Ken Steinhoff, Author at Cape Girardeau History and Photos

November 24, 2013

Pine Cone Magic

It’s been a warm October and November, but we’ve had about a dozen days so far that called for a fire in the fireplace. Tonight, possibly the last night I’ll be in Cape until the spring, is one of those nights. Weatherbug reports it is 25, headed to an overnight low of 18. I didn’t bother to look at the windchill numbers. When your nose hairs freeze, windchill is a non-factor.

I noticed that Brother Mark had a box of pine cones dipped in wax in a box near the fireplace, so I tried one of them as a fire starter. It burned like a champ. (Click on the photos to make them larger. They might make you feel warmer if you live up north. Plus, they’re kinda pretty.)

I’m cheap and lazy

I knew the wax would enhance the burn quality of the cones, but I didn’t want to go to the trouble and expense of buying, melting and spilling the wax, so I thought I’d see how well plain ones would work.

Mother and I cruised around until we saw some pine cones sitting on the ground under a tree in a park in Jackson.

They followed us home.

It was amazing at how easily they caught fire. (Something that you might want to think about if you have pine trees that have dropped a bunch of cones around your house.)

Just the touch of a match

All it took was the touch of a match to get the cones to burst into flame.

A thing of beauty

I was watching one just as the flames were dying down and the cone was a mass of glowing red. I dashed across the room for my camera, but it was one of those things that was perfect just for an instant.

That’s when I threw some of these cones into the fireplace trying to duplicate what I had seen seconds before. Didn’t work: the magic had all leaked out. Some of these are nice, but not close to what that first one looked like.

How to start a fire

I found the fastest way to start a fire with these was to wrap half a dozen in a couple of sheets of loosely twisted newspaper. (See, newspapers ARE still good for something.)
Put a few sticks or other light kindling on top of the newspaper.
Light and run away (That last part is for fireworks; you don’t have to run away.)
If you feel lucky, you could go ahead an put a log on top of the kindling when you light it, but I usually like to see that it’s going to take off first.

Oh, my aching back

I got smart before we went on our next pine cone mission: I stopped at a local hardware store and picked up something similar to this aluminum reacher and grabber gizmo. (Buy it from this link and I’ll make a couple of pennies. Or, go to just about any hardware store and get it for about the same price.) It’s not a high precision piece of equipment and it’s not going to last forever if you pick up heavy stuff (or give it to your grandkid to play with), but Wife Lila and Mother have found it useful.

It does an excellent job of snagging pine cones.

Photo geekery

I was going to give you all kinds of information about exposures, but they were all over the place. The only constant was that I underexposed them by two stops from what the camera said was normal.

The camera looked at all the dark areas in the photo (most of which I cropped out) and said, “I want to make those areas lighter.”

I wanted the shadows to go dark, which also brought out the rich colors in the flames, so I told the camera to give it much less light than it thought it should in the theoretical world. Is there a scientific way to calculate the right exposure for something like this? Probably, but I just guessed, looked at the image, liked it, and kept shooting.

It’s a shame about the magic leaking out, though. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that first cone was the prettiest.

November 23, 2013

Centenary Nativity Scene

Mother and I were heading to Annie Laurie’s Antiques tonight when we passed by Centenary Methodist Church. I don’t know that I had ever noticed the beautiful stained glass Nativity scene on the west side of the church.

It’s appropriate for the season, so enjoy. (The best part was I didn’t even have to get out of the car in the cold wind to shoot it.)

November 20, 2013

Stones With a Story

I love roaming around in cemeteries. It’s a good way to get a feel for communities: how old they are; who the prominent families are; when epidemics swept through… Most tombstones are pretty ordinary: birth date, death date and a standard inscription.

Sometimes, though, you stumble across stones with personality. This beautiful shoe in Bollinger County Memorial Park caught my eye from five rows away. I just had to see what that was all about. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Husband: “I Made It”

It turned out to be a pair of tombstones side by side for Roger Elmer Damlow and Wilma Lee Damlow. His stone has the symbol of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America on it.

At the bottom is the inscription, “I MADE IT,” which you would think appropriate for a craftsman.

Wife: “I spent it”

His wife’s stone, though, gives his phrase a different spin. “I SPENT IT,” it proclaims. Her stone is decorated with logos for designer products. (I have to wonder if those companies will go after her for trademark infringement or if they will be flattered to be remembered that way?)

Since neither of the stones has a death date on it, the couple is probably still alive and could tell the story behind the stones, but I’d rather speculate.

Penny Lou Klingel

Penny Lou Klingel’s marker in Scott City’s Lightner & St. Joseph Cemetery was strikingly unusual from the front. I spotted its shape from a distance, grabbed a telephoto lens to get a closer look, then had to walk up to see what the back looked like.

“Later, Dummies”

It was worth the walk. The back side of the stone that had the kicker: “Later, Dummies.”

I can only guess that was one of her favorite sayings.

Here is a link to a set of tombstones I found in Athens, Ohio, this summer. One was heartrending; the other had a touch of whimsy.

November 20, 2013February 14, 2021

Selfies and Smoke Signals

The webosphere had been all agog this week because Oxford Dictionaries declared “selfie” to be the word of the year for 2013. For you old folks, a “selfie” is defined as a smartphone self-portrait shared on social media.

For you young folks, a “dictionary” is what we used to call a non-electric spellchecker that was accessed by sneakernet and could be used by only one person at a time.

2013 ain’t 1968

While I was in Athens, Ohio, to do a presentation on the birth of the student rights movement, Curator Jessica finagled a field pass to the OU vs Miami of Ohio football game. Ostensibly she wanted me to shoot members of the undefeated 1968 football team to go along with action shots I have of them. I think she really wanted me to watch her younger sister, a member of OU’s Marching 110 prance around on the field playing her slidey thing. (Jessica is a band alum.)

I was less than excited. It was cold and parking was somewhere close to Louisville. Still, Curator Jessica can be persuasive.

Since I didn’t have to worry about game action, I wandered around looking at the spectators.

It became apparent very quickly that actually watching the game was secondary to gazing at portable electronic devices.

Here’s how we did it in the old days

One of the female students I was photographing while she was busy texting away gave me a “What is this creepy old guy looking at?” look.

I walked up, introduced myself and said, “I’m here doing a compare and contrast with football games from back in 1968. See, in my day, we didn’t have these fancy gizmos to keep our friends updated on the game. We had to use smoke signals. The stadium people would have small fires in pots scattered through the stadium so we could keep in touch with the folks on campus.”

“Really?” she asked, not quite convinced.

“Sure,” I said. “Wander around after the crowd leaves and you can probably still see small circles here and there burned into the concrete.” Then I walked away.

Urban legend or fodder for 30th Reunion

There is no doubt in my mind that the young woman went back to her dorm and shared the information I gave her.

It is either going to be the start of an urban legend or a story that will haunt her when she goes back for her 30th reunion.

Photo gallery of the New Age

Here’s a photo gallery of a modern university football game, one with nary a signal fire to be seen. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the sides to move through the gallery. And, just like when I was a student, the stands emptied out as soon as the Marching 110 finished the halftime show. It’s good to see that some things never change.