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The The Merci Train
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August 12, 2013
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Serving The Eastern Maumee Bay Communities Since 1972
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Green slime arrives in waves By J. Patrick Eaken Press Staff Writer news@presspublications.com
Co-owner Ryan Bowen is dwarfed by images of seven school mascots on the east wall of Ryan & Tony’s Barber Shop in Millbury. Artist Deano Davis took logo images from seven schools, clockwise from noon — Lake, Northwood, Clay, Oak Harbor, Genoa, Cardinal Stritch, and Woodmore, and used his creative talents to expand on them. (Press photo by Ken Grosjean)
Artist paints
School mascots with an attitude By J. Patrick Eaken Press Sports Editor sports@presspublications.com Walking into Ryan and Tony’s Barber Shop on Woodville Road in Millbury, customers catch an eyeful of school mascots on steroids. Each mascot is about 10 to 20 square feet, and Lake’s is the biggest. The collection covers the entire east wall. Co-owner Ryan Bowen, once a Lake basketball star, stands in front of the mural and he is dwarfed by the images. If you are sitting in a barber’s chair, you spend the entire time looking at them. The trash talk begins almost immediately. “I love it. It brings color to, and don’t kill me for saying this, an otherwise drab community, to be honest with you,” said Kyle Borko, a 1985 Genoa High School graduate and customer. Co-owner Tony Meadows, a 1998 Lake graduate, said mean looking mascots was the plan, just like when the Toledo Mud Hens made Muddy appear meaner. “I said, I think we want to make them a little bit tougher. We wanted to give that little edge to them,” Meadows said.
See related story ...page 2 Schools Seek Logo Protection... Artist Deano Davis took logo images from seven schools — Woodmore, Cardinal Stritch Catholic, Genoa, Oak Harbor, Clay, Northwood, and Lake — and used his creative talents to expand on them. “He put his artist’s rendition on each one of them,” said Bowen. “He didn’t want them to be exactly like them, he wanted to do his own little take and they came out pretty neat. We love it. We’ve actually had a lot of people stop in here to look at it just by word of mouth. We couldn’t be happier. He did a fantastic job with it. It’s cool.
“It’s kind of funny. Every time somebody different comes in, they like a different mascot,” Bowen continues. “Everybody has their own thing. When the Genoa people come in, they like their Comet. Obviously, the Lake people like their ‘Lake.’ The Lake Flyers emblem is all over the place — there are pilots, airplanes — that one came out neat. The Lake Flyers’ pilot has the big eyeballs up there. I like Northwood’s, too, because Northwood’s literally is a blue and yellow ‘N’. It’s neat, man.” The airbrushed images took Davis, a CSX employee, about 20 hours. Bowen had to let him in at 5:30 a.m. the morning he finished the project. Davis, a 1996 Clay graduate who grew up in Harbor View, relished the opportunity. “I was fortunate to have an opportunity to give something back to the community,” Davis said. “It was fun that they were able to just let me create the logos. It’s hard for me to find an opportunity to just be creative and not be under so many rules, but it was definitely a project that I enjoyed.” Customer Aaron Endicott, who stops in the barber shop for coffee nearly every
If you’ve noticed that shoreline water along Maumee Bay is turning a shade of green, don’t be alarmed — yet. Sandy Bihn, executive director of the Lake Erie Waterkeeper Association, says algae blooms along the shoreline look bad under certain conditions, but they are not even close to levels reached in 2011. Bihn describes the green lake water near the shoreline as “putrid,” but it could be worse. “It’s not supposed to be as bad as 2011,” Bihn said. “Actually, I just collected it in a jar and took it to my speech in Pennsylvania, and the density of the algae of what we have now compared to what we had in 2011 is hugely different. Right now, it floats to the surface and is clear underneath, and in ’11 it went down 20 to 50 feet. So, it’s not nearly as dense or as abundant as it was in 2011, at least at this point. “It comes and goes,” Bihn continued. “It doesn’t look bad today (Wednesday). What happens when the lake is very calm and it’s warm, it will flow to the top and you’ll see a lot of it. Today, it’s not even two-footers (waves) and you don’t see any algae at all because it mixes in.” Changing agricultural practices and weather conditions are cited in a study as the likely causes of what is considered the largest harmful algae bloom in Lake Erie’s recorded history. While not all algae is harmful, the type seen in the huge blooms in the western part of Lake Erie and other inland Ohio lakes can produce nerve and liver toxins, which are especially dangerous for pets, children, the elderly and those with comprised immune systems. The algae have already limited the use of three other Ohio lakes, as well as some Canadian beaches. The algae is fed by the rising water temperatures and phosphates commonly found in fertilizers. Researchers at the University of Michigan and eight other institutions describe the 2011 algae bloom as a harbinger of things to come rather than an isolated occurrence.
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A successful life is not based on the avoidance of mistakes. Bryan Golden See page 12
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