Iva Walker

It’s back.  The big yellow buses are on the road.  The kids are walking—on or off the sidewalks—to and from school/practice/meetings, detention (It happens)all that stuff.  Watch !   No texting (Sexting is absolutely beyond the pale, in more ways than one), no putting on make-up, no scarfing down...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotarians are gearing up for the start of their fall club activities by fortifying themselves at the steak fry on August 19.  Hot grill, cool beverages, pot-luck  accompaniments, good company….  Way to go, Rotary.  New members welcome! Speaking of which…Kim Kohli and Delores McCumbers will be attending membership events...

Ya shoulda been there! “There”, in this instance was actually two places where it was all happenin’ last week.  Not genuinely related places, really, but there were similarities, fo’ sure. The first one was the business-to-business open house at Facet Salon and Day Spa on Tuesday, August 6.  The parking lot...

Spell Check can’t do everything. I was at the Farmers’ Market at Robinson the other day.  Small but interesting; an assortment of vendors with  good stuff.  Dave Stotler had Lodi apples, good for the first apple pies of the season.   A lady from Randolph was there with a food truck...

Garrettsville-Hiram  Rotary went in for nuts & bolts in their meeting on July 28.  Bolts were as follows : Members will be calling and contacting individuals who signed up at the Rotary booth during SummerFest with invitations to a fall meeting, September  23.   Save-the-date cards will be going out. The club...

Somebody out there is reading this stuff (Besides you, Mom). I got another correction, Heaven knows there are probably plenty more deserved.  Anyway, the first Garfield football game is NOT on the 23rd of August, but on the 30th at Cardinal.  That first glitch is a scrimmage, which, while it...

“Tis the season! For just about everything, I guess.  The other day, a container of blueberries and two squash magically appeared on my front porch sitting on some literature from the Jehovah’s Witnesses or some other well-meaning group and next to the comic strip umbrella from the AB-J.  Tasty stuff! ...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotarians are gearing up for more activities on their very busy calendar. It’s never too early to begin thinking about the fall fund-raiser, the website project, the   quest for new members, the Santa Claus delivery night, Family Week, even the Four-Way Speech Competition next spring.  Possibly new on the...

Garrettsville - The James A. Garfield Marching Pride pulled out all of the stops last Friday to give a preview(Preview—that means that they’re just going to get better) of their fall band show line-up.  A fine audience of parents, grandparents, friends and supporters were treated to an evening of...

My, how Time flies! Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. So, if the line above is an example of  a “garden path sentence” or syntactic ambiguity or  a pun, a double entendre or an antanaclasis—well, it would be, wouldn’t it—possibly by that great linguist, Groucho Marx, these...

“I made that s-o-b” Heckuva line to open with, eh?  Chalk it up to Julie Thompson who made it part of her presentation on the Last Great Train Robbery in the U.S. and the perpetrator, Al “Creepy” Karpis, who spoke those words in reference to J. Edgar Hoover, head of...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotary reflected on a number of things at their most recent meeting in the Hiram College Dining Hall. To wit : Jim Irwin’s account of the Tall Ships event in Cleveland sponsored by the Rotary Club of Cleveland—interesting but HOT. Local flooding…with pictures on cell phones, natch…and recollections of other...

Garrettsville - Well, wasn’t it just!  The heavens opened and at least some of us got a taste of the other end of the spectrum.   If having several feet of water in the basement or watching the backyard doghouse swirling down the street doesn’t qualify as a premature look...

You know, the saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for.”  Ain’t it the truth! The Villager took a brief hiatus on the Fourth, giving staff and media stars (That’s you, Benjamin.) a little time to set off and/or observe firecrackers and recoup after all of the frenetic activity of...

So…the lightning storm took out the computers—desk top, laptop, probably the remote control for the alarm clock, for all I know—and the Villager deadline is looming on Monday.  What  to do?  What to do? The schedule is filling up : The computer guru who is working on the problem will...

If it isn’t one thing, it’s another…how’s that for original thought? I went to my computer, the desktop, which is one of the newer dinosaurs, as compared to the iPads and tablets and such, intending to turn it on and get started on my weekly offering of deathless prose and...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotarians have sent Laura Wilburn, Joseph Miranda and Britney Collins to the annual RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Assembly) at Baldwin-Wallace, sponsored by the local club and others in the district.  The young people were drawn from Garfield HS and Windham HS and should return with many ideas and...

Well, it’s all the talk.  Superman, in the new movie coming out soon, “Man of Steel”, has a new look--no tights!   The new costume still sports the iconic red capital “S” across the--very broad--chest on an all-blue, sort of metallic, more-armored-look unitard.  No belt, exactly, but a waist-defining red...

The triumphal return of Jessica Lyons from her stint as a Rotary Exchange student in Norway was celebrated at the June 3rd meeting of the Garrettsville-Hiram Rotary Club. Jessica and her parents, Doug and Karen Lyons, recounted their experiences on both sides of the Atlantic and expressed appreciation for the...

Just in time for the summer cooking-out season, the Hormel company has now fessed up to producing ten--that’s 10 different kinds of SPAM.  Well, who’d a thunk it?  Yes! You have your regular old Spam ( which the company likes to call “Spam Classic”).  You have Spam Lite, Spam ”with...

How about being a “do-gooder”? helptheparrots@parrothope.org is seeking individuals who desire to help animals in need.  This group would like to put to good use your skills and/or talents to benefit the community and the birds.(“It’s for the birds” is not a bad thing).  This could result in volunteer experience...

It wasn’t pretty. The brain trust here at the Weekly Villager sallied forth to adventures in orthography by participating in the22nd Annual Community Spelling Bee for Literacy, co-sponsored by the Portage County Literacy Coalition Community Partners at the NEOMED Conference Center on Friday, May 24, 20013.  And fourth…maybe fifth… was...

Garrettsville - Well, there weren’t 76 trombones but there were lots of  families and awards and plenty of  recognition for the members of the James A. Garfield Marching Pride at the annual band awards banquet, held on Wednesday, May 8, 2013. ‘Twas a pretty full house too, upwards of one...

The James A. Garfield Historical Society was happy to accept a number of donations for its collections at the May 20, 2013 meeting:  Bob and Jean Farley contributed pictures, maps and merchants’ placards from early days in business (C.W. Payne Insurance) in the village.  Rhonda McCullough Jones  contributed  pictures...

That was a fine old time! Well, if you weren’t trying to get anyplace in a hurry, that is.  The annual Garrettsville community garage/yard/porch sale seems to have attracted quite a crowd for most of the weekend.  Some of the narrower thoroughfares were a challenge for those just trying to...

So, is this how the Opera House was lost? The James A. Garfield Historical Society withdrew its application to the Portage County commissioners for consideration to receive a community development  grant intended to facilitate the rescue and restoration of the former Paul’s Grist Mill/Foote Building in downtown Garrettsville.   It...

Elizabeth DeLuca, recently of the University of Findlay, was on the program of the Garrettsville-Hiram Rotary at their meeting on May 13, 2013.  She is a well-traveled young lady and offered insights on her stays in Japan, Argentina, Peru and Brazil. Her title for this presentation was ”Through the Looking...

`You thought that spring had come, just because you looked at a calendar and got out your flip-flops and sunscreen (I wear sunglasses all year, so that’s really no indication), not to mention making pool plans.  Think again, Hummingbird-watcher. I DID hang out four loads of wash on the line...

Garrettsville - Sincere apologies and grateful thanks go to the folks who showed up for the Machine-0-Mania / Touch-A-Truck event last Saturday at Garfield H.S.   Apologies go to the parents, grandparents and such who came expecting to see LOTS more trucks and big rigs of all sorts that simply...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotarians we’re offered renewed insights on the operations and goals of the Coleman Professional Services--Fostering Recovery, Building Independence, Changing Destinies--being offered to the citizens of Portage, Summit, Stark and Trumbull counties here in northeast Ohio and in Allen, Auglaize and Hardin counties in northwestern Ohio. One of the first...