The eastern half of Richland County is full of forests, fields, and folklore.

Shawnee warriors once hunted the area's rich store of deer and fish, but today it's farm country:  corn and soy, red barns and silver silos.  In the easternmost sections of the county, where Richland bleeds into Ashland, Amish and Mennonite families maintain the farming lifestyle of the original white settlers who first pioneered the land, no electricity, no machinery, no frills or foolishness -- traveling by horse-and-buggy, tying their hay up in old-fashioned sheaves, and hanging their laundry out to dry in the wind.  But mostly, today's inhabitants of Richland County are normal folks with televisions, baseball caps, John Deere tractors, basketball hoops, and Ford pick-up trucks.  Generally speaking, the people in the eastern half of Richland County work hard, vote Republican, and love Ohio State football.

Skirted by colorful sprays of wildflowers, purple, orange, and yellow, Ohio State Route 96 weaves its way from Shelby to Ashland, following the contours of the land.  It's a route that demands one's time and attention -- carefully accelerating and braking, following the curves in the road, watching for white-tailed deer, especially at dawn or dusk.  Red-tailed hawks perch on fence posts and telephone poles, watching and waiting to swoop down for a groundhog, rabbit, squirrel, or mouse.  Around this time of the year, the corn is tassling, and the evenings are humid and moist, like a whispered secret.  Late in the day, an amber light slants across the landscape, forming long, cool shadows, with the soy forming soft, verdant beds in the fields, in which the mist nestles down for the night.  As the sun sets and the moon rises, lightning bugs sparkle from the forests.  Crickets sing on the breeze, but otherwise a hush hangs over the land.

And in these moments, the stories return to me.

There are so many stories from this countryside:  legacies, legends, myths, and ghost stories.  Each one seems to be connected to a particular landmark.  There's the Crying Bridge, on Geisinger Road.  And the Olivesburg Fork, close to the spot where State Route 96 and State Route 603 intersect.  There are stories of the Ku Klux Klan and Satanists, convening in the forests and occasionally venturing out to the settlements to wreak their havoc on unsuspecting citizens.  My wife's family -- Richland County residents for seven generations -- has a story about a Moonlight Interrogation.  And almost none of these stories have been written down, as far as I can tell.  After a little bit of research on the internet at at the local library, it seems like very few of these stories exist beyond the aural accounts of Richland County residents -- and the ones that do exist are very condensed, very short, and honestly not recorded the way that I remember hearing them.  So I want take some of these warm summer evenings to see if I can remember some of these stories, draw them out and give them room to breathe, and then set the stories down in written form.  I don't know if I'll be able to get around to all of them, but I'm going to do the best I can do to harvest some of the fruit of this Rich Land of Stories.

Did you know that you can travel from Amsterdam to Calcutta to Toronto to Damascus... without ever leaving the state of Ohio?

It's true.  Ohio has an astonishing number of cities which are named for other world cities.  Dozens of them.  As I drive throughout the state, I see signs pointing to all of these various places, and I can't help but smile.  It's become something of a hobby to catalog all the different names that fall along these lines -- several of which have comically-different pronunciations than the other (generally more well-known) cities which have similar names.  For instance, most people have heard of Milan ("mee-LAHN") in Italy -- but how many people have heard of Milan ("MY-lun") in Ohio.  Most people have heard of the capital of Peru:  Lima ("LEE-ma") -- but did you know that there's also a city in Ohio called Lima ("LY-ma")?  The French may have their famed palace, Versailles ("ver-SY) -- but Ohio has a city named Versailles (ver-SAILS)...

European cities are the most popular namesakes for Ohio knock-offs.  Names from the German-speaking world are quite popular:  Berlin, Bremen, Dresden, Frankfort, Hanover, New Bremen, and New Vienna (not to mention Germantown!).  From the Low Countries, one can find Ohio cities named Amsterdam, Holland, New Holland, Antwerp, and Ghent.  Hearkening back to the British Isles, there are also Ohio cities which have been named:  Dublin, East Liverpool, London, New London, Manchester, Oxford, Plymouth, and Sheffield.  Greek/Balkan names also feature frequently throughout Ohio:  Athens, Berea, East Sparta, Macedonia, New Athens, and Troy.  There are also a couple of names derived from the Iberian Peninsula:  namely Toledo and Lisbon.  Throw in a few Italian names: Geneva, Genoa, Milan, Parma, Venice Heights... A few French names:  New Paris, Strasburg, and Versailles... A couple of Polish references:  Poland and Warsaw... And << Voila! >> you've got a veritable Continent within a state one-third the size of Germany.

When it comes to African namesakes, however, the only thing that comes close to such a parallelism is Sahara Sands, Ohio.  And I couldn't find any Ohio cities that share the names of prominent locations in Australia / Oceania.

But still, there's quite a bit to be discovered in Ohio.

I'm woefully out-of-touch with American life.  It's incredible how much some things have changed over the last seven and a half years, since I moved from Ohio to Amsterdam.

Take text-messaging, for instance.  When I left America, mobile telephony was nowhere near as common as it is today.  In fact, I didn't get my first mobile phone until I moved to the Netherlands.  At that point, people mostly used cell phones for making phone calls.  Over time, though, text-messaging started to become popular -- in Europe as well as in North America -- and though the technological part of it didn't give me any troubles (I actually wonder if Europeans may have adapted to text-messaging more quickly than Americans), I just couldn't keep up with the popular American usage and cultural evolution of the technology.  Text-messaging short-hand in particular.  I heard about it in the media, and I understood the ways that the 4s and 8s and R's and U's and consonant contractions were supposed to save time and space -- but I genuinely thought that it was just a silly thing that high-school sophomores did, like practicing your "autograph" a thousand times on the back of your Trapper-Keeper.

After a week of trying to assimilate back into my "home" culture, though, I realize that I was seriously mistaken.  Text-messaging is at a totally different level than I ever anticipated.  And the usage of the text-messaging short-hand is far more widespread than I had ever imagined.  Last Friday, I responded to one of my friend's text messages with a suggestion and he wrote back "k."  I knew that his single-letter response meant "OK / Affirmative" (I'm not that clueless about text-messaging short-hand).  But when I laughed about the incident to my sister and her husband, saying that I would have to harass my friend (who's my age) about his teeny-bopper short-hand, they stared at me with blank looks on their faces that told me how far off from reality I was.  It turns out that "k" is a perfectly professional and adult way of responding to text messages -- confirmed by several people my age or older, with occupations as prestigious or more prestigious than my own -- and, if anything, it's considered just plain silly to write back the extravagantly overblown two-letter version of the affirmative response.

As you can see, I'm woefully out-of-touch with American life and linguistics.

Part of me wants to be indignant and stubborn about this -- pouting about how text-messaging "impoverishes" the English language, fussing and fretting about grammar and syntax.  But ultimately, I don't want to be that guy.  Truth be told, American linguistics have always been about adaptation and transition.  Looking up the history of the phrase, "OK" (or "okay," depending on your preference), it's easy to see that "k" is every bit as good as any of the other derivatives.  No one actually knows what the "O" and the "K" are actually supposed to stand for.  Some think it's a bastardization of the Choctaw (Native American) word "okeh," which means "it is indeed."  Others suggest that it's an adaptation of the Greek phrase "Ola kala," meaning "everything's good" or "all good" -- brought into popular usage by Greek railway workers in the United States during the 1800s, as the initials were stamped on various shipments to indicate that they were ready to go.  Still others trace the usage of "O.K." back to Martin van Buren's campaign for the American presidency, in the late 1830s, in which he used the abbreviated version of his nickname, "Old Kinderhook."  But the most widely accepted etymology of "OK" goes back to an American fad during the early part of the 1800s, in which comic misspellings of common phrases were abbreviated and cemented in the public consciousness:  "K.G." for "Know Good" (no good) and "N.S." for "Nuff Said" (enough said)... and, most notably, "O.K." for "Oll Korrect" (all correct).  Some very interesting -- and widely varied -- theories, wouldn't you say?

Ultimately, no one really knows how the phrase "OK" came into popular usage.  We just know that it was an American phenomenon -- though it's now been adopted by hundreds of other languages -- and that it was likely based on some sort of "incorrect" grammar (possibly intentional).  Based on all these criteria, then, the text-messaging "k" seems to be a surprisingly appropriate adaptation of the old terminology.  I may not like it, and I may be slow to adapt to the cultural transitions -- but hey, such is the American way.  K?

Yesterday, the Dutch national football (soccer) team suffered an agonizing loss -- falling to the Spanish in overtime, 1-0.  It was a hard-fought game.  Even though many faulted the way that the Dutch team approached the game (calling it ugly, thuggish, and brutal), I am proud of the way that my adopted country played in this year's World Cup tournament.  They showed mental toughness, and they didn't let the Spanish intimidate them.  They kept to their game-plan, and it almost paid off for them.  If they could have held out for just four more minutes, they would have had the opportunity to win the game on penalty kicks (against an opponent who was, by most accounts, clearly better than they were).  If they could have held out for just four more minutes, I genuinely believe the game could have been theirs:  the first championship in Dutch football (soccer) history.

But it wasn't meant to be.  It turned out to be just another heart-break for an eternally-frustrated fan base.

Last Thursday, the city of Cleveland, Ohio suffered an agonizing loss -- when basketball superstar LeBron James decided to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and sign a new contract with the Miami Heat instead.  The Cavs gave it their best shot, managing a clever campaign to keep their native son (James grew up in nearby Akron) playing in Cleveland, which was admittedly an uphill battle for a city which has been having a rough half-century or so.  And unfortunately, the story didn't have a happy ending for people from Ohio.  Similar to the way it happens in business, politics, and industry, Ohio sports are plagued by the fact that the best and the brightest often end up moving on to greener pastures in the South, or on the coasts, or in the bigger cities, where they achieve their glory.  Cleveland, in particular, seems to have a penchant for developing really good teams and really good players, but then losing at the last minute when the ultimate prize appears to be within their grasp.  There had been some hope that the LeBron James situation might be different -- that maybe he could be the "messiah" of Ohio sports.

But it wasn't meant to be.  It turned out to be just another heart-break for an eternally-frustrated fan base.

There's something astonishingly similar about these two agonizing losses, these heart-breaks, even though they're for very different cultures, different sports, and different types of loss.  On the emotional level, though, they're very similar.  Close but not close enough.  Good but not good enough.  Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.  I know the pain of Dutch loss, Ohio loss.  But the pain doesn't change my fondness for Oranje voetbal or Ohio basketball.  If anything, the pain intensifies my feelings of identification and affinity.  We may be mildly pathetic, but we've still got pride.  We may lose when it comes to the "big game," but we're loveable losers.

Ears ringing, throat stinging, elbows (and knees and shoulders) banged against me as I pushed through tens of thousands of screaming strangers.  Several of the people in the crowds physically accosted me at different point along the way, slapping at me and yelling in my face.  The air was filled with smoke and sirens.  Some strange, cold substance was raining down on my neck, my back, my legs.  It was absolute pandemonium.

And I hardly could have enjoyed myself more.

For yesterday's World Cup semi-final match between Holland and Uruguay, I joined 40,000 of my closest friends at the Museumplein in central Amsterdam -- watching the big game on the big screen, in the midst of the most unimaginable orange insanity.

When the Dutch team scored a goal, the sound of the crowd was deafening:  cheers, air-horns, vuvuzelas, bells, whistles, and music blasted over the sound system.  Confetti and fireworks shot up into the air.  Bright orange flares spewed acrid orange smoke.  And everyone jumped up and down -- making the Museumplein seem like a rocky orange sea.  People crashed into each other:  complete strangers hugging and high-fiving (and this from a culture where eye contact with strangers on the street is generally avoided).  And best of all, the Dutch team won 3-2, making it into the championship game for the first time in 32 years (and providing the opportunity for its first world championship ever).

It was an unforgettable experience.

And to think... I'm going to be back in Ohio for the championship game!  It'll be hard to be away from all the pandemonium in Amsterdam (especially if the Dutch team could pull off the win), but I'm definitely going to be cheering from wherever I'm at.

Speaking of which, does anyone know a good place in north-central Ohio for watching soccer with an enthusiastic crowd?!?  If there is no such place, I'm going to have to create one in my parents' living room.  I wouldn't miss the championship for the world.

I saw them installing this piece of art at the H88 earlier this morning.  It looks like it's going to be amazing, so I thought I'd pass along the word, for anyone who will be in Amsterdam this weekend...

Sachi Miyachi born in Tokyo and lives and works in Amsterdam, is a performance and installation artist.

She studied anthropology, philosophy and art at the Wako University in Tokyo and came in 2004 to the Netherlands where she did the Gerrit Rietveld Acadamy and Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam.

In 2007 she won the AIAS Prize of Honour (International Association of Independent Art and Design Schools)

Miyachi does refined drawings and installations that are often constructions of "forgotten memories". She takes in what meets her in her direct environment and searches as an archeologist the usable history data to tell a story about the urban change and identity. Rituals and other daily actions are a important part of her work.

For Artspace50, Miyachi will show 'The frame'.

A picture frame is a container for a picture intended to enhance its subject matter, make it easier to display in a space. 'What enhances today's life?' is the key of Miyachi's frame. By a use of mass produced daily objects, Miyachi creates the special frame in a grotesque manner to emphasize how our today's life and memories have been framed in a mass-consumption society. With a site specific context, the viewer will experience to face on Miyachi's approach to the world.

When and where:
Friday, 9 of July
from 20:00 till 23:00
Herengracht 88 sous, Amsterdam

curated by Avantia Damberg (contact@avantiadamberg.com)

Did you know that they observe the 4th of July in the Netherlands?  It's true...

It comes just after their observance of the 3rd of July and just before their observance of the 5th of July! :-)  Sorry, I couldn't resist the old joke.

But seriously:  We didn't get to watch fireworks this weekend, and we didn't grill out in the backyard.  We didn't deck the house with red, white, and blue bunting.  We didn't even sing any patriotic songs.  We did very little to mark the celebration of American Independence Day.  But we did have a pretty special weekend, all the same.

Particularly when it came to watching European sports.

Friday evening, the Dutch football (soccer) team stunned Brazil in the World Cup quarter-finals, suddenly making them favorites to earn a trip to the finals (Uruguay comes next, though they're generally considered the weakest of the four remaining teams, and even at that they'll be missing their top player for the next game).  Everyone here in Amsterdam was desperately hoping for the win over Brazil, but I don't think very many were actually expecting it.  To say the least, the city was a pretty happy place on Friday evening after the game...

And then, on Saturday, the Netherlands played host to the opening of the 2010 Tour de France.  I've been following cycling for a good while now (even before moving to Europe, back in the early Lance Armstrong years) -- and when I heard that the Tour would be starting in Rotterdam this year, I decided that I needed to make the trip to experience the event for myself.  Thankfully some friends offered to take our kids to the Efteling (kind of like a Dutch Disneyland), so we didn't have to keep them with us in the crowds and extended curb-side waiting in Rotterdam.  Instead, Marci and I waved them off at Amsterdam's Centraal Station and then took our own train south to Rotterdam, together with our friend Linda.

By the way, if you want to read more about our kids' adventures at the Efteling (without us), you can read Elliot's excellent report on his own blog...

Around the time that they were arriving at the amusement park, Marci, Linda, and I were starting to walk along the racing route in Rotterdam.  As we crossed over the famous Erasmus Bridge, we got to see teams who were making some practice runs over the course.

Eventually, we chose a spot where we'd be able to see each rider twice -- 1.5 kilometers into the route, and then again as they were headed into the last 1.5 kilometers.  We also had a convenient view of a large jumbotron (which showed the riders at other points on the course), and we had a gentle bend in the road which gave us a better view of the cyclists as they approached the finish.  A pretty good spot overall, I think.

But once we settled in there, we had a lot of waiting to do.

All said, we stood at that spot for about seven and a half hours -- through blazing sunshine, drizzling rain, and blustery winds.  But suffice to say, we got to see the Tour de France!

We got to see all the big names, including Alberto Contador (last year's winner), Ivan Basso, Andy Schlek, and Cadel Evans.  But two of my favorites were George Hincapie (above), and of course Lance Armstrong (below).

I've been wanting to see the Tour de France for quite a long time.  And now I can say that I've done it.  I can say that I've seen all the major riders -- all within just a couple of meters in front of me, about the distance from which I normally sit from my television to watch them!  I can say that I watched Lance Armstrong race in what will probably be his last Tour de France.

And now that I can say all those things, I don't have to do it again.

Honestly, I believe that the Tour de France is a sport that is perfect for television.  You can see more of the riders, hear more of the back-stories, get a better overview of the course (all those majestic, panoramic, post-card, helicopter shots), and sit in leisurely comfort while the athletes gut it out on one of the grandest stages in all sports!

Seeing it in-person was cool, and I'm still very glad for the experience this weekend in Rotterdam -- but to tell you the truth, it was not so comfortable sweating in the melting-hot sun and shivering in the cold wind and rain, over the course of seven-and-a-half hours.  It's a pretty amazing spectacle, with all the sponsors and merchandise thrown about, with all the skill that goes into competing for such an event and covering it in a way that so many spectators can enjoy.

But from now on, I think I'll be happy to enjoy it from home, where I can put up my feet, have something cold to drink, and quip about the time that I saw the Tour de France with my own eyes, on Lance Armstrong's last tour.

I'm officially half-way through my Proverbs 365 project!  For the past six months, I've been taking a Proverb for each day of the year and then considering it and applying it for 21st Century living. Continuing my monthly tradition, I'm highlighting three of my personal favorites from the past month (and hopefully, in so doing, encourage some cross-over readership!):

I've been submitting a number of my Proverbs 365 entries to the fiction critique group to which I belong.  And up to this point, one of their favorites has been P2815 - Papa Bear, a short story about a powerful dictator, a secret agent, and exploration of the subtle motivations behind tyranny.  The story, of course, is inspired by one of the Proverbs -- Proverbs 28:15, to be specific -- in which it says, "Like a roaring lion or a charging bear is a wicked man ruling over a helpless people." The story ends with something of a twist, but you'll have to go and read it if you want to find out what it is...

On a more personal note, I deal with some of my own issues of gluttony, greed, and social awkwardness in P2301 - Chastised Over Cheesecake.  I was reflecting on Proverbs 23:1-3, where it says, "When you sit to dine with a ruler, note well what (or who) is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony.  Do not crave his delicacies, for that food is deceptive." And as I considered it, I was reminded of the time that I almost blew my relationship with the love of my life... over a piece of cheesecake.  Fortunately, we were able to recover from "The Cheesecake Incident" and even get to a point where we can laugh about it.  But it was definitely a learning experience...

Thirdly, I wonder:  How many of us have ever thought that we're never really ready to be "grown-ups?"  Personally, I can feel like this all the time!  It's hard to live with "grown-up" responsibilities.  It can feel really, really sad and lonely.  Not too long ago, I was reminded of this while watching the film "Mary Poppins" (of all things) -- and the film actually brought me to the point of tears!  But then, by God's grace, I found myself reading Proverbs 18:10 the very next day, where it says, "The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe." Meditating upon this Proverb, I came up with a post entitled P1810 - What to Do When You're Mr. Banks.  To me, it's brought a lot of comfort; maybe the same would be true for you, too...

For a more comprehensive listing of June's content, here are the titles of all 30 entries, along with direct links to the rest of the content.

• P108 - Family Heirlooms
• P209 - Righteousness, Justice, and Fairness
• P311 - Don't Resent the Rebuke
• P417 - Another Kind of Bread and Wine
• P518 - Hot, Passionate, Mind-Blowing, Biblical Sex
• P618 - Fabulous Fab and the Rest of Us
• P721 - Persuasive Words and Smooth Talk
• P802 - The Lady of Schiphol
• P906 - The Road out of Rijeka
• P1022 - All Yin, No Yang
• P1126 - Lessons from the Long Winter
• P1223 - Escaping the Aura of Egghead Eric
• P1313 - Considerations for Hiring, Appointing, and Enrolling
• P1404 - The Hard Work of Farming
• P1503 - Eyes Everywhere
• P1631 - Faith for the Middle-Aged
• P1728 - Internal Dialogue
• P1810 - What to Do When You're Mr. Banks
• P1902 - The Pace of the Proverbs
• P2018 - Seeking Advice
• P2104 - What's the Big Deal with Pride?
• P2207 - The Return to Indentured Servitude
• P2301 - Chastised Over Cheesecake
• P2427 - First Things First
• P2528 - Preventing Ourselves from Doing Things We Want to Do
• P2616 - The Problems of Haiti
• P2717 - Sharpening Experiences
• P2815 - Papa Bear
• P2915 - A Child Left to Himself
• P3015 - Insidious Insatiability

I've got to be honest:  at this point, the Proverbs 365 project is feeling kind of heavy.  Day after day of reading, meditating, and writing has started to catch up to me -- especially as other circumstances in my life become more time-consuming and stress-inducing.  But I am determined to press onward.  I'm half-way there!  Please know that your participation, feedback, and encouragement is greatly appreciated throughout the process.  I'm still working on July's posts -- but so far, it's looking like it'll be a pretty good month.  Check it out for yourself at http://proverbs365.ericasp.com. Please feel free to spread the word, too... One of the distinct advantages of the Proverbs is that it's easy to tune into them, whenever one might so choose. It's not like if you missed the first six months, then you're "behind" or anything like that. The Proverbs are just like these little power pellets that can be consumed and digested immediately. It's never too late to start enjoying them!