As 2016 comes to a close, we can look back on a year dominated by competing political ideas, which led to a close and contentious election. Of course, the big news is that our country will soon have a new, and very different, leader. While the Trump administration will certainly have an effect on the state of the electric utility industry, it’s difficult to project the extent of the impact.
June 2020
When people visit a museum, its gift shop is usually the last thing they see. During the holidays, however, museum stores should be your first destination for gift ideas. These very special stores reflect the collections of their parent institutions, and they carry a wide range of items — regional publications, landmark photos, works by local artists, tasteful toys, and elegant accessories — that are sure to inspire, surprise, and delight everyone on your list. Here are some of our favorites.
Happy kids, an appealing, eco-friendly product — what’s not to like about a cut-your-own Christmas tree operation? It’s a win-win situation, says Brian Bartels, who with his wife, Kara, and parents, Steve and Judy Bartels, operates Bartels Farm in Hamilton. The operation features fresh-cut Christmas trees, a live Nativity scene, tractor rides, and a Christmas shop.
When general manager Cory Hoops gives tours of the Universal Lettering Company’s Van Wert facility to FFA members, it’s often an eye-opening experience for them. “I remember this schoolgirl telling us she had no idea that so much labor goes into producing FFA jackets,” says Hoops. “She was excited and amazed to see how hers was made.”
The highlight of February’s Winterfest in Perrysburg will be the U.S. National Ice Carving Championship, but Chad Hartson, who owns one of the nation’s largest ice-sculpting companies — Ice Creations in Napoleon — and is himself a former world champion, won’t be a contender. “The National Ice Carving Association (NICA) sanctions the event,” explains Hartson. “Since I’m president of its board and helping organize the championship, I can’t be competing too.”
No matter how big a hero he became, through his pioneering work as a test pilot and astronaut or his service to the state and country as a United States senator, John H. Glenn Jr. never forgot his rural roots — and that made him a friend to electric co-op members everywhere, says Darrel “Cubby” Cubbison, the retired longtime member services manager at Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative.
Middletown was once a bustling steel and paper manufacturing hub along the banks of the Great Miami River in southwest Ohio. The majority of manufacturing jobs disappeared in the downsizing waves of the 1980s and 1990s, leaving behind an older population — including many elderly on fixed incomes and government assistance.
For 38 years, the Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives Youth Tour to Washington, D.C., has given high school students a unique perspective on our nation’s capital and the electric cooperative world.
It is a fundamentally different experience than any other youth trip to D.C. It is a more personal, more engaging, and more rewarding experience — one where participants can meet new people from around the state and the country while broadening their knowledge of our government institutions.
A look back
Country Living came into being at a time when the country was still getting used to the idea that farmers could get electricity from a centralized power plant, just like urban dwellers could.
A little more than 20 years had passed since Franklin D. Roosevelt had signed the Rural Electrification Act, which allowed for the creation of electric cooperatives to illuminate the mostly dark countryside. By October 1958, 28 electric cooperatives had formed and were successfully providing electricity to rural areas — mostly farms — in the Buckeye State.
