Franklin Bike Trail: Start of My Aerobic Fitness Program

Today I walked about six miles along the new stretch of bike route between Franklin and Crain's Run Park just south of Miamisburg. This is one of the most interesting and beautiful trail segments in the Miami Valley. In downtown Franklin the trail runs along the riverfront alongside a street that is lined with historic streetlights. It passes the restored log cabin, built in 1805, that served as Franklin's first post office, a nice water fountain, and a highway bridge (not part of the trail) with interesting cast iron lion sculptures guarding its approaches. After you leave downtown the trail runs along the top of a levee with the river on one side and the dry bed of an old hydraulic canal that once served to provide water-power to Franklin's industries on the other. A couple of miles upstream from Franklin the trail passes the head gates of this canal and the ruins of the Chautauqua Dam. This dam once served to maintain the river's depth at a level sufficient to ensure a steady flow of water through the canal.

Old Franklin Post Office

Statue of lion on bridge in downtown Franklin

At this point there are also two bridge piers standing in the river, the only remains of a pedestrian bridge that once connected a station on the east bank of the river that served the old interurban line that linked Dayton and Cincinnati with the Chautauqua grounds on the west bank of the river. The Chautauqua was for decades one of the cultural and entertainment hot spots of the Miami Valley. It was a product of the Chautauqua movement that swept the country at the turn of the twentieth century and flourished for several decades. Groups of performers would follow regular circuits traveling from community to community presenting everything from Broadway plays to lectures to musical performances. Residents would turn out by the thousands for what for most must have been the highlight of the summer. In the 1920s over ten thousand communities participated in the Chautauqua movement with over forty-five million people attending (compare this figure to the total U.S. population in 1920 which stood at one hundred and six million). The Chautauqua near Franklin was also one of the favored swimming spots in the Miami Valley. It had the distinction of being the only grounds in Ohio purchased solely for Chautauqua purposes.

About a half-mile upriver from the dam is Crain's Run Nature Park. This park is a great place for a jogger or bicyclist to get a drink, use the restroom facilities, and rest. Across the road from Crain's Run Nature Park is a lock chamber from the old Miami and Erie Canal that was restored in 1990. This was a shipping canal that ran parallel to the Miami River and the Franklin hydraulic canal, and which represented the economic backbone of Dayton and the Miami Valley prior to the ascendancy of the railroads. Construction on this canal began in 1825. This particular set of locks dates back to 1829.

The scenery along the trail is outstanding. The entire route runs along the riverbank and most of it is heavily forested. There are numerous places were you can stop and lean against the wooden railing to rest and get a breathtaking view of the river. The best part for me, though, was getting to cool off with a banana split and Pepsi at the Tasty Freeze in downtown Franklin afterward! This has been one of my favorite stops since I was a kid.

This begins the aerobic phase of my new fitness program. I plan to alternate between strength training and aerobic workouts on a regular basis, lifting weights every other day and walking, jogging, or cycling on the other days. Saturday and one other day through the week of my choosing will be rest days.

Springfield Museum of Art

Today I decided to visit the Springfield Museum of Art for the first time. The vast majority of the works on display in this museum are the products of artists with a local connection. For a number of years Springfield was the national leader in the production of agricultural implements. Among the numerous manufacturers of agricultural equipment based in Springfield were Champion Reaper and a company that was one of the forerunners of International Harvester. The second largest industrial complex under one roof in the world was located on East Street. The mower was invented here by William Whiteley in 1851. In 1880 the William N. Whiteley Company produced more farm implements than all the factories in Chicago combined!
During this time period there was a great deal of prosperity in Springfield and this enticed a number of very talented artists to set up shop here.

The museum has on display several excellent Hudson River School paintings. Being the nature lover that I am, this was the part of the exhibit that I enjoyed the most. I also enjoyed several landscape paintings of scenes along Buck Creek painted in the nineteenth century by the Frankenstein brothers, Gustavus and Frank. They stand out for their exceptional clarity of detail and brightness of color. As a side note, I learned that Sherwood Anderson was a student at Wittenberg and while enrolled there lived with his brother Frank, a local artist, in a house known as “The Oaks” that once stood on South Wittenberg Street a few blocks from my home.

The museum is currently hosting a traveling exhibit of lithographs and etchings that were produced by artists who were participants in the Associated American Artists project. This was an intriguing endeavor launched in the depth of the Great Depression (1934) with the goal of bridging the divide between artists and the mass audience by making available signed works by highly acclaimed artists at affordable prices. The program initially met with a great deal of skepticism. Upon being approached for support one prominent businessman retorted “the people want food and you’re offering them art!” In spite of this the program proved to be a huge success. Catalogues were printed so that potential customers could browse through the available artworks at home and fifty department stores nationwide agreed to display and sell signed etchings and lithographs. The program filled a cultural void by making high quality art available to a vast audience that had previously been unable to afford it while at the same time also serving the interests of artists who had grown weary of being forced to deal with a small class of wealthy patrons. Most of the works on display at the museum feature scenes of everyday life, with farm and rural life being the dominant theme. Among my personal favorites were several lithographs by Grant Wood dealing with Iowa farm life and one work in partular by the Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias.

My favorite work in the museum was the lithograph shown at the beginning of this post, “Rhumba" (1946). This was my first exposure to Covarrubias' work. When I got home I jumped on the Internet and did some research on Covarrubias. He was a twentieth century Renaissance man. Covarrubias made signal contributions in the fields of art, modern dance, archaeology, theater, and anthropology. As an anthropologist in Bali he was instrumental in documenting a vanishing way of life, a way of life that was also the subject of much of his greatest art. He was also an expert in the history of Mexican art and culture. His intellectual pursuits fueled his artistic endeavors and vice versa. The home that he shared with his wife, an accomplished master of modern dance in her own right, just outside of Mexico City was just as much of a favorite stopping point for traveling artists and intellectuals as the home of Gertrude Stein had been in Paris.

Ooh-rah!

Today I finally did it! After months of debating the issue I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods in Beavercreek and bought a home gym. It set me back about five hundred dollars after I factor in the weights, which were sold separately, but it is an excellent piece of equipment. It has a lat bar, bench press, apparatus for chest exercises, a leg developer, a v-bar, and a number of other options. I can use it to develop every major muscle group. It is a smith machine, so its safety features agive me the choice of performing bench presses alone if I have to. I did my first workout on it tonight.

I plan to begin an aerobic program this week. The plan is to gradually get my body accustomed to a higher level of physical activity by adopting a routine that commences with progressively longer walks on the bike trails and culminates in a combination of cycling and jogging by next spring. My goal is to be as strong as I can be and drop my weight down into the 175-180 pound range. It would be fun to be able to participate in a number of the 5K runs next year!

I set up an account with ActiveBody.org. This site allows you to record your workouts and goals. It includes charts, a calendar, and graphs that allow you to track your progress toward your goals.

Springfield’s Summer Arts Festival

One of the things I most enjoy about living in Springfield is its Summer Art Festival. This is a series of free performances ranging from Shakespearean plays to children’s choirs to country music acts to symphony performances that are staged over a six-week period every summer. The performances are staged in a new amphitheater located in a beautiful natural setting at the base of a cliff next to Buck Creek. The amphitheater itself blends into its natural setting in keeping with the principles of Frank Lloyd Wright (there is a Frank Lloyd Wright house that has been converted into a museum in Springfield)

My favorite performance was the National Player’s summer tour production of “The Tempest”. The National Players are the longest-running classical touring troupe in he nation. They feature young cast members drawn from the graduates of the top theater programs in the country. They crisscross the USA gaining experience in all aspects of theater production from the actual performance itself to erecting the set and setting up the lighting. It was a first rate production. One of the more interesting aspects of the play itself for me was Shakespeare’s treatment, rather sophisticated for his day, of society’s attitudes toward the more “primitive” peoples with whom Europeans were coming into increased contact in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Prior to the play the members of Springfield Stageworks treated the audience to a reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets, National Players cast members explained the background and significance of “The Tempest” as well as some of the themes explored in the play, and a music professor at Wittenberg and Cedarville universities and one of his students played the lute and two or three models of flute, all of which were popular during Shakespeare’s day. The lute is one of the more beautiful instruments I have ever heard. There were about two or three thousand people in attendance.

I was privileged to be able to attend a performance by Warren Hill, one of the top smooth jazz artists of the past twenty years. This was the first time that I had ever seen a professional saxophonist in person! The show really blew my socks off. I plan on buying his CD next month.

During the festival’s Irish Fest phase I got to see two excellent Celtic bands. The first of these, Cherish the Ladies, is the most successful Irish-American Celtic band. They have performed all over the world and received numerous awards, including the BBC’s Best Musical Group of the Year Award and a Grammy nomination. I was fascinated by the Irish stepdancing and the pennywhistle. This was the first time that I have ever heard what is surely one of the most beautiful instruments in the world.

The next night I got to see Homeland, a local Celtic band that travels extensively throughout Ohio and the neighboring states, often playing such local haunts as the Dublin Pub. I will definitely make plans to hear them in person again in the near future.

I also attended the performance by The India Children's Choir. This is a choir composed of children from the Hmar tribe of India. This is a former headhunting tribe that was Christianized by missionaries (a real-life cliché). Every year the children of this tribe compete for slots in the India Children’s Choir. The winners get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend nine months touring the United States putting on shows. I enjoyed the program. At the end of the show the children, who are around nine or ten years of age, made their way through the audience hugging the attendees. For the audience the show is an opportunity to see that children from all around the world are the same.

Miami Valley Bike Trails

I have recently relocated to the Miami Valley and am bowled over by the quality of the local trail system. I do not think that the local people appreciate what a gem to the community that this is. The Dayton area is home to several hundred miles of trails with a wide variety of settings ranging from urban to rural. The local trail system is connected to the Buckeye Trail which circumnavigates the state. There is an excellent website, www.miamivalleytrails.org, which provides an excellent overview of this extensive system. I am particularly lucky in that I live just a few blocks from Springfield's Buck Creek Trail. While it is situated entirely within the limits of Springfield this trail winds along the creek for several miles through a couple of parks and a forested area, which appears to be a flood control easement. Along most of this route you would never know that you were in the city. A few miles downstream this trail intersects the Simon Kenton Trail, which crosses Buck Creek on an old railroad steel truss bridge. The Simon Kenton Trail connects to the Little Miami Trail, which extends all the way to Cincinnati. Below the bridge the creek waters tumble over a rocky area with a low level dam visible in the distance. i love to stand on this bridge and relax and get my nature fix before starting on the return leg of my journey.
I recently bought a bicycle, and once I bling it out with lights, carrying cases, and whatever other accessories happen to strike my fancy I plan to hit the trails pretty heavily. My father and I biked our way all over the Miami Valley when I was a kid, but when I was eleven we moved to a very hilly area and I gave up the hobby. I am planning on eventually participating in a GOBA event.