If you don't live in Ohio, there is a good chance that you don't know what the name means.  If you search for a bit on the Internet, you could find suggestions like Only Handle It Once, Our Hand Is Out, Over the Hill In October,  and -- my personal favorite -- Old Hicks In Outhouse.  But, the real meaning behind the name came from the Seneca people, one of the Iroquois nations.  They called the Ohio River "ohi-yo" which meant "good river", "great river", or "large creek".  Personally, I think great is better than good and river is better than creek.  So, I'm going to stick with "great river".  However, in my travels, I've also learned that if you say Ohio in Japan (although it should then be spelled "ohayo"), it means "good morning".

When I lived in Antwerp, Belgium, the oldest house in the city was built in the 1500s!  That kind of history makes most things in the United States seem so quaint and new.  However, there is rich Native American history throughout the continent -- including in Ohio -- that predates anything in Colonial America.  That fact should be obvious with a name like Ohio coming from the Seneca people.  

So, I decided to do a little daytripping in Central Ohio to see what I could explore.  I started with some Native American sites and then expanded.  I'd still rather tour a cathedral in Europe, head out into the remote bush in Africa, discover kangaroos in Australia, or wander Inca ruins in South America, but I was very pleasantly surprised what the land of that great river had to offer.  ​

SHRUM MOUND     Before European and American settlers came into the Northwest Territory, there were several Native American tribes in the region.  In my research, no site had a list that they completely agreed upon, but some of the main tribes were the Shawnee, Delaware, Ottawa, Miami, Wyandot, and Seneca.  Before these people, the Adena culture, a Pre-Columbian Native American people, lived in what would become Ohio (along with parts of Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania) from approximately 500 BC to 100 AD.  They were followed by the Hopewell culture (which expanded out from Ohio into present-day Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Pennsylvania, and New York) from approximately 100 AD to 500 AD.  

Both the Adena and Hopewell people were hunters and farmers.  They would hunt wild game, birds, and fish.  They would have grown squash, gourds, beans, sunflowers, and corn.  The Adena were known to trade with other tribes in what would become the Central, South, and Southeast United States.  The Hopewell expanded trade to get obsidian from the Rocky Mountains, sea shells from the Gulf of Mexico, sharks teeth from Chesapeake Bay, and copper from the Great Lakes.

The Adena, as well as the Hopewell, were famous for the mounds that they built.  Some of the mounds were burial grounds.  Others were ceremonial effigy mounds shaped like various animals.  Perhaps the most famous of these is the Great Serpent Mound near the Ohio River.  This mound, shaped like a coiled snake, is three feet tall and 1,348 feet long.  Estimates say that it is probably 2,000 years old.

When settlers first came into the region, there were thousands of mounds in all sizes.  Most of them did not survive the passage of time.  Today, it is possible to visit about 70 different mound locations in Ohio.  There is one small mound in a local park that is very close to where I live.  It's in the middle of a woods, about six feet tall, and covered with brush.  There is no way to photograph it well.  I didn't even try.  Instead, I headed out to Shrum Mound on the other side of town.  It is about 20 feet tall with a diameter of 100 feet and one of the last conical mounds still in Columbus.  It is believed to be 2,000 years old and built by the Adena people.  More importantly to me, it is beautifully landscaped and so easy to photograph.  

CORNHENGE    Officially, it's called The Field of Corn, (with Osage Orange Trees), but the people of Dublin, Ohio, usually refer to it as Cornhenge.  Technically, a henge is supposed to have a circle of stone or wooden uprights. But, when you're coming up with a nickname, being clever is more important that accurate.  Anyway, much to my absolute shock, this park was constructed in 1994!  How could it have taken me over two decades to learn about it?

I counted the number of corncobs, but I wasn't accurate.  I came up with 106, but there were three more of them. Each corncob is made of white cement, stands just over six feet tall, and weighs 1,500 pounds.  The project was commissioned by the Dublin Arts Council and the ears were designed by Malcolm Cochran, a professor of sculpture at THE Ohio State University.  For those who just have to know, originally three differing ears were cast and then molds were taken of each ears.  When the corncobs were installed, the ears were turned at various angles to give the illusion that every ear is unique.

The instillation was designed to honor Ohio's rich corn heritage.  The field where the corncobs are on display was once an actual cornfield.  That comes as no surprise because so much of the land around Columbus, Ohio, used to be farmland (including where I live).  In fact, this particular park was farmed by Sam Frantz from 1935 to 1963. Frantz also worked with THE Ohio State University developing hybrid corn seeds on this very property!  The double-cross hybrid variety of corn that Cochran used for his design is called Corn Belt Dent Corn (which is probably more information than you needed to know.)

The biggest surprise to me as I learned about corn was that fact that it has been cultivated in Ohio for approximately 1800 years!  And, it wasn't just grown in small little garden patches around tepees, wigwams, and longhouses. By the mid-1700s, in the Scioto River Valley (from around Columbus and south to the Ohio River) and in the Miami River Valley (from Dayton to Cincinnati), thousands of acres of cornfields were grown.  Thousands!  Who knew?

The farming continued when the European and American settlers came to Ohio in the late 1700s.  Corn was their most important crop.  It was food for the family as well as the livestock and any surplus was sold.  By 1850, Ohio led the nation with its corn production.  Franklin County, where Columbus is located, was once one of the leading corn-producing areas in the state.  As the capitol city continues to sprawl in all directions, that is no longer the case. 

And, on a very personal note, the big festival every year where I grew up was the Wyandot Popcorn Festival.  It's actually the world's largest popcorn festival and annually draws a crowd of about 250,000 people.  When I attended in the past, I had no idea that the Wyandot people actually grew corn.  I still can't imagine Indians sitting around the fire eating popcorn (but with a little research, I learned that that was exactly what they did!)  And, I also had no idea that in the years since I moved away, the entertainment at the Popcorn Festival included Lee Greenwood, the Righteous Brothers, the Pointer Sisters, the Commodores, Willie Nelson, Kansas, Kool and the Gang, Ricki Martin, Blake Shelton, Boyz II Men, and the Village People.  I'm a little shocked.

So, lesson learned in my daytripping.  No matter where you live, if you do a little research, you might be surprised what you find in your own backyard.  And, if you get up early when the light is just right for photography, you may have a good morning in Ohio, or wherever you find yourself.

I usually go to church for the second service at 11:00 in the morning.  On a Sunday morning, I don't want to be bothered getting to church early enough for the first service at nine o'clock.  However, this week, I had to go to the early service.  Leah, who stands as a greeter at the door I always use, noticed right away that I was not attending at my usual time.  She had to ask what was up.  I said, "I had to come to this service today because I volunteered for some golf thing in the afternoon."

"Do you mean the Memorial Golf Tournament?"

That would be the golf thing.  The name slipped my mind.  I don't do golf.  I certainly don't watch it on television.  I haven't even played putt-putt in decades.  I'm fairly sure I've never been on a golf course.  And, I know I'd never been to Muirfield Village.  Muirfield is the dream of Jack Nicklaus.  (I did know that name.)  Nicklaus designed the 220 acre golf course / country club / community complex in the 1970s.  The Memorial Tournament, named to commemorate the greats of the sport, began in 1976.  Muirfield Village is the destination address for those people in Columbus who simply have more money than they know what to do with.  Might I suggest sponsoring a muralman?

I called up my brother and said, "You'd never guess in a million years where I am."  Of course, I was right.  He couldn't possibly have come up with the correct answer.  Nobody who knows me could.  It's completely out of character for me to have anything to do with golf.  However, it's not out of character for me to volunteer for a cause.  One of my friends was in charge of gathering 60 volunteers from his Lions Club.  And, knowing the right person is how I ended up at the 18th hole of the Memorial Golf Tournament. 

It's okay to be mildly jealous of the experience.  (My brother-in-law certainly is.)  But, to add a little reality to the situation, I was on trash duty.  I spent the afternoon of a beautifully, sunny day in Ohio gathering up bags of trash and stuffing them behind a hidden bar for someone else to take care of later in the day.  Most of the drinking crowds were considerate with their trash.  However, I still managed to get beer all over my arms as I moved around wet trash bags.  I smelled like a drunk by the time I got home -- and I never drink the stuff!

More reality for the situation.  When you are on trash patrol, you really can't get a good place to watch anything at the 18th hole.  If and when anything happened on the course, there were too many heads -- and even more raised I phones -- in the way to see much of anything.  I didn't suffer though.  There were no celebrity sightings on the course, except for the Goodyear blimp.  I'd never heard of any of the golfers that day.  Yes, I do know who Tiger Woods is.  Even I would recognize him anywhere.  He wasn't one of the 120 players participating in the tournament.

Much to my surprise, I was stopped several times by people as I hauled off the trash.  They wanted to thank me for my community service.  It was nice to be appreciated. 

The leader throughout the day was Billy Horschel.  He's a PGA professional that I'd never heard of before.  He maintained his lead on the final day and went home a whole lot richer.  How much do you get for winning a golf tournament in Columbus, Ohio?  Well, if it is the proper tournament, it's a tidy $2.6 million dollars. 

Nicklaus was there for the drama at the last hole, and he presented the trophy to Horschel.  You would think that seeing the Golden Bear present the trophy to the 2022 Memorial champion would have been my highlight of the day. 

Not even close.

Horschel is a young father with three young children.  The oldest one looked perhaps seven-years-old.  They were little, but they were still old enough to know that their daddy was in a tournament.  And, there was no way to control their joy when he won.  According to The Memorial Twitter account, one of them cried, "Daddy, did we win?"  There was also a whole lot of joyful jumping up and down, when daddy replied, "Yes, we did."

A podium was hauled out to the middle of the 18th hole's putting green.  That's where the presentation took place. As Nicklaus presented the trophy to Horschel, three little children just couldn't stay by their mother's side.  They rushed up to be by their father.  Then, there was a moment when nobody was sure if they should be there or if they should go back to their mother.  Fortunately, sanity reigned at that moment and they circled their daddy for the photos. 

There were probably a lot of young fathers in the competition in Columbus this week.  I really don't know.  After all, I didn't even know the names of the participants.  But, one very proud papa took a trophy home to the delight of three children.  Hershel might have won the trophy but his kids won my heart.  As far as I'm concerned, the best man -- and daddy -- won.

There are causes that I believe in, and I'll pull out my checkbook to support them when I can.  But, writing a check is not as satisfying as digging in and using your hands to actually make a difference.  And, thankfully, I had the chance to physically get my hands involved in a worthy cause.  The opportunity came my way to do something to help the people of Ukraine. 

The country has been in the news for weeks and months.  Millions of people have been forced to flee their homes and nobody can place a number on how many people have been killed.  Usually, I ask myself, what can I do? How can I make a difference? And, I'm not the only one who feels this way.  Very fortunately, my pastor had the same questions going on in his mind, but he knew who to contact.  Pastor Frank called up a friend, Lyle Mullins from Heaven Sent Ministries.  He asked Mullins, "Are you doing anything for Ukraine?  Can my church be of assistance?"

"Yes! Yes!"

Heaven Sent Ministries has worked in twenty countries around the world.  They know what to do, how to do it, and they have local connections.  They provided a well-oiled operation when they came to my church for a weekend. And when the call went out for volunteers, over 1000 people raised their hands.  Yep, half of the church signed up for the chance to help the people of Ukraine. 

There were four two-hour shifts on Friday as well as Saturday.  Groups of 12 people were assigned to individual tables.  Everyone had a job to do.  There were scoops for soy powder, vitamins, dried vegetables and rice.  The bags were weighed, sealed, labeled, counted and boxed.  I worked both days, and before my first shift was over, I was very thankful that I never had to work on an assembly line as a permanent job.

There were a lot of old farts present who knew very well about Lucille Ball's experience on an assembly line in the television show I Love Lucy.  She and her friend, Ethel, worked at a chocolate factory.  When they fell behind, they ate chocolate and stuffed even more every place they could in their clothing.  My job in the assembly line was weighing each bag of food to see that it ranged between 398 and 402 grams.  It was rare if any bag arrived at my scale between those numbers.  Bags piled up as two of us weighed the contents and then added or scooped out rice as needed.  If it was chocolate bonbons, I might have kept up better than Lucy did.  But, nobody was tempted to eat uncooked rice with dried vegetables.

Each bag held enough food to feed five people.  Every box held 36 packages of the rice and dried vegetables. Over the course of two days, the volunteers from my church packed up over 1000 boxes with enough food for 215,000 meals.  The shipment would head out to Poland to help some of the three million refugees there and then go on into Ukraine as well.

It was a wonderful experience for all involved, but there were some special moments.  On the very first shift on Friday, local television news crews showed up.  And, at one point, someone tapped my pastor on the should to tell him something extraordinary.  A volunteer for that shift was a woman from Ukraine who had only arrived in the US a few days previously.  Valeria spoke through a translator to the reporter, “I am very happy to be with these wonderful people. Thank God that I am with you and can help Ukraine. I am grateful to all Americans for caring and helping my country. Many thanks from all Ukrainians. You are the best!  We will definitely win!” 

It was one of those moments when there were not so many dry eyes in the room.

On my Saturday shift, the packaging was well ahead of schedule, so my pastor called for a halt.  He wanted to talk to the volunteers.  There were two Ukrainians, who had come to the USA many years before, participating during the shift.  He wanted to introduce them.  After that, Pastor Frank moved from table to table to see if there were any other Ukrainian connections.  As it turned out, there were five other people from Ukraine in our midst.  Some may think that the pastor staged that event, but he's not a miracle worker.

The last table that the pastor came to was mine.  I don't think we had a Ukrainian connection.  If we did, I spoke up instead of them, but I had something to share.  The reason I wanted to help was because I once lived in Liberia. My best friend, Daniel, was a refugee who had to flee to a neighboring country.  I never thought I'd ever personally know someone who would be a refugee.  But, I now realize that it can happen to anyone, anywhere.  And, since I knew a refugee, I now know how personal the statistics are. Three million isn't just a number.  It's three million individual people who have friends, brothers, children, parents, sisters, neighbors, stories and lives.  Each one is special to the people who love them.  None of them ever expected to be thrown into this situation. 

I came to my church to help the people of Ukraine, but I did it because of my friend Daniel.  He is now safe, back in the village where he was born.  I hope the same for all of the people of Ukraine.