Beautiful Ohio

I recently found a button made in Columbus, Ohio. It is about 2 1/8 inches in diameter.

Although it is not a campaign button, it does mention the names of 5 presidents from Ohio. That helps to date the badge between 1900 and 1908, since the names of Taft and Harding do not appear.

What is interesting, is that by 1901 there had been 6 presidents from Ohio. Two of them were named Harrison (William Henry and Benjamin). Maybe the badge designer figured every one knows about both Harrisons, and used the name only once to save space. Or maybe he decided not to count William Henry, as he held office for only a month. I guess we will never know.

The badge has a picture of the State Capitol at the top, the State Seal in the center, and a picture of the Battle of Lake Erie on the right side.

The picture on the left side is the scene of a land battle. The question is, which one? My guess is it may be the 1794 “Battle of the Fallen Timbers," in which General “Mad Anthony” Wayne defeated a force consisting of Blue Jacket's Shawnees and Buckongahelas's Delawares, Miamis led by Little Turtle, Wyandots, Ojibwas, Ottawas, Potawatomis, Mingos, and even some Canadian militia.

The music at the bottom is “Home Sweet Home.” It seems strange to me that the designer did not use “Beautiful Ohio,” which became the official state song in 1889, before William McKinley became president.

Figuring out the history associated with the old buttons is part of the fun I get from collecting them...

Post Cards with Flags

Here are a couple of old post cards from my collection. The first one was cancelled in 1909. When you know that, the picture of the flag presents 2 problems. Can anyone figure out what is strange about the flag?

The second one has a fanciful flag, and is an embossed card. I posted it just because it is attractive.

Captain Rob

On Wednesday I had another 'Before the Mast' program aboard the Pilgrim at The Ocean Institute. The students were 5th graders from Our Savior Lutheran school. I was the Captain on their program last year as well. Their photographer took lots of pictures of both programs, and he brought me a disk with the pictures from 2008. This one shows me standing on the quarterdeck of the Pilgrim.

We give the students lots of hard work and challenging tasks, but we sprinkle the program with sea chanteys, a jig, and a few humourous moments as well. Few things are as satisfying as the expressions on their faces.

A Second Grandchild

My elder daughter, Amber, and her husband, Ron have blessed us with a granddaughter, Briana Carlotta Gill.

Brianna was born on September 22. Because she is adopted, we held off on the announcements for a week or so until all of the adoption paperwork was complete. I sent out emails to family and friends, but I did not get around to writing in my blogs until today.

Bonnie and I are happy, of course, to have a second grandchild.

Quinton at 6 Months

Our grandson, Quinton Thomas Dale, was 6 months old in June. He sure is growing fast. Our daughter, Heather, had some great photos taken. I just had to post a couple of them:

Quinton and the French bulldog, Nick, are getting along well, too:

Rare Cactus Flower

When bought this cactus about 40 years ago. It was about 2 inches high and 2 inches around. Today, about 1 foot tall, the cactus bloomed for the first time. The nursery owner told me it is called Ferocactus Gatesii, discovered in the Baja California desert by Professor H. E. Gates at California State University of Fullerton. My cacti and succulents handbook does not mention it, but some internet research revealed that it is a subspecies of Ferocactus Gracilis, sometimes called "Fire Barrel Cactus."

Since this cactus blossom is probably seldom seen, I decided to celebrate by sharing the picture.

Cell Phone Saga

I read somewhere that 30% of telephone users in the U.S. have abandoned their land lines completely in favor of cell phones.

I'm pretty "tech savvy" for a guy my age, but I don't embrace new technology until I find either a specific need or an economic reason for doing so. That's why I did not even purchase a cell phone until a year ago. My reason was a need. I bought it primarily so Bonnie can reach me in an emergency when I'm not home. We also observed that public pay telephones have essentially disappeared, and we occasionally find ourselves wanting to call somebody when we are on the road.

The cost for my AT&T land line did not seem excessive at the time, so for the overlapping service I opted for the provider that appeared to be the cheapest (and to require the least commitment), that is, a TracFone. The service cost about $10.00 a month, and I did not expect to use the 400 minutes allocated for the one year of air time.

When Bonnie had to relinquish her company-provided cell phone, I bought her a TracFone as well. Her package includes "double minutes for life," so she has a budget of 800 minutes. At first this move seemed to be a mistake because her phone took two minutes or more just to acquire a signal. That proved to be a defect in the phone. TracFone replaced the phone and transferred both her number and minutes to a good one. Their technical support is a little less than perfect, and requires a little patience, but it is there.

It worked out so well, in fact, that when I purchased another year of air time for my phone, I also bought a "double minutes for life" ticket. I figure the time will cost between 12 cents and 15 cents per minute. It's the same, of course, for local and long distance calls, and there are no "access" or"roaming" charges. I am assuming that Bonnie and I both use all of our minutes, which may not be the case.

I have noticed that the monthly bill for our land line seems to have increased by almost 50% over the last couple of years. Just for fun, I figured out what my land line cost me last month. It worked out to almost 35 cents per minute for local calls. Long distance was even worse--since we only made two one-minute calls, long distance cost $3.84 per minute! Because we are relatively low volume users, we could probably tinker with the options and reduce those costs.

But it looks like I had an economic reason for trying cell phones all along, and did not realize it. For us the cost of the two cell phones is comparable to the cost of the single land line. Bonnie and I decided to make all of our long distance calls by cell phone. I plan to see if I can drop the long distance coverage on the land line altogether.

At this point, I am not even sure we want to hang on to the land line.

One thing that bothers me is that when a call is "cell-to-cell," both the caller and the receiver are charged for the time, which is not the case with land lines. So I will be paying for incoming calls as well as outgoing, and I have no data on what that cost will be. I guess I will just try to keep track for a few months and estimate the impact.

Of course, some sort of disaster could wipe out cell service altogether without affecting land line service. But that is not very likely. To keep the land line for that reason seems almost as "survivalistic" as buying a firearm or building a bomb shelter, and I don't do either of those things.

The day may not be far away when the statistic for "all cell, no land line" increases to 30% plus 2 people...