Retreat Post - Thursday #2

I probably should give a little bit of Cincinnati history here. I tried to explain it to the van load, but since some still didn't understand the link on Monday between pigs and Cincinnati, I thought that I would explain a little more here.

This is an excerpt from Wikipedia's History of Cincinnati entry:

"In 1802, Cincinnati was chartered as a village, and in 1819, it was incorporated as a city. The introduction of steam navigation on the Ohio River in 1811 and the completion of the Miami and Erie Canal helped the city grow to 115,000 citizens by 1850. The nickname Porkopolis was coined around 1835, when Cincinnati was the country's chief hog packing center, and herds of pigs traveled the streets. Called the "Queen of the West" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (although this nickname was first used by a local newspaper in 1819), Cincinnati was an important stop on the Underground Railroad, which helped slaves escape from the South."

In 2000, there was public art exhibit of large fiberglass pigs that were decorated by artists and schools. This display was called the Big Pig Gig. It was sort of copied off of the cows in Chicago. The pigs were interesting and there are still some on display throughout the Greater Cincinnati area.

After the pigs, a suburb of Cincinnati, the City of Glendale, made and decorated squirrels because they are known for a black squirrel population. You can read about that here.

There were squirrels through out Village Square where Stitches is located. Of course, we had to get some pictures with it!

This is Sherry, Faux-Me-Oh the squirrel, Cindy and Jen.



This is Jen, Moneik, the squirrel, Jennifer and me.



And a few views of just the squirrel.









So, Jen and Moneik, I hope that this gives you a better understanding of why there were pigs all over the airport. :)