Stopped in at the Gus Grissom Memorial at Spring Mill State Park today. He was the second American in space and died tragically in a fire aboard Apollo 1 during pre-flight testing.

Yesterday a friend and I visited the Warren G. Harding Presidential Sites in Marion, OH - mainly because it was about halfway between the two of us. Harding is not one of our most illustrious presidents. Although he was popular during his time in office (he died in 1923 before finishing his first term), corruption and multiple extra-marital affairs were later revealed that tarnished his reputation. The historical information at the site is clearly trying to rehabilitate him: there is more information in the exhibits about the family pets than the scandals.

What was most interesting to me was that Harding’s home was in a regular neighborhood with nearby houses. It was nice but not particularly large or grand. The ten members of our tour group had to squeeze around each other upstairs. It looked like it could be any of the houses in my own small-town midwestern neighborhood.

This struck me, I believe, for two reasons. First, because in modern times we associate wealth with US presidents. The Hardings were not poor, to be sure. They were, according to the tour guide, upper middle class. They traveled around the world. To give you a sense of comparison, he ranks 37 of 46 on this listing of US presidents by wealth. All of the presidents in my lifetime have been multimillionaires. The last time we had a president who was not a millionaire (adjusted for inflation) was Harry Truman. Whatever they may say, US presidents have not been, by and large, “just like us.”

The second reason I was struck by the size and location of his home was that he, like three Ohioan presidents before him, ran a “front-porch campaign” for president, that is, voters and delegations of voters came to him and he gave speeches from the front porch of his house. Crowds of up to five or even ten thousand people would gather in his (not large!) front yard. The Republican National Committee headquarters moved into the house next door to him. One of the reasons we have such good records of those front door speeches is that his next door neighbor sat on her front porch and made notes at all of the events. She published them as a newspaper column called “The Girl Next Door.”

Harding doesn’t deserve to be held up as a model for … well, anything really, but visiting the site did remind me of how much the United States presidency has changed over the past century.

June 25-26, 2014, was a two-day window in which same-sex marriage was legal in Indiana. (More on the history here.) On June 25, the United States District Court struck down Indiana’s ban on same-sex marriage. Licenses began to be issued that day and continued to be issued the next day. On June 27, the Seventh Circuit court brought the licensing to a halt while the case was appealed by the State of Indiana. The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal on October 6, 2014, which legalized same-sex marriage in Indiana. The Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage for the entire country came a few months later in June 2015.

Our local public radio station has produced a podcast episode telling the stories of couples who were married in that two-day window. The final story is of a couple from my hometown, which the narrator correctly describes as not the most progressive town in the country.

I remember those two days. We all knew that then-governor Mike Pence would appeal the decision and likely get a temporary stay. But the fact that it had happened in Indiana was truly exciting. On my drive home from work on June 25th, I came across a gay pride flag flying from the top of some apartments in my hometown of Bedford. In Bedford! I was amazed - and took this picture to capture the moment.

Went to see Over the Rhine - the best band in the world - at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater last night.