National Park: William Howard Taft Home

On a whim the family decided to drive down to Cincinnati which is about 2 hours away. There was a snowstorm going on at the time, but we didn't care we were itching for something to do. Once we got to Cincy, we found a BOFA (yes, BOFA has no branches in Indiana, go figure) and made a bank deposit. After that initial stop (still can't believe BOFA doesn't have branches in Indiana) we went for some German grub at the second largest biergarten in the world (after Munich's), Hofbräuhaus.The menu for this fine establishment can be found here. I enjoyed the sampler platter and a couple of their tasty beers while tapping my toes to the Alpen/Polka music (what do you call that German Octoberfest music when it isn't October???). We also made a trip to the Cincy IKEA to pick up some things for the house. We need one of these nearby. 

Regarding the National Park Site, William Howard Taft's house is located in a downtown neighborhood not far from the Ohio River that separates Cincinnati from Kentucky. The house is modest in stature, of the dozen or so presidential houses I have been to, this one ranks towards the bottom in its splendor (Harry Truman's is the most modest thus far) but I have quite a few to go. 

It is safe to say that Taft, the 27th US President, was a large individual. Many folks will remember the story about him needing a new bathtub installed into the White House to support his girth. I did learn less trivial facts; he was that he first president to also subsequently serve as a Chief Supreme Court Justice which meant he served alongside justices that he himself appointed. It also meant that he was the only President to give the oath of office to another president. I also found it fascinating the things that he was involved with before and after he became president. He was such an accomplished individual before he became president after Theodore Roosevelt. He served as Governor of the Phillipines, U.S. Solicitor General, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Provisional Governor of Cuba, and Secretary of War for Teddy Roosevelt. 

Taft and Roosevelt go at it.

Another interesting thing I learned was that he became a president on a wave of support for Teddy Roosevelt when TR chose not to run again after serving one full term and one abbreviated term as a result of the assassination of  President McKinley in Buffalo, NY.  This may have made Taft's term more challenging because he made decisions in office without consideration of the political consequences. When Roosevelt did decide to run again as a third party Progressive candidate to succeed him, it got ugly. While Wilson won convincingly in the election of 1912, it could be argued that the political discord between the two divided two wings of the Republican party and helped Woodrow Wilson win with a plurality but not a majority of the votes. Wilson did win a extremely large portion of the Electoral College.

Our daughter was a little fearful of the size of  President  Taft.

National Park: Hopewell Culture

It is unfortunate that ancient Native American artifacts and sites would be sullied by the adjacent building of an extremely large correctional facility that houses Ohio's death row inmates. I have to assume that they did not know these mounds were sacred/important when the Chillicothe Correctional Institute was built. It is chilling to think that Charles Manson was once held there.

Regarding the site itself, it may be a misnomer to say that the site is enclosed to this one location when there are sacred Native American sites all over southern central Ohio. Supposedly the mounds here were built by Native Americans that flourished here between 200 B.C. and AD 500. The mounds on the site seem to be nothing more than that, but an informational video at the visitor's center makes it clear that the mounds may have a celestial importance (much like Stonehenge in England). I couldn't quite grasp the full explanation in the video film was in development (they were trying it out during my visit of February 2012), but apparently the stars line up with certain points on some of the structures within the site on the solstice. Perhaps this was lucky at one site, but the same structures were built dozens of miles a way in such a manner that they too would line up so there has to be something there, right?

The visit to the park itself is short, one needs no more than 90 minutes or so to hit the educational video and take a walk around the site. There are nice explanatory markers along the hiking route which is no more than a mile. The markers may inform you about cremations, burials, and other artifacts identified during archaeological digs around the site.

National Park: Carl Sandburg Home

Who the heck is Carl Sandberg and why is there a National Park dedicated to him near Asheville, North Carolina? This was the thoughts going through my mind as I drove from Charlotte to Flat Rock, NC on a Sunday in Spring, 2011. As it turns out, this may be one of the most underrated national park sites of the ones that I have been to thus far. The location of this park is spectacular, Sandberg’s wife chose the site because is offered peace and tranquility required for Sandburg’s writing, decent year round weather and enough space for the raising of her prize-winning goats.

View of the house from the front lake

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) was a writer, poet and musician from the Midwest who won the Pulitzer Prize for some of his poetry and a biography of Abraham Lincoln. He was also a social activist most notably involved in Wisconsin politics. On his death, his wife Lilian wanted his life preserved at their home, named Connemara Farms. The site has walking trails, a beautiful pond and a dairy barn that houses their goat herd. Sandburg was a prodigious talent and the site (and indeed his home) is home to hundreds of thousands of archived items including books, letters, sound recordings, telegrams, maps and photographs.

I don’t know  much about his poetry or folk songs for which he is widely famous, but I do know a bit about his Abraham Lincoln biography. I am currently reading the Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, and it is astounding the amount of detail he gets into about our 16^th president’s life. I learned that this comes from listening to stories by individuals that knew Lincoln. The writing is as much historical as it narrative which I liken to Caro’s The Power Broker or Shelby Foote’s Civil War. Sandburg set strange hours for himself writing until the wee hours of the morning, and sleeping later than his wife. The schedule was so out of the ordinary that his wife, Lillian, slept in a separate room so she could schedule her time to care for the prize winning goats.

Front Office

In addition to the beautiful setting, the site itself is memorable in the sense that there are so many books and historical artifacts that are left untouched. Books are left open to the page they were left open when the site was left for preservation, the calendar is set to the month/week that he passed away, the dining room table is set as if dinner would be ready that evening and the cluttered desks and workspaces indicate a constantly working mind.

Mrs. Sandburg's Prize Winning Goats

After a short 20 minute tour of the house, you can take a walk to the barn where the prize winning goats are still a part of the farm. Supposedly, you can still buy a goat from her original herd.