Monthly Archives: January 2024

Meltdown Winter Ice Festival

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The last weekend in January seems like a pretty safe time to have an ice festival in Richmond, Indiana. The average temperature there for both the 26th and 27th is 32°F which sounds just about perfect. But averages are not guaranteed. If the town’s Meltdown Winter Ice Festival had taken place a week or two ago, organizers might have wondered if people would brave the near-zero temperatures to attend. On Friday, their top concern was probably whether or not the ice sculptures would survive the day’s temperatures which were pushing fifty.

This is the Meltdown’s eleventh year but it somehow hid from me for the first decade. A significant part of it escaped me this year, too. I timed the hour-and-a-half drive to give me time for dinner before the first item on the schedule. I parked near Jack Elstro Plaza where big blocks of ice were being unloaded and food trucks were setting up. I ate at a local restaurant as I worked my way to the historic district. An online map indicated where sculptures would be but those I walked by were empty. It eventually sunk in that all carving was to be done on-site and was just starting Friday evening. All ice festivals I’ve attended had on-site carving but others also had some sculptures finished elsewhere and trucked in ready to display.

I continued along the path indicated by the map. It included several blocks of Main Street and it was on Main, in the vicinity of Jack Elstro Plaza, that I saw my first ice sculpture of the day. A fellow adjusting the sponsor tag as I approached told me it had just been finished a very short time before. There was already evidence of melting and I had to wonder if it would make it through the night.

Back at the plaza, things had picked up considerably while I was walking and eating. Several sculptures were nearing completion and perhaps would soon be positioned around town like the one I had seen on Main Street.

A couple completed sculptures appear to have already been moved from the carving area to display positions around the plaza. Or maybe they had been carved in place. I’m still not really sure how all this works.

The food trucks were all operating and the igloos scattered around the plaza area had a few occupants although I believe they had entered out of curiosity rather than a need to keep warm. I went through all of the food trucks looking for a cup of coffee but came up empty. Maybe if it had been fifteen or twenty degrees cooler, some enterprising vendor would have coffee or hot chocolate on their menu. And maybe those igloos would have been completely filled.

So I learned that showing up when the event first opens is not a wise move in terms of looking at completed sculptures. I had intentionally picked Friday over Saturday because I thought Saturday might be too crowded. I had only myself to blame for feeling a little disappointed when I started for home.

I was not disappointed enough to drive back to Richmond on Saturday but I did check in on things remotely. Rain might have reduced crowd size somewhat but there was still a good turnout and there was never any thought of canceling the festival’s main event, the Meltdown Throwdown, because of the rain. I was surprised to learn that this timed competition between two teams of carvers was being streamed live for the first time. The teams carve in three ten-minute segments. The screen captures are from the beginning of the second and third segments and after it is all over. The winner, selected by audience volume, was the iguana from Team Ice with a tongue carved separately and attached in the final moments. The guitar on Team Fire’s rocker was also a separately carved attachment. A second guitar was smashed in dramatic Pete Townsend fashion as time expired

Book Review
The Pioneers
David McCullough

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For the second time ever, I’m reviewing a book that was a recent “#1 New York Times Best Seller”. That’s two more than I anticipated when I started doing reviews on this blog. This one, like the other one (The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles), will be pretty shallow. There are plenty of reviews out there from high-profile professionals and an author with two Pulitzers to his credit does not really need a lot of praise from me. McCullough’s forte was (he died Aug 7, 2022) biographies (his Pulitzer winners were Truman and John Adams), and The Pioneers tells the story of the white man’s take over of Ohio through streamlined biographies of the men who led it. They are not household names like Truman or Adams. A few, such as Putnam and Cutler, might be household names in select Ohio households, but most would be recognized only by fairly serious students of regional history. The book is not organized around individual biographies. The tale of early Northwest Territory settlement is told chronologically with the lives of key figures smoothly embedded and expanded forward or backward or both without much interference with the flow of time.

The Pioneers was recommended to me by multiple sources both in print and in person. The personal recommendations were made by people familiar with my interest in “local” history. The book is centered on Marietta, the first settlement in the territory. Despite it being on the far side of Ohio from where I live, it is a place I have visited many times. I recognized the names Putnam and Cutler and a few others but I knew just the basics about any of them. Instead of writing what I’ve already noted is unneeded praise, I’m just going to identify a few of the things this book taught me about my own extended neighborhood. 

I knew that Marietta had been named after Queen Marie Antoinette but I did not know why. From McCullough, I learned that the Revolutionary War veterans who named the town felt that she was more influential than anyone in getting France to support the revolutionaries.

In 1800, a square-rigged brig sailed from Marietta down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Less than a dozen years later, in 1811, the first steamboat on the river traveled from Pittsburgh to New  Orleans, with a stop in Marietta, in an astonishing fourteen days.

Even though the ordinance establishing the Northwest Territory seemed to rule it out, there was a proposal during the writing of the Ohio Constitution to permit slavery up to 35 years of age for males and 25 years of age for females. It failed by one vote.

There are many more, of course, and I believe that almost everything in The Pioneers is true. I had to slip that “almost” in there because I did discover one goof in the book. McCullough correctly writes that the Shawnee chief Tecumseh was killed in October 1813 by forces commanded by William Henry Harrison. He incorrectly states that this occurred “in Ohio’s northwestern corner”. The correct location is Ontario, Canada, at the Battle of the Thames.

I certainly don’t want to end this on a negative tone so I guess I’ll offer some praise after all. Anyone claiming to know anything at all about Cincinnati history should be able to tell how Mount Ida was changed to Mount Adams to honor John Quincy Adams following his trip to the city to dedicate the observatory there. McCullough tells of that trip and of Adams’ stop in Marietta during his return to Washington. A few residents of Marietta, including Ephraim Cutler, accompanied the former president from there to Pittsburgh. McCullough’s reporting provides a warm and personal view of Adams that I quite appreciated.

The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, David McCullough, Simon & Schuster (May 5, 2020), 6 x 9.25 inches, 452 pages, ISBN 978-1501168703
Available through Amazon.

A Bigger Rear View

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My parents would be absolutely appalled to see something like this. It’s my Google Maps Timeline which I was reminded of in an email about a week ago. Seeing a record of their travels that they did not create would have truly alarmed my parents. They, and most of their generation, guarded their privacy to the nth degree. Subsequent generations, including mine, have each been a little less guarded than the one before. In at least one regard, I am less protective of my privacy than many of my own generation. That, of course, would be travel. A guy with a website that exists primarily to tell people about his road trips is obviously not going to be upset that somebody knows about them. I’m much more likely to be upset that more people don’t.

For any that are appalled or upset or even a little uncomfortable, please note that maintaining the timeline is enabled by a Google account setting called Location History. The email that reminded me of its existence also reminded me that I “can view, edit, and delete this data anytime in Timeline.” I cannot speak to how well disabling the feature or deleting the data works because I’m not interested in either.

The map above includes all data from when Google Maps started watching me sometime in 2014. A drop-down list goes back to 2010 but 2014 seems to be the first year with any data recorded. There are also drop-downs for month and day for drilling down to some details.

Here are the maps for all of 2014, the month of December, and Christmas Eve when I drove from Augusta, GA, to Savannah, GA. At the day level, the route and most stops are shown.

This post was triggered by that Google Maps reminder email, of course, but also by the fact that this blog’s 2023 in the Rear View post was fresh in my mind. There is another view of 2023 at the right.

Clearly, all of my travel that Google Maps knows about (i.e., mid-2014 and later) was in North America. To be honest, that’s also true of nearly all of my travel before that but there were a few exceptions. Tripadvisor is a service I joined in 2005. It provides a map of contributions and also allows direct entry of locations for the map. I’m including the Tripadvisor map for an even bigger look in the rear view. Some of the stuff on that map is from the last century.

I had this post completed and scheduled when an online discussion reminded me of yet another view of my travels. The image at right is my current map of U.S. counties visited from the MobRule website. I included the May 1, 2017 version in the book published after I visited my 50th state (“50 @ 70“). The current count is 1887 of 3144 or 60%. I failed to record those details about the 2017 map so cannot quantify travels since then but I think the only readily noticeable change between the two maps is a few more shaded areas in the northwest. As I said in 2017, maps like these are extremely misleading in terms of territory covered. Visiting New York County in New York State (the smallest on the mainland) let me shade in less than 23 square miles of area. I got to shade in just under 145,900 square miles when I visited Yukon-Koyukuk County in Alaska.

MobRule also supports tracking county equivalents in Canada, Mexico, Great Britain, and U.S. Territories. The only one of these I use is Canada where I have accumulated just 62 of 669 or 8.5%. Overlaying these counts on Google Maps is supported but zooming seems to lose the data. Open Street Map is also supported and does not have this problem. The map at left is from Open Street View.

Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption

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Some things stay on my to-do list for a long time because they are far away or expensive or have very restricted access. Others have none of these issues but still hang around because, I’m guessing, they don’t really fire up my curiosity. Apparently, the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption is in that latter category. It is about twenty miles from my current residence and some places I’ve lived have been even closer, it is free, and is usually open to visitors from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM, Monday through Friday. I have heard about the place and how stunning it is for decades but Thursday was the first time I’ve been inside. It was, in fact, the first time I’ve stopped to look at the outside. Not sufficiently curious I suppose. It is not a duplicate or even an attempted replica of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. There are many similarities but there are also differences. The most common phrase used when describing the Kentucky church’s connection to the church in France is “inspired by”. Make that “heavily inspired by”.  

Construction started in 1895 and was suspended, they say, in 1915. I doubt anyone is too surprised to hear that the place has not really been frozen since then. Installation of the numerous, immense, and famous stained-glass windows occurred before, during, and after World War I. Most of the fantastic wood carving was done after World War II. Twenty-four statues of saints were added to the front of the building in 2021. At least one news article said that the cathedral was now complete as the statues were the final piece of what Bishop Camillus Paul Maes, who got this whole project rolling, envisioned. I had no idea whom I was photographing but have since found a spotter’s guide that identifies the fellows in the photo as Pope Pius X, Patrick, Benedict, and Joseph.

Perhaps the single most eye-catching thing in a building filled with eye-catchers is the stained-glass window in the north transept. At 67 feet tall and 24 feet wide, calling it the Great Window is certainly justified. It is the largest in the western hemisphere and second largest in the world. It depicts the Council of Ephesus held in 431 AD. It is even pretty impressive from the other side.

The south transept holds the 1932 Wicks pipe organ and a 26-foot rose window. I’ve included a better view of the organ and a different view of the window. It looks pretty good on the outside too.

The Chapel of St. Joseph contains some of the carved wood I mentioned and there is more behind the Sanctuary.

A bit farther beyond the Sanctuary is the St. Paul Relic Shrine. Most of the relics are centuries old, of course, but the shrine itself was dedicated in August of 2021 so is quite new. Some of the reliquaries are even newer. The reliquary holding the carpal bones of St Paul the Apostle is one of two described as “recently commissioned ” in an article dated March 4, 2023.

In theory, I could have stayed until 3:00 but an award ceremony for students from Covington Latin School was scheduled for 2:00, and as the hour approached a small but increasing number of pews became occupied. I find taking pictures inside an active church to always be a bit uncomfortable and doing it with an audience even more so. With more haste than was truly necessary, I snapped photos of the 1859 Schwab organ, the Duveneck murals, and one of the Stations of the Cross mosaics, signed the guest book, and exited the building just as the bulk of the students were starting up the ramp to the door.

As I headed to my car, I realized that I had not photographed one thing that I had intended to. Not long after I entered the cathedral I had a wonderful conversation with a volunteer named Roger. As we talked about modern additions like the wood carvings and the new statues on the front of the building, he pointed out a painting hanging near the Duveneck murals and told me that it was 500 (or maybe 400) years old but had been hanging there for just a couple of months. I eyed it from afar but forgot it when I was in the area. I also missed photographing the oft-mentioned gargoyles atop the building. That was not an oversight. The terra cotta figures were removed early last year and will be replaced by new ones cast the old-fashioned way. There was a ceremony when the saint statues were added so maybe there will be one when the gargoyles return. If there is, I might attend. I probably would not have attended the one for the statues even if I’d known about it. As Billy Joel sort of said, “I’d rather laugh with the gargoyles than cry with the saints”.

2023 in the Rear View

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The year in numbers with 2022 values in parentheses:

  • 7 (6) = Road trips reported
  • 81 (68) = Blog posts
  • 47 (35) = Days on the road
  • 2029 (1675) = Pictures posted — 866 (748) in the blog and 1,163 (927) in Road Trips

Everything went up this year. Everything that is except interest. I’ll discuss website traffic toward the end of this post but it’s probably not much of a spoiler to note that it continues its general decline. As for my own activity, I did get in one more trip than last year, and, unlike last year’s added trip, this one did translate to an increase in days on the road and pictures posted. Again, no trips from the year being reviewed made the top five but, unlike 2022 when there were no repeats from the previous year, the first four of 2023’s top five were repeats from 2022 and the fifth sort of was. Two of 2022’s top five blog posts made it again this year along with two brand new posts and one returning after an unusual absence. 

Top Blog Posts:

  1. Twenty Mile’s Last Stand
    Making its ninth appearance in the top five, this post about a nineteenth-century stagecoach stop turned roadhouse follows three consecutive seconds with its fourth first place. The previous three were in 2012, 2013, and 2019. It also ranked fourth in 2014 and fifth in 2018. On top of all that, this year the Twenty Mile’s Last Stand post accomplished something never before seen. In years past, the blog’s home page has always had more visits than any individual post but this time even it was bested by this post.
  2. Scoring the Dixie
    Like the Twenty Mile Stand post, this one moves up one spot from last year. It also appeared at third in 2015 plus first in 2020 and 2021 and fourth in 2012 and 2017. It describes my tracking of driven portions of the Dixie Highway. Because of some Conferedate-themed markers placed beside the road and what I consider a misunderstanding of the name, the Dixie Highway has been the subject of some negative stories in recent years. I’m not sure I entirely believe that “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” but I hope it is true in this case and that anyone brought here because of one of those negative articles sees that the Dixie Highway played an honorable and important part in the development of transportation in America.
  3. Review: A Christmas Carol
    Not many posts make the top five in their first year of existence. The full twelve months that posts from previous years have to accumulate visits is hard to compete with which makes the fact that this post did it in barely half a month almost unbelievable. A Christmas Carol has long been a favorite at Cincinnati’s Playhouse in the Park but was skipped in 2022 while a new theater was built. This post took a look at a new production in the new theater and that seems to have been something that quite a few people were interested in.
  4. Review: Route 66 Navigation
    This post, with the full name “Product Review — Route 66 Navigation — by Touch Media”, is also new for 2023. The product is a smartphone app that I wanted to review since its 2018 introduction but I did not get a chance to use it until the very end of 2022 then posted the review in February 2023. It was somewhat refreshing and quite encouraging to find that the product does just what it claims.
  5. My Wheels – Chapter 1 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner
    It’s baaaack! After slipping from the top five last year for the first time since it was published, the initial post in the My Wheels series returns in the fifth spot. Previous rankings have been first (2014, 2015, 2018), second (2013, 2016, 2017), third (2019, 2020), and fourth (2021).

Top Non-Blog Posts:

  1. Sixty-Six: E2E & F2F
    My third full-length drive of Historic Route 66 is back for its seventh top-five finish and its third finish in the top spot. It was also first in 2012 and 2021. In addition, it was second in 2019 and 2022, fourth in 2018, and fifth in 2015. The abbreviations in its name stand for End to End and Friend to Friend.
  2. Lincoln Highway West
    This 2009 trip was my first documented travel on the Lincoln Highway west of Indiana. It ranked third last year, fourth in 2020, and fifth in 2014.
  3. Lincoln Highway Conference 2011
    This Lincoln Highway-centered trip did not even appear in the top five until it took third in 2020 then placed first last year. It’s a good trip that adds all of US-36 and bits of the CA-1 and Route 66 to the Lincoln Highway bits.
  4. Kids & Coast
    This makes two fourths in a row for this 2008 Seattle to San Francisco trip. Like the 2011 Lincoln Highway trip above, it waited a long time to make the list but came in second in 2020 and is becoming a regular.
  5. Christmas MOP
    This is the top five finisher I said was sort of a repeat from 2022. The fifth-place non-blog entry in 2022 was the Christmas Escape Run of 2021. This year it is the Christmas Escape Run of 2022. My October Miles of Possibility trip had been cut short by COVID-19 so when Christmas came around I used a modified version of that unfulfilled itinerary for Christmas MOP. It may or may not be a coincidence that this trip is where I was able to study the Route 66 Navigation app for the review that was the fourth most popular blog post of 2023.

Blog visits edged up a bit but overall website visits continued to decline. I’m not completely confident that my web host is tracking and reporting statistics accurately but they are all I have. Overall visits dropped from 102,804 to 95,651. Blog visits rose from 4,187 to  4,366. Page views were completely out of sync with everything else last year when they hit an all-time high of 924,495. This year they are back in sync with the dropping visits at 651,826.

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