Cycle Thru and Collective Behavior at CAM

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I made it to “Cycle Thru! The Art of the Bike” within its first week. It opened at the Cincinnati Art Museum on Friday, April 4, and I attended on Thursday, April 10. It will be there for another eighteen weeks, through August 24. The exhibit includes photographs, paintings, and other pieces of art that feature bicycles, but while I enjoyed looking at those items, what I documented were the real things: Bicycles that might themselves be considered pieces of art.

The exhibit begins with an 1878 Ariel High Wheel. This style of bicycle originated in Britain and was commonly known as a penny-farthing because the pairing of the large and small wheels reminded people of the relative size of penny and farthing coins. On the left in that first picture is an Otto Dicycle, which women could ride without risking the embarrassment of exposing an ankle. In the foreground of the second photo is a cast iron and wood velocipede from 1865. I had seen the three-wheeled vehicle in the third picture in promotions for the exhibit but could not figure out what was going on until I read its description at the museum. That trailing wheel was supposed to make the ride smoother, but it’s not clear how well that worked. That rider comfort was definitely top of mind with this bike is reinforced by its “bespoke anatomical saddle“.

I thought one of the vehicles in the 1900s-1910s display might belong to Wile E. Coyote, but what looked like an Acme Rocket is one of two metal cans to hold air and keep the water bike afloat. The wall behind the very rare 1960 fiberglass Bowden Spacelander is filled with bicycles from the 1930s and 1940s. The 1965 Sears Spaceliner at upper left in the 1950s-1960s caught my attention because of its resemblance to my 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner. The Spaceliner was designed by Viktor Schreckengost and built by Murray, and I’m guessing that is also true of the Flightliner.

Of course, for anyone not having owned a Flightliner, the big attention grabber in that last group of bicycles is almost certainly the customized 1953 Schwinn DX Cruiser from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The saddle might not be bespoke, but everything else sure is.

The museum itself is, as always, free. “Cycle Thru!” is not. However, admission to the bicycle exhibit also includes another paid exhibit at the museum. Until May 4, that second exhibit is “Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior!“. After that, “Cycle Thru!” will be paired with “Farm to Table: Food and Identity in the Age of Impressionism“. I’m sure “Farm to Table” will be a very good show, but man, I sure liked the Sikander exhibition. The photo above is of the second edition of her sculpture “NOW”. The first edition is on permanent display outside the Appellate Courthouse in Manhattan

As the museum’s description of the exhibit states, Shahzia Sikander works “in a variety of mediums—painting, drawing, print, digital animation, mosaic, sculpture, and glass,” and I believe the exhibit contains examples of every one of them. The first item shown here, “Provenance the Invisible Hand“, combines silkscreening and hand painting. The second, “Arose“, is a glass mosaic. A detail from its center is here.

“Liquid Light II” is painted glass. “Promiscuous Intimacies” is a bronze sculpture. I made myself comfortable on a futon and watched the “Parallax” digital animation but somehow missed its description, so I am including a capture from a PDF of exhibit labels here.

I also missed any onsite description for “NOW”, so am including a capture of the PDF for that as well. It is here. As I did some fairly casual research on Sikander, I learned of an 18-foot statue named “Witness” that is similar to the 8-foot “NOW”. On July 8, 2024, while on display at the University of Houston, “Witness” was beheaded. Although an anti-abortion group had protested the statue’s presence in February, nothing is known that connects the group with the decapitation. Sikander explained her desire to not have the statue repaired with, “The damage reflects the hateful misogynistic act and it should not be forgotten.”

A Birthday in Hoosierland

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I set another personal age record yesterday. Even though the celebration was spread over three days and 300 miles, I am reporting it with a blog post rather than a multi-page trip journal for no particular reason although laziness could be a factor. The seeds were planted when I saw that Jason Wilber and Dave Jacques (John Prine’s long-time accompanists) had a concert planned in Chattanooga. I was interested, but before I could act on that, a date in Jasper, Indiana, was announced. When I realized that the Jasper concert was on my birthday and that a single front-row seat was available, I grabbed that seat and built the rest of the party around it.

Things got started on Thursday with breakfast at a favorite restaurant just inside the Indiana border. Folks at the State Line Restaurant make their own goetta (in and on the omelet) and strawberry jam (soon to be all over the toast), which makes it one of the best places ever to start a birthday party. The restaurant is not only on the state line; it is also on US-50, and that’s what I headed west on.

Although the trip was organized around a concert, this turned out to be the splurge of the outing. I visited the West Baden Springs Hotel with a group of friends back in 2007. At that time, it had only been open for a few months following a long closure and major restoration. I told myself I would stay there someday, and today, a little over seventeen years later, I did.

I stayed in this room and ate dinner at the hotel’s Ballard’s Restaurant, which uses a small section of the 200-foot diameter “Eighth Wonder of the World” dome as its dining area. The photos are from and of my table. That’s baked cavatappi on the plate and Trash Panda blonde ale in the glass.

Friday started with breakfast at Nila’s Place and ended with dinner at Schnitzelbank. When I began looking into Jasper eateries, Schnitzelbank consistently appeared as one of the best in town. I penciled it in as a likely spot for my birthday dinner. Then I went looking for a fish fry for the Friday night I would be in Jasper. It did not take long for me to discover that Schnitzelbank holds a very popular seafood buffet every Friday during Lent. So, a seafood buffet became my Friday fish fry, and I got rid of any problem I might have coordinating dinner at this very popular restaurant with the Saturday night concert. Here’s that buffet from one end to the other.

I definitely lucked out on my birthday breakfast spot. I’m pretty sure that everyone else at a rather busy Cranberries knew each other, and the waitress called me honey multiple times. I found a pretty good place for dinner, too. The fact that Pub ‘N’ Grub was about a block from the concert venue was a big plus. With the steady rain, I wished it were closer.

The Astra Theater is not exactly on the town square, but its entrance is accessed through an opening between two buildings at a corner of the square. It opened as a movie theater in 1936 and operated as a movie house until closing in 2002. After much refurbishing, it reopened in 2018 as a combination movie theater and performance venue.

That front-row seat was great for hearing and for seeing but not so great for photographing. Jason and Dave played a bunch of Prine songs and told a bunch of Prine stories. Sam Lewis and Andy West, both friends of John’s, joined them for a few songs and shared their own stories. This was a great kickoff to a tour they are doing, which will include a variety of guests at the different shows. Yeah, it’s a pretty good way to spend a birthday.

ADDENDUM 7-Apr-2025: Partially because they didn’t fit smoothly into the narrative and partly because I wanted to make sure the post was ready for Sunday morning, I omitted some of the things I did other than eating and sleeping. I doubt anyone is surprised that visiting breweries filled some of my idle time. I reached West Baden Springs way too early for check-in on Thursday, so I drove about fifteen miles south to check out Patoka Lake Brewing. On Friday, I tried out Saint Bebedict’s Brew Works in Ferdinand, and I also visited the Dubois County Museum in Jasper. I took no external pictures there and very few inside. A 1910 Sears Runsbout did catch my eye inside the large and impressive museum. Part of Saturday was filled with visits to the Santa Claus Brewing Company in Santa Claus and Yard Goat Artisan Ales in Huntingburg.

A Pair of Urani

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I have been to the original Uranus Fudge Factory in Missouri a few times since it opened in 2015. With the opening of the second Indiana “factory” outside of Richmond in December, there are now a total of three. The first Indiana “factory” opened three years ago in Anderson. I visited both of the Indiana stores on Friday, which I guess means I could do a “My Caboddle” post on them if I wanted.

The Missouri location is marked by an elaborate giant neon sign and a twenty-foot-tall Muffler Man style statue of Uranus Mayor — and owner — Louie Keen. Richmond has the huge block letter sign in the opening photo and a pair of not-so-tall Mayors. It also has a 110-foot cross. The cross was left by the previous owner, New Creations Chapel, much like someone might move and leave behind a couch that doesn’t fit in the U-Haul truck they rented.

Mayor Keen is not ten years old, but either has a really good memory or took really good notes on every potty joke that made him laugh at that age. The potties here, of course, have jokes. The establishment’s name lets you know what to expect, but there is a line that the signs, slogans on merchandise, and endless double entendres from employees do not cross. If you can laugh like a ten-year-old boy, you’ll be just fine.

There is, naturally, merchandise aplenty. Uranus, MO, sits beside Historic Route 66, and the inventory there reflects that. The Richmond store sits beside US 40 and could be considered to be on the National Road. Road fans should note, however, that it is not on the National Old Trails Road. It is on the stretch of National Road bypassed by the Dayton Cutoff, which the NOTR followed.

And yes, there is fudge; really good fudge in a bunch of different flavors. I left with a little Praline Pecan and a little Mint Chocolate. Uranus ice cream and sodas are also available, but I skipped both in Richmond. Gotta save something for the day’s other Uranus.

Fudge and ice cream might make you think of an amusement park, and Uranus has a bit of that, too. There is a shooting gallery in a back corner and a Vortex Tunnel near the exit. Without that handrail, there is no doubt that I would have been sprawled on the floor within just a couple of steps. Outside, the animatronic dinosaurs will be turned on “any day now” and will eventually guard a miniature golf course.

I then moved on to Anderson, IN. There is no statue of Mayor Keen here. I guess that could be him dressed as an astronaut, but I doubt it. The real Louis Keen is on the premises, however. The Anderson fudge factory opened on April 1, 2022, and is celebrating its third anniversary a tiny bit early with a party on Saturday featuring a fudge eating contest. One of the employees I spoke with indicated that Louis was next door, resting up for the big day.

Standing in front of the main building is something featured at all three locations: a fully functioning Zoltar. Here is the one at Richmond. The inside is packed with fudge and merchandise.

In Anderson, ice cream is served in a separate building. I got pistachio. The Anderson Putt Pirates Mini Golf, featuring the deep blue sea, is beyond the ice cream parlor. There are some dinosaurs and other figures here and there, but they are not animatronic, and they are not hanging out at the golf course.

I will close with this pictorial observation from the Richmond factory and my own observation about this post’s title. When I looked for the correct plural of Uranus, I was told that it was a proper noun and there was no need for a plural. Maybe so, but that was before Louie Keen got involved.

Cincy’s Fire Fighting Heritage

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I once ate dinner here. It was sometime in the 1980s. The company I worked for held a banquet for a sales conference here, and we were all allowed to tour the museum before the meal. I recall that I found the Cincinnati Fire Museum quite interesting at the time, but for some reason gave those memories the better part of four decades to fade. During Saturday’s visit, I did find a few pieces of equipment to be somewhat familiar, but I don’t really remember anything about the layout of the museum and have a hunch it has changed more than a little since I was here.

Steps — or for adventurous youngsters, a pole — lead to a lower level where the oldest items in the museum are on display. The city’s first fire engine has been lost to history, but its second survives. It is a pumper built by William C. Hunnerman of Boston in 1816. With a crew of twelve, it could throw water up to 133 feet. The massive drum was Cincinnati’s fire alarm from 1808 to 1824. After the city became too big for the drum to be heard by all, a bell took over, and the drum fell on hard times, which included a period of being used as an oat bin before someone recognized its importance and started to take better care of it. Bored-out logs like the one here were once common components in city water systems. When firemen reached the scene of a fire, they might drill a hole in the nearest pipe to access the water, then plug and mark it for possible reuse in the future. The name “fire plug” has outlived wooden pipes and hand drills by a bunch.

Before the middle of the nineteenth, things called fire engines were merely pumps that were usually mounted, almost always accompanied by some sort of tank, on wheels. Manpower pulled the engines to fires, and manpower operated the pump once they arrived. In 1853, Shawk and Latta, a Cincinnati company, developed the first practical steam pump for fighting fires. Cincinnati soon gained a reputation as a supplier of firefighting equipment. The horse-drawn fire engine (rear view here) was built in 1884 by the Ahrens (later Ahrens-Fox) Fire Engine Company, who had obtained the Latta patents in 1868.

At almost exactly the same time that steam power was dramatically changing firefighting equipment, an equally dramatic change was occurring with the firefighters. Boston began paying some of its firefighters in 1679. Cincinnati went further in 1853 and is considered to have established the nation’s first fully paid fire department. In 1873, Cincinnati firefighters were forbidden from holding other jobs, making them truly professional.

Closing things out is a pair of twentieth-century Ahrens-Fox fire engines. The chain-driven Model M-4 was delivered to Cincinnati’s Company 13 in 1918. The 1958 cab forward Model ECB is the last fire engine ever produced by Ahrens-Fox. It was retired in 1981.

Early TV Museum

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I have more than once seen the Early Television Museum mentioned in posts about under-the-radar museums in Ohio and told myself I should go there sometime. When that happened while early Cincinnati TV history was fresh in my mind from my recent visit to the Voice of America Museum, I decided now was the time. I went Saturday and was quite impressed.

The Kuba Komet in the opening photograph might be the newest item in the museum. I picked it not because of its age but because I thought it the most eye-catching thing there. It’s from England and was, in 1962, a complete entertainment system with a turntable and AM/SW radio concealed by panels. At 7 feet wide and 5 foot 7 inches tall, it was probably a bit intimidating.

I’m not sure what the oldest item is in the museum, but it must be something in the mechanical television gear from the 1920s and 1930s. There is a description of just how mechanical television works on the wall, but it did not help me much. To me, mechanical TV might be even more mysterious than electronic TV.

Apparently, the British were a step or two ahead of us during the earliest days of television. Most of the displayed items from the mechanical era are British. This is a British electronic television from 1938. It originally sold for about 135 pounds (approx. 11,612 pounds or 15,029 dollars today). The earliest picture tubes were often quite long and were mounted vertically to reduce their footprint. Mirrors allowed viewing while seated.

Television was introduced to Americans at the 1939 World’s Fair, and these two General Electric models were part of that introduction. Apparently, G.E. was making some picture tubes short enough to mount horizontally. Both models were priced somewhere around $600 ($13,626 today).

My earliest memory of television comes from 1950 when I was bribed with a Coke to sit quietly on top of the cooler while my Dad and a few other men watched the Saturday (I think) fights at the village’s only store on a screen about the size of one of the smaller ones in these pictures. Most items on display have a placard with considerable information about the item and most of those placards have a QR code that accesses even more information on the museum’s website. There is a tremendous amount of history on display here.

Cincinnati Celebrates Bock

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Predictions of rain or snow during this year’s Cincinnati Bockfest parade were on and off over the last few days, and with them, my own plans to attend. At the last hour, I decided to go, but at the last minute almost reversed course as a few drops of water appeared on my windshield on the way there. I ultimately put my trust in the weather reports and arrived at the parade launch point about forty-five minutes before launch time. The parade naturally took some hits during the COVID-19 pandemic, but I thought it had pretty much recovered when I was last here in 2022. In years past, this area has been filled an hour or more before the parade so maybe those rain predictions had succeeded in scaring off a number of attendees.

Even with what I thought was a slightly off crowd, Arnold’s was packed, and I didn’t even try to get inside. Instead, I joined this line at a booth where four local bock beers and pretzels from event sponsor Servatii were being served. The complete lack of sunlight and the slightly damp air made things feel quite a bit colder than the 46 degrees the thermometer registered.

Bock in hand, I roamed the staging area a bit and grabbed pictures of perennial favorites the Moerlein Goat and Arnold’s Pushable Bathtub. Sadly, Arnold’s Gas Powered Bathtub was nowhere in sight. The Clyffside float is new to me (I think).

I also got a shot of a self-propelled wheeled goat being interviewed and a group photo of the lovely but reserved ladies of the Monthly Parking Available dance team. This was one of three dance teams in the parade, but one of my longtime favorites, the Red Hot Dancing Queens, was not among them. Their Facebook page shows no activity since May 2023, so I fear they are no more. Bummer.

When the parade started, I missed seeing Jim Tarbell until he was directly in front of me and had to scurry up the street to get this shoddy shot of Cincinnati’s favorite politician, promoter, and parader. I’m not sure why I missed the 2023 parade. I missed — or at least mostly missed — the 2024 parade because of a concert scheduled for nearly the same time. The venue was right on the parade route so I did see a bit of it in passing. I even grabbed photos of Mr. Tarbell and the big goat.

I really didn’t do any better in capturing the 2025 parade than I did in 2024. I knew before I arrived I would not be following the parade to Bockfest Hall/Tent and sampling multiple beers as I’ve typically done. As it passed, I mostly watched and chatted with friends, with little effort put into recording it. Some of that was due to weather, but most of it was due to age. Though it seemed a little shorter this year than in years gone by, it is still one of Cincinnati’s coolest parades, and no doubt the four Official Bockfest Halls and eighteen Official Bockfest Venues were sites of great fun. I expect to be back next year, and maybe I’ll walk the parade route, but probably not. Bock on, young ‘uns. Bock on.

Cincinnati Chili Week II

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Cincinnati Chili Week is back. Today is the final day of its second coming, so you can still participate if you’d like. I’m taking the day off after participating in all six of the week’s previous days. Although there are no actual repeats from last year, the list of visited restaurants looks kind of familiar. Just one entry is 100% new to me, and I only avoided full on repeats by patronizing different locations of three restaurant chains. That is not the fault of event organizers. It’s mine.

There are several interesting restaurants on their list that don’t make my personal list of candidates because the only chili they serve is on cheese coneys or in bowls. I simply don’t care for cheese coneys, and although I don’t really dislike chili by the bowl, I can’t say that I really like it either. To be entirely honest, I guess what I do like is pasta and cheese, and I have learned to enjoy both chili and marinara toppings because I Iive in Cincinnati.

Monday: Chili Hut was not one of my stops during last year’s Chili Week, but I have eaten here before. Their primary mode of operation is as a food truck, but they do have a brick-and-mortar location in Loveland that kept regular hours for a short period and is now open on special occasions like Chili Week. Their chili is meaty and slightly on the spicy side. My only previous visit was during the summer of 2022 when the Loveland location was open full-time.

Tuesday: This is the only completely new to me restaurant on this year’s agenda. Since Cincinnati’s chili scene was started by a couple of Greek emigrants, having a 4-way at Mezedes, a restaurant started and operated by real Greeks from Greece, might be seen as going back to the beginning. The chili here is fairly meaty and definitely spicy but not painfully so,

Wednesday: This was my first time at Champions Grille, but I have eaten Empress Chili before, which is what they serve, so I can’t count this as a totally new experience. Empress is where Cincinnati Chili first began back in 1922, and at one time there were several Empress Chili parlors in the area. Just one remains, in Alexandria, KY, but there are other places like Champions that license the name and recipe. I feel that Empress is one of the mildest chilis in the area, so it might be a good one for noobies to start with,

Thursday: The rest of the week is filled with almost repeats. I included the original (but moved slightly) Blue Ash Chili in last year’s chili week. As many as three locations of this small chain have existed in the past. Now, there are just two. I believe I’ve eaten at the Tri-County location before, but it has been remodeled and was not at all familiar. The 4-way, however, was very familiar. It’s a personal favorite with what I consider just the right amount of spice, meat, and cheese.

Friday: The next almost repeat from the inaugural Cincinnati Chili Week is Dixie Chili. I visited the original location in Newport, KY, last year, and I know I have eaten at the restaurant on Dixie Highway, but the tiny chain has three locations, which means one remained for a first-time visit. This is the Covington store where I enjoyed a familiar and tasty 4-way.

Saturday: As I did last year, I made Gold Star the sixth and final 4-way supplier in this year’s run. Last year, I simply went to the nearest location which I guess could be called my “regular” Gold Star restaurant. I did not want to repeat that but had little criteria for selecting a different location from the 50+ partictpants in the promotion. The very first Gold Star was in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Cincinnati. It’s long gone but I decided to visit — for the first time — that neighborhood’s current Gold Star restaurant. I always think of Gold Star chili as spicy but it isn’t really hot spicy. It’s just flavorful spicy.

Voice of America Museum Revisited

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The nearby National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting reopened last month after a seven-month closure for refurbishing. I visited the museum back in 2022 but had been hearing about the update and decided to fill an idle Saturday with a return visit. One thing that is different from the last time is noticeable from the outside. Visitors now enter from the side rather than the front. I’m guessing that’s part of the recent rework, but it might have been that way beforehand.

I arrived a few minutes ahead of the day’s first guided tour, and I used those minutes to look over the Cincinnati radio and TV displays near the entrance. Cincinnati was a real leader in the early development of both forms of broadcasting. The pictures are of the Larry Smith Puppets and the Ruth Lyons set. Smith came to fame on the Uncle Al Show and later had a show of his own. Ruth was a true pioneer in daytime talk TV. Note the converted-to-color Predicta TV next to Ruth’s sofa.

When I visited in 2022, the display of Cincinnati’s commercial broadcasting history was kind of like a big attic. These nicely designed exhibits are typical of the improvements made during the recent refurbishing. 

When the United States entered World War II, Cincinnati’s WLW was using this 50,000-watt transmitter to broadcast entertainment to South America via shortwave. The newly created Voice of America initially rented the transmitter and started broadcasting on February 1, 1942, less than two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In the second picture, Joe, our guide, demonstrates how shortwave signals reflect off of the ionosphere and bounce around the globe.

The Volksempfänger (people’s receiver) existed to bring Nazi propaganda into German homes, and USSR-built transistor receivers did the same for the Soviet Block. The VOA never managed to get its programming to the Volksempfängers, but the BBC did. People figured out how to tweak the Soviet radios to pick up both. Incidentally, VOA has never broadcast propaganda, rightfully believing that broadcasting the truth is more effective.

Within about a year and a half, the building that is now the museum was complete, equipment was in place, and a huge array of antennas was erected. The last picture is just the front panels of the 250,000-watt transmitter, which is not just room-sized — it’s a room. I think at least half of our tour group stepped inside at the same time without a hint of crowding.

Here is something left over from World War II that is still pretty useful. 

Book Review
Leaving Tinkertown
Tanya Ward Goodman

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My October Tinkertown visit began with a nice chat with owner Carla Ward. We had exchanged a few emails when I reviewed her 2020 book, The Tinker of Tinkertown, so of course, that was a topic, and talking about that book naturally led to her mentioning that the Tinker of Tinkertown’s daughter had also written a book about her dad. Leaving Tinkertown was published about a month after what had been my most recent visit to the museum, so maybe I can be forgiven for not knowing about it. It took a while for the copy that went home with me in October to reach the top of my reading list, but once it did, it quickly made an impression. Tanya Ward Goodman has remarkable writing talent — and she’s not afraid to use it.

There is a lot of not being afraid, or more accurately overcoming fear, in Leaving Tinkertown. Ross Ward, Tinkertown’s creator and Tanya’s father, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease at age 57. Everyone around him had plenty of fear to overcome.

Tanya was living in Los Angeles at the time but was present in New Mexico when the diagnosis was delivered and even moved back to the museum that had been her childhood home for a while to help with things as the disease progressed. On the day of the diagnosis, she found herself remembering stories her dad told her as a child and wondering just how the plaques and tangles the doctor tried to describe would affect her father’s brain. She asks herself, “Will he survive this? If he doesn’t, who will tell the story?”

It seemed pretty obvious that it would be Tanya who told the story, and that sort of reinforced the idea that the book was about Ross Ward. I did certainly learn a lot about the incredibly creative artist from this book, but I soon realized that the book really was about its author. I suppose I should have known that from the title.

Tanya’s life wasn’t exactly typical. That her parents divorced and her dad remarried when she was quite young is hardly unusual, but that her mother and stepmother were both important influences as she grew up was a bit so. Even more unusual were occasional trips with her father as he traveled the country, painting rides and signs for carnivals and the like. The house she grew up in had walls made of concrete and empty bottles. It was filled, like a museum, with her dad’s artwork, and part of it was an actual museum open to the public.

Alzheimer’s is a main character in the book. When Ross is diagnosed with it, his mother insists on leaving South Dakota to be with her son in New Mexico. Before long, the disease had grabbed her too. It moves fast and is a sort of highspeed preview of what to expect with Ross. Tanya writes about the strain this places on everyone in the family with complete frankness and uncommon skill. This is what I had in mind when I spoke of her not being afraid to use her writing talent.

Of course, she must have overcome a considerable amount of fear in writing about other aspects of her life, such as the budding romance she put on hold in California to spend time in New Mexico. And overcoming fear and other emotions surely played a role in dealing with all those issues in real life, too.

I have some experience with Alzheimer’s. It is what took my dad. But he was in his 80s, not 50s, and was as far from rebellious as it is possible to be. Also, I was close to it for only a few months and not a few years. So, there are many problems Tanya and others had to deal with that I cannot relate to. But watching a guy that could once do anything turn into someone who can do nothing… Yeah, that’s tough.

Leaving Tinkertown is part of the Literature and Medicine Series from the University of New Mexico Press. Part of their stated mission is to showcase “the texture of the experience of illness,” which this book does incredibly well. It’s been out for more than a decade now, so I don’t think anyone would call it a spoiler if I let it be known that the budding romance bloomed and that Tanya is happily back in LA with a husband and a couple of kids.

Leaving Tinkertown, Tanya Ward Goodman, University of New Mexico Press (August 15, 2013), 6 x 9 inches, 232 pages, ISBN 978-0826353665
Available through Amazon.

Happy Lupercalia

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Two weeks ago, I had nothing planned for this blog and was preparing to dust off an old Groundhog Day or Imbolc post when I spotted a notice for a motorcycle show on Groundhog Day Eve. That led to Beer and Bikes, and the Imbolc and Groundhog posts were left on the shelf for another day. When I found myself in the same situation around Valentine’s Day, I got to wondering if Valentine’s Day had the same relationship with older, often pagan, holidays that days like Easter, Christmas, and Candlemas have. After all, its full name is Saint Valentine’s Day.

For me, the answer is probably. Almost all online articles about the history of Valentine’s Day mention the Roman feast of Lupercalia but most stop short of firmly linking the two with phrases like “many believe” there is a connection or that a connection “has been suggested”. Count me among the many who believe.

Lupercalia comes from the Latin word lupus which means wolf. Theories about its association with the feast include a deity that protected herds from wolves and the wolf (pictured above) that kept Romulus and Remus alive so they could get Rome started. Some descriptions of Lupercalia imply it was a one-day event held on February 15. Others say it was a three-day affair that filled the 13th, 14th, and 15th.

Regardless of how long they say it lasted, everybody describes it as a quite raucous celebration. Participants were drunk and naked. Men sacrificed goats and dogs then whipped women with strips of the animal’s skins to increase fertility. At some point — which I assume was after the slaughter, skinning, and whipping — men and women were paired up by lot for the duration of the festival. Trysting with a possibly blood-splattered random lady after trying to make her more fertile doesn’t seem all that wise or even fun, but times were different.

That the Christian Church would want to replace that with something more sedate seems natural, but the origins of Valentine’s Day are not well documented. There seems to be no shortage of saints named Valentine. Two are connected to February 14 by virtue of reportedly being executed on that date in different years. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates a different Saint Valentine on July 6 and yet another on July 30. One of those guys executed on that special day in February was sentenced to die because he persisted in marrying Christian soldiers when the Roman emperor forbade it. That could be what initially got the day associated with love and romance, but I’m betting it was the Lupercalia lotteries.

Associating romance with the day really picked up steam after Chaucer published “The Parlement of Foules” in 1375, and a few Valentine cards were sent between lovers during the next couple of centuries. Then Cadbury came up with heart-shaped boxes of candy for the day in 1868, and Hallmark started printing Valentine’s Day Cards in 1913. It is predicted that Americans will spend $2.5 billion on candy this year and $1.4 billion on cards. Throw in jewelry, flowers, and romantic dinners, and the total bill is expected to reach $27.5 billion. I’m sure goats and dogs are also celebrating, but they’re doing it very quietly.

The opening photo is of the Capitoline Wolf in Cincinnati’s Eden Park, taken June 1, 2014. The statue has been admired, denounced, stolen, and replaced. Read about it here.