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What was I saying last week about time flying?
“Street Fair” has come and gone already - barely before I had time to wake up to the fact that it was here.
I got around to seeing a little more of it this year than last. Plus, I knew my way around town a little better this year, so although the traffic situation was still a bit of a pain, it was a lot easier for me to figure how ways to beat the problems this time around.
Plus, there were no disgusting souvenirs left behind in the News-Banner parking lot this year.
The parades were fun and the evening entertainment items that I was able to see were also very enjoyable. The Show Choir competition was definitely a highlight, and it was great to see all three Wells County schools perform so well.
Norwell and Bluffton should both be real contenders again this competition season, and it would be great to see Southern Wells also joining in the fun.
The horse pulling contest on Saturday was also kind of fun. If you had told me when I was back in New Zealand that I would get a buzz out of watching horses pull a load of bricks from one end of a track to the other I would have thought you were nuts.
It just goes to show how doing something “new” can totally change your perspective.
I guess that being a late arrival in town, I’ll never have the “childhood memories” that the natives of Bluffton have of Street Fair, but the event definitely has the potential to grow on me.
I did also manage a new first for myself over the weekend just passed.
Camp 17 of the Huntington County Sons of the Union Veterans had a meeting at the GAR Hall in the Huntington County courthouse on Sunday afternoon, and I was able to attend.
Funnily enough, that’s only the second time I’ve been to Huntington since I moved here, and the first time I had visited the Huntington Courthouse - a very impressive building, and the GAR room itself is almost like a mini-museum!
(I had originally been planning to do a lot of exploring of the surrounding counties over the summer months, but $4 per gallon gas put a serious dent in those plans!)
The camp has some interesting events coming up, and I’m hoping I will be able to join in and learn a bit more about Civil War period history of my new homeland.
With everything else going on this past weekend I didn’t make much progress with painting more toy soldiers. I’m trying to race through and finish my Viking army before the end of the month so I can get a full three months work on the large box of sets from the 1400-1700 period that I have sitting in my “work to do” cupboard before the end of the year.
I’m a little behind with my Vikings, so there might be some overlap with those two projects.
I figure that the cold months of January and February will be an ideal time to study the struggle between Sweden and Russia for supremacy of the Baltic region, so I’ll be spending the rest of this year frantically painting up armies from those two nations.
(I know that January in the United States is supposed to be African History month, but I’m afraid that thinking about the warmer climate of Africa at that time of year just makes me feel even colder and more miserable.)
I’ve actually got a number of projects lined up for next year, and I’ll probably pick the one that worked best for the Collector’s Show next year. I just need to find the time to get them all done!
I did manage to catch the latest news regarding efforts to date the construction on Stonehenge in England on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website. For those of you with televisions that can get the BBC programs, there will be a documentary about it as part of the BBC Timewatch series. It apparently screens in Britain on Sept. 27 - I don’t know how that translates to American television time.
Archaeologists are now dating Stonehenge’s construction to around 2,300 B.C., which is about 300 years later than originally thought, with a more precise date expected in few months, as radiocarbon dating results are confirmed.
This puts the construction date at about the same era that the nearby “Amesbury Archer” (an apparently wealthy man whose burial site was near Stonehenge) lived, adding to speculation the two sites were linked for some reason.
The archer’s tomb included artifacts from Switzerland, and it is believed that he travelled to Britain from Europe. Other tombs in the area also contain evidence of people and artifacts from the general area of the Alps, so either there was a high level of migration to Britain at this time, or at least a healthy trade.
Given the level of technology that existed at that time, that’s actually pretty amazing to think about!
No planes, no trains, no automobiles. Even the horse wasn’t being used by these people on their travels. And there were no hotels, or even restaurants to stop at along the way.
The Celts arrived in Britain around 700 B.C., overwhelming these earlier inhabitants and their culture, and evidence of their existence only rediscovered in relatively recent years. The Phoenicians were apparently trading with Britain before the arrival of the Celts, but much later than Stonehenge’s creation.
We’ll probably never know the real reason Stonehenge was built for sure, but it is fun trying to figure it all out!
by FRANK SHANLY
frank@news-banner.com
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