Anyone living in a rural area of Ohio knows there’s a problem with internet service.
The need for speed
Lack of high-speed internet access affects students’ ability to learn, individuals’ ability to work, and businesses’ ability to prosper, because every day the world is becoming more digital. Online classes, remote work, and Zoom meetings are becoming more and more the norm, and without broadband, those digital tools are simply unavailable.
There can be no doubt that electric cooperatives will play a part in bridging that digital divide.
A small village in southern Ohio may seem like an unlikely country music hot spot, but Bainbridge, population 3,000, boasts a tradition rivaled only by the country music capital of the world.
Today, the jamboree continues to draw from a reservoir of talent to play alongside its house band, the Original Jam Band.
Still, as musical tastes change, Koehl and his team have a tricky balancing act: trying to preserve the history, traditions, and nostalgia of the jamboree, while also trying to bring in a younger audience.
Head outdoors with me after supper some evening during the month of April, and remember to take a jacket, as it will be chilly by the time we return after dark.
You’ll likely hear a woodcock long before spotting one, the sound beginning just after sunset. The woodcock’s call has been described as a single loud “peent” or “buzz,” spaced every few seconds. That usually continues for several minutes before the male finally takes wing in a spiral flight skyward, making a twittering sound as he climbs.
Ohio is known for producing more United States presidents than any other state in the Union — eight in all, including several who were veterans of the Civil War. First among the veterans, and perhaps appropriately so, was General Ulysses S. Grant.
Grant descended on his father’s side from a family long-established in America, dating to the Massachusetts Bay Colony circa 1630. His great-grandfather served the British in the French and Indian War, and his grandfather aided the colonists’ cause at the famed American victory at Bunker Hill in the American Revolution. Perhaps, then, it was no surprise that the 5-foot, 2-inch 17-year-old Grant would accept an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1839.
One of Michael Pence’s earliest memories dates to the 1950s, when he traveled to the Indiana State Fair with his parents to sell popcorn. He was only 5 years old at the time — but his daughter, Leslie, got her start in the family’s mobile concessionaire business at an even younger age.
Pence’s Concessions originated in 1902, when Michael’s grandfather, Clarence Pence, started selling popcorn and peanuts from a pushcart at state fairs. Michael’s father, Don Pence, continued the business in home-built trailers that he towed to fairs and festivals. “My dad didn’t get a manufactured trailer until 1957,” recalls Michael. “I still have that trailer, but it doesn’t travel anymore because we use it for making candy.” In the 1980s, Michael decided to make the company’s concession trailers pink and green.
Head to most parks around the state — from small-town playgrounds to urban greenspace to metroparks — and you’ll often see something that’s been added or improved as the result of an Eagle Scout project.
The path to Eagle Scout includes a rigorous set of requirements that must all be completed before the Scout turns 18: positions of troop leadership, a selection of required and optional learning on a wide variety of subjects (merit badges), and, most famously, completion of a project that benefits the community.
When Jerry Swank married his wife, Carolyn, in 2003, he wore a rancher-style felt hat, boots with spurs, and three replicas of the legendary Colt .45 single-action Army revolver that helped tame the American West.
Swank and his wife are South Central Power Company members who reside on 81 acres of farmland in the Hocking Hills. His interest in guns began when he was growing up in the Middletown area. He was introduced to shooting sports as a member of the Boy Scouts and while hunting with his father, and learned Western riding because his parents and grandparents kept horses.
As an adult, he worked in sales, but he also parlayed his knack for riding and training horses into a carriage ride business in downtown Columbus.
