“In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”

Hearing these words read from the Gospel according to John this morning, I reflected on how much has changed since last October.

Then, a tragedy was unfolding, only to be resolved by a tremendous change I doubted I’d have the fortitude to handle. Purpose and fulfillment in life were in short supply as the center of my attention started fading away. I prayed to just get through each day, pondering what I could do to offer meaning and find hope beyond a challenging present, into a future that didn’t look very appealing.

So when I saw that the “Patron of Hope” was coming to St. Paul the Apostle Church in Westerville on October 30, 2023, I decided I’d pay St. Jude a visit.

Also referred to as Thaddeus, Jude was a first cousin to Jesus. He and his brother, James the Less, were among the 12 disciples Jesus appointed to be His Apostles. During the first century, Jude ministered in modern-day Turkey, writing a 25-verse Epistle of the New Testament. He also preached the Gospel in Phoenicia, Arabia, Syria and Mesopotamia, accompanied by fellow Apostle St. Simon the Less. Either in modern-day Beirut or Iran, the pair were martyred; Jude was clubbed to death and then beheaded with an axe, while Simon was cut in half with a saw. Jude’s body was buried in the place of his martyrdom, but his remains were later transferred to Rome. Today, the remains of both Jude and Simon rest in a shared tomb directly below the main altar of the left transept of St. Peter’s Basilica. The Saints’ shared feast day is celebrated on October 28.

When St. Jude is pictured, he is often portrayed holding a club or an axe, the two instruments of his martyrdom, as well as a pen, representing his New Testament epistle. Also, he can be seen wearing or carrying a cloth or medallion bearing an image of Jesus’s face, symbolizing the Image of Edessa, the first miraculous image of Jesus prior to those said to have been seen on St. Veronica’s veil and the shroud of Turin.

St. Jude has developed a popular reputation as a patron of hopeless cases and desperate situations, as many faithful experiencing significant difficulties find solace and hope in invoking his assistance. Prayers to St. Jude express trust in placing individual needs in his hands and requesting his intercession for them, if it is God’s will. Therefore, he is usually depicted with a small flame above his head to represent his intercessory power.

In the United States, St. Jude has achieved popular recognition, thanks to Danny Thomas, the Lebanese-American who prayed to St. Jude as a struggling entertainer facing financial difficulties. Thomas promised to build a shrine in St. Jude’s honor if he found professional success and his finances became more stable. True to his word, in 1962, Thomas established St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, dedicated to providing the best medical care to young patients, especially those suffering from life-threatening childhood diseases, regardless of their financial situation. Today, it is one of the world’s leading pediatric research and treatment centers, operating on the principle that no family receives a bill for treatment, travel, housing, or food.

During an 1830 renovation to the main altar of a Roman church known as the Holy Savior of the Laurels, a reliquary containing the bones of one of St. Jude’s arms was discovered. Carved in the shape of an upright arm imparting a blessing, the wooden reliquary also is marked by official seals attesting to its authenticity.

Since September 2023, that reliquary has been traveling on a North American pilgrimage to 100 American cities. In each stop, the faithful request St. Jude to intercede to Jesus for them, venerating his relic by saying a prayer, making the Sign of the Cross, or touching the display case containing the reliquary.

The tragic event that I thought would be the most difficult of my life turned into one that continues to yield triumphant outcomes.

“May God be praised for lifting your burdens.”

“Pollinator Garden in Progress….”

As I approached the northwest corner of Indianola Ave. and Torrence Rd., John Tesh talked to me about the emerging trend of creating a “quiet garden.” By assembling a calming collection of ornamental grasses that rustle and sway in the breeze, fragrant flowers, and different types of foliage and textures to engage the senses, you can create soft aesthetics in your landscape that reduce anxiety. Native plants, particularly those that attract bees and butterflies, are especially at home in a quiet garden.

It was fitting that this installment of “Intelligence For Your Life” was imparted right in the thick of the Clintonville Hellstrip Gardeners’ domain.

Inspired by Clintonville resident Agi Risko, devoted gardeners in this Columbus community are endeavoring to create soothing respites from urban life right at the curbs of city streets.

They’re following the lead of landscape designer and author of The Undaunted Garden, Lauren Springer Ogden, who coined the term “hellstrip” to describe a difficult-to-plant piece of land between a street and a public sidewalk.

By converting a sparse or ignored patch of grass into part of an overall planting scheme, hellstrip gardeners are making their neighborhood more inviting, encouraging interactions between residents, and adding curb appeal to homes.

For gardeners in search of more space, or eager to experiment with different plants, hellstrip gardens offer an appealing extension of available acreage. They also provide additional habitat for wildlife and can be employed as an extra plot for a vegetable garden.

The same gardening practices can be employed along fences, down steps, beside driveways, or other challenging parts of a landscape.

Nutrient-poor soil, construction fill topped by turfgrass, and air pollutants from vehicle exhaust can make some curbside conditions not conducive to growing a lush stand of grass. However, with some care, hellstrips can host thriving gardens. Dense plantings also offer lower maintenance requirements, especially when including plants that have adapted to nutrient-poor soil or don’t need extra water or fertilizer.

Plants well-suited to a hellstrip garden include purple coneflower, daisies, coral bells, perennial herbs like thyme, sage and oregano, and native grasses and wildflowers like flax, penstemons and salvias. Yarrow, butterfly weed, coreopsis, red hot poker, blazing star, penstemon, aster, little bluestem and hyssop are other recommendations.

Adding features like free plants for the taking, as well as water and treats for dogs, make a hellstrip garden even more attractive.

You can spot most of the Clintonville Hellstrip Gardens east of N. High St. in Clintonville, particularly on Torrence and Blenheim Roads. One was also established in front of Beechwold Hardware, at 4591 N. High St.

Before beginning a hellstrip garden, check with your city first to ensure that it is permissible. Some hellstrips may be publicly owned or have public easements or utilities running through them. Ensure that you comply with specifications like height restrictions, prohibited plants, and whether other structures in the landscape are permissible.

For more, see Hellstrip Gardening: Create a Paradise Between the Sidewalk and the Curb, by Evelyn J. Hadden.

“The most comfortable and most favourable arrangement of my worldly concerns that I ever had.”

One of my best friends digs dandelions and dump trucks, craves chocolate and constructs pillow houses. In fact, he’s turning four today.

Henri shares his birthday with John Brown, the noted abolitionist who was born 224 years ago. To my surprise, I discovered that the man Harriet Tubman said had “done more in dying, than 100 men would in living” was also a talented shepherd who spent the better part of his life in Ohio.

In 1805, Brown’s parents decided to leave their native Connecticut and seek a new life for their family on the frontier of the Western Reserve, eventually settling in Hudson, Ohio. Growing up in Portage and Summit counties, Brown helped his father provide refuge and transportation for escaped slaves on their way to Cleveland via the Underground Railroad. When Wiliam Lloyd Garrison, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, gave an 1837 address in Hudson, Brown was moved to devote his life to the cause of ending slavery.

While Brown’s convictions were strong, his financial know-how was faltering. Plagued by debt and bankruptcy, he decided to develop his childhood interest in the sheep and wool industry. Before long, he became a successful sheep breeder and an expert judge of wool quality. Instead of gathering and bundling fleece straight from the sheep — dirt, burrs and all — Brown meticulously cleaned it, separating it into nine different grades of wool he developed, all at different prices.

In 1844, Brown’s talents attracted the attention of Simon Perkins, Jr., the wealthy son of the co-founder of the city of Akron, Ohio. Perkins lived in an elegant stone mansion that was completed in 1837 and is now considered one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in Ohio.

Besides farming the 150 acres that surrounded his home, Perkins raised cattle, but wanted to expand his business to include sheep. He approached Brown to form a partnership in this developing industry that also offered international trade opportunities in wool.

Brown accepted, renting a two-room cottage from Perkins, located across from the Perkins mansion at what is now at the intersection of Copley and Diagonal Roads in Akron. Built circa 1830, the structure had been rented by the Perkins family as their stone mansion was being built, and Perkins had purchased it in 1844. Brown considered this “the most comfortable and most favourable arrangement of my worldly concerns that I ever had.” Annual rent for Brown, his wife and nine children was $30, which included a garden and firewood.

While Perkins provided food and shelter for the flock of 1,300 Merino and Saxony sheep, Brown took care of them, including shearing them, cleaning their fleece, shipping the wool to market, and traveling to Europe to develop new business. Before long, the partnership was a success, winning awards and press coverage for Brown’s method of cleaning and producing quality wool from what was considered one of the largest and finest flocks of sheep in Ohio, indeed in the United States. In fact, the flock was so large that residents of Akron referred to the Perkins estate as “Mutton Hill.”

Prosperity prompted Perkins to establish a three-story factory in Akron, where each floor was devoted to different tasks of wool production, from washing and sorting to spinning, dyeing and weaving. Nearly 60 people were employed in the operation, and it eventually produced 500 yards of finished product a day. The business also expanded to Springfield, Massachusetts for a time, where Brown formed a depot for storing wool. Two of Brown’s sons were also involved in the business.  

Meanwhile, Brown continued his dedication to abolition and the Underground Railroad. He purchased land in North Elba, New York, where an initiative was under way to teach farming to escaped slaves and free Black men. When business difficulties proved to be too much to overcome, Perkins and Brown parted company amicably in 1854, and most of the Brown family relocated to North Elba. 

For the next five years, Brown increased his abolition efforts, organizing a failed raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia that led to his conviction for conspiracy to incite a slave insurrection, treason and murder. He was hanged on December 2, 1859.

Perkins family descendants lived in the stone mansion until 1945, when it was sold to the Summit County Historical Society. Today, it is a historic house museum that includes decorative art and artifacts from the period, including some original Perkins family possessions.

The cottage the Browns lived in was later expanded over the years, with Perkins descendants also calling it home. Later, it became the first home of the Portage Country Club, with a nine-hole golf course constructed around it. Recent efforts have not only returned the exterior’s appearance to resemble its original cedar boards, but also restored the property’s outbuildings and perimeter stone wall, possibly built by Brown and his sons. The original two rooms of the cottage have been redesigned to present information about Brown and his 20 children, his work on Mutton Hill, and his role in ending slavery. It is a site on the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

“It stands for simplicity.”

With a surprise ring of the doorbell, a routine Friday evening watching The Carol Burnett Show turned into a welcome special event. During that conversation by candlelight, I rediscovered another enduring symbol of 1970s popular culture: Beer-can collecting.

Back then, beer-can collecting was a fast-growing hobby. Walls were filled with finds collectors cajoled from others or unearthed with the help of metal detectors. Whether their tops are flat or cone-shaped, or opened with pull tabs or stay tabs, some beer cans are rare and unique, but they all offer a unique take on brewing history since they were introduced in 1935.

Collections are not only beloved examples of their owners’ personalities, but also important pass-downs for future generations. Legendary acquisitions and surprise discoveries are proudly displayed — mostly at home, but sometimes as the subject of a museum exhibition.

That was the case last Fall, when the Dayton Art Institute displayed a private collection of Marblehead pottery, a subdued, but stunning product of the American Arts and Crafts movement.

Known for its soft colors, simple designs, matte glazes and thorough workmanship, Marblehead Pottery got its start in 1904. A medical doctor named Herbert Hall had begun a therapy program for women with nervous disorders in Marblehead, Massachusetts, a coastal fishing village north of Boston. While recuperating in a relaxing environment, patients could choose to engage in a variety of soothing handicrafts, including weaving, woodcarving, metalwork and pottery.

Each craft was developed and supervised by an individual, and Arthur Baggs, a student at the New York State School of Clay-Working and Ceramics at Alfred University, was hired in 1905 to oversee teaching patients the therapeutic techniques of pottery-making, as well as producing the pottery.

Early Marblehead pieces were made from clay discovered nearby; then, the pottery was created from a mixture of Jersey stone and native Massachusetts brick clay. Simple forms were hand-thrown and individually decorated.

In the beginning, pieces were predominantly green and blue, with a matte glaze.  Soft, warm tones were reminiscent of the village’s gardens and streets, as well as the nearby rocks and sea. A distinctive deep blue glaze became known as “Marblehead Blue.” Other colors included gray, yellow, tobacco brown, wisteria, rose, putty and yellow. Vases typically featured two tones: an outer glaze in a slightly different color from the interior glaze.

Hand-thrown vases and candlesticks, as well as cast tiles, trivets and bookends, were common creations. Many featured abstract, geometrical decorative motifs associated with New England, such as a square rigger ship, stylized waves and harpoons. Other natural motifs included trees, vines, flowers, insects, birds, seashells, animals and fish.

Early pieces bore a hand-drawn mark depicting a seagull overlaying the capital letter “M.” Eventually, the mark developed into an impression featuring a square-rigged ship flanked by the letters “M” and “P.”

Before long, it was obvious that Hall and Baggs were on to something, and the art and design field noticed.  “The Marblehead Pottery stands for simplicity – for quiet, subdued colors, for severe conventionalism in design, and for careful and thorough workmanship in all details,” House Beautiful observed in 1912.

What began as a summer endeavor continued as a permanent responsibility. Three years later, Marblehead Pottery was established as a separate, for-profit enterprise with a staff of employees. When its output grew to over 200 pieces a week, the pottery business was sold to Baggs in 1915.

By 1923, Baggs summered at Marblehead, but spent the rest of the year teaching pottery in New York and perfecting glazes at Cowan Pottery in Cleveland. In 1928, he became the first faculty member hired by the new Department of Ceramic Engineering at The Ohio State University in Columbus, heading the program until his death in 1947. Today, the Arthur E. Baggs Memorial Library, in the Department of Art’s ceramics area in Hopkins Hall, includes a collection of ceramics-related books, objects, tools, glaze notebooks, test tiles and other material. University Archives also holds the Arthur Eugene Baggs Papers, containing his correspondence, research and class notes, and publications.

Marblehead Pottery sold its award-winning, distinctive items through mail order and in shops across the country. It closed in 1936.

“The train has left the station. After all that suffering he endured so stoically, we pray that he’ll have the smoothest, most enjoyable journey to his final destination in Heaven.”

Paul David Butler lost his valiant battle against severe, fast-paced dementia on Saturday, March 16, 2024.

Born to Victor and Dorothy Stein Butler on August 11, 1935, Paul graduated from Holy Rosary High School in 1953 with his cousin and sidekick, Fred Butler. He earned his degree in commerce from The Ohio State University in 1958 and was drafted to serve in the U.S. Army from 1958 to 1960 at Ft. Ord, California, which included a screen appearance in “A Summer Place.”

Paul first expressed his talent for fixing things and his love of lawn care at Cohagan Hardware, becoming the store’s stockboy in 1951 and rising to co-owner in 1960 and then owner. He was recognized for distinguished service by the Ohio Hardware Association and successfully completed a course of study in O.M. Scott & Sons’ lawn school. After closing the store in 1985, he applied his easygoing personality and aptitude for numbers as the law firm of Bricker & Eckler’s accounts receivable and collections manager until his retirement in 2004. From giving tours of the firm’s historic building and editing its employee newsletter to organizing lunchtime euchre games and social gatherings, Paul was the enthusiastic center of a devoted following at the firm.

During the 1970s, Paul served his German Village community as treasurer of the German Village Society and as a lector and altar server at St. Mary Catholic Church. He was a volunteer gardener during AmeriFlora in 1992. He expressed his artistic creativity through his signature recipes, award-winning pumpkin carving, watercolors, Bob Ross paintings, stained glass windows, interior design, gardening, and designing and building dollhouses, picket fences, Chippendale-style planters and a gazebo. 

Paul’s gentle, congenial, humble and generous ways were his hallmark, best expressed in his close bond with his now-deceased parents-in-law, Jim and Jane Born Heinmiller. With his wife of 55 years, Suzanne, and daughter, Betsy, the inseparable Butler trio cherished being together, even when such a cruel disease invaded their home.

Predeceased by his elder brother, Bob, Paul is also survived by his brothers, Roger (Tina) and Tom. His nieces Debbie Zahara and Dodi (Terry) Weirick, and nephew Michael (Julie) Butler, held a particularly special place in his heart.

Friends are invited to pay their respects to Paul on Wednesday, March 20, 2024 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm at Egan-Ryan Northwest Chapel, 4661 Kenny Road, Columbus; Mass of Christian Burial Celebrated by Fr. Michael  Lumpe Thursday, March 21, 2024, at 10 a.m. at St. Michael Church, Worthington, followed by interment at St. Joseph Cemetery, Lockbourne. Those wishing to honor Paul’s memory are encouraged in lieu of flowers to offer Mass intentions for his eternal soul or to contribute to the Paul, Suzanne and Elizabeth Butler Endowment Fund held by the Catholic Foundation.