Haphazard Holidays

Calling this trip “haphazard” might be a little strong but plans really aren’t very firm. I started on Winter Solstice with some solid plans and also have plans for some stops in Virginia. I hope to eventually reach where my son lives in New York but what goes in between is pretty murky.

This entry lets blog-only subscribers know about the trip and provides a place for comments. The journal is here.

Book Review
Near Woods
Kevin Patrick

The year Kevin Patrick spent “connecting with White’s Woods” may have been, as a blurb on the back of Near Woods says “In the spirit of Walden” but the resulting products are not the same. Thoreau’s time at Walden Pond was an experiment in self-sufficiency and the book he wrote some years later documented its success. His observations of nature and seasons were generally used to support some aspect of his minimalist lifestyle and not to educate the reader. I suppose some of Patrick’s observations are also made to reinforce some philosophical viewpoint, but he is a lot more subtle and he helps the reader share the raw observation as near as possible. Exactly one-half of this book’s pages are filled with some excellent photographs.

The word “spirit” also appears early in the book’s text. There Patrick says it is written in the spirit of other nature books and mentions, in addition to Thoreau, Emerson, Muir, Cousteau, and others. I believe what he means is the sharing of observations as accurately as possible and in a manner that promotes a real appreciation of what is being observed.

I’m not all that familiar with many of the authors named but did find myself making some comparisons with an author and book Patrick does not mention. In PrairieErth, William Least Heat Moon makes a deep dive into a single county in Kansas. In some sense, Patrick’s deep dive into the 250-acre White’s Woods is closer to Moon’s product than to Thoreau’s but that comparison is also far from perfect. By trying to look at that county from every possible angle, PrairieErth can sometimes seem like a writing class exercise. Near Woods looks at its subject from a lot of angles but not, I think, every angle. Just the interesting ones.

Of course, Near Woods is better looking than either Walden or PrairieErth. To some degree, that’s just something that color photographs do for a book. But these high-quality and well-chosen photos do more than make the book pretty. They are the “raw observations” mentioned in the first paragraph of this article. The book’s design incorporates the photos wonderfully and helps make reading the book a pleasure. Every lefthand page contains one or more photographs. Righthand pages are all text. Captions are in the extra wide inner margins of the text pages. It didn’t take me terribly long to recognize the beauty of this. Every page turn resulted in a new image that could be studied as quickly or slowly as desired before tackling a new page of text.

Sometimes there is a direct connection between text and photo and sometimes the connection is loose or non-existent. At one point a loose connection led me to believe that Kevin had cheated me or at least made a major goof. One of the more interesting finds in White’s Woods is a quad-trunk tulip tree. I really wanted to see this oddity as I read about it but the pictures next to the text were of something else entirely. A photo of the tulip tree in winter appears a page or two later and I realized that this is the image on the book’s back cover. The front cover shows this extraordinary tree in summer. I wasn’t cheated and the goof was all mine. Doh!

Photographs show the woods through one year of its life and the four seasons are used to organize the book. The woods’ history and possible future are mixed into the reporting of seasonal changes to provide some very pleasant lessons in natural and human history, horticulture, geography, and geology.

Near Woods: A Year in an Allegheny Forest, Kevin Patrick, Stackpole Books (May 1, 2023), 8.5 x 11 inches, 258 pages, ISBN 978-0811772211
Available through Amazon.

Don’t Christmas My Yule

Heavens to Murgatroyd! How did I not know that? Until a few weeks ago I thought Yule was just another word for Christmas. Latin maybe. Or maybe German or Old — I mean Olde — English. Nope. The word itself is probably Norse in origin and the holiday it identifies predates Christ and Christ’s Mass by a bunch. There are many descriptions of Yule floating around and they vary quite widely but one of the things they all agree on is that Winter Solstice is involved. That’s important. It’s the thing I did not know. It’s something that distinguishes it from modern-day Christmas.

Of course, common sense and history point to a connection between Christmas and Solstice but these days no answer to the question “When is Christmas?” will contain the word Solstice. Conversely, the word Yule is used frequently in discussions of Christmas. It appears in officially designated Christmas carols and in greeting cards mailed from deeply religious homes. There are times when the words Christmas and Yule seem to be used interchangeably. That, no doubt, is why it took me three-quarters of a century to realize they are not interchangeable. One is tied to a naturally occurring planetary event. One is not.

The 12 Nights of Yule at the top of this post appears on numerous websites. I was unable to determine its origin so am unable to give credit. One of those sites is The Viking Dragon where an Origins of Yule post is quite informative. One bit I thought interesting is the fact that a King of Norway (Haakon the Good, 920–961) decreed that Yule and Christmas were to be celebrated at the same time. What better way to show the lack of a natural connection than a law arbitrarily linking them? The law also required every free man to consume a quantity of ale during the holiday which I assume is the reason that “the Good” was attached to his name.

The twelve days of observation is one of the more obvious things that the new guys copied from the old guys. The 12 Days of Yule begins the day before Solstice and runs through New Year’s Eve. The 12 Days of Christmas begins the day after Christmas and runs through January 6 which is the day associated with the arrival of the Magi or maybe Jesus’ christening. The Catholic Church calls this day Epiphany, and yes, I suppose you could use that word to describe my discovery that Yule was absolutely not another word for Christmas.


A Cosmic Reason for the Season — Reredux is this blog’s most recent previous post on the Winter Solstice. With plans to reference that post here, I looked it over and discovered that a website it linked to had disappeared. Since I thought its discussion of Solstice and Christmas a good one, I located the desired content through the WayBack Machine. fixed the existing links, and am including a direct link here. In previous Solstice-related posts, I’ve been upfront about the amount of time separating the post and the precise moment of Solstice. This year the event follows this post by 4 days 16 hours and 27 minutes.

Play Review
A Christmas Carol
Playhouse in the Park

This is less a review of a play than the reporting of one more Cincinnati Christmas tradition being checked off of my list. I seem to have gotten away with calling Cincinnati’s production of Every Christmas Story Ever Told a tradition even though its first year was just 2006. Cincinnati’s Playhouse in the Park first staged A Christmas Carol a decade and a half earlier, in 1991, so I’m sure its status as a tradition will not be questioned by anyone. What might be questioned is just how much of a reset to this tradition has just occurred, and whether or not it matters.

I don’t believe I had ever previously seen a live performance of A Christmas Carol let alone one of the beloved Playhouse in the Park performances. Although the names are the same, neither the play I saw nor its setting are the same as they were in 1991. A new main theater was built for the Playhouse last year and the annual A Christmas Carol run was put on hold while one theater was torn down and another built in its place. Some changes in the production were required because of physical differences in the stages, and the Playhouse’s artistic director, Blake Robison, took advantage of the hiatus to produce a new script. So the same Charles Dickens story of the ultimate grumpy old man being scared into a complete about-face is being told this year but the telling is not quite the same.

I obviously can’t tell you how the new compares with the old. I can tell you that the production I attended on Wednesday was spectacular in a way that could start a new tradition though I hope it will let an existing one get a new grip and continue.

That word “spectacular” applies most readily to the scenery and costumes. The onstage world looks exactly like what I’d expect a cleaned-up Dickensian world to look like. A giant clock anchors the set and also anchors the audience in stepping through the events of a long Christmas Eve. Special effects, puppets, and moving stage elements add to the sense of spectacle. When telling a story that everyone knows, the “how” really does outweigh the “what”.

Except for my comments about the new theater, pretty much everything I’ve said could be replaced with “Looks good to me” and that’s really all I’m qualified to say. For a real review, check out David Lyman’s report in the Enquirer which includes some official photos. A Christmas Carol will be at Playhouse in the Park through December 30. Go help a new tradition get started or help nudge an old one into a new phase. 

Yippee-Ki-Yule, Y’all

On Thursday, I got a double dose of holiday hoopla. The first dose was administered at Krohn Conservatory in Cincinnati’s Eden Park. The second came at Thomas More Stadium in Florence, KY.

This year’s holiday show at Krohn is called “Golden Days of Yule”. That name, coupled with my improved understanding of Yule (the subject of next week’s post), was one reason I wanted to visit Krohn this month. Another was that I realized it had been ten years since I’d seen the holiday display at the conservatory. All of my visits since 2013 were to see butterflies.

“Golden Days of Yule”, like previous holiday shows at Krohn, has lots of Cincinnati landmarks such as Music Hall in the opening photograph. All are made of locally sourced plant material and most return year after year. New this year is the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center pictured at left.

Numerous model trains travel among the landmarks and the conservatory’s normal display of plants. Even though no train has ever crossed the real John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, this version has a double set of tracks so that a train with a Cincinnati Reds boxcar can cross it in both directions.

Other returning favorites include Union Terminal, now the Cincinnati Museum Center, and Findlay Market, which is encircled by Thomas the Train. Procter & Gamble’s Twin Towers and the Tyler Davidson Fountain, featuring The Genius of Water, appear together in the third photo although the relationship between the two is nowhere near accurate in either size or location.

It somehow makes sense that the Krohn Conservatory contains a model of the Krohn Conservatory and there might be nothing more natural for a conservatory to hold at Christmas time than a giant poinsettia tree. “Golden Days of Yule” runs through January 7 with live music on weekends.

Thomas More Stadium, on the other side of the Ohio River, is home to the Florence Y’alls Class A baseball team. Winters here are way too cold for baseball so, for the second year in a row, a skating rink and 2.5 million lights have been moved in for Deck the Y’alls.

There are lights everywhere both inside and outside the stadium. They are impressive to look at from just about anywhere but following a path through the displays at field level is the main attraction.

A family of four was near me during the early part of my walk and the youngest child asked her mother to read the lighted signs that marked each section. As soon as she heard “Dinoland”, she announced that she was not going in there. I’ve a hunch that it was what she saw and not what she heard that prompted her reluctance. The family hung back at the arch but after a few minutes, I saw them move ahead slowly. Before long they were back at their normal pace. Up close, dinosaurs made of electric lights just aren’t that scary, it seems.

And “Ornament Land” just wasn’t scary at all.

Apparently, neither was “Under the Sea” although I lost track of the family somewhere around The Blue Whale of Florence.

Here’s a sampling of the “12 Days of Christmas”. In reality, this whole post is just a sampling.  There’s a lot more here than what I’ve shown.

This is the exit. I hung back to take some pictures — and watch and learn from the people in front of me —  then passed through the maze and headed for a cup of hot coffee.

As I sipped that coffee, I captured a short overview video. Deck the Y’alls runs through New Year’s Day with fireworks on New Year’s Eve.
 
  


For anyone wondering about the team name, it comes from a water tower. The short story is that while Florence Mall was in development, a water tower advertising it was erected nearby. Because the mall did not yet actually exist, that led to some legal issues which were resolved by hastily converting the “M” to “Y'”. This was supposed to be temporary but proved so popular that it remains today even though the mall has now been in operation for decades. A fuller version of the story is here. The team was founded as the Florence Freedom in 2004 but changed its name to Y’alls in 2020.

Last Flash Flash Back

A ten-year-old blog post recently appeared in this site’s traffic statistics. The post told about the last issue of a publication devoted to a veteran’s organization to which my father had belonged. It isn’t terribly unusual for ten-year-old posts to get hits but I really can’t remember the last time this particular post appeared. The hit prompted me to reread the post and even update it a little. In the process, I was also prompted to let my thoughts wander down several of the many paths uncovered by my reading. Whoever clicked on the search result that took them to this old post missed Veterans/Armistice Day by a couple of weeks and this post misses it by even more but my mind — and maybe yours too — is still in a slightly reflective mood. So this week’s post consists of just this paragraph and a link to that ten-year-old post. Reflect as much or as little as pleases you: One Last Flash

TG ’23

At one time, possibilities for Thanksgiving dinner included an Indiana state lodge with an overnight stay and an Ohio state lodge without. I dithered just a little too long, however, and both were completely filled before I made my calls. So I hastily put together a Plan C which involved an overnight stay in a Kentucky state lodge. That ‘C’ could stand for “cave” or “Carter” or both. Carter Caves State Resort Park was my destination as I crossed the Ohio River. 

Most of the miles I drove in Kentucky were on KY‑9 which roughly parallels the Ohio River although it is usually at some distance. It’s a pretty nice-looking drive but the low morning sun and the mostly eastern bearing were no help at all in photographing the scenery. After just under a hundred miles of KY-9, Garmin had me turn south on KY-2 where the sun was less intrusive and the scenery possibly even better as the road ran along Buffalo Creek. After a few miles of KY-2, the GPS directed me onto KY-7 and then, barely a mile later, onto Sutton Road. Sutton Road soon became gravel. With my destination just a few miles away, I saw no reason for concern…

…until I reached a T. The road to the right was marked with a “DEAD END” sign. To the left was a low water bridge with not much that I could see beyond it. Garmin assured me that Carter Caves Park was just a few minutes away on the other side. While I contemplated the situation, I checked the GPS to see if it was really in “Faster” mode and not in “Shorter” or “Adventurous” mode. It was. I have gone straight ahead in similar situations in the past but on this day I wasn’t in adventurous mode either. After turning around and traveling a short distance, I could look back and see a road heading off on the other side of the stream. I was tempted but continued on the prudent path.

I entered the park about half an hour later after a drive of 20, rather than 2, miles. Even so, I was there way ahead of my scheduled dinner time and assumed it was also too early to check in. I explored the park in my car and found every possible parking spot near the lodge/restaurant filled. The feeding frenzy was in full swing. There was a reasonable mix of cars and open spaces at the visitor center so I pulled in to take a look.

Once inside, I was pleasantly surprised to find that cave tours were taking place that day and even more pleasantly surprised to learn that a tour of X‑Cave was starting in just five minutes. X‑Cave is not very large but it does have a lot of interesting formations. It gets its name from two passageways that intersect to form an ‘X’. Tours travel through one side of the ‘X’, step outside, reenter, and travel through the other side. On the first pass through the intersection, the tour guide shared the cave’s very own Daniel Boone story. It’s extra appropriate on Thanksgiving Day.

While hunting one day, Boone spotted the largest turkey he had ever seen. He inexplicably missed his first shot but saw the turkey enter the cave  He hurriedly lit a torch and followed. Reaching the underground intersection, Boone saw the turkey down one of the passageways and fired. In his haste and weak light, the frontiersman had overloaded his rifle with powder and the blast threw him backward with such force that the imprint of his foot can still be seen. The turkey was missed once again by the shot but was so badly frightened that it instantly turned to stone.

Things were still busy at the lodge but I was now able to find a parking spot. I was even able to check into my room where I relaxed until dinner time. There is a salad bar behind me and a dessert-filled table just beyond the ham carving station. I helped myself to turkey and stuffing and more but decided against the ham when I reached it. I think that was because I had also helped myself to that other traditional Thanksgiving entree, catfish, when I filled my plate. After dinner, as I again relaxed in my room, I decided to get on board with the popular Elf on a Shelf craze.


When I left the lodge on Friday, I was only slightly surprised when the GPS directed me to turn left rather than retrace the way I’d arrived. Even though the road name didn’t register immediately, it did eventually, and as Sutton Road became narrower and more gravely, I knew exactly where Garmin was leading me.

This is the other side of that low-water bridge where I turned around Thursday. On Friday, having seen both sides, I had no qualms about splashing right on through. In fact, I was quite happy to do so and erase some of the guilt I felt about not splashing through the day before.

A Mighty Fine Season

The 2023 Ansonia High School football team suffered its first loss of the year on Friday. It will be their only loss as it ended their run at the state championship after a 10-0 regular season and 3 playoff victories. The game was at the same stadium in Piqua as last week’s game, and the afternoon rain had moved out by game time so Terry and I did make it. This week, though, we were the lower seed and sat on the visitor’s side of the field.

The Tigers got the ball first, and their running game ate up a lot of ground and time but ultimately came up a little short of the end zone.

Ansonia remained very much in the game through the first half. They never managed to score themselves but held the Marion Local Flyers to a single touchdown that was scored on a passing play. When the half ended, that touchdown and point after were all that separated the two teams score-wise.

The second half was a different story. The Tigers came out ready to play but so did the Flyers who scored in less than a minute on their first possession. The experience and size of the Marion Local team combined with some tiredness and demoralization on the other side to put the game out of reach fairly quickly. The Tigers were outplayed in this game but oh boy what a season! The 13 wins are the most ever for the school. They are nearly double the total number of wins during my entire time as a student (0-9, 0-9, 4-5, 3-6). Coincidentally, one of those four wins in 1963 was against Marion Local. The post title has it right. 13-1 makes for a mighty fine season.

ADDENDUM 2-Dec-2023: Today Marion Local won the Division VII State Championship by defeating Dalton, 38-0. This extended their unbeaten streak to 48 and their consecutive state championship streak to 3. We were beaten by the best.

Coffee With Jim (Hinckley)

I’m scheduled to be on Coffee With Jim, a podcast from Jim Hinkley’s America, this week. I know that some, but I’m sure not all, of our conversation will be about “Tracing a T to Tampa”. It will be recorded at 9:00 AM EST Sunday, November 19, and clicking here should allow you to listen in if you so desire. I believe that commenting or asking questions requires the PodBean app which is available on the page.

The program will be published on Spotify and other major podcast sources within a few hours of being recorded. If you don’t already have a favorite player and subscription service, it can be heard, once published, via the embedded player on Jim Hinkley’s America home page. You’ll have to scroll down just a bit.

A Win for Ansonia

Until last Friday, I don’t believe I had attended a single football game played by my high school alma mater since I graduated. Furthermore, it seems quite likely that I had not attended a game as a spectator ever. I had attended every game in the four years prior to graduation but it was always as a member of the marching band. Friday night was a new experience for me in several ways not the least of which was the favorable final score.

Of course, I’d thought about attending a game on several occasions but never followed through. I probably would not have made it to Friday’s game if my friend Terry had not been paying more attention to things than I was. Although our friendship goes back even further than high school, we did not attend the same school. Terry’s son did attend Ansonia High School and played on successful teams there in the 1980s.

As the regular season ended, it was Terry who made me aware of Ansonia’s 10-0 record and their entry into the 2023 playoffs. As the #2 seed for Division VII, their first two playoff games were on their home field but I was, unfortunately, out of town for both. Fortunately, they won them both (52-7, 34-8) to set up Friday’s match with St Henry at a neutral site. Also on the fortunate side of things, I was home for this one.

The game was a good one. Ansonia never trailed but our victory was not assured until the closing moments. With no kicking and little passing, the Tigers repeatedly moved the chains on third and fourth down with what often seemed like just inches to spare. The officials thought only one of their two-point conversion attempts was successful although there was serious disagreement from AHS fans on one of the others. Ansonia will play #1 seed Marion Local next Friday but where has not been determined. Whether or not Terry and I are there will depend a lot on the location.
ADDENDUM 19-Nov-2023: The Marion Local game was also at the Piqua stadium, and we did attend. Read about it here.

As implied by this headline from my days as a student, rooting for a winning team was once an impossible dream. The thirty-eight-game streak it refers to came to an end just a little over sixty years ago on September 13, 1963.

Both of these images are from the 1964 Ansonia High School yearbook. The first contains photos of the seniors on the team that ended the streak along with a local newspaper report of the event which attracted some national attention as well. The second image shows the entire team. In those days, yearbooks, at least those for small Ohio schools, were entirely black and white with the exception of the endpapers. There could be no better use of the book’s only splash of color than recognizing the group that ended what I believe was the longest losing streak in the nation at the time.

I mentioned that my previous AHS football game attendance involved the school band. The band’s fortunes over the last six decades do not appear to match those of the team. The picture at right shows the band during halftime of Friday’s game. I counted about twenty members, and Terry said that was noticeably more than what he remembered from the last game he attended.

There were 54 in the band that would have marched at that big 1963 win.