I Did Not Get To Help Raise the Big Flag at Fort McHenry

It was still fun, though!

Because, as everyone knows, my entire purpose in life now is to collect national park passport stamps, I convinced my partner that the best way to get to the kid's college to pick her up for summer vacation was through Baltimore.

It's obviously not, but my wish for you is that you also find a life partner who deems it easier to support your delusions than to argue with you.

And not only did I convince him that we should detour through Baltimore, but I ALSO convinced him that we should do so a day early and spend the night there so that I could get to Fort McHenry National Monument when it opened and therefore be in no danger of accidentally missing the raising of the giant historic flag.

Because. You guys. If you're there for the raising of the giant historic flag, YOU GET TO HELP RAISE THE GIANT HISTORIC FLAG.

Enough said, right? Obviously this opportunity is worth any amount of effort.

The grounds around the fort are beautiful and free to roam, and combined with the free parking I imagine they're an awesome place to hang out all year. Here's the entrance to the paid area, with the small overnight flag still flying:

The admission to the fort is a horrifying FIFTEEN DOLLARS PER PERSON (?!?!?!), buuuuuttttt if you buy an $80 America the Beautiful pass it covers all entrance fees for you plus three people or your entire personal car-load for 12-ish months. 

I bought the pass, and it'll have paid for itself by the end of July. 

I'm sorry to tell you that also at the flag-raising was a giant group of MAGA schoolchildren, and I know this because many of them were wearing MAGA hats. Why on earth you would dress an innocent child in a MAGA hat I do not know; it's so gross to put a hate-filled agenda physically on a child and just expose them to the judgment of the general population like that. It's the same kind of people who also put their children in front of Planned Parenthood clinics holding forced-birth signage. Everyone knows that kids don't have the critical thinking skills to properly put themselves in positions like that; it's the parents who want their kids to grow up to be fascists who do things like that TO them.

I'm also sorry to tell you that it was too windy for the big flag. Instead, we raised the small flag, sob.

However, the bright spot of the day is that separately, there was ALSO a children's choir visiting Fort McHenry that morning, on the same kind of "visit Washington, DC, and its nearby educational sites" trip as the MAGA children's group. I actually saw these kids gathering as we were pulling into the parking lot and thanks to their aura of general productivity--busy sunscreening themselves and putting on their hats and their little backpacks--I was all, "Oh, look! A Girl Scout troop!"

I wasn't far off, lol!

When the park ranger running the flag raising heard that they were a children's choir, she invited them to sing the National Anthem during the raising. They agreed, and now, thanks to them, I have a very sweet national park memory:

Although I'd rather have a memory of the children's choir singing while I helped raise the BIG flag, humph.

The fort itself is interesting to walk around, with small exhibits inside many of the rooms:

Because it was such a beautiful day, though, the best part was exploring around the fort, all the banks and berms and cannon emplacements with an outstanding view to the river:

In the distance, there's even a perfect view of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. 

That walking path at the bottom of the photo and all the green space between it and the fort is a fee-free area, so I bet the whole area was MOBBED with spectators in the hours and days after the bridge's collapse.

I really liked all the cannon emplacements. During the Civil War, they were turned to face Baltimore in case of insurrection:

Genuine cannonball from the 1814 bombardment:

View from the jail:

View INTO the jail!

This is really cute. On the 100th anniversary of the bombardment, they dressed children in little red, white, and blue capes to make a "living flag." 

We spent about three hours exploring, and I wish we could have packed a picnic and spent the afternoon, too--I mean, look at this beautiful day!--

--but we were actually supposed to be literally moving my kid out of her dorm room that day, as well, ahem.

And on the way there it would be practically hardly any detour at all to just sneak by the First State National Historical Park for a couple of hours...

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Have Reached the Pinnacle of Summer Achievement, for Wilbear Wright is Mine

Oh, Happy Day, for I have achieved the dream that I have dreamed since March 14.

Wilbear Wright is MINE!

To earn Wilbear Wright, you have to visit at least eight sites on the Dayton Aviation Trail.

For me, Sites 1 and 2 were the Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center and Paul Laurence Dunbar's house.

Site 3 was the graves of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Sites 4 and 5 were the National Museum of the United States Air Force and the Aviation Hall of Fame.

Sites 6 and 7 were the Butler County Warbirds and the Wright "B" Flyer, Inc.

And Site 8 is Carillon Historical Park, home of an excellent museum about the Wright brothers, including an actual 1905 Wright Flyer in a display that was partly designed by Orville Wright himself!

Also this unrestored part of a 1905 Wright Flyer, which is actually outside the paid part of the park, so you can just go see it whenever you want:

I had to rely on my shitty cell phone camera because the flash on my Canon is even worse, but still, there's so much fascinating detail to see:

The fabric looks like a linen or a cotton--if there was proper signage that said, then I missed it--which is interesting, because the earliest glider that the Wright brothers tested at Kitty Hawk was sateen. Wilbur had to alter it on a local woman's hand-cranked treadle sewing machine because he wasn't able to find the lengths of wood on-site that he needed, and when the brothers were finished with that year's experiments they abandoned their glider, so that same woman scavenged the sateen to sew dresses for her two daughters. 

The stitching was certainly done by machine, probably another hand-operated treadle, and the stitches are VERY tidy--that's what sewing slowly will do for you!

We had come to the park specifically to see the Wright brothers stuff, so were a little baffled at first by the other historical displays. I don't know much about Ohio history other than the Mississippians and the Wright brothers, so we just sort of wandered into old buildings and absorbed random content.

This place had so many animatronics! Well, to my knowledge it actually has TWO animatronics, but two feels like a lot. One of them is this guy, and spoiler alert, yes, he IS related to Ichabod Crane, lol!

We wandered through this old wooden two-story building--

--while learning fun facts like the community's first jail was a literal pit in the ground. I would not want to await trial in a pit!

The buildings were moved to this site, though, so that boarded up well there isn't the pit, I don't think.

You know I have to snoop around every historical vegetable garden I see!

There was a whole building to display a CRAZY flood that the town had on Easter 1913, including this adorable old-timey Weather Channel report:

And there was another whole building full of Wright brothers merch!

The mock-up of the Wright Cycle Company and the print shop was a little weird, since you can see the real versions of both for free about a five-minute drive from here, but I never get tired of looking at these old-timey bicycles with cork hand grips:

Way back at the Wright "B" Flyer, Inc., we overheard a random guy trying to bait the docent into a "gotcha" moment by informing her that in Brazil, they lauded a Brazilian guy for having invented the airplane first. This museum had a whole wall for various pioneers of aviation, including their specific accomplishments, and I'm guessing that guy was talking about this dude:

To be fair, the wording on that display *does* sound a little defensive, so there might be more to the controversy than they're stating. Interesting!

I was genuinely surprised/impressed by how many cool artifacts Carillon Historical Park has scored. Check out some actual fragments of the Wright Flyer II!

AND they've got the camera, THE camera that took the historic photo of the first successful sustained flight:

This guy is my favorite brother. He used to get easily overstimulated and lash out at people, and SAME!

The Wright Flyer III has a terrific gallery all to itself, in which you can walk all the way around the plane and see it at a level that Orville Wright himself specified as the best level to see all the details:

As my older kid and I were standing at the barrier and discussing some detail or other--I will not be convinced that the Wright Flyers do not look backwards, but my kid refuses to agree--all of a sudden out of absolutely nowhere a man started speaking to me from just beside my other shoulder, where there had been literally nobody a second before, and I was so startled that I screamed. 

I turned to him and tried to apologize and tell him he'd just startled me because I hadn't known he was there, but he WOULD NOT STOP INTERRUPTING ME or acknowledge my apology and explanation and instead insisted on talking over me to tell me that if I stood up on the bench at the back of the gallery I could take a picture of the whole plane at once.

For Pete's sake, Dude! But also, he was correct, and I love my photo of the whole plane all at once:

Huzzah to probably our 300th image/recreation of a Wright Flyer at this point! We're earning those Wilbears!

Also, Wilbur Wright's favorite satchel that he apparently took everywhere. I'm obsessed and I want one just like it:

There was an excellent #womensupportingwomen moment in this gallery. My partner and I were sitting on a bench watching early footage of the design and construction of Carillon Park, and in the footage was a video of Orville Wright walking arm-in-arm with Edith Deeds, the wealthy woman who once saw a really cool carillon while she was on vacation and decided that Dayton, Ohio, needed a really cool carillon, too, and if she was going to the trouble to have a carillon built she might as well go to some more trouble and build a whole entire park about it.

ME: "Huh. I wonder when that video was taken?"
PARTNER: "In the early 1950s."

ME: "I thought Orville Wright died in 1948?"

And before my partner could even respond to that--and it would have been in a reasonable manner, because he's not a mansplainer!--a completely random woman looking at a display to our left said, "Orville Wright did die in 1948."

Thank you, Anonymous Woman! She was NOT going to settle for even the smallest chance that my man might double down or act like an ass in the face of my objective correctness. It's also super baller, because whenever I hear a man being vocally incorrect in a museum I just rant about it to my companions while they attempt to get me to rant a little more quietly. 

Should I be confronting more incorrect men?

Anyway, the timeline *is* kind of unclear, because in the Wright Flyer display they make a big deal about the fact that Orville Wright helped with the restoration of the plane for display and then they show him walking with the founder of the park through what looks like some kind of opening ceremony-type festival and THEN they tell you that the museum part of the park opened in 1950 but they kind of elide the fact that by 1950 both Orville Wright and Edith Deeds were dead.

Tangent, but check out this game that Orville Wright patented and sold. It looks bananas, and I want to see it in action. 

On our way out of the park we stopped at the gift shop to collect our very last Dayton Aviation Trail stamp, then have our stamps tallied, and finally receive our very own Wilbear Wright for each of us.

I LOVE HIM. He is ready for adventure, with his little aviation jacket and goggles, and he's the perfect size to pop in my backpack without taking up too much room, so from now on, I'm taking him with me on all my travels. 

Just me and my little old Wilbear, traveling the world and having adventures and counting every Wright Flyer recreation we see!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

P.P.S. I'm currently reading this excellent biography of the Wright brothers, so be prepared for a summer FULL of Wright brothers fun facts!

The Dragon Rider Smut Book Club Is Now In Session. This Month's Topic: Onyx Storm

I do NOT want to talk about that hockey score pop-up in the frame. I am so disappointed in the playoff results so far! Nevermind that my most beloved Stars lost to the Oilers, because the Oilers are fine and I'd be satisfied to have them win the Cup, but the Panthers are also in the final?!? The Panthers represent the absolute worst of the NHL, everything that I find most toxic about men's professional hockey. Not the players, because they mostly can't help where they play, but the awful management. Okay, I guess I *did* want to talk about that hockey pop-up, but now my mouth is closed about hockey until October!

I have begun annoying/entertaining my family by inserting Fourth Wing taglines into every scenario.

Case in point before Family Movie Night the other night:

A fighter plane without its pilot is a tragedy.

A fighter pilot without their plane is dead.

Welcome to Top Gun.

Catchy, right? And it works in a surprising number of scenarios!

Anyway, for my crimes I spent much of my free time over the Spring semester listening to Onyx Storm while walking my 10,000 steps a day, cleaning house (how are two empty nesters still making this much mess?!?), and sewing, the latter of which led to an interesting moment in which I'd forgotten that my partner was working from home and I was absolutely BLASTING my audiobook, the better to hear it over the noise of my sewing machine. He walked through the room on his way to make himself a sandwich, and was all, "Um, are you listening to porn?"

And then had to repeat himself three times because not only was I indeed listening to porn, but I was listening to it LOUDLY.

I told you after I read the last book that Xaden was going to eventually figure out some more uses for his shadow manifesting signet!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by • Emma Jade • (@emmajadereads)

I'm pretty sure it was Chapter 49...

Fair Warning: the following meeting of the Dragon Rider Smut Book Club is members-only, because there will be all the spoilers for all the books!

Here's my review of Fourth Wing.

Here's my review of Iron Flame.

And here's my review of Onyx Storm!

SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILIERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER

Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m pretty sure that Tiktok has damaged my ability to process information, because I genuinely really liked this book?

I mean, quite a lot of it was stupid, and there are too many characters and I refuse to be expected to have memorized the name of everyone’s dragon, and I am SO bored with Violet as the #bestest #specialest #mostdragonriderwhoeverdragonridedest, but I dunno. I drank the Kool-aid. I bonded with my captors. I collaborated with the fascist regime, and I enjoyed my time in Basgiath.

I was still annoyed on every page, though!

The most annoying thing about Violet, even more than her absolute bestestness/most specialness, is how she seems to just really feel all her feelings in her body. Every time Violet hears bad news or thinks a scary thought, we have to hear how her body responds. Are venin on the prowl? Well, then Violet’s throat is going to tighten in response. Does she have to keep yet another boring secret from Rhiannon? That’s sure going to put a pit in her stomach! Poor girl really needs several rounds of EMDR and a consultation with a gastroenterologist.

The thing that I really like about Violet, however, is her moral greyness. She’s actually not that great of a person, and I’m so into it! That BRILLIANT shit she pulls at Faris’ court is legitimately my favorite scene in this entire series, and I'm not sure why every problem is not being solved by permitting Violet to serial killer her way to success. 

The other best scene in the book is when the gang is on the luck island and fortune determines that Trager is shot right in front of their faces, and they just have to stand there and be all, "Ah, fortune... Cool, cool." These scenes have in common the idea that morality is inherently objectively grey in this world, variable according to who wields it, and if Yarros would just lean into that as her overarching premise instead of just a cool bit that she uses every now and then, the series as a whole would be so much stronger, more interesting, and more meaningful. Don't you feel like society as a whole, right at this moment, really needs to sit down and have a discussion about who determines what's right and what's wrong and where that puts those who don't agree with that determination?

Other than the fact that dragons are great and we should all ride them, I have to confess that I’m not actually sure why channeling from the ground is so bad? Yes, venin are assholes, but that seems to be about the venin, not the channeling, because Xaden channels and all it did was make him a sad, wet dishcloth of a man, not an asshole. And yes, depriving the ground and the people on it of their life force to the extent that they die is VERY bad, but Xaden can also channel from Violet’s conduit, we learn, so why can’t they all do that instead?

What I would prefer, and what would make me genuinely interested in Violet/Xaden, would be if channeling from the ground did make you absolutely 100% genuinely EVIL. Like, you can choose from Lawful Evil or Chaotic Evil or Neutral Evil, I don’t care, as long as that second part is EVIL. And Xaden can still be obsessed with Violet, even, after he’s evil--actually, I’d prefer it if he was, because that would be interesting! Just imagine him bopping along with the Scooby Gang, helping solve all their mysteries, trying to hide the whole time that he’s evil. It would be so good!

Since I don’t actually care about Violet/Xaden, I also don’t really care about the cliffhanger ending. But I DO hope Violet poisons someone about it, because that would be hilarious.

Also? The Irids are right.

Also also? Now there is a cat, and that is my favorite part.

Very last also: The Basgiath cadets are thirstier for patches than Girl Scouts, lol. I hope they DO pause their war long enough to commission themselves a Quest Squad patch!

Predictions for the next book:

• Violet is also somehow genetically venin and that’s why her parents offered her up to that death cult or whatever when she was a baby--it was to mask that part of her. But somehow she’ll figure out how to reveal it and then integrate it or whatever, and then she can teach Xaden.
• The venin aren’t actually bad. Maybe they’re just enslaved or something to a couple of bad leaders, so Violet and the gang will solve that problem and then everyone, everywhere, will be able to channel allllll the magic.
• I know this contradicts what I just said in the previous point, but my other idea is that Violet will somehow turn out to be inherently Good--I mean, isn't that what the best of the bestiness is all leading to?--and her union with Xaden, now objectively Bad because he's a venin, will work to unite the two sides of The Force to bring harmony to their world. And maybe then even all dragon riders will bond two dragons, a regular war dragon like always and a peaceful Irid that's always going to be talking hippie peace and love into their other ear.

Feel free to use my ideas, Yarros! In payment, just have Violet poison someone!

P.S. View all my reviews.

P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Read Death in Grand Canyon, Because I Needed To Be Told Not To Pick Up a Rattlesnake With My Bare Hands

Photos courtesy of a 2010 trip I took with the kids to the Grand Canyon. There's more than enough to see even when you're standing behind the guardrails and staying on the path!

Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon by Michael P. Ghiglieri
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Y’all know how obsessed I am with my Special Interest of Human Mishaps in National Parks. I like to tackle it through various lenses--missing people, or search and rescue, or the occasional paranormal theorist--but my favorite is this type of book that simply chronicles every single death, of every circumstance, in one specific national park.

While Death in Grand Canyon isn’t nearly as gruesome as Death in Yellowstone (sooooo many people have been boiled down to their bones in Yellowstone! So many people have been devoured by bears!), it’s still pretty gruesome. I now know so much about how to die of dehydration, and ALSO how to die of hyperhydration. Eat salty snacks while you chug your water, Friends!

As I gleefully announced every time my husband walked by while I was reading this book, the main risk factor for dying in Grand Canyon appears to be being male. Men are the ones pranking their poor daughters by pretending to fall off the rim and then slipping and actually doing so (Greg Austin Gingrich). Men are the ones trying to pick up rattlesnakes with their bare hands. Men are the ones ducking under guardrails to go stand on the rim, and when their young sons warn them that they’re not supposed to go past the rail, they respond, “You gotta take some chances in life,” then immediately step onto an unsupported snowbank and fall 350 feet (Richard Pena). And most of all, apparently, men are the ones insisting on peeing over the edge of the canyon, then getting dizzy and falling to their deaths with their dicks out.

And when men aren’t actively getting killed on their own behalf, they’re actively dragging their women into death instead. I am still absolutely fuming about the talented young athlete Margaret Bradley, whose amazing performance at the Boston Marathon and in her collegiate competitions had her planning for the Olympic Trials… after she visited her buddy Ryan in Flagstaff, of course. He was a runner, too, and had planned a fun fifteen-mile training run for them down and back at the Grand Canyon.

It wasn’t even so much that Ryan’s proposed trail was WAY longer than fifteen miles. Or even that they didn’t carry nearly enough water. Or even that when they got tired and dehydrated and Ryan couldn’t continue, they agreed that Bradley would pound on to their destination and send help. That’s all stupid, but every one of those mistakes could have been recovered from. The mistake that couldn’t be recovered from is when Ryan, who’d sheltered in place overnight, was rescued the next morning by a USGS employee who happened by, HE DID NOT TELL HER THAT HE HAD A COMPANION WHO WAS MISSING. Instead, he was like, “Yeah, I’ve got a buddy down at Phantom Ranch. Can you have someone tell her I’m moving the car?” Like, Dude literally just assumed that Margaret, suffering from dehydration and heatstroke, had blithely run all the way to Phantom Ranch and then just… what? Hung out there without breathing a word to anyone about HIM?!?

You guys. This dude hitched a ride with that USGS employee back to Flagstaff, still without breathing a word about his missing companion, and went to bed. Meanwhile, Margaret’s parents are freaking out that she hasn’t checked in with them, they’re calling everyone, they finally get the police to get ahold of Ryan early the next morning, and he finally tells the authorities the actual story so they can get a helicopter out to look for Margaret.

The coroner’s report stated that Margaret had died about 12-24 hours before the helicopter spotted her. If Ryan had told anyone that his running buddy had kept going and he didn’t know where she was, she wouldn’t have died lost and alone from heat stroke.

I swear, y’all, if you’re a man and you want to go to the Grand Canyon, you need to first make sure it’s your turn with the single brain cell that you all share.

Fortunately, or the book might be too depressing even for me, we also learn about plenty of heroes whose quick thinking and compassion save lives. In 2001, when a couple with four children went hiking down the canyon, they didn’t keep track of their kids and the three older kids ranged far ahead of the parents and toddler. The three older kids happened upon a Boy Scout troop whose leader, Jim Furgo, had just made the decision that the troop was going to forgo their fun overnight at the bottom of Hualapai Canyon because of the weather forecast, and when that Boy Scout leader saw three unaccompanied children hiking towards an area he considered unsafe, he roped them in with his troop, and they all hiked a mile to a much wider area. And so when the flash flood came through the canyon with its 20-foot-high wall of water, the parents and toddler died, but Jim Furgo had saved the lives of every child with him.

I framed it for the vista, so you can't tell that they're not sitting anywhere NEAR the edge. Don't sit on the edge of the Grand Canyon! Your brain can't make sense of the perspective and will make you lose your balance or feel faint as you're getting up.

Although the authors can be a bit glib at times, I appreciated their emphasis on what one can learn from these accounts. Listen to the park rangers and heed all warning signs. Bring more than enough water, and enough salty snacks to accompany them. Don’t hike alone, if possible. Ensure that someone outside your party knows where you will be and when you plan to return. Be mindful of local weather. Don’t sit on the edge of the Grand Canyon, because you’ll stumble or get vertigo when you get up and fall. Don’t use the Grand Canyon as your suicide plan, because it’s traumatic for the people who have to pick your meaty bits out of the dirt.

And don’t try to pick up a rattlesnake with your bare hands. Why are people even doing that in the first place?

P.S. View all my reviews.

P.P.S. P.S. Want to know more about my adventures in life, and my looming mid-life crisis? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

One More Site To Go Until I Earn Wilbear Wright

Local, independent museums are always so delightfully surprising and strange.

As in, I never would have told you that when I planned to hit up Butler County Warbirds, part of the Dayton Aviation Trail, early on a Saturday morning, I would also be visiting one of the best, most interesting, and absolutely most surprising private collections of World War II memorabilia.

But there we have it!

The primary goal of Butler County Warbirds is to preserve, protect, and restore its collection of antique planes and equipment, but the founder also made a small museum out of his own personal collection of military memorabilia, padded out with donations and loans from other collectors. The display is my favorite kind of intense--as in, there's a LOT of stuff, and a lot of it is the kind of everyday item or ephemera that it's more unusual to have had preserved for our present-day benefit. 

World War I gas mask

I remember this one from when the kids and I studied World War I. We engaged in trench warfare and listened to rousing tunes on Spotify!

A newspaper is usually a great example of ephemera you wouldn't normally see preserved, but people actually often saved entire newspapers when there was a big headline. It doesn't make it any less interesting to see, though!

The displays are well-organized chronologically and by theme, but one place where there's room for a research-minded volunteer to contribute is in explanation of provenance, meaning, and context. The volunteer docents had excellent general knowledge but weren't able to speak about specific pieces, so I had to martial my patience and bide my time until I could look everything up at home, ahem.

For instance, check out this INSANE KNIFE!!!

Have you ever seen anything more baller outside of a movie? It's apparently a Skull and Cobra Fighting Knife, and in my enthusiasm I just happened to take a photo that shows that it's also the even rarer "pig nose" variant, so probably made for a Marine with a blade repurposed from another knife. It's interesting that soldiers wanted fighting knives enough to make them for each other when they weren't being issued, but now I'm curious to know if soldiers were really out there knife fighting each other during World War II or what?

I thought it was cool to see a real syringe, but I wish I knew whose Purple Heart that was...

My partner and I had just seen some other examples of painted flying jackets when we were at the National Museum of the Air Force, but I love that this display has several of the pilot's things together:

This display was also pretty wild. The caption for this armband reads "JEWISH ARMBAND VILIJAMPOLE GHETTO":

That location is particularly notable because there was a well-documented underground resistance movement there, but over a year before the end of the war that ghetto was emptied and everyone who lived there was sent to be murdered in concentration camps. 

This page from the Zekelman Holocaust Center has examples of the typical badges that Jews were required to wear in different regions. The one in the photo matches the first example. I'm curious about the stamps on the badge in the photo, though. I've seen stamps on other badges, but I've never learned who did them or why.

Here's another amazing, and also baffling, artifact:

Its caption reads just "CONCENTRATION CAMP ARM BAND JEWISH HOMOSEXUAL," and I have so many questions! Obviously, I want to know where it came from, who wore it, what concentration camp they were confined in, and what happened to them. I'm also curious about how atypical the badge is:

People normally had to make their badges themselves, or obtain them from someone else who had handmade them, and this one is beautifully done. But it doesn't seem to be how they were technically meant to look, and I can't find another one like it. The closest comparison is here, interestingly also part of a private collection.

It's almost physically painful to look at it and not know who had to wear it and what happened to them, much less what happened afterwards that led it to a display case in a tiny museum in Ohio. 

After the Butler County Warbirds--and its Dayton Aviation Trail stamp!--we went to Wright "B" Flyer, Inc., another small non-profit that makes and flies recreations of the Wright airplanes. 

We got to actually climb up and sit inside a working recreation of the Wright B Flyer--

--and an actual Model T, including honking the ooga horn--

--and check out another modernized version of the Wright B Flyer that's still in progress. At this point, I think we've encountered 50 Wright Flyer images, models, and recreations!

Here's a good video that shows what the organization does. Pay a lot of attention to that good footage of wing warping--that's the Wright brothers' biggest innovation!

At some point while touring the Butler County Warbirds planes with two docents, I asked about how people were able to fly these DIY and kit-built literal airplanes. Was the FAA not... concerned? That's when I learned that there is literally such a designation as "experimental airplane," and yes, you CAN get the FAA to come to your backyard shed and certify your experimental airplane so you can tool it around unmonitored airfields!

Y'all. I think I found my mid-life crisis.

My other mid-life crisis plan is to buy land that has genuine prehistoric Native mounds on it and then, just, I don't know... roll around on all my mounds, I guess. While preserving and protecting them, of course.

So obviously, after all this airplane content, we had to 1) pick up Raising Cane's chicken (my favorite fast food place because the menu is so manageable, so PLEASE do not tell me who the company's owners donate money to or what other atrocities they've committed because I promise you I am boycotting enough businesses at it is) and 2) take it to the nearby Miamisburg Mound to eat it:

I did not realize it until we got there, but you can also CLIMB the mound!

So we did!

I find it frustrating when a mound like this doesn't seem to have been professionally studied in contemporary times (this excavation in the 1800s doesn't count, because they're also talking about how the mound definitely contained Nephilim skeletons, sigh), but I'm also horrified whenever I learn that a mound has been taken apart and then put back together just so people can see what's inside, so I guess there's no pleasing me.

When I buy my property with mounds on it, you're not even going to so much as look at them while you've got a garden shovel in your hand or I swear to God I'll bite you.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!