Posey Magazine May/June 2012

May/June2012

www.poseymagazine.com

May/June 2012

A magazine for and about

Posey County, Indiana Copyright 2012

www.poseymagazine.com

No material can be reproduced without the written permission of Posey Magazine.

Contact us at poseymagazine@aol.com

Posey Postcard — Nestled in the rolling hills of Posey County, this bucolic scene replays itself hundreds of times, reminding us of its quiet beauty.

I’m just sayin’ — “Bad habits come with bad decisions,” Kayla Anslinger wrote in this issue’s latest prompt. Yet another student, Lexie Tomlinson, wrote “Bad Habits — everyone has them.” All of our students had a pretty good idea of what bad habits mean to them.

Posey Then & Now — In 1898 the Independent Order of Odd Fellows built a Romanesque Revival style building that eventually housed the Peoples Bank and Trust Co., in Mt. Vernon. Today, the Old National Bank anchors that corner.

Cover story

Photograph by J. Bruce Baumann

Doug Saltzman —Life on the edge

You can slice it any way you want, but the Poseyville Town Marshal creates some of the most beautiful knives you have ever laid your eyes on. All are works of art, capped off with handles of mammoth teeth, redwood trees and giraffe bones. How did he come to making knives? That’s part of the interesting cover story on Doug Saltzman by writer Linda Neal Reising.

Special thanks to the following for their help

Feathers — The eastern meadowlark is not a member of the lark family at all.

It’s really part of the Icteridea family.

Writer Sharon Sorenson explains in this issue’s “Feathers.”

NEW LIFE — It was the warmest month of March on record, forcing an early spring on Posey County, and bringing a plethora of beauty to our area. Read Charlene Tolbert’s essay, with a photographic essay by J. Bruce Baumann.

Alison Baumann, Judy Grebe, Donnie Martin, Joseph Poccia, Kathy Riordan, Kevin Smith, Sandy Smith

THE UNINVITED VISITOR T

his spring, as with most springs, Posey County people scanned the landscape searching for signs of life. And boy, did we find them this year.

A fearless crocus poked its little head up. Then came the forsythia with its signature shade signaling that the earth had wriggled free from winter’s grasp. Daffodils and jonquils tripped over each other in patches and clumps in gardens. Redbud trees, pear trees and star magnolias paraded up and down streets beckoning the dogwoods to join them. We were glad to see them, every last one of them.

And then came the dandelions. If we don’t hate them, we Americans sure don’t like them. At least most of us don’t. We use an estimated 80 million pounds of herbicides annually to eradicate the omnipresent pests.

But these masters of survival persevere. They turn up in lawns, roadsides, parks, and cracks in sidewalks. And small wonder — a single dandelion can produce 2,000 seeds per year. Its flower head can turn to a seed head overnight, and each seed has a tiny parachute with which to spread far and wide in the wind.

The more you try to weed up a dandelion, the faster it will grow. Its taproot is deep, twisted and brittle, and unless you remove it completely, it will regenerate. It is a fast grower. It can go from bud to seed in a matter of days. If left undisturbed, an individual plant

can live for years, and its root will keep going down, sometimes as far as 15 feet.

So, this year I have decided to reconsider the uninvited visitor to my otherwise pristine lawn. Or, in other words, if you can’t beat’em, then eat’em. The plant has an ancient heritage. Its name comes from the Old French dent-de-lion, meaning “ lion’s tooth,” referring to its long, coarsely-toothed leaves. Those long leaves are edible. In fact, the entire plant is edible. The greens, best harvested early before they flower and again in late fall after a frost, are tasty in salads, sautéed or steamed. They are said to taste like chicory and endive, with an intense heartiness overlying a bitter tinge.

The flowers can be used to make jelly or wine.

The roasted, ground roots make a caffeine-free coffee. The pesky plant is packed with nutrients — more vitamin A than spinach, more vitamin C than tomatoes — and it’s loaded with iron, calcium and potassium.

Dandelions have been used in Chinese traditional medicine for over 1,000 years, primarily as a diuretic. They provide food for honeybees and some butterflies. They are actually good for your lawn because their widespreading roots loosen hard-packed soil.

If dandelions were liberally sprinkled in a field instead of our yards, we’d call them wildflowers. If they were expensive and hard to cultivate, we’d treasure them. But no, we call them weeds and wage war against them.

Let’s remember that their seeds are things that wishes are made on. Who doesn’t have a memory of being a child and blowing the parachutes off the stalks of dandelions and making a wish? If you could get all the seeds off in one breath, your wish would come true.

This season I’m enjoying my free garden of dandelions and waiting for my wish for morels to come true.

—Charlene Tolbert Contributing Editor Posey Magazine She can be contacted at poseymagazine@aol.com

POSEY POSTCARD

“Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.”

—Oscar Wilde

© Photograph by J. Bruce Baumann

By Linda Neal Reising What do woolly mammoth teeth, redwood trees, and giraffe bones have in common? They have all managed to find their way to Doug Saltzman, the Poseyville Town Marshal, who turns them into works of art.

A reserved, down-to-earth kind of guy, Saltzman balks at the idea of being called an artist. He never set out to be one. He graduated from North Posey High in 1971 and worked at Evansville Food Distributors for 21 years. In 1975, he joined the Posey County Sheriff’s Reserve Deputy Program, whose volunteer members are called in when there is a shortage of regular deputies. In 1992 he became the Town Marshal of Poseyville. “To the best of my knowledge and according to the town council we have, I’m the longest standing Town Marshal we’ve ever had. Be that good or bad, I don’t know.”

Š Photographed by J. Bruce Baumann

The Poseyville Town Marshal makes a traffic stop after radar shows the driver was exceeding the speed limit. A routine check finds this driver was not only speeding, but was driving on a license that had expired six years earlier.

Poseyville is a far cry from the mean streets of New York City or Miami, but the job has had its moments. Saltzman remembers stopping a woman who had made only the slightest pretense of stopping at a stop sign.

When he asked her what the big hurry was, she told him she had a sick baby in the car and was trying to get him to the doctor. Saltzman was just about to start in on his speech about how many times he’d heard that hackneyed excuse, when the baby, on cue, “went BLAAAH…” laughs Saltzman, imitating a dramatic vomit all over the back seat.

Saltzman quickly retreated from the woman’s car window and sent her on her way, with the best wishes of the Town Marshal.

The job has exposed Saltzman to real danger, especially with the advent of methmaking in the County, as well as low comedy and the satisfaction of helping fellow citizens in times of distress. But it was during sick leave following neck surgery in 2005 that he found his true passion. “I was off four months and pretty bored. I picked up a magazine, and it had an ad for a [knife] kit that you could buy and put together,” he says, “I thought, ‘You know, I think I could do that.’”

Saltzman made his first knife as a present for his father, and he was hooked. He started buying materials from knife supply companies. “Finally, it just progressed into buying a flat piece of steel and completely making them by hand.”

Despite his protestations, Saltzman takes every aspect of the creative process of knife-making seriously. “If I’m designing it, it will come to my mind, and then I’ll draw it out on paper and get it like I want it. Then, actually, I’ll cut that drawing out and trace it onto a piece of steel. I use what they call the stock removal method,” he explains, “which means I take a blank piece of steel and grind away everything that don’t look like a knife.”

Next, he shapes the blade and drills holes. “Then the long process comes in,” Saltzman says with a tinge of pride. “I sit down and hand-sand all the grinding marks out of it and polish it to a mirror finish. Then I buff and polish it.”

The following step is the heat-

A small skinner knife sports a mammoth tooth handle.

Raw materials: steel blanks (top 3), beveled blades, and pins to hold the handle.

Saltzman begins the process of polishing a knife blade in his workshop in Poseyville.

This boot knife has a white bone handle and onyx spacer.

2011 National Wild Turkey Foundation Knife of the Year. The steel blade is set off with a stabilized burl wood handle and mosaic pins. Saltzman makes his own sheaths, but the turkey art was created by Donnie Martin.

Handle material: Mammoth tooth

Stabilized burl wood

A turquoise with gold pyrite handle sets off this beautiful boot knife.

Stabilized redwood

Fossilized brain coral

This Damascus blade, with a California buckeye handle, is truly a work of art. After grinding and heat treatment, the blade is dipped in ferric chloride to bring out the pattern. A fileworked blade spine adds a finishing touch, making this a classic skinner knife.

treating process. Saltzman sends the blade to a Texas company to be heated to 2000 degrees to make it hard. Then, after cooling it down, they re-heat the blade to around 400 degrees, which makes the metal pliable, not brittle. When the blades are returned, they are “messed up again” and require re-buffing.

“Then you just start putting the guards and handles on it.”

This is where the pure artistry comes in. Most of Saltzman’s knife customers come to him from word of mouth, and they’re usually people who want something unique.

“I had a guy that contacted me…his father had killed a huge deer back in the late 40s or early 50s. The bases of the rack were about

this big,” says Saltzman, curving his fingers and thumb, “and had a whole lot of little tips coming off it. He wanted me to take that rack and make two knives out of it, one for him and one for his brother.”

Deer antler is just one of the materials Saltzman has used. “Your imagination is the only thing that limits the stuff you can find,” he says. And Saltzman has found a remarkable array of “stuff” to turn into oneof-a-kind knives, including elephant ivory (before it was banned), fossilized brain coral, and dyed box elder. He holds up a piece of material that looks like a flat slab of marble.

“What would you guess this is? This is the tooth from a woolly mammoth. This piece

of tooth right here is over 15,000 years old.

They dig this out of Alaska, Siberia, and places like that where a lot of mammoths lived and died.”

Saltzman has created knives for skinning animals and filleting fish as well as traditional kitchen uses. Saltzman claims, “Every knife that I make can be used. And I would say 80% of them never are.”

Why would people be willing to spend $200 and up for knives they’re never going to use? It takes only a look at one of Saltzman’s gorgeous hand-made knives—ranging from one as small as a nail file to a huge Bowie— to understand why he has customers who tell

him, “I want you to make me two knives a year, every year, until I tell you to stop.”

As he completes each knife, Saltzman applies his stamped logo—his name, hometown, and a tiny knife outline. And he takes a photograph of every finished piece.

That’s important for him, because he keeps none of his own handiwork. “I do not own one of my own knives,” Saltzman states. “I own them until I get rid of them, of course, but I’ve never been able to keep one of the hand-made ones long enough to have it.

Anytime that I think I have one I’d like to keep, here comes somebody along who wants it worse than I do.”

A Posey County resident since 1980, Linda Neal Reising lives in the historic “Cale House,” where she writes fiction and poetry, as well as fending off rowdy raccoons and voracious Virginia creeper. She can be contacted at: poseymagazine@aol.com.

Poetry

Faded Gone now are the men who erected clothes lines, their backs clad in stained white cotton, sleeves rolled up along tanned arms, hefting shovels of hoof-shaped soil.

Next they set the silver legs, twin topless crosses, monuments to godliness, cleanliness.

Then the art of stringing, stretching the wires as if threading a Gibson, twisting, twisting, fine-tuning the tautness until the sway-backed line stiffened, held starched, stiff enough to pluck a song.

Whatever happened to the men who built clothes lines?

They faded to memory like the smell of sun-baked sheets and the rhythmic flap, flap of shirt tails riding the wind. — Linda Neal Reising

Š Photograph by J. Bruce Baumann

THE BASIC RULES FOR CLOTHESLINES: 1. You had to hang the socks by the toes...

NOT the top.

2. You hung pants by the BOTTOM/cuffs...

NOT the waistbands.

3. You had to WASH the clothesline(s) before hanging any clothes - walk the entire length of each line with a damp cloth around the lines.

4. You had to hang the clothes in a certain order, and always hang “whites” with “whites,” and hang them first.

5. You NEVER hung a shirt by the shoulders always by the tail! What would the neighbors think?

6. Wash day on a Monday! NEVER hang clothes on the weekend, or on Sunday, for Heaven’s sake!

7. Hang the sheets and towels on the OUTSIDE lines so you could hide your “unmentionables” in the middle (perverts & busybodies, y’know!)

8. It didn’t matter if it was sub-zero weather... clothes would “freeze-dry.”

9. ALWAYS gather the clothes pins when taking down dry clothes! Pins left on the lines were “tacky”!

10. If you were efficient, you would line the clothes up so that each item did not need two clothes pins, but shared one of the clothes pins with the next washed item.

11. Clothes off of the line before dinner time, neatly folded in the clothes basket, and ready to be ironed.

12. IRONED???!! Well, that’s a whole OTHER subject!

— Author Unknown

ŠPhotographe by J. Bruce Baumann

Feathers/By Sharon Sorenson

EADOWLARKS M Stocky, potbellied, short- tailed, pointy faced, long billed

The eastern meadowlark’s song stopped me in my tracks, jamming on

the car brakes, sliding down the window, listening to be sure. While some folks describe their whistle-song as “WE’he, SEE’ee you” or “seeohseeyeer,” to me it pronounces to one and all, “Spring of the-a year.”

Meadowlarks, like other feathered creatures, sense lengthening daylight, a phenomenon that kicks in their hormones. Thus, atop fence posts, utility wires, or other high perches, they burst forth in exuberance—to attract a mate, to stake out territory, and, unwittingly, to make music for my ears.

So what’s to get all excited about? As one ornithologist wrote, “[This] boldly patterned fencepost singer is as synonymous with eastern farmland as the robin is synonymous with suburban lawns.”

And so it once was. But in the last 40 years, meadowlark populations have crashed, declining by 72%. In fact, these brilliant yellow-breasted birds rank sixth on the list of the top 20 common birds in decline. And it’s all due to habitat loss.

Eastern meadowlarks, which are really not larks but part of the Icteridea family, cousins to blackbirds and orioles, stay with us yearround, nesting on the ground in overgrown weedy fields and pastures in spring and summer, turning to grassy roadsides and plowed or harvested fields in fall and winter. But such habitats are disappearing; so meadowlarks often choose a second-best alternative: hayfields.

Unfortunately, area hayfields get a typical first mowing in late May,

Eastern meadowlarks, which are really not larks but part of the Icteridea family

Š Photograph by Sharon Sorenson

© Photographed by Sharon Sorenson

before babies fledge. Nests fail.

The meadowlark’s silhouette—stocky, potbellied, short tailed, pointy-faced, long billed—resembles that of a starling. But its bold black V-shaped necklace set against sunshine yellow boasts elegance no starling can match. In flight, white outer tail feathers flash unmistakably below short triangular wings; but upon landing, the meadowlark melts into the grasslands, its brown-patterned back a camouflage.

A ground feeder, the meadowlark forages with a slow waddling step, picking grass and weed seeds in winter, switching to insects, especially grasshoppers and crickets,

insect larvae and grubs in spring and summer.

Thus, as hayfields subjected to pesticide applications grow sterile, the meadowlarks’ food source is destroyed even when mowing is delayed.

So my excitement at hearing meadowlarks in my Posey County neighborhood was compounded by the excitement of hearing them—period. With fewer than 30% of the birds remaining, in coming years they may no longer announce “Spring of the-a year” to our children’s children.

But we can help. We can wait until mid June to mow hayfields. We can quit using

pesticides that kill birds’ food supply—and not just that of meadowlarks but of all birds.

And we can quit destroying habitats in our ever-growing compulsion to be neat-nicks, always mowing, clearing, and spraying herbicides. The magic of “Spring of the-a year” is surely worth the changes.

Sharon and Charles Sorenson settled in St. Philip in 1966 and continue to improve their certified backyard wildlife habitat that to date has hosted 161 bird species and 53 butterfly species. Send your bird questions and comments to them or contact them for publicvenue programs, conferences, or seminars at forthebirdscolumn@yahoo.com.

Posey Portrait

Š Photograph by J. Bruce Baumann

Marge Bundy, from Savah, is an 80-year-old three times a week bowler, with a 130 average

Posey Portrait will feature a random photograph of a friend or neighbor — in a place we call home

I’m just sayin’

BAD HABITS You know it’s bad, wrong. You wish you would’ve picked something better. You should really learn to control yourself, but you just can’t shake that bad habit, can you?

Jessica Wilkins North Posey High When someone mentions bad habits, many people think of biting their nails. A bad habit that many people have is drugs. Not only is the person destroying his or her body, they’re destroying the lives of their loved ones who have to watch and suffer. Bad habits can do more than damage your cuticle; they can destroy your life!

Miranda Holbrook Mt. Vernon High You don’t make habits; habits make you.

Some are good; some are bad. Some occur when you’re happy, some when you’re sad, like biting your nails, tapping your feet, or blowing a bubble in class when you’re sleepy.

Or like trying your hardest in whatever you do, habits good and bad make you you!

Keandric Givens Mt. Vernon High Some bad habits aren’t so bad. Biting your nails is a habit that isn’t as bad as drinking or

smoking, etc… Bad habits are hard to break.

It takes dedication to stop. Some people go back to their habits and some people succeed in breaking their habits. You’ll always have the feeling of wanting to go back.

Taylor Franklin North Posey High We all have bad habits, Either biting your nails or using foul language.

But there comes a time in everyone’s life, When you have to decide Whether or not you let your bad habits Become bad decisions.

Kalin Hastings Mt. Vernon High People these days have really bad driving habits. There are signals on your vehicle for a reason, People! Our society needs to learn good habits while driving. My parents are hesitant to let me ride with a friend to any place. I don’t blame them!

Ty Hurley Mt. Vernon High When we are children, bad habits are considered “cute accidents.” Then when we enter elementary school, bad habits aren’t cute anymore. We begin to get into trouble.

Then we are “big kids” in junior high and high school; we think “high” about ourselves.

We are now “invincible,” and bad habits are everywhere. We should know better; so it’s up to us now if we commit the bad habits or if we endorse the better ones.

Dalton Schaefer Mt. Vernon High Everyone has bad habits; some are worse than others. We don’t notice them, but they are there. We try to stop them, but they just come back. Bad habits really do “suck!”

Kenadee Claycomb Mt. Vernon High Bad Habits -- everyone has them. If you say you don’t, you’re lying. Bad habits are just a part of the human race. You have to accept them, if you want to accept people.

Lexie Tomlinson Mt. Vernon High

Bad habits are flaws that everyone has, that aren’t very easy to fix: caring too much about what people think of you. Bad habits ultimately are made only to be fixed. If no one had bad habits, that would mean everyone was perfect and identical. Imagine how your life would be if everyone was just alike. No one

would be spontaneous and interesting; if no one had bad habits, our daily life we have now would dramatically change.

Josie Mercer Mt. Vernon Jr. High “Bad habits” come with bad decisions.

Bad decisions come with bad consequences.

Why make bad choices, if the choice comes with bad consequences?

Smoking is a bad habit; with it comes cancer.

Drinking is a bad habit; with it comes liver failure and a broken family.

Make a good decision, and keep your world “Bad Habit” free!

Kayla Anslinger Mt. Vernon High Do you have bad habits? They are things we do without thinking. We repeat them every day. It’s somethings we have been committing day after day. We all have habits.

My habit is drumming on everything.

What’s yours?

Austin Colson Mt. Vernon High What’s your bad habit? Most of us have something that we tend to do that we would just like to get rid of. Some people bite their

I’m Just Sayin’ is a sounding board for young people. All middle and high school students (including homeschoolers) in Posey County are invited to submit essays, stories or poems on the designated topics for each issue.

Submissions must be no longer than six sentences. Topic and deadline for the next issue: July/August Death Deadline: May 20, 2012

nails while others procrastinate to the point of failure. Some have more serious cases, like compulsive lying or not paying attention to anything. There’s always an internal victory when you solve your bad habit, but to do that, you first have to know what it is. So, what’s your bad habit?

Cody Chase Mt. Vernon High Everyone has bad habits. It’s a known fact that some people hate to admit. Some are worse than others, but still are considered just bad habits. My bad habit involves not getting enough sleep. I always stay up late and end up regretting it every morning! Habits aren’t easy to break, especially if one doesn’t admit to it.

Tiffany Collins Mt. Vernon High

Everywhere you go, bad habits can be found.

Wherever you go, they are always around.

Some are quite obvious; some are not.

Some smoke, some drink, some affect thought.

Some are just trying to rule out their sorrow.

Others seek attention; Some struggle just to see tomorrow.

Brandon Mann Mt. Vernon High Bad habits -- we all have them. Every person has a habit; people do something they accept or are ashamed of. Habits can be kept secret; a habit can be a guilty pleasure. A person who is ashamed of his habit doesn’t accept it as a part of himself, but can’t get rid of it. A person who accepts his habit may be slowly dying; some habits can go too far and cross the thin line between habit and addiction.

This habit can be seen in a large majority of the population, in all classes, rich or poor, young and old.

Elijah Gray Mt. Vernon High

Posey Then & Now Circa 1905

Courtesy of Old National Bank

The corner of Fourth and Main Streets, across the street from Posey County’s imposing Courthouse, has long been a prestigious location in downtown Mt. Vernon. In 1898, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the oldest fraternal organization in the city, constructed a 3½-story stone and brick office building in the ornate Romanesque Revival style. Local businesses occupied the first floor of the building and rented offices the second floor; the Odd Fellows reserved only the third and fourth floors, including the four-story cornice at the corner, for their own use.

The portion of the lot north of the IOOF Building belonged to Mt. Vernon businessman Hiram Barker, who in the same year built the two-story Barker Building in the same architectural style. Initially, Barker rented the offices in his building primarily to attorneys.

In 1907, the newly-formed People’s Bank and Trust Company became the primary tenant of the IOOF Building and soon merged with the other two Mt. Vernon banks. In 1970, People’s purchased the Barker Building and modified the two buildings by removing walls that separated them, so that the lobby of the Bank comprised the first floor of both historic buildings.

Posey Then & Now Circa 2012

© Photographed by J. Bruce Baumann

Despite the interior merger, the impressive and historically important facades of the IOOF and Barker Buildings remained substantially as they were built at the end of the 19th century. Together, they occupied a leading place in local history. In 1985, they were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

By the early 1990s, however, it became clear that the old buildings were no longer adequate to meet the needs of what had become Old National Bank. In 1996, Old National erected the brick building that now occupies the east and north sides of the lot. The corner where the historic buildings stood holds sidewalks, landscaping and the Old National sign, which is framed by decorative stones from the roof of the IOOF Building. Except for basement space leased to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the bank occupies the entire building.

In 2003, much of downtown Mt. Vernon was listed as the Mount Vernon Downtown Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places, with the Old National Bank Building designated a “non-contributing property.” The IOOF and Barker Buildings remained on the Register until 2011, 15 years after their demolition.

Out of the frame/J. Bruce Baumann

Out of the frame will focus on moments found, without a story or context. We all pass something that catches our eye and tweaks our curiosity during the course of everday living. Sometimes it makes us smile or even chuckle. You might say it tickles the mind. Other times it makes us think about life in a serious way. Regardless of how we react, in that instant the image touches a part of our brain or heart and becomes part of who we are.

For the moment it takes us out of the frame.

EW LIFE N &

this was the loviest of them all

By Charlene Tolbert Photographed By J. Bruce Baumann

Ithedo some of my best thinking driving through fields and hills and hollows of Southern

Indiana, especially Posey County. It’s beautiful in all times of the year, but I think spring is at the top of the lovely list. You have to be careful this year, though, if you blink too long at spring, summer might just show up. And if winter is a memory, it’s a fleeting one.

This past winter was the fourth-warmest in the United States since record-keeping began in

REDBUD TREE — Cercis canadensis

1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In neighboring Illinois, the first three months of the year were the warmest three winter months since 1895.

The National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky., says the daily high temperatures in Posey and adjacent counties made March the warmest on record.

But you don’t have to rely on records and thermometers to tell you that spring was an early arrival this year. All you have to do is look around.

The fields and ditches along the roads are painted a bright gold with the nodding heads of wildflowers visited by flocks of red-winged blackbirds. The redbud trees have almost all leafed out, leaving their purplish blossoms just a fading memory.

The dogwoods were close on their heels, causing folks who use them as the centerpiece of their spring festivals to consider this year hosting the “Remember Dogwood Festival.”

Knockout roses are already

NEWBORN FAWN — Odocoileus virginianus

RHODODENDRON — Rhododendron catawbiense

FORSYTHIA — Forsythia suspensa

SAUCER MAGNOLIA — Magnolia X soulangeana

DOGWOOD — Cornus florida

blooming and wisteria and lilacs are sending their fragrances through the night air.

Spring is the season for rebirth, renewal and regrowth.

The new life that comes with the change of the season is

already abundant wherever you look. Rabbits, those prolific little procreators, are an ancient symbol of fertility and life for a very good reason. The critters are everywhere in my neighborhood.

I was driving to a friend’s

house in a suburban subdivision just a few days ago. There is a vacant lot down the street next to what is usually either a corn or bean field. When I rounded the corner, my headlights picked up what I first thought were

some dogs out for a final romp before going in for the night.

Nope. It was a group of five does, munching grass and nuzzling each other. For all I know, they were exchanging recipes.

I suppose most people have

CLEMATIS — Clematis X ‘Nelly Moser’

VIOLETS — Viola odorata

special feelings about their homes and the surrounding countryside, those things that leave a mark on our memories and our characters.

Maybe it’s spring that makes us conscious of those feelings as we shake off the doldrums of winter and embrace new life.

I have always thought that William Herschell, the Hoosier poet, got close to that feeling when he wrote:

Ain’t God good to Indiana?

Other spots may look as fair, But they lack th’ soothin’ somethin’ In th’ Hoosier sky and air.

They don’t have that snug-up feelin’ Like a mother gives a child; They don’t soothe you, soul an’ body, With their breezes soft an’ mild.

They don’t know th’ joys of Heaven Have their birthplace here below; Ain’t God good to Indiana?

Ain’t He, fellers? Ain’t He, though? ” Charlene Tolbert is a nearly lifelong Hoosier who continues to be captivated by the people and places of Southern Indiana.

She can be contacted at poseymagazine@aol.com.

LAKE ALGAE

Out In The Back Of Beyond/Editor’s Notebook T

his issue has been a delight to gather and publish. So many beautiful things to share and so little time to find them. Over the past two years we’ve made an effort to raise the bar with each new issue, producing the next magazine with the hope that it will be better than the last. The glorious spring weather in Posey County offered a cornucopia of visual treasures. We hope you will find it to be a reprieve from what can be a very hostile world.

As the name Posey Magazine suggests, all of our stories come from Posey County, Indiana. Our friends and neighbors suggest ideas for the magazine, and each proposal is given careful consideration. We admit that we get ideas that just don’t fit our notion of what works for the magazine and, therefore, we have to pass on them. But, let us be clear, we need your input to keep us going. We’re particularly interested in folks that are doing unusual things and like to

talk about it. The Poseyville Marshal, Doug Saltzman, who is featured in this issue, is a good example. Young photographer Josh Hayden offered us a chance to view the world with an appreciation of seeing everyday items in a different light. Woodcarver Donnie Martin, featured last year, was another story that displayed the many talents found in our county. And gravedigger Ed Russell, our first issue profile, has passed the 5,000 grave mark, according to his wife, Margaret. So, if you have an idea, pass it on to poseymagazine@ aol.com. We’d love to hear from you.

free. Unconditional love should always come with unconditional care.

This past month came with terrifying news that our beloved nine year old golden retriever, Tug, had a cancerous tumor growing in his mouth. A family dog is more than a pet, so you can imagine the heartache we felt with the bad news. But two operations later, Tug looks a little like a platypus with a wagging tail. In a couple of weeks he should be back to normal and cancer

Here’s a quote to think about: “Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.

Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.” —Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

Which reminds us — Bob the bobcat is still being held captive by the Indiana Department of National Resources. It’s been more than a year since he was illegally taken from Posey County. The system keeps delaying any proceedings that would send him back to the woods of Posey.

We can only guess that the DNR thinks everyone will either get tired of fighting it, or that we’ll just forget about it. Fat chance.

J. Bruce Baumann Editor Posey Magazine poseymagazine@aol.com

Surf’s Up

© Photograph by J. Bruce Baumann

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