Earthworks column series 10-24-21
Jeff Gill
Preservation history made in Newark
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On March 8, 1892 a special election was held in Licking County. The results of the balloting that day may be a part of not just local history, but a significant step forward in world history.
The citizens of this county voted overwhelmingly to purchase, with a property tax levy, about 135 acres on the far west side of Newark that included "the Octagon Fort" because "the people of Licking county are strongly of the opinion that these earthworks should be preserved, and that the State should own them" in the words of an Advocate reporter in 1891.
Why did they do this? True, in Ohio other monumental antiquities had already been preserved. In 1886, Frederic Ward Putnam had moved to purchase Serpent Mound for Harvard University with private donated monies. This no doubt helped to motivate a push, led by local antiquarians like Warren K. Moorehead, to have the State of Ohio buy Fort Ancient and make it the first state park in 1891.
There were also wider cultural influences that local residents would have been aware of, from preparations for the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago which involved Putnam and Moorehead at ancient sites all over Ohio, surveying mounds and excavating artifacts for display in that American world's fair meant to compete with the Old World's great 1889 Paris Exposition. Chicago's vast and first Ferris wheel was the reply to France's Eiffel Tower, but scientific exhibits were also intended to support national pride and competition between the hemispheres.
So our ancient wonders were highlighted in that decade, and the value, even if only as bragging rights, of a long-distant culture which could be compared to Egypt and Rome was on the upswing. America also had John Muir out west, in California, promoting all through the 1880s the grandeur and irreplaceable wonder of Yosemite, which was named a national park in 1890 after many articles about preserving American antiquities and marvels had been written by Muir and published in magazines and newspapers read even in far off Ohio.
The United States had declared Yellowstone a national park in 1872, and Yosemite in 1890, but there was no National Park Service to operate and manage such sites until 1916. The Army was invited to send units like the Buffalo Soldiers to train and maintain federal properties, and offer tours to visitors in season, and today's park ranger uniform is largely the Buffalo Soldier uniform of the 1870s.
This is why the local leaders in Newark who wanted to preserve the Octagon Earthworks had to think creatively in 1891. They looked at bringing the state lunatic asylum to the site, or a Masonic Home, but ended up settling on inviting the Ohio National Guard (ONG) to establish a permanent encampment at the end of Camp Alley off 30th St., the edge of the city, as the management option that would serve their needs. The Ohio legislature agreed, but with the requirement that the citizens vote to purchase the land involved before they would provide for managing the site through an ONG encampment.
Newark had preserved the Great Circle in 1854 by making it the county fairgrounds (a role it fulfilled through 1933, even hosting the Ohio State Fair that first year), and the success of that site as a public park for two generations helped build support. Then, in 1892 something happened in this county that had never been done before, possibly anywhere: local citizens voted to tax themselves to obtain and preserve antiquities of a culture not their own. Not by federal act or state decree, but through local initiative the Octagon Earthworks were purchased directly with local tax dollars.
It was an act of initiative and vision for which we can, in Licking County, be justly proud of 129 years later.
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Notes from my Knapsack 10-21-21
Notes from my Knapsack 10-21-21
Jeff Gill
Places and spaces and upkeep in general
___
Our Fayre Village has more actual voting to do than usual this go-round.
I'd say "this Election Day" which is coming up on November 2 as has long been the general election pattern, but how many will vote on "the day"? 50%? 40%? Are we heading south of 30%?
Regardless, whether in downtown Newark for early voting or by mail in absentee ballots or in one of our fine precinct locations on that November Tuesday, we will have to put on our thinking caps this time.
There's a vast sprawling pile of charter amendments in the village, which all seem like administrative matters to me: does democracy really benefit from us voting on this stuff? But it's interesting to be reminded — and perhaps this is the real point of the exercise — of how our village council and staff are hedged about with legal mandates, some federal or state imposed, but not a few created by our own action, and so modifiable by our own decisions.
So I'm glad to offer my view on what we'll do there.
Granville schools on the board member level ask us to make choices, and for both village council and township trustees, we have to figure out what to do, and not just click or mark or somehow tally our approval for a single candidate, a truly ungratifying use of the franchise. Voting should give us a visceral sense of "hah!" We all know we vote against almost as often as we're truly voting for. "Not you" is part of the democratic process as much as anointing or inaugurating or otherwise affirming someone as "the one."
It gets trickier in that we have to keep track of a couple in each office, among a larger number, not just "pick one." Again, we need to do our homework, check into details, ask around even. There are folks happy to help with that, including elsewhere in this paper, and the video forums that the League of Women Voters and the Granville Chamber of Commerce have hosted are still online to view and learn from.
Kudos to every last person who is running, even ones I know I won't be voting for. It's work to get on the ballot, to run even half-heartedly, and there's always the risk you might win and have to serve. There's little (okay, nothing) to gain and much to hazard for a candidate in these local offices, but their impact on local lives is not inconsiderable. Thank you for your attempts to serve, one and all.
Do I have preferences? Sure, but I don't do endorsements. That's not this column's role. I will hope for editorial indulgence if I just add I'm going to have to vote for the Licking Park District replacement levy, in part because I was at their first meeting back in the early 90s, have loved their work ever since, and they mow my 1,600 acre backyard for me, metaphorically speaking. Those parks and trails and walking paths soothe my soul, and have been good for my spirits in a tough time, and a yes vote is my thank you!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to walk to clear his head, which should happen more often than it does. Tell him how you recharge and renew at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Faith Works 10-16-21
Faith Works 10-16-21
Jeff Gill
Prayer is afoot in Licking County
___
One of my preferred prayer practices is walking prayer.
Twenty years ago I found a book titled "Long Wandering Prayer" by David Hansen, and he presented a practice I realized I'd been stumbling towards for some time. In seminary, I walked a neighborhood around the church I was serving then with a number of clergy who were concerned about an increasing murder rate. We paused to pray specifically at places where violence had occurred, praying of course for peace, and for healing, and for the community.
Since then, early in any ministry I've taken on, I've done that: simply to pray a circuit widely around the "parish" neighborhood. And when I'm burdened and needing some intensive prayer, I find myself more able to do so while in motion. It's not the only way I or anyone else should pray, but it's a tool for spiritual health I've found helpful.
The practice started for me in an urban setting, but obviously for peace and quiet as I'm looking to do some "long wandering prayer" getting out into nature is helpful.
This is one reason I support the replacement levy in the November election for the Licking County Parks. I have the pleasure of having been around for much of the first days and years of this county program, starting in the early 1990s, and as the properties have been set aside and rails-to-trails program woven into their work, the some 1,600 acres they manage include a marvelous set of walking paths and places to stroll.
Obviously, the bike path through Granville and Newark, which I live fairly nearby, is a great way to walk and pray through both urban and natural settings, and as someone who often walks around in cemeteries, there's the passage alongside Maple Grove Cemetery which I appreciate almost as much as the views of Raccoon Creek as a spiritual metaphor.
Coming into Newark, though, past fast food places and highways and then into the city itself, there's a revelatory sense of what needs our prayer, and how we fit in, both from nature into the city, and also peeling back the downtown experience layer by layer into the trees and along swamps and river bottoms and on into the countryside.
But Infirmary Mound Park, on Route 37 south of Granville, is perhaps the outdoor church I've prayed my way through most often (Taft Reserve a distant second, but that's my logistics more than how well it serves the need). More up and down, along pavement or back into the woods, and to the equestrian area to the east side where the ancient mound, now plowed down, is itself a bit of a ghost. I can see it, but it's not really quite there anymore. You could say I'm haunted by it.
And when I go there, a young man of the 1880s with pick and spade haunts me; I speak to him occasionally, knowing the later arc of his career as an archaeologist better than he would have in life at that time, a Denison student playing hooky. Warren Moorehead would come to regret some of his more random, unstructured digging later in life, and would come to defend both living Native Americans in print and through public service, as well as a chastened attitude towards disturbing the dead and plundering artifacts. Some events in his life would haunt him, and he'd change and grow. But there are evenings I go up there and find him still digging with youthful energy, and we talk, him now eighty years and more dead.
If talking to the dead isn't prayer, I'd be greatly surprised.
And yes, there are a few trees I talk to, with divine intercession. I don't hug trees as a rule, unless we're longstanding friends, but I'll talk to any of them, even a silver maple. Oaks are slow talkers, but deep thinkers.
What I most enjoy is communion with great blue herons. They have their spots along the creeks and rivers, and a number of our county and city parks give you access to where they might pass by and give you the time of day. I appreciate the bald eagles as much as anyone, but it's the heron perspective that gives me pause, even if they don't. Their steady stroke of wings in flight, their ability to disappear as a couple of sticks in the water at creekside, and a truly gimlet eye: herons, I believe, really know how to pray. If you want to pray better, get closer to those who already do.
Jeff Gill is a long wandering sort of pray-er; he's open to other disciplines more building related, but this is his default mode. Tell him how you best focus your spirit at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
Prayer is afoot in Licking County
___
One of my preferred prayer practices is walking prayer.
Twenty years ago I found a book titled "Long Wandering Prayer" by David Hansen, and he presented a practice I realized I'd been stumbling towards for some time. In seminary, I walked a neighborhood around the church I was serving then with a number of clergy who were concerned about an increasing murder rate. We paused to pray specifically at places where violence had occurred, praying of course for peace, and for healing, and for the community.
Since then, early in any ministry I've taken on, I've done that: simply to pray a circuit widely around the "parish" neighborhood. And when I'm burdened and needing some intensive prayer, I find myself more able to do so while in motion. It's not the only way I or anyone else should pray, but it's a tool for spiritual health I've found helpful.
The practice started for me in an urban setting, but obviously for peace and quiet as I'm looking to do some "long wandering prayer" getting out into nature is helpful.
This is one reason I support the replacement levy in the November election for the Licking County Parks. I have the pleasure of having been around for much of the first days and years of this county program, starting in the early 1990s, and as the properties have been set aside and rails-to-trails program woven into their work, the some 1,600 acres they manage include a marvelous set of walking paths and places to stroll.
Obviously, the bike path through Granville and Newark, which I live fairly nearby, is a great way to walk and pray through both urban and natural settings, and as someone who often walks around in cemeteries, there's the passage alongside Maple Grove Cemetery which I appreciate almost as much as the views of Raccoon Creek as a spiritual metaphor.
Coming into Newark, though, past fast food places and highways and then into the city itself, there's a revelatory sense of what needs our prayer, and how we fit in, both from nature into the city, and also peeling back the downtown experience layer by layer into the trees and along swamps and river bottoms and on into the countryside.
But Infirmary Mound Park, on Route 37 south of Granville, is perhaps the outdoor church I've prayed my way through most often (Taft Reserve a distant second, but that's my logistics more than how well it serves the need). More up and down, along pavement or back into the woods, and to the equestrian area to the east side where the ancient mound, now plowed down, is itself a bit of a ghost. I can see it, but it's not really quite there anymore. You could say I'm haunted by it.
And when I go there, a young man of the 1880s with pick and spade haunts me; I speak to him occasionally, knowing the later arc of his career as an archaeologist better than he would have in life at that time, a Denison student playing hooky. Warren Moorehead would come to regret some of his more random, unstructured digging later in life, and would come to defend both living Native Americans in print and through public service, as well as a chastened attitude towards disturbing the dead and plundering artifacts. Some events in his life would haunt him, and he'd change and grow. But there are evenings I go up there and find him still digging with youthful energy, and we talk, him now eighty years and more dead.
If talking to the dead isn't prayer, I'd be greatly surprised.
And yes, there are a few trees I talk to, with divine intercession. I don't hug trees as a rule, unless we're longstanding friends, but I'll talk to any of them, even a silver maple. Oaks are slow talkers, but deep thinkers.
What I most enjoy is communion with great blue herons. They have their spots along the creeks and rivers, and a number of our county and city parks give you access to where they might pass by and give you the time of day. I appreciate the bald eagles as much as anyone, but it's the heron perspective that gives me pause, even if they don't. Their steady stroke of wings in flight, their ability to disappear as a couple of sticks in the water at creekside, and a truly gimlet eye: herons, I believe, really know how to pray. If you want to pray better, get closer to those who already do.
Jeff Gill is a long wandering sort of pray-er; he's open to other disciplines more building related, but this is his default mode. Tell him how you best focus your spirit at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
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