DR. KNOW

I live in Denver now, but as a Cincinnati kid I often visited the Natural History Museum by the Elsinore Tower on Gilbert Avenue. Outside were enormous sculptures of wooly mammoths. I loved them more than the exhibits inside. Why didn’t they move with the Museum to Union Terminal? Please tell me they survive

somewhere. — MAMMOTH MEMORY

DEAR MEMORY: The Doctor is pleased to tell you that they survive somewhere. Despite decades of, um, mammoth popularity standing guard outside the old Natural History Museum, your cherished pachyderms were unable to

Dr. Know is Jay Gilbert, weekday afternoon deejay on 92.5 FM The Fox. Submit your questions about the city’s peculiarities at drknow@cincinnati magazine.com

configure with the institution’s move to the Cincinnati Museum Center in 1990. While many elements were successfully installed in the new location, some had to sadly be left behind. The magnificent Planetarium especially was a major loss; Pink Floyd laser shows just haven’t been the same since.

But even with the extinction of reallife wooly mammoths—thank you for not calling them elephants; it’s a sore point— the Natural History Museum committed to giving their mammoths a new home. The family of four now happily roams outside the entrance of the Cincinnati Museum Center’s sister location at West Fifth and Gest Streets in Queensgate.

It’s all for the best, really, because back in the old neighborhood, the new Cincinnati Ballet Margaret and Michael Valentine Center for Dance has just opened on Gilbert Avenue. If the mammoths were still hanging around, it would make everyone think of that scene in Fantasia.

At the corner of Reading Road and Liberty Street is the beautiful clock tower that welcomes people to Pendleton/Over-the-Rhine. But the clock (two clocks, really) stopped working about two years ago. It’s been 10:06 in my beloved neighborhood for too long. Are there plans to fix it? — IT’S ABOUT TIME

DEAR ABOUT: Because the Doctor is a history nerd, he shall begin by bringing up a much older clock tower. On September 24, 1848, Cincinnati’s riverfront was the subject of the world’s first panoramic city photograph. Not until 2015, though, during a painstaking digital restoration of the daguerreotype plates, did we discern a downtown clock tower showing that the time was exactly 1:55. Everyone was impressed, but come on, was the clock even working that day? We all know how finicky those contraptions are.

The clock(s) at Reading and Liberty continue(s) this finicky tradition. Time

When employees at Mike Albert refill their reusable bottles at work, the water dispenser displays a running count of how many plastic bottles were saved. To date, that number exceeds a half-million. If stacked on top of one another, that many bottles would reach the edge of space—62 miles above our beautiful, fragile planet.

For Evendale-based Mike Albert, one of the country’s largest vehicle leasing and fleet management companies, sustainability is nothing new.

They installed their plastic waste-reducing water dispenser 10 years ago. A year before that, they began managing electric vehicles for their clients and subsequently added EVs to their own fleet, allowing their associates to sign them out to run company errands. Three years ago, the company converted its high-wattage parking lot lights to energy-efficient LEDs.

“When it comes to sustainability, we don’t face the same regulatory and reporting requirements that public companies do,” says Jeff Hart, the president of Mike Albert. “Our motivation comes from a genuine belief that helping Mother Nature by reducing our carbon footprint is the right thing to do. The fact that sustainable practices are often good for the bottom line is a nice bonus.” Hart and the rest of the Mike Albert leadership team are not resting on their sustainability laurels. Far from it. They’re currently evaluating options and making plans for indoor LED lighting, solar energy collection, and the introduction of water-saving modifications to their landscaping.

These efforts are part of their broader Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives—a framework that helps companies become the best corporate citizens possible. “Sustainability is about more than environmental improvement,” says Bruce Shaffer, vice president of strategic initiatives at Mike Albert. “It’s also about everything a company must do to keep itself sustainable as a viable enterprise with happy employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders.”

Mike Albert celebrates its 65th birthday this year and its 100th in the year 2057, assuming, of course, that today’s sustainability efforts keep our planet healthy and habitable. If more companies follow Mike Albert’s lead, the odds look quite promising indeed.

After running a company errand, associate Ken McCormick charges a Mike Albert EV.

“It feels good working for a company that cares about sustainability,” says associate Emani Thompson.