An Apology, Take 230,000,132

The old adage goes something like sometimes your the dog, and sometimes your the tail.

Well for the last couple of months, I've been that flea at the very-end of the tail.

There is finally some light at the end of the tunnel, and I've been able to emerge from the real world and get back to enjoying life outside of Tar Heel Drive.

I've got at least six county photos to write-up and get posted, so hopefully lots of new stuff coming from the Project in the next couple of weeks.

Special thanks to "discoverourcity.com" for linking to the blog. Unfortunately, I saw it in blog explosion and can't find the actual page that linked to the site.

A Weekend in Pittsburgh

Loaded up the Blazer and took the wife on a trip to Pittsburgh over the Memorial Day weekend for a Rascal Flatts concert at the Post-Gazette Pavilion.

pennsylvania.com (c)

We took advantage of the long-weekend and left for Pittsburgh on Friday afternoon and spent some time heading around the city before we headed to the concert on Saturday night and back to the concert on Sunday morning.

A little bit of this and that on the trip…

PITTSBURGH ROCKS: Okay, so Cleveland is still my favorite sports city, but if I ever had to pack up and move to a city Pittsburgh would be it. Sitting only 28 miles inside the state of Pennsylvania it is still close enough to be “Buckeye Country” but a walk through Robinson Mall proves that you are really in “Joe Pa Country” and Pitt basketball rules. The city is gorgeous and a friend of mine lives on South Shore and we had a great lunch at the Main Street Grill in an area that is completely being revitalized.

NO LIGHTER, NO PROBLEM: As Rascal Flatts went into a ballad and the number of cell phones got raised up above heads it dawned on me that the age of lighters was through. As smoking has continued to fall out of favor in public spaces, the increase of cell phones has to be growing exponentially during concerts. The two “teenagers” next to me were on the phone basically from start to finish during the show. I have never understood this, you drop $50 a ticket for this show – one of the cheaper ones – and you are more interested in talking to the people that wouldn’t/couldn’t fork over the money to attend with you?

PAVILION FALLS DOWN DRUNK: Might have been the holiday weekend, but the amount of public intoxication was utterly amazing to me. I have seen people thrown out of bars for being less intoxicated than many of the lawn-seat fans were.

GLAD TO BE HOME: It was great to cross over the river into Steubenville and return home to our Buckeye family!

SCOUTING THE TALENT: Browns Name Rees Director of Player Personnel

"With the third selection in the 2005 NFL Draft, the Cleveland Browns select…"

When NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue makes this statement on April 23, there will be an Ohio Wesleyan connection to the Browns' pick. Bill Rees '76 will be part of his first draft as the Browns' director of player personnel.

New Browns General Manager Phil Savage brought Rees to Cleveland from the same position in San Francisco. "This is a great opportunity to work with Phil Savage, a guy who has been a good friend for a long time," said Rees. "There is a great tradition associated with the Browns, and Cleveland is just an outstanding football city."

However, Rees' start in college coaching was 30 years ago and 130 miles southwest of Cleveland Browns Stadium. Former OWU coach Jack Fouts got Rees, a three-year member of the football team, started on a career in coaching and scouting in 1975.

"Coach Fouts gave me the opportunity to coach the wide receivers my last year," said Rees. "I'm sure that experience helped me getting a coaching position at Northwestern."

Rees spent three years coaching the Wildcats, earning his master's degree in the process, before moving on to UCLA and spending 15 years with the Bruins.

In 1994, Rees decided that he wanted to move into player personnel and the NFL was the place for him. Rees joined the Kansas City Chiefs for three years before becoming the director of college scouting for his hometown Chicago Bears.

"In Chicago, I was responsible for college players, and that obviously put a major emphasis on the draft," said Rees. "When I went to San Francisco it was a dual role working with both college and professional players."

Rees estimates that he is on the road up to 60-70 percent of the time, which reaches its peak during the football season. He spends part of a typical week watching practices at the major-college level before traveling to wherever the Browns are playing that weekend. "The schedules are worked so that I can get to our games on Sunday," said Rees. "You usually watch practice on Tuesday through Thursday, do film study on Friday, and travel to the NFL game on the weekend. There is simply no substitute to seeing a player in person."

With all that travel, it has been a couple of years since he had the opportunity to return to campus.

"The quality of students," is what Rees, a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, remembers most. "Ohio Wesleyan has been able to attract a high level of students from all over the country. It was an extremely invigorating experience for me."

He also holds the faculty in special regard. "The faculty at Ohio Wesleyan was excellent. I've spent time at Northwestern and UCLA and put the quality of OWU's faculty on par with their better people." While Rees was hesitant to name a faculty member that stuck out, he commented on a history course with Dr. Richard Smith, professor emeritus of history. "It was exceptionally hard to get an 'A', but you learned a great deal."

Browns fans are hoping Rees' stops in Chicago and San Francisco have taught him a great deal about bringing a winner back to the city.

I know this is about my "trips" around Ohio. But I wrote this for work before the NFL draft about Rees returning to Ohio to work for the Browns after graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University. So thought I'd share. Might have a couple more of these "Ohio tied" pieces coming on a couple of unique Jazz musicians that spent four years in Ohio as they slid through to other pursuits.

Oh where has April gone?

Hard to believe that April has almost come and gone. Sorry to dissapear, this is the worst time of year for me at work, with about 20,000 things have to be done by the end of the year.

And I've had a bad case of "spring fever" which has me outside working in the yard, on the golf course, or sitting at the baseball stadium taking in a couple of games.

Basically put, anywhere than writing these posts.

I have visited Richland (Mansfield) and Madison (London) counties in the past month and need to get the photos and write-ups posted. Wife is home this weekend and as a stress-break hoping for some time to get a couple more out of the way.

Have a great weekend!

Baseball's Back in Ohio -- Three Times Over

The weather may be wet and gray, but that is not going to kill my mood today.

It is a joyous week as baseball is back and I have had two opening days – with the third staring me in the face – already this week.

Of course, the Indians and Reds opened on Monday and both played very well. Joe Randa’s walk-off home run off course made the Reds look a little better, but both teams played very good games. Then last night, the United League of Moderate Gamers, a Strat-O-Matic baseball league I’m in opened the season and I won my first (and maybe last series) of the year.

Today is the official opening day for Minor League Baseball with the six Ohio squads opening. Columbus Clippers, the AAA affiliate of the New York Yankees, is on the road to open the season, but returns home next week. Already ordered my tickets for April 18 when the team takes on Charlotte for Dime-A-Dog night. Baseball and cheap hot dogs, what else could a married man want?

The infamous Toledo Mud Hens (AAA, Detroit) have become a house-hold name thanks to their unique nickname and Toledo native Jamie Farr donning the team’s colors on M*A*S*H.

The Indians have three affiliates in Ohio, Akron Aeros (AA), Lake County Captains (Low-A) in Eastlake, and Mahoning Valley Scrappers (Short Season-A) in Niles. The Reds have their High-A affiliate in Dayton where the Dragons often sell-out.

Coming later this summer is professional independent baseball action in Chillicothe where the Paints are a founding member of the Frontier League. In addition, some of the best college players in the Midwest take part in the Great Lakes Baseball League, a wood-bat college league, based in Delaware. The league has teams in Toledo – playing at the old home of the Mud Hens Ned Skelton Stadium – Delaware, Columbus, Athens, Celina, Indianapolis, and Canton.

So grab a lawn chair and get-out and support baseball in Ohio!

And the Winner Is...

In the first-ever Ohio Wine Producers Chili Cook Off, there is a winner.

Tarsitano Winery was the winner of the two-day event, held on February 25-26 at five different Northeast Ohio wineries. Tarsitano’s also topped Gretchen and I’s ballot (“Chili Cook Off, Wine Tasting in Northeast Ohio”, posted on March 3) for their original presentation and great tasting chili.

The event drew 80 people to the wineries and the OWPA is promising it to become a yearly endeavor. Attendees received all the chili recipes and a collectable glass and had the opportunity to win a special gift basket or the grand prize being an overnight stay at The Lodge and Conference Center in Geneva.

Donniella Winchell, executive director of OWPA, wrote in a letter to attendees, “In future years the Great Chili Cook Off is sure to become known as a fun way to warm up from the mid-winter blues, add to your recipe collection, and enjoy the atmosphere of Ohio’s unique wineries.”

The next OWPA event on the docket for the Wines and Vines trail is the Wines N’ Bloom scheduled for the first two full weekends in May.

Medina Native Tells Tale of Civil War Preaching Grand Father

Saw this article in Today's Akron Beacon-Journal and had to retell part of the story.

Elizabeth Menges Ramirez-Graham has a leather-bound diary in a velvet-covered jewelry box. It has been in her family for more than 130 years, but it has only been in the last couple of years that she began to feel the power of the words.

"It was in my family but we never looked at it very much," she said. "We heard about my grandfather, just through the family. We always felt proud of him, but we never knew many details."

Elizabeth's grandfather was Reverend Louis Miller Albright and the diary is his 1865 Civil War Diary. Rev. Albright was not a soldier but rather a volunteer for the YMCA sponsored U.S. Christian Commission which formed in 1861 to meet the spiritual needs of soldiers in the field.

February 1865: Today I was assigned to General Hospital No. 3 in Nashville. Spent all the forenoon distributing periodicals and conversing with sick soldiers in the hospital. Distributed 50 papers and magazines and conversed on the subject of religion with six soldiers.

It was entries like this that led Elizabeth and friend and self-publisher Stanley Graham to write up the entries into a collection of his journal entries, Civil War Diary, which is available for $19.95 from Belding Publishing.

Albright attended Ohio Wesleyan University and following the War returned to campus as a math and science teacher. He married Eliza Lewis Downing in 1867 and the couple became a "Methodist Power-House" in central Ohio. Albright is the founder of Asbury United Methodist Church, which still worships in the sanctuary built in 1888.

"It just seemed the thing to do. I didn't like to think that his life and his contributions had been forgotten."