Gummy Bear sails out of busy Auckland Harbor. Betsa Marsh photo

Gummy Bear zoomed half-way around the world this fall to discover New Zealand during the annual conference of the Society of American Travel Writers. Gummy travels for the third-grade class of Meredith Schroeder at St. Joseph Consolidated School in Hamilton, Ohio.

Gummy learns about coffee roasting from Master Roaster Joseph Stoddart at Havanna Coffee Works, Wellington. Betsa Marsh photo

Gummy found herself in–or at least near– some hot water at Havana Coffee Works in Wellington, which roasts 14 types of coffee. Master roaster Joseph Stoddart took the time to show Gummy the giant coffee roaster, which heats up to 204 degrees Celsius/400 degrees Fahrenheit. Wow! Gummy sipped a flat white coffee to recover.

And what goes better with coffee than chocolate? Gummy went to the little town of Greytown to jump right into Schoc Chocolates, the Global Home of Chocolate Therapy, Ltd. Gummy is a firm believer in “the spiritual benefits of chocolate,” as Schoc puts it.

She was ready to try lemon-and-black pepper chocolate, sea salt bittersweet, lemon white and tropical heat with curry powder, coconut and pineapple in white chocolate.

Gummy even tried a blind taste test, and realized she needs to work on her chocolate palate. She didn’t pick out many of the flavors, such as apricot and rosemary, dried basil, lavender, or lime and chili, which is Schoc’s bestseller.

Gummy Bear with truffles at Schoc Chocolates. Betsa Marsh photo

Gummy dives into chocolate nibs during her visit to Schoc Chocolates in Greytown. Betsa Marsh photo

After eating her way through Wellington, Gummy hopped onto a catamaran out of Auckland Harbor and set sail for the Hauraki Gulf. It’s pretty smooth sailing through these protected waters, and she loved her berth on the luxurious Island Passage.

Gummy Bear whispers nautical advice to Capt. Vincent Maurice of the Island Passage. Betsa Marsh photo

Soon, the Island Passage sailed over to Waiheke Island, where many Aucklanders live and commute by ferry into the city each work day. Gummy met Paora, a sculptor who began as a jewelry designer, then moved to jade carving and is now sculpting. He showed Gummy a pukaea, a trumpet he carved of granite. Among the native Maori people of New Zealand, it was used to tell a tribe that a battle was about to begin.

Gummy Bear meets sculptor Paora on Waiheke Island. Betsa Marsh photo

Sculptor Paora demonstrates the native Maori pukaea trumpet. Betsa Marsh photo

Gummy also learned to fish, with the help of the Island Passage fishing guide James Brown.

Fishing guide James Brown takes Gummy out on a fishing excursion. Betsa Marsh photo

One shore trip was especially exciting, as Gummy met 4-year-old Pippa at Glenfern Sanctuary on Great Barrier Island. Her parents, Dr. Emma Cronin and Scott Sambell, are busy trying to save some of New Zealand’s rarest birds from predators such as ship rats, cats and pigs.

Gummy meets Pippa at the Glenfern Sanctuary on Great Barrier Island. Betsa Marsh photo

Gummy climbs up to enjoy a view of Port Fitzroy on Great Barrier Island, above Glenfern Sanctuary. Betsa Marsh photo

Also on Great Barrier Island, Gummy takes the tender over to Sven and Trish Stellin’s place, where they make Barrier Gold lotions from the manuka and kanuka plants. And Gummy couldn’t resist one more flavor of New Zealand–sampling the strong flavor of manuka honey.

Gummy gets ready to dip into strong manuka honey, distinctive to New Zealand. Betsa Marsh photo

Gummy Bear is ready for the road and National Passport Day, armed with her Pawsport from Build-a-Bear. Betsa Marsh photo

Gummy Bear, the new SATW Traveling Teddy for St. Joseph Consolidated School, is gearing up for National Passport Day Sept. 17. “Have pawsport, will roam” is the Traveling Teddy motto!

Gummy travels for the third-grade class of Meredith Schroeder at St. Joseph in Hamilton, Ohio.  The class named her in their first Traveling Teddy meet-and-greet.  The Traveling Teddy program is a geography outreach of the Society of American Travel Writers, a group  of travel professionals from the U.S. and Canada.

Gummy’s first adventure was close to home, visiting the Ohio Statehouse in the capital of Columbus. She got to check out the beautifully restored rotunda and count the memorials to President Abraham Lincoln. The 16th president once spoke on the lawn of the Statehouse.

Gummy Bear at the Ohio Statehouse. Betsa Marsh photos

Gummy with a Civil War cannon. Union troops once camped on the Ohio Statehouse lawn. Betsa Marsh photo

A singer leaps for joy at the 2012 World Chor Games kickoff. Betsa Marsh photo

Listen! Fingers are already snapping as more than 80 choirs from around the world rehearse for the World Choir Games July 4-14, 2012, in Cincinnati.

This is the first time the biennial games have been held in the U.S. Choirs from 18 countries are already registered, including singers from China, Indonesia, Israel, Ireland, Singapore Ukraine and Venezuela. Cincinnati expects 20,000 singers and 200,000 spectators.

Cincinnati has a long history of choral music, back to 19th-century German immigrant singing societies and beyond.

Cincinnati native Drew Lachey, member of the Grammy-nominated group 98 Degrees and winner of the second season of “Dancing with the Stars,” emceed the kickoff on Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati. Atlanta gospel singer Byron Cage and the Cincinnati Citywide Mass Choir performed, along with the Eleventh Hour Choir from Kettering, a finalist in the NBC show “The Sing Off,” and Kelly King, star of “The American Dream.”

The World Choir Games mascots, Whirl and Twirl, added their furry support as the giant WCG clock started ticking.

Girls concentrate on the kickoff choirs. Betsa Marsh photo

Byran Cage with the Cincinnati Citywide Mass Choir. Betsa Marsh photo

Whirl and Twirl mascot fans come in handy at 96 degrees. Betsa Marsh photo

Eleventh Hour Choir from Kettering rocks with their a cappella precision. Betsa Marsh photo

A singer helps send out the Cincinnati USA postcard to the world. Betsa Marsh photo

The video postcard gets bigger and bigger. Betsa Marsh photo

A choir cuddles with Mr. Red. Betsa Marsh photo

The clock's ticking until July 4, 2012. Betsa Marsh photo

Whirl and Twirl have the World Choir Games mascot business cornered. Betsa Marsh photo

Kelly King sings "The American Dream." Betsa Marsh photo

Johnny X gears up for his shark dive at The Bistro off Beqa Island. Betsa Marsh photo

By Betsa Marsh

Johnny X the SATW Traveling Teddy crossed the International Dateline to explore Fiji–the two-day odyssey felt a bit like a mini-hibernation.

Johnny flew across the US and the Pacific Ocean, took a bus and then hopped two boats to get to Beqa Island, pronounced “Mbenga”–that word took some practice! Johnny X travels for the third-grade class of St. Joseph Consolidated School in Hamilton, Ohio.

Johnny was coming to scuba dive in the warm water, where giant soft corals sway in the current and divemaster Joeli Delana led a shark dive! At 86 feet below the surface, we watched nurse, lemon and bull sharks swim by and snap severed skipjack fish heads out of Joeli’s hand in a fluid buffet line. Yikes!

Back on land, Johnny X went to the Methodist Church in the village of Raviravi, and later that day met a young chorister performing with the full church choir back at the Beqa Lagoon Resort.

Johnny X meets a young chorister of Raviravi Methodist Church on Beqa Island. Betsa Marsh photo

After catching two return boats and heading to Fiji’s largest island, Viti Levu, Johnny X traveled inland a bit, meeting young friends in the pottery village of Lawai. And he even jumped into the arms of the village’s  young warrior, Inosi Navoto of the warrior clan. That warclub he was carrying looked serious!

Johnny with children at Lawai pottery village. Betsa Marsh photo

Johnny with warrior Inosi Navoto in Lawai pottery village. Betsa Marsh photo

During a Waitui breakfast at the Warwick Fiji Hotel, Johnny X did a double-take–was that really a mermaid? Sure enough, and she wanted to cuddle with the furry little bear.

Johnny with a mermaid at Warwick Fiji Resort. Betsa Marsh photo

Even closer with a mermaid! Betsa Marsh photo

To wrap up an unforgettable Fijian trip, Johnny X jetboated up the Sigatoka River and met the village elders of  Naveyado Village. Afterwards, he joined a giant communal feast,

Yum! The village feast in Naveyado Village. Betsa Marsh photo

sitting on the floor, then dancing with his new village friends. Soon it really was time to hibernate on the two-day trip across the International Dateline to his den back home.

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra.

Cleopatra, Egypt’s  last autonomous pharaoh, is being unveiled through excavations of her mighty palaces and temples at “Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt” now through Sept. 5 at Cincinnati Museum Center.

The show has nearly 150 artifacts, including statues, jewelry, coins and religious items that are all visiting the US for the first time. The marvel of the show is that “most of the artifacts were underwater five or six years ago,” Franck Goddio, director of European Institute for Underwater Archaeology.

Underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio and the Serapis head pulled from the waters of Canopus. Betsa Marsh photo

“These artifacts do not come from museums around the world, but they have been crafted, designed, to be together. It’s so good to see them here together.”

In just 20 years, Goddio and his team have discovered a cluster of three lost Egyptian cities: Heracleion, a strategic trading post; Canopus, a religious pilgrimage site; and the Portus Magnus of Alexandria.

The exhibit continues through Sept. 5 at Cincinnati Museum Center.

A spectral reader sits on the steps where the ghost rampaged up. Betsa Marsh photo

By Betsa Marsh

Like many a ghost story, James Thurber’s “The Night the Ghost Got In” rollicks with fear, confusion and absolutely no conclusion about the ghost itself.

But because it’s Thurber, one of America’s great humorists, the story also has his unpredictable mother, his hapless brother and grandpa in the attic, his mind replaying the key moments of the Civil War.

So his mother throws a shoe through the neighbor’s window and gramps shoots a Columbus cop. All in a night’s adventure in the Thurbers’ Victorian house on Jefferson Avenue.

The chaos of “The Night the Ghost Got In” will celebrate its 95th anniversary this Nov. 17, immortalized in Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times. The best part is that you can still cross the Thurber threshold, stomp around what was the dining room where Thurber heard the ghostly footsteps, and climb the stairs toward the bathroom, where the terrified Ohio State student slammed the door and braced his knee against the specter.

Halloween may be the perfect time to tour Thurber’s haunted house, where the family lived from 1913-1917 while James attended OSU. It’s now a non-profit literary center with a full calendar of author talks and writing workshops. Honored writers-in-residence move into the third floor, Grandpa Thurber’s old haunt.

The seemingly innocent Thurber House in Columbus.

Surrounded by concrete models of Thurber’s famous, floppy-eared dogs, the author’s old homestead embraces the ghost tale and Halloween itself. Although a visiting dog barked incessantly at one possibly haunted spot in the house, so far, no ghost dogs have been spotted.

It might be 95 years since Thurber heard footsteps at a quarter past one in the morning, but the staff who work in the house say he’d fit right in with their paranormal experiences.

“People hear things all the time,” said Meg Brown, manager of children’s programming. “Really creepy stuff. The people who clean here were upstairs and they heard the piano playing by itself.

“They’ll vacuum and move the chairs around the dining room table, then put them back. No sooner do they put them back than they’re moved again.”

While Brown and another employee were upstairs, the broken clock on the downstairs landing chimed four times. “It’s little things like that that make you jumpy working here.

Meg Brown and the mysterious clock.

“I think the ghosts are friendly, and usually do something funny—like changing a radio station. It’s nothing that would make anybody fearful. We like to blame all our computer problems on the ghosts, but we can’t.”

Might there be some basis for the spectral activity?

“There was a large lunatic asylum on this land,” Brown said, “and it was supposedly one of the best run and most humane at the time. It burned to the ground and seven inmates did not get out.”

Columbus then developed three elliptical parks on the east side of downtown, and Italianate houses sprung up on the old asylum site. The house the Thurbers rented, where Mrs. Thurber would barter furniture for food occasionally, had a later Queen Anne addition.

The frenzied action of “The Night the Ghost Got In” happened exactly 47 years after the Ohio Lunatic Asylum burned on Nov. 17, 1868.

Of course, the neighbors couldn’t help but embellish the haunted history of No. 61. “Thurber was talking to someone at a store and didn’t know the house was haunted,” Brown said. “The man told him that an earlier resident was told that if he went home at noon, he’d ‘find his wife in the arms of another.’ The man went racing around the dining room table and ran up the stairs, where he shot the lovers and himself.

“There’s no evidence for that story, but it’s been used to explain the footsteps racing around the table and up the stairs.” The Thurbers’ dining room is now the center’s gift shop.

Thurber

James, “his two parents, two brothers and a plethora of dogs,” as Brown puts it, claimed the lower two floors of the house. Grandfather took the attic, and on the night the ghost got in, mistook all the commotion for soldiers deserting Gen. Meade’s army during the Civil War.

“ ‘Back, ye cowardly dogs,’ roared grandfather. ‘Back t’ the lines, ye [expletive] lily-livered cattle!’” Thurber wrote. With that Grandpa grabbed a policeman’s gun and shot another cop in the shoulder.

“Most of the action seems to take place in the third floor,” Brown said. Now the home of the writer-in-residence, the attic apartment was under repair when construction people had the door close on them and not open, then suddenly release. Radios changed channels at will.

One writer-in-residence saw the shadow of a hefty man cross the attic window, but when she got inside, no one was there. She also heard kitchen cabinets rattling at night throughout her stay.

“Another one of the residents in the attic, a woman, saw a figure behind her in a mirror—a man in a bowler hat,” Brown recalled. “She stayed in a hotel the rest of her time.”

Just out! Cincinnati Essentials is my new app that covers the waterfront from Cincinnati’s Ghost Subway to flying pigs and frying goetta. Designed for travelers and residents alike, Cincinnati Essentials uncovers the best of the quirky Queen City.

The mobile guide for Apple iPhones, iPods and iPads is available for $2.99 on iTunes. All updates are free.

Greater Cincinnati’s major attractions and little secrets are revealed in more than 230 entries and 1,700 photos. You’ll learn how to eat Cincinnati chili five+ ways and where you’ll never get a shot of tequila at the bar, no matter how you plead.

Essential photos, GPS maps and easy searches help users:

* Cheer on the first professional team in baseball
* Track the stars on the oldest professional telescope in America
* Meet 700 dummies at the world’s only ventriloquism museum
* Try to follow Sarah the Cheetah, the world’s fastest land mammal
* Raise a stein at America’s largest Oktoberfest—and do the chicken dance.

The interactive app lists dozens of free and budget adventures, plus handy taxi maps to estimate fares.

Entries are sortable by name, distance, cost and neighborhood, as well as subjects such as art, attractions, Cincy eats, family fun, music, riverside revels, shopping and sports.

As many of you know, I covered the city on staff at The Cincinnati Enquirer. I’ve since written about Cincinnati for National Geographic Traveler, Hemispheres, Midwest Living and media across North America. I’ve reported from every continent, but still like landing at CVG.

A total history geek, I trained as a volunteer Cincinnati Heritage Programs history docent at the Cincinnati Museum Center, and you’ll see juicy tidbits from Cincinnati’s past in Cincinnati Essentials.

Ryan Lang is a fourth-generation distiller and proud of it.

Do the math and somebody in that family line must have run into the long governmental arm of Prohibition.

“My grandmother Nellie was a rum runner and went to jail for a while,” Lang said of his family in Williamsburg, Pa. “They made everything—apple jack, white lightning. I learned a little bit [about distilling] from my grandfather, and where he hid all the stuff.”

Now settled in Columbus, Ohio, Lang continues the family business with his partner in vodka, Brady Konya. But it’s all legal, sanctioned by a rare license from the Ohio liquor board to both manufacture spirits and sell them onsite.

“Ryan brings street cred to the business,” Konya said. “And that long line of distillers was part of our inspiration.”

Brady Konya scoops up some of the soft red winter wheat from northeast Ohio used in OYO vodka. Betsa Marsh photo

Middle West is just one reason to raise a toast in the capital. The distillery is joined by a relocated Via Vecchia Winery in Columbus’ historic Brewery District downtown.

Middle West Spirits

Lang and Konya launched Middle West Spirits July 1 in a converted transmission repair shop on the north edge of Columbus’ Short North arts district. They sold out their inaugural run of OYO vodka at $34.95 per hand-numbered, hand-waxed bottle that first weekend. Now they’re encouraging drinkers to request OYO in their cocktails and at their liquor stores.

Both men are transplants to Ohio, Lang from a career in engineering and industrial manufacturing in North Carolina, Konya from work in advertising and product development in Seattle.

Lang and Konya jumped into the local foods movement with gusto: they use soft red winter wheat from northeast Ohio farms; applied a stylized state tree, the Buckeye, to their bottles; and christened their brand a version of the Iroquois name for Ohio, OYO.

They pronounce OYO as “Oh WHY OH,” which has a secondary homage to the Ohio State University call and response cheer, “OH—IO.”

Beyond the initial run of vodka, Middle West is looking toward infused vodkas this fall, “where we can highlight regional fruits and produce,” Konya said. “We can have local supply chains.”

Lang, head distiller at the micro-distillery, and Konya take the wheat mash from fermenting tank to bottle in eight days; infused vodkas take a few days more. One secret to their streamlining is a sparkling new Kothe pot-and-column distiller from Germany, which Konya says is the first vodka-specific distillation system in the U.S.

Some companies use repeated distillations to get vodka to 95 percent alcohol as required by law; each run reduces the flavor a bit. Middle West’s new still can do the equivalent of 37 distillations in one run.

Even so, Lang selects only about 10 percent of each batch to be bottled, rejecting the rest. Middle West refuses to use charcoal or sugars that some distillers add to stretch the usable volume of spirits.

“We go for the hearts of the run, the nectar in the middle of the batch that’s sweet and pure,” Konya said.

The resulting OYO, Lang claims, is a vodka that “you can sip—alone—and not add anything to it.”

Via Vecchia Winery

Wine meets beer as Via Vecchia moves into Columbus’ old German Brewery District.

Mike Elmer with a bottle of Via Vecchia wine. Betsa Marsh photo

Via Vecchia is “the old way” in Italian, and that’s precisely what the trio wants to preserve. Using Tuscan techniques that Rosi learned from his father in a little village called Grondola, the vintners let the grapes speak loudly and purely in each bottle.

Via Vecchia imports grapes from California, then blends in the minimum amount of sulfites. The urban vintners add no yeast, sugar, coloring, enzymes or preservatives, and rely on the sediment in the wine and the phases of the moon to filter the wine naturally.

“People are surprised this wine is made here in Ohio,” Elmer said. “We get a lot of push-back from wineries in Ohio because we bring in grapes from out of state. We tell them we’re an Old World winery that just happens to be in Ohio.”

The four Via Vecchia wines tend to follow natural progression of the seasons.

Adamo is spring-light, from a blend of SanGiovese and Cabernet Franc grapes. Trovato is a summery light red wine from SanGiovese and Pinot Noir grapes.

Autumn is represented by Jorro-ma, a rich Syrah, and winter by Trouve, a full-bodied Cab blended from Cabernet Sauvingnon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot whole grapes. All the wines sell for $24.99 a bottle; reserves are $39.99.

The partners will pour their wines in tastings set for 6 p.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday evenings. Tasters can pair the wine with antipasto from Sidari in Cleveland, then round out the mini-meal with Columbus’ own Crimson Cup coffee and Sugardaddy brownies.

The trio keeps the winery a no-debt, pay-as-you-go proposition, so they and their families scrub, paint and tile as part of their sweat equity.

Brick peeks through old plaster on the barrel room wall, and a disco ball from the warehouse’s nightclub days as Major Woody’s and Ludlow’s still hovers over the studio. “We are,” Elmer said, “artists when it comes to making wine.”

They painted and tiled around the original limestone foundations and cast-iron pillars, but “we want to keep it somewhat raw, because it is a warehouse,” Elmer said. “It’s got to have that industrial feel.”

The winery’s space went from 1,400 square feet in Rosi’s basement to 8,300 square feet in the old Hosters Brewery warehouse. The new digs will allow Via Vecchia to double production, from 5,000 bottles in 2009 to a projected 10,000 this year.

The Via Vecchia partners have still to paint over the scarlet-and-gray Ohio State colors on the outside of the warehouse, but they’re working on the inside for now.

“This will be our dream job,” Elmer said during a break from a hot summer’s day of renovation. “Wouldn’t you give everything to your dream?”

Details

Middle West Spirits, 1230 Courtland Ave., 614-299-2460; www.middlewestspirits.com.

Via Vecchia Winery, 485 S. Front St., 614-893-5455; www.viavecchiawinery.com.

The winner will receive a cottage for two for two nights from At Boulder’s Edge Tipi & Cabin Retreat, dinner for two at The Brass Ring, lunch for two at Etta’s Lunchbox Museum and Café, tickets for two on the Hocking Hills Canopy Tour Zipline Adventure and a Fun Package for two at Hocking Valley Canoe Livery.

Four of the remaining members, including lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh, grew up in Akron and met while attending Kent State University.

Named for the band’s first album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO!, the exhibit includes a costume, with the iconic red hat or “Energy Dome,” t-shirts, vintage stickers and albums.

The group’s name is based on the idea that the human race is in a process of devolution, a concept that members first read about in the 1924 pamphlet “Jocko Homo Heavenbound.” Later editions (second through fifth) of this anti-Darwinism pamphlet were published in Ashtabula, Ohio, birthplace of Clarence Darrow. A copy of the fifth edition, in the collections of the Ohio Historical Society, is on display with the DEVO Collection.

Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO! can be seen 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursdays and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays in the lobby of the Archives-Library on the third floor of the Ohio Historical Center.