Behind Put-in-Bay's breathtaking scenery and wild nightlife is a side of the island that will make your hair stand on end. Passersby claim to see the ghost of assistant lighthouse keeper Sam Anderson, who jumped to his death in the turbulent water of Lake Erie during an 1898 smallpox outbreak. Doors open and close of their own accord, and some say a spirit named Benny tosses things around at the Put-in-Bay Brewery and Distillery. Stage actor T.B. Alexander married the granddaughter of famous abolitionist John Brown and became one of the island's most noted mayors. His ghost is said to linger in the historic barroom of T&J's Smokehouse. Author William G. Krejci hosts this tour of the darker aspects of island life.
"We have met the enemy and they are ours. . . ." So wrote Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to General William Henry Harrison following his decisive victory over a British fleet at the Battle of Lake Erie. Perry's victory served as a catalyst both for this battle and for ending hostilities in the Old Northwest Theater of the War of 1812. Captured here in over 200 vintage images from the Monument archives, is a pictorial and technical record of how a monument befitting this naval victory and the resulting peace became a reality. During the remainder of his life, the country heralded Perry as a national hero whose bravery and fortitude enabled the U.S. to win, or gain an honorable peace from, its war with England. A deserving result of this victory was creation of a monument to honor Perry and his men. The story of the construction of the monument is as thrilling as the bravery that inspired it-seen here are the original photographs taken by prominent Put-in-Bay photographer G. Otto Herbster, capturing the builders, architects, mishaps, and triumphs that occurred during the construction of one of Ohio's most revered treasures.
Renowned artist and architect Maya Lin's visual and verbal sketchbook—a unique view into her artwork and philosophy. Walking through this parklike area, the memorial appears as a rift in the earth -- a long, polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth. Approaching the memorial, the ground slopes gently downward, and the low walls emerging on either side, growing out of the earth, extend and converge at a point below and ahead. Walking into the grassy site contained by the walls of this memorial, we can barely make out the carved names upon the memorial's walls. These names, seemingly infinite in number, convey the sense of overwhelming numbers, while unifying these individuals into a whole.... So begins the competition entry submitted in 1981 by a Yale undergraduate for the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. -- subsequently called "as moving and awesome and popular a piece of memorial architecture as exists anywhere in the world." Its creator, Maya Lin, has been nothing less than world famous ever since. From the explicitly political to the un-ashamedly literary to the completely abstract, her simple and powerful sculpture -- the Rockefeller Foundation sculpture, the Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights Memorial, the Yale Women's Table, Wave Field -- her architecture, including The Museum for African Art and the Norton residence, and her protean design talents have defined her as one of the most gifted creative geniuses of the age. Boundaries is her first book: an eloquent visual/verbal sketchbook produced with the same inspiration and attention to detail as any of her other artworks. Like her environmental sculptures, it is a site, but one which exists at a remove so that it may comment on the personal and artistic elements that make up those works. In it, sketches, photographs, workbook entries, and original designs are held together by a deeply personal text. Boundaries is a powerful literary and visual statement by "a leading public artist" (Holland Carter). It is itself a unique work of art.
