Category Archives: Event

Open House at Vent Haven

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On Saturday, right after I was welcomed at the Vent Haven Museum open house, I was asked if I’d been there before.  “Yes”, I answered. “Several years ago.” I later checked to see when that earlier visit was and discovered that apparently — in my mind, today — several equals ten.

My only previous visit to the “World’s Only Museum Dedicated to Ventriloquism” occurred way back in 2011. It was during that short period when Oddment pages had not yet been totally replaced by blog posts. There is an Oddment page here. I joined a guided tour on that 2011 visit which made the information I received and shared on that Oddment page noticeably more precise and organized than what I’m posting here. That’s not at all a knock of the open house, and I encourage everyone to partake if they can. They generally do two a year and the second one for 2021 is just a month away on Sunday, June 13.

Today I’ll just share a couple of photos from each of the three open buildings. My first stop was in the building directly behind the house. It was built in the 1960s by museum founder W.S. Berger, and is the first building constructed specifically for the museum. There are hundreds of ventriloquist dummies in the building but I’ve chosen pictures of the string of past presidents and another small grouping. It is the smallest member of that grouping that caught my eye. It’s a replica of “Bull” from the TV show Night Court.

This is the collection’s first home after it was booted from the residence by Mrs. Berger in 1947. It is the garage left empty when Mr. Berger retired and sold his car. The middle picture is of eight dummies donated in the last twelve months. The museum typically gets 10-15 donated each year. There are also a few hundred dummies in this building but none more realistic looking than Penn and Teller.

Construction of the third building was started by Berger but he died before it was completed. It and the garage will be taken down later this year to be replaced by a new building that will offer several enhancements (including restrooms!). Be aware that these are not the only wall-of-bodies or shelf-of-heads photo ops in the museum which now has about a thousand residents.

I actually took this picture soon after I arrived but saved it for a closer. It’s Mike Hemmelgarn who made absolutely everyone feel relaxed and welcome.

Big To Do at Wigwam 2

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The first night I stayed at a Wigwam Village of any vintage was April 22, 2004, when I pulled into Wigwam Village #2. There was no neon outlined tepee like the one at right to greet me. I had driven down after work which put me at the village a little after 10:00 PM. The office and gift shop were in use but weren’t open that late. I retrieved the key that had been left for me in the mailbox and let myself in.

There were lights in front of the office including a neon VACANCY, OFFICE, and arrow. I have no pictures from this visit that show the neon tepee lit and I believe it was completely non-functional but my memory isn’t good enough to swear to that. I got an external shot of the office tepee that included the sign and an internal photo with owner Ivan John.

John retired and sold the motel about a year later. Things had really deteriorated prior to his 1996 takeover and the deterioration commenced anew after his departure. It might not have been immediate. The picture at right of the lighted neon tepee was taken in 2007 and I don’t know if its resurrection came before or after John left. It is the image I used to represent the village in A Decade Driving the Dixie Highway. While John ran the place, a playground and picnic tables were added and the rooms refurbished while retaining most of the original wooden furniture. Since at least 2007, I don’t believe much effort or money has been invested in improving the village until new owners came along in November.

Even if I did not know what was planned for today, I might have seen the ladder at the sign as a clue. There really isn’t much on the outside of the tepees to indicate how much work Keith and Megan have done. The grounds look neater but that’s about it. Even inside there are no dramatic changes. Bathroom fixtures have been updated but the general deep cleaning and repainting may not be immediately obvious.  My habit of posting little collages of motel rooms had not yet been established when I stayed here in 2004 and 2007 so the oldest internal view I have to compare with today‘s is one from 2009.

Megan and Keith had begun accepting a few guests in March but today was a sort of grand-opening of Historic Wigwam Village No. 2 with nine wigwams revitalized and rented. A tepee-shaped cake and some very accurate cookies really added to the occasion.

Megan and Keith each spent a few minutes talking about their experiences during their fairly brief ownership and about their plans for the future. Then they threw the switch that illuminated the recently replaced neon on the sign. It looked good immediately and even better as the sky darkened. In his remarks, Keith noted that they thought bringing the sign to life was an important and highly visible indicator of their intentions to bring the whole village back to life. I think he’s right and it seems that a lot of others do too.

That’s All, Brother

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Lt. Col. John M. Donalson named his C‑47 “That’s All, Brother” as something of a declaration that the Nazi’s success in Europe was just about over. Then he used it to lead more than 800 aircraft loaded with paratroopers across the English Channel to confront those Nazis on the night of June 5, 1944. When I heard that the plane was coming to the National Museum of the United States Air Force on Tuesday, I thought I might be interested in seeing it. When I woke up a couple of hours ahead of its estimated arrival time, I decided that I was interested in seeing it land.

A one-hour window had been announced for the landing and the plane appeared just about in the middle of that window. It made one pass over the runway without landing. Maybe that was so the pilot could scope things out or maybe it was so people on the ground could take pictures like the one at the top of this article. It then circled the museum and dropped onto the runway without a hiccup. Even with a chainlink fence in front of me, I was able to get a shot of the big airplane slipping safely between a water tower and a tractor-trailer.

The museum’s announcement said that the plane would be available for up-close viewing, inside and out, once it was on the ground and parked. Inside viewing would be limited to two at a time. I figured there would be a long and — with the two viewer limit — slow-moving line to get inside the plane so I anticipated not doing that. I did walk out to the plane, however, to get a closer look and better photos. Next to the plane, T-shirts and other merchandise were being sold from a van. It’s a Mercedes. Maybe no one other than me saw the irony in that, and even I am unsure whether using a German vehicle with D-D stripes to support a U.S. WWII military plane is a major insult or simply cynical.

The line was not as long as I feared and the two-person limit was not in place although there was an effort to maintain social distancing and a mask requirement was being strictly enforced. The C-47 is a military version of the DC-3 so it isn’t completely unfamiliar. Of course, passengers seating in the DC-3s I’ve seen looked considerably more comfortable than this. Information on this plane’s history and future can be found at “That’s All, Brother”.

There was a lull in the boarding right after I exited the plane, and I was able to get a shot of the door. One of the operations “That’s All, Brother” was involved in after D-Day was dropping supplies in relief of the siege of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. With a touch of awe in his voice, the docent inside the plane pointed out that those supplies were thrown out this very door.

I could say that I took these pictures after checking out “That’s All, Brother”, but the truth is that there was a fair amount of time between the plane’s landing and it being available, and that’s when I went inside the museum. These pictures are, in fact, out of sequence. There are a few hundred aircraft displayed at the museum. Like “That’s All, Brother”, these are three with a WWII connection. The all-volunteer Flying Tigers, organized to fight in China before the U.S. entered the war used Curtiss P-40s. The C-47 in the middle picture was the last in routine USAF use. “Bockscar” is the name of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. A mockup of that bomb, named “Fat Man”, is displayed beside it.

I’ve visited the museum several times and actually spent less time inside it today than on almost any other visit. But, for some unknown reason, I was really struck today by the amount of money, energy, and intelligence that has been devoted to creating machines whose sole purpose is the destruction of other machines — and people.

A friend called on Friday evening to tell me about a related event. “That’s All, Brother” was helping with a celebration honoring a local veteran. The celebration started Friday and would continue on Saturday. The fellow being honored was Jim “Pee Wee” Martin who parachuted into Normandy on D-Day and would be turning 100 on April 29. I decided I was interested in seeing that, too.

“That’s All, Brother” was joined by “Placid Lassie“, another C-47, and “D-Day Doll“, a C-53. All had participated in the D-Day invasion. As the three planes flew over Skydive Greene County, a couple dozen passengers exited. There were other jumpers, including the Army’s Golden Knights, and music, ceremonies, and fireworks were planned. Promised rain made an appearance about the time the Golden Knights finished their jump which prompted Terry, the friend who called Friday, and me to slip away while we were still mostly dry. 

These pictures are from Tuesday and are very out of sequence. When time permits, breakfast at the somewhat nearby (4 miles) Hasty Tasty is a nice prelude to an Air Force Museum visit. Hasty Tasty was a local chain that peaked at thirteen stores. This is the last and may also have been the first.

Big Bunnies and Lunisolar

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Two years ago, I decorated a post about determining the date of Easter with what was claimed to be a new flavor of Peeps. Last year, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I reused the post after augmenting it with another claimed new Peeps flavor. I once again see those two flavors, Root Beer and Hot Tamales, being touted as new. At best I think they might be called seasonal. So what, if anything, really is new? Maybe Peeps Giant Bunnies. Everything is relative, of course, and in the world of Peeps, I suppose it is legitimate to call something about five inches tall GIANT. Plus, at about two dollars each, they can be used in that old pirate joke about a buck an ear.

But, as I said up top, the original post was about determining the date of Easter and the Peeps picture was just decoration. The bunnies serve pretty much the same role in today’s post. The real purpose of today’s post is to reveal just how much ignorance was in the original.

I presented the formula for finding the date of Easter — first Sunday after first full moon after vernal equinox — as something that separated Christian Easter from Jewish Passover when it is simply calculating the date of Easter pretty much the same way that the date of Passover is calculated. At least that’s what I now think. Although I now know a lot more about the Jewish calendar than I did a few days ago, I am absolutely not an expert.

The Jewish calendar is lunisolar meaning it is based on both the sun and the moon. The more common Gregorian calendar is purely solar with no direct lunar involvement. All months of the Jewish calendar start with a new moon. A new moon occurs approximately every 29.5 days so that the Jewish calendar can keep the months pretty much in sync with the phases of the moon by alternating 29 and 30 day months. Of course, 12 X 29.5 is a little short of the 365.24 days that it takes the Earth to circle the sun so every now and then a thirteenth month is added to the year. The timing of these “leap months” is based on a nineteen-year cycle and there are other tweaks as well.

Passover begins on the fifteenth day of the month of Nisan which is the first month after the vernal equinox. Because every month starts with a new moon, the fifteenth of every month is a full moon. Ergo, Passover always begins on a full moon. Being a week long, it always contains a Sunday. Rather than moving Easter away from Passover in 325, the First Council of Nicaea kept the scheduling just the same as it had always been and simply stopped saying the word Passover out loud. Oh wah, tagoo, Siam.  

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.

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

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.

Minor Ado About Nothing

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Today is the final day of 2020’s Greater Cincinnati Restaurant Week. In normal times, I would have visited at least one or two of the participants, but, to restate the obvious, these are not normal times. I scanned the restaurant list looking for places that I’d not tried but wanted to, that offered something appealing to me, and that had outdoor seating. I came up empty and had accepted the fact that there would be no new restaurant experience for me this year. Then a friend posted something about a pop-up at a restaurant I’d never tried but wanted to. The restaurant was not a GCRW participant and the dates of their pop-up (9/25-10/2) didn’t align with Restaurant Week (9/29-10/4) but the two did overlap. There was outdoor seating and the food offering did appeal to me. As I learned the story behind it, it became more than appealing; It became an all-consuming but short-lived obsession that I satisfied the very next day.

Northside Yacht Club is the place. It has a pretty nice front door but during the pandemic that is used only for picking up carry-out orders. These days, the main entrance is on the side next to the tastefully decorated utility poles. It has been there since 2015, normally has a variety of live music, even now has cool drinks and food, and has done a couple of pop-ups in the past.

Building on an old false rumor, NSYC wore an Applebee’s costume for Halloween in 2017. Last year it combined two Cincinnati favorites, Skyline chili and LaRosa’s pizza, to become SkyRosa’s. It was Ronny Salerno’s tongue in cheese-filled cheek report on the faux Applebee’s that first brought the Yacht Club to my attention. This year, they put on their disguise a little earlier, possibly because the end of September in Ohio usually offers a better outside dining experience than does the end of October. The pop-up that just ended involved Arby’s, but there was more to it than that. NSYC’s menu temporarily mimics that of the roast beef chain but the inspiration came from a punk rocker’s Twitter account. That both the rocker (Brendan Kelly) and the account (@Nihilist_Arbys) are well known is evidence of just how uninformed I am. You’re better off checking out the Twitter feed and this Arby’s-meets-nihilist story than having me try to explain things. There’s a good CityBeat story here.

Each sandwich comes with a nihilist_arbys’ Tweet. Mine was originally published on Valentine’s Day. I chose the beef and cheddar and it was excellent. The Sixteen Bricks bun makes it look like the Arby’s version but believe me it was many steps up in quality. The curly fries, on the other hand, were a near-perfect match for Arby’s in all regards. The beer may look like a Bud Light but it’s Riegele Privat lager. Neither, of course, are available at a real Arby’s.

Before leaving, I checked out the upper deck which offers plenty of additional seating and overlooks a Northside style split-the-yacht wall decoration.