After a spell of ill health, I find myself back at the books and the keyboard during a winter storm, ready to talk about a book I wanted to hate, but couldn't.
Barbara Kingsolver is a great writer who presents her stories as plain-faced as a tale can be. This leads to some unpleasant topics sometimes when a story absolutely must be told. Such is “Demon Copperhead” ($34.50 ISBN:987-0-06-326746-6), an Oprah's Book Club 2022 selection.
The book is all about a boy (Daemon) with red hair (Copperhead) growing up up in the Apalachicola South, with all its poverty–which means plenty of teen mothers and drugs, among other things like high school football, drinking excessively and having not much future to look forward to. On the other hand, family is tight and most important in life.
Can you guess the number of horses in Richland Township and Bluffton 128 years ago? Try 683. That’s nearly 1 horse for every 5 persons here.
That interesting statistic is one of several uncovered in an assessment of Richland Township and the Village of Bluffton in 1895.
Most of the details relate to agriculture, simply because our American society was agriculturally based at this time.
The Bluffton News reported the assessor’s 1985 finding. We’ve posted these directly from the News story, that follows:
Assessor J.W. Steiner made his report to the county auditor last Friday, after having put in 31 days in gathering the usual statistics and data for the township and corporation.
Dr. Walt Paquin, professor of social work at Bluffton University, will present the Colloquium, “Developing 'New' Tools for Student Learning,” at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 3 in Centennial Hall’s Stutzman Lecture Hall.
This presentation focuses on the projects that Paquin has explored over his 2021-22 sabbatical. Paquin has significantly revised the ‘Learning in Community’ course to increase student engagement in the Lima community. He also discovered ways to enhance student engagement and “learning activities” throughout the Social Work curriculum at Bluffton University.
FINDLAY--Mast producing trees, like walnut and hickory, were important to the McKinnis family and their neighbors. Not only was the wood used in many of their structures, the nuts of the black walnut, shagbark hickory, shellbark hickory, and butternut hickory were used in baking and making ink. Join Mrs. Boylan, a neighbor of the McKinnis family, in the kitchen as she shares samples of her walnut cookies and hickory nut bread to all who stop by.
The United States Department of Agriculture is urging farmers to complete the 2022 Census of Agriculture by the February 6 deadline.
USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) has sent the 2022 Census of Agriculture to nearly 3 million ag producers across the country. Survey codes for responding securely online were mailed in November and paper questionnaires in December. “Through the ag census, producers can show the nation the value of Ohio agriculture and influence decisions that will shape the future of the industry,” said Marlo D. Johnson, Director of the Great Lakes Regional Office. “Data from the census works for producers by improving decision- and policy making regarding jobs, transportation, production practices, new technologies, marketing opportunities, farm services and programs, and local, state and federal policy. The Census of Agriculture is the producer’s voice in the future of American agriculture.”
