Dear Kid,

Last night we went to MadTree Brewery for a celebration for Ohio River Foundation and Dad’s birthday. Unless it was Dad’s birthday and an ORF celebration.

Either way, we were there.

We had a goat cheese pizza and a variation on mac and cheese. One of these days I’ll remember to photograph food before we eat it.

Ohio River Foundation is the charity of the month at MadTree. So if you go to MadTree during December, you can throw a dollar (or many dollars) up on the screen, and at the end of the month the money will go to ORF. (They get the money down from the screens with a leaf blower!)

Happy today,

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Once upon a time there was a river. It was a nice river except is was crazy polluted. And it had been working very hard for a very long time. While the river didn’t want to retire, it rather hoped someone would take care of it a little better.

The river was called Glug by close friends and the Ohio River by everyone else. The river had been given its name by the Iroquois one birthday (Ohi:yó means Good River which it was at that point in its life). It was 981 miles tall long and carried a lot of tributaries (piggy back style).

The river was the friendly type and snuggled up to six states while keeping in touch with several more in its drainage basin.

The first Europeans to see the river arrived in 1669. They didn’t even bring a thanks-for-letting-us-visit present.

Eventually, lots of people moved in and – wham! dams, pollution, big mess.

For a long time, the river ran from the problem (get it? river running? of course you do) and then along came a Very Nice Man (VNM).

The VNM spent a lot of time with the river, cleaning it up, sprucing up its shores, helping people enjoy it, and educating kids about taking care of it (called “Being Environmental Stewards”). He created a Foundation to help take care of the whole watershed and to teach students about the importance of taking care of our resources. He named the Foundation after river, which the river thought was very nice.

The river knew not everything would change overnight, but it had been around for a long time and it was willing to wait and work with the VNM.

Please LIKE Ohio River Foundation and make a donation to ORF as a birthday present for the Very Nice Man.

Don’t forget to call (as in your real voice–not just a text) Dad today to say Happy Birthday.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

The kayak was first created in the arctic by the Inuit people. This explains why kayaking is most popular in warm climates and in the summer.

You may have thought that kayaking is fun (it is) and fairly straightforward: get in and paddle. Turns out you are much mistaken, my young padawan. You need equipment, a river or other water body, and a healthy helping of Newton’s 1^st and 2^nd Laws. And some torque. You definitely need torque. There is a website that explains all this in detail and even suggests that to become a better kayaker you should enroll in a physics class. (The Physics of Kayaking if you are interested.)

Kayaking became a part of the Olympics in 1936, although it’s not obvious whether the kayakers take physics as part of their training.

In other news, the rain continues. And continues The sump pump is running full on  and Dad is fretting over the accumulation of water. Many of the plants are growing water wings and requesting swimming lessons. Rain is making the front page of the newspaper on a regular basis (which I suppose is good in that it means that there aren’t that many other interesting catastrophes in the world). And I can’t use gardening as an excuse not to do housework because “gardening” right now probably involves scuba gear and a lot of mud.

Sorry your kayak trip got rained out.

Love, Mom