Features
Jody Christiansen was into trees, and he enjoyed finding ways to get other people into them as well.
In 2004, he discovered his dream. He and his wife, Anna Lee, took their family on a trip to Costa Rica to celebrate daughter Madison’s high school graduation and his completion of chemo treatment for lymphoma. Jody, an avid recreational tree-climber, took an interest in a zipline experience they had while they were there.
The five sculptors know how important their role is. Within their capable hands is a tradition that some will experience for the first time this year and others perhaps the fiftieth time — one that thousands of people look forward to every year.
“The butter sculpture display is one of the most loved traditions of the Ohio State Fair,” says Jenny Hubble, senior vice president of communications for the American Dairy Association Mideast, which represents dairy farmers in Ohio and West Virginia. “Ohio’s dairy farmers are proud to support it.”
Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude and want determine how well you do.” Those words, adorning a motivational sign in the Butterfield family’s barn near Oxford, Ohio, have been undeniably effective.
Matt Butterfield’s 280-pound market barrow, named “Repeat,” was grand champion at the 2018 Ohio State Fair. The pig was so named because Butterfield’s previous pig, “Hollywood,” was grand champion at the 2017 fair. It was only the second time that someone had won back-to-back Ohio State Fair grand championships with pigs.
When The Shawshank Redemption was released in 1994, no one predicted the movie would make Mansfield, Ohio, a tourist destination for fans. Filmed almost entirely in and around Mansfield, the prison drama stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne, a banker wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, and Morgan Freeman as Ellis “Red” Redding, the resourceful inmate who befriends him.
In Ohio, there are an estimated 2,500 species of moths, compared to fewer than 140 butterfly species. An enthusiastic group of Ohio “moth-ers” (people who enjoy moths, rather than a maternal parent) is looking forward to celebrating these nighttime flyers during Mothapalooza, a bi-annual event taking place July 12 to 14 at Shawnee Lodge and Conference Center near West Portsmouth.
Michael Barhorst never tired of standing near the covered stage in the natural amphitheater on his property in rural Shelby County, watching thousands of country music fans enjoy the Country Concert he organized every year.
Fans came there to enjoy headliners, old favorites, and newcomers to the country music scene, to camp out and have fun with friends, and to share their love for the music with a massive crowd. “It is so rewarding,” Barhorst often remarked to friends and family, “to watch thousands of people take a shared emotional journey through the power of a song.”
The whole world watched on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong planted his left foot in the virgin lunar dust. That “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” rocketed Armstrong to instant immortality. As the first person to stand on a celestial body, Armstrong fulfilled the late President Kennedy’s goal of putting an American on the moon and rendered the United States the winner in its space race with the Soviet Union.
