The 981 Project Podcast

When I visited Evansville, Indiana, on a bright summer day in 2021, its revived waterfront and fabulous murals captivated me. Since then, I delved into Timothy Egan’s book about the Midwestern Klan, where I discovered that Evansville was a hotbed for KKK activity in the 1920s . Unlike the Klan that terrorized the South during Reconstruction, its second wave looked beyond Blacks to hate and harass....

The more I learn about the Ohio River’s regional history and culture, the more I feel like I’m taking a Virginia history class. You’ll see why when you take this month’s trivia quiz! If you want a leg up, check out this prior newsletter concerning Virginia’s land claims. Note to my fabulous new subscribers: It’s the rare person who can answer all ten trivia questions without any prep. I couldn’t a...

Every class I took on the American Revolution focused on the thirteen colonies. In my limited knowledge of the war, the French and Spanish were doing their own things west of the Mississippi, leaving the British-owned but lightly settled Illinois Country in between that saw no real action. I had no idea that the southern part of the old Northwest Territory had been a theater of war until I got a p...

Welcome new subscribers! One monthly newsletter is devoted to Ohio River trivia, and always includes ten questions. It’s the rare person who can answer all ten correctly without a deep dive into each topic. Do your best and have fun while learning something new. Before delving into the trivia questions, I’ll prime you for this month’s topic with historical background on higher education in the Ohi...

I heard from lots of folks about the last newsletter, “ When Virginia Claimed Pittsburgh ,” who were shocked by the power and rivalry of colonial governors. Heads up: to succeed in this month’s Ohio River Trivia quiz, you need to read it first. This month’s trivia is focused on Pittsburgh with a little Philly and Pennsylvania sprinkled in for flavor. Okay, as a reminder, the answers are in the foo...

The more I learn about the European kings who colonized the world, the more they blow my mind. For example, I was just in Barbados and picked up a book about its founding. Essentially, one of King James’s buddies fell into debt with some London merchants and figured the best way out was to start a colony in the Eastern Caribbean, as one does. He asked his king if he could have one, and the soverei...

Hello, beautiful people. It’s trivia time again! Those who read my last newsletter reviewing David McCullough’s book about settling the Ohio Territory will remember that the first white settlement on the Ohio River was named Marietta. In a prior quiz, we revealed that Marietta was named for Queen Marie Antoinette, whom Revolutionary veterans thought had done more than anyone else (even Ben Frankli...

The other night, my spouse and I were scrolling through the channels and came upon the 1972 pilot of M*A*S*H . Matt and I had watched the CBS reruns on a black-and-white TV every night as we pulled a meal together in his tiny college apartment. We loved the show’s zany characters and its stick-it-to-the-man pacifism and didn’t notice (much less mind) the laugh track. So we curled up on the couch t...

Hello, friends. I hope your December was better than mine—I came down with Covid and basically napped my way through the last two weeks of 2023. I managed to listen to a couple of good books and catch up on my podcasts, some of which I’ll list in the intermission between questions and answers for this month’s quiz. Oh, and I knitted this scarf. If you come down with something this year, my best ad...

The Ohio River was America’s longest slavery border. It shaped the culture and institutions of the entire region before the Civil War, and into the present day. As I continue expanding my body of work here, I’ll show you what I mean. First, a note about slave borders. We usually think of the Mason-Dixon as the dividing line between slave- and free-states, but it wasn’t intended for that use when i...

Readers (and listeners) loved last month’s Ohio River Trivia . More, more! Encore, encore! You asked for it, you’ve got it. My first newsletter each month will be ten trivia questions about the six states that border the Ohio River. I pull several questions from my prior newsletters, so faithful readers have a leg up! ANSWERS IN THE FOOTNOTES, so don’t click them until you’ve made your final choic...

Born in the 1960s, I missed the nuclear duck-and-cover drills, where school children knelt under their desks and covered their heads. We learned that same drill for tornado sirens, not nuclear annihilation. My first memory of anything nuclear (outside of history books) was Three Mile Island in 1979, not bombs. It wasn’t until 2023 that I learned that the Ohio River Valley had played a major role i...

Hello friends, I have been told I have a “trap mind” because it traps and holds onto random facts and scenes. For example, I remember the leopard-printed socks that my friend Carola bought 34 years ago when our oldest children were in their strollers. Obviously, my trap mind is unpredictable and undiscriminating, but it occasionally serves me well—for example, trivia nights and marital arguments d...

Say what you will about the algorithms of online sellers, for me, there’s no way to outdo a human bookseller near your research. During my June research trip to Kentucky, I went on book-buying sprees at Roebling Books and Coffee in Covington, and Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville . Here’s the scoop on some of the titles I bought and why. Germans in the Ohio Valley My recent post about Covington...

Now that summer’s over (sigh) you may be ready to get into a new podcast or two. Scroll down for a list of recommendations. I'd love to hear what you're listening to that comes from any of the 981 miles of the Ohio River. Did you know that the narrated version of my newsletter goes out in a podcast? Here’s a linked list to services that carry The 981 Project podcast: Apple . Audible . Amazon Music...

During my June motorcycle sojourn along the Ohio River, I spent a couple of days in walkable Covington, Kentucky, home to the south shore of the Roebling Bridge. Cincinnati is on the other side. You may feel you've seen this bridge before if you've seen Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge in New York. But Cincinnati-Covington’s predates Brooklyn’s by 14 years—think of this one as a model for the larger one...

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death so that when their time comes, they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home. ~Attributed to Chief Tecumseh, 1768-1813, this poem is commonly known as the Chief Tecumseh Death Song Last month I spent a we...

No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it's not the same river and he's not the same man. ~ Heraclitus Heraclitus’ famous quote is philosophically inclined, but I thought of it recently when telling a friend about a legal case between Ohio and Kentucky concerning, of all things, a boulder removed from the river. Okay, when I put it that way, it sounds ridiculous (albeit true). It’s a littl...

Everybody is looking for KRISHNA. Some don't realize that they are, but they are. ~ George Harrison (former Beatle) I primarily remember the Hare Krishna movement of the 1960s and ‘70’s because it pushed the buttons of so many adults—adults who had no problem with the equally ecstatic so-called “ Jesus Freaks ”of the day. I grew up about thirty miles east of Columbus, Ohio, and I don’t remember se...

Educated in Ohio public schools, I had an overly simplified understanding of slavery in America, making it easy to be proud of our state’s history on the right side of the Underground Railroad and Civil War. Enter The 981 Project, which required a ton of research. Oh, how much I didn’t know! Today’s newsletter covers two of the topics that took me 61 years to learn. Slavery existed north of the Oh...

I grew up in Licking County, Ohio, about 20 miles from Ye Olde Mill in Utica, which I had always been told was a stop on the Underground Railroad (URR). Today, the site is home to the Velvet Ice Cream Company, which moved its operations to the former gristmill in the 1960s after outgrowing its original location. Cloaked in secrecy There isn’t irrefutable evidence that the property had been a URR s...

I was sickened by the news of the February 3 Norfolk Southern train derailment and subsequent explosion in the village of East Palestine, Ohio. I think it was February 5 when I heard it described as an “American Chernobyl.” That’ll draw the hairs up on your forearms, eh? The closest I’ve come to the village is East Liverpool , some 28 miles south, a river town with a fascinating history that I’ll...

Tamela, get up! Tamela!” A flashlight blinds me. “Josh?” I sit up. What’s the director of the Appalachian Writers Workshop doing in my room at 2:30 in the morning? “What’s wrong?” “Your bike might already be washed away. You might save it if you leave now.” Save my bike? My brand-new bike! For three days in late July, 2022, our mobile phones had buzzed with severe thunderstorm and flood warnings i...

High above the Ohio River, atop Mount Washington, the meeting between Guyasuta and George Washington in 1770 is memorialized in bronze. As you can tell from comparing me to the two historical figures, it’s a massive piece of public art that just begs to be admired. Waiting for Jack to finish taking my picture, I wrestled with what I could remember from fifth grade Ohio History, unsure if Washingto...

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” ~Mark Twain Any good river trip begins at its headwaters. For the Ohio, that’s in Pittsburgh at the Golden Triangle formed by the Allegheny...