The Future is Rosie

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Denny

A far as I know, not a single marmota monax in the city of Cincinnati has shown any propensity for prognostication. That means I have to go to Dayton if I want my Groundhog Day predictions live. But not only is Dayton, OH, a much shorter drive than Punxsutawney, PA, watching the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery‘s Rosie do her thing is a lot less effort and a lot more comfortable than watching Punxsutawney Phil, which I did once, do his. It was even a little more comfortable this year than most. Normally the resident groundhog works in an open wooden shelter beside the museum but, when single digit temperatures were predicted, museum staff decided to move it inside. There is no doubt that both Rosie and the kids (who are very much the target audience) appreciated this. The predicting took place next to a solid wall of windows so that any shadow making stuff that showed up outside could make shadows inside, too. It took a few banana slices from the museum’s Melissa Proffitt to entice a reluctant Rosie to poke through the door but she eventually came out and took a look. There wasn’t a hint of a shadow and Rosie confidently predicted an early spring. Museum President and CEO Mark J. Meister read the proclamation with TV weatherman Chris Mulcahy, who served as MC, looking on.

After the big event, many of us kids headed off to check out the museum though quite a few did hang around to get a closer look at Rosie. It’s no accident that the museum feels like a combination children’s museum and natural history museum. In 1993, one century after the Dayton Museum of Natural History began, some community leaders got together to explore starting a children’s museum. The philosophies of the new group and the existing one were so similar that the Children’s Museum Board and the Board of the Dayton Society of Natural History merged in 1996 and this is the result. The phrase “…to be the premier regional provider of interactive science learning experiences which enrich the lives of children and adults…” is from the Boonshoft’s mission statement and I think they may have already done that. This is one really cool place. Every single employee I had contact with was extremely friendly and helpful. On top of that, they all seemed to be having a really good time and spoke about the museum with genuine enthusiasm. Seems like this is a good place to work as well as visit.

Rosie isn’t the only resident of the museum. The Discovery Zoo contains quite a few animals, birds, and other smallish critters. Otters and meerkats are representative of the size of animals on display although the largest resident is a Burmese python that’s nearly 16 feet long and 180 pounds in weight. I understand that he almost never sees his shadow.

I think my personal favorites were The Dome and Science on a Sphere. Both are pretty much what they sound like. The Dome is a full-dome screen on which planetarium programs and movies, including some in 3D, are projected. Science on a Sphere is a large ball which can display images on its entire surface. The picture here shows a color coded image of the height of waves during the 2011 Japanese tsunami.

This was Rosie’s second year of handling Groundhog Day duties. She was found injured in Minnesota and is believed to be about three years old. Although she has essentially recovered from her injuries, she is partially blind in one eye so returning her to the wild would not be wise. Ivy, Rosie’s predecessor retired last year then died just a month after Groundhog Day. The average lifespan of a groundhog in the wild is two to four years; In captivity it’s eight to ten. Ivy was right at eleven. Of course, regular meals and good shelter had a lot to do with Ivy’s long life but I’ve a feeling that having a purpose helped a little, too.

The Boonshoft Museum of Discovery is in Triangle Park a little north of downtown Dayton. It seems somehow fitting that my visit to Rosie and the park occurred on the eve of this year’s version of the National Football League’s Game of the Century. Until I started putting this post together, I simply assumed that Triangle Park took its name directly from its location in the triangle formed by the joining of the Stillwater and Great Miami Rivers. Turns out that had nothing to do with it. The name comes from a trio of Dayton companies who sponsored a professional football team and gave them the name Dayton Triangles. This was their home. The Triangles were charter members of the American Professional Football Association (APFA) which changed its name to the National Football League (NFL) in 1922. Not only was professional football played here for several years, there is at least a 50/50 chance this is where the very first APFA/NFL game took place. Read the story here then imagine an all Ohio Super Bowl between the Dayton Triangles and the Columbus Panhandles.

My Wheels — Chapter 1 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Denny

This wasn’t exactly my very first set of wheels but it was the first with any sort of brand identity. There were probably three wheels in my very first set and they might very well be on the vehicle shown here. That’s the photo I use for my summertime “on the road” Facebook profile picture. The tricycle was followed by a peddle tractor that had its front wheels welded back on at least a time or two due to high speed crashes at the end of the sidewalk and a dimly remembered tiny bicycle with training wheels. The first two-wheeler that actually allowed me to hit the road was a 24 inch girls bike.

It was purchased at an auction or some other sort of sale and was very used. Dad made some repairs and we (at least I thought I was helping) painted it a dark purple. The color wasn’t carefully chosen because it was my favorite. It was carefully chosen because it’s what we had. That the bike was made for a girl barely registered with me. At first I could hardly reach the pedals from the seat and spent a lot of my riding time standing up. The lack of a horizontal bar turned out to be a major advantage. I eventually grew into then out of the 24 incher. A slightly older aunt had retired her 26 inch bicycle and it became mine. That was great initially but, as I became a teen, riding that light blue girly bike became less and less attractive. “Sure,” my Dad said. “You can have a new bike. All you have to do is pay for it.”

I set my sights pretty high. It took close to a year but through odd jobs and, no doubt, some gifts, I eventually accumulated enough to buy a shiny new bicycle from the Sears catalog. I couldn’t afford the Deluxe Flightliner with chrome fenders and “torsion spring-action fork” but I could afford the regular Flightliner and I’d still get dual headlights and a rear carrier that sorta kinda had fins. It came partially disassembled in a big box. Unpacking that bicycle and putting it together was the most exciting thing I’d ever done.

I rode it to the nearest town once in awhile but that was more than three miles each way and took some planning. I didn’t need a destination, though. That bike spent a lot of time going nowhere in particular on Ohio 49. During the summer, when school was out, my sister and I spent a lot of time at our grandparents. Somehow I frequently talked Dad into wrestling the bike into the trunk so I could ride it around the extremely small town where they lived.

J. C. Higgins Flightliner This is not a picture of my bike but one from the internet that looks pretty much the same. At some point I removed those headlights I’d lusted after to get the look of a big air scoop. The “fins” were pretty handy for tying down packages but not so popular with passengers. I moved on to motorized transport in 1962 and the two year old Flightliner lost its spot near the center of my world. Embarrassingly, I can’t even remember whether I sold it then or later. It would be 1979 before I’d buy another new vehicle.

Next Wheels: Chapter 2 — 1948/9 Whizzer

Jim Grey rescued me again. OK, maybe rescued isn’t exactly right but only because I didn’t need rescuing at the precise moment he planted the seed for this series but I will someday. Back in August of 2012, when I had no post ready by my self imposed Sunday deadline, Jim gave me an idea for a series of articles that require very little time to prepare and can be used at any time. That was the start of the Trip Pic Peek series. Recently, he unknowingly gave me another idea. First, he turned me on to the Curbside Classics automobile website. I subscribed to the blog and find I read about half of the posts. Then Jim did a series of Curbside Classic posts himself as a guest blogger. He wrote about cars he had owned in the sequence that he owned them. That was the seed. His articles were fun to read and I’m guessing they were fun to write. I decided to start my own series along those lines though I won’t go anywhere near the depth of some of the Curbside Classic posts and, as you can see, I’m not limiting myself to cars. Trip Pic Peeks will remain the true safety net since they can be produced in just a few minutes. Like My Gear and My Apps, My Wheels articles can be prepared and stockpiled as time permits. This third My… series should come in handy as My Gear and My Apps approach the present and temporarily peter out. The first car is just a couple chapters away.

My Apps – Chapter 5
Life After Frontpage Express

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Denny

When Frontpage Express went away it left a big empty spot in my tool box. FPE was what I initially used to create, edit, and preview webpages. It also allowed me to manage the collection of pages that made up my website and upload the site to the remote server. Microsoft stopped bundling FPE with Internet Explorer at version 6 in 2001. It didn’t immediately disappear but I realized that I best be looking for a replacement. There was, of course, the full blown Frontpage but it was complicated and pricey while my website was simple and I was cheap. Complicated and pricey seemed to describe every all-in-one web tool so I ended up dealing with the four aspects of website management separately.

File Upload

Somewhere inside every web site is an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server and that is the most basic way to upload files. All versions of MS Windows includes a command line FTP client and I’ve often used that to upload files. I’ve also used some of the fancier FTP clients with graphical interfaces and more powerful features. At some point, MS Windows Explorer became capable of creating FTP connections so that copying to or from a remote file system can be done with the same drag-and-drop cut-and-paste operations as purely local transfers. That’s the way I’ve done uploads for years.

Source Editing

For at least a couple of years, I maintained the website with the NotePad text editor packaged with MS Windows. The general structure of the website and the layout of the pages had been established with FPE. Adding a new daily page or even a new trip consisted of copying an existing page and modifying it. NotePad handled that just fine. It did not, however, provide much help. There was no spell checking and no syntax checking. Around 2004 or 2005 I started using a program that did both. That program was the free “Lite” version of CSE HTML Validator. It helped tremendously and after a couple of years I purchased the “Standard” version with more powerful error checking and support for CSS and PHP in addition to HTML. These are simply additional programming languages used in webpage authoring. I doubt that many readers of this blog are also writers of HTML but for any that are, CSE HTML Validator is a very good tool worth checking out.

Preview and Testing

As long as I was just dealing with pure HTML, simply pointing a browser at a webpage file was all the preview I needed. Then one forgotten but fateful day I added some PHP or some server side includes and the limits of that method became immediately obvious. Fortunately, by the time I reached this point, many others had already passed it and establishing a local web server was fairly easy. Although my very first web hosts were MS Windows based, I had rather early on switched to Linux. This was not a philosophical or technology triggered switch. It was pure economics. The most common web hosting rig in the world is the Apache server running on the Linux operating system and that’s where the bargains are. It’s cheap because it’s common and common because it’s cheap. To round things out, most of those host providers include, among a mishmash of other tools, bells, features, and whistles, the PHP language preprocessor and the MySQL data base.

Duplicating this common Linux based server model on an MS Windows machine is called WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP) and I’m sure it was pretty messy once upon a time. For me, it was as easy as installing an integrated package from those really smart and generous folks in the world of Open Source. There are several WAMPs available. I’m using the one from WampServer. I like it and have experienced no real problems with it but I’ve no experience with the others so can offer no sort of comparison.

Link Checking

When I wrote that Frontpage Express “allowed me to manage the collection of pages that made up my website”, what I had in mind was link checking; Verifying that my little piece of the web was coherent with no loose strands leading to no where and no important somewheres with no strands leading to them. The Standard version of CSE HTML Validator, which I own, checks links in individual pages. The more expensive Professional version does this for full websites and other collections, too. The Lite version does neither. I can justify the price of CSE HTML Validator Standard but not Professional. I use the free Xenu’s Link Sleuth. This powerful program checks every internal and external link in a website and produces a full report of errors. It even throws in a complete site map.

As I’ve said before, there are lots of higher level web authoring tools out there that weren’t even dreamed of in 1999. I am not suggesting that anyone start running a website the way I am. What I am suggesting is that, if you are doing or are considering doing anything similar, these are some pretty good tools to do it with.

My Apps – Chapter 4 — Serif PhotoPlus

Book Review
Indiana Cars
Dennis & Terri Horvath

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Denny

Indiana Cars cover Yes, I am late to the party. This book on Indiana’s automotive history was published in 2002 but, since it’s about old cars, none of the history has changed and the cars have only gotten older.

I learned of and purchased the book when one of its authors performed guide duty on a tour that was part of the Lincoln Highway Centennial Kickoff in Indianapolis. On that tour, Dennis Horvath took us to many of the city’s automotive landmarks and this book contains all of those and more. Though few might consider Indiana Cars light reading, it is certainly interesting reading. Dennis knows automotive history. And he really knows Indiana automotive history.

There is a tremendous amount of it. At one time second only to Michigan in automobile production, Indiana has been home to more than 400 vehicle brands. Some are still widely recognized — Stutz, Studebaker, Duesenberg. Other, such as Lexington, Flandermobile, and Empire, are pretty much forgotten outside of hardcore automotive circles and the pages of this book. Similarly, Indiana had plenty of automobile pioneers. Louis Chevrolet, Harry Stutz, and Eddie Rickenbacker are fairly well known; Guys like Elwood Haynes, Charles Black, and Louis Schwitzer not so much. They’re all there in Indiana Cars.

There is an introduction and “A General Overview by Decade” to get things started. That overview begins in the 1890s. It talks of the overall automotive industry and Indiana’s role in it. There are lots of numbers. It was this I had most in mind when I said that some folks would not consider the book light reading. Statistics are necessary, of course, in showing growth and relationships. The Horvaths do a good job of presenting them but they are still numbers. Numbers don’t make for exciting reading but they make for a good reference book and that’s a role Indiana Cars plays quite well.

Indiana Cars sample Once the background is set, the book moves onto the various manufacturers. Not every mark ever built in the state is covered but there are sizable sections on what the Horvaths consider “Significant Automobiles”. The reading isn’t so dry now. There are fairly lengthy articles on the likes of Duesenberg and Studebaker and shorter ones on others. The book is well illustrated with photographs and clippings from period literature. Facts are seasoned with entertaining anecdotes. Joe Cole got his first car running and took off without installing the brakes. Lack of fuel finally stopped it after many laps around Monument Circle in Indianapolis. In 1891, Charley Black’s six-block drive in a Benz included crashing into both a surrey and a shop window. Those were the good old days.

Trucks built in Indiana have a section as do military vehicles. Many of those pioneering Hoosiers who put Indiana near the front of the early automotive development are covered, too. Appendices include listings of all Indiana cars, major milestones, and other items.

Indiana Cars excels as a source of information The book most likely contains the answer to whatever questions you may have about the automotive industry in Indiana. Car nuts will find it entertaining. They and history buffs will find it educational. Those in neither group may find it a wee bit dry.

Indiana Cars: A History of the Automobile in Indiana, Dennis E. Horvath and Terri Horvath, Hoosier Auto Show & Swap Meet Inc. (printed by Jackson Press), 2002, hardback, 8.8 x 11.2 inches, 198 pages, ISBN 978-0964436459
Available through Amazon.

Something’s Brewing in Cincy

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Denny

Cincinnati has breweries. It used to have a lot of breweries and they used to be bigger. Maybe the glory days when more than twenty breweries operated in the Queen City won’t be returning but the count is definitely increasing. Most of those 20+ breweries simply didn’t recover from the Eighteenth Amendment. A few — Hudepohl, Shoenling, Wiedemann, Burger — did and were going strong when I came to town in 1965. But one by one they closed and all were gone by the end of the century. An exception of sorts is the former Shoenling Brewery now owned by Boston Brewing and used to produce Samuel Adams and other brands for a company headquartered nearly 800 miles away.

In 2004, Greg Hardman started putting his money and his considerable energy where his heart is. Using contract brewing, he brought brands like Christian Moerlein, Hudepohl, and Shoenling back to Cincinnati shelves and taps. A major goal was reached in February of 2012 with the opening of the Moerlein Lager House on the banks of the Ohio River right next to the Roebling Suspension Bridge. An even bigger goal is about to be reached when beer starts rolling out of the Moerlein Brewery in Cincinnati’s Over The Rhine. The building on Moore Street began life as part of Kaufmann Brewing Company, spent many years as a Husman’s Snack Foods potato chip plant, and more recently served as the Great Hall for the annual Bockfest. The photo at left was taken during an open house in late November as things eased ever closer to an actual opening. As I stood in the full and noisy hall, I planned this post — sort of.

My actual thoughts on that day were of a brewery that had been operating in the Cincinnati area for several years but which I’d never visited. Visiting that brewery became a priority. There were issues, however. Tours are offered but only on Saturdays. My December Saturdays were already filled so it wasn’t until the new year started that I could get serious. By then my thought had expanded to include other breweries in the area. In fact, the brewery that had triggered the plan would actually be the last one I would visit during three days of peace and brewski.

I started on Thursday with a stop at Triple Digit on Dana Avenue. The brewery is part of Listermann Manufacturing who has been supplying home brewers since 1991. They have been brewing themselves for several years and I’ve enjoyed some of their product in local restaurants. The taproom is rather new, though. Until last spring, an Ohio taproom required its own licence in addition to the brewery license. Removal of that requirement was a real boon to smaller operations like Triple Digit. I tasted a few brews and walked out with a couple of bottles of Chickow! Very good stuff.

Lunch at Arthur’s was next. That it was fairly close and more or less on my path were good reasons but there were two better ones. One is that on October 23, Arthur’s began “Proudly serving only Local Draft Beer!!!”. Most of the nationally distributed stuff is still available in bottles as is a wider range of local brews but each of the six permanent taps dispenses only beverages brewed in the Cincinnati area. A very cool and classy move in my opinion. The long standing Tap Tuesday’s could be construed as a technical violation of the “local only” rule but it is certainly a reasonable one. There is a single standalone tap that gets a keg from some smaller brewery every Tuesday. As it has been in the past, this will sometimes be a local product and sometimes not. This week it had been from a small brewery in Portland, Oregon. Hard to fault them for that. The second “better” reason was to try the beer coming from the tall diamond shaped tap. It’s Fork in the Road, an India Amber Ale from Blank Slate Brewing Company. That would be my next stop but I knew there was no tasting room or much chance of seeing anymore of the brewery than the mailbox. That’s it at the top of the article. More good beer. If you find Fork in the Road on tap, take it.

Thursday’s last stop was at the Fifty West Brewing Company on Wooster Pike, a.k.a. US Highway 50. Anyone who looked for the six taps in the picture from Arthur’s may have come up one short because the Fifty West handle is sideways and hard to see. The company is pretty new. The taproom is just seven weeks old but going gangbusters. I started with a Brewmaster’s Choice flight then, on a neighbor’s recommendation, did a pint of something else. My favorite was the Horse & Buggy Scotch Ale but, at 8.3% ABV, it wasn’t something I could just guzzle.

On Friday afternoon I drove up to Valley Vineyards near Morrow, Ohio. They’ve been making some well respected wine here for over forty years. I’m not much of a wine drinker but did attend some of their earliest wine festivals when I lived near by. I’ve been wanting to revisit the place ever since they added the Cellar Dweller nanobrewery a little over a year ago. The one word description “refined” came to mind as I worked through the seven member flight and the word seems fitting for an operation with the experience behind it that this one has. Although the offerings fill the full range from an American Light to an Irish Stout each is rather middle-of-the-road for the type. That’s not at all a bad thing. I’m sure Valley’s goal was to provide a range of high quality and pleasant brews without jarring palettes. Well done. Perhaps it is also fitting that my favorite was the middle of the lineup Dead Dweller English Ale.

Friday’s second and last brewery was Rivertown in Lockland, Ohio. The taproom is open only on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday with tours available Friday and Saturday. They charge five bucks for the tour but it includes a beer and a souvenir glass. Since most beers are $5, they’re really giving you a glass to take the tour. Rivertown Brewery is only a couple of years old but quickly overcame some early quality problems to become one of the area’s more successful breweries. One of the beers I’ve tried and liked in the past is Roebling Porter. At the brewery I got to try it the “right way” with nitrogen delivery and liked it even more.

OK. Here it is. The place that got me thinking about visiting local breweries last November. Mt Carmel Brewing has been producing beer in this 1924 farm house since 2005. They have been offering tours on a regular basis since that change in Ohio law allowed them to open a taproom last spring. It’s not a big place so a tour doesn’t take long but it does provide a good feel for how the place operates. Improvements and expansions have occurred as the business grew and more are planned. Production is the top priority but things like more parking for taproom patrons are also in the works. As Mt Carmel brews have appeared on an increasing number of area shelves and taps, their Amber Ale has become a favorite of mine.

Visiting these five taprooms made it clear to me that brewing is pretty healthy in Cincinnati. Although my timing was accidental, it was also extremely appropriate. Next Saturday, as a prelude to Cincinnati Beer Week, six sold out “Taproom Trolleys” will visit most of the same places. The buses will not go to the remote Valley Vineyards but will stop at the Moerlein Lager House and Rockbottom Brewery. I beat the crowd but just barely.

2012 in the Rear View

Posted on January 6, 2013 by Denny

The year in numbers (2011 values in parentheses):

5 (8) = Oddment pages posted
8 (9) = Road trips reported
52 (21) = Weeks of regularly scheduled Sunday blog posts
77 (31) = Total blog posts
76 (69) = Days on the road
2254 (2058) = Pictures posted — 388 (96) in the blog, 131 (141) in Oddments, and 1735 (1821) in Road Trips

Twenty Mile Stand in the Rear View Available blog statistics kind of suck. At least they do for WordPress Jetpack statistics on a self hosted blog that is only a portion of a website. One issue is that the most popular “page” is almost certain to be something called “Home page / Archives” which is a swirling mix of the multiple pages displayed at the blog’s root or the multiple pages that satisfy a search. I have AWStats generated numbers for the entire site, including the blog, but those have some problems, too. For one thing, counts include all of the individual pages appearing in the previously mentioned “Home page / Archives” many of which are not actually viewed. For another, AWStats numbers include blog page references that I’ve made myself in creating and maintaining the blog. I try to keep these to a minimum but eliminating them completely is not possible. In the end, though, I do believe the relationship of the numbers is meaningful even if the numbers themselves aren’t all that precise. So here are the top five blog and non-blog entries and I’ll follow the lists with some overall numbers.

Top Blog Posts:

Twenty Mile’s Last Stand
Article on an endangered historic building that drew some interest locally.
The World is Singing in Cincy
Report of my one day visit to the 2012 World Choir Games held in Cincinnati.
The Long Drive
Book review posted in November of 2011 that was 2011’s top post.
Scoring the Dixie
Discussion of my own attempts to keep track of what parts of the Dixie Highway I have driven.
Route 66 Attractions
Review of a GPS based product for tracing Route 66.

Top Non-Blog Posts:

Sixty-Six: E2E and F2F
Trip journal for Route 66 End-to-End & Friend-to-Friend trip to the festival in Victorville, CA.
Tadmor
Oddment page on a 2006 visit to the ghost town of Tadmor. I believe traffic is largely from Wikipedia.
American Sign Museum Opening
Oddment page on the 2005 opening of the American Sign Museum. Traffic almost certainly due the the museum’s reopening at a new location this year. A blog entry on the reopening ranked eighth.
Sixty-Six the Hard Way
Trip journal for drive on US-44 and US-22.
Lincoln Highway Conference 2012
Journal for trip to the 2012 Lincoln Highway Conference in Canton, Ohio.

The entire website had 91,233 visits and 337,996 page views last year which is a goodly increase from the 43,213 visits and 227,060 page views of 2011. Jetpack tells me the blog had 5,965 views in 2012 though I’m not sure if those those views and AWStats’ page views are the same.

When I reviewed 2011, I had just completed my 100th documented road trip and had made a clickable collage of the teaser images. In that post, I waffled on whether or not I would extend the collage with subsequent trips. I decided it was a good idea and completed trips are now added to the collage when they’re added to the Trip List. This is just one of the things covered in an FAQ page that was added last year. Yep, extending a collage and adding an FAQ page were the big changes for 2012. And I’m probably not going to get very jiggy in 2013 either.

Trip Peek #4
Trip #60
Crescent City Christmas

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Denny

This picture is from my 2007 Crescent City Christmas road trip. That was my second Christmas Escape Run and I spent a very pleasant Christmas Day in New Orleans, Louisiana. On the way down, I checked out some history in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, and on the way home connected with road fan Alex Burr in Jackson. Mississippi. Alex rode with me for a few days as we got a decent dose of Delta Blues education. The photograph was taken on Christmas Eve on Royal Street.

I readily confess to this Trip Pic Peek not being random. I wanted something seasonal for the middle of my 2012 Christmas Escape Run and the “Peace Yall” sign has always been one of my favorites.

Trip Pic Peek # 3 — Trip #9 — Augusta Spring

Trip Pic 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 randomly selected 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 trip journal it is from.

Christmas Escape Repeat

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Denny

Delta Queen, Christmas Day 2010 That’s the steamship Delta Queen pictured to the right. The picture was taken on December 25, 2010 when Chattanooga got its first Christmas Day snow fall in 41 years. I don’t expect to see scenes like that again though I am returning to the Queen for Christmas 2012. Once the holiday is past, I’ll be driving a little Dixie Highway and spending a little time in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m now on the way and spent last night in LaFollette, Tennessee. The short journal for that first day’s drive is here with the overview of the trip here. As usual, daily journals will be posted as the trip progresses. If you would like to be notified of each day’s posting, look into the available mailing list or RSS feed. This will be the only blog entry related to this trip and will serve to hold any and all comments.

Music Review
Not of Seasons
Mississippi Charles Bevel

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Denny

Not of Seasons - cover I went to see Hank Williams: Lost Highway last week. The first sound that came from the stage wasn’t the voice of Hank or his mother or the cry of a pedal steel guitar. When the lights dimmed and the play began, it was the pure voice of Mississippi Charles Bevel that came unfaltering from the darkness. Bevel plays Tee-Tot, Williams’ mentor. The CD that this post claims to review is not new. It’s a dozen years old and I don’t recall ever hearing of it or Charles Bevel before last Wednesday.

I was quite sincere in writing that I’d never before heard of Charles Bevel but there’s a strong possibility that it’s not entirely true. I’ve not seen the Broadway show It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues but I’ve certainly heard of it. Bevel co-wrote that and starred in it so there’s a decent chance that I’ve seen his name somewhere before. On Wednesday, though, I knew nothing of Bevel’s history and was simply wowed by his voice. He wasn’t the star of the show in any normal sense but he was the cast member who impressed me the most musically and there were some fine musicians in that cast.

I made two wishes during the show and both came true. One, some of those CDs I’d seen for sale on the way in were Bevel’s and, two, he was among the cast members in the lobby collecting money for charities. Better yet, my cheap seat made me one of the last to exit and the crowd was thinning as I headed out. My reward was an autograph and a short conversation. “All the words are in there,” the singer said as he returned the signed CD, “so you can sing along.” That was my first hint that there was more to this CD and this man than just another pretty voice.

I listened to a Hank Williams CD on the drive home. When I finally listened to my new purchase a couple of days later, it was immediately obvious that this guy had some heavy-duty musicians backing him up. And with each song it became more and more apparent that he was working with some heavy-duty material, too. By the time I checked the credits, I was simply verifying what had become more than a suspicion. Behind that Wednesday night hint was the fact that Mississippi Charles Bevel had written every tune.

A closer looked at the credits revealed even more of my ignorance. More than twenty musicians appear in the credits and I didn’t recognize a one. These are not unknown musicians. They were simply unknown to me. Toss some of the names in a search engine and you’ll discover folks who have played with the likes of John Denver, Delaney & Bonnie Bramlett, The Commodores, Nora Jones, and on and on. Every performance on Not of Seasons is top-notch and maybe it’s natural to wonder how can all these people I’ve never heard of make such great music but I’m kind of used to it. There are a lot of great musicians whose names I recognize but I also know there are plenty more that I’ve so far completely missed.

It’s a big group with multiple saxophones, trumpet, trombone, and a small choir that delivers “I’m a Lover”, the upbeat opening track. Bevel actually co-wrote this song — with James Mabone — for the Staple Singers. I know it’s the saxophone that does it but Bevel’s version sounds rather Springsteenesque to me. The next tune, “Dreams”, is a little slower and just slightly exotic sounding. It made me think of early Terence Trent D’Arby and I found myself thinking of D’Arby at various other points in the CD. I don’t believe any other track equals the opener in troop size but several come close. That choir returns for three more songs and horns, various keyboards, and guitars abound. One cut has a sousaphone; Another a cello. None are gimmicks. They are there because they belong.

Bevel’s strong voice sounds great backed by a room full of musicians but it may be easier to appreciate with pared down backing. “Woman” is just him and a piano. Other tracks include little more than a guitar and/or piano.

Back in the 1970s Bevel recorded a CD for A&M but even before the big promotional tour he realized that wasn’t what he wanted. He essentially walked away to be what he wanted to be and that’s exactly what he is. And the songs on Not of Seasons are what he wants to write and what he wants to sing. Calling it blues isn’t incorrect but it’s also gospel, soul, funk, pop, and folk. The lyrics are as strong as his voice. They can be insightful.

I heard a voice speak to me
Say, come over here to the land of the free
Land of the free and the home of the brave
But I see cowards and I smell slaves

And some might make your mind swivel unexpectedly.

Lord, Jesus and sex are both friends of mine

Some are just fun.

Making love, it ain’t magic
If you don’t know what to do it can be tragic

All are delightful.

There’s a two-man live version of the title track here. The album can be found here but Mississippi Charles Bevel spends a lot of time acting these days and it’s a lot more fun to buy it first hand after a performance.

My Christmas Squirrel

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Denny

I’m not much of a decorator. When there were young’uns in the house, there was always a tree at Christmas and I even strung up a few outdoor lights once or twice but there has been nothing of that sort around my bachelor abodes. When I lived in a one bedroom apartment, I found a couple of red balls that probably came from someone’s tree and hung them from a ceiling beam. I’ve expanded on that just a bit in my current location. At some point after Thanksgiving has passed each year, I take my single armload of holiday trim out of the closet and make things all Christmasy.

The little tree is store-bought. It’s the only component in my Christmas display not made by a family member’s hand. The snow-couple on the mantle are covered soft drink bottles. My sister dives into various arts and crafts projects on a regular basis and one year she made quite a few of these. I’m guessing that the ornament with the photo of the grandsons was assembled by my daughter-in-law or maybe the oldest boy did it. It arrived just a few days before my first ever Christmas Escape Run in 2006 and I took it with me. It first hung on a tree of sorts in a room above the Under the Hill Saloon in Natchez, Mississippi.

The star is one my Mom made of wax-coated paper. My sister and I each have five. I think Mom may have formed the stars then dipped them but I might not be remembering that quite right. She passed away in 1959 so the stars are at least 54 years old. Unlike my current piece of fake shrubbery, there was some store-bought stuff on our trees in those days but not a lot. There was popcorn we had strung while also eating a goodly amount of it and each year we carefully removed the hanging strands of tinsel (icicles) to reuse the next. The tree was definitely not fake.

The merry-go-round isn’t exactly holiday themed but, like pretty much any toy, seems quite appropriate. I guess Dad ran out of furniture to refinish or chairs to cane or maybe he just wanted a break. Whatever the source of the urge, it resulted in the production of several of these merry-go-rounds some years back. They were populated with a variety of animals. Mine has a chicken, duck, cat, and squirrel.

The sweat of the honest makes the merry-go-round.
Dirk Hamilton, Rainbows in the Night, 1995

I wasn’t able to get an ornament made by my newest grandson in time to include it in this post. Construction is in progress and I’ll update this post with a photo as soon as possible. For the present, I’ll just include this photo so that all three grandsons are represented.

UPDATE: January 3, 2013 – I picked up the new ornament on the way home from my Christmas trip. As promised, here it is. I’m all set for Christmas 2013.

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