Iconoclast View

The Icon offers viewers a three-part photo series that took three years to complete. We intend to continue this series. Here’s the story about it.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away there was a newspaper editor in a small town called Bluffton, Ohio.

The editor’s name was Charles Hilty. He created a tradition that The Icon has adopted. Every year on or very close to July 4, he’d take a photo of an old farmer, Henry Huber, standing in Henry’s cornfield.

Tell us about the “oldest” flower in your garden.

Here’s mine, and while it’s a vintage plant, the details are hazy. I don’t even know its official name.

In my back yard is blooming a white iris that is very fickle. It blooms once every three years or so. There are also some blue irises in the mix. I’ve never seen the blue and the white bloom the same year. Perhaps they don’t like each other.

News flash:

During the May clean up the village reports 33.07 tons of refuse was collected over a two-week period at the Spring Street recycling center.

Using an estimated figure of 4,000 residents in Bluffton, how many pounds of crap was dumped per resident during spring clean up? First off, 33.07 tons is 72,906 pounds. The answer is 18.2 pounds.

This fact begs the question: Is every person in Bluffton – babe in arms to elder at Maple Crest –  collecting 18.2 pounds of junk each year, or slightly over 1.5 pounds per month?

Rudi Steiner, a 1961 Bluffton High School graduate, may well deserve a master’s degree in Bluffton automotive science 1945-1961. During this period he watched who drove what and sometimes, why. Here’s a summary of the Bluffton’s chrome and fin vehicle age from one who observed it first hand. This column is reprinted from "Bluffton, A Good Place to Miss."

By Rudi Steiner

The Icon invites you to consider a book reading list unlike most you've encountered. We invited our Bluffton University intern, Nnenna Onwukeme, to offer a reading list of African writers. Here's her list:

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