I Am Good, I Am Grounded

I've been to Ohio at least a dozen times and I'll go there many more. From Cleveland to Cincinnati to Columbus I've enjoyed it through. I think about drinking beer at O'Malley's In The Alley after watching the Reds at Great American Ballpark and playing chess with the bartender. I think about watching jazz with my old friend John at Dick's Den in Columbus after I worked the Ohio State football game. I think about eating brisket at the Baker family barbecue in Cleveland Heights. Being in the Dawg Pound with Nick, making the air on a Monday Night Football broadcast, and watching the Browns lose in devastating fashion on a blocked field goal returned for a touchdown as time expired.

The first time I went to Ohio I was on the way to California. I had just turned 21 and I spent the afternoon playing guitar in a park for tips. I took those tips to the casino, got lucky, and afforded myself a hotel room for the night. That was the only hotel room I bought that trip.

They named Ohio from the Iroquoian ohiyo meaning great river or, funnier, large creek. It's a special place that has birthed LeBron James and Steph Curry, but also, my friends Daley and Taylor. None of those people live there anymore. The British and the Shawnee were briefly teammates in the war of 1812 laying siege to Fort Meigs while the Americans held. This was all a part of the Sixty Years' War, expanding the United States and setting the boundary for the Civil War while essentially vanishing the Indigenous population from the area. None of those people live there anymore either.

The Ohio River is the largest tributary of the Mississippi. Thomas Jefferson once said, regarding it, "The Ohio is the most beautiful river on earth. Its current gentle, waters clear, and bosom smooth and unbroken by rocks and rapids, a single instance only excepted." Ironically, this was written in his book Notes on the State of Virginia.

Ohio is also a sort of political litmus test. Obama won it twice, as did W., as did Bill. It would be easy to attribute all of these facts to a lack of cultural identity, but I think differently of it. Historically speaking, wherever we ended up, good or bad, Ohio was on the way. If you hate the NBA right now with all of its 3-point volume you can blame the kid from Akron who shoots it from 30 feet away. If you love the NBA right now with all of its hunting for better and more efficient ways to score you can blame the other kid from Akron who never saw a nice pass that he didn't want to make. In this way, Ohio is a great river.

Another midwestern icon (albeit not from Ohio, but Illinois), Herbie Hancock, embodied a particular philosophy with his influential Mwandishi band. This philosophy not uncommonly referenced the importance of the journey one takes instead of the destination. We've all heard this sort of thinking but it needs to go a step further. In his book, You'll Know When You Get There (also the title of track 2 from Hancock's, Mwandishi), Bob Gluck writes, "For Hancock, diverse musical influences belong together and the synthesis deserves a broad audience. To this listener, the results echo the teaching of the Jewish mystic Rav Kook that "our task is to make the old new and the new holy.""

This is what Ohio means to me.

There are ideological arguments for the excision of large swaths of this country and those work fine if you've stopped believing that we can be better. I wouldn't totally argue against you. It's fun to consider, electorally, what we could get done without Texas on the map. It's not fun to consider what the people in Texas would have to do if abandoned by the rest of us. I prefer trying. Forever. And you'll know when you get there.

If you'd like to change your life you can start anytime, but if you'd like to change the country you should go to Ohio. You'll probably have more fun in New York or Los Angeles, but I assure you that you'll learn more in Cleveland.

-Michael Campana