Christmas of Old

Season of Love

Changing Seasons

 Photo by Mary Christopher Smith

Christmas Past

 The past is a term used to indicate the totality of events which occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience time, and is accessed through memory and recollection. In addition, human beings have recorded the past since the advent of written language.
Wikipedia

By the Cabin Door

My Old Kentucky Home State Park - 2012

My Old Kentucky Home

The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home

'Tis summer, the people are gay

The corn top's ripe and the meadow's in the bloom

While the birds make music all the day



The young folks roll on the little cabin floor

All merry, all happy and bright

By'n by hard times comes a-knocking at the door

Then my old Kentucky home, good night



Chorus

Weep no more, my lady

Oh, weep no more today

We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home

For the old Kentucky home far away



They hunt no more for possum and the coon

On the meadow, the hill, and the shore

They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon

On the bench by the old cabin door



The day goes by like a shadow o're the heart

With sorrow where all was delight

The time has come when the people have to part

Then my old Kentucky home, good-night



The head must bow and the back will have to bend

Wherever the darkey may go

A few more days, and the trouble all will end

In the field where the sugar-canes grow



A few more days for to tote the weary load

No matter, 'twill never be light

A few more days till we totter on the road

Then my old Kentucky home, good-night

Ohio River

Indiana Shoreline looking towards Kentucky

The Ohio River (Seneca: ohi:yó) is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi; thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream. It is approximately 981 miles (1,579 km) long and is located in the Eastern United States.

The river had great significance in the history of the Native Americans, as numerous civilizations formed along its valley. In the five centuries prior to European contact, the Mississippian culture built numerous regional chiefdoms and major earthwork mounds in the Ohio Valley, such as Angel Mounds near Evansville, Indiana, as well as in the Mississippi Valley and the Southeast. For thousands of years, Native Americans, like the European explorers and settlers who followed them, used the river as a major transportation and trading route. Its waters connected communities. The Osage, Omaha, Ponca and Kaw lived in the Ohio Valley, but under pressure from the Iroquois to the northeast, migrated west of the Mississippi River to Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma in the 1600s.

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle led an expedition to the Ohio River in 1669. His French party were the first Europeans to see the river. After European-American settlement, the river served at times as a border between present-day Kentucky and Indian Territories. It was a primary transportation route for pioneers during the westward expansion of the early U.S. 

The Ohio flows through or along the border of six states, and its drainage basin includes all, or part of, 14 states. Through its largest tributary, the Tennessee River, the basin includes many of the states of the southeastern U.S. During the 19th century, the river was the southern boundary of the Northwest Territory. It is sometimes considered as the western extension of the Mason–Dixon Line that divided Pennsylvania from Maryland, and thus part of the border between free and slave territory, and between the Northern and Southern United States or Upper South. Where the river was narrow, it was the way to freedom for thousands of slaves escaping to the North, many helped by free blacks and whites of the Underground Railroad resistance movement.

The Ohio River is a climatic transition area, as its water runs along the periphery of the humid subtropical and humid continental climate areas. It is inhabited by fauna and flora of both climates. In winter it regularly freezes over at Pittsburgh but rarely so as it travels further south toward Cincinnati and Louisville. At Paducah, Kentucky in the south, near the Ohio’s confluence with the Mississippi, it is ice-free year round. Paducah was founded there because it is the northernmost ice-free reach of the Ohio. 

In his Notes on the State of Virginia published in 1781–82, Thomas Jefferson stated: "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."

Source: Wikipedia
Photo by Mary Christopher Smith