Here in Northeast Ohio, March means your choice of local pancake breakfast offerings. Cities and villages all across this part of the state are serving up big stacks of fresh pancakes and locally produced maple syrup, since there are a number of farms here that produce the delicious stuff. I seem to have missed these events year in, year out, save for our local pancake breakfast at our High School, which happened last Sunday and which I missed. But this morning, my mother and I drove to a nearby village called Shalersville for a pancake breakfast put on by a local farm that produces its own maple syrup, the Goodell farm. We had our choice of regular or buckwheat pancakes, and I chose a mixture of the two. You also get sausage, coffee and orange juice. I was quite full by the time I finished, and the atmosphere is quite congenial. We sat across from a gentleman, probably my age or thereabouts, who was a computer programmer, and we had a nice talk about a host of things. I love the neighborly atmosphere of these local meals. We go to church suppers here twice a month, all you can eat spaghetti for around $7 or $8, and you get to know your table mates as you dine on delicious fare. The church supper at the local Lutheran Church, served the third Friday of the month, has this absolutely to-die-for German Chocolate cake that my mom and I always get for dessert, and they have taken to saving us back each a piece because they know that we will show up. Most of these dinners feature spaghetti, salad or applesauce, bread, a drink and dessert. We always leave totally full. The other one we go to is served on the first Friday of the month at the First Christian Church. My mom knows people at both churches, so we always end up in pleasant conversation with her friends. These kinds of gatherings for shared meals are really special because you get to see people that perhaps you do not normally see, meet new people and enjoy good food and pleasant conversation with local folks that, under normal circumstances, you might not otherwise talk to. What a great way to foster community, I think! I guess it's time for me to get to more of these local pancake breakfasts, though, while the month of March is still upon us. Sampling various locally produced maple syrups while eating nice fluffy fresh pancakes is something I could definitely get used to doing! Yum!
A LITTLE BIT OF TRIVIA
I don't know how many of you have seen the most excellent Steven Spielberg film "Lincoln" yet. I have seen it three times and could easily see it again, and probably will once it is released on DVD. Well, there is a scene at the end after the 13th Amendment to the Constitution has been approved by the Senate where firebrand Senator Thaddeus Stevens takes home the original copy of said Amendment and hands it to his black housekeeper to show her that slavery has officially been abolished. She reads it carefully and becomes quite emotional. Later on, she and the Senator are seen in bed together - apparently they are more than housekeeper and employer - and she is reading it again, section by section, as Senator Stevens beams proudly at what he helped to fight hard to make a reality and get it approved by the Senate. The camera pans and I noticed that the quilt under which they were lying was of the Ohio Star pattern. Senator Stevens was from the State of Pennsylvania, our next door neighbor, so this might well have just been a coincidence, as that was a fairly popular pattern quilt pattern in those days, or it may have been some kind of subtle message regarding the State of Ohio's role in abolitionism, or something. I'm not sure. But keen eyes will pick out this little detail and wonder what, if any significance, it has in that scene. That's the fun thing about having this kind of knowledge of trivial things like that. It's fun to notice small details that others might miss and to wonder what it means, or whether it's mere coincidence on the part of the people who worked on the design of the movie. This is what happens when you are a history buff who notices little details in films that most people would otherwise miss. There were a number of little details in this film that I noticed as well that were achingly familiar from my many long years of reading about Lincoln and the Civil War, but this little detail in particular caught my fancy and made me wonder what, if anything, it meant. Probably nothing. It could well be that someone saw a quilt of this pattern, very popular in the period, and decided that would be the one they used in that scene. Now you can amuse and amaze your friends with this astounding little bit of trivia, and you don't even have to be a quilt buff to know it, either. You're welcome.
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