Saturday, August 14, 2010

i live in ohio

Ohio is a pretty cool state. I know that it is usually used as the stereotypical plain boring soulless place in tv shows and etc. One time on Arthur, Arthur's family was having a family reunion and at one part Arthur tells his class about it and that some of his relatives came from Ohio and the whole class goes "OoOoOoOooo Ohiiiiiiooo" in the most sarcastic ever voice, and that made me sad, when I was little. And also that they brought him maple syrup from Ohio, which I don't think that's even a thing here? Or at least definitely not something we are known for.

But yeah. I like Ohio. We get actual seasons, hot hot way too freaking hot summers and winter and feet of snow and so on. There are a lot of interesting things here too. I think that can be said for any place or town, no matter how much people complain or say that their town is boring and THERE'S NOTHING TO DO! but there is. There is, at the very least, a lot to learn, a lot of local history.

I've always been enthralled by that kind of stuff. When I was 13 or 14, there was this little camp or week long activity thing at one of the historic old homes near the library; the house is called The Hickories. It was ridiculously neat. We learned about the different styles of houses and architectural features in the area and what life was like in the 1800s or 1900s or whatever time period and we made some foods that were made back then: some kind of cornbread and a maple syrup candy, which okay maybe we do do things with maple syrup, all right? I don't know.

The whole week was very fun and nerdy, but I was and am a nerd, duh.

Also Ohio, just northeast Ohio, has Cedar Point and Geauga Lake or Six Flags or whatever it's called now and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Science Center which is one of my favorite places ever.

And right near there, there is an old World War II submarine in the harbor, the USS Cod. I went there on a field trip in high school, and it was one of the neatest things I've ever experienced. There was so much stuff packed into that tiny space, every part and place having a function and made to be of maximum efficiency. We had to almost crawl through some of the doorways, and there was a lot of ladder climbing. It even had an ice cream maker. To think that all those men lived in there, that that 312 foot piece of steel and whatever had everything needed to sustain them and fight and travel and submerge, that it was built in 1942, that it still exists and is a thing anyone can walk through and see now, that is so awesome to me. Everything is as it was then. It's like a time capsule of life, a weird eerie glimpse into what it was like to live on, and plus the old technology, it was so freaking fascinating. If you want to see some stuff about it, here is its site, and really check out the virtual tour; it gives a pretty good sense of what it is like to be in there.

Another thing Ohio has a lot of is canals. We went on a field trip to some of those too once, and again, it was cool EVERYTHING IS SO COOL. We went to a lot of shops and got to ride a canal boat. I don't remember much other than that but I do remember that it was rad and that I want to go there again.

One more thing I just remembered that I will talk about and then I will stop; I'm sorry; a lot of this is probably bland and very vague for people who are not me, but all of these old memories have popped into my brain and I am going to take an Ohio history course this semester, which I guess is what made me think of all this etc etc ok.

Johnson's Island was a prison camp for confederate prisoners of war that is in Lake Erie. I did a report on it in junior high and was always fascinated (how many times fascinated and interested I need more words to say things with. with which to say things) by all of it. Like in the winter when the lake froze, men would try to escape by walking over the ice to what is now Cedar Point or Sandusky or Marblehead. After the war, there was an attempt to make it a ~pleasure place~ and it rivaled Cedar Point for a while until the buildings kept catching on fire and they gave up. A few years ago I got to go up there with my family and it was cool and creepy to see all of the stuff there, the cemetery and little visitor's center that had a lot of artifacts and letters and documents and such. Most of the island is private property now though and people live on it.

CONCLUSION: Ohio is cool and history owns and there is history everywhere and you should check out your city or town or area; there is a lot to learn and it is rad.

3 comments:

  1. thank you for teaching me about ohio now i know that it is a cool and fascinating and interesting place and not dull and boring like tv portrays it

    Love you, Valerie<3

    ReplyDelete
  2. no but really there is very little to actually do here and you have to go out of town to buy anything not sold at walmart

    but yeah town history or w.e. yeah

    ReplyDelete
  3. There's also great library system!! And caves! But you have to drive places to get to the caves.

    ReplyDelete

say a thing say something say it say it right now