Ohio seems to have a bit of a thing with flags. It’s not just that our state flag is the only one out of the 50 that is not a rectangle (an interesting story in its own right).
You might have seen a service flag: a blue star (or stars) on a field of white, surrounded by a red border — hanging in the picture window of a seemingly random home in the neighborhood or in a shop window of a downtown building. But many folks might be unaware, or at least unsure, of its significance.
Every so often, we are reminded of the raw power of — and our relative helplessness against — the forces of nature. Throughout Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, communities are still coming to grips with the devastation wrought in late September and early October by the one-two punch of hurricanes Helene and Milton, two of the more powerful and damaging storms of the past few decades.
The utter destruction there is difficult to fathom. Recovery will take months, and even years in some communities.
I’m old enough to have witnessed the demise of much of the ring-necked pheasant population in Ohio firsthand. In the 1960s, I remember my father taking me on a pheasant hunt to private property in the northwest part of the state.
Ringneck numbers in Ohio peaked during the 1930s and ’40s, and have been on a steady downhill slide ever since. The reason for the decline is simple, as it is throughout the North American pheasant range: the disappearance of quality grassland habitat.
As goes the habitat, so goes the population of birds.
Wrap up your shopping and sleigh the holidays this year with our gift guide’s selection of original, useful, and ingenious made-in-Ohio items, which will make it the most wonderful time of the year for everyone on your list.
Barb Barbee Jewelry, Delaware
At her home studio in Delaware, Worthington Craft Guild member Barb Barbee fashions jewelry using 14-karat gold-filled wire, sterling silver, freshwater pearls, and precious and semi-precious stones. Her holiday line has Christmas tree-shaped green malachite pendants; mother-of-pearl snowman earrings; and stunning Christmas spiders that channel an East European folktale.
When electric cooperatives in North Carolina and South Carolina put out the call for help after Hurricane Helene barreled through in late September, Ohio answered.
When the Ohio group reached the Carolinas, what they found was shocking. In the western parts of those two states, Helene had left a mutilated landscape in its wake. Roads, bridges, power systems — in some places, even entire villages — had been washed entirely off Appalachian hillsides and into flooded valleys. Damage was widespread, and it was devastating.
Chelsey Keiser vividly remembers growing up in western Ohio and helping her parents, Darke Rural Electric Cooperative members Mike and Debbie Keiser, raise thoroughbreds at their North Star-area farm.
“I’ve loved horses forever,” she says, noting that she learned to ride even before she learned to walk.
As she got a little older, Keiser started helping out by galloping the family’s thoroughbreds as part of their training regimen. “I really enjoyed that aspect of working with horses,” she says. “The hard part was handing the reins off to a jockey at the track.”
She also took up barrel racing — a fast-paced sport pitting horse and rider against the clock on a cloverleaf-shaped course, where the fastest finisher wins.
