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February 21, 2015

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Excursion 26 (2/14/2014)

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Excursion 26, Part 1 (Vortacular)

Unearthed Ohio is active again, after some time off for questionable behavior.  Unlike most blogs, where inactivity for an extended time portends doom, the extended hibernation here was deliberate.  Much of my free time this past year was spent working with a designer and a developer to create a new version of my other website, then I had to import and convert the old content, then catch up, and, well, it was a monumental undertaking.  I had to put Unearthed Ohio to the side—though I never stopped the actual photography.  Now I can catch up a bit.  With this blog entry, I present photographs from a trip I took in mid-February 2014, deep in the heart of the Polar Vortex.  As I write this intro, however, I seem to be deep in the heart of Polar Vortex 2:  Electric Boogaloo.  Two very nasty winters in a row.  The one advantage that a winter offers is winter landscapes and last year I took the opportunity of a recent snowfall to do some experimentation with snowy photography, which I present to you herewith.

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April 26, 2014

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Excursion 21 (11/3/2013)

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Excursion 21, Part 2 (Frack Attack)

In which our intrepid hero hopes that oil’s well that ends well…

Fracking concerns me, I admit it.  I should hasten to point out that I do not, as many do, oppose fracking, no more than I oppose genetically modified crops.  But I believe both technologies should be treated prudently, with an eye towards identifying and preventing problems.  I am concerned about groundwater contamination, I am concerned about earthquakes.  I can only hope that Ohio is wise enough to create a good regulatory and oversight foundation and will be proactive enough to try to deal with potential problems before they become actual ones.

Beyond that, though, I am concerned about something that it may not be within the power of the state of Ohio to regulate, and that is that Ohioans themselves will not benefit enough from fracking.  One would think that it is a rare blessing that Ohio’s deposits are located in the economically blighted Ohio Appalachia; those areas certainly deserve a break, right?  Yet it is those same areas that have Ohio’s traditional oil deposits as well, as can be seen by the hundreds and hundreds of wells dotting the countryside.  And that traditional oil wealth seems not to have benefited eastern Ohioans much at all—so will fracking do so, or will the gains simply be siphoned out of the state, much like Ohio’s gambling money largely is?  I hope the people who need the money the most get some of it.

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January 4, 2014

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Excursion 14 (7/13/2013)

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Excursion 14, Part 1 (Pastoral Ohio)

In which our intrepid hero cows some cows…

As I sit here typing on my computer, the weather outside is 11 degrees (Fahrenheit, of course; I do not belong to Al Qaeda).  The next few days are going to get much colder.  The winter of 2013-2014 so far has been a pretty darn cold one for Ohio.  That arctic quality is only enhanced when I look at the photographs in this blog entry, which were taken last July 13 on a gloriously sunny summer’s day.  As an obese person, I tend to prefer extremes of cold over extremes of heat (you can always put on another layer, but you can only get so naked), but I am not much for extremes of any sort.  Although I can put up with cold weather, I really am a weather wimp.  I would be much happier if the temperature always stayed between 69 and 72 degrees.

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November 14, 2013

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Excursion 11 (6-10-13)

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Excursion 11, Part 3 (Motor Castles for Motor Carriages)

In which our intrepid hero encounters much roadside lodging of a bygone era…

Every frequent traveler has their hotel stories to tell.  One little one of mine comes from a trip to Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1990s.  I walked into my hotel room to discover that there was an agitated bee in the hotel room.  That was a little disconcerting.  I am not afraid of bees but I respect them and being in the same hotel room as one struck me as being a mite too close for comfort.  So I called down to the front desk and told them to send someone up with some bugspray.  Eventually a hotel staff member arrived but he didn’t have any bugspray.  How the hotel expected him to kill the bee was beyond me.  What he did have was bug-eyes and I soon discovered the reason that he was so fearful was because he was, allegedly, allergic to bee stings.  “So the hotel sent the one guy allergic to bee stings to come kill my bee?” I asked.  “And didn’t give him anything to kill it with?”   We saw, eventually, that more than anything the bee just wanted out of there—he kept trying to get out through the window (which did not open).  So finally we decided to team up—one of us trapped the bee in some of the window curtains while the other thwacked him with a book (probably the hotel room bible).  Final score:  Bee 0, Two Idiots 1.

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September 1, 2013

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Excursion 9 (6/1/2013)

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Excursion 9, Part 2 (Every Knee Shall Bow)

In which our intrepid hero encounters various signs of religious inclinations…

It goes without saying that religion is a touchy subject, as many deeply held beliefs can be.  My own perspective on religion is slightly unusual.  I was raised Catholic in a city with a significant Catholic population.  However, I still remember from my childhood being passed anti-Catholic comic books published by Jack Chick and being told by one Baptist that I was going to go to Hell for being a Catholic.  I became aware of religious prejudice at an early age.  However, religion did not “take” with me.  By the time I was an adult I had become an atheist.  Yet I always had a great many friends and relatives from a variety of religions whose opinions and perspectives I greatly respected.  Later, as I began professionally to get into the arena of studying (and combating) extremism, I became even more familiar both with religious prejudices as well as prejudices against people because of their religion.   And for more than a dozen years I have been working for a civil rights organization dedicated to fighting against such prejudices.

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August 24, 2013

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Excursion 8 (5/19/2013)

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Excursion 8, Part 7 (The Flatlands)

In which our intrepid hero enjoys the pleasures of the horizontal plane…

There’s more than one type of flat.  First, there’s Western Flat.  Western Flat may be very flat and it may be very flat for a very long way but typically there are mountains in the distance.  Among other things, this allows you to orient yourself.  Then there is Closed In Flat.  That’s when the country is flat but vision is obscured by buildings and/or trees.  When I moved from El Paso to Columbus I went from Western Flat to Closed In Flat.  You lose your bearings in Closed In Flat because there is nothing you can see with which to orient yourself.  I easily get lost in Closed In Flat if I am not familiar with the area.  Lastly, there is Open Flat.  That’s just plain flatness to the horizon.  Northwest and North Central Ohio is primarily Open Flat.  No hills, not much woods, just a lot of farmland.  That’s what I was driving through on this, the final leg of my eighth excursion.

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August 24, 2013

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Excursion 8 (5/19/2013)

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Excursion 8, Part 5 (Camp Perry)

In which our intrepid hero ventures onto a military base (more or less)…

I grew up in a military town (El Paso, with massive Fort Bliss, as well as the nearby White Sands Missile Range).  I went to college at another military town—San Antonio, Texas.  It wasn’t until I moved to Columbus, Ohio, with no military presence at all, that I realized how many differences there were.  I grew up with military jets and helicopters overhead so often that it was unremarkable.  Fort Bliss itself is so large that it materially affects the geography of the city, limiting its sprawl to certain directions.  Of course, soldiers were everywhere and, since El Paso is a major location for retired military personnel to settle, former soldiers were also everywhere.   But then Texas as a whole is much more of a military state than Ohio, which really only has one major military base in the whole state (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base).  Ohio’s “non-militariness” is actually exemplified in one of its “bases,” Camp Perry.

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July 19, 2013

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Excursion 7 (5/9/2013)

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Excursion 7, Part 1 (The Anchorhead of Ohio)

In which our intrepid hero embarks upon a journey to the mythical land of Troy…

Everybody who has ever seen the movie Star Wars knows the city of Mos Eisley, even if the name is not familiar.  That’s the city on Tattooine that Luke and Ben and the droids go to that has the funky bar with all the aliens.  It’s where they meet Han and Chewie and from whence they lit out on the Millennium Falcon.   But you know what?  It’s not the only place on Tattooine.  Brief references in the movie tell the viewer about another place, a much less exotic place, called Anchorhead.  It’s the place where all the moisture farmers go to buy a new clutch.  It’s a farm town.  Nothing happens there; it is only a place from which people depart.  “I can take you as far as Anchorhead,” Luke tells Obi-Wan.  “You can get a transport there to Mos Eisley or wherever you’re going.”  It’s a Greyhound Bus stop.  Well, Ohio has its Anchorheads, too.

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June 17, 2013

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Excursion 5 (4/27/2013)

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Excursion 5, Part 1 (Head South, Young Man)

In which our intrepid hero encounters a mystery building…

One of the saddest things about life is that we can never re-live things we experience.  Do you remember a time when you were deep in the throes of a new love—how that person made you think, how it made you feel?   Do you remember the first time you saw your favorite movie and how it made you feel?   You can’t get those feelings back; you can only vaguely remember and appreciate what it was like to have them.  It’s a less illegal version of that first hit of heroin—even if you married that person you fell in love with and have been happily with that person for decades, you don’t physically feel the same way about them.  Literally, the chemistry is different.  And you can watch that movie again, but you won’t be scared or amused or moved to the same extent that were the first time.  The movie has worn grooves in your brain now; it is no longer as fresh.  You can’t get that “first time” back.

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June 9, 2013

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Excursion 4 (4/20/2013)

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Excursion 4, Part 5 (Take Me to the River, Drop Me in the Water)

In which our intrepid hero continues his journey towards the mystical Ohio river…

I am no student of architecture but anybody who looks at enough buildings, or pictures of buildings, will eventually begin to pick up on certain architectural styles from certain eras.  That is certainly true for mundane residences and businesses.  Often you can look at a house and pretty much know when it was likely to have been built, just from its appearance.  Leaving aside signs of aging, buildings go through fads and trends just like anything else.  One such trend certainly appeared in the 19th century.  If one looks at early photographs of American towns and farmhouses, certain types of brick structures appear so often that they are often a signature—though it is true that in the 20th century some buildings were constructed in a “retro” fashion, inspired by or duplicating that earlier style.

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