Tag Archives: cemetery

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July 2, 2017

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Excursion 63 (11/12/2016)

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Excursion 63, Part 1 (The Legions of the Dead)

I’ve given passing thoughts, from time to time, as to what I’d like done with my body once I die. While parts of me—the egotistical and historian parts of me, mostly—would like a burial and headstone, ideally with a pithy comment from me on it, the plain fact is that no one would ever see it or care. So basically, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d like my body disposed of by whatever means is the cheapest and most convenient, whatever that is. Society in general disagrees, with the results that people like me have fascinating cemeteries to examine from time to time.

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February 18, 2017

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Excursion 57 (2/26/2016)

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Excursion 57, Part 2 (Crossing the Streams)

Growing up in West Texas, as I did, I acquired the habit of looking down over the railings every time I drove over a bridge.  The reason why, of course, was to see if there was any water in the arroyo or canyon or streambed or riverbed below—because more often than not, there wasn’t.  If you did see some water, it was like a pleasant little surprise, something always to be remarked upon as you drove past.  In Ohio, of course, there’s always water under the bridge, but it took me many years for my subconscious to pick up on that, because I was always looking.

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September 11, 2016

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Excursion 56 (2/5/2016)

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Excursion 56, Part 2 (Sweet Marietta)

When last we met, we were in the middle of a sunny but cold February 2016 excursion into southeastern Ohio, just a couple of miles from the Ohio River itself in Washington County, whose county seat is Marietta.  Washington County is one of the more prosperous counties of southeastern Ohio—its per capita income is 25-33% higher than that of neighboring counties—but everything is relative.  Central Ohio counties have incomes similarly higher than that of Washington County.  You can find prosperity and poverty both along the Ohio River here.

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September 4, 2016

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Excursion 56 (2/5/2016)

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Excursion 56, Part 1 (Lambs and Lost Places)

A new employee showed up at a place I once worked and a veteran employee quickly came to the conclusion that she did not like the new employee.  She began a whispering campaign about the new hire, attributing certain negative job-related qualities to him, and before you knew it, other people were repeating those aspersions when the new hire’s name came up—even though they had never actually seen any of those things themselves.  The new employee was suddenly the victim of widespread preconceived notions, without even knowing what was going on, much less having an opportunity to do anything about it.  He struggled his entire time at his job under the burden of those undeserved, preconceived notions.  What struck me about this incident was how quickly others accepted the aspersions against him, with no proof or evidence at all.  They were simply sheep following the lead of someone more dominant.  It was a depressing but useful life lesson.

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August 19, 2016

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Excursion 54 (11/26/2015)

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Excursion 54, Part 2 (The Macrobus of Memories)

I never rode in a city bus until I was at college in San Antonio; sans car, I had to beg rides or take the bus.  Luckily, San Antonio had a great bus system.  As a child and a teen, I was too close to both my elementary school and my high school to take school buses, but I did occasionally go on field trips. The first field trip I ever took, which was when I was very young, was to a dairy. It wasn’t very exciting, but it got us out of school.  When I was in the 8th grade, the entire 8th grade went on a day long field trip, first to the El Paso planetarium, then to a state park adjacent to the mountains that are such a big piece of El Paso’s landscape.  The picnic at the state park was all fine and good but what my little geek self was excited about was the planetarium.  Oh, was I excited about that.

We all got in the buses to go to the planetarium and one of the cool things about not being in school was that you could chew gum. Gum was not verboten in the real world.  I have never been a huge gum chewer, but when I was offered a stick of gum by one of my classmates, I took it.  Why not live the high life?  We arrived at the planetarium and debarked.  But as we were filing in from the lobby into the actual arium part, a pinched-face planetarium employee put his hand out to stop me.  “Are you chewing gum?” he asked.  Well, I was.  I forgot to spit it out.  I went to put the gum in a trash can but when I came back to the line, the employee would not let me in—he wanted to punish me for nearly having brought gum into his beloved planetarium (heaven forefend).  No teacher intervened to help me, and so I was forced to sit in the lobby for an eternity while every one of my 130 grademates got to see a planetarium show.  It would be another 10 years until I entered the doors of a planetarium again—although, in a belated soothing of my still-ruffled feathers, that second experience let me know I had not really missed anything with the first.  Still, what a fucking mean thing to do.

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August 14, 2016

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Excursion 53 (11-14-2015)

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Excursion 53, Part 1 (Septic Thanks)

We don’t always take the time to appreciate the little things in life.  For example, at the moment of this writing, I have a gnat/fruit fly infestation in my house. I don’t know where the little buggers are reproducing yet and I am probably going to have to tear my house upside down.  I normally don’t take the time to appreciate a gnat-free house.   I do appreciate the relaxation of going on my little excursions across Ohio, but often not until I am actually on the road.  What I dread, to be honest, is having to wake up so early. I am such a night person, that getting up early enough to catch even the trailing rays of the morning’s “golden hour” is certainly a chore. One saving grace of excursions in the winter is that the sun, at least, rises a bit later.  I need those minutes.

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August 14, 2016

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Excursion 52 (10/11/2015)

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Excursion 52 (Glimpses of Space and Time and Space)

On my way back from a gaming event in Cleveland, I decided to take the long way home and drive through the flat farming country of north central Ohio.  In such areas of Ohio, you get a bit more wide open view, though usually bounded by a row of trees sooner or later, and this gives you a bit of perspective on the small things—such as you and I—encountered in such larger landscapes. Continue reading →

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July 8, 2016

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Excursion 50 (9/25/2015)

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Excursion 50, Part 2 (East to East Liverpool)

My 50th excursion, quite a milestone, took me northeast from Columbus to Coshocton (because all roads lead to Coshocton), and well beyond.  But let’s pick up a bit northeast of Coshocton, where I was driving northward through what was essentially the southern reach of traditional “Amish country” in Ohio (though Amish communities can be found throughout the state). Continue reading →

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April 2, 2015

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Excursion 32 (6/7/2014)

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Excursion 32, Part 1 (Mosaic of the Past)

I have such an odd memory.  I remember things that I read or write extremely well, and I have a historian’s command of the irrelevant detail.  But when it comes to my personal life, my memory is such an odd jumble.  I can’t really compare it with someone else’s memory, of course, having experienced only my own, but it is so fragmentary, so impressionistic.  My oldest memories are all just a few seconds long, if that:  my mother outside the house trying to use a broom to keep water from the basement, rolling a Hot Wheel down a table (I don’t know if our house was completely level), pedaling a Big-Wheel-like contraption around my grandmother’s store/house, seeing something weird (a bat?) flying around in my bedroom, being in the back seat of our car when my parents spelled the word “i-c-e-c-r-e-a-m.”  Things like that.  Concrete or sequential memories are much rarer.  I do remember one, perhaps because I learned a lesson.  I remember watching “I Love Lucy” on television, then us turning off the tv and going somewhere.  When I got back, I turned the tv on to finish watching “I Love Lucy” only to discover some other program was on.  That was when I discovered that when you turned the tv set off, tv programs kept going.  Well, they used to, my young on-demand, streaming darlings, they used to.

That is what you might expect for memories of someone 3-4 years old, but the thing is, that is the way all my memories are.  That is the way my high school memories are—momentary, fragmentary, mixed up.  That is the way my college memories are.  Oh, I remember more things, but what is amazing to me is how much I have not remembered—whereas I can tell you with certainly the most obscure details about World War II, something I never came close to experiencing.  In some respects I know more about the world I did not live in than the world I lived in.  That’s reality giving me an atomic wedgie, that is. Continue reading →

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March 28, 2015

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Excursion 31 (5/24/2014)

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Excursion 31, Part 1 (The Rules of Rusticity)

Sadly, a large part of my life has consisted of impatiently lusting after some material object, driven by an ever increasing desire to have it, only to experience great disappointment and letdown upon finally obtaining—usually at great cost or effort—said object itself.   Even when the item lived up to its allure, the wait—that damnable, endless wait—was torture.  I remember as a kid in the early 1980s when I did my first mail order.  I ordered the wargame Pearl Harbor from Wargames West in Albuquerque.  UPS only took a few days to deliver from Albuquerque to El Paso, but it seemed like an eternity to me and every time I heard a vehicle coming down the street I would rush to the door to look for the UPS truck.

Sadly, decades later I have not changed a bit.  So when camera lensmaker Tamron announced an upcoming new lens, I was hooked.

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