Features

For once, I was there “yesterday.” If you’re an angler, you know what I mean. How many times have you heard, “Well, the fish aren’t biting today, but had you been here yesterday (or last week, or last month), well…”

Putting me on the fish that magical late-summer morning a few years ago was veteran fishing guide Dave Rose. We were fishing a small river in northwest Michigan from a drift boat, casting minnow-imitation lures for king salmon (also known as Chinooks) that were migrating upstream from Lake Michigan to spawn.

Being a board member for an Ohio electric cooperative comes with a sense of pride in service to one’s community. Board members, after all, are the link between owner-members of the cooperative and the services those members receive from the cooperative, and they take that responsibility seriously.

While many travelers regard Holmes County as the crux of Ohio’s Amish Country, few realize that Walnut Creek is its cradle. In 1809, Amish farmer Jonas Stutzman migrated from Pennsylvania to present-day Holmes County as the area’s first white settler. More Amish folks soon followed, putting down roots that blossomed into the world’s largest Amish-Mennonite community.

Ohio electric cooperative trustees and employees took their policy priorities to Capitol Hill in late April at the NRECA Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C.

Co-op leaders from dozens of states joined Ohio’s delegation for the annual conference, which focused this year on building momentum from the successful Co-ops Vote campaign during the 2016 election.

Our present days are an amalgam of all of our yesterdays: the past is prelude. That adage couldn’t be more true with respect to Ohio’s geologic history. Nearly the entire state felt the cold crush of mile-deep glacial ice pushing on the land.

The evidence is all around you in the moraines, the low long ridges in southwest Ohio; the grooves etched in stone on Kelleys Island; the open, pleasant till plains seemingly laid flat as a skillet.

Springtime can only mean one thing: It’s the beginning of festival season in Ohio, a time when there’s a celebration to honor just about any hobby, haute cuisine, and historical happening in hamlets across the state. Here’s a look at some of the more interesting festivals happening this spring and summer.

Being a lineworker is not a particularly easy job; besides the strenuous nature of the work that both keeps the lights on and restores power when there’s an outage, the folks on the poles need to have a knowledge base that ranges from basic knot-tying to electrical engineering.

Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of training that goes into becoming (and remaining) a lineworker. Also not surprisingly, Ohio’s electric cooperatives are leaders in the field of lineworker training.

Rudy Dalrymple leaves his room at the Ohio Veterans Home in Sandusky between 5 and 5:30 a.m. most days, and settles into a comfortable padded chair behind his sturdy worktable. Using crepe paper, wire, cloth tape, and his trusty wooden crimping tool, he forms delicate poppy blossoms, one after another, again and again, until he’s surrounded by a mound of flowers, which are destined for American Legion auxiliaries across Ohio to use in their major fundraising efforts around Memorial Day.

The 30 or so therapy horses of Seven Oaks Farm may be little, but they have a big impact. Owner Lisa Moad brings the horses around to more than 50 care facilities and numerous Ronald McDonald houses to bring comfort to the residents and guests, and joins with several police departments to help with community and anti-bullying efforts.