The Search for Pebbles at the Muskingum River

Ah, the Muskingum River.  River of my dreams.  River of my Home. 

Maybe not the stuff of love songs or Hollywood movie franchises, but certainly the river of my memory.



This is the Bridge. The one my school bus (and later, my own car)
went over twice a day. I know this bridge like the back of my hand.



It is the Muskingum that lazes through my hometown.  The river that my school bus crossed every day on the way to Middle and High School.  The river that fed Zanesville's Art Pottery boom in the early 20th century.  The river that I return to.  Always.



This trip was no exception, and I had a mission.

My goal was to gather pebbles from the Muskingum to transform into Curious Pebbles, and then to plant them around town while I was there.  Ah!  The best intentions! Alas, between family-time and friend-time and memory-time, I really never got around to making the poor dears their little crocheted pebble jackets, and so...



Under the Bridge (Go ahead.  Begin singing the Red Hot Chili Peppers'
song.  I do.  Here.  I'll start..... "Sometimes I feeeeeel.... ")



...In the end, I even left the box of Muskingum River pebbles on the nightstand in my room at my parent's house, because my suitcase was already pushing the weight limits.  Dad says he'll ship them.  He will.

But as I was gathering pebbles, I (as usual) was practically FORCED by the hand of ______ (something?)into taking pictures of this lovely place.  So I did. 



(Stick with me, and in the end, I'll reward you with a photo of the lone remaining Muskingum River Curious Pebble... although in truth, I actually did succeed in making TWO, but gave one away as I'm wont to do)



Perfect place to start a family.  If you're a bird.  And you can make
your house out of mud.  And don't mind the sound of semi-trucks
barreling overhead at all hours. 

The search for the perfect pebble begins.  Huh.  Not so easy here.
These guys are kinda craggy.  And small.  Hmmmm....



... Oh!  Look over here!  It's LOVELY!

And... it is at this point that I forget about pebbles and start photographing like mad.  I live in the DESERT, you know (sorta.  Close enough).



I could build a cabin and just live r.i.g.h.t. here.  I'd be happy.
You know... If someone would bring me groceries and stuff.  And
maybe DVR "Weeds" for me.  That kind of thing.



Ummm... yeah.  We don't grow moss like that in California.  Nope.  Not at all.

There's something witchy and wonderful about these tree roots.
Something permanent and tenacious.  Something very cool.

And then there's THIS guy.... Like a giant yawn, he is. 
The strange thing was that it's still alive.  Still breathing.
And the hole/cavity runs about 4 feet deep.  Cabin?  Who needs
a cabin?  I could just live in this tree....

I adore the bark pattern on this maple.  Adore it.  Spotty!  La-La-LA!

Bug!



Would have been nice if the monarch I was photographing
on this blossom stuck around... but I suppose he had other
things to do, places to go, nectar to suck....




Blurry Bug!  But the antenna we so freaking cute, I had to
post it.  I think he was a'smilin' at me.  Hard to tell,
though.  With a bug. 



Muskingum River Curious Pebble.  Now residing on my mantlepiece.
NO, that's not my mantle.  That's a PIANO.  Piano's don't hang very
well above fireplaces.  A simple rule of decorating you'd do well to follow.

MY! I'm snarky this afternoon!

/Julianna

Lunch at the Old YWCA



I can't for the life of my figure out why we were the only
ones for lunch... Who WOULDN'T want to be here???



One of the perks of going home is seeing old friends.  And I really, really mean that.  I have some very close friends that are still living in my hometown, and while I wish I could see them more often, it certainly makes the few moments I can spend with them even more precious.  This was one of those days.



In college, I had a "twin".  People were forever mixing us up, especially the male Underclassmen.  Indeed.  I suppose it was the shared Mediterranean heritage and the long, dark hair.  Although she is Greek, and I'm Italian... But we were in the same club, and both in the music department.  So, I suppose it wasn't that difficult to confuse us.  I suppose.  And in any case, she is drop-dead gorgeous, so there are worse things.

My friend works downtown and we decided to meet  for lunch at the old Zanesville YWCA, which today is a lovely restaurant/meeting place called "Bryan Place".  The old YWCA gym was being set up for an event, and the upstairs rooms have been made into a furniture store.  And while that sounds like it wouldn't be a very nice thing, it's all very tastefully done, the furniture is shabby-chic, and most importantly, the spirit of the place remains. 

It was like stepping back in time.

It even smelled amazing, and I'm not just talking about lunch. 

A sweet old sign on a sweet old porch.

I hadn't given much of a thought as to what the interior would look like 30 years after the last time I'd visited... I hadn't been inside the building since it STOPPED being the YWCA, when I once took gymnastic classes there when I was really, really small.  At the time, I certainly didn't give much thought to the history or anything.  But, Time and Distance can do amazing things. 

I suppose NOT being a four-year old doing somersaults in gymnastics class also helps, perspective-wise.

So besides the lovely conversation with a lovely friend...

she has a big, shiny BADGE!  It was so impressive!

...in a dining room all to ourselves, glasses of iced tea and salads bigger than our stomachs, I ended up taking some photographs of days gone by. 

And here they are.

So inviting...



This table, too...





A view of one of the many, many churches in Downtown
Zanesville (this one is Central Presbyterian) as seen from
the front porch of the YWCA/Bryan Place.





And it also looked nice, framed by the arches on the Patio.



How many have hung their coats in this hallway?

 

How many have climbed these stairs?





The front doorway, looking out.



These doors stopped me cold.  The hardware.  The scuffed and
missing kick plates.  How many feet?  How many hands?



Hardware Love.



Peeling paint does not necessarily put me into handy-man mode.
The walls and this window frame were particularly nice.

  

The building's current name.

Stay tuned for the river and PEBBLES tomorrow!  

/Julianna





Zanesville in Black and White

Somewhere downtown.... in an alleyway between 5th and 6th, I think.

This is where I grew up.  It's a place that has BIG history - loads of it - a place that between 1810 & 1812 was the state capital of Ohio, and is located at the confluence (look it up, sweetie) of two beautiful rivers, the Licking and the Muskingum. 

It's the only place in the world* where you can be given the driving directions, "Go to the middle of the Bridge and TURN LEFT/RIGHT".  It's a joke Zanesvillian's like to make with non-Zanesvillians, because, Gee!  Doesn't it sound funny to turn in the middle of a bridge? 

Not when the bridge is shaped like a "Y".  The "Y" Bridge.  Only in Zanesville.   

I say that a LOT.  "Only in Zanesville".  It's a funny kinda place. 



Lock 10 of the Canal System.  A system once used to transport
goods along the rivers of the East, with boats pulled along
the canals by donkeys.

Seated in the Appalachians, Zanesville is home to both Rednecks and Millionaires.  Art Pottery and Longaberger Baskets**.  Country Music and awesome dive bars along the river (Terry's Tavern, I'm lookin' at YOU).  Sternwheeler Boats and Canals.  1800's Soap Barons and the Underground Railroad.  Fields of Corn and the occasional smell of Bell Farms' Pigs.  Wide open, starry night skies and Fireflies.  A dying downtown desperately trying to revitalize itself.  A stretch of road that I once heard has the most fast food restaurants per square mile (or per capita, I can't remember).  Millions of Lovely Trees and rolling hills.  A surprisingly wonderful Art Museum.  "The Pizza People Come Home For".  Tom's Ice Cream Bowl.  Donald's Donuts (the proprietor of which is a close friend of mine, I am SO lucky).

Home to... Me.

Sigh.

And when I'm out here, in Southern California, home feels VERY far away.  And, indeed it is.  2,337 miles, to be exact.  No direct flights from here to there, so never less than an 8 or 9 hour journey, no matter how you slice it (and, according to my most recent journey, the absolute worst-est plane trip EVAH in my recorded history, but that's another story altogether).

San Diego is lovely.  Don't get me wrong.  It's amazing to live here.  The climate alone beats all.  I can go into my closet in the morning and choose my outfit, then head off to the climate zone that I've dressed for.  Beach?  CHECK.  Mountains?  CHECK.  Desert? CHECK.  See?  No right to complain.

Except that..... well.... the architecture and newness of it all kinda gets to me.  Honestly, my current town was nothing but chicken farms until 30 years or so ago.  And not much more than that up until 20 years ago.  It's a light industrial/higher education mecca with a bunch of Southern California neighborhoods thrown into the mix.  History?  It has plenty.... but it isn't MY history.  It isn't MY story.  It isn't HOME-home.  And I've lived here for 16 years.

I have a postage-stamp of a yard and can practically touch the neighbor's houses from my upstairs window.  My parents have 15+ acres.  Even in the neighborhood I lived in as a child, the houses all had at least 3/4 of an acre.  I have something like 1-billionth of n acre, but don't quote me on that.

I "garden" in three half-wine casks on my patio.  That's all I have room for.  My father could feed half a city with his garden. 

But I digress.  What I love about Zanesville is the history and the people.  You will be said "hello" to more times than you can count and it's highly likely that you will have met them/seen them before, and you will meet/see them again.

The Zanesville Publishing Company...
Currently home to "The Times Recorder" Newpaper.

But what I REALLY love about Zanesville are the buildings. The feeling you get when you look at them - the age, the times, the craftsmanship, the history - it oozes.  It flows.  It seethes.  It vibrates.

Many of the buildings are in serious disrepair - the economy is hitting my hometown HARD these days (especially in the Putnam District, where the 19th century, truly amazing homes are.  Makes me want to CRY), but even before the downturn, things have always been a little patched up (or not). 

Abandoned (?) loading dock behind the old

Zanesville PublishingCompany

And me... well, I find beauty in that.  I see the cracks and fills and rust and rot as symbols of something else... like laugh lines on the face of an older friend... and I think it's beautiful.  I'm perfectly aware that some people would call this "blight", but look deeper.  It's practically singing.

When I took this picture, I was DYING to see inside those windows on
the 3rd and 4th floors. This morning, I found out on facebook that a
friend of a friend recently purchased this building and that it was the
old Montgomery Ward Building.  There are plans for a store on the
bottom floor and an apartment above.  I will DEFINITELY be checking
it out next time I'm home.

These images are from Downtown Zanesville, an area that was dying by the time I was 10- although I do have memories of shopping there before the mall moved in on the North-End of town.  When the mall opened, everyone forgot about things like the tiny little nut shop tucked in between two buildings on 4th street (or something like that), Kresge's drugstore and soda fountain disappeared, as did nearly all of the other shops and department stores.  Sigh.



Aerials in the Alleyway between 5th and 6th and
the old Conwell Candy Co. Building.



There are more pics on my flickr page if you are interested, and tomorrow, I'll have some lovely shots of the former YWCA/Bryan Place. 

There's also a story to come about a day with my Uncle and his farm in Morgan County, and PEBBLES down by the River.

And you thought I'd forgotten about the Pebbles, didn't you?

*Ok, Ok, I think there's another one in China now, or something.... but that wasn't so when I was little.  And Ok, Ok, OK, there was ONCE (apparently) one in Galena, Missouri, but it was built waaaay after Zanesville's Y Bridge, and is closed to traffic.  So THERE.  Pffffffbbbbbt.

**So, Longaberger is in Dresden, but I'm from the north end of town, which is pretty close to Dresden, so I'm claiming it.   Might as well.  It's a small town.

Obligatory shot of the Muskingum County
Courthouse in downtown Zanesville.

  /Julianna

Ohio.... So hot. So Muggy. So Lovely.

Last weekend in Ohio, it was reunion time again... and my mother, the amazing one, once again organized the whole shebang with aplomb and creativity and cooking and silly party games (she's like that). This year's Theme (oh, yes, there's ALWAYS a Theme).... Pinwheels. More specifically, pinwheels "Spinning Memories", to be exact.

See? My mom is adorable.

SUCH a good time was had by all, and as every single member of the family is a prolific photo-taker, we end up with literally thousands of photos from such events. These are from my camera.  Note that I say "my camera" and not "my photos", because it's highly likely that someone else picked up my camera and shot off a few pics if something fun was happening (which it usually was) and my camera was the closest one (which also happens).

So, I've made a few collages of the events so as not to bore you all to death. But some of the shots were so durn cute that I had to share.

Enjoy Ohio, everyone. I know I did, even while sweating through multiple changes of clothing each day (hot. muggy. humid. oh, MY).

Oh Yes.... Click any of the images for a better/bigger view. 

(clockwise-ish, from top left) Me and Mr. Man mugging for ourselves; My E and his love of Fireflies (which we have none of in California... boo.hiss); Daddy and the divine Miss M; My amazing Uncle (more on him next post, I hope) and but one of his EIGHT dogs, Laowai; My cousin KVL's youngest being adorable; My brother the grill-master; Three kids in a pool, a very common sight during this weekend; Me, laughing about who knows what and completely unaware of the camera, oh, geez; Aunt C with her butterfly friend.

"No pictures, please". Huh. Are we SURE she's my child?

Ah. That's more like it. She DOES love a photo shoot. Which is really awesome, because she's so much fun to photograph.

The Penny-Hunt. Really... is there anything more fun than many handfuls of pennies tossed into a pile of sawdust? I STILL love doing this. I just left out the pics of me. I was most certainly there. In the middle of it. Loving it. Oh, Joy!

My mother likes silly party games. In fact, it's one of the things I love most about her. She LOVES to have fun. And if this is her idea of fun, then we'll all do it. We love to please her. This time around, she was inspired by "Minute to Win It", and all cousins were tasked with bringing a different game MTWI game. Here we are playing "Elephant Walk" (knock down the bottles with the weight-filled sock tied to your head) and a game in which a pedometer is tied to your head, and you must bob it up and down 125 times in one minute (MUCH harder than it sounds, and I'm pretty sure we all had whiplash afterward). And of course, the star of the show... my dear, dear mother. She's lovely, isn't she?

And now, it's PICTURE TIME!

The small cousins, Before (Hee Hee!) and After....

(Above) The Entire Clan.... wow.

(Below) Cousins. I loves youse guys. And I miss you crazy.

You might note that we all look alike.  The genes in this crazy Italian family are so strong that even those who MARRIED INTO the madness start to look like us as well.  Save for my husband (who is just simply too blond to ever really meld with the rest of us, sorry darling), it's really hard to tell who has our blood and who doesn't.  I think that's hilarious.  My Mother and Aunt B (mom's sister-in-law) look and act so much alike, it's kinda like they're twins.  But not.  It's hilarious, I tells ya'.  Oh, and Mom and Aunt B are sitting right next to each other in the middle of the top picture... one in orange-y pink and the other in white.  Not related.  But exactly the same. HA!!!

Pinwheels and More Pinwheels line the driveway.

Me, poking my head out of my father's new barn.

More Ohio Fun tomorrow. Promise.

/Julianna

Ohio Bound...

(Written last night on an airplane... But not posted until, well... Now....)

Today begins a week of vacation/family reunion in Ohio... A trip that requires 8 hours in the air (ok, some of that is a layover), and I am currently hurtling above the earth at an alarming speed somewhere between Nashville and Columbus.

(Which makes it sound as if I have a fear of flying, but I don't... I just like the idea of hurtling through the air at an alarming speed.)

But, what really prompted me to blog from 30,000 feet is this story.

On the first leg of this journey - the almost 4 hour flight- I pulled out my thread and crochet hook, thinking that I might as well make some pebble sweaters. Although, I was not so silly as to bring a pile of pebbles with me, mind you. Seemed a little bit much, although the thought DID occur to me.

So... I'm working on a pebble sweater, and Flight Attendant Julie stopped by with a, "Ooh! That's pretty! What are you making? A doily?"

I'm sure I blushed bright red, because it sure felt like it, as I was trying to figure out just how to phrase my reply so that I didn't sound like Miss Havisham or someone equally certifiable. I think I did say something like, "Well... I... ummm... I make little sweaters for pebbles, then I leave them on the beach for people to find..."

At which point she called over Andrew, Flight Attendant #2, and thus I was compelled to launch into a full-blown explanation.

Julie is looking at me, smiling, half amused, half unsure if what I'm saying is true, so I fish into my bag and pull out one of business cards (no, TWO cards, because by this point, Andrew wants one, too). She is properly impressed.

Andrew (who seems also to be duly impressed) says, "That's so Random!" in a very nice and lovely way, and, well, it IS, isn't it?

Julie hints that, Gee! She sure would like to find a pebble like that! To which I sadly note that I didn't bring any pebbles with me... that I'm just making the crochet bits... and she giggles and tosses a bag of peanuts onto my tray and jokingly suggests I try making a sweater for that tiny bag of peanuts.

It was a little too floppy... Not impossible, of course, but not the best of subjects.

But it DID give me an idea.

I glanced at my water cup... And, YES! The crochet bit that I was working on JUST FIT the rim of the "glass"...

So I summon Andrew when her back was turned and asked him to bring me a clean cup, and told him that I was going to crochet a cover for it. I'm not sure he believed me. He doesn't know me like you guys do.

But I'm glad it was such a long flight, because I was able to finish the weirdest thing I've crocheted to date.

And Julie couldn't believe that I'd done it. I do believe she said she loved it, in fact. And she was ever so sweet about it.





Kind of sad to put that much work into a plastic airlines cup.

Or not.

Not if it made someone happy.