This is the story of a failed state park and its lake. To tell it faithfully, though, I need to tell you how I came across it. To do that, I need to first beg forgiveness, because I fibbed 44 summers ago.
First, I encountered the ruins of curious concrete edifices in the creek bed that were clearly relics from another time. Old sycamores and silver maples grew thickly through cracked concrete. A tall tower stood there, orphaned, in what seemed the most out-of-the-way place. Not 40 yards away, Indian Creek bent into a deep pool beneath sheltering box elders. That leads to the second reason for the memory: It was there that I hooked a smallmouth bass as long as my forearm and thick as a pillow from the smallest of waters.
Emily Bania has been a member of an electric cooperative for as long as she can remember. Growing up around Belle Valley, she and her family were members of Marietta-based Washington Electric Cooperative.
Emily’s story is typical for co-op members. They get their electricity from, and pay their bills to, one of Ohio’s 25 electric distribution cooperatives; usually vote in the election for the co-op’s board of directors; and maybe attend the annual meeting of members. They might even get capital credits in the form of a check or a bill credit at the end of the year when the not-for-profit co-op’s revenues outpace its expenses.
This summer, you can take a voyage on a 19th-century British ship, visit ancient Rome, witness 50 years in a couple’s bedroom, travel to the underworld, and even go to the prom, all within the confines of the Buckeye State.
Ohio Light Opera at the College of Wooster
Freedlander Theatre, 329 E. University St., Wooster, OH 44691. 330-263-2345; www.ohiolightopera.org
At its peak, Ohio Light Opera’s program allows ambitious theater lovers to see as many as six shows in one week. While there are some devoted ticket holders who do just that, many others come to see one or two favorites.
One of the most infamous incidents in all of early Ohio history occurred 241 years ago this month, on June 11, 1782, when Col. William Crawford of the fledgling U.S. Army was burned at the stake by Native American locals out for revenge.
The story begins several months earlier, in March 1782, when 96 members of the Delaware tribe, who had converted to Christianity, were rounded up, massacred, and burned along with their entire village of Gnadenhutten (meaning huts, or tents, of grace) along the Tuscarawas River by Col. David Williamson and his contingent of frontier militia.
Along the road connecting Fredericktown and Amity in Knox County is a red wooden sign with a lobster on it, marking a driveway leading to 22 acres of wooded property featuring a creek, walking trails, two cabins and a 1961 Shasta Airflyte camper trailer for rent, a house, a
The road to Amity
After graduating from Ohio State University, Fletcher talked his dad into co-signing a loan for a lobster boat and moved to an off-the-grid family cabin in Georgetown, Maine. He spent the next 20 years as a professional lobsterer, hauling water to his makeshift shower and 200 traps’ worth of lobsters per day from the waters surrounding the island town.
Roman Mast’s backyard looks like a bird-feeding test kitchen.
“I have my oriole feeders out by the last week in April,” Mast says. “Through the years, I’ve tried a lot of different foods to attract orioles, including sliced oranges, but my main food now is simply grape jelly.” Orioles and a few other species, such as rose-breasted grosbeaks, gray catbirds, and some warblers, seem to love the stuff. “A red-bellied woodpecker even comes to my jelly feeders occasionally,” Mast says.
After working in the electric utility business for nearly 40 years, I still marvel at the working of our interconnected electric power network that we commonly refer to as “the grid.” It has taken equal parts of engineering, ingenuity, and hard work to design, build, and sustain a network that makes electricity available every hour of every day, no matter how hot or how cold the weather outside may be.
Jackie Driscoll paints her landscape with a palette of colors from native plants.
Driscoll has been gardening since she was a child. Her mother, who kept gardening until she died at 88, planted the joy of gardening seed in her daughter, and it still flourishes.
Jackie and her husband, Brian, lived in a Cleveland suburb while their children were growing up. Their property was small, but Driscoll kept adding plants to it. “My husband finally said, ‘You have to leave some grass,’” she recalls.
