The early hours of February 22 were typical for a Sunday morning in rural Highland County.
“Over long periods of time, small changes in stress in the earth can tip a fault over the edge,” Brudzinski says. “How many cocked guns are left and how many faults are really primed? There is no way to know; we really can’t anticipate when and where they will occur. Our ability to forecast earthquakes is not great.”
While Hillsboro may have been the site of the most recent shaker, Brudzinski says that Anna, a town of 1,500 people between Dayton and Lima, is the earthquake epicenter of the Buckeye State.
Brandie Hale never imagined that she ever would be any kind of an activist. As a self-described introvert who doesn’t like to talk — especially to large groups — it’s just not the kind of thing she’d put her energy into.
“Safety is everything, something that can affect our lives every single day,” she told the crowd. “I definitely don’t like to do this kind of thing, but I will do it forever if it can keep one other family, one other person, from having to live what we live now.”
Pride and joy
Brandie’s oldest child, Blake Rodgers, was born March 25, 2000, and even before his first birthday, he had learned to climb steps and could even climb up onto furniture. As he grew up, he excelled at football and baseball and at being a big brother.
Imagine taking a statewide road trip only to find every highway restaurant, hotel, and gas station closed. For a traveler, being tired, hungry, and in danger of running out of gas makes the journey difficult, if not impossible.
One way humans can help is by planting a pollinator pathway, creating an environment where those farm and garden helpers don’t have to work so hard just to get by.
A pollinator pathway is a grouping of native, diverse plants that help beneficial insects and birds survive in developed areas. Made up of plants that bloom in succession, they provide corridors of food and shelter from spring to fall. Typically located along roads, sidewalks, and yards, these pathways provide different landscapes needed to create bridges between habitat areas that might be too far apart otherwise.
Jason White still works every day to manage the symptoms and struggles that came home with him from Operation Desert Storm in 1993. Difficult as it can be, though, he knows that the love of his family makes him one of the lucky ones.
White has long done what he could to help fellow vets — for years, he donated modest proceeds from his YouTube channel to veteran-related causes.
In 2022, he told his wife, Angela, “I want to do something big for veterans.” Nearly four years later (their efforts were delayed temporarily when Jason had a heart attack shortly after his inspiration), the couple is an organizing powerhouse as the full-time volunteer operators of Riding 22 in 22 VSA, a 501(c)(3) organization that marries their desire to help veterans with their love of motorcycle road-tripping.
When we moved into our house nearly three decades ago, there was a small pond in the backyard garden, its shape fixed by a hard plastic liner. The pond was choked with excess vegetation that hid, somewhere in the depths, a small pump that did not pump.
Even a small pond adds beauty and interest to a backyard, says Justin Miller, general manager of Aquarium Adventure in Columbus, and for the homeowner, an added value is “stress relief.”
“You sit out there with the sound and the movement of the water and it just relaxes you,” he says.
On a beautiful spring morning a few years ago, Randy Evans, director of Three Valley Conservation Trust in Oxford, was walking through a wooded area with the owner of the property, admiring the stunning array of wildflowers in bloom.
Evans thought of all the Little Free Libraries that were springing up at the time, offering books for anyone to take, and thought that maybe a similar program might encourage more people to plant wildflowers. It was a project, he figured, that would fit right in with 3VCT’s mission.
Three Valley Conservation Trust is a nonprofit group that promotes conservation measures in Butler, Preble, and Montgomery Counties. Its 250 members mainly work to secure land conservation easements and raise awareness of the importance of protecting natural habitats and resources.
When severe winter weather recently swept across Ohio and much of the eastern United States, it put significant strain on the electric grid. As temperatures dropped, electricity demand surged and fuel systems tightened. It was a challenging period that once again showed what truly matters during extreme cold: a reliable, diverse power supply that performs under pressure.
With the exception of humans, likely no other species on earth can control its environment like the beaver. They do so, of course, by building dams — creating habitat not only for themselves but for other wetland wildlife species as well.
The rodents are so large (weighing up to 60 pounds) and unrelentingly industrious (“busy as a beaver,” of course), sometimes it may seem their secret motto is “Dam the Humans!”
Until recently, the main solution to beaver issues has been to do away with the beaver; eliminate the beaver and you eliminate the problem, or so goes the theory. But that kind of thinking is slowly beginning to change. Many rural landowners enjoy having beavers on their property, along with other wildlife their ponds attract — as long as the beavers and their dams can be kept under control.
The name of John Solomon Rarey is known to most folks in the small Franklin County town of Groveport; there’s a statue of him at the community’s recreation center, after all, and his brother William was one of the original founders of the village (which at the time was called Rarey’s Port).
Rarey cemented his international reputation as one of the greatest horse trainers the world has ever known when he won a bet with England’s Earl of Dorchester in 1852. The earl, it so happened, owned a horse named Cruiser, reported to be the fastest in England. But Cruiser also was vicious — a living fury who kicked two grooms to death, and who, as if in a rage, snapped an inch-thick iron bar with his teeth as numerous witnesses watched. He was considered too dangerous to race.
