Hey y’all!
A big howdy from Evansville again! I unfortunately was too busy having fun to take photos, but here’s a brief summary of the meetup on June 30th the weekend before last:
The following folks attended:
>From Evansville, IN:
*YHoshua (who graciously arranged for us to meet at West Branch Library)
*Crtew (and his young Wikipedian counterpart)
*Bob the Wikipedian (me)
>From Bloomington, IN:
*Nyttend
*Vmenkov
*Ben Kovitz
We met at West Branch Library in the basement, where the air conditioning shielded us quite nicely from the heat (and after the blazing hot drive here, I think the Bloomington folks DEFINITELY appreciated that!). We had chili, sandwiches, strawberries, and Turkish berek. I didn’t know what Turkish berek was, but it’s pretty good!
YHoshua was more than excited to share with us what he knew about the history of Evansville’s libraries. He also introduced the Bloomington folks to Ski, the legendary citrus soft drink of Evansville, and told them the lore of the Grippos as well (shame on me for not thinking to bring those!).
Over lunch, we learned that the Bloomington crew was on a mission to help Nyttend fill in some unvisited historical landmarks on his checklist that day, so they had taken the long way to Evansville—driving all the way into Posey County and turning around after taking photos.
What’s a wiknic without Wikipedia discussion? Well, we didn’t have to answer that question. Naturally, hot topics over lunch included Twinkle, deceased Wikipedians, the Wikipedia Education Program, and why Wikipedia hasn’t quite caught on with a good percentage of Evansville. Oh, and we all got cool little Wikipedia globe buttons!
We managed to get a group photo before half our group parted (anyone have a copy they can share?) with the Indiana flag. Funny story here—I’ve been doing research on the flag of the city of Evansville and am now “seeing Evansville flags” in much the same way others “see Elvis”, so there was a bit of excitement from me when I saw the furled blue and gold flag with the fringe around the edges and thought it was the Evansville flag.
Well, the 107 F climate couldn’t stand in our way that day. We opted to tour Franklin Street instead of playing Taboo or Balderdash, so after a quick visit to the library above us to pick up a tour guide pamphlet, we began our trek down Franklin.
For those who haven’t been to the Fall Festival in Evansville, Franklin Street hosts the second-largest street festival in the nation annually in October and is one of the largest historical sites in Evansville. We took tons of photos with the intention of uploading them to the Commons another day.
We actually had so much fun doing this that we drove down to the Ohio Riverfront and took a walk down the running path next to the river, where Nyttend enlightened us with several stories about the history of southern Indiana, and Vmenkov told us some fun stories about Turkey and the other places he’d been. Thanks to the drought we’d endured in Evansville since April, we didn’t have any mosquitoes to worry about.
Suddenly, we realized Kentucky was literally a few feet away from where we stood as we overlooked the Ohio River. Naturally, we all decided we’d venture to historic Henderson next, where we took a few more photos and ended the wiknic.
We agreed that the next meetup would occur in Bloomington, since Bloomington had practically equal representation at the wiknic. So, good news for the Bloomington and Indy folks—it won’t be quite as much of a commitment to join us next year!
Thanks YHoshua for organizing the event location, and thanks everyone for pitching in for food and carpooling! I especially enjoyed having the visitors from Bloomington! Y’all come back now, y’hear?
That’s all I’ve got...if anyone wants to share photos, I’d love to see them.
Adios,
Rob Schnautz
Ambassador to the Great Lakes Reaches
United States Education Program
Wikimedia Global Development