Mín Englisc Blog

Today was quite interesting: Dad and I went driving to the northwest to see several historic sites. While a few buildings in Wapakoneta were nice, there were two more significant spots: the site of Fort Amanda and the Deep Cut on the Miami and Erie Canal. Fort Amanda was established during the War of 1812; although it was short-lived and is long gone, a memorial was erected on the site in the twentieth century, and a cemetery is likewise present. We were quite pleased to discover a three-part black granite monument: in 2006, a local Boy Scout fulfilled his Eagle Scout project by researching the names of all the soldiers who served at the fort and arranging to have placed the monument with all their names.
After leaving Fort Amanda, we continued on to the Deep Cut. This truly was an impressive site: when the canal was dug in the early nineteenth century, the engineers decided against building locks for a clay ridge one mile wide, so they simply dug through it. Imagine digging through a mile of clay, sometimes to a depth of more than fifty feet, and using only hand tools and black powder. It's amazing what could be done with the technology of the day! The canal is rather well preserved, and a path leads from the parking lot and memorial down to the canal bank.
Watersides were the most interesting part of the day's trip. Fort Amanda was built by the edge of the Auglaize River for a significant reason: it was the location of a military boat-building operation. A path still leads to the water's edge, a solemn and quiet riverside where nothing happens now: imagine what events occurred there in the past. Likewise, the edge of the canal is deserted except for the occasional historic tourist like me: how things have changed from the days when the Miami and Erie Canal was the leading transportation artery of the state!

Coach RichRod, we in Ohio love you :-)

Not much has happened during the past week — thus no posting. Dad and I visited Grandmother for a period of time on Monday; she was relatively little changed from how I'd last seen her. While we were down in the Cincinnati area, we had a little extra time, so we paused to take a quick detour into the village of Glendale, whose downtown is a National Historic Landmark district.
As I prepare for bed, an interesting thought strikes me. The first part of Psalm 119 (Aleph) has been running through my head for quite a while, and as the second stanza of the Book of Psalms for Singing translation came to me. "O that my ways were firmly fixed/To keep the statutes Thou hast made" — while we may truthfully say so many other things in the psalm, about loving God's law and following it faithfully, like the psalmist we can only say these things in generalities, because we're not perfect. This verse points to that quite well: if we were the perfect individuals toward which a literal understanding of much of the rest of the psalm would tend to indicate, we'd have no need of making such a wish, because we would already be as firmly fixed as we need to be.

Today's trip went well. The funeral was conducted in a very respectful, very Christ-centered, and very understandable manner. At the graveside, his stepson spoke: he had led a wild life, but he was saved through Mr George's words in rather recent years. It was good to speak with Mr George's sister, who naturally grew up in the RPCNA as well: when we explained who we were and why we were there, she clearly was somewhat encouraged. She and her daughter told us how to find the Jonathan's Creek church building — just down the road from the cemetery, and although it's now a house, it wasn't hard to see that it was once a church.
Before and after the funeral, we visited places I'd never been before. The simplest route to White Cottage took us through Perry County, one of the ten Ohio counties (out of eighty-eight total) that I'd never previously visited, and I'd never before seen anything of Muskingum County (where White Cottage is) other than I-70 and the county seat of Zanesville. After the funeral, we drove into Zanesville, where I took some time walking around and seeing the downtown. It's quite a historic downtown: although an alarming number of historical buildings have been pulled down and the ground converted into parking lots in recent years, there is still a fine collection of historic architecture. It shouldn't be a surprise: after all, Zanesville was the capital of Ohio at one time.

Planning to be gone for much of tomorrow at a funeral for a member of Belle Center RPC. This man, Richard George, was the last remaining member of the Jonathan's Creek RP in White Cottage, Ohio; when this congregation closed in 1963, it was the last remaining congregation of what was Ohio Presbytery of old, and Belle Center became the last Ohio congregation of what is now Great Lakes-Gulf Presbytery. While his membership was transferred up here, he was rarely (if ever) up here for worship; after all, White Cottage is at least two hours' drive away, so it's obvious that he transferred his membership for the sake of remaining officially an RP member. I never had the chance to meet him, although Dad was able to visit him at least once.

Back on Saturday, but hadn't gotten around to posting until now :-( My trip went well, and I had quite a useful time at IU. Now comes the time for applications...we'll see what it's like when decision-making time comes.

About to leave for a few days — I'm to be visiting the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University and seeing friends in the Lafayette area.

Today was a milestone for me: this morning I took the last of my Dilantin pills. Unless a disaster happens, I will never again take this kind of medicine. I was put on it in the ambulance on the way to the hospital on the morning of my first seizures, and except for the occasional time that I forgot it, I have taken this medicine every day since then — 3½ years. God willing, I'm done :-)