ROCKET PROPELLED CARDINAL—

This aerobatic version of Ohio’s state bird did an explosive departure from the platform feeder when the Blue Jay arrived for lunch Saturday. Heavy snow had begun falling about an hour earlier during the backyard feeder, Christmas Bird Count for our Gorman Nature Center.

I recorded 15 species of birds at my feeders during the day-long count. The greatest quantity of a single species at one time was the Junco with 33. Second place went to Cardinals with 16 while 9 Goldfinches took third.

I also recorded Mourning Doves, Red Breasted and White Breasted Nuthatches, Downy, Hairy and Red Bellied Woodpeckers, Song, White Throated and Tree Sparrows, Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, Blue Jays and two Mallard ducks.

The ducks, naturally, are not regarded as feeder birds but I have a hopper feeder near the edge of the pond and the ducks like to come and tidy up the droppings of seed from the birds with messy table manners.

We are on the border of the ranges of the Black Capped and Carolina Chickadees and they are very difficult to tell apart. Local birding experts believe the Chickadees we see are the Black Capped variety

The snowfall diminished and temperatures warmed overnight to 36 degrees at dawn Sunday and left us with about an inch of slush. Then, the low pressure moved east of us which brought us north winds, plummeting temperatures and about two more inches of snow.

It’s December in Ohio--and the birds rarely seem to mind.

CHRISTMAS SCENES—


Bellville village children frolic around the bandstand on the village green at the conclusion of the annual burning of the Yule Log. The opening of the holiday season also was celebrated by caroling, the lighting of the town’s Christmas tree and a visit by St. Nick while Wassail was warmed in a large cast iron kettle over the fire.


A new holiday decoration was installed on the village green south of Church St., this year. It will highlight the town skating rink usually set-up on the lawn in front of the town hall when winter’s grip of frigid temperatures finally arrives.


This tastefully decorated home is in a new development on the south edge of the village. Holiday lights from the very modest to absolutely dazzling are visible throughout our Norman Rockwellesque town in the Clear Fork Valley.


Feeling frazzled with the bustle of the season? I try to avoid such silliness and did that this year by doing most of my Christmas shopping before Easter. * Sigh *
__________________________________________________
Next week we feature a photo spread on Santa’s recent visit to our area.

WEATHER NOTES--

The ice storm that recently pummeled the midwest has been very kind to Ohio. This modest overnight ice build-up is melting slowly in light rain with our temperature hovering at 33 degrees and forecast to warm through the day.

And, we have abundant water. This latest rain has pushed the pond to about 10 inches above its normal full level. I cannot measure the rain quantity. The rain gauge is put away for the winter.

COMMENTERRY—

No Enthusiasm for Organized Religion

After a childhood which included baptism and confirmation as a Lutheran in the Christian faith I slowly drifted away from the church.

Along with that choice, though, I remember keeping a careful eye on the potential consequences of such an heretic decision.

Will such a choice really condem me to an eternity of damnation? Would I face purgatory after death until I came to my senses?

Serious questions indeed. But, does it make sense, then, that believers of other faiths would automatically face such tribulations simply because they do not march to the doctrinal tunes of Christianity?

What about Hindus or Jews, or Yezidis for that matter? What about countless populations who lived and died before Christianity even arrived on this Earth? How could they be penalized for failing to believe what I was taught?

I have long noticed the organized religions tend to advocate a generally similar path through life; one of peace and hope and love and goodwill to fellow man or comforting words of similar effect.

I also have noticed a common thread of hypocrisy among those religions.

For example, while preaching “Peace” and “Love” at home, the Crusades were actually wars based on the prevalent Church of the time seeking to expand its area throughout what is now generally known as the Middle-East.

Christianity arrived in the US colonies because of religious persecution on the European continent. Simply being a "heretic" there was a capital offense through those early ages.

Muslims and Jews have been fighting over Palestine since Biblical times.

In a more contemporary setting, Protestants and Catholics have tended to kill each other in Northern Ireland.

Even more recently, how about the sordid affairs common in TV evangelism or the aberrant sexual behavior that appears to be prevalent in the Catholic priesthood?

Not to mention today’s radical Muslims and their jihad; a homicidal holy war against the rest of us human infidels.

Then, an odd thing happened to me recently. While doing the blog piece on the local Unitarian Universalist Church I began to feel a warm tinge of Christian curiosity.

But that door promptly slammed closed.

It appears they relish their freedom to practice the religious style of their choice under the First Ammendment of our Constitution, but, with no respect whatsoever for our Constitutional protections under the Second one.

Bricks and mortar churches? No thanks.

A walk in the woods with my dog while pondering the cosmos remains more than ample balm for my wayward spirituality.

MY BACKYARD CATHEDRAL--

Barbara Piatt (above), docent at Mansfield’s Oak Hill Cottage, played the Grand Orchestral pump organ at Oak Hill’s opening of the holiday season one recent Sunday.

OAK HILL COTTAGE—

“One of the most perfect Gothic houses in the US”

The cottage was built in 1847 by John R. Robinson, a local railroad tycoon. It has seven gables, five double chimneys and seven Italian marble fireplaces. Later that century it was acquired by Dr. Johannes A. Jones and remained in his family for 101 years.

Mansfield native and Pulitizer Prize winning author, Louis Bromfield, played at Oak Hill as a child. His memories of the home were the basis for his first published novel “The Green Bay Tree” in 1924.

The house was acquired by the Richland County Historical Society in 1965, is on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a Literary Landmark by Friends of the Libraries USA in 2000.

Anka Hall, a volunteer in the Oak Hill Cottage Guild has given tours there since it opened to the public in 1983. “The house is fully restored with the original furnishings, not simply collected pieces from the period,” she amplified.

Seldom does a house with all the furnishings and artifacts of one family’s life come down to the present intact. This one has!

In the library you will see Dr. Jones’ medical tools and a very early inhaling appliance. Over on the hearth of the room’s fireplace are musical instruments of the period favored by the Jones’ daughters.

Tour guides smile when they point out initials carved in some room’s window glass by Dr. Jones’ bride with her new diamond ring; a demonstration of the relative hardness of those elements that has survived through the past centuries.

Resplendent in its holiday attire, the cottage will be open Sundays, 2 to 5 p.m. through the end of December. Admission is $3.

______________________________________

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS—

Bangladesh

In the news recently after a typhoon hit the country, Bangladesh is located in South Asia surrounded on three sides by India except for a small stretch of border shared with Myanmar. The Bay of Bengal is on its south border.

These borders were established in the 1947 partition of India when the region became the eastern wing of the newly formed Pakistan. They declared their independence and became Bangladesh in 1971.

The Islamic country has been mired in political turmoil ever since with 14 different heads of government and at least four military coups.

The recent cyclone (known as a hurricane in the northern hemisphere) claimed a reported 3,167 lives with 1,724 people missing. Officials there feared the toll could go much higher.

Three similar storms have hit the country in the past 40 years. One in 1970 killed 300,000 people and another in 1991 left 140,000 dead. Advances in disaster preparedness are credited with the lower casualty figures from this storm.

It is among the most densely populated countries in the world and officials there predict 50 per cent of the country would flood with a mere three foot rise in sea level; a scenario sometimes predicted to result from global warming.

WEATHER NOTES—

A cookout today would require shoveling some 5” of fresh snow off the picnic table on the lower deck; our first significant snow of the season. Actually, a picnic is not a very good idea—for humans. The birds, however, are delighted; particularly after I freshened up the feeders a bit during a slight lee in the storm. Those are American Goldfinches and Dark-eyed Juncos flitting about the thistle feeder.

The goldfinches are with us the entire year and the males, commonly known as wild canaries when in their bright yellow breeding plumage, are now the same drab olive color as the females.

The juncos spend their breeding season as far north as Alaska and winter with us in large numbers.

PICKIN’ IN THE GARAGE—

Bellville’s version of the Grand Ole Opry happens the fourth Sunday of each month in Gary Mishey’s backyard garage. Sounds of clanking tools are replaced by the rhythms of banjos and guitars and mandolins strumming mostly country music as it should be played.

Dean of the Jam is Bill Wise, 81, framed behind his son Chip’s stringed instrument in the above photo. Both play lead guitars. Counting Logan below, Bill is now playing for the fifth generation in the Mishey family.

Gary Mishey, bass guitar

Logan Scott Mishey, 14 mos.

We’re in “G” de facto leader Jim Blackstone says and toes get to tappin’ and fingers get to pluckin’ and music rolls through the wrenches like a melodic tsunami.

June Wenger, rhythm guitar

Larry Hammond, rhythm guitar

An average of 10 to 12 musicians from a regular pool of 30 or so do this each month because music is in their collective blood. It wants to come alive as audiences wish it would. And, with this group it always does!

Jammin’ in the Garage…

Folsom Prison Blues, Your Cheatin’ Heart, Foggy Mountain Breakdown,
Ruby, The Tennessee Waltz…

…Grand Ole Opry Bellville Style.