Granville, Columbus & Mt. Vernon

Victoria Woodhull Clock. Robbins-Hunter Museum. Granville O.

This is a real curiosity. Victoria Woodhull *1838, 1927† was quite an American celebrity in her day. Her life history would make a fine picaresque novel. She was born in nearby Homer. Her childhood was troubled, and perhaps, quite abusive. Her father was a scoundrel. She married soon after her 15th birthday, a drunken scoundrel who was a backwoods physician.

 

She was a mesmerist, a medium, a Christian socialist, and a spiritualist. She and a sister became stockbrokers on Wall Street, and made Cornelius Vanderbilt richer. The sisters then had a weekly paper, that had much writing on feminism. It also printed the first English translation of Marx's Communist Manifesto.

 

In 1872 she was the presidential nominee of the Equal Rights Party. She was shy of the constitutional requirement of being 35 years old. She, her sister, and her second husband were arrested before election day. The paper, besides endorsing free love, criticised the hypocrisy and adultery of famous preacher Henry Ward Beecher. The charge was on publishing an obscene paper. This scandal prompted the Comstock Laws of 1873. In America, as in much of the world, exposing the bad acts of the powerful is treated more harshly, than the those that committed the bad acts.

Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1877. His eldest son, Billy then became the richest man in the US. Victoria knew things, Billy paid her to leave the country. She continued on in England.

O, the clock...well, the first time i saw it was in winter. In winter she does not come out. I was in Granville, Tuesday just before 6 o'clock in the latest of the afternoon. I saw the time. Steps away, there was a small restaurant, and won of the workers stepped out. I asked about the clock, he said there had been an electric outage that day. My nephew went into the library, which faces the clock. He was told that she does not come out hourly, but erratically. While i was still talking to the restaurant fellow, the clock made a gentle chime. The doors opened, and she moved to the railing, and then moved back and the doors closed. It was that quick. It is the only memorial/monument to the first female candidate to run for the presidency of the United States. It is sort of a cuckoo clock.

First rose of summer, seen 16 May at Columbus Park of Roses, 'Perle d'Or'.

Pat Belisle & Chris Saylor. "Annabelle".  2009. Chadwick Arboretum.  

This steel sculpture is at the agricultural school in the state's capital. It is at summer session, there are hundreds, nay thousands of empty parking spaces; but the campus parking police is very active. Like every Ohio college campus that i have seen in recent years, there is no place for a visitor to park a car.

Lisa McLymont mural. parking lot wall @ a defunct computer repair shop, Columbus O.

front window of shop supra

Claude Cormier. Dog Fountain. 2019. Mount Vernon.

 It is much better, when the water is active. I last saw it a little over two years ago, it was winter. [click and see]

Karma likes fountains. She, at first, was unsure of the depth.