Kevin Williams

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. 

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.

Amusement parks in Ohio date as far back as the mid-1800s. In fact, Cedar Point originally opened as a public beach in 1870. Kings Island, while celebrating its 50th anniversary this summer, traces its origins to nearby Coney Island, which also opened originally in 1870.

Today, the jamboree continues to draw from a reservoir of talent to play alongside its house band, the Original Jam Band.

Still, as musical tastes change, Koehl and his team have a tricky balancing act: trying to preserve the history, traditions, and nostalgia of the jamboree, while also trying to bring in a younger audience.

Each time of year offers something different. Winter is a solitude of quiet and barren beauty. Spring is a time of reawakening and colorful songbirds. Summertime cloaks the hills in emerald beauty and wildflower bouquets. And autumn? Stake out a spot and watch the trees covering the valley alight in flaming oranges, crimson reds, and crisp rusts.

The pandemic has made people take a closer look at the ground beneath them. 

“The pandemic gave native gardening another shot in the arm,” says Chris Chmiel, owner of Integration Acres outside of Albany in Athens County. “It’s a safe activity: Go out and do some foraging while social distancing.”

Today, many of the pork producers are larger, corporate-owned operations where the pigs are kept indoors and escape is impossible, so many of the fences have disappeared. Swihart’s farm has a 4-foot-high cement wall and double fencing. But, it turns out, the best fences are made from love and happiness.

“My hogs don’t want to go anywhere — they are happy here,” Swihart says. He can count the times on one hand over the decades that a hog has gotten loose, and each time it has come back. His hogs prefer life on the farm over a life on the lam.

Stark treasure

It was 1755, and the French had been trying desperately to repel attacks by the British on Fort Duquesne, France’s outpost in Pittsburgh. Fearing the fort’s imminent fall (it actually held out until 1758), some French soldiers started to evacuate valuables from Fort Duquesne — including a hoard of gold and silver used for military payroll.

Rivers, to me, are analogies of our humanity: They begin as spindly streams, unglamorous trickles, and, like people, they find their way — carving their character as they go, widening and deepening with distance. If a river can have such an ignominious beginning yet end with a glorious, glowing connection to something larger, then couldn’t that be a template for a life well-lived?

In 1951, a young boy was vacationing with his family near Milan, Italy. The boy, George Rau, was a scion of the well-known Lazarus family, which, for generations, ran one of the largest department store chains in Ohio.

Rau became enchanted with the docile lizards that sunned themselves on the rocky walls around Milan, and so he tucked 10 of them into a sock and brought them back to Cincinnati, where he released them in his family’s Torrence Court backyard.