February 2026

"Celebrity" - one of Mac Worthington's signature looks. He is best known for his metal sculptures.

A Mac Worthington piece of art is almost instantly recognizable. Worthington’s work (he’s best known for his metal sculpture) can be found in public, private, and corporate collections across the country and around the world.

Worthington was born in Canton, the son of artists. His father, Jack, made many of the bronze busts in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His mother, Marion, worked with enamel and silver. 

Before turning to art, Worthington built washing machines, served in Vietnam, and worked for a finance company — all good experiences that proved useful when he opened his own galleries.

So far, more than 100,000 trees nationwide have been removed due to Asian longhorned beetle infestation and damage, and if left unchecked, the damage will only become worse.

Got trees? Most co-op members do. If you’re among that group, the U.S. Department of Agriculture wants you to be on the lookout for yet another invasive insect species attacking woods in the Buckeye State: the Asian longhorned beetle (ALB).  

The ALB is a wood-boring bug that attacks a dozen types of hardwood trees in North America, including maples, elms, buckeyes, birches, and willows. Infested trees do not recover. They then weaken and become safety hazards, especially during storms, and eventually die.

In March, more than 30 high school students from Adams County participated in a co-op career fair at Ohio State’s Center for Cooperatives in Piketon with representatives from area co-ops, including Adams Rural Electric Cooperative and South Central Power Company, who shared many of the ways students can launch careers in a cooperative business.

When you think about cooperative businesses, what comes to mind? For most reading this, it’s probably the local electric cooperative.

The Center for Cooperatives opened in 2017 at OSU’s South Centers in Piketon. Faculty and staff work with businesses throughout the state with a focus on cooperative education, applied research, and support. 

Program director Hannah Scott grew up in an agricultural community and says she appreciates the unique approach of how co-ops conduct business: The members own it, benefit from it, and make decisions about it.

Ohio’s urban garden cemeteries are some of the country’s most distinctive memorial parks, and stunning examples can be found in nearly every population center.

In the early 19th century, public city parks were virtually nonexistent. That doesn’t mean, however, that there was no green space in urban areas.

Ohio’s urban garden cemeteries are some of the country’s most distinctive memorial parks, and stunning examples can be found in nearly every population center. Here are three that are particularly outstanding and accessible. 

Murray Lincoln addresses an assembly gathered to hear about electrification, as Eleanor Roosevelt (left) listens intently.

In the fall of 1935, in the depths of the Great Depression and the dawning of the New Deal, a young executive from the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet Morris L.

The initial meeting didn’t go so well, as Lincoln remembers in his autobiography, Vice President in Charge of Revolution.

Shown into his office, I told him that we of the Farm Bureau wanted to avail ourselves of the benefits of this legislation and set up our own utility plants. 

“What do you know about the utility business?” Mr. Cooke asked.

“Nothing,” I admitted cheerfully. “I was trained in dairying and animal husbandry.”

Electrical wire with current

Electricity runs (or can run) nearly everything in our lives. It’s such an integral part of our everyday lives, in fact, that we rarely even think about all the benefits that electric service brings to our homes and businesses every minute of every day. 

We all take a trip down memory lane once in a while, reminiscing about special times and meaningful life events.

That experience helped her realize two things: first, that she proudly came from a long line of strong, influential women; second, how important it was to engage with her grandmother, listen to her story, and record her family history before it was lost forever. “Listening is good for all of us,” Sanders says. “When they tell their story, it gives them purpose. There’s a reason they’re here.”

With World War I well underway, Fred Norton joined the Army after graduating from OSU in one of the earliest versions of what would become the U.S. Air Force.

Two weeks before he graduated from Lakeside High School in May 1912, Fred William Norton competed in the inaugural Ottawa County track meet.

Most kids of the day ended schooling and began working full-time after eighth grade. But Norton took a different path. He entered Lakeside High School (now Danbury High) in 1908. Along with track, he also competed in football, baseball, and basketball, and he carried a 4.0 academic average all four years there. 

According to the Lakeside Heritage Society, he also worked for a local railroad, operating a locomotive and cleaning and repairing buildings and equipment. He often clocked 10-hour days, six days a week.

A small crowd gathers next to the Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives Education Building during the Farm Science Review to watch South Central Power Company’s live line safety demonstration.

It’s not unusual for the crew of lineworkers from Lancaster-based South Central Power Company to hang around and make small talk with attendees after they’ve finished their hourly live-wire safety demonstrations at the annual

“Our guys are really good about making sure they answer everyone’s questions, and they’ll stick around as long as they need to,” says Candi Fisher, member engagement coordinator at South Central Power, who coordinates the mobile safety demonstrations for the co-op. “They could tell this older gentleman wanted to talk to them and so they went over to say hello.”

“You saved my life,” the man said. 

“That’s not something you hear every day,” Fisher says. “But he was very insistent. He made a special trip there that day to thank the guys who had saved his life.”

When French refugees settled in Gallipolis, they brought with them a strong appreciation for the arts, resulting in the opening of the Ariel Opera House in 1895 at the height of the "opera house" movement.

When Lora Lynn Snow first saw the inside of the Ariel Opera House in 1987, the first thing she noticed, of course, was the quarter-century’s worth of bird droppings that coated just about everything.

Today, thanks to that love affair — and a lot of hard work — Gallipolis (population 3,300) is home to one of the most distinctive, if unlikely, symphonies in the country. The Ohio Valley Symphony, replete with tubas, French horns, cellos, bass violins, flutes, harps, trumpets, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and more, begins its 34th season of performance at the Ariel this month.

The hills that hem in this tiny Ohio River town on the southern tip of the state are truly alive with the sound of music.