Features

The year 1868 was one of turmoil and uncertainty in this country, when the very Union itself was in crisis. One man’s act of valor — not on a battlefield, but in a legislative body — may have been the deciding factor that held the nation together.

Edmund G. Ross cast the deciding vote in the staid United States Senate to acquit the impeached President Andrew Johnson in May of 1868. The vote earned him the widespread scorn at the time. But his act of conviction — ignoring both attempted bribery and physical threats — put him on the right side of history.

Location: Cincinnati’s Eden Park, a hilltop oasis that’s also home to the Cincinnati Art Museum; the Presidents’ Grove of trees honoring U.S. chief executives; and the Eden Park Overlook, which offers panoramic views of the Ohio River.

In a few years, you may be able to spend your morning commute reading a book, checking e-mail, or even napping, thanks to self-driving car technology.

While they aren’t exactly as high-functioning as KITT, the crime-fighting black Camaro from the old Knight Rider TV series, autonomous vehicles from the likes of Google, Tesla, and other companies have proven that we are on the cusp of being able to take our hands off the wheel.

There is a 140-foot-tall communications tower positioned at Mid-Ohio Energy Cooperative’s substation in Ada that’s vital to the co-op’s mission to provide reliable electric service to its more than 8,000 owner-members.

At the top are two radios that are part of Mid-Ohio Energy’s microwave communications network — one that communicates with another substation, and another that points back to the co-op office in Kenton — and unless both are working, the co-op would have difficulty communicating with critical systems at several substations.

Long before mothers were blogging about their daily lives, Erma Bombeck’s syndicated newspaper column — “At Wit’s End” — acquired a legion of faithful followers by mixing her musings about marriage and motherhood with healthy doses of humor. Born and raised in Dayton, Erma certainly knew her subject. She and her husband, Bill, had three school-age children when, at age 37, she began writing the column on a makeshift desk in a bedroom of her suburban Centerville home.

Houseplants are a widely popular addition in many homes. For some people, though, the thought of growing a houseplant has them seeing only brown instead of green. They may think their indoor growing conditions are less than optimal, or maybe they simply think that houseplants are too fussy or take too much time.

Every June for the past 39 years, high school students from co-op families have attended the Electric Cooperatives Youth Tour — a weeklong leadership experience in Washington, D.C., sponsored by their co-op. Youth Tour is an experience unlike any other — full of fun, friends, and memories that last a lifetime.

Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) is considered the father of modern-day wildlife management in North America; his 1933 book, Game Management, is a classic. I’m fortunate to own a copy of the second printing (1936) and recently wondered what it might be worth, so I contacted Jim Casada of Rock Hill, S.C., a fellow outdoors writer and an expert on collectible outdoor books.

Location: Downtown Xenia, about one block from the Greene County Courthouse.

Provenance: Brothers George and Andrew Dodds, both of whom were stonemasons and immigrants from Scotland, started making memorials in Yellow Springs in 1859. Five years later, they relocated to a building on West Main Street in the railroad hub of Xenia. It’s now one of the nation’s largest monument companies.

Attractions across Ohio host dining events throughout the year that feature more than just food — the guests of honor include historic figures (actors, impersonators, or simply historians with a flair for the dramatic, most with Ohio ties) and make for enriching experiences that combine a dash of education with a huge helping of dinner theater.