What I am Grateful for this Year

(in no particular order)

1)   My nieces and nephews for joining us at Put-in-Bay this summer. Yeah, I know you’re all teenagers and still somewhat under control of your parents, but we appreciated your presence and the fact that you all seemed to enjoy yourselves, which made us happy as well. By us, I especially mean your grandparents whose idea the mini vacation (to celebrate their 50^th wedding anniversary) was in the first place. I hope you all look back on the holiday fondly.

2)   Our gardener, Lolly for the very professional job she did whipping our garden into shape this summer and helping me with the leaf raking chore this autumn. My mom said our garden never looked better, and I was especially in awe of the way Lolly shaved our bushes giving them shape – a bit like those topiaries you see at the Deaf School Gardens in Columbus, or the ones in Disney Land/World. I told her that and she just blushed saying, “I wouldn’t go that far.”

3)   My friend Lisa for providing a sympathetic ear after Sunday mass recently. She literally sat down on the pew after mass and let me pour out my soul to her while she listened quietly with compassion. Though this wasn’t one of those cry-your-eyes out poor me pity-parties, it was nice to just talk. Also, back in the summer, Lisa was kind enough to share one of her very early childhood memories of the Apollo Moon Landing (which was published in my blog back in July).

 

4)    My sister, Karen and her very kind gesture when she recently brought Andrew and me a small pan of lasagna she had made. She knows I am solely in charge of all meals (and pretty much everything else) right now while Andrew convalesces, and certainly welcome anything that only needs reheating. It was delicious and the bread with the lovely butter on the side was also much appreciated. I am also lucky enough to have her so close by as we live less than 5 miles apart. I know my parents certainly appreciate that when they come down to visit. She’s also my drinking buddy whether it’s a cup of coffee and some conversation, or a glass of wine (and maybe a little whining sometimes).

5)    Our neighbor on Ridgewood, Amy, for loaning us a wheelchair for my in-laws visit last month. I know this doesn’t seem like a big favor, and it wasn’t at first since it was only meant to be an occasional aid, but when my mother-in-law broke her ankle, it quickly became a necessity for her mobility. As the situation was stressful enough, this was one less detail we needed to take care of, and for that, we are all eternally grateful to you for this kind gesture.

6)    My best friend, Leslie for always being there for me for the past 45 years or so that we’ve been friends. Leslie has just hit the half century mark that is looming for me next spring. We’ve been friends since about kindergarten – I guess? We’re both getting old, so it’s hard to remember back that far, but we have class photos that prove we were occasionally in the same class. We’ve had the occasional disagreement, and don't always see eye to eye on everything, but each respect our differences and remain friends to this day.

sorry Joe, it's the only photo I have (but look how young you are!)

7)   Our neighbor Joe for being the best neighbor we could ask for over the past 14 years. It’s the end of an era as our neighbor to the right of us has just moved out of the neighborhood. Joe was the best kind of neighbor to have – always quiet, took pride in his yard, always happy to have a brief, but friendly chat while out sweeping the driveway or some other chore, and never minded looking in on our cat or collecting our mail while we were away for the weekend. Joe, you will definitely be missed, but on to greener pastures!

8)  Our house – especially the den and guest bathroom. Yes, this might seem an odd thing to be grateful for, but if Marie Kondo can greet a house, I can certainly thank my house for its service. The den (aka our guest room) is definitely the most under-utilized room of our house as its only purpose is to serve as a guest room when we have guests, which is rare, except for when we host my parents and uncle over Christmas. This year the den, which has an adjacent full bath, has had more activity this autumn than it’s seen in the 14 years we’ve lived in our house. My in-laws were guests for 10 days back in October (and spent 75% of their time down there following my mother-in-law’s accident). Now my husband is convalescing there following surgery on his ankle. Though I still find the room a bit dark, as it’s now late autumn, it’s starting to feel a little cozy on these dark evenings.

9)   “Gilmore Girls” for bringing me 7 seasons and 2 of the best years of TV viewing. Though I had heard of “Gilmore Girls” back in 2000 when it premiered, it wasn’t that big in the UK where I was living at the time, so I never tuned in. Flash forward 5+ years to when we moved into our house on Wenwood and happened to be chatting to our neighbor, Dick over the back fence and had asked why their dog was called Rory since, in my mind (being a Dr. Who fan), that was a boy’s name. Dick, the father of 3 girls, told me they all enjoyed watching “Gilmore Girls” and found it strangely soothing, so they named their dog, Rory, after one of the main characters. Although I found the story touching, I still didn’t tune in until after I quit my long-time job back in 2017. Remembering what Dick had said about it being soothing and all that, I definitely needed as much comfort and sympathy while I went through that job transition. Turns out Dick and his girls were right. It definitely is soothing, quirky, and really enjoyable. Though I’m not necessarily a fan of small-town life, I would chuck it all in a second if I could live in Stars Hollow (and work in one of the two bookstores there). I finally finished watching the entire 7 seasons (and already read Lauren Graham’s book reminiscing about it), and look forward to viewing “A Year in the Life” next year.

10) Being able to work at home. Though it can be a little lonely, I am especially grateful now that we’ve had our first overnight snowfall and the street looked a little treacherous that morning. My coworkers were rejoicing about being able to work at home on days like that as well. It’s also been convenient for taking care of Andrew while he recovers as I was able to bring him all his meals and the occasional cup of tea and biscuit when on break (but he's back to working at his company office now).

Sunday Outing at OSU

My husband and I had another Sunday outing making that three Sundays in a row we’ve had plans (which is a rare thing for us indeed!). The first event that was penciled in was The Ohio State Marching Band Hometown Concert, which was scheduled for mid-afternoon.

The Wexner Center

Since that left the whole morning free, and we still hadn’t been to the Wexner Center to see the Ann Hamilton, Jenny Holzer and Maya Lin exhibit, we went there first. It’s difficult to know what to say about the exhibit. It’s colorful (Inflammatory Essays);

it’s thought-provoking (Truisms),

and it’s very detailed (Folding the Chesapeake).

The “details” can’t really be appreciated unless you see them in person. Picture like a million glass marbles or beads spread across the floor crawling up to the ceiling. My artist friend, Amy, is one of the installers who helped glue them all down, and for that, I give her a huge amount of credit. If someone had shown me the schematic, handed me a bottle of glue and told me I had like two weeks or so to make the space look like the drawing, I would have told them they were crazy, or I probably would have gone crazy.

I think being an art installer is very much an underappreciated and underpaid job. When you see exhibits like Maya Lin’s you have to think the installers deserve to be paid more than they do for the care they take in handling the art (which Amy said is definitely one of the perks since the general public certainly can’t touch priceless works), and then the attention they pay to detail when it comes to reconstructing the puzzle.

Of the three installations, my favorite was Jenny Holzer’s Truisms.  According to the exhibit description, “…Holzer produced Truisms: concise one-liners written anonymously and designed to condense difficult and contentious concepts into seemingly straightforward statements of fact.

Originally written in BIC pen on lined paper, Truisms existed as Holzer’s personal distillations of large philosophical ideas. Later, however, she printed them on rectangular white broad-sheets and posted them around New York City, pasting them up in telephone booths, in subway stations, and on walls and buildings, often working in the early morning hours to remain anonymous.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the nearly 300 maxims that make up Truisms began to appear not just on posters, but also on T-shirts, stickers, condoms, benches, LED tickers, and various other language-based media.”

I’m not sure if all 300 were there in this exhibit as the list repeats, but I read as many as I could and hopefully I can find the complete list somewhere (I love lists, and I love rules to live by). 

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~field/holzer/truisms.txt

The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

Since most of the Wexner exhibit is just a repeat of lots of text, it didn’t take even close to two hours to see the entire installation. We browsed the bookstore for a little while, but then to fill the remaining time until the concert started, we wandered over to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum (next door to the Wexner Center). The current exhibit is: Ladies First: A Century of Women's Innovations in Comics and Cartoon Art November 2, 2019 - May 3, 2020.

Though I’m not really into politics and quite a lot of the exhibit (at least in one room) is a pretty comprehensive display of political cartoons (from about the last 50 years or so), I very much enjoyed looking around. There were quite a few I had never seen (like all the ones from MAD magazine), and most were worthy of a laugh or two – even those mocking the presidents I liked (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, etc.). Ladies First main exhibit.

I read somewhere that Nixon’s face was a cartoonist’s dream come true because so little distortion needed to be done. I ended up spending so long looking at all the political art that I had to quickly skim the Ladies First main exhibit.

The Ohio State Marching Band Hometown Concert

We eventually made our way over to the Mershon Auditorium (where we have previously seen famous alumnus like comedian, Richard Lewis, photographer, Annie Leibovitz, and filmmaker, Richard Linklater). This time we were there to see the OSU marching band perform a varied program of movie musicals, pop music, and even cartoon classics (if you can call “Sponge Bob Square Pants” a classic).

Since this is a concert and half the fun of seeing the band perform is to watch them create the various formations on the field, those were shown on a screen during the performances. Probably my favorite of those was the rocket formations honoring the anniversary of the moon landing earlier this summer.

I especially enjoyed the impressive demonstrations by OSU’s two drum majors, Konner Barr and little old 5’2” Morgan Davis (proof that you don’t have to be tall to be a drum major).

Nary a baton was dropped and there were some pretty awesome gymnastics performed to catch it at times.

Memories of my sister and I pretending with our own batons floated through my head as I watched the pair up on stage. I was also fondly remembering a friend (who was only a few inches taller than me) who himself was a drum major when we were in high school.

As these are student performers, they’re not above a few unscripted antics – like the repeated chorus from “Hey Jude” at least a couple times between songs, which at one point, the announcer had to do his best and try to introduce the next song over that. At least everyone seemed to have a good sense of humor.

If you’ve never been lucky enough to attend a game or a skull session, or even see the band march through the annual state fair every summer, this is certainly the next best thing (and way more affordable $$ than attending a game $$$). TBDBITL!

Speakmon Memorial Regatta Oct. 26-27, 2019

I recently crossed another item off my Bucket List, which was to attend a Regatta down at the Scioto River. Because we live so close to the river (approx. 3 miles), it seemed like something we should do,  and I’ve always been curious (and still am as the whole day was a bit of a mystery to me).

Funnily enough, I hadn’t exactly planned on doing it this weekend, but last night the entire girls’ rowing team from Magnificat, an all-girls Catholic school in Cleveland, attended 5:30pm mass at my church. I had no clue they were even a rowing team as none of their clothing gave that away (though one or two of the girls might have been wearing a rowing hoodie). It was only after chatting with their coach after mass that I was filled in on events. Apparently the girls had done pretty well on day one (which is pretty lucky considering it was cold, wet, and dreary all day) and were looking forward to continued success on day two (Sunday). Their coach told me the Sunday schedule started at about 7:30am wrapping up by 3:30pm and invited me to come out and watch the races. I told him I might since that was something I’ve always wanted to do anyway.

When I got home from church I filled in my husband on the plan, and he seemed happy enough to accompany me, so he started looking up info on the internet (no. 1 priority, where do you park?). Though we only live a few miles from the river, there’s no sidewalk or path and you have to cross a couple busy roads, so driving there is still the better option.

Sunday morning was another dreary looking day (though dry at least), so we decided to have brunch and get a few things done first before heading over at about half past eleven. The internet said parking was at the local disc golf course on Riverside Drive, so we headed over there (passing dozens of closer places we probably could have parked, and maybe will next year if we attend again). Though there was a shuttle from the parking lot, we ended up walking from the parking lot (I definitely burned off all those syrupy pancakes I had just eaten!).

As it was around noon, there wasn’t much rowing activity on the river as it appeared to be between races with lots of people standing around – some in line at one of the food trucks;

others in line to use one of the many porta-potties,

while a few stood around chatting or used the time to walk their dogs.

We walked up and down the river and learned there was still quite a wait until the next race. We briefly contemplated buying a hot beverage, but we both declined not wishing to then have to miss any action while waiting in line at the porta-potties.

I suggested we check out the folly* that was recently built near one of the pavilions. The front of the folly faces the road and appears to be a stage, which made us wonder if it has been used for any small performances (you could easily set up chairs or a few bleachers on the hillside in front of it). Somehow I doubt that’s the case, but there’s certainly future potential there.

*a costly ornamental building with no practical purpose, especially a tower or mock-Gothic ruin built in a large garden or park.

As it got closer to race time we wandered back to where we had been standing and found a good vantage spot to see the rowers as they headed back towards the finish line, which was the OSU Boat House, according to what the Magnificat coach told me.

Not really understanding the logistics of the races, I assumed we might see several dozen boats staggered across the width of the river with lots of shouts of “Row! Row! Row!” while loyal fans cheered them on. Instead, we only saw a couple boats at a time and they were pretty close to the western bank of the river, so we had to rely on our telephoto lenses to get the best view of the action. Note to self: If we attend again, perhaps park elsewhere and find somewhere to stand on the other side (though all the activity and amenities are on the eastern bank).

I also think if we do decide to attend next year, we make more of an effort to acquire more information on when the races are, and how it all works. Quite honestly, just watching two boats race to the finish, not knowing any of the rowers, wasn’t all that exciting.

We did learn that the rowers launch their boats from the eastern bank, then have to row a mile or so the starting point, so there’s quite a distance between the start and finish – a bit like a parade route.

I told my husband Andrew that the whole experience might have been more interesting had we known any of the rowers, or been privy to a story or two about whom the underdogs were and why we should cheer for this team or that team.

It was certainly an interesting experience and it was fun being around such an enthusiastic crowd. The autumn color was pretty, though certainly more picturesque once the sun came out toward the end. Plus, it was nice to get out of the house and attend an event we had never before been to. All in all, a nice day out.