Author Archives: Denny

Chillin’ With Neon

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What would it take to get you to walk around outside in 28° weather? The subjects in the photo at right did it for me. As part of the ArtsWave Red Light Valentines Display, the American Sign Museum kept the outside signs illuminated for several hours on both Friday and Saturday nights, and I decided that was something I ought to see. I helped justify the trip downtown with one last drive across a favorite bridge just ahead of an extended closure.

The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge has had its share of brief closings over the last few years. Once it was closed until it could be inspected after being struck by a car. Then it was closed when pieces from one of its sandstone pillars started falling onto the roadway. A protective net, visible in the middle picture, allowed it to reopen. Recently, it was closed for its own protection when a fire closed the nearby Brent Spence Bridge carrying I-71/I-75, and the nineteenth-century suspension bridge was just too tempting to truckers with rigs far in excess of the bridge’s limits. It was reduced to a single lane a couple of weeks ago as crews prepare for a full closure on Monday. Repairs that include replacing deteriorated sandstone will keep it closed for nine months or so.

After crossing to Kentucky on the Roebling, I returned to Ohio on the now repaired Brent Spence, and headed to the Sign Museum where I was greeted by a brightly lit Holiday Inn sign.

I have seen these signs lit before, but only when some event was taking place in the museum. Having them all aglow with an empty parking lot and dark building was something new to me.

I was half expecting there to be a number of photographers flitting around the signs but I had the place all to myself. After twenty gloveless minutes of tripod toting and camera aiming, I had a pretty good idea why. As I drove back past the Holiday Inn sign, I found myself thinking that heated steering wheels might not be entirely frivolous.   

Have You Herd?

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Well, I have. Or at least I’m contributing. I got my first COVID-19 vaccination this week. I’m aware that not everyone can say this but for me the operation was smooth, the injection painless, and the side-effects non-existent. That actually seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Of the thirty or so people I know personally who have received at least one shot, three had a sore arm for a day and one of those sore arms was accompanied by a night of chills and fever. I’ve heard a higher percentage of these same people complain louder about the morning after effects of encounters with spicy foods or adult beverages.

I have seen some warnings about posting images of this card to social media. I’m sure they are well-intentioned and the warning is, in general, a reasonable one. However, it appears to me that the only personal information on the card is my name and birthdate, and those have been circulating on the World Wide Web for years. Even so, I don’t want to be totally irresponsible and completely ignore the warning so, inspired by Captain Yossarian’s censoring methods, I’ve blacked out the vowels and odd digits.

As you can see, this isn’t the first time I’ve willingly become part of the herd in an effort to avoid a devastating disease. The phrase “social distancing” had not yet been coined in the 1950s but, even without a catchy name, parents really worked hard at keeping their kids away from strangers during the frequent polio outbreaks. I suppose there were exceptions, but it seemed to me that pretty much everyone was ecstatic when vaccines became available, and there is no question that everyone was happy when those outbreaks stopped happening every year or so. It’s certainly unfortunate that not everyone sees the COVID-19 vaccines, or even the disease itself, in the same light that polio and associated vaccines were seen in the last century, but I have hope that we will all at least be happy when the outbreaks stop.

UPDATE 6-Mar-2021:

I got my second Moderna COVID vaccine injection yesterday. The operation was smooth, and the injection itself painless, but things got mildly unpleasant later. I don’t recall ever having any sort of reaction to a vaccination until last year. I received the first of two Shingrix (for shingles) shots in January and decided to get the second one at the proper time in March even though COVID had just hit. Getting that second shot was one of the very few times I was inside a pharmacy during the last year. I had a reaction to that shot that was unnervingly like COVID symptoms. For almost two days I had chills, a fever, a mild headache, and just generally felt like crap.

The cause of the COVID reaction was explained to me as follows and I imagine pretty
much the same thing applies to Shringrix.

Although none of the COVID vaccines being used contains any actual virus, either living or dead, they apparently resemble it quite a bit. Once injected, the first dose of vaccine runs around building defenses. When the second dose comes along, it’s pretty easy to mistake it for an attacking enemy. After all, the lighting isn’t very good in there. The two doses may do battle with each other until all the identities are worked out.

I got my shot a few minutes past 11:00 AM. When I went to bed around 10:00 PM, I noticed that my arm was sore where I got the injection. That in itself was kind of unusual. At almost precisely twelve hours after the shot I was hit with chills and aching joints. That lasted for an hour which I got through by piling on an extra blanket and putting my body in self-cuddling mode. The aching joints continue today along with a slightly elevated temperature (98.8 vs my normal 96.6). There have even been a few flashes of hot and cold but nothing like that first hour. I’m treating it with Girl Scout cookies.

Trip Peek #103
Trip #41
Zane’s Trace

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This picture is from my 2006 three day trip over Zane’s Trace in southeast Ohio. Now called the Olde Wayside Inn, the pictured building was named the Bradford Inn when it opened in 1804. It’s where I spent the first night of the trip. East of Zanesville, the National Road generally followed the 1797 Trace when it entered Ohio in 1825. Even so, there are many remnants of Zane’s Trace that are distinct from the National Road. I scheduled this outing to coincide with an open house at the National Road Museum east of Zanesville where a new guide to the road, written by Glenn Harper and Doug Smith was introduced.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Fear Is Still Very Scary, But…

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As election day 2020 neared, I found myself thinking about a blog post made in response to the election of four years earlier. Revisiting that post, Fear Is Very Scary, seemed a rather natural thing to do but the form of any revisit wasn’t obvious at all. In fact, I quickly decided that there wasn’t much value in even thinking about it until the results of the election were known. In 2016, I was traveling on election day, and the post I’m talking about was made a month later when I was back home and my thoughts had settled a bit. I was home for the most recent election but hit the road the very next day. A month later, I was again back home but this time my thoughts were not yet very settled. More importantly, neither was the election itself.

Some contended that the election remained unsettled even as major milestones were passed. All the vote counts — and several recounts — were completed and by December 9 all fifty states certified their totals. On December 14, members of the Electoral College met in every state and made their votes official. Either of these events should have settled things and allowed me to pick an angle to approach that four-year-old post. Neither did.

The last official milestone on the way to inauguration day was the counting of Electoral College votes by a joint meeting of the Senate and House of Representatives on January 6. It was obvious that this would not be the smooth and boring formality that it typically is, but I was confident that it would put to rest any real hopes of overturning the election, and, with that in mind, started to give some thought to how to reflect on the post from 2016 a few days ahead of the meeting. I decided against copying and updating the post. Instead, I would simply link to the post and comment on it. That 2016 post identified a number of occasions in my life that had been scary; Things like the Cuban missile crisis and Kennedy’s assassination. I ended the main part of the post with “I’ve seen the world survive some pretty deep piles of doo doo in the past. Today’s doo doo is different and may even be deeper in spots but history suggests that there’s a pretty good chance that the world will survive it too.”

I figured that the new post could point out that, yes, there had been some scares during the previous four years, but we had survived them and none were in the same class as those listed in the 2016 post. Then January 6 actually arrived. Violent insurrectionists actually breached the capitol and forced the lawmakers to evacuate. Many questions remain and numerous investigations are ongoing but among the few certainties is the fact that five people died. It is a pile of doo doo — some of it literal — that is clearly as big and as scary as any of those I listed in 2016. The mob was eventually removed and the counting completed, but even then more than half of the Republican Representatives and eight Republican Senators claimed to believe that the election was not settled. Instead of being able to express relief that the fears prompting that December 2016 post had not been entirely justified, this post must acknowledge a situation every bit as scary as the 1968 Democratic Convention.

Many arrests have been made and more are certain to follow. President Trump has been impeached and charged with “incitement of insurrection”. He will be tried by the Senate even though he is no longer in office. Conviction could prevent him from ever running for office again. A mix of rumors and credible threats of violence aimed at the inauguration of  President Biden prompted numerous closures and an unprecedented number of security forces in the nation’s capital for the event which went off without a hitch.

There are still plenty of things to worry about. Things like climate change, systemic racism, domestic terrorism, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic problems the pandemic has caused. Domestic terrorism includes that January 6th assault and there is still good reason to fear there might be more like it. We are hardly free of fear but the USA has managed yet another peaceful transfer of power and most people I know are both relieved and hopeful.

I don’t really know how to wrap up this post so I’m going to sort of copy from 2016. I tacked a song link onto the Fear Is Very Scary post. The song, Fear Is Never Boring, had nothing to do with the content of the post but I’d borrowed from its title. It was performed by a band, The Raisins, whose members, while no longer together, have all been — and continue to be — very active and important in Cincinnati’s music scene. As 2020 wound down, the guy who wrote Fear Is Never Boring released an album with an opening song that became a favorite of mine the instant I heard it. When I saw the official video a short time later, it too became a favorite and made me love the song even more. It’s tempting to think of it being written specifically for today but its roots go back to 2009. It is not inherently political at all but it is inherently hopeful and buoyant. Give it a look and a listen. You’ll feel better. I promise. Turn This Ship Around

My Memories — Chapter 2
Rockcastle Canoeing

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I see this new series as a place to dredge up any old thing that my thoughts bump into, but I’m going to stick with white water adventure for one more chapter. This story involves Kentucky’s Rockcastle River and a canoe rather than a raft. That’s the river in Kentucky Heartwood‘s picture at right. It’s the only whitewater river I ever rode down in a canoe and I only did it a handful of times. However, the river appeared as a very different creature on each of those visits. At low water, it was scenic and safe. There was some walking required but it was mostly to get past spots lacking enough water to float a loaded (or sometimes even an empty) canoe rather than a portage to avoid danger. It was also scenic and fairly safe at high water. The flow was fast but it carried boats over all but the largest of boulders. In between, even though it remained scenic, it was not entirely safe. This story is about a mid-level visit.

Accepted practice puts the heavier and/or more experienced member of a pair of canoeists in the rear. The majority of steering is done from the back end and having it deeper in the water than the front helps with that. I sat in the back for most outings but not this one. This time that spot was filled by a coworker and friend named Klaus. He may have been a little heavier than me but the main reason was that he was definitely more skilled than me. We worked pretty well together and this was a successful run at the Rockcastle with one exception. Exceptions, of course, are how you get stories.

Most of the group we were with were in kayaks. In fact, we may have had the only open boat on the outing. It’s not uncommon for canoes tackling white water to cover the space between paddlers with a tarp or some such or to strap in extra flotation such as blocks of styrofoam. Both serve to help keep some water out of the boat but we had neither. We were cautious, however. We walked ahead to scout several rapids and sometimes watched kayaks run them to help pick a line through. We did that at the location of our “exception”.

It was a series of two fairly close rapids. Neither would have been particularly scary but the two together made them significantly more challenging. After studying the spot from the shore, we decided that there was no way through the first rapid without taking on some water. There was a little space between the two rapids with a small eddy off to the side. Our plan was to duck into that eddy and bail out the boat before hitting the second bit of rough water. It was a good plan.

We ran the first rapid essentially as intended but took on more water than we’d hoped. My job was to plant a high brace in the eddy while Klaus powered us in. We didn’t make it. The half-flooded canoe was swept into the second rapid where it quickly became fully flooded. We were both separated from the canoe and I found myself under enough dark water to make me unsure of which way was up. I was well aware of how easy it is to get pulled into underwater passages between rocks from which escape is impossible. I honestly assumed I was a goner and recall thinking how stupid it was to drive 200 miles to drown when I could have done it much more conveniently in my bathtub.

I felt a rope brush my leg and instinctively grabbed it. It was, as I think I assumed, attached to the canoe although I had no idea whether it was headed to the surface or being pulled into an underwater crevice. My confusion did not last long as things quickly became brighter as the canoe pulled me upward and more sunlight penetrated the murky water. I was underwater for only a few seconds which apparently was not enough time to have my whole life pass before me even though I had briefly been convinced it was over.

Klaus, the water-filled canoe, and I were now floating in a calm pool below the rapids. We pushed the canoe to shore and sat on some rocks while catching our breath. We eventually emptied the canoe and headed on down the river without further incident.

There is no recording of the incident (it was the late ’70s) and no witnesses. The version I’m most fond of is the one with the canoe being so full of water from the first rapid that it was impossible to get it into that eddy. But there’s another version that I play back now and then when I want to feel guilty. In that version, I think that a better planted brace by a stronger canoeist could have saved things. Fortunately, a desire to feel guilty occurs very rarely.

My story is not very significant as Rockcastle River stories go. People have died on the river and boats have been destroyed. There are even incidents from my own trips that might be considered wilder. This story is firmly embedded in my memory for one reason and one reason only. It is the sole time I’ve been convinced that life was over… so far.

Writing the Rockcastle story caused me to remember one of my favorite “small world ” stories. Some friends stopped at a gas station while traveling through Pennsylvania. The stop was for gas but one of them had a desperate need to empty his bladder. He dashed to the station and past a door bearing the word “WOMEN”. There was a similar-looking door just beyond and he jerked it open to find a blonde female standing at a sink. He muttered some sort of apology as he hastily retreated but heard his name called as he shut the door.

“Don?” the blonde asked. “Bridgette?” he responded.

The women’s restroom had two doors and the lady Don encountered was Klaus’ wife Bridgette. Neither had any idea that the other was within a few hundred miles of the place or had ever stopped there before.

I’ve yet to meet up with a female friend in a women’s restroom in Pennsylvania but it’s been on the list ever since I learned it was possible.   

Trip Peek #102
Trip #65
A Visit to Garth

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This picture is from my 2008 Visit to Garth. In the real world, Route 66 is about 300 miles from my home. On TV, it’s only 60. The very first episode of the Route 66 TV series was set in the small out of the way town of Garth. Filling the role was the equally small and out of the way town of Concord, Kentucky. My visit was just a day trip, but — I’m serious about that out of the way thing — was pretty much a full day trip. I’m happy to report that I did get a much better reception than Tod and Buz had forty-eight years earlier.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

2020 in the Rear View

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The year in numbers with 2019 values in parentheses:

  • 2 (5) = Road trips reported
  • 65 (69) = Blog posts
  • 30 (47) = Days on the road
  • 1059 (1641) = Pictures posted — 496 (543) in the blog and 563 (1098) in Road Trips

It might be nice if 2020, like Dracula, simply did not appear in mirrors — rear view or otherwise — but the truth is, we’re going to be reflecting on this strange year a lot and for a long time. In last year’s Rear View post, I lamented a drop in travel. Trips, days on the road, and pictures posted were all down, but those were the good old days. This year the counts didn’t just drop, they plummeted. I do not, of course, have to guess at the cause. It is clearly the shutdowns and precautions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to that becoming a factor in mid-March, I had 2020 identified as a big travel year with plans for two major trips and several of medium-size. In the end, only one of the major trips and a single small trip actually took place. The top five trip journal entries were again for major trips including one repeat from last year. Neither 2020 trip made it. Only one new blog post made the top five and that was at the bottom behind four posts that were at least five years old.

Top Blog Posts:

  1. Scoring the Dixie
    This post ranked fourth when published in 2012 to describe my struggle with keeping track of sections of the Dixie Highway I had driven. It was third in 2015 when I announced that quest complete (as far as I knew then), and reappeared at number four in 2017. It takes over the top spot for its fourth appearance. I don’t doubt that some of the traffic is due to the misguided notion that the word “Dixie” is associated with the Confederacy and should, therefore, be removed from public view. On the other hand, an increasing number of people were brought to this website, and possibly to this post, by a search for “Dixie Highway map”. I believe that indicates an interest in the road and not just the name, and that I consider a good thing.
  2. Twenty Mile’s Last Stand
    This post was in the top five for the first three years of its existence then missed it for the next three. This year’s appearance secures another 3-in-a-row by scoring a second to go with three firsts (2012, ’13, 19), one fourth (2014), and one fifth (2018). The Twenty Mile House may be gone but it is clearly not forgotten.
  3. My Wheels – Chapter 1 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner
    The very first My Wheels post keeps its top five streak intact by racking up its second third place to go with three firsts and three seconds.
  4. Much Miscellany 2, Sloopy at 50
    There was so much miscellany in 2015 that it required two posts. This one placed fifth in that first year then dropped out of the top five for a couple of years. In making its fourth appearance, it lets me recycle a bad joke by noting that it hangs on 😉 to fourth place for the third consecutive year.
  5. Blocked
    This was the most popular of 2020’s new blog posts and the only one to crack the overall top five. It isn’t about travel or an event or an attraction. It is about social media — specifically, Facebook —  and I’m not exactly proud of that even though I am fairly active on the platform and don’t have any particular gripes with it. I avoid the head-on collisions that many enjoy but I will occasionally respond to a debunked claim with a link to some evidence of its incorrectness. I do this without adding my own comments and I’ve done it for claims from people of various persuasions. Some people apparently think fact-checking is somehow evil and I guess I encountered a couple of them. In the year just ended, my post about those encounters attracted more readers than any other.

Top Non-Blog Posts:

  1. Sixty-Six: E2E & F2F
    This was my third full-length drive of Route 66. It ranked first when it first appeared in 2012, disappeared for two years, reappeared at number five in 2015, then disappeared for two more years. It started its current climb in 2018 at fourth, then second, and now first. Why? I have no idea.
  2. Kids & Coast
    It’s hard to believe that this fly-and-drive trip from 2008 is just now making its first appearance in the top five. It started with a flight to Seattle where one of my sons lived and ended with a flight from San Francisco where my other son lived. In between the flights was a drive south along the coast. It was a great trip that should not have had to wait twelve years to get some attention.
  3. Lincoln Highway Conference 2011
    This is another great trip that is getting its first mention in a year-end review. At the time this trip was completed, it was my longest in days (25) and possibly miles (6698). It included driving a US Numbered Highway (36) end-to-end, plus a big chunk of Lincoln Highway, some California coast, and some pieces of Historic Route 66.
  4. Lincoln Highway West
    This 2009 trip isn’t a total stranger to the top five but it’s close. Its only previous appearance was in the number five slot in 2014. I referred to this trip as the one that clinched the Lincoln Highway for me despite knowing there were some alignments I had yet to cover. I claimed a clinch because I had driven at least one LH alignment from coast to coast.
  5. Alaska
    After a year’s absence, the reigning champion in both days (41) and miles (11,108) returns to the top five with a fifth to go with a second (2018), third (2016), and fourth (2017).

I was surprised to see that both website visits and blog views reversed a trend and increased a bit. Website visits went from 96,512 to 112,115 and blog views from 5,135 to 6,060. Page views again moved in the opposite direction and dropped from 726,399 to 670,115. When the reverse happened last year, I commented that fewer people are looking but they’re looking at more. I guess more people are now looking at less.

Last year I suggested that one reason for the drop in visits and views could be the fact that mailing list messages sent to Verizon, Yahoo, and AOL addresses were being refused during the last half of the year. This was the result of shared servers at my hosting company, Arvixe, being identified as spammers. This year’s increase cannot, however, be credited to solving that problem since it remained a factor until mid-October. Even then it wasn’t solved in the sense that Arvixe got things cleared up. It stopped being a factor when I did what I said I was considering last year and switched hosting providers. The switch to Bluehost was announced and explained in the blog post A New Web Home. l still have access to my installation at Arvixe and occasionally test the email there. The problem that caused me to move is still unresolved at the end of 2020.

Posts of Christmas Past

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I last spent Christmas in Cincinnati in 2005. I slipped out of town for Thanksgiving that year, and it went so well I did it again in 2006. Then, with a full week available at Christmas, I again hit the road to start a string of December twenty-fifths spent away from home that was unbroken until this year. My 2020 Christmas plans shared the fate of many others: COVID clobbered ’em. Whether or not a new streak is launched next year remains to be seen, but it’s a fact that there is no new Christmas trip journal entry for 2020. In its stead, I’m using the blog to recount the fourteen entries already there. All photos were taken on Christmas Day.

2006 — Natchez Christmas was organized around a drive of the Natchez Trace Parkway that began the day after Christmas. Christmas Eve and Christmas Night were spent in a room above the Under the Hill Saloon in Natchez, MS. It’s between the two white-fronted buildings in the picture.

2007 — I decided to go a bit farther south the next year for Crescent City Christmas. New Orleans had recovered sufficiently from Katrina’s 2005 devastation to welcome tourists to bolster the recovery effort, and it’s a pretty good place to celebrate anything. The tree and Joan of Arc statue are in front of the French Market.

2008 — My great-grandparents spent Christmas on the Alafia in 1920, and I tried to do something similar. I could not camp on the river bank as they did but I could stay in a nearby motel. On Christmas Day, I had breakfast at Showtown USA in nearby Gibsonton. At the time, Showtown still had plenty of carnival people as both employees and patrons.

2009 — My retirement in mid-November meant I now had time to drive to US-62’s West End from my most western contact with the route in western Kentucky. After spending a day snowed in in Altus, OK, I reached Lubbock, TX, on Christmas Day and stopped by Buddy Holley’s grave. Lubbock possesses no snowplows so most of the record five inches that fell the day before was still there although much had been blown from the area in the photograph.

2010 — My Chattanooga Christmas was also a white one. The depth may not have been a record but the fact that this was the first Christmas Day snowfall in Chattanooga in forty-one years meant it was something special. The Delta Queen had been forced to quit cruising in 2009 and was serving as a stationary hotel. I had spent Independence Day 2009 aboard her, and couldn’t resist the chance to spend another holiday on board.

2011 — Although my path reached as far south as Alabama, Nashville, TN, was the target for George for the Holidays. The title refers to George Harrison whose 1970 album All Things Must Pass was performed by The Long Players on December 23. Oven Master Mary had supplied me with a whole gingerbread family for the trip, and I photographed one family member on stage at Legends Corner.

2012 — The plans for Christmas Escape Repeat included New Year’s Eve in Raleigh, NC, and some time in Atlanta, GA, but were timed to allow me a second Christmas stay — this time without snow — on the Delta Queen in Chattanooga. It was the first of only two times I used the word “escape” in the title.

2013 — A Wild and Wonderful Christmas was spent at North Bend State Park in West Virginia where “Wild and Wonderful” is a slogan. After a fine holiday meal at the lodge, I went for a drive that took me to “America’s Oldest Five and Dime” in Harrisville. Berdine’s was not open on Christmas Day but was open the day after so I got to check out this delightful store on my way home.

2014 — Christmas Escape 2014 turned out to be quite the escape indeed. There was Christmas Eve with friends in Savannah, GA, Christmas Day with a friend in St Augustine, FL, (where the picture was taken), and some time with an uncle near Lake Alfred, FL, to start the new year. Plus a lot of Dixie Highway and a little time in the keys.

2015 — That WV state park had worked out well in 2013 so I tried out a neighbor on the other side for It’s a Wanderful Life. The holiday meal at Indiana’s Turkey Run State Park was fairly late in the day so I helped my appetite by doing a little hiking before dinner.

2016 — I stayed fairly close to home and used Ohio’s new tourism slogan for Finding It Here. Home base was the lodge at Burr Oak State Park. A Christmas Day drive took me to the town of Cambridge and a long stroll through the Dickens Victorian Village erected there each year.

2017 — With this trip, I proved that I Can Drive Twenty-Five. I followed the current US-25 from its beginning at the Ohio River to its other end in Brunswick, GA. Holiday dining options were somewhat limited and I ended up with a not so traditional Christmas dinner of crabcake, grits, broccoli, and cookies. In honor of the holiday, I named these four gingerbread men — a gift from Oven Master Mary, of course — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Ringo.

2018 — The focus of Kitty Hawk Holidays was the 115th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight at Big Kill Devil Hill. That was on the 17th so I did a bit of running around before ending up in Knoxville, TN, on Christmas Day. A selfie in Worlds Fair Park let me show off the new mustache my grandson had given me for Christmas.

2019 — Finding (More Of) It Here had me back in Ohio at a park lodge. This time it was at Geneva-on-the-Lake State Park. The photo was taken just before dinner as the sun set to my left and illuminated the clouds over Lake Erie.

A Cosmic Reason for the Season — Redux

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I was understandably alarmed when I first saw the news at right. However, reading beyond the headline reassured me that it was only the program planned for Fort Ancient that has been canceled and that the Sun and Earth and other heavenly bodies are to continue as is. The program was held last year and I attended. It was on a Saturday and the following article was published the next day as the regular weekly post. I am reusing it as a regular weekly post 364 days later, a day ahead of the 2020 Winter Solstice which will occur at 5:02 AM December 21.

Calendars come and calendars go and Earth just keeps on turning. And it keeps on orbiting, too. The turning bit creates what we call days. The alternating periods of light and dark impact almost all life on the planet and humans adopted the day as a basic unit of measure pretty early on. What we call years comes from Earth orbiting the Sun. There was plenty of time for early humans to stare at the sky and not a whole lot to keep them from doing it. They couldn’t help but notice that things in the sky moved around. In time, some of the more observant among them realized that not all that movement was random and eventually some patterns were noted. I can’t imagine how exciting it was when some smart guy figured out that the sun popped up at the same point about every 365 days. Of course, that “about” would be very important.

The opening photo shows the sun rising yesterday over a “gateway” in the earthen enclosure at Fort Ancient. The photo at left was taken a bit later and includes a small mound inside the enclosure in the foreground. When the mound, gateway, and sunrise align, sunset will follow sooner than on any other day of the year. This is the northern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice. It is the day when the sun is above the horizon for less time than any other day of the year, and yesterday that amounted to 9 hours, 25 minutes, and 9 seconds. Although we talk about Solstice being a day, it is technically just an instant. It is the moment when the Sun is farthest north or south of Earth’s equator. It happens twice each year and happened yesterday at 23:19 EST.

Serpent Mound, another ancient earthen structure containing solar alignments, is a little more than forty miles southeast of Fort Ancient. The serpent’s head is aligned with the Summer Solstice sunset. Body coils align with Summer and Winter Solstice sunrises. For several years, a modern event known as Lighting of the Serpent took place there at Winter Solstice. It was discontinued in 2017. The picture at right is from 2014 which is the only time I attended.

Long before they knew anything about orbits and equators, humans knew the day of Winter Solstice was special. It is the point where each successive day receives more rather than less daylight. It’s the big turnaround that will eventually lead to the warmth of spring and summer. It is clearly a day worth celebrating and it has indeed been celebrated in many different cultures in many different ways.

During their existence, humans have developed a slew of calendar systems. Several actually remain in use today, but the Gregorian calendar is the one most widely accepted. In the late sixteenth century, this started replacing the Julian calendar which had been around for all of those sixteen centuries and then some. The Julian calendar had been created by folks who calculated that a year was 365 and 1/4 days long which was a lot more accurate than an even 365. They came up with the rather clever idea of adding an extra day every four years to balance things out.

We now know that a year is 365.2422 days long. A year is the length of time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun, a day is the length of time it takes Earth to rotate, and neither is adjustable. When the Julian calendar was first adopted, the northern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice fell on December 25 but it slowly drifted away. Someone in authority thought to put an end to this nonsense by declaring December 25 the official solstice. But those non-adjustable orbits and rotations kept doing what they were doing and the official solstice and actual solstice just kept getting farther and farther apart.

The Gregorian calendar, which we have used for roughly 400 years now, put an end to that. Like the Julian calendar, it considers most years to be 365 days long but has a more involved system of “leap years” that add an extra day. The result is that over a long enough period our years will average 365.2422 days in length. Not only did the new calendar eliminate future drift, it tried to correct for some of the previous drift by throwing away ten days. The calendar’s namesake’s full-time job was as Pope of the Catholic Church. Ditching those ten days moved the solstice to December 22 which is where it had been in 325 when the church was founded. Of course, some holidays that had been tied to the official solstice (which hadn’t been anywhere near the actual solstice for some time) would continue to be celebrated on December 25.

Anyone wanting a more complete discussion of calendars, solstices, and holidays will find one here. Additional information on Fort Ancient is available here.

Purple Trusses Majesty

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This isn’t the first year for a Christmas display on the Purple People Bridge but it is the first year I’ve taken notice. Maybe that’s because more people have been posting pictures of it on social media, or maybe it’s because I’m sitting at home paying more attention, or maybe it’s because the display has received a little more publicity because it almost didn’t happen. The privately owned bridge is normally home to a variety of fundraising events throughout the year but that was not the case in COVID-riddled 2020. There was simply no money in the budget of the nonprofit Newport Southbank Bridge Company for lighting the bridge this year, but local companies, led by realtor North American Properties, stepped in to assure that there would be lights. The 25-foot tree placed at the bridge’s south end by the Wish Tree Program is covered with gift suggestions for people in need.

I arrived at the Kentucky end of the bridge a little before sunset and walked across it to Ohio. Note that the state line is a lot closer to Ohio than it is to Kentucky. It is the low-water mark on the northern bank — as it existed in 1792. When “love locks”, closed by couples before tossing the keys in the river, became a problem around 2017, they were removed from the actual bridge and a special area designated. I presume that even the special area has to be cleaned up occasionally. The middle picture is of the Big Mac Bridge which carries I-471 and is officially named the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge. The supports in the foreground of that picture once carried railroad tracks. They can be better seen here. The third picture was taken from the Cincinnati access ramp looking back at the bridge.

As the light faded, I headed back toward Kentucky. With the change in lighting, the people on the bridge also begin to change. It had been mostly people jogging or biking for exercise and workers on a foot-powered interstate commute. Now small groups, including some obvious families, began to appear to take in the lights.

When darkness came, the bridge began to take on that “infinity room” look I’d seen in pictures others had shared online. Somewhere near the middle, I leaned over the railing to grab a shot of the big tree in Newport.

Back on the Kentucky shore, I stepped off to the side for a view of the city across the river before taking a parting shot of the Wish Tree and heading home. The display is free and it only cost me $3 to park in the garage next to the bridge. The lights will be lit each night through January 15.

What was originally called the Newport Cincinnati Bridge opened in 1872 as a railroad only bridge. Over the years, it was widened, had decks added, and for a long time served automobiles, trains, and pedestrians. It lost the trains in 1987, became a people bridge in 2001, and became purple in 2006. In addition to being painted purple, the bridge had stairs and railings added to allow people to walk along the top of its trusses for a fee. They’re still there.

Sadly for the promoter, there usually wasn’t all that much to look at, and, even when there was, the improved view from a maximum of maybe 140 feet above the free-to-walk deck did not seem worth the fee which hovered in the $30-$40 range. These pictures were taken during Cincinnati’s last Tall Stacks Festival when the riverfront was full of boats. That gave climbers something to look at and the idea was new enough to seem attractive. I’m fairly certain those few days in October 2006 were the busiest ever for the climbing operation which closed less than a year later.