Features

Features

American Classic Snack, Wadsworth

Ohio Cooperative Living's 2023 Holiday Gift Guide

When stockings are hung by the chimney with care, they cry out to be filled with made-in-Ohio gifts that help Santa not only enchant everyone’s nearest and dearest but also give a boost to entrepreneurs and artisans throughout the state.

American Classic Snack Company, Wadsworth

Using locally grown corn and ingredients such as homemade caramel and toffee, American Classic Snack Company has produced handcrafted, small-batch popcorn snacks for more than 30 years. While Buckeye Blitz is a year-round favorite generously coated with peanut butter and chocolate, the company’s palate-pleasing treats also include Bear Claw with Cashews, Beer Cheese + Bourbon, Caramel Apple, and Pumpkin Pie Crunch.

Features
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.

Beetle alert

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.

Features
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.

Places of rest

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. 

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

Power to the people

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.”

Features
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.

The amazing Fred Norton

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.

Features
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.

Small town, BIG sounds

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. 

Features
Peggy Kelly (pictured at center) attends the Ohio Renaissance Festival both alone and with her family during the course of the event.

Back in time at the Ohio Renaissance Festival

Peggy Kelly first attended the Ohio Renaissance Festival about 15 years ago.

The festival lasts eight to nine weeks, and Kelly, who is a season passholder, says she’ll typically attend six to eight times during that period. She attends often enough that she says her husband knows exactly where she’s headed if she gets up early — and that she’ll be gone for most of the day.

Features
Early French colonial influence can be found all across Ohio, but notably so in the western part of the state, where, for example, the Holy Family Cemetery in Frenchtown has a sign at the entry that reads, “Heureux Les Morts Qui Meuerent Dans Le Seigneur,” which translates to “Blessed Are the Dead Who Die in the Lord.”

French connection

France began its effort to colonize North America not too long after Christopher Columbus arrived here in 1492. At times between 1656 and 1750, in fact, France controlled more of the continental land mass than Britain and Spain combined.

Quebec, for instance, continues to be a Francophone island in English-speaking Canada that’s held steadfast to its language for hundreds of years. In spots of northern Maine, French is used as typically as English, and French-inspired poutine and ployes are as familiar on menus as burgers and pizza. The Cajuns of Louisiana still embrace their past with gusto and richness — so much so that the number of French-speakers in the bayou has actually increased in recent years. In Missouri, where St.

Features
The Wuebker family (from left): Gary, Brad, Angela (holding Levi with Ava in front), Todd, Nancy, and John.

Never forgotten

The sounds of high-pitched laughter and delighted squeals fill the air on this late-spring Saturday afternoon at Carthagena Park in rural Mercer County as youngsters scramble over brightly colored playground equipment.

From celebration to tragedy

Not far from the park, the boys’ mother, Nancy Wuebker, sits in her kitchen at GBT Family Farm, in the heart of Midwest Electric co-op territory. She recalls the events of Aug. 10, 2021, that forever changed the lives of her family and the close-knit farm community they call home.

Features
Subscribe to Features