The "Lancaster's Famous Female Sculptress" Story

Lion sculpture by Blanche Nevin.

It was an ordinary day.  My grandson Caden and I are taking photos of the street hockey rink where my youngest son and Caden's uncle Tad used to play in Reservoir Park on the eastern outskirts of Lancaster, PA.  Neat place with a heavy rubber floor with openings for drainage in case of rain.  

Stone engraved with the name of her father.

Two penalty boxes line the one side while team boxes line the other.  Took a few photos then headed toward the water tower on the east side of the rink.  As we approached the tower we found what we had come to the park to photograph.  A bronze lion sculpted by Blance Nevin in the late 1800s.  

The signature of George Ross is one of
four notable Lancastrians that surround
the lion statue.

Caden was excited when he saw water spraying from the mouth of the lion, just as it has for ages.  Blanche Nevin was born in Mercersburg, Franklin County, PA in 1841.  Her father, a theologian, teacher and minister moved his family to Lancaster County when he became the president of Franklin and Marshall College in 1855.  Blanche studied art in Philadelphia, the Royal Art Academy in Venice, Italy and at Carrara, Italy.  Blance was our nation's first noted sculptress as well as an accomplished poet whose most famous poem in 1895 was titled "Great-Grandma's Looking Glass."  In 1897 she restored the mansion of a house in Windsor Forge, in the nearby town known as Churchtown, and added a studio for her work.  

Sculpture of General
Muhlenberg.

In 1889 she sculpted a statue of Revolutionary War General Peter Muhlenberg which now stands in the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.  But, the residents of Lancaster know her for the two statues that she made that are on either end of Lancaster city.  The lion on the east side of the city and a sculpture of a horse drinking fountain that stands at the intersection of West Orange Street and Columbia Ave. on the west end of town.  The lion was first sculpted in brick mud.  Miss Nevin had two of her male neighbors in Windsor Forge help her haul a wagon load of brick mud or clay from a kiln near the town of Honey Brook.  The two men piled the mud on a platform of stones and cement in the front yard of Blanche's house at Windsor Forge.  The men then kneaded the mud until it became pliable, then Blanche began working on her sculpture, gradually forming the nose, mouth, eyes, ears and mane and finally the body of the lion.  

Sculpture at the intersection of
West Orange St. and Columbia
Ave. on the west end of town.

Artisans then made a plaster cast of the lion so they could form the bronze lion which we are standing in front of in the park.  The brick mud lion remained in front of her home in Windsor Forge until weather ruined it.  Along the side of the lion is a stone that reads: In Memory of John Williamson Nevin, Scholar, with the date 1905.  She sculpted the lion in memory of her father.  Earlier in our journey today, Caden and I photographed her other sculpture at Orange St. and Columbia Ave.  It is much less ornamental and smaller in size, but nonetheless amazing.  On one side of that statue is an engraving in stone honoring her mother.  Blanche died in 1925 and her obituary in the Lancaster newspaper stated, "The simple unpretentious neighbors of Miss Nevin never questioned her foreign ideas and eccentricities, but accepted her for the true, human qualities which she so abundantly possessed."  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

On the side of the horse drinking fountain on the west side of Lancaster.

This is engraved on marble at the lion sculpture.

The "LDub's Polaroids of Lancaster's History: Part II" Story

My Polaroid of Lancaster Theological Seminary in Lancaster, PA.

It was an ordinary day.  Walking the campus of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.  As I headed back to my car which I had parked on College Avenue, I noticed another building across the street that I had taken a Polaroid photo of years ago.  Place actually fronts on West James Street, but is open on one side to F & M on College Avenue.  

Photo I took recently of the main building.

The Lancaster Theological Seminary (LTS) is affiliated with the United Church of Christ in Lancaster and was founded in 1825 by members of the German Reformed Church.  After a series of tries to open a school of Theology in various town and cities, the Seminary moved to Mercersburg, PA under the charter of Marshall College.  

This is the housing for those who attend the Seminary.

In 1853 Marshall College moved to Lancaster to join with Franklin College.  Since the Seminary was associated with Marshall College, it eventually moved onto the campus of F&M in 1871.  The site across from F&M was purchased in 1893 and the buildings were completed and occupied the following year.  Lancaster Theological Seminary is one of seven seminaries holding full relationship with the UCC.  A good friend of my wife graduated from Lancaster Theological Seminary and was a UCC minister until she decided to work with my wife at the Parish Resource Center which was founded in 1976 by LTS professor Douglas Whiting.  As I walked around the majestic buildings of the Seminary today I felt like a part of the history of the building in Lancaster County.  The beautiful architecture of all the buildings may me fell as if I was living in a different era.  Explore with me the Lancaster Theological Seminary through my photos as I take you back to another era.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

The walks are all laid out in this beautiful pattern.  Does make you dizzy while walking on it if you are looking down all the time.

Another look at the architecture.  This birds head is shown on either side of the main entrance.

Stained glass window above the main door to the Seminary.

This miniature monument stands in a garden of grasses.  It says: May Peace Prevail On Earth.  It is in 10 languages as well as hand language.

I'm sure this beautiful window looks fantastic from the inside. 

This is a 36" x 48" painting of the Theological Seminary which was painted by Lancaster artist Freiman Stoltzfus.

This is a 1904 post card that I found of the Theological Seminary in Lancaster.  See if you can read what is written around the edge of the card. Click to enlarge.

The "The Best Darned Baked Oatmeal and Apple Dumplings" Story

Stauffer's along the Lancaster-Lititz Toll Road in the early 1930s.

It was an ordinary day.  Standing in line with my container of apple dumplings, plastic bag with two bunches of asparagus and container of baked strawberry oatmeal.  The sign above the cash register says: 6 items or less, and I meet the demand from the store.  The line I'm going through is located in the Stauffer's of Kissel Hill store along Oregon Pike in Lancaster, PA.  

Another view of the stand with farmland in the background.

The store is about half a mile from my house and is perfect for small quantities of groceries and other items.  Stauffer's was founded in 1932 along the Lititz Pike when the road was still known as the Lancaster-Lititz Toll Road.  The popularity of the store is still the same as it was over 80 years ago.  The owners of the chain of stores, Roy and Florence Stauffer, decided to leave Roy's father's fruit farm and begin a new market on Kissel Hill, a mile or so south of the town of Lititz, PA.  

The stand now is the home to Corporate Headquarters
for the Stauffer's of Kissel Hill Stores.

The stand began to grow in both size and in the products they offered for sale.  They had such an abundance of fruits and vegetables that they also sold them at nearby markets such as Roots and Green Dragon, both Lancaster County farmer's markets.  In the 1950s a new development known as "Mayfield" sprung up near their stand in Kissel Hill.  

This is their Lititz Pike Store near their headquarters.

People began to call the area Mayfield so the Staffers painted a big sign stating that: "This is Kissel Hill" so people would still know where Stauffers of Kissel Hill was located.  They eventually replaced their steps into their market with ramps, but the ramps were too steep and the shopping carts sometimes would take off across the parking lot.  So, they added hand brakes to their shopping carts.  In 1964 the market that I am now standing in was created along with a lawn and garden section.  

An aerial view taken from their website showing their
Lititz Pike store and garden center. 

Since then super sized grocery stores have been built by Stauffer's along the Lititz Pike, near their original store and also in Roherstown, PA. In 1986 fire destroyed the store in Roherstown and it was replaced with what has been said is the biggest supermarket in Lancaster County.  Today Stauffers employs close to 1000 employees and is ranked in the top 50 in the nation for garden centers.  The reason I shop at Stauffers is to buy the items that they make themselves such as the apple dumplings, fresh baked goods and baked oatmeal.  Anxious to get home and pop one of the dumplings in the microwave and then pour milk over it.  Great lunch!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

The "Optical Illusion" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Checking my emails and found one from Reader's Digest trying to get me to buy a subscription to the magazine.  They did include a few articles that I suppose were published in one of their issues.  When I opened one of the articles I realized I had been at the spot shown in the photo.  Guessed right away what the photo was about.  Thought you might like a story of all photos for once, so I posted the Reader's Digest photo story today.  The first photo will show you a neat photo that you may believe to be an optical illusion, but after looking at the second photo you will realize what the first photo really is. Try not to look at the second photo of each group until you have guessed what the top photo might really be.  I have given credit to all the photographers where I was able to do so.  The final two photos are the one that I recognized right away.  See how well you do.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

hungry baby birds!  Mike Powles/Corbis  and Animal Press

These newborn skylarks and their mama were snapped in Norfolk, England. The eye-catching pattern of the babies' throats is a key stimulus for the parent to feed the chicks. 

...goats.  Adriano Migliorati/Caters

Gravity is no match for these alpine ibex goats. They typically live in very steep, rocky terrain, so this 160-foot-high, near-vertical dam in Northern Italy doesn’t faze them as they roam, licking the stones for salt.

.. pencil shavings.Levi Brown for Reader's Digest Stock

Some people chew on pencils; others turn them into art. “I saw that I could make long, undulating shavings with a sharpener, and I started gluing them to a surface,” says photographer Levi Brown. “Initially, I was going to make a pattern with them, but they started to take on a life of their own and formed a topography.” Attention, students: Don’t try this at school.

.. crayons.

Inspired by a sale at an office-supply store (five cents a box!), photographer Levi Brown assembled 5,000 crayons, playing with color, depth, and pattern to make a mysterious image: a reminder that beauty and possibility can be found in the simplest objects.

.. a man, hiding in plain sight.

Hint: The shoes are the giveaway. Chinese artist Liu Bolin camouflaged himself for a series of photos called Hiding in the City. They're metaphors for government suppression of art, he says. Other scenes he's painted himself into include the rubble of earthquakes in the countryside and a wall with text from The Communist Manifesto scrawled on it.

... fish traps in water.

From high above, the fish traps in Kosi Bay, South Africa, form a mysteriously lovely pattern on water rich with algae. Generations of fishermen have worked in the bay—really a series of four interlinking lakes surrounded by a nature preserve. The area is known for biodiversity: In addition to abundant spotted grunter, rock salmon, and bream, it's home to 250 species of birds, plus crocodiles and hippos. Happily, trap fishing is both successful and sustainable.

.. a llama's eye.

If you ever happen to look a llama straight in the eye, you'll see an unusual pupil: a horizontal oval that might be sky blue. The squiggly frills surrounding it are called iridic granules, and they're believed to provide shade in bright sunlight. The close-up on the previous slide was photographed by Suren Manvelyan, who has shot the peepers of creatures from pythons to people.

Add caption.. icy cold soda. Barry Makariou

Photographer Barry Makariou mixed different flavors of the fizzy stuff and froze the concoction for a color explosion. The image is delicious, especially when it's 99 degrees in the shade.

.. millions of monarch butterflies.Frans Lanting/National Geographic Stock and Joel Sartore/National Geographic Stock

Every fall, millions of monarch butterflies head south from Canada and the United States to their winter digs in Michoacán, Mexico; here they make strange shapes on the trees in the region's Sierra Chincua preserve. Scientists didn't discover the monarchs' wintering grounds until 1975—and they still don't understand how the winged things know where to go. Sadly, they're in decline, occupying a record low 2.9 acres, down from some 22 acres a decade ago.

..sushi. Bobby Yip/Reuters

Got soy sauce? On January 9, a Hong Kong restaurant chain created the world's largest sushi mosaic, breaking the Guinness world record. The edible artwork, built on top of ice, measured about 404 square feet. It included 20,647 tasty pieces, which were quickly packed up that day and distributed free to spectators and the homeless.

...a rice paddy field. Zubin Li/Getty Images,

The land looks flat from above, but these Chinese rice paddies are terraced for a better yield. Farmers have created these "steps" in China and the Philippines for as long as two millennia; they're considered a marvel of ancient engineering. Zubin Li/Getty Images

...a field of tulips. Getty Images 

Spring has clearly sprung in Zuid-Holland, as these vast tulip beds attest. Although the flowers originated in Central Asia, they’re big business—and a major tourist draw—in the Netherlands from April until early May. Some three billion bulbs (red, white, yellow, green, purple, and more­) pop up there each year. But a tulip, like spring, is fleeting; it blooms for only a few weeks.

..a thrilling close encounter.  Kent Miller  and Fyodor Borisov

Most people go to the beach to chill, but tourists who flock to Maho Beach on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten go for thrills. Low-flying planes heading for the adjacent airport can actually blow sunbathers into the water (at least that’s what local government signs warn).

The "LDub's Polaroids of Lancaster's History: Part I" Story

My altered Polaroid of F&M's Old Main.

It was an ordinary day.  Just got a call from Wayne, the owner of Strawberry & Co. in downtown Lancaster.  He needed a collage of my altered Polaroid photos that featured the four scenes of Franklin & Marshall College that I have.  Seems that parent's day is this weekend and students are bringing their parents into the city to see the historic buildings.  Also stopping in his store and finding out that I have photos of the college.  

Oil painting of Marshall College in Mercersburg, PA

 I took the photos in the early 1990s and have been selling them regularly.  My Franklin & Marshall photos feature four of the main buildings on campus.  The college was created with a merger of Franklin College which was chartered on June 6, 1787 in Lancaster, PA and Marshall College which was opened in 1836 in Mercersburg, PA.  Marshall College was named for the great Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall who had died the previous year.  

This is a postcard showing Old Main
on the campus of F&M. Old Main looks
to sit alone in this shot. 

 Marshall College had gained national recognition, but by the late 1840s had lost most of its financial backing.  Franklin College was named for Benjamin Franklin who donated money to start the institution.  It's first trustees included five signers of the Declaration of Independence, two members of the Constitutional Convention and seven officers of the Revolutionary War.  The school first opened on July 16, 1787 with courses taught in both English and German.  It was also America's first coeducational institution, but that policy was later abandoned and it would take 182 years before women were once again permitted to enroll in the school.   Two years after the school opened, it too ran into financial difficulty so the Board of Trustees established an academy to aid the ailing college.  

This is my recent photograph which shows Old Main in the
center, Goethean Hall on the left and Diagnothian Hall on the right.

 For over 30 years Franklin College and Franklin Academy managed to just stay afloat.  It wasn't until 1849 that the two colleges began to explore the possibility of merging their two colleges.  Finally on June 7, 1853, Franklin & Marshall College was formally dedicated at Lancaster's Fulton Hall.  

The Liberal Arts building stands to the right of the the photo above.
The two statues are of Benjamin Franklin (right) and John Marshall.

 James Buchanan, who four years later would become President of the United States, became the first president of Franklin & Marshall College.  Franklin and Marshall Academy still operated on campus until 1943.  

Shadek-Fackenthal Library stands to the left of Old Main photo.

 On May 16, 1856 the distinctive tall-towered structure known as "Old Main", with the Gothic Revival architecture was dedicated.  It sat along College Avenue in Lancaster, PA.  Today the trio of buildings known as "Goethean Hall" on the left, "Old Main" in the center, and Diagnothian Hall" on the right, stand as majestic as ever.  

This is The Protest Tree.  The white ash was
used as a vehicle of expression for any issue
from school food to the Vietnam War.  It was
first used in the 1960s.

 The two halls were named after philosophers.  All three were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.  I decided to take another trip to take some photos to see if the college still looked as it did when I originally took my Polaroids.  The college has a beautiful campus as you can see by my current photographs.  If you ever get a chance to visit the campus you will be impressed as I was during my photo shoot.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.