Illinois Ghost Adventures (part 4)

The Hannah House
Alexander Moore Hannah built his Italianate home in antebellum Indianapolis.

One of the few sympathetic Hoosiers, he used his house as a station on the Underground Railroad. After his death, his children sold the home and the property. The new owners, the Oehlers, moved into the house in 1899. Soon after, they began experiencing strange phenomena. Moving objects, phantom sounds, the smell of charred bodies.

After some investigation, they discovered the grisly truth. One night, Hannah sheltered a group of escaped slaves in his cellar. Someone knocked over the lantern, igniting the straw mattresses. Everyone in the cellar burned to death. Hannah later buried the bodies behind the cellar wall.

Today, people still experience ghostly figures moving through the house, cold spots, unexplained sounds, and the smell of burning.

Ghost Hunt
We spent Saturday night investigating the Hannah House with a group of other Ghost Hunters. The moment we arrived, we were filled with a strange sense of foreboding.

We explored the grounds before the events began. The woods around the house were filled with an eerie silence.

We found a hastily disassembled guillotine. Were the current owners French? Were they hiding the murder of the local aristocracy?

Inside the service branch of the house, we met with the other Ghost Hunters.

One couple were clearly professionals. The husband had a tactical vest and both were bristling with expensive ghost hunting technology. EVP recorders, EMF detectors, flashlights, digital cameras. I felt totally outclassed. I later learned that they had investigated hauntings all over the country. There was also a mother-son team who had been to a handful of other haunted houses. When those four learned of our inexperience, they did not seem amused. They moved away from us on the Group W bench. In addition, there was a group of four college kids, also on their maiden ghost hunting voyage.

While waiting for the tour to begin, I inspected the disturbing artwork. What could it mean? What secrets did these writhing, nipply figures hold?

The Guide gave us a tour of the house, explaining the history, pointing out the hotspots. Then they turned us loose to investigate. Aine and I staked out the attic while it was still light. What we found there unnerved us.

According to the Guide, the rugs mysteriously move around the attic floor. I took this picture during the tour.

When we returned, the chair had been moved and the rug missing. I found it behind a column on the other end of attic.

After sunset, we found, to our dismay, that the flash on our camera no longer worked. Did the spirits sabotage our equipment? What follows is the raw, uncut video footage we took as we explored the house.

The Attic
We didn't experience any paranormal activity in the attic, even though people before us had experienced being pushed and hit by an unseen entity. You'll notice the rug has moved from the earlier picture.

On the way up to the attic, I thought I saw one of the other investigators step out of a room, look at me, then return to the room. When I got to the room, no one was there.

Grandma Oehler's Bed
The Guide told us Grandma didn't like people messing with her bed. We taunted the old lady for over an hour, but couldn't rouse her. At one point, Aine was laying on the bed and I was sitting on the other side of the room. I thought I heard Aine whisper something. She sat up. Did you say my name, she asked. I said no. She said it sounded like someone whispered her name in her ear. We both heard it, but have no idea who said it. Also, while in the room, Aine heard a child say the word "mama" twice from the hallway. I didn't hear it and there were no children in the house.

Also, Aine downloaded a Ghost Communicator App on her iPhone. It displays words that, allegedly, are being communicated by nearby spirits. It kept showing us the words airplane and airport which didn't make much sense. But it also kept displaying my name. Then it displayed the word run. Which was a little disturbing. It didn't display my name in any other room or since we left the house. Only in Grandma Oehler's room.

Did Grandma Oehler know who we were? What was she trying to tell us?

The Cellar
We went down to the cellar where people burned to death and were hastily buried.

We took an EMF detector the Guide let us borrow. It didn't react anywhere in the house. While in the basement, the air grew suddenly chilly and the EMF started lighting up. The Ghost Communicator started repeating the words army, murder, and burning.

Extras
A couple other oddities in the house.

Parting Shot
The mysterious rocking chair.

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

Here on the Jabbo Homestead, we enjoy strange fruit. And I don't mean the kind hanging from southern poplar trees.

We've already delved into the world of blood oranges and apple cider, which I think, regardless of what your doctor tells you, should count as a daily serving of fruit. We tried mangoes, which are devilish to cut, and papaya. We couldn't decide if the papaya tasted sweet and delicious or like vomit and bubblegum. It was a toss up.

Here's the good stuff.

Star Fruit
Carambola. A native of south and southeast Asia. We started growing them domestically in Florida as recently as the 1970s.

I've heard the texture described as similar to either an apple or a grape. People say it tastes like an apple, a pear, or a nondescript citrus. To me it has the taste and texture of a star fruit. You'll just have to try one.

To prepare it, you lop off either end and stand it upright, like you would a honeydew, then slice the edges off the lobes. Then slice it up and serve it. This is an expensive fruit, at least in Illinois, but so tasty.

Red Bananas
Red Daccas. Quite a bit different from the standard yellow Cavendish you're used to seeing in stores.

Funny story about that. Up until the 1950s, the predominant banana eaten by Americans was the Big Mike (Gros Michel). Big Mikes are fat and round (sorry, Kirk Cameron, so much for the ridges... also, in other countries, they eat the banana from what we consider the bottom, which is actually the top). If you remember pictures of the fruit salad on Carmen Miranda's head, those are Big Mikes. In the 1950s, most of the Big Mike trees in South America were wiped out by a fungus called Panama Disease. Which is the problem with growing a monoculture, that is, relying entirely on a single genetic strain of a food crop. See also Potato Blight. The Cavendish bananas were seemingly resistant to the Panama Disease fungus and they filled the vaccuum.

Today, bananas are still one of our favorite fruits. In fact, Walmart stores sell more bananas than any other item.

Red Daccas are a cultivar of Cavendish, only they're red and the flesh, when ripe, is pink. These took forever to ripen. They aren't as obvious as their yellow cousins. You have to squeeze them. They can turn black and still be green inside. These sat on my counter for a week and then I put them in a paper bag for almost another week before they turned soft.

But then they were delicious. Like the blood oranges, they had a faint hint of raspberry in the aftertaste. Aine thought they just tasted like bananas, though. She was not impressed.

Strawberry Pizza
Since we are now the proud owners of a pizza stone and a pizza peel, we decided to make pizza pretty much all the time. The dough takes an hour and a half to make in the bread maker, but after that it's a matter of rolling it out, slapping the ingredients on it, and heating it up. So, like twenty minutes total. It's one of the easiest meals to make if you plan ahead.

I found a recipe for Strawberry Basil and Balsamic Pizza on Cookie and Kate.

Instead of the balsamic reduction, we used balsamic vinaigrette, and instead of goat cheese we used feta. But you just sprinkle mozzarella and feta over the top, slice up fresh strawberries and spread them on like pepperoni. Then when it comes out, you add the fresh basil and sprinkle on the balsamic liquid of your choice.

It sounds weird, but it gets five stars. Delicious.

Jabbo Cider Review

As American as Apple Cider
Apples come from the hills of Kazakhstan. They traveled to America on British ships in the 1600s. As seeds. Funny thing about apples. If grown from seed, the tree will produce bitter apples. You can't eat bitter apples, but you can turn them into hard cider. The American colonists loved two things: representation and getting their drink on. Grapes and hops and sugarcane didn't grow well on the Atlantic seaboard, so wine and the ingredients for beer and rum had to be imported. Apple trees could be grown almost anywhere and you can get 12 to 14 gallons of cider from a single tree in a year.

As a result, the cheapest, most accessible, and most popular adult beverage for the first two hundred years of our history was hard cider. Which they called cider. Non-alcholic cider wasn't invented until Prohibition. In 1700, the colonies were producing 300 thousand gallons of cider a year and the average man drank 35 gallons a year. By 1810, Vermont alone had 125 distilleries producing 170 thousand gallons a year.

George Washington preferred hard cider over beer. Benjamin Franklin said, "it is bad to eat apples, it is better to turn them all into cider." John Adams had a tankard of cider every morning for breakfast. Andrew Jackson, when he wasn't busy killing men in duels, drank cider.

Sarah Palin wasn't the first politician to appeal to Joe Six Pack. To appeal to the blue collar workingman, William Henry Harrison, in his 1840 bid for the presidency, called himself the "log cabin and hard cider candidate."

Cider's most important evangelist came in the form of the American Dionysus, John Chapman. You know him as Johnny Appleseed. Our popular conception of him is wandering missionary, spreading God's word and planting apple trees willy nilly. That's pretty much not how it happened. He did become a missionary later in life, but he got his start in the world as a businessman. Chapman traveled around the US establishing apple tree nurseries and hiring local farmers to manage them. Since the apples from all the trees he planted weren't edible, there was only one thing to be done. Thanks to Chapman, cider production soared.

The sad decline of cider is a complicated story. The 1840s saw a huge influx of German and Irish immigrants who brought with them a powerful love of beer and improved brewing methods (specifically, bottom fermentation which was superior to top fermentation practiced in the US... which produced beer of inconsistent quality before refrigeration and modern sterilization techniques, but that's a whole other story). During the mid-1800s, an apple blight swept across the US, severely depleting the apple tree population. Also, more Americans began to settle and farm the Midwest, which meant more land for growing hops and barley.

The biggest blow to the dominance of cider came with the Temperance Movement, beginning in the 1820s. The movement caught on with Anglo Protestants, that is, the cider drinkers. The Catholic beer-drinking Irish and Germans had none of it. At end of the 1800s, politics were heading toward national prohibition and the new soft drink Coca Cola snatched up the cider demographic. By the time the 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition in 1933, the American tradition of guzzling hard cider was gone with the wind.

That is, until the 1990s when American hard cider became popular again, thanks to Woodchuck.

The Survey
Since hard cider plays such an important role in our national and cultural heritage, I decided to try them all. I mean, anything worth doing, is worth doing to excess.

Angry Orchard - From the company that brought you Sam Adams. If the creepy man tree on the label doesn't scare you off, the taste will. I tried the Crisp Apple variety first. It tasted like sugar added juice box apple juice. If I wanted something this sweet, I would have made some Kool-Aid. I tried their Traditional Dry variety, but it was still too sweet.

Crispin - A California cider. This was probably my favorite of the ciders. Light-bodied, dry, crisp. It was both refreshing and intoxicating and had a really clean apple flavor. I had it again at Blue, Brews, and BBQ. It also tastes good out of a plastic collectible cup. This will be my go to cider.

Magner's - An Irish Cider. I ordered this at Dublin O'Neil's, Champaign's Irish Pub. It came on ice, which was a little disconcerting, but apparently that's a perfectly acceptable way to serve cider. This didn't have much flavor (maybe it was watered down) and I wasn't very impressed.

Woodchuck - The American cider that brought cider back. This wasn't as juice box sweet as Angry Orchard, but a little too sweet for my taste. By the way, a woodchuck is the same thing as a groundhog, only it has nothing to do with wood or chucking. The name is a corruption of the Algonquian wuchak.

Hornsby's - The one with the rhino. This was Aine's favorite. My second favorite. It was mostly dry, with a lot of apple flavor. This one tasted like actual apple juice from an apple. Not the from concentrate stuff with lots of sugar like they give to kids these days.

So, now you're armed with truth. If you love America, drink some cider.

We Are Hard Cheese Ready

Dad built and mailed me a cheese press last week. When he told me, I rushed to Amazon to buy some cheese wax. Since that was the last piece of equipment I needed, I can now embark on the next stage of my Cheese Odyssey...

Hard Cheese.

I am moving from Cheese Adolescence to Cheese Adulthood. Granted, I'll have to successfully make a Brie or a Bleu Cheese before I am Epic Cheese Master, but this is an important step.

All my Cheese Dreams are coming true.

Potterpizzaversary!

Background
Two years ago, on the July 4th weekend, we drove for two days in a Uhaul to move Aine and all her things up to Illinois. We arrived on Church street late the second day, unloaded the truck, and set up house. Exhausted, we didn't feel like cooking dinner and didn't know the local restaurants well enough to order carry out. We bought a frozen pizza and ate it while watching a comfort movie, one of the Harry Potters.

One year ago, on the July 4th weekend, I moved up to join Aine in Illinois. We drove a Uhaul for two days and late the second day, we unloaded the truck, this time doubling the amount of stuff in the 500 square foot Church street apartment. Exhausted from the weekend's activities, we decided to celebrate the successful completion of the move by cooking a frozen pizza and watching Harry Potter.

This year, we decided to mark the one year anniversary of my move and the two year anniversary of her move with a Potter and Pizza Night.

I asked Aine, do you want to get another frozen pizza or make our own, hoping she would opt for the frozen pizza. She said, let's make our own!

Homemade 'Za
We wanted to do this right, so we bought a pizza stone to have that authentic brick oven experience. I used the pizza dough recipe that came in the Oster Recipe Booklet and used whole wheat flour.

Taste of Home had a good pizza sauce recipe that I mostly followed. I omitted the fennel seed and cooked it for ten minutes instead of an hour and it produced a very tasty sauce.

Il Recipe:

• 2x 15 oz cans tomato sauce
• 12 oz can tomato paste
• 1 tbl Italian seasoning
• 1 tbl dried oregano
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• .5 tsp salt

We wanted different toppings on our respective halves. I wanted the traditional pepperoni and jalapenos. Aine preferred mushrooms, savoy spinach, and feta.

While I chopped the veggies, Aine, a pizza-making veteran from her Sewanee days, rolled the dough.

Crankles stood guard.

After we assembled the pizza,

we put it in the oven (400 degrees for 15 minutes). Here's how it came out:

Homemade pizza on a whole wheat crust. Our third annual Potter and Pizza Night was a success.

Grad to the Bone 
Earlier that day, a courier arrived with paper proof of Aine's hard work and tireless scholarship. She now has her long awaited diploma for a Master of Arts in Classics.

Champaign Freedom Celebration 2013

Independence
Yesterday, July the 4th, we celebrated Independence Day. We were one of the first nations to name a day disconnected from any religious tradition, but devoted solely to our national identity. Unlike France's Bastille Day, to name one, ours does not celebrate a battle or a military victory, but a parlaimentary motion to approve a document.

In June, Richard Henry Lee submitted a resolution the Continental Congress to declare independence from the British Empire. Many of the delegates had not been given approval to vote for independence by their states, so the Congress decided to the let the situation marinate. In the meantime, they appointed the Committee of Five, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson, to draft a document justifying independence. Since the heavyweights in the committee were occupied by pressing work in more important committees, the work of drafting the document was shuffled down to the most junior member, the shy, lanky ginger nobody really knew, Jefferson. No one expected much from the declaration. Jefferson needed to slap some words on paper for filing purposes. Instead, he wrote one of the most brilliant and politically radical philosophical treatises in history.

Friday, June 28th (that's right, the 2013 calendar syncs up with the 1776 calendar), the Committee of Five presented Jefferson's declaration to the Congress. They spent the weekend chugging hard cider and haggling in back rooms and on Monday, July 1st, debates over Lee's resolution and Jefferson's document began in earnest. On Tuesday, the political ducks were in a row and the Congress approved Lee's resolution from the month before. The United Colonies were independent of the British Empire. John Adams went home and wrote to Abigail:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

After haggling over wording (about slavery) on Wednesday, the Congress voted to approve the final handwritten copy of the document (dated July 4th) on Thursday and they rushed it off to the printers. Historians disagree about who signed it when, but most agree that the final signed copy on display at the national archives was drafted (and signed by Hancock) sometime after July 19. The majority of delegates didn't append their signatures until August.

Independence wasn't a reality until Cornwallis' surrender in 1781 and the subsequent Treaty of Paris in 1783, but in early July 1776, the idea, long incubated, was born: the idea of a government instituted by the governed to ensure the inalienable rights of its citizens. And that's what we celebrated yesterday.

Three Point One
To celebrate, we ran the Freedom 5k.

Of course, we needed patriotic attire for the run, so we bought some 2013 Flag Shirts from Old Navy.

It started and ended in a grove of sycamores in front of Assembly Hall.

Here's the Before Picture (see how happy and naive we look):

And the After (see the exhaustion):

For the weary runners, watermelon:

After the race we met up with Sebastian.

His usual workout takes him on 10 mile runs. So, while we were happy that we came in under 30 minutes, he seemed ambivalent about coming in under 20. We consoled ourselves with a fattening breakfast of eggs, potatoes, and pancakes at Le Peep.

Fireworks
Even though the Freedom Celebration took place only half a mile from our apartment, we decided to drive, so we wouldn't have to carry our chairs that far. We were still tired. We ran a lot that morning. However, when we reached the parking lot, we realized it was about the same distance in the other direction. So we drove back home and walked anyway.

The festivities were set up on Stadium Terrace, a huge green area across from Assembly Hall. They had bounce houses for the kiddos, food vendors, and a 60s and 70s cover band. The band was pretty good when they were singing. Sometimes between songs, they made jokes. They weren't funny.

We arrived early and brought books. We wanted to enjoy the music, the weather, and some cold beverages from Friar Tuck's while we read and waited for the sun to set. However, the booth wasn't Friar Tuck's, local liquor store, it was Fryer Tuck's, local purveyor of fried foods. I looked around at the coolers brought from home and the dads furtively pouring their beers into nondescript plastic cups and I realized I had misjudged the situation. So I trekked off campus and bought beers and a cooler from Walgreens. Aine hassled the Fryer Tuck's staff for two plastic cups. Then we moved our chairs to the middle of the field, far from the roving police officers.

By that time, it was too dark to read. The sun was setting.

Shortly before the start of the fireworks, I had to go to one of the Port-a-Pottys to release some of the beer. I am generally horrified at the thought of public restrooms, so when exiting the little wigwam of feces, I took a generous helping of hand sanitizer. On the walk back, I found the hand sanitizer was taking an unusually long time to rub in. Also, it was strangely fragrant. Also, it foamed the more I rubbed.

I sat down and expressed my bewilderment to Aine.

She said: "You brainless scumbag. That's soap."

Apparently there were little motion activated sinks inside the Port-a-Pottys. I thought they were just really high urinals.

It was too late at that point. A local pastor said a prayer, a local choir sang the Star Spangled Banner, and Champaign Fire Department retired the flag while a bagpiper played Taps. Then the explosions began.

The first fireworks celebration for July 4th took place in Boston in 1777. So, when you watch fireworks on the 4th, you're participating in our second oldest national tradition. The first oldest is complaining about taxes.

Here are the obligatory blurry fireworks pictures.

Parting Shot
We were a stop on the Wedding Victory Tour!