In the Midwest, Mother’s Day is often associated with flowers–not because of the bouquets given to Mom to honor her on a special day, but because Mother’s Day is viewed in these parts as the traditional weekend to fill out your garden beds. If you wait until Mother’s Day to plant flowers, the folk wisdom goes, you’ll avoid the risk of your plants dying from an unseasonably late frost.
As is so often the case, this time-honored rule of thumb reflects a significant kernel of truth: May is a wonderful time to grow things in central Ohio and elsewhere in the Midwest. Russell was in town for a visit this weekend, and he remarked on how green everything looks around here, with most of the trees fully leafed out, the grass growing like crazy, and flowers and flowering shrubs everywhere you look. As the picture above shows, in this season Ohio is a study in green. The air, freshened with recent rains and the fragrance of growing things, smells good, too.
At Ohio State, the University recently cleared out an encampment, invoking school space rules. The University also has locked some buildings, to prevent occupations in connection with the protests. In all, more than 40 people have been arrested on the Ohio State campus in connection with the protests, which means the current activities have produced the most arrests of protesters at Ohio State in more than 50 years.
The reference to the most arrests in more than 50 years takes us back to the ’60s and early ’70s, viewed by many as the “golden age” of American protests. In reality, protesting has a very long history in the United States, where the country itself was the product of protests, like the Boston Tea Party, that led to the Revolutionary War and the formation of a new nation. And in virtually every era since then, people in America have been protesting about some issue or another–whether the issue is taxes, or tariffs, or slavery, or the ability to unionize, or women’s suffrage, or Prohibition, or civil rights, or foreign wars. The issues may change, but the fact that our country is founded on principles of free speech means that people have the ability to protest and advocate for a cause–and therefore the push and pull between protesting and maintaining public safety and order will always be with us.
The ’60s were a weird time, when it seemed that every news broadcast featured stories on marches, riots, protests, assassinations, and other forms of civic unrest. Viewed with some perspective, what’s going on now seems like a pale imitation of that era. But as chaotic as the ’60s were, the chaos ultimately ended, and the country turned to the leisure suits and disco music and bad cars of the somnolent, self-obsessed ’70s. I expect that what is going on now, too, shall pass. i
Yesterday we visited the Dawes Arboretum, located on the outskirts of Newark, Ohio, about 30 miles east of Columbus. It was an overcast morning, but we hoped the weather would cooperate in allowing us to get in some good hiking, including tackling the Timber Run and Gorge Overlook trails. Alas, Mother Nature had a different idea.
The Dawes Arboretum occupies a big plot of land that covers familiar Ohio landscapes, from deep woods to rolling meadows and ponds–with some rarer territory, like a cypress swamp, thrown in. The grounds feature an extensive variety of plant life, all of which was blooming on a damp spring day. After paying our senior discount fee ($8.00, rather than the standard $10.00), we took the advice of the Arboretum employee at the entrance gate and did a drive around the grounds on the north and south loop roadways. Our first stop was the hedge letters, shown above, which spell out “Dawes Arboretum.” We climbed a viewing tower to get a better look and check for misspellings, but the hedge designers aced the test.
Our next stop was Dawes Lake, located next to the hedge letters. It’s really more of a big pond, with a mowed trail around the circumference. We took a nice stroll around the edge of the lake, encountering some geese and a bullfrog in full throat, when the sprinkles began. With the perversity that you often encounter with Ohio spring weather, the rain began to fall in earnest when we were precisely halfway around the lake, at the maximum distance from our car. By the time we got back to the Lincoln the rain was pelting down at a heavy rate and we were pretty well soaked.
The rain didn’t stop us from completing our auto tour, of course, and we saw some pretty scenes with some of the blooming plants and wildflowers that were drinking in the rainfall. Regrettably, however, the intensity of the rain increased, and it was obvious that the Timber Run and Gorge Overlook trails, which run for several miles to the east of the main arboretum grounds, would have to wait until another day. The employee at the entrance gate had cautioned us that they would be muddy from prior rains, and the new downpour wouldn’t make the hike any easier.
Before we left, however, I did get a chance to take in the Bald-Cypress Swamp, shown below, which has an interesting, otherworldly appearance. I half expected to see Yoda hobbling out from behind one of the trees. Swamps and wetlands are not common in the modern Buckeye State, but Ohio originally had extensive wetlands, located primarily in the northwestern part of the state. The Bald-Cypress Swamp at the Dawes Arboretum gives you a glimpse of an Ohio scene that undoubtedly was very familiar to the indigenous people who once roamed the Ohio forests.
After taking in the swamp, with no break in the rain in the offing, we decided the better course was to head back to Columbus, dry out in the car, and stop in Granville for lunch. We’ll have to return to Dawes for the trails when conditions are drier and Mother Nature is in a better mood.
Something pretty unusual will happen today in Columbus. We’re on the edge of the path of a total solar eclipse, where the moon will pass by the face of the sun. The downtown area will experience 99.6 percent totality for a few minutes starting at 3:07 p.m. this afternoon. If you want 100 percent totality, you’ll need to head north. Akron and Cleveland, among other Ohio cities, are on the totality track, which you can check out here.
Here’s an interesting statistic about just how rare it is to have a total solar eclipse visible in Ohio: the last one happened in 1806, only three years after Ohio became a state, The Ohio Department of Natural Resources notes that only 21 total solar eclipses have crossed the lower 48 states during the entire existence of the United States. The next one to hit Ohio won’t arrive until 2099.
Given the unusual nature of the eclipse experience, people in Columbus don’t quite know what to expect. There have been some weird warnings about making sure your car is gassed up, because there could be an influx of eclipse watchers coming to town and guzzling up our gas supplies, and traffic is expected to be bad because of potential visitors. Don’t be surprised if people have responded to the warnings by going to the store and stocking up on toilet paper, just as they would if a big storm were in the weather forecast.
I’ll head outside to check out the eclipse when near-totality occurs, but there may be a big catch: it is April in Ohio, which is a cloudy time. We don’t know if the sun will even be visible through the standard cloud cover. Right now, the weather app is predicting cloudy conditions between 3 and 4 p.m. Keep your fingers crossed that there will be a break in the clouds so we all can get a glimpse of a pretty amazing celestial spectacle.
Well, we’ve reached Final Four weekend. It’s one of the biggest sports events of the year–which these days necessarily means it’s no doubt one of the bigger sports betting weekends of the year, too. If you’ve not been paying attention to the impact of legal sports gambling, know this: we’ve now reached the point where there are as many TV shows analyzing potential sports bets as there are shows that discuss the actual sports events themselves.
Among the bets that are analyzed on such shows are so-called “prop bets.” The prop bets are different from the familiar “point spread” bets on the ultimate outcome of a contest. “Prop bets” are much more granular, and require gamblers to take a position on a specific proposition–like whether a quarterback will throw over or under 2.5 touchdowns, or whether a team will make over/under 10 three-point shots in a particular game.
There’s a long history of gambling scandals in sports, at both the professional and college level. “Prop bets” seem to involve a lot more risk of gambling interests actually affecting outcomes. If you only have to influence one player to play poorly, that’s a much easier task than recruiting enough players to affect the outcome of a game.
I’m not a betting person, so I’ve never been tempted to make any kind of bet on a sports event, “prop bet” or otherwise. But I’d also like to think I can watch a college football game without fear that a particular player’s performance was influenced by gambling. I’m glad Ohio doesn’t permit “prop bets” in college sports. I hope more states join in what seems like a reasonable regulation of gambling.
You may have seen this regrettable headline recently: “Ohio women put dead man in car’s passenger seat, try to withdraw money at bank drive-thru, police say.”
The accompanying article is about an 80-year-old man who owned a house in Ashtabula and allowed two women to live there. When the old-timer unfortunately died at home, according to one of the women who described what happened in a phone call from jail that was recorded by authorities, the women put him in the passenger seat of their car where he could be seen and then went through the drive-thru line at his bank where they withdrew $900 from his bank account. The women then drove to the hospital where they dropped off his body, allegedly without identifying the dead man or themselves. They’ve since been identified, arrested, and charged with theft and gross abuse of a corpse.
I want to make this appeal to headline writers everywhere: when one of these weird stories about appalling misconduct arises, can we please stop identifying the actor’s state of residence in the headline? It’s not as if, in this case, living in Ohio had anything to do with the women’s decision to take advantage of a dead man. Having lived in Ohio for most of my life, I can assure you that the Buckeye State does not condone or encourage that kind of activity. And in that time I’ve gotten to know many “Ohio women,” and I feel confident that none of them would have done what the two women did in this case. Headlines like the one quoted above improperly smear the reputation of both Ohio and the women who live here.
We’ve all seen countless “Florida man” news stories about random guys in Florida doing something strange. I’d hate to see “Ohio women” stories become a similar staple of the clickbait news websites. Can’t we just agree to leave the states where people happen to misbehave out of it?
When a really significant sieche occurs, as happened earlier this month when 65-mile-and-hour winds hit the lake, the bed in the western part of the lake can be exposed–leaving huge rock formations that typically are water covered visible to the naked eye and creating opportunities for cool photographs like the one above. The biggest sieche in history was a 22-foot shift that occurred in 1844 and killed 78 people. This year’s sieche, fortunately, was not as destructive. But when a serious sieche occurs, be careful about venturing too far out onto the lake bed–because the water always comes back after the wind stops.
Last night the new-look, improbability-busting Cleveland Browns clinched an NFL playoff spot. They beat the New York Jets 37-20 after putting up 34 points and some amazing offensive numbers in the first half. That victory is worth noting in any event, but the Browns did it in style: on prime-time TV, before their home crowd of long-suffering fans, in a city that was primed to explode with happiness when the last whistle blew and the game ended.
So, the Browns have made it to the dance for only the third time since they came back to the NFL in 1999. We’ll enjoy a day or two of celebration of that milestone, but for any football fan the question quickly becomes: can my team advance?
The building blocks for a playoff run are there. The Browns clearly have a tough, aggressive defense that is able to get offenses out of their comfort zones and their game plans. Last night the defense forced a turnover, relentlessly pressured the Jets QB, and even scored a touchdown during the Browns’ frenzied first half. It gave up more yards on the ground than you would like, but it’s the kind of defense that can win games in the post-season. With the addition of Joe Flacco at quarterback, the offense has been reenergized and supercharged through the air; last night Flacco threw for more than 290 yards in the first half alone, even though his top receiver was out for the game. The play-calling has been great, and last night the Browns’ running game also reemerged after a few awful, unproductive games.
But postseason wins and losses are often about more than impressive statistics. They are about mistakes and turnovers–and this Browns team is making a lot of both. Last night Flacco threw a bad pick-six, the Browns fumbled four times, losing two, and they also missed an extra point. In recent games they’ve given up another pick six, failed to recover an onside kick, allowed a kickoff return touchdown, and repeatedly lost the turnover battle. To be sure, they’ve overcome all of those blunders in beating the Jaguars, the Bears, the Texans, and the Jets, but the competition will be stiffer come playoff time, and you could easily see any one of those mistakes being fatal and causing a heart-breaking loss that brings an end to what has been a magical season.
How do you stop the turnovers and the special teams mishaps? That’s something that head coach Kevin Stefanski and the rest of the Browns coaching staff is going to have to figure out. Should they rest the offensive and defensive starters in their last game against Cincinnati, now that the playoff berth is assured–or should they have the first-team offense play, if only to work on keeping control of the pigskin? That’s a tough call, obviously, and one that would be endlessly second-guessed if number 15 or one of the other key players suffered an injury.
But if the Browns hope to advance against tougher competition, they can’t continue to dance on the razor’s edge and repeatedly put the ball on the ground. They have got to figure out how to play a clean game. If they can pull that off, they could make some real noise.
Richard brought along this nifty, vintage U.S. map puzzle that he picked up at an estate sale in Austin, to give us a post-present-opening Christmas activity. It’s a brightly colored wooden effort, with little icons that purport to identify different features of the individual states. Ohio, for example, has a tire positioned near Akron, and Iowa has an ear of corn, a pig, and a steer’s head. Our puzzle-making family attacked the challenge with relish, only to realize at the end of the puzzle process that we were missing a piece: Montana.
Howin the world did the prior owner lose Montana? After all, it’s the fourth largest state in the country, by square miles, just behind California. I could see misplacing one of the tinier states, like Delaware, or Rhode Island, or Vermont–but you’d think Montana would be easily findable on any carpet or floor.
That suggests two scenarios for the missing Montana–it fell through a vent and was lost in the bowels of its prior house, or a dog got to it. Even with the missing Montana, however, it is still a cool puzzle
Because Issue 2 was a citizen initiative, the Ohio General Assembly can act to modify and amend the law. Ohio lawmakers are talking about doing that, including addressing important questions like how the tax revenue generated by the legal sale of marijuana–which one study estimates will eventually amount to hundreds of millions of dollars–should be used and whether additional regulations should be imposed on the new marijuana industry. Issue 2 establishes the “Division of Cannabis Control” within the Ohio Department of Commerce, which is supposed to “regulate, investigate, and penalize adult use cannabis operators, adult use testing laboratories and individuals required to be licensed.” The Department has nine months to create and publish the regulations and issue the first set of licenses.
All of this is pretty amazing for someone who has lived in Ohio for decades. When I was a kid, Ohio was a pretty buttoned-up place. “Blue laws” prohibited the sale of beer and wine by groceries on Sundays, liquor could be purchased only from state-controlled stores, there was no gambling of any kind in the state, and growing and using marijuana was completely banned. Now the approach to all of those activities has changed radically.
Why has Ohio decided to change? Perspectives on issues can and do change with the times, of course, but I think a significant part of the answer is found in the fact that, with the passage of Issue 2, Ohio becomes the 24th state to make recreational marijuana legal. In short, Ohio is right in the middle of the country on this issue–neither the first mover, nor the last–which is right where any native Ohioan would expect it to be. Ohioans are pretty pragmatic people. My guess is that many voters concluded that many other states have legalized marijuana and collected the tax revenues associated with it, so why shouldn’t we?
Yesterday morning, I used Ohio’s “early voting” option for the first time. It was an absolutely painless experience, and I’d do it again if, as is the case this year, I will be out of town on Election Day.
In Franklin County, the early voting site is the Board of Elections location on Morse Road, which is located in a strip mall. That sounds odd, perhaps, but the strip mall setting means there’s lots of surface lot parking available–which is a good thing because when I arrived at around 8 a.m. there were many people there to vote. (Incidentally, you will know you are getting close to the early voting site when you realize that every square inch of vacant ground is occupied by yard signs advocating for a particular candidate or ballot issue.) The site was well marked, and the “early voting entrance” sign, shown above, used the enormous typeface you expect to see only in “going out of business sale” signage.
Upon entering, everything proceeded like clockwork. A poll worker asked you to have your driver’s license ready, and by the time I had fished mine out of my wallet another volunteer directed me to an open booth to show my ID, confirm my identity with some basic personal information, and sign in. I was given a slip showing my precinct number and a temporary stylus to use with the voting machine. I followed arrows to another area where I gave my slip to another poll worker who took me to an open machine, set it up for the right ballot, and gave me some basic instructions. I deftly employed my temporary stylus, completed and printed out my ballot, walked to another location to scan it in, retrieved my “I voted today” sticker, and deposited my temporary stylus into a discard bin as I exited.
All told, the entire process took no more than 10 minutes. It was a cinch, even for this early voting rookie. And it’s pretty obvious that Ohioans like having the early voting option and are using it with increasing frequency. It’s convenient to be able to do it when circumstances warrant, and while you can always request an absentee ballot and vote by mail, I like the experience of voting in person. It’s nice to know that early voting is available, and now I’m experienced veteran of the process.
Capable proofreading is a learned skill. Some people work at it and are good at it, some people aren’t, and some people, alas, never understand its value in the first place.
Usually, inept proofreading results in nothing more serious than producing text that is riddled with typos–embarrassing though that may be. Sometimes, however, the consequences can be rather more significant. Ohioans saw an example of that this week.
The potential issue with resubmission is that each step in the process will take time, which will reduce the amount of remaining time for CNP to attempt to get petition signatures from Ohio voters sufficient to get the proposal on the ballot. The group needs to collect 413,000 signatures from Ohio voters by July 3, 2024 if it wants meet its goal of getting the amendment proposal on the presidential election ballot in November 2024.
I expect that, after fixing the date mistake, CNP will take a very careful look at the rest of the language to make sure that it is typo-free. And they’ll presumably remember the power of proofreading going forward, too.
Ohio produces some of the best apples in the world, thanks to the legendary efforts of Johnny Appleseed and generations of apple growers, and early autumn is prime apple harvesting time in Ohio. That means that anyone who is driving through the Ohio countryside should keep their eyes peeled for roadside apple stands where they can pick up a sack of a dozen freshly picked apples. I remember buying a paper bag of apples on a whim from a farmstand years ago and taking them to an offsite meeting. They were some of the best apples I’ve ever tasted and earned rave reviews from the other attendees.
There are lots of different varieties of apples, and the choices can seem overwhelming. I ran across this helpful chart recently that puts apple varieties in order, from most tart to most sweet. There’s an ongoing debate about which kind of apple is the best in an apple pie–everyone agrees you want a firm apple that will hold up during the baking process, with the dispute being which variety presents the truest apple pie taste like Grandma used to make–but I know, for eating by hand, that I prefer apples on the tart end of the spectrum.
Give me a fresh, crisp McIntosh on a bracing fall day, let me bite through the skin and experience that rush of tart juice and the happy crunch of the fruit, and watch me carefully nibble around the core and the stem to get every last bite. It’s a classic “autumn in Ohio” experience.
Edited to add: After I posted this, a Facebook friend called my attention to the message in the middle of the chart, which I hadn’t noticed because I looked only at the top and bottom. Pay no attention to that, but the rest of the chart is pretty useful. I found the true chart on-line and it appears below.
During our visit to Vermilion, I followed a long-standing tradition: for one of my meals I had a basket of Lake Erie perch. Served in fried fillets with a side of french fries, and consumed by hand, one fillet after another, after a liberal spritzing from a lemon wedge you squeeze yourself, Lake Erie perch is one of the most delicious fishes you’ll ever eat. Not surprisingly, my meal didn’t disappoint. I ate every bit of my tasty perch (although I tried to show some self-restraint on the fries).
So, why, only a hundred miles or so to the south in Columbus, is it so hard to find Lake Erie perch on a restaurant menu? Why, instead, does virtually every Columbus restaurant offer the same fish option: salmon? Salmon, which isn’t native to these parts and needs to be shipped hundreds of miles, whether it is “wild” salmon or is taken from some salmon farm? Salmon, which is almost always served egregiously overcooked, until it achieves an unpleasant, rubbery consistency that makes you think you are gnawing on the remains of a punctured basketball? Salmon, which is never fully consumed as part of a meal and ends up reheated, leaving the microwave with a terrible fish smell? Salmon, which is regularly misrepresented on restaurant menus? I love smoked salmon, but cooked salmon is almost always a disappointment, leaving you wondering why you ordered it in the first place . . . until you realize you did it because your doctor told you you really need to eat more fish.
Here’s a suggestion for Columbus restauranteurs: head due north until to come to a Great Lake, visit one of the lakeside restaurants, try the perch, and then realize you’ve been making a colossal mistake with your salmon fixation and make arrangements to get some perch that you can put on your menu instead. Why not offer a freshly caught fish from your home state instead of following the salmon herd? I think your diners would appreciate it–and their doctors probably would, too.
During our visit to Vermilion we drove to a farm just south of Oberlin to let the little kids in our group romp around in a play area, check out some farm animals, take a hayride through a cornfield and some surrounding woods, and generally enjoy a northwestern Ohio farm experience.
The farm had grown a bumper crop of pumpkins that were carefully placed on flatbed trucks and waiting to be sold to visitors. The offerings included not only some colossal orange pumpkins, but also white and yellow pumpkins.
You could tell from the pleasing round shape of the pumpkins that the farm family had paid a lot of attention to their pumpkins. A successful crop of large pumpkins takes a lot of work and careful attention. They require plenty of water, you need to trim the vines so only one pumpkin grows on each vine to ensure maximum size, and you need to position the growing pumpkins to place each pumpkin bottom flat on the ground to achieve the round shape and avoid the “flat on one side” effect.
Round pumpkins aren’t essential if you are going to use them to bake delectable pumpkin pies, but the sturdy round shape sure helps if you’re planning on carving jack o’ lanterns.
Webner House 