Trip Peek #96
Trip #92
Chattanooga Christmas

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Denny

This picture is from my 2010 Chattanooga Christmas trip. It was the second of my three visits to the Delta Queen while it operated as a stationary hotel in Chatanooga, TN. I’d spent Independence Day 2009 onboard and would return for Christmas 2012. One thing that made the trip memorable was the first Christmas Day snowfall in Chatanooga in forty-one years. In addition to the snow, I have memories of a remarkable young man named Jeremy. The unusual snow was enough to keep most employees, including the cook, at home. Jeremy was the desk clerk and apparently the only staff member on board. I’m guessing his age at about twenty. Once he realized that he was essentially on his own, Jeremy took it upon himself to break out coffee, fruit, and pastries so the passengers were fed. I was impressed.

I’d started the trip with seven members of the Gingerbread family courtesy of Ovenmaster Mary, but only the parents and two offspring remained when I took the Christmas morning photo above. I enjoyed walking through the surprise winter wonderland of Coolidge Park and nearby areas then headed home the next day. On the way, I stopped in Nashville and Bowling Green to look in on Belle Meade and the National Corvette Museum.

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

It’s Easter (Again)

Posted on April 12, 2020 by Denny

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?”

So It’s a Little Fishy

Posted on January 26, 2020 by Denny

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Groundhog Day. I don’t mean the movie, although I like that well enough. No, I mean Groundhog Day the day. I’ve seen Punxsutawney Phil, Buckeye Chuck, and Rosie the Groundhog perform predictions regarding the nearness of spring. I once had plans to observe Woodstock Willy at work but those got knocked off by a blizzard. I have eaten some sort of pork sausage on the second day of February for several decades. I’m quite taken with the holiday and may get out to see one of the furry forecasters next week, but yesterday I checked in with a popular predictor of a very different sort.

Several years ago, some folks in Buckeye Lake, Ohio, hatched a plan to give their community a little mid-winter boost. Winterfest involves many of the town’s eating and drinking establishments. Special food and drink offers combine with assorted entertainment to make it a fun day and fuel sales. A blatantly groundhog day like event anchors and opens the festival.

By 6:00 AM, a crowd had begun to gather in the park near the lake. Around 6:30 Benny the Bass arrived in his hundred-gallon aquarium. Music, dancing, and some lighthearted speeches helped build the excitement until 7:00 when a bucket of minnows was emptied into the tank. According to the six-year-old legend, if Benny downs a minnow in a minute or less, an early spring is on the way. If not, winter will drag on for another six weeks. I’d read that the official chant was “Take the bait. Spring can’t wait”, but chants of “Eat it Benny” were all I heard today as time ticked away. The thirty-second warning was reached then a countdown of the final seconds and a loud moan of disappointment from the crowd. I wonder if the old “Take the bait” chant would have made a difference.

It was a short moan that got quickly covered by the boom of fireworks and a blast of Springsteen. “Glory Days”, rockets’ red and white glare, “Born in the USA”, and for many, it was time to go get a beer.

The crowd thinned quickly so I was able to see the whole tank for the first time. I walked around it to photograph the bad news that someone had written on the glass on the opposite side, but before long, the same sad prediction was written on the other side as well.

The opening photo was taken yesterday when I first came into town and stopped by the Buckeye Lake Brewery. That’s where Benny will be displayed for the rest of the weekend. The bartender had suggested parking near the brewery and walking to the park. That’s what I did which gave me an opportunity to stop by Our Lakeside Diner for breakfast on the way back. A Groundhog Day breakfast always includes pork sausage. Today was a lot like Groundhog Day but sausage didn’t seem all that appropriate for the occasion. My problem was solved when I saw perch & eggs on the menu. Walleye was also offered but perch seemed just right.

By the time I finished breakfast and walked on to the brewery, Benny had been moved to an adjacent spot. The finned boat and wood-grained wagon make for a really classy ensemble. I don’t think there was an official minnow count so it’s unknown if any are missing but Benny and most — if not all — of the minnows seem to be getting along reasonably well.

Unlike many of the festival attendees, I wasn’t quite ready for a beer. I paused briefly at the brewery then moved on for a walkabout that let me peek at some of the other businesses in town. I eventually settled down in the tent in front of the brewery to listen to Paper Street Music Company while enjoying one of those multipurpose beers that fans had promoted at Benny’s side. Not every business in town was open but those that were seemed pretty busy. Apparently that wintertime boost Winterfest was created for is a reality and bennyfishal to all participants.

Finding (More Of) It Here

Posted on December 23, 2019 by Denny

The 2019 Christmas Escape Run is another all Ohio outing with Christmas at Geneva-on-the-Lake and a couple of days leading up to it in Steubenville. The first day, which is now posted, was pretty much filled with the drive to Steubenville. The title comes from Ohio’s tourism slogan, “Find It Here”, which was also the basis for the title of an all Ohio Christmas trip in 2016.

This entry is to let blog only subscribers know about the trip and to provide a place for comments. The journal is here.

A Cosmic Reason for the Season

Posted on December 22, 2019 by Denny

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.

Pyramid Hill Holiday Lights

Posted on December 15, 2019 by Denny

At least twice in the last few weeks, I’ve mentioned Holiday Lights on the Hill when the subject of light displays came up. As I talked up the annual event at the sculpture park near Hamilton, Ohio, I silently recognized that I really didn’t know what I was talking about. I’ve visited the park in the daytime and I’ve seen pictures of the holiday lights, but I’d never personally taken in the big show. I resolved to correct that, and Wednesday night I did.

The opening photo is of a swan made of lights on a small pond. I had seen the swan in promotional material for the event. The entrance to the park and a view of the beginning of the drive into the park are pictured at left. Admission is charged per car and paid at a window in the small building at the center of the first photo.

The round trip drive through the lights is described as 2.5 miles long through more than 100,000 lights. This year, all of those lights are LEDs.

This year, the light display operates from November 22 through January 5 but the park is open year-round. There is a museum of ancient sculpture and the 300-acre site is filled with both permanent and temporary works of art. Some of the pieces are visible among the colored lights.

I think one reason the light show at Pyramid Hill was on my mind this year was that I’d heard Brave Berlin was once again involved. The folks at Brave Berlin are the minds behind BLINK (which I saw a little of in both 2019 and 2017) and Luminocity (which I’ve not seen at all). They had something at last year’s Pyramid Hill show and the word was out that there would be something bigger this year. That something was a mapped projection at the park’s pavilion. A winter scene and the words “Greetings from the North Pole” covered the entire building. It’s impressive but impossible to fit into a photograph from the road with my gear. The field of blue, where figures flicker in and out, is directly across the road from the pavilion.

Holiday Lights on the Hill differs from other light displays in my experience in that the vast majority of its lights are arranged in geometric or simply random patterns. “Scenes”, like this carriage, make up the bulk of other holiday light shows, but there are only a few here. The setting is unique and glimpses of sculptures that are not technically part of the holiday exhibit somewhat play the role that sightings of elf and reindeer shaped structures play in other light displays.

Dynamic Traditions

Posted on December 1, 2019 by Denny

The ways I have experienced Thanksgiving are many. Early in my life it was as the large family gathering typically presented as the ideal. I don’t disagree. There were seldom seen relatives bringing an astonishing assortment of edibles; Some you’d been craving for a year while others you just hoped your parents wouldn’t make you eat. But we could never put together that Norman Rockwell scene with everyone sitting around a single table. Instead, Grandma’s house was filled with happy people eating in the kitchen, at folding tables, and from full plates balanced on knees. Marriage triggered a switch from celebrating the day with the large family in Darke County to the small but growing family in Cincinnati. Divorce changed things, too.

As a single, I shared Thanksgiving with friends and friends’ families. Some gatherings had a real “Alice’s Restaurant” feel though without the court appearance. That phase ended when three kids moved in. The “head of household” period saw some awkward attempts at feast making by me and some much more successful efforts by girlfriends. A shortlived second marriage included a new family to celebrate with. My current solo period began when the last of the young ‘uns moved out.

It was a little different than it had been before the family period. I was invited to join friends for holidays but everybody was a little more mature now. There was no question of me being genuinely welcome but I saw myself as more of an add-on than I once had. I dealt with the situation by running away. I first ran away for Thanksgiving in 2005. I started running away for Christmas in 2006.

I have left home for every Christmas since then. My Thanksgiving escapes have been less consistent. Since 2009, Thanksgiving has been a mix of home and away for me. Somewhere along the way, I realized that many state parks offer buffets on holidays. It’s something I’ve taken advantage of for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Last year, my daughter and I enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving meal at a local restaurant. This year we borrowed from my “away” experience and took in the buffet at Deer Creek State Park.

The place was absolutely packed and they were running behind schedule. That wasn’t much of an issue for us as there was a bar area in the lodge where we could pass the time with beer in hand. Our name was called about forty-five minutes after our scheduled time and we were seated at what we considered a primo spot overlooking the lake.

We joked about the possibility of there being nothing left to eat for us but that wasn’t the case at all. The only thing that ever seemed to get depleted was the stack of plates but even that shortage didn’t last long as the staff hustled to get clean ones to the table as soon as they were ready. The food was quite good and included all the standards like turkey, ham, stuffing, and potatoes along with some nice cold shrimp and baked salmon.

I realize that none of the pictures here are very good. They were taken with little care with my pocket camera. But more important than the quality is the absence of any pictures of my daughter or me with full plates. Heck, there aren’t even any pictures of the full plates and that’s just about unheard of in a Thanksgiving Day post. The truth is I had no intention of posting anything about the day and only snapped the few pictures I have because that’s what I do. In hindsight, I do wish I’d asked our waitress to snap a picture of us at our table but accept the fact that I’m lucky to even have a picture of the table.

I was also lucky in spending time with my daughter. I didn’t actually speak with either of them, but I did exchange text greetings with my sons in New York and California. There’s a meme bouncing around the interwebs with the observation that “Happiness is when you realize your children have turned out to be good people.” I realized that a long time ago but the fourth Thursday of November is a very good time to remember it and to be thankful for it.

Book Review
Tales… from the Dickens Scenes!
The Rainy Day Writers

Posted on November 27, 2019 by Denny

This book is unusual and unusually good. The Dickens Scenes of the title are those in Cambridge, Ohio, that starred in this blog’s most recent regular weekly post. There are currently 94 of those scenes and each began life as a sketch by a fellow named Bob Ley. Bob is one of a group of writers, known as The Rainy Day Writers, who help each other practice and improve their craft and occasionally collaborate on projects. Ten of them contributed to Tales… from the Dickens Scenes.

The book’s organization is simple. Each of the scenes is the subject of a two page spread. On the left-hand page is a black and white photo of the scene along with the Bob Ley sketch on which it is based. Text that appears on a sign placed by the scene completes the page. Each sign contains an identifying number and the scenes appear in the book sequenced by those numbers.

The individual photos are not credited but acknowledgments at the front of the book identify Tom Davey and Lindy Thaxton as the photographers. The photos are all quite good and do a nice job of capturing each scene from its best vantage point. Together, the book’s even-numbered (i.e., lefthand) pages make up the sort of catalog often prepared for a museum display. The village really is such a display with the sidewalks of Cambridge forming the museum.

Filling the righthand pages is handled with skill and creativity by The Rainy Day Writers. The text on each page was created for the scene it is associated with. There are works of fiction that imagine a day or a minute in the lives of the figures in the scene, and there are factual essays with subjects such as Victorian England, modern Cambridge, or Charles Dickens himself. Some are thought-provoking, some are educational, many are both. Simply noting the great difference between life in the late nineteenth century and today is thought-provoking and educational.

I’m sure that tailoring a story or an essay to a single page was often a challenge for the writer, but their small size helps make reading them about as non-challenging as it gets. Reading the odd-numbered pages in an easy chair makes sense and so does having the even-numbered pages at hand while walking around downtown Cambridge during the Christmas season. The book is available online but I suggest getting it at the source if possible. At least “while supplies last”, copies sold at the Dickens Victorian Village Welcome Center (647 Wheeling Avenue) have been signed by all ten of the contributing writers plus you can put the book to work as soon as you step through the door.

The first paragraph of this article contains a link to The Rainy Day Writers website. The site contains quite a bit of good information but appears to be less current than the group’s Facebook page.

Tales… from the Dickens Scenes!, The Rainy Day Writers, Independently published, September 21, 2019, 6 x 9 inches, 198 pages, ISBN 978-1691098804
Available through Amazon.

Cambridge Spirit(s)

Posted on November 24, 2019 by Denny

Like the one a fortnight earlier, last Sunday was preceded by a very blog-worthy Saturday that just had to wait because the weekly blog slot was already filled. Again, I’m calling that good since it gave me all week to produce this post rather than trying to put it together overnight. If I had, it’s certain that it would contain fewer pictures and more mistakes. The actual target of my trip was Zanesville, Ohio, but that’s close enough to Cambridge that I drove over to visit the annual Dickens Victorian Village. As things turned out, Cambridge and the figures that line its streets during the holidays get almost the entire post.

There are nearly 200 of the life-sized figures. Each is unique and dressed in Victorian-era clothing. They are grouped into 90-some scenes. Some come directly from a Charles Dickens story while others represent sights the author might have encountered walking around nineteenth-century England.

This is the village’s fourteenth year, and I believe this is at least the fourth time I’ve visited. The bulk of the figures are placed along Wheeling Avenue which once carried the National Road. The road and a bridge pictured on that panel will be mentioned again before this article ends.

The Guernsey County Historical Society offered two “living” tours of Cambridge’s Old City Cemetery and I made it to the second one. The first resident we met was Sophia Gibout, Sophia was a washerwoman who died in 1865 after living in Cambridge for many years. Being familiar with other residents — both before and after their move to the cemetery — she accompanied us as a guide. The lady with the white muff is Elizabeth Taylor, wife of Joseph Taylor. The Taylors figured prominently in Cambridge’s early history. A newspaper and hotel were among their contributions and Joseph served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Isaac Oldham, the fellow in the third photo, settled in the area before Cambridge was established.

The American Civil War was naturally a major chapter in the history of Cambridge and these three figures have some interesting personal connections to it. Before serving in the war, James Adair walked to California to join the gold rush of 1849, made his fortune in the goldfields, then returned to Ohio by taking a ship south to the isthmus of Panama, traveling across it, and heading north on another ship. Captain Adair was killed in Virginia in 1962 and his body returned to Cambridge for burial. John Cook was killed by an unknown assailant in March of 1865. The murderer and an accomplice were eventually tracked down and a major trial, which overlapped that of Lincoln’s assassins, resulted in both being hanged. The gentleman in the tophat is C.P.B. Sarchet. He survived the war after reaching the rank of colonel then developed a reputation as a great historian. He was born in 1828 which he proudly pointed out was the same year that the National Road came through and that double covered bridge on the panel downtown was built. The bridge stood until washed away by the flood of 1913. Colonel Sarchet died a few weeks later.

We walked back to where we had first met Sophia and where Elizabeth was waiting. Like Paul Harvey, Elizabeth wanted to make sure we knew the rest of Sophia’s story. She was well-liked in the town and at her death friends arranged for a proper burial. It was then that the undertaker discovered that the washerwoman was physically a man. That simple revelation ended the “living” tour and started some personal brain activity. I’ve read of nineteenth-century women disguising themselves as men in order to join the military, drive a stagecoach, or participate in some other activity otherwise denied them. This was something different. There are essentially no reasons that would justify choosing to live as a lower-class female in the early 1800s. Sophia Gibout’s story should make anyone who believes that questions of gender identity are a 21st-century phenomenon think just a little deeper.

Following the “living” tour, a presentation on tombstone symbols was provided by Randy Neff of the Guernsey County Genealogical Society. In the photo, Randy is standing beside a tombstone showing a pair of hands. The hand on the viewer’s left represents the deceased. It is always stiff and lifeless and is gripped by the other hand which may represent an already deceased spouse or other relative. A hand coming from a cloud represents the hand of God himself pulling the newly deceased into Heaven.

It was now that l realized my great blunder. I had driven to the area for the purpose of attending a gathering of the Ohio National Road Association. It was on my phone calendar for 7:00 PM. As I left the cemetery, I considered driving the short distance east to Wheeling, West Virginia, where one of my favorite bridges had recently been closed. I can’t explain why I only now double-checked the phone calendar with the original ONRA mailing, but that’s what I did. My intent was to determine with certainty whether or not if I had time to drive to Wheeling and back to Zanesville. What I discovered was that the information on my phone was terribly wrong. The gathering was a 12:00 lunch, not a 7:00 dinner. I had plenty of time to drive to Wheeling because I had already completely missed the event.

The 1849 Wheeling suspension bridge was closed in late September due to continuing violations of weight limits. I didn’t expect to discover anything new but my basic curiosity prompted me to take a look since I was fairly close. The result is a picture of a bridge closed sign.

Anticipating an evening spent with National Road fans near Zanesville, I had a motel reserved nearby. The sun set while I was in Wheeling which gave me an opportunity to stop in Cambridge for a look at the wonderful light show at the Guernsey county courthouse.

Trip Peek #82
Trip #138
Finding It Here

Posted on May 5, 2019 by Denny

This picture is from my 2016 Finding It Here trip. It was that year’s Christmas Escape Run. I wanted to keep the CER short in 2016 and, having enjoyed Christmases at state parks in West Virginia and Indiana, selected an Ohio park for this outing. The name came from the fairly new state tourism slogan, “Ohio, find it here”. Burr Oak, the chosen park, is in the east half of the state about halfway between Columbus and Marietta. Although technically a four day trip, the last day was an uneventful quick drive home from the park. The first night was spent in Athens and included visits to a couple of local breweries. Burr Oak Lodge sits near the south end of the Morgan County Scenic Byway, a section of which locals have nicknamed “Rim of the World”. That was my route to the lodge. On Christmas Day, I explored some of the park and the narrow roads around it. I also made it all the way to Cambridge which is taken over by a Dickens Victorian Village each year. The photo is of a huge chandelier in the lobby of Burr Oak Lodge.

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