Independence Days

Sit-in Closet

I’m hanging out with Quijote, who has decided the safest place to be is in our closet.

Initially, he played it cool – like the noise of the 4th of July fireworks wasn’t going to bother him. Then, all of the sudden, it was too much, and he began scampering wild-eyed around the house in a panicked search for the best hiding spot.

Even before Quijote, we didn’t always go to see fireworks. In the middle of the sweltering Arizona summer, it’s a good day for brunch with friends or swimming or barbecue or staying inside and crafting.

San Diego

Of course, we were way out of the house when we had our first Independence Day with Quijote on our San Diego trip a year ago.

It was a similar story, where he started out unfazed, and then suddenly switched to terrified.

We were staying at the Hawthorne Historic Inn, which has a deck that’s great for watching fireworks. Phillip found us a couple chairs and brought up some wine and snacks. It was so sweet and lovely until we realized Quijote was not going to be able to deal with noise after all.

We gathered up our stuff and climbed back down the wooden steps.

Phillip and I propped up pillows and sat drinking wine and watching tv in bed, while Q burrowed under the comforter.

Indiana

On the other hand, Phillip and I began one 4th of July on a red eye to Indianapolis.

We arrived, caught a few hours sleep, stopped by a square where there was a music festival we were too early for, and then drove to Madison County to see my extended family.

We ended the day outside a different hotel, watching fireworks and fireflies and mysterious orange lights that were floating across the sky.

When you’re with ones you love, you can have a good time whether you’re standing in an open field or hunkering down in a closet.

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January 11, 2019January 11, 2019

House of Glass

House of Glass Paperweights

For the past eighty years, the St. Clair-Rice family has been crafting art glass using techniques passed down through generations.

Craftsmen working at House of Glass

I remember seeing this St. Clair Glass on the kitchen counters and shelves and window sills of my dad’s side of the family since I was a kid. It comes from the same place they do: Madison County, Indiana.

Madison county, indiana

Of course, the people and the glass have made their way across the country, moving for better jobs or better weather or bigger cities. Our family’s business used to be farming, but, even the relatives that stayed in the region left the farms years ago.

road in madison county, indiana

Every so often when I was growing up, my family would make kind of a pilgrimage from our home in Arizona to visit our Indiana family. Sometimes we’d visit the St. Clair glass factory (The House of Glass) in Elwood.

St. Clair Glass in madison county, indiana

The showroom had shelves and tables stuffed full of lamps and vases, and so many paperweights — palm-sized sculptures shaped like birds, bells, baskets, apples, and angels with a landscape of colorful glass inside their clear exteriors. Each one was made by hand in the on-site workshop.

My parents would buy gifts to bring back for the friend who collected apple things or the one who was dog-sitting while we were away.

elwood indiana

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You could see new pieces in progress, molten glass glowing from the heat of the furnace as the artist turned it and added color and shaped it into something you could recognize. It was like magic.

And it still was when we visited Madison County a few years ago. The store shelves were more sparse, but through the back door in the sweltering workshop, artist-owner Joe Rice was still firing the glass by hand.

Even then, he was concerned that he hadn’t been able to find an apprentice. Like my great-grandparents’ farm, there wasn’t anyone willing and able to take on the work long term.

As he used a long metal pole to heat up the liquid that would become a teapot-shaped ring holder, Joe Rice (who sometimes signs his work “Joe St. Clair,” using his mother’s maiden name) explained how it wasn’t just that he didn’t have a successor, there were few glass makers out there who could match both their production numbers and commitment to flawless glasswork.

And now there are even fewer.

mounds park in anderson, indiana

Joe Rice announced last year he’d be closing up shop at the end of 2018, limiting his work to only select projects.

I still hope that one day soon someone will have the passion to learn his trade and fire up the furnace again.

House of glass

July 4, 2016January 4, 2018

Orange Lights

Best western anderson indiana
The orange lights drifted across the night sky, while we watched with the rest of the crowd scattered across the lawn. They traveled almost single file at irregular intervals. We ruled out planes and fireflies and satellites, then jokingly settled on aliens, because it was Independence Day, and we had no other explanation.

Anderson indiana

One didn’t make the full arc. It was falling (crashing? landing?), down towards the earth. It was on fire. Some teenage boys ran out to catch it. No aliens, just the remains of a burnt sky lantern, probably being launched from the same site as the firework show that had drawn us all outside to this Anderson, Indiana lot.

Anderson indiana

With the mystery solved, they left it behind on the grass, and we all went back to watching fireworks explode.

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March 17, 2016February 13, 2019

Mounds State Park

Sharing some green with you today from Indiana last summer, specifically from Mounds State Park in Anderson.

The Mounds

Mounds State Park is named for mounds of earth built around 160 BCE by a culture known as the Adena-Hopewell, famous for pottery and mad mound-building skills.

Actually, they could’ve been two separate cultures, the Adena building the Mounds and the Hopewell leaving their more advanced stuff around later. Or the Adena could’ve just gotten Hopewell-levels of advanced over time.

If there’s a new car outside your friend’s house, is someone visiting or did your friend just get a new car? Way harder to clear that up when your friend is 2000 years in the past. So I guess hyphenating the two names is a way to hedge archaeological bets.

Why were they built? Maybe the Adena built them for ceremonies and then they were used for burials by the Hopewell (who may or may not just be the Adena 200 years later). The truth is we’re not sure what all people back then were into.

What we do know is that someone (ok, a lot of someones) purposefully dug out and built up earth a couple millennia ago into mounds you can still see today.

There are 10 of these earthworks in Mounds State Park, and they tend to be crater-like, with the mounded outsides surrounding a depression with a platform in the center.

The largest one has dents in it that align with the equinox, solstices, and rising of certain stars. Known as “the Great Mound,” it is 9 feet tall and has a quarter-mile circumference. So, yeah, whatever the Adena-Hopewell were up to, they were not messing around.

The Park

The visitors’ center has displays about the park’s ecosystem and a floor map of how the Mounds align with various astronomical phenomena.

Its observation room has chairs facing oversized windows, giving you a front row view of a pond, birdhouse, and a thick stand of trees, so you can watch for birds or frogs or maybe even deer.

Outside is a cute little children’s garden.

Also at the park is the historic brick Bronnenberg House, which dates from 1840. Compared to the Mounds, though, that seems like new construction.

The White River cuts through the park, and you can fish, as well as camp, hike or picnic. There are trails of varying difficulty levels winding around the Mounds.

Our Visit

Since we were in town for a family reunion, Phillip and I got to visit the park with my uncle, who’s been going there since he was a kid, and my cousin Allison, who made sure to photobomb the butterfly video I was shooting in the pollinator garden.

A video posted by stephanieliebold (@stephanieliebold) on Jul 6, 2015 at 2:24pm PDT

We started down trail #1 towards the Great Mound and met a harrowed-looking hiker coming from that direction, who asked if we had insect repellent – not to borrow it for himself but to make sure we were protected.

As we approached the boardwalk, we found out why. The mosquitoes were out in force that day. Despite our deet, they didn’t seem to be deterred. I could barely stop long enough to snap a photo without those tiny vampires swarming towards my neck and head.

I wrapped my scarf over my head and tucked my arms inside. Allison laughed at me, but I’m pretty sure it was just that she was jealous of my scarf/mosquito net and not that I looked ridiculous.

We cut our hike short after seeing the Great Mound.

We drove to a spot near the river, where the guys wanted to explore some more. Allison and I decided to take in the scenery from the safety of the car.

I wonder how the Adena kept the mosquitoes away.

October 1, 2015October 1, 2015

Sleeping In in an Anderson, IN. Inn

There are lots of reasons you might be visiting Madison County, Indiana. For me, the biggest reason is family. However, if you don’t have family there (or maybe because you have family there), you can stay at the Best Western Plus in Anderson.

No one will wake you up in the morning by pounding on your door before your travel-weary, west-coast-time-zone bones are ready to stir and shouting “You’re not here for very long, you don’t want to sleep all day!” (You know, the Staying with Family Standard Room Rate.)

But there will be a hot breakfast waiting for you.

I’d get my eggs or yogurt or waffle from the buffet, refill my coffee (after making the first cup with the Keurig in our room), and have breakfast with the birds. They would be outside flapping around one of the feeders, looking for their favorite seeds while I sat inside at a table by a window.

My aunt, uncle, and cousin Allison were in town for the same reunion we were and had chosen the same hotel. Most mornings they’d join us at breakfast, with Allison and her mom teasing my uncle about his snoring. I offered her the foldout couch in the front room of our suite. Even though she didn’t take us up on it (instead opting to kick her dad out of the room entirely and send him to stay with a relative that lives in the area), the point is that an extra couch/bed in your room can come in handy.

So can a microwave and mini fridge. I tend to travel well-supplied with snacks, but you might also want to keep farmers’ market finds cool or heat up an Amish donut.

The hotel is conveniently located right off the freeway and Scatterfield Road, my reference route for getting around Anderson. It was an easy drive to Mounds State Park or downtown.

If you have relatives in the area, chances are, they’re close too. But not as close as Best Western’s indoor pool, twice weekly happy hour, and totally optional wake up calls.

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P.S. Did you spot Mr. Cheeseface?

Thank you to Anderson Madison County Visitor and Convention Bureau! We were their guests at the Best Western Plus Anderson.