Columns

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.”

Last week, we left Galileo Galilee poised to begin a house arrest that would extend almost a decade until he died in 1642.

Happy Valentine’s Day, dear readers! This year, Feb. 14 also shares holidays with Ash Wednesday and National Ferris Wheel Day (in honor of George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. – the man who invented the Ferris Wheel).

We know how important farming is in our state: one-in-seven Ohioans depend on agriculture for their jobs.

“Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.”