A Practical Scientist

I learned about George Washington Carver in grade school, but I never realized how helpful and practical he was.  He was trying to understand how he could use what was available to make whatever he needed.  For instance, instead of complaining that he didn’t have money for a rug, he learned to use available plants to make a rug and then taught others what he learned.  At first he wanted to be an artist but didn’t have much money so he learned to use minerals or plants to make pigments. Later he shared what he learned so others could save money on paint. 

An instructor at Tuskegee Institute, most of his work was on peanuts (he found over 300 uses) but also extensively studied soybeans, cotton, and sweet potatoes.  He found hundreds of uses for the entire plants including food, medicine, and even plastic.

He worked with farmers and their wives to train them in better ways to farm (such as the rotation of crops so that the ground wouldn’t be exhausted) and household education (such as recipes or handicrafts).  Tuskegee Institute sponsored annual conferences for farmer, sponsored a vehicle that trained farmers at their location, and wrote hundreds of bulletins.

 

The Tuskegee area is much more interesting than I expected. History, leadership, and science!

Red Tails

You may have seen the movie “Red Tails” or “The Tuskegee Airmen”.  In it you see actors like Cuba Gooding Jr. playing the first black fighter pilots.  This group took classes at Tuskegee.  Students built an airfield where the Tuskegee Airmen trained nearby.  This was the era of Jim Crow laws where blacks and whites couldn’t eat or learn together.  But they were able to train black pilots, navigators, mechanics, and all the other skills needed to support the first African-American Air Corp unit.  In World War II, the fighter pilots gained reputation for their escort skills and were never known to abandon bombers in their care.

The mechanics learned to repair the whole plane including engines and plane wings.  As the war progressed, women were also trained to be mechanics.

 

One thing I didn’t realize but makes sense is that pilots spent time learning military intelligence.  That meant they had to learn to identify 100’s of planes and ships from memory.  They spent hours in this little room reviewing maps, memorizing plane and boat shapes, and keeping up with military reports of the war.

 

 

 

Tuskegee Heritage

Booker T. Washington started a small school in Tuskegee Alabama to train black men and women to be teachers.  The school believed that books were important but that experience in practical skills were also needed.  Washington felt the school of Tuskegee should be as self-sufficient as possible while teaching his students independence.  So the students learned to make bricks, nails (shown in the picture), learned carpentry, sewing, and many other skills.  They practiced by actually building the school doing the construction, brickwork, making desks, and even making school uniforms.  The building shown was made by students and is now a museum.

Over the years, Booker T. Washington became well known and respected while the school grew into a major university.  He spent much of his time speaking around the country and in Europe but still returned to the school for half of his time.

 

I love the independence and persistence.  The museum mentioned that they sometimes didn’t have all the knowledge they needed but they kept trying.  For instance, it took four tries to make the right kiln to fire the bricks.  Persistence!

Tuskegee Alabama Area

First the frustrating and fun stuff…today we found two closed national park sites, one moved site, and our GPS took us on two ‘shortcuts’ including one where we were driving on a dirt road through the woods and hitting mud puddles!  Seemed like a lot of work, but we did enjoy the museums and learned a lot.  One of the closed places was the stately yet inviting home of Booker T. Washington.  At least we could see the outside. 

We stayed in a small state park nearby.  For my morning walk I got to climb around waterfalls.  The path was rough, but the falls were neat to see.

Stone Mountain Park

Besides the hike, Stone Mountain has many other things to see. There is an amusement park area. I’m not too sure what all they have but it includes things like riding a train or the ducks (a tour vehicle).  We skipped that.

There was a rock quarry area.  The mountain was extensively quarried from 1845 up until the 1970’s.  The exhibit explained all the different methods and technologies that were used to quarry and finish the rock over the years.  The granite is used all over the park for curbs, signs, and posts. 

 

They have a sign (in granite of course) of all the places the granite was used all over the world.  Besides being used at the Panama Canal, it was even used in the Post Office of Ada Ohio.  Can’t get more famous than that!  (I went to college in Ada.)

 

Stone Mountain is perhaps best known for the carving on one side. It’s a grouping of Confederate President Jefferson David, General Stonewall Jackson, and General Robert E. Lee.  The original sculptor was Gutzon Borglum.  After working for a year on the sculpture, major disagreements between him and the association funding the sculpture resulted in him being dismissed. He took all his sketches and models with him, at which point a warrant was issued for his arrest.  He fled Georgia and instead was asked to carve the more famous Mount Rushmore.  A second artist removed his work from the surface and later a third artist finished the work.  From the viewing area, the carving doesn’t look that big.  It’s actually larger than a football field.

 

 

Stone Mountain Hike

Our science lesson for the day: a monadnock is an isolated rock hill or small mountain that rises abruptly from a plain.  An exfoliation dome is a rock (like granite) that is submerged under the earth and under great stresses.  When the ground above wears away, it exposes the hard granite but also releases the stress.  This causes layers of the rock to expand and break off over time.  Stone Mountain is both of these things.
 

We visited a smaller exfoliation dome in Texas (http://tandtrv.blogspot.com/2012/01/enchanted-rock.html).  It was 425 high and a 0.6 mile hike.  It wasn’t a difficult hike but certainly wasn’t easy.  Stone Mountain is 786 feet high and the trail is 1.3 miles long.  Add in the 90 degree temperatures and I was sweating like a pig!  The trail was full of people, mostly in their 20’s or young couples with children so I felt like an old timer.  But we saw one older gentleman in a full business suit walking with his family!
 

Frequently there was graffiti on the path carved into the stone.  Some of the carvings were from 1800’s and up to 1970’s.  It’s been a popular place to visit.
 

Great view of the Atlanta area at the top and worth the hike!

 

Flashing Cindy

We like watching “Auction Kings” on Discovery Channel. If you haven’t seen it, it shows pieces being brought in to an auction house.  The piece is appraised by an expert and then you see it being sold at auction.  Simple format but we enjoy it.  The auction house is Gallery 63 in Atlanta.  So, I talked John into driving over to it to see what we could see.

 

It was great!  We arrived on the day before an auction. I wasn’t sure if it would be open but the parking lot was full with people everywhere. The front of the auction house looks like the TV show but the parking lot is small.  In the parking lot there were two camera crews set up already interviewing and filming people.  Inside there was another camera filming.  The place was full of people looking at items and taking pictures.
 

Paul (the boss of the place) was busy and we saw Jon (the picker).  The best part was seeing Cindy!   I didn't want to bug her but snapped a picture while she was working at a desk in the office.  I heard her jump after the flash went off so I hid around the corner.  A few minutes later, a few people from New York called her out of the office so they could meet her.  I jumped in and talked to her too.  She was friendly and funny. I asked John to take a picture; she looks at him and says “Did you flash me a little while ago?” John denied it and blamed me.  I’m all right with that.
 

Atlanta

We’re in Atlanta now.  The people are friendly.  I’m surprised at how healthy everyone is.  Lots of people were walking, jogging, or biking.  We heard young kids talking about cardio and strength training.  One boy, maybe 10, stopped hiking to do pushups!  The bad part is that they are crazy drivers.  Maybe because it’s busy traffic with a lot of lanes, but there were multiple James-Bond-wanna-be’s quickly weaving through lanes.
 

We did a few drive-bys.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is in Atlanta.  It was founded during World War II in the South since there were so many problems with diseases such as malaria in this area.  At that time it was called the Communicable Disease Center and has been renamed several times over the years. They employ ~15,000 people at several locations with over half of them with advanced degrees.

I figure this could be one of the most important places in the world depending on what virus strikes in the future.  Or maybe they’ve already saved our lives multiple times preventing virus outbreaks.  Anyhow, they have a visitor center but it’s closed on weekends.  It was interesting to see how big a complex it is and to see the guard house that’s protecting the CDC.

Atlanta has a large Hindu temple.  Construction started for it in 2006.  It has 13 domes and reportedly cost $19 million to build.  We couldn’t get in the gates.  It turns out there are 3 gates.  We stopped at the 2 closed gates but didn't see the 3rd gate that was open.  However, it was still cool and even restful to see. 

 

ONU Reunion

This was my mumble-mumbleth reunion at my college of Ohio Northern University.  The last reunion I went to I found only one person I knew.  This time I saw 4 people!  It was a busy and fun day.

The school hosted a Health Fair.  I had a cholesterol , glucose, body fat, and bone density check done quickly and for free.  Very nice. This was followed by a tour of the engineering building (I’m a mechanical engineer) by the current dean.  Given the fact that this dean is 4 or 5 deans past the one I had means it had been awhile.  There were lots of changes and lots of things that were the same.  The picture is of the bent, a symbol of the Tau Beta Pi honorary.  One of the things a new class has to do is shine this thing.  Luckily I had some sort of excuse to miss this when I joined!

 

The next thing was the parade.  A homecoming parade in a small town and college is fun.  There is the school band.  I happily played the trombone during my years.  Playing in the marching band was my favorite extracurricular activity.  The band now is immense, especially for a small college with a fairly small music department.  The parade also had a few local bands, a twirling school, and some pretty lame floats that the fraternities and sororities build at the last minute.  Maybe it’s kitschy, but it’s still fun to watch.

 

We had a class reunion picture after that.  Out of 500 or so students in my class, we had 7 people show up for the picture.  Kinda sad but at least we had that many.  This year I met up with a Gordon who was a friend in computer science, Linda who was  someone I went to high school and college with, along with Melanie and Mark (picture of me, Linda and Melanie at top), .It was a good day reminiscing and catching up with each other. 

 

 

Mounds AND a Cemetery

I’ve been to quite a few mounds and lots and lots of cemeteries, but never a mound in the center of a cemetery. Mound Cemetery is in Marietta Ohio.  The mound is called “Conus” and was constructed between 800 BCE and 700 CE.  The signs say that the mound is a burial mound for chieftains. 
 

Surrounding it is a cemetery with people from the revolutionary war on up to the present. Marietta was founded under the leadership of General Rufus Putnam in 1788.  Plus, he was Grand Pubah (or something like that) for the Masons!

This guy, Commodore Abraham Whipple, was “…the first on the seas to hurl defiance at proud Britian.  Gallantly leading the way to wrest from the mistress of the ocean her scepter, and there to wave the star spangled banner.”  This is a flowery way to say he sank the first British ship during the American Revolution and was the first to unfurl the Star Spangled Banner in London.  Though I wonder what that really means.  Did he lift the flag over our first embassy or sneak over to England and open up the flag in some pub?

A creepy or just funny story was when a dark  gray cat came up to us at the cemetery and jumped on a grave stone.  Not quite a black cat, but close.  Next, we found an open grave.  No signs of a body (luckily)!  Then, to top it off, as we were driving back to the house a fully black cat crossed our path!  I’m not sure how worried to be right now.

I was in Marietta to visit my friend Doreen.  Here she is hanging out with the cat that followed us everywhere.

Ice Cream and Tires

For a great marketing scheme, more factories should open up for tours.  This is especially true for small factories with food or drink.  The tea plantation we recently visited (http://tandtrv.blogspot.com/2012/09/growing-and-preparing-tea.html) attracted people to pay for a tour, tea, and related products.  This time I went to an ice cream factory in Utica Ohio.  There were lots of people seeing the factory or eating at the restaurant.

Velvet Ice Cream has a pretty good setup.  The plant makes 5 million gallons of ice cream a year.  You can watch the factory (just a few lines) package ice cream.  You can also see  equipment from a grain mill,  older ice cream equipment, and a small museum explaining the history of ice cream.  But then you can buy ice cream, lots of related stuff, and they have an restaurant that serves sandwiches.  Got to admit, I enjoyed the ice cream shake!

 

While driving my rental car back to the hotel, an alarm light turned on.  I am pretty good at ignoring alarms, but this one was an exclamation mark (!).  So, I pulled out the book to find out that it meant my tire pressure is low.  I’m planning on doing a lot of driving, so I pulled into the nearest gas station.  They had free air but no gauge at the compressor.  I looked around and soon a couple of guys in a pickup truck pulled in. I asked them if they had an air gauge (who better to ask than Ohio good-old-boys!).  No, but they knew the station had one so they ended up checking and filling my tires which were all very low.  Thanks, guys!

Relaxing Among Trees

When I was in sixth grade I had to do a leaf collection.  Even though it was fairly far from home, my parents drove me to Dawes Arboretum where I got my most unusual leaf (a gingko).  Today I took a walk through Dawes Arboretum.  Even though I couldn’t find the gingko tree, it was wonderful to see in the fall.

 

The 1,800 acre arboretum has lots of hiking trails with different themes.  There’s a holly section that was gorgeous right now.

 

There’s a large 2,040 foot long hedge writing saying “Dawes Arboretum”. I was disappointed to see that the tower built for viewing it was closed due to damage so this is a picture from an earlier trip.  Actually it's best seen from an airplane, but I didn't have one of those handy!

There’s even a cemetery.  Wahoo!

Bizarre Architecture

Several years ago I was driving on I-70 just east of Columbus.  There was some problem on I-70 so they sent us on a poorly marked detour in the back roads.  Besides being somewhat lost, it was early morning and foggy.  Suddenly out of the fog I saw this beside the road.

 

 

Very surreal!  Later I found it this building has been on several lists of weird and unique buildings.  This is the home office for the Longaberger basket company built in 1997.  One of the ‘cool’ things I learned about the World's Largest Basket is that they heat the handles to melt ice off them in the winter

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I love the details on this.  I wonder what it’s like to work here.  Driving up to this every day and then looking out your window to see people taking pictures.