Margaret Buranen

“Climbing combines physical activity — a sportlike activity — with a meaningful cultural experience,” he says. “It’s a reason to travel and experience new places. I’ve spent hundreds of days climbing in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Alabama, traveling to places that are remote. I’ve enjoyed meeting people there who are climbers and not climbers.” 

Shortly after he earned his PhD in sociology from the University of Washington, he and his wife, Laura Black, moved to Athens with their two kids to be professors at OU. 

Evans thought of all the Little Free Libraries that were springing up at the time, offering books for anyone to take, and thought that maybe a similar program might encourage more people to plant wildflowers. It was a project, he figured, that would fit right in with 3VCT’s mission. 

Three Valley Conservation Trust is a nonprofit group that promotes conservation measures in Butler, Preble, and Montgomery Counties. Its 250 members mainly work to secure land conservation easements and raise awareness of the importance of protecting natural habitats and resources. 

Competitive bass fishing is strictly catch and release. Teams of two, using only artificial baits that look like worms or crawdads, drop their lines in a specified area. Each competitor catches a maximum of five fish, which must be kept alive in water-filled wells on the boats. As soon as the fish are quickly weighed and photographed, they are released back into the lake. The winning team is determined by the total weight of the fish caught.

For safety, every boat is operated by an adult so that the two young competitors can concentrate on their fishing. 

That organization, based in Pittsboro, North Carolina, keeps track of rare breeds of sheep, horses, cattle, chickens, and other types of livestock — researching populations of dozens of breeds and rating their viability from “critical” (fewer than 100 annual U.S. registrations) to “recovering” (over 2,500 annual U.S. registrations, but still in need of monitoring).

Terri Riddle of Loveland, a painter who works mostly in oils and acrylics, got interested in quilling after her husband gave her a Cricut machine, which can cut paper in custom, specialized ways. Riddle had a project in mind, but realized she needed to learn quilling to finish the parts that the Cricut couldn’t handle — so she taught herself.     

She finds quilling both satisfying and relaxing. “It’s a very beginner-friendly craft,” she says. “You can do it while watching TV, and the designs can be simple or more complex.”

The dairy’s prime location just off of Lane Avenue, near the main entrance to the Columbus campus, reinforces the importance of agriculture to the university and the state, says Maurice Eastridge, senior associate chair of animal sciences and dairy extension specialist at Ohio State, and the new dairy was designed with education of students as the top priority. “Public education and research needs are its second and third missions,” Eastridge says.

“We saved a certain section of the orchard for the gleaners,” she says. “I told the [professional] pickers not to pick those peaches. We like to give back to the community and to those in need. That’s one of our purposes in life.”

The Crows got into square dancing by chance. They went to dinner late one summer evening to a restaurant where many of the other patrons were wearing what they later learned to be traditional square-dancing attire: the women in ruffled skirts worn over fluffy crinolines, and men in western-style shirts that matched or complemented their partners’ outfits.

Hops add bitterness to balance the sweetness of malt in beers. Different varieties of hops contain varying levels of oils and acids, and those are what give beers their distinct flavors. 

Volkens discovered pickleball when he began to spend winters in Arizona. He fell in love with the sport and played daily. But when he returned to Middletown he was dismayed to find nary a court — not a single one.

After driving around Middletown and finding 17 empty tennis courts, Volkens saw his opportunity; he gathered some friends and made a case to Middletown’s Parks Department, which agreed to dedicate space to the activity, and Volkens started recruiting Middletown residents old and young as soon as courts became available. That was nearly 20 years ago.