Like many Kelleys Island residents, Charles and Cindy Herndon spent their childhood summers in the bucolic setting on western Lake Erie before returning decades later to live there. But they didn’t just come back to fade away into retirement.
“The lake is a provider for paintings using propagation, waves, the stones it brings to shore, its movement, repetition, and variety,” he says. “The natural world is important to my soul and its creative juices.”
Before he painted, Charles mostly sculpted, and the garden portion of the campus is home to about 150 pieces ranging from smaller works to massive creations 7 or 8 feet tall. Some are wood, steel, or bronze; others are pieces of glacial erratic (granite) and limestone, many quarried from the island.
Each visit to Passion Works Studio is a visit to joy. It’s part art studio, part gift shop, and part community gathering place — and it bursts with creativity and whimsy. There are bold lines and vibrant color combinations everywhere. Each visit brings a new discovery.
What the Athens studio is best known for — its signature pieces — are the Passion Flowers, which festoon the walls and hang from the ceiling.
The flowers, made from recycled metal newspaper printing plates, have put the town’s creative spirit on the map. Stop in numerous Athens businesses and you’re likely to find them. They also decorate several downtown outdoor spots.
“My dream is to be a roadside attraction,” says Patty Mitchell, Passion Works founder and executive director.
At about 4:30 a.m. one frigid Monday this past December, a signal went out from Columbus that temporarily switched off electric water heaters, furnaces, heat pumps, and geothermal systems in tens of thousands of electric cooperative members’ homes around the state.
Buckeye Power, the generation and transmission cooperative that provides the electricity Ohio’s co-ops distribute to their members, can reduce costs and ease strain on the grid by cycling those appliances off and on for short periods of time when the demand for power is at its highest. More than 100,000 co-op members in Ohio volunteer to participate in the program.
Harvesting your own fresh, aromatic herbs provides a satisfying connection to nature and lets you bring garden-to-table zestiness to your meals.
Why LED?
In years past, indoor gardening often meant bulky, hot lights that were as hard on your electric bill as they were on your plants. Modern LED lights, McDermott says, have revolutionized the kitchen garden. The slim, cool bulbs use up to 50% less energy than traditional fluorescents, yet deliver a full spectrum, which prevents plants from becoming “leggy,” or thin. The result is a sturdier, bushier herb that thrives on your countertop.
Choosing the right light
There are three categories of waterfowl that frequent the Buckeye State: ducks, geese, and swans. Swans are by far the largest of them — weighing 20 pounds or more, with wingspans measuring nearly 8 feet.
Tundra swan (the good)
The tundra swan is Ohio’s only native swan. Large flocks of them migrate through the state late in February and March on their way north to nest in the High Arctic, then come back with their young cygnets the following November and December, especially along the shores of Lake Erie. If you have an older bird ID book, the tundra swan may be identified as a “whistling swan.”
Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe that a full year has passed since I began writing these messages as CEO of our statewide association of electric cooperatives. 2025 was a fulfilling year, filled with both highlights and challenges, and I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts and to reflect on our progress.
Steve Stolte was a civil engineering student at Ohio State University when the Silver Bridge, which connected Gallipolis to Point Pleasant, West Virgina, on busy U.S. Route 35, collapsed into the Ohio River.
After the collapse, Ohio began to require that all bridges in the state be inspected once each year. Seeing an opportunity to both make some money and potentially save some lives, Stolte and some of his college friends started up a new business.
They attended classes during the week, but on weekends they traveled into rural counties throughout the state to perform those mandated bridge inspections.
“We learned quickly to drive across each bridge prior to doing our inspection, because we often didn’t want to drive across after seeing the condition they were in,” he says.
Kyle Hicks, the new senior government affairs analyst at Ohio State University’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, hadn’t always planned to pursue a career in public policy — he wanted to be a teacher.
Hicks decided to apply to take the trip after hearing about the experiences his mom and sister had when they went on Youth Tour in 1994 and 2017, respectively. South Central Power selected him as one of its delegates as he was finishing his junior year at Amanda-Clearcreek High School, and that summer, he boarded a D.C.-bound bus with 30 other Ohio students who had been sponsored by their own co-ops.
What do a church, a brewery, and an elementary school have in common? Each is home to art installations created by the Artifactory, a partnership between two Delaware County artists who work with those groups to create intricate mosaic pieces from recycled materials.
Now she and Corwin teach groups in central Ohio and beyond to create those free-form mosaics that are then installed as permanent works of art.
