Iva Walker

Garrettsville - The April 11, 2016 found the Garrettsville-Hiram Rotary meeting at noon in Cal’s II in Garrettsville’s Sky Plaza and conducting the following business : The bowling event held at Sky Lanes on Saturday, April 9 was a great success with some thirty participants-- InterAct students from James A....

Garrettsville - The James A. Garfield Local School District will once again be honoring its own.  Graduates who have excelled in athletics, the arts, sciences, public service, national service will find a place on the Hall of Fame.  Each class year is different,  highlighting the various facets of accomplishment...

So...I’m listening to a radio program called “Marketplace” and discovered an interesting idea from some economic guru—Michael Bloomburg or Warren Buffett or some such multimillionaire.  Whoever this dude was, he said that he frequently followed the MUI—the Men’s Underwear Index(not to be confused with the Modern University of Information...

Garrettsville - Noses to the grindstone, eyes on the snowy skies, the Garrettsville-Hiram Rotary Club got down to business at their meeting on April 4, 2016 at Cal’s II, Sky Plaza, Garrettsville.  Here was their agenda: This year’s Fit & Fun program will be likely having involvement of the Garrettsville...

Garrettsville - For a book and plot line that had about as much substance and gravity as a bubble bath or a flapper    girl’s champagne, it was a delightful evening of entertainment showcasing talent in every direction.  The choreography was outstanding and outstandingly performed—who knew they could tap...

O.K., I can definitely understand the viewpoint of the older brother in the Prodigal Son scenario and I have to wonder if there might be a story to be told about how family life went on after the younger brother returned, all contrite and  grateful for a crust of...

Garrettsville - Don Havener and his hiking of the Appalachian Trail were the focus of the program at the Garrettsville-Hiram Rotary Club on Monday, March 28, 2016.  The retired teacher, coach, hardware merchant, tire guy set out on the hike as a journey of faith and of giving back...

Garrettsville - Road Apple WHAT? The road apple part is no mystery to anyone who has lived in or near Amish country...or anyplace where  one shares the highway with equine modes of transportation (Also an album by the group known as The Tragically Hip but we’re not going there).  Roubaix—you...

Garrettsville - The James A. Garfield High School Quiz Bowl team finished their competition season strong, sort of like the basketball teams and the wrestling team,... “Close, but no cigar.”  Like any good team, regular practice across a variety of topics, is necessary for improvement and success.  Contests with...

I started with a dog, you know. Her name was Samantha, which rapidly became “Sammie”; her mother was a purebred apricot poodle   and her father was a traveling salesman of some sort...whatever he was selling, she bought it.  Anyway, Sammie was a nice dog, a good dog...and not much...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotarians bid a fond farewell to February, 2016 on Leap Day, February29, the likes of which will not be seen again for four years (In a less-contentious election year, let us hope). President Tom Collins urged members to make their opinions known on a pending agreement between the Sierra...

Speaking of winter storms....  This whole naming thing apparently started with the Weather Channel and a Latin class somewhere.  This was apparently so that the on-screen prognosticators could get us all to focus on a particular weather event at a particular time and to nudge us toward acknowledging the...

What Dave Barry always calls “an alert reader” stopped me the other day in the PCDL and asked if I wasn’t going to write  some more stuff drawing on the abovementioned publication and it seemed like a good idea, so here we are.  The Old Farmer speaks : (Freely...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotarians opened their meeting on January 18, 2016 with Happy Dollars celebrating outstanding scholastic achievement, a 15-year anniversary, good business news, safe family, gifts and general, all-around good life—a nice start for any day. Speaker for the day was Ralph Price, pastor of the Streetsboro Church of Christ, who...

Well, here we go again.  ”Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme.” As you, no doubt recognized, the above aphorism attributed to Jean-Baptist Alphonse Karr, means “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”  (You might also be aware that albums by the groups Cinderella, Machine Head and...

Working at Garrettsville’s Precinct A  for thirteen hours on Election Day—with a fairly steady stream of citizens exercising their rights, good for them—was enough to occupy my time; I had no occasion to commit mayhem on the Portage County Board of Elections computer system, though I’m sure there are...

The  October 19, 2015 meeting of the James A. Garfield Historical Society, held at  the Mott Building on Main Street, Garrettsville, covered a wide range of topics including : The warm reception of the organization’s display at the recent Chamber of Commerce Business Showcase and the coming presentation to be...

Well, that was interesting...and informative...and fun too. The Ohio Turnpike had an Open House on Saturday, October 24, celebrating its 60th Anniversary; it officially opened on October 1, 1955, all 241 miles of it.  The construction took 38 months, in sections, employed some 10,000 workers—and 2300 bulldozers—at a cost of...

The October 19, 2015 meeting of the Garrettsville-Hiram Rotary Club was a series of short takes.  Here’s what got tooken : For Friday, Bob Evans restaurants will be joining the Polio Plus campaign of worldwide Rotary International by contributing 15% of receipts collected from contributing diners to the fight to...

Women of the Twentieth Century Club of Garrettsville met on October 15 at the home of Joyce Fashing on Eagle Creek Drive. The roll call response, as befits the season of Halloween, was to tell of a favorite costume or item of apparel.  Resulting tales ranged from dressy occasions to...

Garrettsville - And a fine display it was, of all sorts of things, including—this being an event that takes place before Election Day on November 3—various individuals running for various offices, people on the ballot, people hoping to be written in, supporters of ballot issues for townships, county services...

Everybody is writing memoirs lately.   It’s the literary style du jour in all of the magazines and reviews.  So I’m thinking, hey, my memories are as good as anybody’s, why not hop to it and make the big bucks? One reason may be that my memories are certainly just...

T’was business as usual at the October 4 2015 meeting of the Rotary Club of Garrettsville-Hiram.  Action on and discussion   of the following were on the agenda : Kyle Collins is alive and doing well as a Rotary Exchange Student in Japan.  He’s noticing differences in social interactions as...

The ladies of the Twentieth Century Club of Garrettsville spent their  meeting of October 1, 2015 “horsing around”.  The subject of the evening’s roll call was experiences with horses and the tales sometime rivaled “The Perils of Pauline.” Business was conducted by President Mary Furillo and the group voted...

It’s awards season just about all of the time now.  There are awards in television, for the theatre, for movies, for sports of every stripe and description, for just about every genre of music that one can think of( and some that I don’t really classify as music, but,...

Read Big! It’s not too late to participate in the BIG READ, a program  sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and Arts Midwest being offered by Hiram College’s Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature and the libraries of the Portage County Library District.  There will be authors, speakers,...