Breaking News

Local Columns

McConnelsville fog leads to nation-wide change

A while ago I was driving on US 32 through a very dark and rainy Adams County. If it wasn’t for the lane markings, I am not sure I could have found the road. It was not that different than a drive that a man named John Edward White Sr. took on Ohio 60 past McConnelsville in 1956. The difference between the two drives? White’s drive on a foggy morning sparked an idea that has made billions of drives safer for millions of Americans for nearly 70 years. White was an employee of the Ohio Department of Transportation. On that morning in McConnelsville he was just a dad trying to get his ...

MOV Parent: Challenges of parenthood

As I was driving the other day and thought it was time for me to submit my article for my monthly parent publication two things came into my mind. First, I love children and second I love cooking and wondered how I could combine these two subjects together in an article. Being a mother of three and grandmother of eight I have developed a great love for children and motherhood is one of the greatest things in the world just to create a human being to love and cherish. Cooking is my second love and very similar to molding a child. For example when a person is ready to prepare a dish you ...

MOV Parent: Fact vs. opinion: A critical reading skill

Parents, many of your children believe that what has been published or seen on social media must be the “gospel truth.” Basically, they lack the critical thinking skills to know the differences between fact vs. opinion. With that said, I will now explain what can be considered as factual material and what can be questioned as an opinion. The following are clues that demonstrate the difference between fact and opinion: Factual Clues If a statement concerns facts, it will pass one of the following three tests of truthful information: 1. Can it be observed? Example: Last ...

Pioneers had long journey on way to Muskingum Park

The next time you are walking through Muskingum Park take a good look at the Monument to Westward Expansion and think about how it got there. The trip from near Constitution to the park on May 9, 1938, was only a little easier than the trip made by those that came from New England to settle Marietta in 1788. Before the statue could become the centerpiece of the park, the 20-ton block of native sandstone had to first be brought from a quarry to the park. The giant block had started off as an 80-ton block at the Holmes quarry at Briggs Station. Look for Briggs Hill Road along Ohio 7 and ...

It’s time for an old friend to move on

When I was in junior high school, I would frequently try to take the shortest route home. The shortest route involved cutting across the football field on Glendale Road and then slipping around the fence at the end of the parking lot at The Marietta Times. I never went into the building though until I joined my parents on a tour conducted by publisher Bill McKinney. This was my introduction to newspapering and to the building I would start to go to work at in 1977. For the past several years though the building has been largely unused because the industry has changed so much since it ...

Flatboats helped move America west

Generations of school children in Marietta have learned how in 1788, 48 men floated down the Ohio River aboard the flatboat called the Adventure Galley to start the city of Marietta. These founders of Marietta were neither the first nor by no means the last group of people to use the popular and simple form of transportation to get down the river on their way west. The one-way crafts moved an incredible amount of people, livestock, and goods down the river. The story of flatboats on the Ohio River started long before 1788 and their legacy continues today in the form of the giant steel ...