Since Labor Day weekend is ahead, thought I'd get ahead before I was asked to:
Faith Works 9-8-23
Jeff Gill
Just imagining losses in the light of gains
___
Living in Licking County in 2023, I find myself thinking about ministry in 1923.
The interurbans, electric railways, had seen their national premiere between Newark and Granville in 1890; both the tracks and the transportation along them grew, spurring an industry to build interurban and subway and elevated railway cars.
Preachers through this period had seen the demise of once common hitching posts and watering troughs along the street in front of their churches. In fact, architecture up to this point had always made a point of putting a high set of stairs between the street level and the main entry, to keep the door above the dust of passing carriages and buggies, much of that dust pulverized from what the horses left behind.
Older members might find that climb a barrier to church attendance, but if you kept the grit and grime and flies out of the auditorium by doing so, since you had to keep the doors propped open in the warmer months, it was a tradeoff.
And you might even remember the livery stable operators and hansom cab drivers in a state of shock as first interurbans and then Mr. Ford's horseless carriages steadily eroded their businesses, let alone the craftsman in leather and fine woods who made buggy whips. Some moved further out in the country and found work where they could still be close to the horses they understood, others sold their stock at a loss and went to work in the growing factories and foundries.
Those pastoral conversations were still vivid in your memory, even as now you were hearing from parishioners that the Jewett Car Company was laying off even more workers. Automobiles were taking away passengers and fares, so interurbans were reducing replacement rates and it was said some municipal rail systems were closing down. Strangely, north in Sandusky the interurban company was closing down much of its business and putting their investments and energy into the former weekend sideline of an amusement park they had at Cedar Point.
The local interurban was still riding high, especially in the summers when so many rode all the way to Buckeye Lake Park, but after Labor Day, the passenger cars certainly looked emptier. At least there was talk about some plants might make automotive parts for the Detroit behemoths. And Heisey Glass kept adding capacity, so they'd be in business for another century for sure.
If people still came to church by automobile rather than by buggy or interurban trolley, that was fine. There was talk among ministers, though, about the silent films that were becoming so popular. Downtown Newark had theaters on all sides of the courthouse square, and there was talk of those "movie palaces" coming to town, giant spaces with pipe organs finer than any church had, with trumpets and bells and sound effects to accent the story. If they figured out how to put the sound of actors talking with the film, how would a Sunday service compete?
And even in the home, it seemed like every other house, at least of the better off church members, had a radio set; people after church talked to each other about music and news they were hearing from Pittsburgh and Akron, and that President Harding had a radio in the White House.
With private automobiles for almost every home, radios becoming common, and movie houses getting more popular, businesses like Scheidler and Jewett cutting back, a preacher could be forgiven for wondering: how would this influence church members? Would people become even more mobile, and disconnected from family and each other, distracted more easily by increasingly intensely interesting entertainment options? Or did that even occur to them, as our modern age was being born?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's pretty sure the worries of clergy in 1923 weren't what we'd think, looking back. Tell him what you wonder looking ahead at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Sunday, August 27, 2023
Faith Works 9-1-23
Faith Works 9-1-23
Jeff Gill
A history worth remembering, faith that redeems
___
2022 will long be a significant date in Ohio and Licking County history.
The truly historic decision to put what now seems to be starting out as a $30 billion dollar investment in our backyard will put Intel in a narrative that goes back through names like Heisey, Scheidler, Rugg, Pharis, and Wehrle.
[ https://www.dispatch.com/story/business/manufacturing/2023/08/23/intel-is-seeking-federal-chips-act-money-for-new-albany-ohio-project/70594547007/ ]
Some years ago I had the opportunity to share a platform with other local historians talking about the industrial development of Licking County. In a ballroom that was filled to capacity (hat tip Freedom Years and Park National Bank!) we talked through a fascinating narrative of how sand and natural gas led to glassworks and lighting, and why the B&O Railroad and the Pennsylvania Station set the table for machine shops and foundries to start and grow here.
We also tried to point out the multiple waves of industrial and technological development that rose and fell across this narrative; I tossed in light heartedly, but with a sincere intention, the fact that our first known industry was flint based technology, distributed across the continent, spurring the local Hopewell economy two thousand years ago. But, I noted, we don't engage in large scale flint business anymore.
Nor do we make cast iron stoves, or rope, or beer bottles. Fiberglass comes along, and that has had a day not yet done; aluminum replaced the dominance of cast iron, with a smaller workforce to make more tonnage. Things change.
This was November 2019. COVID wasn't even a rumor yet, and Intel? That's an overseas manufacturer, right? Turns out they had US fabs, and now half of Licking County knows where they are and it seems half of those have been to Arizona or New Mexico or Oregon for a visit.
Dayton isn't going to make the world's cash registers again, and Akron has blimps but no longer a near monopoly on tire manufacturing. They're looking for their next step forward. In Licking County, we're already marching on ahead.
None of what's coming is going to erase our past history. We have some remarkable episodes in American history, some epic and marvelous, others tragic and painful, that happened here in our previous eras of boom and bust. We're entering a boom time; many of us have only known a busted era as adults, watching plants close and factory ship south, with our elders comparing any development today to better days in the past. A boom time is good times, right?
Pastorally speaking, I find it interesting that the crowd on the evening in 2019 did not respond well to our attempts to talk about positive developments in our local economy that were taking place, with the Port Authority in Heath and The Limited and other distribution centers to our west. There was some strong and immediate grumbling at any talk of better days ahead. The focus was on what we'd lost. And I understood, even if I regretted that attitude in the room.
In a parallel way, I find myself sifting some of the earlier history for what we lost when the now vanished manufacturers and businesses got started. What we as a community recall as boom times came with costs to persons and ways of life that were displaced by steam engines and assembly lines. Growth wasn't, and won't be, all good.
The challenge for faith communities: how do we celebrate new opportunities, while ministering to the losses that will come with change?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's imagining a pastor talking to a livery stable owner as the interurbans went in. Tell him what your community is doing with change at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
A history worth remembering, faith that redeems
___
2022 will long be a significant date in Ohio and Licking County history.
The truly historic decision to put what now seems to be starting out as a $30 billion dollar investment in our backyard will put Intel in a narrative that goes back through names like Heisey, Scheidler, Rugg, Pharis, and Wehrle.
[ https://www.dispatch.com/story/business/manufacturing/2023/08/23/intel-is-seeking-federal-chips-act-money-for-new-albany-ohio-project/70594547007/ ]
Some years ago I had the opportunity to share a platform with other local historians talking about the industrial development of Licking County. In a ballroom that was filled to capacity (hat tip Freedom Years and Park National Bank!) we talked through a fascinating narrative of how sand and natural gas led to glassworks and lighting, and why the B&O Railroad and the Pennsylvania Station set the table for machine shops and foundries to start and grow here.
We also tried to point out the multiple waves of industrial and technological development that rose and fell across this narrative; I tossed in light heartedly, but with a sincere intention, the fact that our first known industry was flint based technology, distributed across the continent, spurring the local Hopewell economy two thousand years ago. But, I noted, we don't engage in large scale flint business anymore.
Nor do we make cast iron stoves, or rope, or beer bottles. Fiberglass comes along, and that has had a day not yet done; aluminum replaced the dominance of cast iron, with a smaller workforce to make more tonnage. Things change.
This was November 2019. COVID wasn't even a rumor yet, and Intel? That's an overseas manufacturer, right? Turns out they had US fabs, and now half of Licking County knows where they are and it seems half of those have been to Arizona or New Mexico or Oregon for a visit.
Dayton isn't going to make the world's cash registers again, and Akron has blimps but no longer a near monopoly on tire manufacturing. They're looking for their next step forward. In Licking County, we're already marching on ahead.
None of what's coming is going to erase our past history. We have some remarkable episodes in American history, some epic and marvelous, others tragic and painful, that happened here in our previous eras of boom and bust. We're entering a boom time; many of us have only known a busted era as adults, watching plants close and factory ship south, with our elders comparing any development today to better days in the past. A boom time is good times, right?
Pastorally speaking, I find it interesting that the crowd on the evening in 2019 did not respond well to our attempts to talk about positive developments in our local economy that were taking place, with the Port Authority in Heath and The Limited and other distribution centers to our west. There was some strong and immediate grumbling at any talk of better days ahead. The focus was on what we'd lost. And I understood, even if I regretted that attitude in the room.
In a parallel way, I find myself sifting some of the earlier history for what we lost when the now vanished manufacturers and businesses got started. What we as a community recall as boom times came with costs to persons and ways of life that were displaced by steam engines and assembly lines. Growth wasn't, and won't be, all good.
The challenge for faith communities: how do we celebrate new opportunities, while ministering to the losses that will come with change?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's imagining a pastor talking to a livery stable owner as the interurbans went in. Tell him what your community is doing with change at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Notes from my Knapsack 8-31-23
Notes from my Knapsack 8-31-23
Jeff Gill
Service and civic opportunities
___
When it comes to serving your country, that phrase most quickly brings to mind enlistment in the armed forces. We salute all veterans and the family members who supported them in that kind of service to our nation, but I'm thinking of some different sorts of opportunity more broadly available to citizens wanting to show their patriotism.
The most basic form of public service is voting. Not everyone can vote, children and foreign nationals for starters. The big issue is that not everyone who can does: only about 60 to 70% of those who could vote do so, and that's in high turnout elections.
Failure to register in the first place keeps that number down, some register but don't vote or move and their voter registration lapses, and others just don't show up, which is why political parties are interested in what they call GOTV or "getting out the vote." If in more mundane election cycles you have about half of the eligible population going to the polls, smaller and smaller fractions of the whole can change the outcome.
Along with voting, paying taxes is something many of us do, but not all: in 2022 it was about 60% of all households that paid income tax. Of the 40% that didn't, they are still in many cases paying FICA (Social Security and Medicare, "Federal Insurance Contributions Act" at 6.2% & 1.45% of gross wages, respectively), and we all end up paying sales taxes or gas tax somewhere somehow. I find disputed sources on how many pay property tax, but I think the average renter would share my suspicion that much property tax cost is passed along to them. In one form or another, we all pay taxes, probably more than how many of us vote.
So as citizens, we can and should vote, we kind of have to pay taxes, and there's military service. But when it comes to citizenship, I think on the list of basics there's one we don't talk about enough.
There is jury duty. I would argue on behalf of our judicial system that in line with voting and taxpaying and honoring the flag, responding to a call for serving on a jury is a basic element of citizenship. Without jurors, we can't deliver on those constitutional promises of a trial by a jury of your peers, and the harder it is to find jurors, the slower the course of justice can be, and a speedy trial is one of those basics we want to honor as well.
I'm writing this because I continue to be amazed at the good, upstanding people who consider a request for jury duty nothing but a burden and inconvenience. And I know full well: being on a jury can be burdensome, but it's not a 55 pound pack or a forward deployment. Jury duty is inconvenient, but it's not a tour in a combat zone. Serving as a juror, though, is an element of our national polity as much as registering to vote, paying taxes, or having a certain number of us willing to serve in uniform.
I started writing this thinking about the further opportunity to serve as an elected or appointed official in the small quiet corners of our civc life, but hearing my umpteenth protest that it's ridiculous to ask a busy person to do jury duty caused me to change course. I hope putting it in this context changes yours.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's served on multiple juries. Tell him about what you learned responding to a jury summons at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Jeff Gill
Service and civic opportunities
___
When it comes to serving your country, that phrase most quickly brings to mind enlistment in the armed forces. We salute all veterans and the family members who supported them in that kind of service to our nation, but I'm thinking of some different sorts of opportunity more broadly available to citizens wanting to show their patriotism.
The most basic form of public service is voting. Not everyone can vote, children and foreign nationals for starters. The big issue is that not everyone who can does: only about 60 to 70% of those who could vote do so, and that's in high turnout elections.
Failure to register in the first place keeps that number down, some register but don't vote or move and their voter registration lapses, and others just don't show up, which is why political parties are interested in what they call GOTV or "getting out the vote." If in more mundane election cycles you have about half of the eligible population going to the polls, smaller and smaller fractions of the whole can change the outcome.
Along with voting, paying taxes is something many of us do, but not all: in 2022 it was about 60% of all households that paid income tax. Of the 40% that didn't, they are still in many cases paying FICA (Social Security and Medicare, "Federal Insurance Contributions Act" at 6.2% & 1.45% of gross wages, respectively), and we all end up paying sales taxes or gas tax somewhere somehow. I find disputed sources on how many pay property tax, but I think the average renter would share my suspicion that much property tax cost is passed along to them. In one form or another, we all pay taxes, probably more than how many of us vote.
So as citizens, we can and should vote, we kind of have to pay taxes, and there's military service. But when it comes to citizenship, I think on the list of basics there's one we don't talk about enough.
There is jury duty. I would argue on behalf of our judicial system that in line with voting and taxpaying and honoring the flag, responding to a call for serving on a jury is a basic element of citizenship. Without jurors, we can't deliver on those constitutional promises of a trial by a jury of your peers, and the harder it is to find jurors, the slower the course of justice can be, and a speedy trial is one of those basics we want to honor as well.
I'm writing this because I continue to be amazed at the good, upstanding people who consider a request for jury duty nothing but a burden and inconvenience. And I know full well: being on a jury can be burdensome, but it's not a 55 pound pack or a forward deployment. Jury duty is inconvenient, but it's not a tour in a combat zone. Serving as a juror, though, is an element of our national polity as much as registering to vote, paying taxes, or having a certain number of us willing to serve in uniform.
I started writing this thinking about the further opportunity to serve as an elected or appointed official in the small quiet corners of our civc life, but hearing my umpteenth protest that it's ridiculous to ask a busy person to do jury duty caused me to change course. I hope putting it in this context changes yours.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's served on multiple juries. Tell him about what you learned responding to a jury summons at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
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