This was yet another busy week. The work highlight was our "off-site" on Tuesday, which was really pretty much social. We spent the afternoon at Karen's boyfriend's house in Annapolis, which is a huge and amazing property right on the Chesapeake, complete with dock. It was the perfect place to watch the Blue Angels rehearse for the Naval Academy graduation. It's easiest to think of it as being almost a private airshow. It's astonishing watching them fly straight up and split off into various patterns - more or less what you see in recruiting videos.
I took Friday off and flew to Columbus, Ohio. My major purpose for the trip was to do a few Volksmarch events. Columbus is, of course, a state capital, so the walk there (which I did today) helped towards a life list item. Another special program I'm doing is Walking the USA from A to Z. While they've made "X" into a wildcard, I still wanted to do it honestly, so I took advantage of a regular event in Xenia. Looking at the map, I figured out I could pick up another tough letter on the same trip. So I did the year round in Urbana on Friday, Xenia on Saturday and Columbus today.
The Urbana walk was pleasant enough, with a cute historic downtown. It is, however, obvious that rural Ohio is not doing well economically, with some stores shuttered and others in need of restoration. The other interesting thing about Urbana is The Johnny Appleseed Museum, on the grounds of Urbana University. It seems that Johnny was a friend of the university's founder, who was a fellow Swedenborgian. The museum isn't much, but the guy who runs it was friendly and provided a nice little guided tour.
The Xenia walk was not at all inspiring, but it served its purpose. There were some nice, large houses along the route, but I didn't come away with any sense of anything unique about Xenia. Aside from it starting with an X, that is. After the walk, I meandered south to Cincinnati. See, my map reading had revealed that Ohio isn't all that big and, where there is baseball, one might as well make an excursion.
Downtown Cincinnati was lively and bustling, largely because of the Taste of Cincinnati festival. I have mixed feelings about these food tasting events, as it's easy to spend too much money to eat too much mediocre food. It's particularly distressing when big chain restaurants, instead of interesting locals, win the "best food" prizes. I did sample a few things, none of which were particularly memorable. It did provide an excuse for a bit of a stroll down 5th Street and I will note, in particular, Fountain Square as being pleasant and attractive. The fountain at the heart of it is a bit weird, though, if you look closely at the figures. For example, one is a man standing straddling a snake. Not so bad, but the snake points sort of straight ahead and water gushes out of its mouth. There's no doubt about what Freud would have to say about that.
I did mention baseball and, indeed, I went to Great American Ballpark in the evening. This sounds like a pretentious name for a ballpark, but the Great American in question is an insurance company. The unique architectural feature is the riverboat deck, which is a nice nod towards the city's history. I gathered that the deck (which runs along center field) is used for private parties, but the design still resembles a riverboat when viewed from the inside of the stadium. Beyond that, the stadium is not particularly interesting, with an especially weak selection of concessions. There are four mascots, which is rather frightening. Mr. Redlegs looks creepy (something about that style of mustache, which suggests a riverboat hustler - and I even like mustaches), Mr. Red is just silly (a smiling baseball), Rosie Red has some history but may no longer even be an official mascot, and Gapper is yet another of those annoying unidentifiable shaggy animals that children seem to love and I detest. To be fair, the mascots were pretty invisible once the game itself started. I was even more distressed to see uniformed cheerleaders, but their activity was limited to dancing on top of the dugouts a couple of times between innings (to accompany a t-shirt toss). The weirdest thing is to see all of these dumb modern ideas take root for a team that is actually the oldest in Major League Baseball.
The idea that didn't take root, alas, was competent pitching. Bronson Arroyo has never been known for consistency and bad Bronson was out Saturday night. In the first inning, he walked one batter, hit another, gave up a single (which let one runner score), then gave up a home run. There were signs advertising a concert he is doing later in the week and one can only hope his musicianship is less random. The Pirates didn't play particularly brilliantly, but they didn't have to. The Reds did rally late in the game, so they only lost 9-5. By the way, given that Pittsburgh is not all that far from Cincinnati, I am surprised not to have seen or heard more Pirates fans in the audience, but maybe they were just all concentrated in other parts of the stadium.
Today I drove back to Columbus and did a Volksmarch there. There were a few options, but I noticed that there was a big Asian festival going on in Franklin Park so chose to do that route. The walk included a long length along Broad Street, which is lined with old and gracious buildings, including one that used to be the governor's mansion. Unfortunately, the section before that was where my weather karma ran out, as I got caught in a brief but intense rain storm. That made the walk a bit uncomfortable as I was sopping wet. I dried out for the most part by the time I reached the park, which has a nice array of gardens. The Asian festival proved useful for lunch, offering better fare than the Taste of Cincinnati had. (This is not a really fair comparison, though, since I'd sampled just a few booths at each.) Oddly, it seems that the largest Asian group in Columbus must be Filipinos, at least if one can judge from the number of booths of each ethnicity there. That's quite a difference from where I live, with its large Korean and Vietnamese populations.
The park also has a large conservatory, which is famous for its mixture of plants and glass sculptures. But it costs $7.50 to get in and I wasn't sure I had enough time to get my money's worth. With just a few hours to see Columbus, I figured I'd rather go to the Thurber House, especially since he's an author I always liked. That would have been a good plan but it was closed when i got there, despite signs on the door suggesting they should be open. The section of the walk between there and the Capitol was particularly bleak, though it didn't feel dangerous. The Capitol is a rather odd one, as it looks like it should have a dome, but doesn't. The more interesting building is the ornate Gothic former courthouse kitty corner from the Capitol. This is now used as law offices, but looks like it should be a cathedral. (There's another building which looks cathedral-like, back on Broad Street. It turns out to be an insurance company.)
That was the last site on the official walk, but there was one more thing in Columbus that I had to see. Namely, the Topiary Park. Topiary is always kind of strange, but this collection is particularly weird. Instead of the usual lions and dragons, it's a topiary reproduction of Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of la Grand Jatte." Oh, sure, there are a few animals involved (3 dogs, a cat, and a monkey), but, basically, we're talking about topiary French people. As their brochure says, "it's a landscape of a painting of a landscape!"
Copyright 2007 Miriam H. Nadel