Toledo, Ohio – Sylvanus Pierson Jermain remains, well, germane to any discussion about the growth of golf, not only in his adopted hometown, but also nationally and even globally. First, consider his gifts to the Glass City, starting with the creation of Ottawa Park Golf Course. A golf enthusiast since he moved with his family to Toledo from Adrian, Mich., Jermain had a strong interest in parkland development and the creation of public-access golf courses. When Ottawa Park’s first nine holes opened in 1899, it was the first public course in the Midwest and just the seventh in the U.S. Later, along with adding a second nine to Ottawa Park, Jermain also developed courses at Bayview, Collins Park and Spuyten Dyval, and he was a consultant in building three country clubs: Chippewa, Glengarry and Highland Meadows. Then, of course, there was his instrumental role in the founding of Inverness Club in 1903. He served as the club’s first president, helped select the land upon which the course was built, and secured permission of the Village of Inverness, Scotland, to use the name and village crest for the club’s identity. And Jermain, naturally, was at the forefront of persuading the United States Golf Association to bring the 1920 and 1931 U.S. Open championships to the Donald Ross-designed layout. He also brought the first U.S. Public Links Championship to Ottawa Park in 1922. But the man called “the father of golf in Toledo,” did even much more than all this, including writing a rules book for American golf. Jermain was 48 when in 1907 he wrote the “American Code of Golf,” a simplified version of the rules guidelines from the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews that served as the first written set of rules for golf in the U.S. He served as president of the Ohio Golf, Central States and Western Golf Associations in the early 1900s while also serving four terms as president/chairman of the city’s Board of Parks Commissioners and two years as Toledo director of welfare. If all that isn’t enough, Jermain looms large in the inception of one of golf’s most popular events, the Ryder Cup. He proffered the notion of creating an international match between golfers from Britain and America following the 1920 U.S. Open, and at one point prior to the creation of the Ryder Cup in 1927, an American businessman named Walter L. Ross, president of Nickel Plate Railroad and a member of Inverness Club, offered to donate a trophy if such a match would be held. There were, in fact, two unofficial matches held in 1921 and ’26, the latter held in England and attended by British seed merchant Samuel Ryder, who eventually donated the cup that now bears his name. http://www.usga.org/ChampEventArticle.aspx?id=21474840994

Players from the 1920 U.S. Open gave a clock to Inverness for opening its doors to them, something other private clubs did not. The clock is part of this year's U.S. Senior Open logo. See picture and story at:
http://www.toledoblade.com/Golf/2011/07/24/Timeless-piece-of-Inverness-history.html

The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation
November 1958: the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. In the rarefied atmosphere of wealth and tradition, sleek hotheaded thoroughbreds piloted by seasoned professionals waited their turn to take on a course of towering jumps. Into the ring trotted the most unlikely competitors — a drab white former plow horse named Snowman and a young riding instructor named Harry de Leyer. They were the longest of all long shots and their win would become the stuff of legend. Harry de Leyer first saw the horse he would name Snowman on a bleak February afternoon between the slats of a rickety truck bound for the slaughterhouse. The big gray horse had matted hair, open wounds on both knees and harness marks across his chest. He was as plain and friendly as a favorite mutt. A man’s best friend kind of horse Harry decided. He bought him for $80. On Harry’s modest farm on Long Island, the horse thrived. Snowman was wonderful with Harry’s children and had all the makings of a quiet lesson mount. But the recent Dutch immigrant and his growing family needed money and Harry was always on the lookout for the perfect thoroughbred to train for the show-jumping circuit, so he reluctantly sold Snowman to a farm a few miles down the road. But Snowman just wouldn’t stay put, and kept returning to the de Leyer’s farm. hen it dawned on Harry that Snowman was leaping six-foot fences to get home — an extraordinary feat for a riderless horse who had never been taught to jump. Harry bought him back and began training him over jumps. The higher they were, the better Snowman liked them. One horse show at a time and against extraordinary odds, the pair rose to the very top of the sport of show jumping — poor country mice competing against the most expensive thoroughbreds in the world. The Eighty-Dollar Champion tells the dramatic and powerful true story of this unlikely duo’s rise to stardom—from the de Leyer family farm in Harry’s native Holland, through the horrors of the Nazi occupation, to his hope of a new life in America, where Harry’s spirit and drive were matched by those of the plow horse he had saved from the slaughterhouse. As Letts writes, “The message is simple: never give up, even when the obstacles seem sky-high. There is something extraordinary in all of us.” http://www.elizabethletts.com/eighty-dollar-champion/

Feedback from muse reader: Martha: Interesting photos of the Romanesco. Scientific American had an article on Jackson Pollock a couple years ago and concluded that his art was so visually pleasing when copycat's art was not so much because his works were fractals. Examining one of his works at any scale, from the entire piece down to a few of square inches, the ratio of paint to blank canvas remained the same. The authors concluded that this factor made the paintings pleasing even though the viewer is not aware of it. David

rutabaga = Swede turnip = Swede = yellow turnip Pronunciation: roo-tuh-BAY-guh Notes: Rutabagas look like turnips, only they're a bit larger and have a yellow complexion. Use them just as you would turnips. Substitutes: turnip (smaller, not as sweet; takes less time to cook) OR celeriac OR kohlrabi

salsify = goatsbeard = oyster plant = vegetable oyster Pronunciation: SAL-suh-fee OR SAL-suh-fie Notes: When cooked, salsify has the taste and texture of an artichoke heart. There are two types: white salsify and the more highly regarded black salsify = scorzonera = black oyster plant = viper grass. After peeling salsify, put it into acidulated water right away to prevent it from turning brown. Canned salsify is a good substitute for fresh, but it's hard to find. Substitutes: parsnip OR burdock OR Jerusalem artichoke OR artichoke heart OR asparagus OR turnip OR carrot. See pictures and read descriptions of many more root vegetables in The Cook's Thesaurus at: http://www.foodsubs.com/Roots.html