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September 1, 2013

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Excursion 9 (6/1/2013)

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Excursion 9, Part 1 (South by Southeast)

In which our intrepid hero discovers people making hay while the sun shines…

Southeast Ohio has always appealed to me.  Geographically, it is one of the most interesting and diverse parts of Ohio.  It is also of cultural interest: Southeast Ohio in many ways is the heart of Appalachian Ohio (though strictly speaking, it is only one of three regions in the state that are technically considered Appalachian Ohio).  Appalachian Ohio is sparsely populated (the largest city in all three regions is Youngstown, Ohio, and the next largest city has fewer than 50,000 inhabitants) and economically depressed (especially Southeast Ohio; most of its counties are considered economically “at-risk” or even “distressed”).   Appalachian Ohio was originally settled by the same demographic groups of people who settled western Virginia and eastern Kentucky and as a result shares most of the elements of Appalachian culture with the Appalachians of other states.

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August 24, 2013

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Excursion 8 (5/19/2013)

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Excursion 8, Part 6 (Justice for Jake and Ella)

In which our intrepid hero discovers a mysterious death…

There was a poll conducted not long before I write this (in late August 2013, three months after this excursion), in which the pollsters gleefully revealed that a substantial percentage of Louisiana Republicans blamed Obama for the failure of the federal government in dealing with Hurricane Katrina.  The point, of course, is that Obama was not even president at the time, but rather a freshman senator from Illinois who had nothing to do with Katrina, good or bad.  What I think this speaks to more generally is how flexible people can be—flexible in terms of things ranging from memory to burdens of proof—when something they want to be true (or not true) is on the line.  Think of conspiracy theorists, for example.  Pick a conspiracy theory:  UFOs, the Kennedy assassination, the New World Order, 9/11, you name it.  Conspiracy theorists generally impose an impossible burden of proof to accept contentions by non-conspiracists while simultaneously lowing all barriers of critical thinking when it comes to accepting contentions or evidence from like-minded people.  This is true for more than simply conspiracy theories or political beliefs; it actually happens quite a bit in ordinary life as well.

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July 25, 2013

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Excursion 8 (5/19/2013)

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Excursion 8, Part 1 (Lake Effect)

In which our intrepid hero encounters a reasonably great lake…

I grew up in the desert and as a result have always been fascinated by large bodies of water.  As a kid, I had never seen any body of water larger than the Caballo or Elephant Butte reservoirs in New Mexico.  When I was a freshman in college in San Antonio, I drove one night with friends to the Gulf of Mexico, but it was pitch black and I didn’t see a thing!  I don’t know how old I was before I ever saw an ocean.  So bodies of water—large rivers (the Rio Grande doesn’t cut it!), large lakes, oceans, bays, all of that stuff—is sort of like a fascinating foreign country to me.

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July 21, 2013

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Excursion 7 (5/9/2013)

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Excursion 7, Part 3 (Cafes on the Left, Left, Left Bank)

In which our intrepid hero discovers a saintly town…

One thing I discovered very soon after moving to Ohio was that Ohio is a state that steals place names.  This is true of many areas of the country, no doubt, but it wasn’t true where I grew up.  Place names near me included El Paso, Las Cruces, Canutillo, Anthony, Fabens, Alamagordo, Truth or Consequences (well, that was stolen from something, but not a place), and so forth.  But in Ohio?  We have Toledo and Moscow and Athens and Brooklyn and Cambridge and London and Dublin and Geneva and Macedonia and Ontario and Oxford and Toronto and many others—none of them even modest enough to throw a “New” in front of their theft.  The one that gets me the most, though, is Rio Grande, Ohio, because locals don’t pronounce it the right way, they pronounce it “Rye-Oh.”  As someone who used to ride a horse along the actual Rio Grande, that grabs my goat by the balls and twists.

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July 7, 2013

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Excursion 6 (5/4/2013)

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Excursion 6, Part 5 (A Barn Doomed to Disappointment)

In which our intrepid hero is reminded that the world is always changing…

It’s amazing how very different we can feel depending on whether or not we are going somewhere or returning from somewhere.  The leaving is filled with expectation—hopefully a happy, excited sort of expectation, but we all know we sometimes leave towards destinations we dread.  The return, though, is usually completely different.  Sometimes we are simply anxious to get home and it doesn’t even matter what is around us—we have only that one thought in mind:  GET HOME.  Sometimes we are more relaxed about it and can enjoy the journey, understanding that at its end is the comfort and familiarity of home.  I remember once, when I was in high school, returning home in the darkness from some interminable bus ride from somewhere in west Texas.  I had a Walkman with me and was playing Simon & Garfunkel’s Concert in Central Park.  When the song “Homeward Bound” played, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  As I’ve grown older (and am now pretty close to the half century mark), the song has only become more powerful to me and if I ever hear it while I am coming back from a long trip I get quite melancholic.

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June 19, 2013

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Excursion 5 (4/27/2013)

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Excursion 5, Part 3 (We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone)

In which our intrepid hero literally discovers the Theory of Everything…

One of the odd things about dilapidated or ruined buildings is how they juxtapose with the seasons.  If you look at a ruined building in the winter, the landscape surrounding it is as grey and colorless as the building itself; lifelessness upon lifelessness.  However, if you come across the same building in the summer (in Ohio), you will instead see a picture of contrasts:  a gray, lifeless shambles of a building surrounded by vibrant greenery.  Indeed, it may not even be surrounded but invaded by such greenery.  In this case, lifelessness confronts life itself.

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June 11, 2013

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Excursion 4 (4/20/2013)

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Excursion 4, Part 7 (Visit to the Far Side)

In which our intrepid hero feels a sense of deja moo…

One of the sad things about driving around and taking photographs is that, even if the photographs turn out well, even if one of the photographs actually (purely by luck) turned out to be quite high quality, the person who sees that picture will still not have experienced the scene the way my eyes did.  There are times when I wish I could just invite people into my eyeballs so that they can see a scene in just the way my own eyes perceived it.

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June 4, 2013

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Excursion 3 (4/13/2013)

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Excursion 3, Part 3 (Death and Grapes)

In which our intrepid hero provides veritas and vino, entirely coincidentally…

Farms interest me.  I am a city boy, through and through; I have spent virtually all of my life living in one of three cities:  El Paso, San Antonio, and Columbus.  But I do have a small amount of familiarity with farms, because relatives of mine owned a cotton farm near the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico and we visited often.  In fact, for a considerable number of years I was there pretty much every weekend, because my father bought a horse (for deer hunting purposes) and reached an agreement with my great-uncle to build a corral on his farm to house the horse and the horse of a family friend.  My dad went out each weekend to ride and brought me along to clean up the corral for him.  So I can say, if nothing else, that I shoveled tons and tons of manure on a cotton farm in my childhood.

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May 26, 2013

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Excursion 2 (4/6/2013)

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Excursion 2, Part 3 (The Mystery Vase)

In which our intrepid hero discovers an intriguing and mysterious urn…

When some people drive alone for a distance, they are able somehow to tune themselves out.  Perhaps they immerse themselves in music from the radio, or CDs or MP3s.  Maybe they just focus on the road.  Sometimes I am able to do that, especially if I am weary, or if the traffic or weather is such that I really need to concentrate.  But all too often I am very conscious that I am with myself.  My thoughts roam far and wide.  This is a bad thing if you are depressed or if something unhappy just happened; your mind gets stuck in a loop and you endlessly replay conversations or are simply unable to get away from fears and anxieties.  But if you don’t have those monsters lurking inside you that day, your mind can instead be a “happy place,” where you can absorb and process what you see in a mindset of peace and serenity.  You can almost feel the dopamine kicking in when you get into such a contemplative, almost meditative mood.  When this happens, I find it more than relaxing; it is almost as if my cares are falling away from me as I speed down the road…

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May 25, 2013

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Excursion 2 (4/6/2013)

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Excursion 2, Part 1 (Spring Yet Unsprung)

In which our intrepid hero leaves the safe confines of his home and encounters an unexpected bit of Africa…

On my first excursion out of the city, on April 6, I decided to drive around southeast-central Ohio.  Although technically spring, it still seemed like winter.  The weather was brisk, the sky soon became somewhat overcast, and leaves were nowhere to be found.  Gray seemed to be the color of the day.

However, as I began to leave town driving east on East 5th Avenue, I soon encountered an unexpected splash of color.

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