it is real close to Cleveland and all its suburbs.

Today’s song is about the Cuyahoga River. It looks in fine health now but it famously caught fire in the late ’60’s, leading the whimsical Randy Newman to write the tune “Burn On” (big river).

Is there a word for a nostalgic visit to a place where you’ve never been before?

My late father Donald graduated from Ohio State University in 1948. Neither my mother nor I think he ever went back to Columbus for any reason. So I may be the first Seliber wandering the campus in 71 years.

I first got a walking tour map at the Visitor Center. They looked up that his old fraternity Tau Eplison Pi (I have his old paddle in my basement!) Left campus in 2004, so I had no frat house to look for. So I walked around, focusing on the buildings that were there when he was. The first and largest is Ohio Stadium, where I’m sure he was rooting for the Buckeyes football team on Saturday afternoons (I still do too). The campus is a mix of old and new buildings surrounding not a quad, but The Oval. See pictures below.

Since my father gave me my love of football, it’s fitting that my other main stop of the day was the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton. I saw the busts of all the Hall of Famers in a room that’s kind of dark. I enjoyed all the exhibits and the featured film was this year’s Super Bowl. I’m pleased to report that the Patriots only scored 13 points but still won!

I went to yet another State House today, in Columbus. The most interesting thing was outside on the grounds, a recent Holocaust and Liberators Memorial, with the story of what an Ohio soldier witnessed when he arrived at Dachau on 1945. And then the Ohio History Center, with exhibits on Ohio sports and living in the 1950’s (for us Baby Boomers).

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For the second straight day, the song of the day relates to a place I will see tomorrow – Kent State. It is if course “Ohio” (Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming … four dead in O-hi-o), by Crosby, Stills, Nash and especially Young (he wrote it a few days after May 4th, 1970).

I found out that I like Cincinnati so much I could barely leave. I was going to 3 places today and I went to 5. So far, St. Louis and Cincinnati are the two cities I could spend a few more days visiting.

First up was the large yellow family house of William Howard Taft, the only man to be elected President and then in “retirement” get the job he always wanted, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, where two of his fellow justices were Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis.

In my travels, I realized that I was in the home city of Hebrew Union College, the United States seminary for reform rabbis. I went through the Skirball Gallery of Jewish history and culture on the campus.

As in Omaha, the old Union Railroad Terminal has been converted into a Museum Center with many exhibits on all levels. I checked out the Cincinnati History Museum, which featured a room-sized model of the city in the 1930’s, an Ohio River steamboat that could be boarded and and a 1800’s riverside street of stores from the early days of the Queen City.

Now here’s the serious stuff. I am sure all of us have seen similarities between the Holocaust and the enslavement of Africans. Let me describe the other two places I visited today and then explain the connections I found.

Just this January, the Holocaust and Humanity Center opened in the Cincinnati Museum Center. It has a solid set of exhibits on all topics before, during and after the Holocaust. Particularly effective was a set of 4 to 6 short interviews with survivors from the Cincinnati area on most of the topics. One woman whose family was fortunate enough to leave Europe in time looked right into the camera and said that her American life started in this building and I realized that she had arrived in Cincinnati by train at the old Union Terminal about 80 years ago. The exhibit that stopped me in my tracks was a three minute film, with modern commentary, that a German soldier took of a killing field in Latvia, with local officials helping and townspeople watching their neighbors get massacred.

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is also a comprehensive look at the whole North American and Carribean slave trade, plantation life and the struggles of African-Americans before during and after the Civil War. But the emphasis was on the Underground Railroad, because Cincinnati was an active Underground “station”. Also, the Ohio River visible from the building’s balcony windows was the dividing line between slave state Kentucky and potential freedom in Ohio. Recalling my stroll last night over the Roebling Bridge made me appreciate how much action there must have been on that stretch of river.

So, the connections. Jews were taken to Auschwitz and the other death camps in crowded cattle cars, while African slaves sailed to our shores in jam-packed lower steerage compartments. 11 million European Jews were targeted for annihilation by the Nazis (6 million were killed) and just about the same number of captured Africans survived the dreaded “Middle Passage” on these slave ships. Finally, modest numbers of Jews were helped by righteous gentiles, and escaped slaves by the operators of the Underground Railroad. So I ended the day with some hope in the kindness of strangers to refugees from oppression.

The song of the day is the fight song for my late father’s alma mater, The Ohio State University in Columbus. I will visit there tomorrow morning.

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I spent most of the day with two of my favorite people who spent their formative years in Indiana – Larry Bird and Abraham Lincoln.

Spring Valley Junior – Senior High School is now located on Larry Bird Boulevard. The woman in the principal’s office told me I couldn’t see his trophy case in the gym because they’re getting the gym ready for this week’s graduation. So I just took a picture of his bust (in a Celtics uniform) outside the community center next door.

Then I learned that French Lick was legendary, at least among Midwesterners, long before Larry Legend came along, and the reason can be found in the name of the school – Spring Valley. As in Hot Springs Arkansas, the area has natural springs and the West Baden Springs Hotel was built in the late 1800’s for the rich and famous to improve their health. When the railroad was persuaded (!) To come to town, the place was expanded in 1902 into the largest free-standing dome in the world until the Houston Astrodome was built. The luxurious complex went out of business with the stock market crash. It was used as a Jesuit seminary, a college and was about ready to be torn down until a wealthy couple restored it in the 1990’s and added a casino. I took a self-guided tour and it is once again the place to be if you have money to burn.

We all know that Lincoln was born in Kentucky and entered the law and politics in Illinois. The Lincoln Boyhood National Monument shows in a film and exhibits in the visitor center that Tom and Nancy Lincoln moved from Kentucky 100 miles to southern Indiana when Abraham was 7 and his sister Sarah was 9, to escape the slavery culture and to get a clear title to land on which to build a cabin and farm. Abraham lived there until he was 21. That’s where he learned to read, split rails and ferry travelers across rivers. Nancy died when he was 9 and Tom got remarried to a widow with 3 children so there was a blended family. Then Abraham went off to Illinois and history.

Hiking from the visitor center is a cemetery where Nancy and other pioneers are buried, the site of the family’s cabin and a reconstructed farm. One of the trails has 12 stones from different places in Lincoln’s life, including Kentucky, the Indiana cabin, his law office and the White House.

I spent the evening in the very lively riverfront area of Cincinnati. I saw the baseball and football stadiums that replaced Riverfront Stadium. I went on the SkyStar ferris wheel. And I walked across and took plenty of pictures of and from the 1867 (now pedestrian-only) Roebling Bridge. If the name and the pictures look familiar, it’s because its designer John Roebling did the Brooklyn Bridge 16 years later in 1883.

The song of the day, for the first of my four days in Ohio’s cities that begin with the letter C, is “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders.

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The American Institute of Architects has named the following top six U.S. cities for architectural innovation and design : Chicago, New York City, Boston, San Francisco, Washington DC and Columbus, Indiana. I’m glad I finally got to visit one of these cities.

So how does a town of 46,000 in south central Indiana make a list like this? As usual with these things, because of a visionary. J. Irwin Miller was an executive in Columbus’s Cummins diesel engine manufacturer, president of a local bank and general good-deed-doer. He and his wife Xenia had no formal architectural training but shared a feeling that well-designed and simple buildings improved peoples attitudes and productivity. So he pledged a fund from Cummins to pay the fees of a select number of architects whose work he admired. The two most famous are I.M. Pei, who died the other day at age 102 and Eero Saarinen, who designed the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the PanAm terminal at JFK Airport, IBM’s campus at Yorktown Heights NY – and the Millers’ showcase home in Columbus.

I got a map at the visitor center (which had a few Dale Chihuly glass pieces casually placed in a staircase window) and did a guided website walking and driving tour around the city, in drizzle and occasional hard rain. And I noticed that all the houses in town were attractive. Sometimes a rising tide does raise all boats – or buildings.

I was planning to see the Indianaplois Motor Speedway Museum. But since the Indianapolis 500 is next Sunday and there were final qualifying races today, it was too hectic. Instead I went to Bloomington and saw the basketball arena Bob Knight used to throw chairs around and the football stadium that replaced the one that was the site of the big bicycle race in the film “Breaking Away”.

My last stop was Spruce State Park in the town of Mitchell. The visitor center had a tribute to Gus Grissom, a Michell native and one of the seven original astronauts – and one of the casualties of the deadly fire as Apollo 1 was blasting off. The park had a very interesting Pioneer Village centered around one of the first water and grist mills in the state (like the Wayside Inn, it still produces bread and corn meal). The majority of the buildings are still standing from 200 years ago, though most have been restored or updated. There were demonstrations at the mill, blacksmith shop, weaver’ shop, distillery and tavern.

Indiana’s most well-known singer of recent decades is John (not Cougar) Mellencamp. I pick his song “Small Town”, as I have passed through many small towns in the last three days.

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I arrived at Indianapolis and summer today – 89 degrees!

Remember last month I said that Arkansas was probably the state about which I knew the least going into my trip. For big cities, it might be Indianapolis. The only things I could think of were the Indianapolis 500 (which is next Sunday) and the pro football combine, which is now nationally televising 40 yard runs and bench presses.

I spent the afternoon downtown. On the one hand, there are a lot of tall chain hotels and a huge convention center so the city’s central location in the country must attract a lot of meetings. But then there are canals with pedal boats right in the middle of everything and seemingly every third person was scooting along on one of those Razors or whatever they call them these days. So I conclude that life is being enjoyed in the Hoosier state capital. I certainly enjoyed my time there.

Indiana has had 6 vice-presidents, including the present one, but its only president was Benjamin Harrison, best known as the grandson of William Henry (Tippecanoe) Harrison and the White House occupant between Grover Cleveland’s two terms. He was a lawyer, volunteered as an officer in the Union army, admired Lincoln, got involved in politics, served one term in the Senate and was a compromise Republican nominee and defeated Cleveland in the 1888 election. During his ride to prominence, he built a handsome house with the latest modern conveniences on Indianapolis’s emerging north side, where he lived with his artist wife Caroline and two children. Unfortunately, Caroline died shortly before he lost the rematch with Cleveland. He remarried four years later and had a daughter at age 63, possibly the only president to have a child after leaving the White House.

I had a tour of the Indiana State House, learned more about the history of the state in the State Museum (including the many possible origins of the nickname “Hoosiers” – see below) and then took some trivia quizzes at that tribute to student-athletes at the NCAA Hall of Champions. To cool off after dinner, I treated myself to only my second ice cream of the trip.

The song of the day is “Back Home Again in Indiana”, written in 1917 and sung every year before the big car race. Jim Nabors did the honors for many years.

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Today was a fairly quiet day as I moved from Michigan to Indiana.

At the Detroit Institute of Art, there were two special exhibitions. One was called “From Camelot to Kent State” and consisted of lithographs and silk screens from the ’60’s by familiar artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Liechenstein. The other was a tribute to Diego Rivera (Mexican artist and husband of fellow artist Frida Kahlo) by a contemporary couple – artist/sculptor Ruben Toledo and costume designer Isabel Toledo. Pictures from both exhibits are shown below.

Elkhart is a small town in northern Indiana that has been big in many businesses, including musical instruments, auto parts, RV’s and pharmaceuticals. I took tours of two 100+ year old mansions built by the family of pioneers of Miles Labs, which developed Alka-seltzer, Bactine and One-a-Day vitamins.

I was welcomed to South Bend by a sign mentioning Mayor Pete and had time for some quick pictures of the Golden Dome and the football stadium at Notre Dame University, which was all dressed up and partying for graduation tomorrow.

I attended my second straight Friday night service, at Temple Beth El in South Bend, another old, small but welcoming congregation.

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I have to go with the “Notre Dame Fight Song” for today’s song.

It was a day spent mostly with the Fords, with some pictures of stadiums and sunsets at each end, all set to a Motown soundtrack.

I don’t believe that the stepfather of Gerald Ford, Michigan’s only president, is related to Henry Ford. After visiting the presidential museum in Grand Rapids yesterday afternoon, I went to the library today in Ann Arbor, home of his alma mater the University of Michigan. There were exhibits on both Jerry and Bette Ford and his post-presidency office.

Next was the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn. It’s a massive place – I was there for 4 hours and probably saw about 80%. It has an amazing number of unique items – the car JFK was shot in, the bus in which Rosa Parks sat, the first Sikorsky helicopter and the only Buckminster Fuller-designed Dymaxion house ever lived in.

The Motown record label was founded in 1959 by 29 year old songwriter Berry Gordy, with the studio in the basement of his house on a busy residential street in Detroit. The Motown Museum is in that house and the house next door. We had a tour led by a very enthusiastic young man named Vernell, with a video of music clips and interviews (Gordy is still around at age 89), photos, album covers, gold records and the original control room and studio, where our tour group sang and danced the first verse of “My Girl” together.

Then quick stops outside the current homes of the Detroit Tigers, Lions and Red Wings (no bears, oh my!), along with the site of the old Tiger Stadium, opened the day before Fenway Park but closed in 1999. Just before sunset, I walked around a very nice and busy park along the Detroit River, with Canada on the other side.

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Out of the hundreds of Motown songs, I am choosing one of the first big hits that to me epitomizes the lasting appeal of the sound – “Dancing in the Streets” by Martha Reed and the Vandelles.