A deeply worn long wooden table, believed to date back more than 400 years, is the centerpiece of the Contraxx Furniture offices in McConnelsville.
Early in his career, Workman learned how the national furniture world works — through trade shows, corporate showrooms, and long days selling into a system built for scale. During his years at Taylor Woodcraft, a McConnelsville-based school furniture manufacturer, he built relationships with major retailers, including Williams-Sonoma. He began supplying consumer pieces — starting with stools — and saw how demand could push standardized production toward customization.
If the internet had a physical body, data centers would be its brain. If you’ve ever streamed a show, backed up your photos, or asked a smart speaker for the weather, all of that information came through a data center.
When big changes come very quickly, often with little or no information that’s easily accessible, neighbors tend to react with suspicion and sometimes even anger. Residents of towns like Trenton, in Butler County, and South Bloomfield, in Pickaway County, have crowded local zoning boards, signed petitions, and generally begun pushing back against data centers planned in those communities. In fact, at least 30 Ohio municipalities have enacted or are considering enacting moratoriums on new data centers.
And that raises a question: What’s the big deal?
More than three thousand years ago, nomads in Central Asia moved from place to place with their homes on their backs. The structures — wood frames covered with felted wool or animal fur — were light, yet they could withstand the winds of the barren steppe.
Add some other modern conveniences, and it makes for glamping at its finest. Turn the page to check out a few options for yurt stays right here in Ohio.
Appropriately, spring’s swift, early arrival in Ohio this year came on a Friday the 13th. A fast‑moving low‑pressure system tore across the state this past March, unleashing widespread damaging winds.
11:52 a.m., March 13: Trouble begins
In Millersburg, in eastern Ohio, reports of outages started coming in to Holmes‑Wayne Electric Cooperative around noon. “The numbers escalated quickly through the afternoon,” says Robyn Tate, the co-op’s vice president and chief administrative officer, noting that the hardest-hit areas were also the most rural. Large trees came down and numerous poles snapped under their weight.
In the small Lake Erie waterfront town of Fairport Harbor, east of Cleveland, Sheila Consaul is a celebrity of sorts.
Consaul, a communications consultant, has painstakingly turned the lighthouse into her summer dream home in those 15 years since she ponied up $71,010 for it at a U.S. General Services Administration federal auction. She lives and works there from May to October, then returns to her winter home in Virginia for the remainder of the year. The following photos are a peek inside the historic light, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2025.
Roger Bender doesn’t think much about the number. From his farm outside Fort Loramie, where he’s a member of Piqua-based Pioneer Electric Cooperative, he’s been showing up to blood drives for more than 50 years. A pint here.
Bender keeps his favorites; they’re a regular part of his wardrobe. But he also gives them away: to neighbors who can’t donate anymore, to friends, to anyone who might wear one out into the world and make someone else think twice about passing by the next blood drive.
He doesn’t give blood for the shirts. He does it for what happens inside St. Michael Hall, the recurring home to Fort Loramie’s drives.
The violent windstorm that swept across Ohio and much of the rest of the Midwest on March 13 was a powerful reminder about how quickly the weather can change — and how much we all depend on electricity in our daily lives.
Gusts were strong enough to bring down trees, snap utility poles, peel shingles, and unceremoniously toss around just about anything that wasn’t tied down. In other words, it was the kind of weather that makes folks worry about whether or not their lights will stay on.
