June 22, 2021 a thought for today, A one hundred yard high tower still has its foundation on the ground. Chinese Proverb

Today there is no need for “out and about”. So I have spent the time on the bulletin and the newsletter. I have both mostly done except....there is still part of the newsletter information that I am waiting for. I spent a larger part of yesterday on some household chores. Since I had the other obligations to get done this week and I got that little bit more done yesterday I think the rest of today will be on the “laid back” side.

Yesterday the photo theme was “blue”. One of my neighbors has a blue patio umbrella. I liked the lines, color and shapes of it. I tried getting a few shots of it. But when I pulled them up in Photoshop I realized I didn’t have the composition that I wanted. So I just used the beautiful sky blue shot I captured right off the front porch.  

The weather has taken yet another turn. The temps have dropped about fifteen degrees. It’s now in the sixties instead of eighties. I was chilly enough to break down and put on a sweat shirt. I don’t think this is going to be one of the best periods for the house plants being outside. There have been strong winds knocking them over several time. More rain than they really need. This is a kind of test to see which of them will be strong enough to make it through a little oversight here and there. 

Things are beginning to “come back to normal” after the pandemic. I think I am seeing some of the changes that I contemplated with the thoughts of how much “normal” would come back totally unchanged. There are some of my friends in my literary club who will not be coming back to the meetings. There is also a change taking place with a major long-lasting mission at my church.  Not necessarily primarily due to the pandemic, possibly a fall out from it, but still a change to what we have been accustomed to for half a century. I’m wondering how many more changes of that sort there will be as the we go forward. 

The word is appreciation. Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. Voltaire.  Next to excellence is the appreciation of it. William Makepeace Thackeray.  Of cheerfulness, or a good temper - the more it is spent, the more of it remains, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has, Henry Ward Beecher.  Only the educated are free, Epictetus. Continuous eloquence wearies. Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm. Blaise Pascal. The greatest gift is a portion of thyself, Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Noble character is best appreciated in those ages in which it can most readily develop. Tacitus. It cannot be that there is a high appreciation of Jesus and a totally silent tongue about him, Charles Spurgeon.  If people did not compliment one another there would be little society, Luc de Clapiers. What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal, Albert Pike. Charity should begin at home, but should not stay there, Phillips Brooks. Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity, Samuel Johnson. It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you, but rather your failure to appreciate theirs, Confucius. We live by admiration, hope and love, William Wordsworth. Correction does much, but encouragement does more. Encouragement after censure is as the sun after a shower, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable, James A. Garfield. 

The photo theme for today is “fire”. I wasn’t about to chase a fire truck, even if there was one racing down the street at the time, and I don’t have any candles around the house at the time so I use one of the fires on my gas stove and tried to include some lines and shapes to give it some character. 

Here is another bit of history about Columbus with a bit of a twist. Apparently there was a question as to whether the Columbus Cultural Art Center is haunted. A student went to the front desk ans explained that she saw a female figure in 19th century clothing walk through the gallery and there had been no sound of foot steps. The clerk said “that would be Hester”.  So the story began. In 1844 Hester Foster was put to death near where the art center is located. It was estimated that 12,000 to 20,000 people “converged on downtown”. There was “drunken revelry” in the crown and this atmosphere caused the death of one spectator. Little was reported of Hester’s death in lieu of the chaos that surrounded the gallows. So it is hard to find much about Hester and her activity as a ghost. In the process of a search about the Cultural Arts Center for other purposes the search about Hester moved forward. The author of this article was asked to take on the task of assimilating the original information about the art center. What she found in that process was a document answering questions about Hester “in her own voice”. There were pamphlets called “The Murder Pamphlet” that gave details on “sensationalized” crimes. The pamphlet about Hester was at the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, part of the Ohio History Connection. Here is a bit of one of the twists that I mentioned in the beginning. There is a 21 page booklet that was sold a Hester’s execution that has been lost and forgotten for almost two centuries. One reason given for the lack of attention over the years could be that facts may be exaggerated of “unreliable”. In Hester’s “Murder Pamphlet”, written in the first person, there are lists of people, places and events about her existence. She had a “happy upbringing” until she was three then she was sent to Cincinnait to live with a relative then due to unfortunate circumstances had to move from family to family where things got bad at time. Later she married and had twins. Her mother gave her slaves to help her. She freed the slaves. It is said that one of the slaves murdered her children and their father. She started drinking and then fell into “vice and wickedness”. At some point she was in the woods with a stranger and two other women she had met and two men. One of the “strangers was raped and beaten” and killed. Hester was implicated in the offense. She said she saw the attack but swore she had no part in it. She was sentences to 20 years in prison in the Ohio Penitentiary. In prison she was in a group of women that got into fights with other groups. Later she argued with another inmate. A prison guard suggested that she “knock” the other woman in the head and that he would look the other way.  During one of the following serious arguments between Hester and two other women Hester hit one of the women in the head with a shovel as the guard looked the other way as he had said he would do. “Even though the attack was not premeditated, Hester Foster was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to death on December 21, 1843, just four days shy of her 22nd birthday”. She was preparing for her execution and was “loaded” into an open carriage with a man who was also being executed.  There was a large crowd at the execution site. Hester “fell to her knees, weeping and praying”. She nodded to the sheriff that she was ready. A hood was placed on her head and a noose around her neck and she was “launched into eternity” as the trap door dropped. That is the story of the ghost of the Cultural Art Center, which, by the way, was the old Ohio Penitentiary site and then an arsenal for the state militia before it became the art center. 

Left of beef and noodles with a bit of boxed tuna teriyaki.

Joy

Grass as a cushion.