Columns

By now you have likely heard that there is a major celestial event happening in Delaware County on Monday, April 8 – a total solar eclipse! This phenomenon hasn’t happened in Ohio since 1806, and the next won’t occur until 2099. To say it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is not an understatement.

No Ohio veteran should be kicked out of their home when they’re trying to get back on track with payments.

Delaware Forward, a citizens group, appeals to voters to support two vital tax levies for community services, parks and recreation, and street repair in the city of Delaware. Last year, nine citizen volunteers studied the financial situation of the city. They spent nine months on the project. Their recommendations to Delaware City Council led to these tax proposals.

Last week, the snow storm brought a little extra work and a lot of fun family activities. I realize as I get older, I view snow in a different way than I did when I was younger. Nowadays, a snow storm brings more work.

Valentine’s Day is always kind of fun. The fun started when we were all in elementary school and exchanged little cards. (That’s how it was at the school I went to, anyway.) It can be really good, or not so good, depending on if you receive a valentine from the right person. That’s the way it is while you are in elementary school anyway. It’s different when you are an adult and have had a spouse for a lot of years.

In 1633, the Catholic Church’s Inquisition convicted Galileo Galilei of violating instructions by Cardinal Bellarmine in 1616. He had been ordered to cease public support of Copernicanism, the belief that the sun, and not the Earth, was at the center of the cosmos.

As predicted, temperatures rose above average on Tuesday, Jan. 23, and marked the formal start of the sugaring season at Stratford Ecological Season on Liberty Road. The farmhands spread out in the Sugar Bush and identified 200 maple trees with a small red slash. Firewood had been stockpiled outside the Sugar Shack, the area cleared of leaves, and the barrels for storing sap hosed off.

This winter, the library staff at the Delaware County District Library were all about having fun! Last week, the Liberty Branch Library youth services staff presented a Life-Sized Candy Land program to over 600 families while Olentangy students enjoyed a day off from school. Next week, they’ll be back at it again with Giant Twister on Tuesday, Feb. 27, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Liberty Branch. Then on Wednesday, Feb. 28, the Liberty Branch community rooms will be open from 4 to 6:30 p.m. for a Board Game Cafe.

Nearly everyone in Ohio has a fentanyl story – it may be in your own family, it may be a neighbor, it may be a coworker. They’re stories of families torn apart. Of parents losing teenagers before they graduate high school. Of grandparents stepping in to raise grandchildren. We’ve all lost someone, or know someone who’s lost someone. It’s a crisis that cuts across all geographic lines, and certainly across all partisan divides.

“Let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.”