July 7, 2008
Rock and roll
The omnipresence of the presidential wannabe campaigns and the occasional intrusion of critical problems like the economy and the wars have a way of excluding the real news when it comes along. I’m not talking about Wimbledon and the so-called All England hoopla which got plenty of coverage and was still not all that newsy coming out like it did depending, of course, on who’s your favorite. What I am concerned with is the goings on over in Kentucky and Ohio.
Kentucky officials have charged an Ohioan with pilfering a rock and have started an outright border war. Indian Head Rock is a mossy eight-ton sandstone boulder that divides the two states. The news story reported that an Ohio historian raised the rock from the Kentucky side of the Ohio River and took it to Portsmouth, Ohio, where it now sits ignobly in a city garage. A Kentucky grand jury has indicted him.
Indian Head Rock is claimed to be an “object of antiquity,” the removal of which is a felony that carries a sentence of up to five years. The historian being charged claimed the rock had been submerged in the river and largely forgotten for the better part of a century. Kentucky is seeking revenge for the removal of the rock, whose crude etchings and graffiti have long figured in Portsmouth’s local lore. On the other hand, the rock has lingered on an official Kentucky antiquities list since 1986. State officials say it is a protected artifact and that such cannot be removed without a permit from the University of Kentucky’s archeology department.
“We’re not fighting over a rock,” said the state prosecutor. Instead, he implied, that it’s a matter principle not getting a license for the move. A Kentucky state representative from Louisville said that “Clearly, there’s a different set of values in Kentucky than apparently exist in Portsmouth, Ohio.” The Ohio historian being charged called the affair a “bizarre Appalachian tale,” and added, “Every day is a new day with this rock.”
There is, of course, a certain truth in the way time passes for Indian Head Rock. Each day has been a new one now for some 300 or so million years since its parent sandstones were deposited during what was probably the Mississippian geologic age. Be that as it may, OoN’s political reporters were unable to reach either of the presidential aspirants for a statement. Their spokespersons, however, strangely enough agreed that the problem was all rock and roll to them.
No Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
| TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark
this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos