Category Archives: Event

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.

 

Oktoberfest Lite

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As everyone should know, the largest Oktoberfest in the world takes place each year in Munich, Germany. Not this year, however. A very distant second is the Cincinnati Oktoberfest which has also been canceled. Both of these events, as well as many others, are victims of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the cancellation of Cincinnati’s Oktoberfest was first announced, there was some muttering about a decentralized event whose participants could be counted so we could claim the number one spot for one year. Those mutterings seem to have completely faded and I suspect part of the reason is that a fair amount of decentralized partying is going on in Germany, too.

Oktoberfest Zinzinnati has a website and a Facebook page through which some activities, such as a Zoom based Chicken Dance, have been and will be coordinated — after a fashion. Even in decentralized form, attendance is limited by social distancing requirements and I opted to avoid anything resembling a crowd by celebrating solo in the afternoon. The site of my “celebration” was Cincinnati’s oldest restaurant and one of the most Germanish places in the city, Mecklenburg Gardens. To head off any claims of fibbing on my part, Arnold’s (1861) is indeed older than Mecklenburg’s (1865), but Arnold’s began life as a tavern. Mecklenburg’s has been a restaurant since day 1. UPDATE 9-20-20: Postcard image added.

My pocket camera did not do well in the mottled light beneath the 150-year-old grapevines but you might be able to pick out the photo-op cutouts in the first picture and the open tables in the second. Only one customer entered ahead of me, but several of those tables were filled soon after. A sausage and beer seemed appropriate and Mecklenburg’s offers a variety of each. I chose a goettawurst which is, of course, based on goetta, a Cincinnati creation. I bet you can’t get one of those in Munich. The beer is Spaten Märzen which you certainly can get in Munich, but there I’d be laughed at for drinking it from a tiny half-liter mug.

Before leaving, I stepped inside where I got a not-so-good picture of the bar which the pandemic has caused to be stripped of stools. A pleasant chat with bartender and part-owner John Harten made for a nice finish to my visit. John told me they have started doing tours of the historic building on Tuesdays. That sounds like something I need to check out.  

It’s a Gas… Engine Show

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Terry’s back. And so is Dale. And so am I. I’ve known Terry since about age twelve. Dale and I go back even further having met in first grade at age six or so. Terry collects and restores Wheel Horse tractors and is a regular exhibitor at an event sponsored by the Tri-State Gas Engine and Tractor Association at the Jay County Fairgrounds in Portland, Indiana. Dale has a passion for bicycles and regularly exhibits at an event the National Vintage Motor Bike Club puts on at the same place. I have attended both events multiple times as a spectator with a lot more curiosity than knowledge. The events have provided the three of us with an informal get-together opportunity and that is something that’s been extra scarce this year.

As a primarily outdoor event, I figured the show would be relatively safe and I believe it was. At odds with that belief was the fact that most attendees walked about without masks most of the time and often chatted without fully six-feet of separation. But people did don masks when standing in food lines and such, and staff at the entrance and elsewhere were masked. And, while faces weren’t always a fathom apart, they were rarely significantly closer than that and people at least seemed somewhat aware of their distance from others. There were frequent announcements about masks being required in the few indoor spaces being used this year, and it sounded like that was being enforced although I did not check it personally. Those announcements also told everyone that masks were required by the free shuttles. We noted that not one person was wearing a mask when the shuttle passed several times within sight of our home base at Terry’s display, but the one time I actually saw someone exiting the shuttle he pulled up his mask as he walked past the other passengers. It was a mixed bag, Safe? Relatively is the right word.

We made two forays into the exhibits. Our first destination was a threshing operation that some of Dale’s neighbors were involved in. Threshing is one of many farming tasks involving multiple generations, and that was the case at this demonstration. Power for the threshing machine was supplied by a kerosene-fueled 1920 Rumely Oil Pull. Mobility came via a somewhat newer 1954 International Harvester Farmall.

I’m told that large scale vintage construction gear has long been part of the show but I either failed to notice or failed to remember. There was even a big pile of dirt available where “kids” could play without being yelled at for messing up the yard.

Here are a few of the things to be seen near home base where we returned to eat lunch purchased from a nearby vendor.

This is the home base I’ve mentioned, with Terry under the canopy and Dale beside it. Those are, of course, just some of Terry’s herd of Horses. The newest addition is that black nose that can barely be seen at the far end of the row. It’s a real one-of-a-kind hotrod that, while I failed to get a good picture of today, I did get pictures of at its place of birth. They’re here and here.

Following lunch, we headed out to cruise the other half of the show. I rode behind Dale in the trailer as I had on the earlier outing. I quite enjoyed being chauffeured around and being able to take (only slightly crooked) pictures at will. Dale once had a summer job as a test driver for Lambert Manufacturing and scored a factory ride for a lawn tractor rally at the annual company picnic. A trailer was included and I was invited so I covered the rally with a view somewhat like the first picture behind a Lambert tractor somewhat like the red one in the second picture.

Not only do the dirt piles you play in grow bigger as you age, so too do the scale models you build. This one is street legal and capable of hauling… stuff.

The guy with the miniature semi-tractor told us about this miniature inline-six a few aisles over. It isn’t a copy of any particular bigger engine, but, with the exception of the carburetor, is built completely from scratch. Even the tiny sparkplugs were machined from some sort of countertop material. It’s mighty impressive from the outside but thinking about the cam and crank shafts inside makes it even more phenomenal.

With a straight line distance of approximately ninety miles, this becomes the farthest I’ve been from home since February. Greenville, which I’ve been to multiple times, is about sixty straight line miles away. The other Gibson I saw there was a lot farther from home than I. This fellow is from a Seattle, WA, company that closed down in 1952. If my original plans for this year had held up, that’s where I would have been sometime earlier this month. Hold on, Seattle, I’m coming.

Here’s the Beef

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Cincinnati Burger Week number six is almost over. Today is the final day of an event that is now part of a statewide Ohio Burger Week. Maybe it has been in the past although I always thought it was local. For 2020, special hamburger deals were/are to be found in five cities — Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Toledo — from August 17 through August 23. I’d seen claims of fiftyish participants but that turns out to be rather low. Nearly seventy restaurants are now listed on the Cincinnati Burger Week website. With this blog in mind, I picked six to try on the six days preceding publication. The number six also fit in with the sixth year for the event and the six dollar (up from $5) burger price. I picked places based on location, the availability of outside seating, and how strongly a specific offering appealed to me. One of the goals of Burger Week is to try something new so half of the places I picked were places I’d never been to before.

The first day went swimmingly and that included perfect weather. Two of my selections were within walking distance but one is closed on Mondays. I headed to the other. At deSha’s American Tavern I enjoyed a Ducking Good Burger at one of the well-spaced tables on the waterside deck. A Ducking Good Burger is described as ground beef, fontina cheese, roasted tomato-garlic aioli, topped with shredded potatoes tossed in duck fat, served on a brioche bun. The only thing keeping this from being the perfect Burger Week experience is that I’m quite familiar with deSha’s (and Belhaven Scottish Ale) so the sandwich itself was the only thing new to me.

The second day was hardly perfect, but it ended well. I decided to head to the farthest away of my selections trying to target a point where the rain that filled most of the day would let up. Not only did I mistime the rain, I really blew it with the ‘burger. I’d made myself aware of the days each restaurant would be closed but not of the time. I arrived at 4:15; They closed at 3:00. But I knew of another nearby Burger Week participant so headed over to Keystone Bar & Grill. The rain had more or less stopped but the outside tables were not yet being used. I sat near the door at a properly distanced table. It turned out that a choice of two hamburgers was offered. When asked, my waitress told me, “I think you should try the donut.” I was well aware that people have been making sandwiches out of donuts but considered them to be totally over the top and had so far managed to avoid them. I tried again today but the waitress and my own curiosity won out. In my defense, this wasn’t just any donut but a Holtman’s donut. I haven’t found a detailed description of the Maple Bacon Donut Burger, but it was delicious even though the touch of sweetness from the donut glaze was a little strange. The new-to-me Three Floyds Gumballhead was pretty good, too. When I went looking for that detailed description at the end of the day, I discovered an apology tacked to the front of the Keystone website. It was an apology for some slow service on the first day of Burger Week that was at least partly due to overwhelming demand for donuts. Henceforth, it said the donut ‘burger would be available for dine-in only.

Great weather returned on Wednesday making it a good day to head to the closest restaurant on my Burger Week list. I placed my order inside Frenchie Fresh Burger Bar then took a seat outside, near the Little Free Library in a phone booth, to await its arrival. Inside seating is available. Burger Week ‘burgers are usually enough to fill me so I tend to skip the extras but I decided to give “Frenchie Fries” with parmesan and truffle dust a try. Good but not necessary. As expected, Le Alpine ‘burger (swiss cheese, caramelized onions, & mushroom demi-glaze) would have been enough. As I ate, I noticed a familiar name in the storefront signage that I had not noticed when checking out things online. Beneath the sketch of a French Bulldog is the phrase “by Jean-Robert”. Jean-Robert de Cavel is a Cincinnati celebrity chef who gained fame at the Maisonette, Pigall’s, and his own fine dining establishments. Apparently, Frenchie Fresh Burger Bar is his move into more casual dining. The beer is Country Boy Brewing’s Cougar Bait which (fortunately, I think) doesn’t seem to work for a guy in his seventies even if he is eating truffle dust.

After starting the week with two places where I’ve eaten many times, I moved on to a pair of new-to-me restaurants. Wednesday was the first I’d been to Frenchie Fresh, and Thursday was my first visit to Brown Dog Cafe. It is one of several restaurants inside Summit Park on the former site of Blue Ash Airport. Both indoor and outdoor seating is available but I didn’t even consider eating inside on such a glorious day. I washed down my fontina cheese, bacon jam, and apple slaw topped ‘burger with Grainworks’ Blue Skies Hero Brew in a Fathead’s Brewery glass. Summit Park really is a park with an observation tower I need to come back and check out. On my way out today, I strolled by a playground I could see in the distance from my table. All distancing and mask protocols were carefully observed by the Brown Dog staff but that was not the case with all the kids playing on the equipment and sliding down hillsides on sheets of cardboard.

On Friday, I made it three new-to-me restaurants in a row by returning to the place where I’d arrived too late on Tuesday. Butler’s Pantry is on the inland side of a building on the south banks of the Ohio River. All COVID precautions are in place and there seemed to be plenty of outside seating. The tasty  ‘burger was topped with pimento cheese, red onion, bacon, onion straws, and root beer bbq mayo although I gotta admit I didn’t pick up much root beer flavor. Maybe the real beer (Braxton Storm, brewed less than half a mile to the south) washed it away. Free parking across the street with validation at the Pantry.

Even though there were still candidates on my list, by Saturday I decided I’d consumed enough hamburgers for the week. I had penciled in the lone non-beef Burger Week participant for a possible dessert someday but used it to fill the last slot in my six-day moving feast. I learned that my impression that only carryout was available was wrong when I arrived and saw the tables out front. I carried my purchase back home as planned, but in hindsight, wish I’d ordered a cup of coffee and nibbled on my beignet sliders at one of those tables along the one time Dixie Highway (now US 42) in Reading. Très Belle‘s Burger Week page describes one of these treats as a berry-filled beignet bun with edible rainbow sugar cookie dough patty and the other as Nutella filled with edible chocolate brownie cookie dough. They only call one decadent but that doesn’t seem entirely honest in my opinion. Maybe advertising double-barreled decadence is against somebody’s rules.

Coincidence at Play (Again)

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This post originally appeared on April 3, 2016. A few weeks ago I predicted that I would be recycling more blog posts as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restricted real-world interaction, but I didn’t think that would be the case this week. I had a pre-canned series post selected when coincidence struck. I was trying to figure out when I had visited a particular museum and resorted to searching this website for some record. The museum is one with many Civil War artifacts so I used those words in the search and this post appeared in the results. I had all but forgotten it but a reread made me think that a repost might be appropriate. As I wrote four years ago, “there’s still plenty of crap going on.” I did, incidentally, read “To Kill a Mocking Bird” within a couple of weeks of seeing the play.

tcamb1I’ve yet to read To Kill a Mockingbird. I have seen the 1962 movie multiple times and now I’ve seen the play. I had hoped to read the book between learning that the play would be performed this season at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and actually seeing it but that didn’t work out.

The Friday night performance would be the biggest event of my week but I didn’t expect it to lead to a blog post. I anticipated that a canned Trip Peek would be published this morning. A Friday morning email got me to thinking differently.

The email was the April E-News from the Smithsonian. One of the topics was “The Scottsboro Boys” with this two sentence tease: “The case of the Scottsboro Boys, which lasted more than 80 years, helped to spur the civil rights movement. To Kill a Mockingbird, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, is also loosely based on this case.”

I read the article referenced in the email and could easily see similarities between the 1931 real world incident and the fictional one Harper Lee set just a few years later. Both involved black men accused of imaginary crimes against white women and both occurred in a world where color mattered a whole lot more than truth. Later I read that in 2005 Harper Lee said this was not the incident she had in mind when writing To Kill a Mockingbird but that it served “the same purpose”. Despite there not being an official connection between the Scottsboro Boys and To Kill a Mockingbird, reading about the incident and its repercussions served a purpose for me, too. It provided an unpleasant picture of this country near the midpoint between the Civil War and today. The accuracy of that picture is reinforced by a contemporary pamphlet, They Shall Not Die!, referenced in the Smithsonian article.

tcamb2I took my seat on Friday with the Scottsboro story fresh in my mind. The stage was bare except for a single light bulb which would actually be removed at the play’s start although it would return later. The stage consists of a large circular center and a surrounding ring both of which rotate. Sometimes they rotate in opposite directions which can seem to expand the distance between actors or the distance they travel. Set Designer Laura Jellinek states that “our main goal was to eliminate any artifice between the audience and the story” and this set certainly accomplishes that. As one audience member observed during the discussion that followed the play, she briefly looked around for the jury during the courtroom scene before realizing that “we were the jury”. At its most crowded, the stage holds nine chairs for the key figures in that courtroom scene.

The discussion I mentioned happens after every performance. Anyone interested moves close to the stage to listen or participate. There were naturally questions about this specific production but there were also questions about the story. There is a sign in the lobby that I now wish I’d taken a picture of. “Don’t read books that think for you. Read books that make you think.” might not be 100% accurate but it’s close. Friday night’s discussion was evidence that this play is prompting some thinking and I’ve no reason to think that discussions following other performances are any different.

tcamb3There is also a set of blackboards in the lobby. As I assume is true at every performance, the blackboards started out empty except for a question at the top of each. By the time people started heading home, the boards were full. It’s pretty clear that some thinking is going on here, too.

It was the coincidence of the Smithsonian email showing up on the day I was set to see the play that nudged me towards making it a blog entry. There is another coincidence of sorts that I find interesting.  Each week, the blog This Cruel War publishes an article on lynchings. The article is published on Wednesdays but, since I subscribe via RSS and I seem to always be behind in my RSS reading, it is often a day or more after publication before I read a specific article. I read this week’s post the morning after my Playhouse visit. In it, the source of the series’ title, “This Disgraceful Evil”, is given. It comes from a 1918 Woodrow Wilson speech in which he calls upon America “…to make an end of this disgraceful evil.”

We don’t have to deal with actual lynchings now as much as in 1918 but there’s still plenty of crap going on. “It cannot live”, Wilson continues, “where the community does not countenance it.”

Originally scheduled to end today, April 3, To Kill a Mockingbird‘s run a Playhouse in the Park has been extended through April 9.

It’s Easter (Again)

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This post first appeared last year. It is being reused due in part to 2020’s reduced mobility and (apparently) creativity. Articles in USA Today and elsewhere, include Root Beer Float in a list of five new Peeps flavors but, as can be seen below and in the original post, the flavor was already around in 2019. Hot Tamales Fierce Cinnamon, on the other hand, really does appear to be making its debut this year.


Today is Easter. I know that because I looked it up on the internet. It was easy. It was easy in the early days, too. Easter was originally simply the Sunday of Passover week. Since most early Christians had once been Jews, they just naturally knew when Passover was. Even those that had converted to Christianity directly from Druidism probably had some Jewish friends they could ask. Easy, peasy. Too easy, it seems, for some.

Things changed in 325 at the First Council of Nicaea. Maybe the priests felt threatened by pretty much everybody knowing when Easter was without asking. Or maybe the astronomers, who might have been the same guys, were feeling left out. Or maybe the priests just weren’t all that happy having a Christian holiday tied so tightly to a Jewish one. So, they tied it, instead, to the moon and the sun.

Their starting point was the vernal equinox when the sun is directly above Earth’s equator and day and night are of equal length. Next was a full moon which occurs when the surface visible to Earth is completely illuminated by the sun. These two events are not synchronized. A vernal equinox happens every 365.24 days; A full moon every 29.53 days. But even the most radical of the Nicaea councilors dared not mess with the idea that Easter was a Sunday thing. That meant that a mostly arbitrary period of seven days and the completely arbitrary selection of one of the seven were overlaid on the two asynchronous sun and moon events. Henceforth, Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

That probably sounds a bit involved and confusing to many people today let alone 4th-century peasants. Come spring of 326, priests were no doubt busy letting the laity know when they should hide their eggs and have relatives over for baked ham.

In the centuries since, alternate sources of the information have proliferated. Asking a priest continues to be an option, but one that has been unnecessary since sometime in the 20th century when the majority of refrigerators became covered by calendars — with Easter marked in red — from every merchant and insurance agent in the area. The time saved has been put to good use finding ways to enhance the Easter experience. A Lego bunny and never before seen colored and flavored Peeps are available for 2019. And scheduling egg hunts has become even easier. “Hey Google. When’s Easter?”

Aging in Place

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This picture is indeed a repeat. It appeared last November in a post about my first decade of retirement. It is now being used for my birthday. I’m celebrating my seventy-third birthday today in the middle of a pandemic and a statewide stay-at-home order. That is not, however, why I’m reusing the picture. As soon as I made the image, I knew it would be perfect for my next birthday post. Sure, I took the picture with retirement in mind, but once the text was added it became a birthday image. I went ahead and used it in the retirement post because I didn’t have time to think of and produce anything else. Here is where it belongs.

The aforementioned pandemic and the changes it’s brought make me aware of other privileges I have besides growing old. In normal times, having a fixed income is often seen as a negative. Any unexpected expense can be a disaster and the slow creep of inflation can be a major problem over time. But, when restaurants and other businesses are being closed, new layoffs are announced almost daily, and most of the self-employed are left with nothing coming in at all, a fixed income doesn’t sound so bad.

I’ve been living alone for more than twenty years, and I’ve become quite used to it. Quite happy with it, too. Social distancing is easy, and I don’t have to worry about anyone but me contaminating that teetering stack of books on my table. I’m not officially responsible for anyone else. Please don’t read that as a disclaimer intended to shirk responsibility. It’s an observation that there is no one is depending on me for shelter or meals. I do keep an eye on my 94-year-old stepmother but she’s remarkably independent and well prepared with wonderful neighbors who make sure she doesn’t run out of anything. I usually see her every week or two, but when I suggested coming to visit last weekend, she talked me out of it.

Each of my three kids fits the model of what I think about when describing someone being responsible for someone else. Each has a family that they shelter and feed and — with schools closed — educate. I was never a particularly good parent but all three are self-sufficient and caring and I’m pretty happy with that.

I had planned to be in the middle of a short road trip right now, and celebrating my birthday with dinner at the historic Century Inn in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania, but the inn is about 250 miles away and only doing carry out anyway. As that affects me personally, it seems to be among the first worldliest of first world problems. It means that the only National Road mile marker I’ll see today is the one on my mantle. I’ve not often done carry out during this quasi-quarantine, but I probably will today. Maybe something from the steakhouse across the street.

Yeah, I’m privileged. Not so much for being old as for growing old. I’ve often said, in reference to road trips, that I enjoy getting there more than being there. I guess life’s kind of like that too. I think I’ll just grow older for a while.

ADDENDUM 5-Apr-2020: In the end, I did not go to the nearby steakhouse. I decided if I was going to venture out, it would be for something special — and local. The steakhouse is a chain and Montgomery Inn, while being a long way from a mom-and-pop restaurant, is independent and locally owned. I did a drive-by for my favorite ribs & shrimp combo and even helped my dwindling beer stash with a six-pack of Ted’s Red (brewed by Mount Carmel).