It was one of those rainy days, and I poked my head out the back door to see how much water had blown onto the porch. There he stood, folks. Smoky was back! It had been more than a month, and I was certain during that time he had passed away.
When I last saw him, his jaw was almost frozen shut and he dragged his right rear leg. It was impossible for him to eat canned food, and when I gave him a saucer of milk, he took only three swallows before he laid down. I called Doctor Spindler's office and talked to one of the office workers, explaining his condition. I felt his time on earth was pretty limited, and I was about to take him to the humane society. When I returned from the phone, old Smoky was gone.
Well, folks, four or five weeks later, Smoky appeared on the back porch with a look of "I'm home, Mom." He is now able to eat anything and sleeps under my back porch.
He naps on the porch floor, unless the sun is too hot, and then he retires under the porch. My big, white cat Jerry has quit hissing at him through the door, so maybe he has been accepted. The problem is he is full of fur lumps and really needs a bath, but have you ever seen a cat that likes water? Well, it looks like, Dr. Spindler, we may be headed your way, if I can get old Smoky into a carrier. Or perhaps, it's the ghost of Smoky!
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The mid-Ohio Players put on a musical comedy, "G.I. Jukebox," June 11-19 that provided standing ovations and cheers and whistles. The leading roles were performed by Su Voycik Meredith, Sue Murdock, Michael Bigger and Gary Prater, and accompanying music was provided by pianists Peter Sour, assistant musical director, and Jan Bigger, who has been involved in, among other things, several musicals with MOVP. The sound of those two pianos filled that theater like an orchestra.
It seemed everyone involved with the production did an outstanding job. Jena Lane Blair was director, Meaghan Hahn musical director, Bonnie Keerps Rake, choreographer, and Sandia Sommer, production assistant.
Su Meredith always brings down the house with her spectacular voice, and Sue Murdock, who is new to me, rates right up there at the top. I was surprised at Michael Bigger's voice, but I shouldn't have been, knowing the background of his musical family, and Gary Prater, also new to me, hit those high notes like he owned them.
The MOVP has put on some great shows in the past, but if you missed this production, you missed the best of them all.
Good going to some hard working cast members and all those who bent their backs to make this an outstanding production. And to Dr. Roger Anderson and Glenwood who sponsored the production, smart choice.
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Have any of you noticed how many laws are being passed these days? Laws that are really limiting our way of life? It's getting so there are rules restricting almost everything we do. It makes lawyers happy, but I don't think our Founding Fathers meant we would have restrictions on everything we do. Some of these are ridiculous and unnecessary. Even schools are the brunt of laws pushed in by the federal government - laws we definitely don't need. When the government decided what the school menu should be I couldn't believe it. There will be a lot of food tossed into the garbage because kids won't eat what is being forced on them - they'll bring their own lunches. In their lunch bags will be a lot of what the schools are removing from the menu, and the teachers certainly cannot refuse to let those who bring their lunches eat what is in their bags. I'll be there won't be any squash.
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The Campus Martius stockade had outside walls measuring 144 feet on each side. "Two-story cabins 18 feet wide and of different lengths filled in the spaces between the blockhouses. These rows of adjoining houses were called 'curtains' by the pioneers. Four blockhouses projected from the corners of this open square of homes.
They were 18 feet square on the ground and two stories high. The upper story extended 18 inches over the lower story to allow for loop-holes in the projecting floor through which bullets could be showered on Indian attackers. The blockhouses and part of the curtain were built by the Ohio Company. When the fortification was completed it contained 72 rooms."
As they were building the fortress, they wanted to give it an appropriate name. They thought of the fort as the start of a city on the banks of the Muskingum that would rival "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome."
The name chosen included both the military and classical implications. At the first meeting of the directors of the Ohio Company on the banks of the Muskingum River on July 2, 1788, it was "resolved, that the buildings at the blockhouses be called, Campus Martius." This is a Latin expression, which means "a field dedicated to Mars, the god of war." The term was commonly applied to a grassy plain in ancient Rome along the Tiber River, in the ninth district, originally belonging to the Tarquinii (Tarquin was the last king of Rome, and Tarquinia was a town in central Italy in ancient times), after whose expulsion it was consecrated to Mars. It became a place for military drills and elections. In this sense the phase Campus Martius was used by Cicero and other Latin writers with whom the cultured founders of Marietta were familiar.
Joan Pritchard is a longtime columnist for the Parkersburg News & Sentinel. Contact her at joprit@sbcglobal.net
