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Empathy vs Hate

While sitting in a local restaurant, I was gratified to observe someone pushing another person in a wheelchair over unpaved grass to watch a small child’s soccer game. The ability to extend to another person the kind of help we would like to receive ourselves because we can is part of what it means to be human. To have the capacity to “imagine” what it must feel like to be a parent or grandparent and not be able to navigate the distance from the paved parking lot to the sidelines to watch a cherished child play soccer is the very essence of EMPATHY. Contrast that scenario with ...

Regulate new nicotine products

Tobacco use has long been the leading cause of preventable disability and death in the United States. Despite widespread awareness of its dangers, Washington County remains a place where smoking persists, with 23% of adults regularly lighting up. However, an even more troubling trend is emerging: our youth are becoming increasingly addicted to nicotine through new, innovative products designed to appeal to them. The tobacco industry, always on the lookout for ways to expand its reach, is now targeting the younger generation through vaping and e-cigarettes. According to the 2023 ...

Election Day, Nov. 5 is fast approaching. Are you ready?

Have you checked to see if you are registered. The Secretary of State requires Boards of Election to purge voters each year. Go to the Washington County Board of Elections sight, boe.ohio.gov/Washington and click on “Am I registered?” Type in your name and submit. You should see information about yourself, your polling place, sample ballot and more. if you are registered. If not, get registered before Oct. 7 for the Nov. 5 election. To register, click on the box in the lower left corner “register on line”. “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are ...

Silver globes are a reflection on the area’s past

If you plan to visit the Barlow Fair this weekend you would likely take Ohio 550 west of Marietta. Along the way you will pass the interestingly named Silver Globe Road. The road joins the highway near an ordinary concrete building a few yards from the highway. The building may be plain, but it was once home to the Marietta Silver Globe Company, where unique globes were once produced and shipped all over. Gazing balls, as they are called, are a glass decoration that you place in your yard. They were first produced in Venice, Italy in the 13th century. They have through history gone ...

Getting ready for the Barlow Fair has been going on for decades

If you have been reading The Marietta Times for the last two weeks or so, you know the newspaper has been publishing since 1864. Each day since Sept. 6, we have looked at a different decade of publication. Today we look at the 1990s. The project has been a joy to work on. It started a decade ago when I was working on 365 historical front pages to mark 150 years of publication. I thought it would be an interesting feature to look at the same week of the first year of each decade. I tried to capture the Thursday edition of the third week of September because that day would align well ...

The Delta Queen is a visitor missed by many

Last weekend Marietta was treated to a wide-variety of sternwheelers that stopped by town to visit for a while and enjoy the Ohio River Sternwheel Festival. One sternwheeler that has not paid a visit to our levee in a long time is the Delta Queen. She can’t, she hasn’t visited anywhere since 2008. I have always had a special place in my heart for the old boat. A tiny photo of it was the first photo that I had published anywhere when it was featured on the front page of Marietta High School newspaper “The Original” in the mid 1970s. The Delta Queen started life not on ...