Monthly Archives: September 2019

Pawpaws to the People!

It’s pawpaw season, and festivals celebrating this regional native fruit are popping up all over. Visiting one of these seemed like the folkloric thing to do, and in fact I couldn’t believe that I had somehow reached my advanced age and had not done so already.

The Pawpaw Festival in Albany, Ohio (near Athens, and also near the United Plant Savers sanctuary which my adventurous colleague and partner in crime, Arlene, and I were visiting this week) is, I would dare say, one of the biggest in the country. We spent a couple of hours there experiencing All Things Pawpaw.

First, the taste. Upon arrival, we sought out the free sample tent where we could set the mood. Volunteers sliced us a big hunk and explained that you just squeeze the soft, yellowish pulp out of the rind, and swirl the big dark pits around in your mouth to get all the good stuff off them. (Then throw them out because they are poisonous if chewed and consumed, apparently.)

Next we found the craft beer tent, where for a few bucks you could try a variety of pawpaw brews (and take the glass home to boot). We listened to a band that defied genre classification, and then made our way to the food court. We sampled an Indonesian satay with pawpaw peanut sauce, and later tried Thai mango sticky rice with pawpaw mousse.

There were also vendors selling pawpaw bread, official paw paw festival t-shirts with designs dating several years back, and pawpaw plants. (As well as a lot of non-paw paw-related stuff.) We were saddened to have missed the pawpaw cook-off.

A full harvest moon rose over the festival grounds, as we finally admitted paw paw overload. Still, I insisted on stopping by the free sample tent one more time to leave with the sweet custardy taste still lingering on my taste buds.

Monumental Moments

A visit to Gettysburg is certainly sobering. The main attraction of this small city in south central Pennsylvania (no matter what the tourist literature says about “fun activities for the whole family”) is following crawling traffic through a bucolic countryside to gawk at an endless series of soaring monuments commemorating men killing each other.

That is cynical, I realize. But realistic. The artwork and craftsmanship that went into these monuments is impressive. Standing among the tortured angels and stalwart fallen soldiers and officers on horseback, you are all too aware that thousands upon thousands of men (and some women too I suppose) died horrible deaths all around you.

War is hell, that is clear, and the Civil War battles fought in Gettysburg on July 1 – 3, 1863 were among the most hellish. Fifty thousand dead. Fifty thousand – dead.

It’s difficult to know what to feel. Proud of those who fought? In despair of so much loss of life? Glad that the Union was victorious in the end, and the States united once again? All – or none – of the above?

When we got to the towering Pennsylvania Monument, despite the number of people ambling around the fields and climbing the stairs to view the vista, it was relatively quiet. Until a thundering boom resounded through the staircase; a cannon fired by a park interpreter. Just one boom, but it shook the building, and the psyche of the assembled visitors. For one awful moment, pride, despair and victory seemed irrelevant. Survival seemed foremost.

Maybe, in the end, that is the lesson we take away from a visit to Gettysburg. The deep, basic struggle for survival, and empathy for those who didn’t.