October 8, 2020

Southeast Ohio faces rising mental health crises PG 6 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2020

A look at Black Lives Matter art around Ohio PG 8 Athens residents rally to rebuild high school stadium PG 16

Beyond the Bubble

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

‘Beyond the Bubble’ is our way of celebrating Southeast Ohio, more

E MOLLY SCHRAMM EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

very year, The Post chooses special topics and issues to feature as special projects, landing pages and print tabloids. While these special issues have sort of ranged in topics, a staple for The Post over the past couple years has been the “Beyond the Bubble” issue.

Spanning outside of downtown Athens, the “Beyond the Bubble” issue has notoriously been The Post’s way to show off Southeast Ohio and Appalachia. While we’re continuing to do that this year, we’ve also expanded our coverage for 2020’s issue. With many reporters working remotely from their hometowns due to COVID-19, we decided this issue was a great way for Post reporters, photographers and more to not only cover Southeast Ohio, but also entities in their own hometowns.

We at The Post are grateful for the opportunity to write about Athens life, culture, politics and more on a daily basis. Nonetheless, we also realize how important it is to shed light on the rest of Southeast Ohio and Appalachia. Despite being often misinterpreted and stereotyped by the issues the area

faces, Appalachia is filled with charm, an active arts and culture scene, people who care about human rights movements and more.

It’s a diverse, interesting place in America, and we’d be doing a disservice to not at least shine a spotlight on its many facets.

Within the issue, Post reporters dived into Appalachian tourism, rural health care systems, the fascination with Mothman, some local businesses in and around the area and more.

While focusing solely on Southeast Ohio has been the aim for past “Beyond the Bubble” issues, we feel like it’s important to broaden that coverage for this year’s issue.

With COVID-19 still affecting the world, most OU students are stuck with at-home schooling, and therefore, many of The Post’s reporters, photographers, editors and more are stuck working remotely.

Broadening the coverage has allowed our reporters to cover a multitude of businesses, cities and more while tying in Athens and Ohio University. Paralleling that, this issue has also allowed many of our photographers,

most of whom haven’t been able to capture what’s going on in Athens, to pull out their camera and take some photos for The Post.

Other than granting opportunities for our remote staffers, the issue is allowing Post reporters to reflect on the places they grew up in and showcase them. From the interesting music acts in Vienna, West Virginia, to some of the vegan restaurants in Columbus, Ohio, this issue touches on places that could possibly spur a day trip or two.

Southeast Oho is a fascinating place, and most of us students only call it home for four or so years of our lives. It’s the face of small-town America, and it’s our duty as a local paper to not only showcase its troubles and turmoil, but also its successes, stories, people and businesses — to give back to the place that shapes our college years. That’s what our goal is with “Beyond the Bubble.”

Molly Schramm is a senior studying journalism at Ohio University and the editor-in-chief of The Post. Have questions? Email Molly at ms660416@ohio.edu or tweet her @_molly_731.

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY MARY BERGER

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Molly Schramm MANAGING EDITOR Baylee DeMuth DIGITAL MANAGING EDITOR Matthew Geiger EDITORIAL NEWS EDITORS Abby Miller, Nolan Simmons ASST. NEWS EDITOR Ian McKenzie LONG-FORM EDITOR Shelby Campbell SPORTS EDITORS Jack Gleckler, J.L. Kirven CULTURE EDITOR Riley Runnells ASST. CULTURE EDITOR Keri Johnson OPINION EDITOR Noah Wright ASST. OPINION EDITOR Mikayla Rochelle THE BEAT EDITOR Madyson Lewellyn ASST. THE BEAT EDITOR Emma Dollenmayer COPY CHIEF Bre Offenberger SLOT EDITORS Eli Feazell, Anna Garnai, Katey Kruback, Molly Powers ART ART DIRECTOR Mary Berger ASST. ART DIRECTOR Olivia Juenger DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Kelsey Boeing PHOTO EDITOR Nate Swanson DIGITAL WEB DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Brianna Lender SOCIAL MEDIA DIRECTOR Taylor Burnette DIRECTOR OF MULTIMEDIA Ethan Sands BUSINESS STUDENT MEDIA SALES INTERNSHIP MANAGER Andrea Lewis

2 / OCT. 8, 2020

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COVID-19 at Colleges Comparing COVID-19 policies at universities throughout Ohio EMMA SKIDMORE STAFF WRITER Universities throughout Ohio have been forced to adapt to COVID-19 starting last Spring Semester and continuing into this fall.

Ohio University, Miami University and Kent State University have all implemented measures to slow the spread of the virus and keep students safe. All universities have also set up COVID-19 response webpages in order to keep both students and families informed.

“While we cannot comment on an individual case due to federal privacy laws, any Miami University student who violates a quarantine or isolation order or hosts a large gathering that violates the City of Oxford mass gathering ordinance will face disciplinary action under our Code of Student Conduct,” Carole Johnson, intertrim director of news and communications at Miami University, said in an email. “We take these matters most seriously, and students can face suspension or dismissal for these types of violations.”

OU students can also face removal from in-person classes or suspension,

should they violate the rule that gatherings cannot exceed 10 people, according to a previous Post report.

Miami resumed in-person and hybrid classes beginning Sept. 21 with residential students engaging in a phased move-in beginning Sept. 14. Currently, Miami has 412 active student cases and one active employee case in the last 14 days, according to its website.

“The health and safety of our students, faculty, and staff, as well as the Oxford community, is our top priority,” Miami President Gregory Crawford said in a media release.

“This decision is an expression of faith and confidence in our students and is grounded in our belief that we can successfully weather this pandemic together.”

According to the media release, the university began testing asymptomatic and symptomatic students for COVID-19 in late August, including students who moved into the Oxford area and those who may have been in contact with someone who tested positive. Residence halls have also been reduced to 60% capacity as an additional precaution.

“If you are selected for the surveillance testing, you need to do it,” Provost and Exec-

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

utive Vice President for Academic Affairs Jason Osborne told The Miami Student. “If not, you can’t stay on campus.”

Students and faculty are also required to social distance and wear a mask. Dining halls at Miami are providing to-go options and socially distanced seating, and activities with more than 10 people are proceeding virtually or canceled, according to a media release.

“I’m confident that many of our students are taking this seriously, but I also know that many of our students aren’t,” Kimberly Moore, associate vice president for student life and dean of students, told The Miami Student.

At Kent State University, there are currently 3,719 students on campus, including residence assistants, said Eric Mansfield, assistant vice president of content strategy and communications at KSU. Mansfield said the total enrollment for Fall Semester is 25,948.

“We have been regularly communicating with our students so they could adequately prepare for the fall semester,” Mansfield said in an email.

According to an email sent to students, KSU said those who have tested positive for COVID-19 and do not quarantine “will face the strongest disciplinary action.”

KSU President Todd Diacon said in that same email, more exacting measures will follow off-campus gatherings that violate city ordinances, including mandatory quarantine.

Similar to other universities, KSU will continue to hold in-person and remote instruc-

PRIME LOCATION

tion until Nov 20. Classes will then resume Nov. 30 and only be held remotely, according to KSU’s website.

As of the week of Sept. 27, there have been 40 news cases at KSU’s main campus and 165 total cases since July 7.

KSU also has isolation and quarantine buildings on campus with about 300 beds for isolation, according to Kent Wired.

“Isolation is when you’ve tested positive for COVID-19,” Diacon told Kent Wired. “And just a reminder, quarantine is when you have been close to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.”

There are currently 287 students with positive COVID-19 results and two employees with positive results on the Athens campus, according to OU’s COVID-19 Dashboard.

OU is engaging in both symptomatic and asymptomatic testing.

In a public health update released Tuesday, Gillian Ice, special assistant to the president for public health operations, said Athens remains in the orange, or “increased exposure/spread” status.

“As young people, your lives and social groups have been so disrupted,” Ice said in the update. “However, I still encourage you to remember that though your risk of catastrophic consequences from coronavirus is low it doesn’t mean that there will be no consequences if you get sick.”

@E_SKIDMOREGS ES320518@OHIO.EDU

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OU now testing about 150 people daily; OU’s Board of Trustees will discuss the Phase 2 reopening EMMA SKIDMORE STAFF WRITER SILVER SERPENT GENERAL MANAGER DISMISSED OF MANSLAUGHTER CHARGES IN COLLIN WIANT CASE Athens Court of Common Pleas Judge Patrick Lang dismissed James Wanke and Silver Serpent Exotic Gifts of first- and-third degree involuntary manslaughter charges Sept. 29.

Silver Serpent and Wanke still face three felony trafficking in harmful intoxicants charges and a misdemeanor for improperly dispensing or distributing nitrous oxide. An employee, Stephan Lewis, was found guilty of two misdemeanors, including conspiracy to traffic harmful intoxicants and improperly dispensing or distributing nitrous oxide.

Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn said the immediate family of the victim has been consulted on the decision and is in agreement to dismiss the charges.

UNIVERSITY NOW RANDOMLY TESTING ABOUT 150 PEOPLE DAILY FOR COVID-19 FOLLOWING FIRSTDAY ORGANIZATIONAL PROBLEMS OU partnered with OhioHealth and CVS Pharmacy

and began testing both asymptomatic and symptomatic students who believe they had come into contact with COVID-19. After initial organizational issues, roughly 150 students a day are now being tested.

Dr. Gillian Ice, professor and special assistant to the president for president for public health operations, said the university has worked with CVS to correct the problems on day one and has since received positive feedback.

Ice said there have been little-to-no waiting times since the first day of testing.

The university decides who is randomly tested based on factors such as students who were included in Phase 1 and Phase 2 and students who have used campus resources like swiping into campus buildings.

Ice said asymptomatic testing is essential to OU’s COVID-19 management to identify those who may unknowingly infect others. Ice said in this way, those who tested positive can be put in isolation, and contact tracing can be conducted.

Students can also use the COVID-19 hotline if they are concerned they may have contacted COVID-19 and report their symptoms that way to get tested. Forty-four OU employees have been tested through the hotline. The university also has 518 quarantine spaces available for students.

Ice said the number of cases in Athens is increasing due to students and that if it doesn’t slow down, it will be harder to bring more students back to campus in the future.

BOARD OF TRUSTEES TO DISCUSS FALL REOPENING, COMMUNITY STANDARDS CASES DURING OCTOBER MEETINGS OU’s Board of Trustees will discuss the decrease in misconduct cases from the Office of Community Standards and Student Responsibility and new accreditation criteria during its Oct. 8 and 9 meetings.

Overall conduct cases have gone down because of COVID-19, including those involving alcohol and marijuana. Vice President of Student Affairs Jason Pina will address questions about conduct offenses during the meeting.

OU President Duane Nellis will also be discussing on-campus COVID-19 testing, Phase 2 and plans for spring 202 graduates in his presidential report. During the meeting, the board will also vote to approve funds for Phase 3 of the Clippinger renovation.

@E_SKIDMOREGS ES320518@OHIO.EDU

POLICE BLOTTER

Resident gets a call from the FBI; burnt Pop-Tart sets off alarm GRANT RITCHEY FOR THE POST

thought the odor was coming from the basement.

They unlocked the basement door and then realized its odor was coming from sewer gas.

WAGON WHEEL The Athens Police Department responded to a report of a theft of a wagon Tuesday.

MEET AT THE BORDERLINE The Athens Sheriff’s Office responded to a call about someone called her pretending to be from the FBI, DEA and the US Department of the Treasury from a resident of Shade Road. They told her that she was in trouble and found a car at the U.S./ Mexico border with a tag that came back to her.

The resident was informed the vehicle had blood and drugs in it. The Sheriff’s Office advised her that at no time would the DEA, FBI or U.S. Treasury contact her by phone. The Sheriff’s Office told the resident it was a scam. They also advised her that if they called back to tell them she spoke with local law enforcement.

YOUR POP-TART IS ON FIRE The Athens Fire Department responded to an alert at Biddle Hall on Sept. 29. A smoke detector was alerted due to a burnt Pop-Tart in a microwave. The fire department took a fan and ventilated the smoke through the window.

SEWER OVERFLOW The Athens Fire Department responded to a residential call on North Congress Street about a potential gas leak. The potential leak was so strong that the residence couldn’t enter their home.

When firefighters entered, they couldn’t pinpoint the direct source of the odor. AFD called maintenance of that residential building, and they 4 / OCT. 8, 2020

CAR NAPS The Athens Sheriff’s Office responded to a call from the Chauncey Park & Ride to assist Ohio State Highway Patrol about a car being damaged while

the owner was sleeping in it. A person attempted to take off the vehicle’s converter while the owner was asleep. When the owner woke up, the suspect fled the scene.

THROWING ROCKS The Athens Sheriff’s Office responded to a call from a foster mother who witnessed her two juvenile foster kids throwing rocks out their window at a nearby car. The witness told the sheriff’s office that her boss will reimburse the victim for the damages and does not want any criminal charges made. @RITCHEY_GRANT GR619615@OHIO.EDU

Rural health care during COVID-19

Rural health care systems are essential for combating COVID-19 in Southeast Ohio MOLLY WILSON FOR THE POST Health care is not a luxury in some Southeast Ohio counties, as some counties do not have reliable access to health care systems, and many residents lack the resources to access that health care.

But despite these hurdles, many small health care systems in the region have proven successful in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

Social factors play a significant role in access to health care for many people. In Southeast Ohio, the high poverty, unemployment rates and a lack of stable housing are the primary factors that influence the health care services that one would be able to receive, Berkeley Franz, assistant professor of community-based health, said in an email.

The availability of health care in a particular community is also impacted by the ratio of health care providers to a community’s population, public transportation and health care organization’s resources, Kristin Schuller, associate professor of health services administration, said in an email.

The majority of medical facilities located in Southeast Ohio are smaller health care systems and hospitals. However, smaller health care systems do not directly equate poor health care services.

Athens is home to OhioHealth O’Bleness Hospital, and it is one of the only large hospital systems located in Southeast Ohio. In fact, the only comparable hospital in terms of size is Marietta Memorial Hospital, located in Marietta.

Hocking Valley Community Hospital, or HVCH, is located about 30 miles outside of Athens and is one of a few medical centers located in Hocking County. HVCH is a smaller hospital providing only 35 staffed hospital beds, according to the American Hospital Directory.

Despite being a smaller hospital, HVCH offers Hocking locals access to numerous medical services, including emergency, urgent care and in-patient services, allowing local residents the ability to stay close to home, Beth Kulding, chief nursing officer at HVCH, said in an email.

While comparably smaller than the OhioHealth health care systems in Athens, smaller systems have the ability to bring in specialists from other facilities when the community is not able to support a full-time specialist in that field, Cory Cronin, assistant professor in the department of social and public health, said in an email.

Many people question the ability of smaller hospitals to function during a public health crisis, such as COVID-19.

However, smaller hospitals have many advantages in treating a virus like coronavirus.

“Hospitals of this size often serve as points of access, which is important in terms of COVID,” Cronin said in an email. “These smaller facilities play important roles in helping rural residents with diagnoses and preliminary services.”

HVCH was able to create a comprehensive plan of attack for the coronavirus in a timely and efficient manner due to its size, Kulding said.

These plans proved to be effective, as HVCH has success-

fully treated COVID-19 positive patients, Kulding said.

However, if there were to be a surge in cases in a rural county, such as Hocking County, the lack of resources available to these hospitals, compared to hospitals in more urban areas of Ohio, may result in the transfer of patients to urban cities where there is a higher number of hospital beds, Franz said.

In addition, the care that a particular hospital needs to provide in terms of COVID-19 treatment is affected more significantly by the population characteristics of that community.

“Case prevalence and demand for hospital care are not necessarily the same thing. It depends heavily on the population,” Cronin said.

Athens represents a unique population, as there is a large college student presence.

“The majority of the COVID-19 cases in Athens County were among adults 19-29 years old, most of whom did not need hospitalization,” Schuller said in an email.

The public advisory system indicators might be the only

“

The majority of medical facilities located in Southeast Ohio are smaller health care systems and hospitals.

However, smaller health care systems do not directly equate to poor health care services,”

- Cory Cronin, assistant professor in the department of social and public health comprehensive way to understand how these hospitals are truly dealing with this health crisis.

Indicator 7, ICU bed occupancy, is flagged if the percentage of occupied ICU beds increases to a level above 80%, and more than 20% of the occupied beds are utilized for COVID-19 patients, according to the Ohio coronavirus website.

“In counties with fewer hospital beds per capita, it would be much easier to trigger this indicator, even with a relatively small number of hospitalizations,” Franz said in an email.

However, there are no counties in Ohio that are currently meeting this indicator.

@MOLLYWMARIE MW542219@OHIO.EDU

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ILLUSTRATION BY OLIVIA JUENGER

Suicide in Southeast Ohio Mental health report: Southeastern Ohio counties report highest number of suicides in past two decades

RYAN MAXIN FOR THE POST Suicide is an issue that is not specific to any one state, nation or continent, but a report published in part by Ohio University explains that for Southeastern Ohio counties like Meigs, Gallia and Ross, the situation is especially dire.

“Suicide in Ohio: Facts, Figures, and the Future” features input from the Mental Health & Addiction Advocacy Coalition, the Ohio Alliance for Innovation in Population Health, the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation and the College of Health Sciences and Professions at OU. It highlights suicide rates in every Ohio county and provides figures to visualize the data.

In a figure showing the average annual suicide rates in Ohio by county, many counties in Southeast Ohio rank near the top.

Experts agree there are many contributing factors for this trend. Orman Hall, an executive in residence at OU and one of the researchers on this report, offered a few possibilities.

6 / OCT. 8, 2020

“If you look at Southeastern Ohio as a region, compared to other regions of the state, the southern Appalachian region is the poorest area of Ohio, and poverty and economic distress and despair are a factor,” Hall said. “That is associated with depression, long-term depression and suicide.”

Economic hardships have long been a cause of mental turmoil, and in the Appalachian region of Ohio, where financial struggles are prevalent, many people end up feeling like they have no way out.

Another trend that Hall examined was the widespread access to firearms in the aforementioned counties. The rural atmosphere of Southeast Ohio is perfect for hunting, but the firearms used to participate in activities like hunting are also a large factor in suicide deaths.

“People value their firearms, and we know that is particularly true among males,” Hall said.

People’s ability to get ahold of firearms is not the sole reason for increased rates of suicide. Hall said a desperate situation paired with access to a gun are ingredients for a perfect storm.

“When somebody is depressed and they are in an

impulsive kind of situation, that access to firearms is a contributing factor to assist in completion,” Hall said.

Depression is a factor that leads to suicide, but it does not work alone.

Rachel Wheatley, program director for Jackson Outpatient at Health Recovery Services, points to opioid and methamphetamine use as catalysts for depression and other mental health issues. “(In addition to suicides), we also see drug usage on the rise, which goes hand in hand with mental health when someone’s depressed,” Wheatley said.

Although suicide rates are on the rise in Southeastern Ohio, many measures are being taken to combat future suicides.

Of the counties that have been hit hardest by suicide deaths, most of them, including Meigs, Gallia, Jackson, Ross and Hocking, have joint coalitions to offset the effects of depression.

Integrated Services for Behavioral Health in Ross County is one of the many services available to residents of Appalachia who are struggling with their mental health.

Kim Dement, managing director of Community Behavioral Health at Integrated Services, spoke about the strides being taken to ensure the trends of substance abuse and heightened suicide rates are stopped.

“Our company is a harm reductionist,” Dement said.

“We’re not going to kick someone out of treatment while they’re still using. We’re going to work with them.”

The additional hurdle of COVID-19 has changed how these companies operate.

“A lot of rules (have been) relaxed around being able to offer services through telephone and through video and even text messaging,” Dement said. “We are making sure that our clients have everything they need during COVID.” Despite the rise in suicides over the span of the last 20 years, the identification of factors such as substance abuse, access to firearms and depression through the report has enabled mental health professionals in Appalachia to target the causes. Progress is still being made, even in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” Hall said. “It’s a complex problem.”

If you or anyone you know has thought about or attempted suicide, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.

“

@RYANMAXIN RM554219@OHIO.EDU

If you look at southeastern Ohio as a region, compared to other regions of the state, the southern Appalachian region is the poorest area of Ohio, and poverty and economic distress and despair are a factor. That is associated with depression, long-term depression and suicide,” -Orman Hall, Ohio University College of Health Sciences and Professions executive in residence

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The Art of

Activism

Ohio Black Lives Matter artists use murals, other work to propel the movement RILEY RUNNELLS CULTURE EDITOR In the wake of George Floyd’s death, people have been in a state of unrest.

On May 25, Floyd was murdered by police officers. What followed was a flare of support for the Black Lives Matter movement, which began back in July 2013 after Trayvon Martin’s killer was acquitted, and has continued for years, demanding justice for Black lives by condemning police brutality.

There have been protests, looting, news reports and more media surrounding the movement than one can count.

Activists who support the movement, no matter the race, are finding avenues to make a statement.

One way activists have been showing their support is through artwork. In cities like Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, activists are furthering the Black Lives Matter movement alongside protests.

Championing Collaboration (Cleveland) In Cleveland, artists designed a 200foot Black Lives Matter mural on East 93rd Street and Bessemer Avenue on the east side.

Each individual letter had messages of hope and unity as well as calls to justice and tributes to the lives lost from police brutality.

The mural is the only Black Lives Matter street mural in the greater Cleveland area and was put together by two nonprofit organizations: Random Acts of Kindness Everywhere and Graffiti Heart Gallery.

Stamy Paul, president and founder of Graffiti Heart, reached out to city officials to organize a similar street mural to the one in Washington, D.C. There were several roadblocks, so they looked into creating a rooftop mural or even a parking lot mural.

The city finally reached out and selected a 8 / OCT. 8, 2020

street it would sponsor.

Random Acts of Kindness Everywhere founder Ricky Smith met with Paul in the middle of June to collaborate and create the basic plan of the mural, and just three days later, the police had blocked off the street for them to begin working. Half of the painting materials were donated from

Sherwin Williams, which also delivered the paint to the site. Volunteers, artists and other groups came together to individually illustrate each of the letters based on their different visions.

Paul believes East 93rd Street near Bessemer Avenue is a great location for the mural because of the history of tragic occurrences in the area with missing and murdered women.

“It’s an area that had been somewhat forgotten, and I think having the mural there not only brought attention to that street and that neighborhood, but it’s also a surprise for the community that lives and works there,” Paul said. “Unlike many of the Black Lives Matter street murals that have happened in the metro areas downtown, there were some that criticized the location. But all in all, I think it was meant to be there.”

The artists unveiled the mural June 20, and the city closed the area to traffic until July 6 so people could visit the mural.

Since the mural’s unveiling, and even through its vandalization shortly after, Paul has seen a lot of positive engagement. She also watched the experience of creating the mural spark joy and form connections among the collaborating artists. A lot of them didn’t just stop at the street mural.

Paul facilitated an Underground Railroad mural in Bedford with some of the artists from the street mural project.

“This mural in particular allowed for 100 different hands and minds to come up with multiple messages,” Paul said. “With the 16 letters, you had 16 different interpretations and outlets for the artists to illustrate their message and their interpretation of Black Lives Matter.”

Beautifying Boards (Columbus) In Columbus, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, or GCAC, worked with the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts, or CAPA, to demonstrate how art can heal by launching the #ArtUnitesCbus campaign.

Artists in the Columbus area are painting boarded-up storefronts on Long Street and even the Ohio Theatre.

Jen Rubles, a Columbus artist and owner of Pattycake Bakery, was contacted by the Ohio Theatre to create a mural for the building. The windows had been smashed in and boarded up, so the Ohio Theatre staff was looking for something to cover the space.

Rubles and some of her friends secured the opportunity to create a mural at the Ohio Theatre, across from the Ohio State-

A Black Lives Matter mural near the Ohio Theatre in Columbus, Ohio. (COLIN MAYR | FOR THE POST)

house. Keeping with the theater theme, they chose to portray a quote from the musical Les Miserables because it seemed appropriate, being a play about oppression and people fighting to use their voice.

“We were like, ‘Tell us how to help; let us be allies,’ looking for any opportunity,” Rubles said.

Christopher Moss has been working with GCAC for about seven years and was eager to help out with the project.

“I really like celebrating Black culture and BLM, so for me, I find it to be very therapeutic,” Moss said. “I try to get that across to other people who also suffer from the same kind of oppression, racism, those things.”

His mural had a yellow background with blue lettering that read “Empathy,” and on top of the word was a symbol of a Black Power fist holding up a peace sign.

The symbol was created by Hakim Callwood, another artist on the project. Callwood also did several other murals during this time, with the list going on and on.

Namely, Callwood created murals for places like Paradise Garage on High Street as well as Kaufman Development. He also did a mural for The Crew, Columbus’ professional soccer club.

“It was a very emotional time, and my art is typically more subtle about things like that,” Callwood said. “But when this came up, it felt like a good time for me to take a chance. I really did a lot of soul searching for each of my murals on how I can be honest to myself and how I can say the message that the business wants to say … and something that the audience will like. So I was torn in multiple directions.”

Most of the murals, however, are pulled now that the businesses have begun to open back up. All of the paintings from GCAC are residing at 400 W. Rich St., a place that showcases local Columbus work.

Though the GCAC and the Ohio Theatre were responsible for the outcome of several murals, more have made their way through the Columbus area. Some represent the concept of equality while others pay tribute to lives lost.

We Will Not Be Silenced (Cincinnati) In Cincinnati, 17 project managers facilitated a group of 70 artists in designing and painting a Black Lives Matter mural downtown.

The painting adorns a full block on Plum Street, directly in front of City Hall. The word “Black” is painted with an overarching red theme, while “Lives” has mostly black paint, and “Matter” has a nature-esque green.

Unlike other art forms of the phrase, however, each letter tells its own story –– especially since each letter was created by different artists.

One artist involved in the mural’s creation is Michael Coppage.

Coppage doesn’t have a specific medi-

um. The Cincinnati resident primarily uses painting, but he also dabbles in photography, embroidery, sculpture and more.

“I use them all to create work that stimulates discussions about the Black experience, specifically as an African American male,” Coppage said. “Everything is a facet of a much larger conversation, dealing with anything from procreation of African American culture to the demonization of African American men in news and media.

I talk about institutional racism, microaggressions and each piece deals with a different aspect of that experience.”

Coppage completed the “L” in the word “Black.” It’s a red, black and white simply graphic depicting a black fist rising into the air out of a pool of blood.

The blood is meant to symbolize the Black lives who have been lost over the years, and the fist is meant to symbolize the resistance and resilience of Black people navigating through institutional barriers and being successful, Coppage said.

“There’s a pluralistic happening that’s going on, and the depiction of that particular image that I think for me was really moving,” Coppage said.

After days of planning the mural and executing the artwork, the artists were able to unveil the mural.

This isn’t Coppage’s first go-around with activism for the Black community. He has been working to acknowledge and address topics like equity, inclusion, racism and white supremacy in his life and through his art for many years.

Which is why he wasn’t surprised when the mural was vandalized.

“There’s so many people who seem to be threatened by the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter,’” Coppage said. “The implication is, ‘If all lives matter, then Black lives matter, too.’ But there’s some people who are threatened by it or don’t agree with it, who see Black people as less deserving. So this came from more of a place of ignorance, just a lack of understanding.”

Coppage knows the mural gave much more to the people of Cincinnati and the movement as a whole than it took away.

He feels the vandalism almost reignited the hype around the mural and created another opportunity for the artists to talk to the media and get the word out there.

“That guy inadvertently helped us in his attempt to try to silence us,” Coppage said.

“So he was a collaborator, whether he recognized it or not.”

Artists Are Activists Although they know art always has the ability to be vandalized, Coppage, Paul, Rubles, Callwood and Moss all feel it’s such an important avenue to promote change and activism efforts.

“Art is less intimidating in person than I am,” Coppage said. “People are more likely to spend time and listen and remain curi-

ous. For me, it serves as a middleman, a safe place to start what are sometimes difficult conversations. But I think art in general appeals to different people for different reasons. I think painting, particularly, and the relationship people have with paintings is very intimate, so it psychologically creates a space that wouldn’t exist if I was using some other media.”

All five of the artists feel art has always been the leading force of any movement, and it can make statements that just saying words or reading news stories can’t always accurately portray. More than anything, however, artwork gives them a platform to participate in this powerful movement.

“It’s a different role than protesting and

actively being in a march, but for me, it’s like being a cheerleader or like a stagehand,” Rubles said. “You are putting support out there for the people doing even harder work, and any way that you can support that work, whether it’s through art or financially or anything, that support trickles down and up, and everything supports each other.”

@RILEYR44 RR855317@OHIO.EDU

Black Lives Matter mural on the street in Cleveland, provided via Stamy Paul.

The Peaslee Community Center in Cincinnati is the home of multiple arts and community projects, including this mural. Monday, Oct. 5, 2020. (JESSE JARROLD-GRAPES | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)

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COVID-19 draws more visitors to outdoor attractions Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, parks and recreation businesses see more visitors this year JILLIAN CRAIG SENIOR WRITER During a typical year, Hocking Hills State Park is teeming with life, as visitors explore the various trails, camp in the park and visit landmarks such as Old Man’s Cave. This year, however, exploring Hocking Hills came to a screeching halt in March when COVID-19 closures began.

Hocking Hills decided to close because of the difficulty of social distancing on narrow and rugged trails, said Heidi Hetzel-Evans, communications manager for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Hocking Hills reopened in phases, as staff reworked certain areas and redesigned trails, Hetzel-Evans said. This included turning some two-way trails into one-way paths to lower the chances of people seeing each other.

Despite the closure of Hocking Hills, people looking to explore the outdoors found other places among the 74 other state parks in Ohio to enjoy.

Since people sometimes can’t get into the park of their choice, they have been going to other parks, which has led to an increase of campers at all of the parks, Hetzel-Evens said.

Lake Hope State Park, which lies outside of Hocking Hills and amid Zalinski National Forest, has seen a significant increase in visitors, cabin use and use of recreational services.

The park was “packed to the gills every weekend” before Hocking Hills opened back up, Lori Grupenhof, assistant manager at Lake Hope State Park, said.

During a typical year, Grupenhof doesn’t expect Lake Hope to be crowded, except for holidays. This year, however, she’s amazed at how many people have flocked to Lake Hope for their own getaway.

“And that’s just not the norm: it’s the norm possibly on a holiday but not the norm on every weekend in the summer,” Grupenhof said. “I mean, I’ve never seen it so crowded.”

Even after Hocking Hills reopened, the park remained busy every weekend.

In 2020, 462,512 trips were booked between Jan. 1 and Sept. 1 for stays at campgrounds, cabins, yurts and rent-atent sites between all state parks. This is an 11% decrease from last year.

During the same time period in 2019, there were a total of 516,280 nights for stays between campgrounds, cabins, yurts and rent-a-tent sites between all state parks.

Stays during the week have been slowing down since school is back in session, but many of the remaining weekends are full or close to capacity, Hetzel-Evens said in an email. Nov. 1 marks the beginning of the off season.

Although state parks are popular tourist spots in Southeast Ohio, there are other tourist-oriented businesses that are thriving during the pandemic. Uncle Buck’s Riding Stable and Dance Barn, located at 73930 Buck Lane in New Marshfield, has been incredibly successful since opening in May. “Actually, once they let us open back up, it’s been bet10 / OCT. 8, 2020

Stacey Scott assists his son, Micah, with carrying his brand-new kayak into the banks of Lake Hope in McArthur, Ohio, on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2020. “We’ve been out here for a couple weeks,” Stacey Scott said, “When I was stationed out west, the one thing I missed the most was the change in color here around this time.” (NATE SWANSON | PHOTO EDITOR)

ter than we’ve ever, ever had,” said David McPherson, also known as Uncle Buck, the owner of Uncle Buck’s Riding Stable and Dance Barn.

The trail rides, a service in which guests can take a guided horse ride on a trail, have been the most popular service offered at Uncle Buck’s.

There are other segments of Uncle Buck’s that have not been as successful, but it is not advertising those services because that would involve crowding people in an area.

Uncle Buck gives some credit to COVID-19 for bringing in more business but also believes that nearby trails, and trails currently being developed, have helped bring in business.

“I think COVID-19 has something to do with it because, again, I think people feel like this is an activity they can do, and it’s not risky, but there’s other things going on out here that I think are having an effect also,” Uncle Buck said.

Despite the success that Uncle Buck’s, Lake Hope and Hocking Hills have experienced this summer, Athens County has not been able to experience that success in the tourism industry.

Many annual events, programs and conferences were canceled, said Boone Troyer, interim executive director of the Athens County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Expectations for tourism for the rest of the fall season and winter season are optimistic for Athens County.

Uncle Buck believes that business will continue to thrive for the rest of the fall.

Even since school is back in session, he estimates it is doing twice as much business and bookings on Saturday and Sunday are full.

As for Lake Hope State Park, business is expected to stay strong through the fall and possibly the winter.

“And while we might still be full on the weekends in our cabins, weekdays really slowed down, and that has not been the case for September,” Grupenhof said. “I mean, we’re not full by any means, but we’re busy — much busier than we’ve done in years past.”

@JILLIANCRAIG18 JC986517@OHIO.EDU

Distanced Drive-ins Drive-in theaters provide entertainment during pandemic COLLEEN MCLAFFERTY FOR THE POST Drive-in movie theaters have managed to change and adapt to COVID-19.

They’ve made structural and organizational changes while bringing in big sales and customer turnouts this season. “(Business has) been steady,” Walt Effiger, owner of Skyview Drive-In in Lancaster, said. “We are operating at 50% capacity. It’s been steady compared to last year when we were running five nights a week. The attendance was spread out through the week more than just on the weekends, so the attendance is about steady.”

Starlite Drive-In, located in Amelia, has also seen an increase in weeknight traffic. Anthony Smith, manager of Starlite, said that pre-pandemic, they had an average of 50 to 70 cars visiting per night. Now, that number has been driven up to 100 or 150.

“We’ve actually seen quite a bit of business,” Smith said. “Starlite’s always been busy since I’ve been there, but this year’s been extra busy. In May of this year, we actually had the highest grossing sales of any theater in America.”

While Ohio drive-ins seem to be doing well now, at the beginning of the pandemic, there was some uncertainty as to whether or not they’d be able to operate. Initially closed at the start of

the pandemic, after Gov. Mike DeWine gave the OK in May, they were allowed to open — with sufficient safety protocols.

“We have online food ordering if customers don’t want to come in,” Effiger said. “They place an order online and come to one given area and pick it up. We have gone to online ticket sales to limit the transaction ... They just drive up when they purchased their tickets online.”

Smith also said Starlite had transitioned to online tickets and ordering as well as closing down their popular playground.

Both drive-ins have enforced masks for patrons and employees.

However strict the regulations for COVID-19, it has not stopped drive-ins from expanding into new territory.

Starlite Drive-In has held virtual concerts for the likes of Garth Brooks, Metallica and Blake Shelton. The Shelton concert and Metallica concert pulled in 300 and 200 cars, respectively.

Smith said one of the biggest nights of his life was the virtual Cast and Crown concert. It drew such a crowd that Starlite ordered four more port-apotties just for that night.

People seem to enjoy the new events.

“It was definitely a very different but cool experience,” Ellen Hesketh, a junior studying dance, said in a message after attending the Quinn XCII concert at Westland Mall. “Each car had their own parking spot that was safely distanced from other people and you could stay outside your car as long as you had a mask on and stayed within your space!”

Hesketh said people followed the rules, and there was plenty of security to enforce the safety. “(The distanced concert) was definitely weird at first...and made me miss going to regular concerts, but it was actually really relaxed and felt like we were all at our own private concert,” Hesketh said in a message.

Some changes, like the online ordering and concerts, are here to stay for Starlite Drive-In. Either way, both drive-in staffs feel COVID-19 has brought many benefits to the business.

“One of our sayings is ‘COVID has actually been a blessing for drive-ins,’” Smith said. “It actually has brought drive-in back to life.”

The Starlite Drive-in screens Hocus Pocus and the live-action “The Addams Family” on Sunday, Oct. 4, 2020. The drive-in in Amelia celebrated its 73rd anniversary this year.

(JESSE JARROLD-GRAPES | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)

PRACTICE SAFE SIX STA Y I NFO R ME D WA S H YO U R H A ND S A VO I D C LO S E C O N TA CT WE A R A M A S K C L E A N A ND D I S I NF E CT M O N I TO R YO U R H E A LT H

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Reclaiming His Roots

“I’ve always kind of been that way; I was always trying to come across as very professional,” Shaw said. “As I’ve gotten more and more success, I’ve started to embrace it more. I’m tired of pretending to be someone I’m not. I have 40 chickens, and that’s OK.” Shaw recognizes being himself is still something not everyone can afford.

“I still have to turn it off.

Sometimes, I can’t turn my accent on all the time,” Shaw said. “I have a lot more liberty and privilege now that I can look at what I’ve done.”

Shaw has covered spots all across the region for “Our Town” –– everywhere from Athens to Gallipolis. When he started producing “Our Town,” his goal was to show how unique and diverse Appalachia is.

He finds each town’s individual history and stories inspiring. “(Our Town) is about having pride in who you are, where you came from,” he said. “Even with the world on fire, people who came before us in Southeast Ohio and survived all the challenges they faced (can) inspire us to go on.”

Jack Wright, a colleague of Shaw’s, knew Shaw’s family “before (Shaw) was even thought of.” Wright worked in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and helped produce music for media center Appalshop.

Wright recorded music by Shaw’s grandparents and parents.

Wright later taught film at OU for over 20 years. Like Shaw, Wright made documentaries for television, including one on the Carter Family. Both of them see a connection between music, film and identity.

“My whole career, in a way, is based in a way Appalachian things in culture,” Wright said.

For student-filmmaker Collin Spens, representation in film is incredibly important.

Spens, a sophomore studying film, said he realized a few years ago that media is very important to all groups of people.

“I started to realize how important it is –– seeing other people of other backgrounds, ethnicities, skin colors,” Spens said. “Repre-

Documentary filmmaker celebrates Southeast Ohio towns KERI JOHNSON ASST. CULTURE EDITOR Evan Shaw is tired of pretending to be someone he’s not.

When he was getting into the entertainment industry, he wasn’t proud of who he was, saying he “did it to survive.”

Now, he wins Emmy Awards by celebrating the thing he concealed: being Appalachian.

Shaw has deep roots in the region, starting from down in the hollers of North Carolina to, now, the rolling hills of Meigs County.

Appalachia is vast, stretching from New York to Alabama.

It consists of 13 states, 420 counties and approximately 25 million people. The region is known for enduring stereotypes and misportrayals in aspects like its music, natural beauty and resources.

Despite historic negative media attention, Shaw grew up celebrating his identity. His parents were professional folk musicians who played around the region.

“I learned so much from them,” Shaw said. “They impacted me a lot. It wasn’t until I was older that I started to recognize how much impact that had on me.”

Shaw studied television production at Ohio University.

Later, he took a job at WOUB making documentary films about local theaters. That project turned into “Our Town,” a documentary series that showcases the history of towns in Southeast Ohio.

Shaw recalled that early on in his career, when he earned an NFL internship in New Jersey, he knew he wasn’t like his peers. He drove his dad’s car, had an accent and wasn’t very wealthy. He was always very cognizant of his differences. He didn’t outwardly express his cultural pride, he said.

WANT MORE? NEWS CULTURE SPORTS OPINION PODCASTS 12 / OCT. 8, 2020

sentation is a very, very important thing. (Films) are way better now that we have more diversity and even more interesting stories as a result.”

As much as he works professionally within the realm of cultural storytelling, Shaw doesn’t know what it means to be Appalachian. For him, that’s the problem. He feels Appalachia can mean pride and hard work, things of that nature.

“But I have a hard time putting a finger on (it),” Shaw said.

“If I can’t tell you what it meant to be an Appalachian, what’s happened to us?”

Shaw thinks part of the reason he doesn’t have an answer is simply because Appalachia is so broadly defined. Shaw thinks one of the only things all of Appalachia has in common is a “hyper-local” culture. For him, it’s the little things –– local subcultures –– that make Appalachia.

“We are so vastly different –– so many different cultures and groups of people, and we’re all supposed to be one group?” Shaw said. “We’re not. And when you probably start looking at that, (you see) we are way more complicated and more diverse than just Appalachia.”

@_KERIJOHNSON KJ153517@OHIO.EDU

Ten-time Emmy winning filmmaker Evan Shaw poses for a portrait in his backyard in Athens, Ohio, with his signature camouflage hat and one of his Emmys. (KELSEY BOEING | DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY)

SCAN HERE

The Intrigue of Mothman West Virginia residents reflect on Mothman’s popularity

ERIN GARDNER FOR THE POST Jeff Wamsley doesn’t necessarily believe in Mothman, but he believes the witnesses’ stories.

Wamsley is the owner and creator of the World’s Only Mothman Museum, 400 Main St., Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

“I’ve interviewed a lot of those original witnesses, and I don’t really have any doubt in my mind that they saw something,” Wamsley said. “Now, what it exactly was is really hard to prove, but most of those people weren’t the type that would just be making something up to get attention. In fact, a lot of those people don’t want the attention. A lot of the original witnesses still won’t talk about it, even to me, and they just want to be left alone. So I would think by now in 50 years’ time, somebody would have come forward … but nobody’s ever done that.”

Mothman is a pop culture reference and West Virginian folklore phenomenon. In November 1966, two couples, Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette, were driving around the TNT Area, which was an old ammunition depot from World War II. The couples happened to be Wamsley’s neighbors, which is how he got the materials and information for the museum.

The couples encountered a “6- to 7-foot-tall being in the road,” Wamsley said. The being was said to be greyish in color, have 10-foot-wide wings and two red eyes. When the couple got closer to it, it ran off and then later flew over their car.

They reported the encounter to the police, which set off a year-and-a-half of reports, Wamsley said.

Some people thought it was a large bird, while others thought it could be related to UFO activity.

After the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge, which killed 46 people, the Mothman legend gained popularity and was frequently connected to the bridge’s collapse.

“In 50 years, (Mothman) turned into a pop phenomenon,” Wamsley said. “I mean, it’s in video games and movies and documentaries and all kinds of crazy stuff. Obviously, the museum does really well because of the people coming from all over the world.”

Even with the COVID-19 pandemic, Wamsley has found

business to be holding up well.

“We were closed for about six weeks in March and April, and we didn’t really know what to expect, but we’ve seen an (upward) trend,” Wamsley said. “I think people are trying to get away for a day trip … We’ve actually not seen a decrease at all. Website sales have picked up quite a bit, too. And even though we didn’t have the festival in September, we thought we would see a big hit with that, but we haven’t.”

The Mothman Festival is an annual event that commemorates the 1966 Point Pleasant Mothman sighting. The festival attracts visitors from all over the world.

Holly Price, a high school student from Hurricane, West Virginia, is the 2019 and 2020 Miss Mothman Festival Princess. Because of COVID-19, the festival is repeating titleholders for the first time.

“I had never done a pageant before the Mothman Festival pageant,” Price said. “I was just really into the Mothman. I love any kind of extraterrestrial, paranormal stuff like that, and I knew it would be a lot of fun to do the pageant and to be able to go to the festival and be on the other side of it for the first time. So I just took a chance and decided to do it, and I had a really great time.”

The main event the pageant presents is the festival. Titleholders emcee events, judge costume contests and talk to vendors. The pageant also does different fundraising and community service projects, which are a big part of the festival.

“This past year, we were able to collect donations for an animal shelter,” Price said. “I personally collected some donations for a food bank near Clendenin (West Virginia). We do different things throughout the year that … really shows what the festival is all about. The people that it brings out (are) people who genuinely care about the community.”

Another festival-goer is Liz Pavlovic, who has an Etsy shop called LizPavlovicDesign where she designs and sells pins, stickers and prints. Her most notable stickers are Mothman-themed.

Pavlovic went to the festival a few years ago for the first time and enjoyed seeing the different representations of Mothman and people’s various takes on the creature.

“I wanted to kind of do my own version,” Pavlovic said.

Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

(KELSEY BOEING | DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY)

Her Mothman sticker that says ‘live, laugh, lurk’ is popular, and people enjoy the cartoony take. Her shop opened in 2017, and the stickers sell for $3.50.

Mothman has certainly taken on a life of its own. Wamsley attributes it to the mystery surrounding the creature. “ … The book was never closed,” Wamsley said. “Nobody ever could figure out what it was. Nobody ever came forth with a solid explanation or proof, so people are still looking for it. They’re still trying to figure out what it was … like Loch Ness and Bigfoot. It’s kind of seeped into the pop fabric, and people seem to like that.”

The World’s Only Mothman Museum is open daily, Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Sunday, 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Admission for adults is $4.50, and children 10 and under are $1.50. Masks are required for ages 9 and up, and social distancing guidelines are put in place.

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People and Their Trees People connect with their trees amid COVID-19 pandemic JOE TIMMERMAN FOR THE POST “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe,” John Muir, a transcendentalist, wrote of nature’s connectedness in his 1911 book, My First Summer in the Sierra.

In 1997, Nature published ecologist Suzanne Simard’s Ph.D. theses, describing newfound proof of how plants within communities can be interconnected through an underground system, called a mycorrhizal network, to interact with each other.

“All trees all over the world, including paper birch and Douglas fir, form a symbiotic association with below-ground fungi … They compete with each other, but our work shows that they also cooperate with each other by sending nutrients and carbon back and forth through mycorrhizal networks,” Simard said in an interview with Yale Environment 360.

In this sense, trees communicate with one another on a deeper level than what is seen in the overstory and the understory of a forest.

From mothers and fathers sharing memories of trees they have grown to love with their kids to a lifelong woodworker who discovered a new relationship with wood as time went by, people are connecting with nature in new and old ways, as COVID-19 has brought a global feeling of social disconnection. People and their trees alike have a story to be told.

1. Pat, Norah Jane and Becky Hill of Loveland, Ohio, with their oak trees. Pat Hill grew up in the house next door and used to farm the land across the street.

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“I’ve always wanted to name this property ‘Twin Oaks,’ one for her and one for me,” Hill said. “As a kid, I always liked a good swing, so I had that swing put up by a tree company.

The cable goes from one oak to the other. I’ve always thought that the swing hung from the two parents, and it was a symbol of the family that we created. Our boys all thrived and spent a lot of time on that swing. I bought excellent chains and a high-quality steel cable to create that swing because I want it to last for a long, long time. I think the trees are about 60 years old.”

2. Phil Ping and his dog, Bandit, of Loveland, Ohio, with his logs and boards of maple, oak, walnut and pine. Ping has been a full-time woodworker for 35 years and has lived in his home for the same amount of time. The wood in the foreground are boards and slabs he cut from the logs that now have to air dry for one year per one-inch thickness before Ping will make them into tables, benches, shelves and more.

“The wood in the piles here are just waiting for their project,” Ping said. “Most of the wood I use in my built-in projects is from Paxton Lumber in Cincinnati. I use a lot of poplar, oak and maple. I use a sawmill to custom-cut local wood from dead trees that people bring by the shop.

It’s been a great business to be in. Wood is a wonderful thing. I have a degree in agriculture, but I started in botany, so I’ve always loved plants and trees and have a real appreciation for trees and different species. When I first got my sawmill, it really changed my whole attitude for trees,

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so now not only do I love the outside, but I started to take them apart and learn how to use them in my craft. It’s been an ongoing relationship knowing how to handle the wood from the log all the way to the finished piece that I would sell to a client.”

3. Iris Wilson of Hamilton Township, Ohio, with her pin oak tree. Wilson takes care of her dad, who still lives in this farmhouse.

“My dad, who grew up across the road, was good friends with the people who lived here,” Wilson said. “They had five boys that worked on the farm here before going to war. They would cut down dead trees in the forest behind this house like crazy. One day, they came back with a little sapling and planted it here by the house on their sister’s birthday. She’s been gone for a little while now. She would have been over 100, so this tree has been here a long time. It has little tiny acorns. There seems to be a squirrel that lives in it year-round.

It really provides a lot of shade for the house in the hot months. When we’ve had ice storms, the limbs, even though they’re way up high, touch the ground. I was sure it was going to ruin the tree, but it didn’t.

We started doing limb maintenance on the tree about three years ago, in hopes of giving it a little more life.”

“My dad put the swing up. I love spinning on it,” Nerlinger said. “I like trees because I can find cicada shells on them, and I find lots of shells on this tree.”

5. Ciera Rose and Ayla Story of Mt. Healthy, Ohio, and Rudee and Jessica Demarce and their kids, of Red Oak, Iowa, with “Everybody’s Treehouse” in Mt. Airy. Everybody’s Treehouse is 14 feet tall and connected to 12 different trees and an easily accessible ramp in the heart of Cincinnati’s largest city park: Mt. Airy Forest. Story says she’s felt connected with nature for a long time, and she loves visiting this treehouse.

“I grew up on a farm in Owensville, Ohio, so I’ve always loved nature,” Story said. “When I was a kid, I would get frustrated sometimes, and my grandma always told me to hug a tree and feel connected and at peace with nature.”

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4. Olivia Nerlinger of Loveland, Ohio, with her tree swing. Nerlinger and her family have been renting the property for the past three years. They don’t know what kind of tree the swing hangs from.

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Alexander’s youth bodes well for the future of its defense “(Hoover’s) an athlete, a really talented athlete,” Dean said.

TYLER JOHNSON FOR THE POST

When Alexander opened its season with a 21-13 loss to Athens, it looked like the defense could hold the team together while the offense figured out its identity.

After giving up 21 points in the first half against the Bulldogs, the Spartans adjusted by increasing the pressure on quarterback Joey Moore, forcing sacks and bad passes through more intense blitzes.

That defensive formula almost allowed Alexander to complete the comeback and win the game. It didn’t, but at the very least, it seemed to set a blueprint for the defense to follow as the season progressed.

Unfortunately for the Spartans, the defense was unable to carry the team most games. The offense found its footing, but the defense’s inconsistency caused the team to struggle.

Alexander held River Valley scoreless Sept. 18, but it was also the offense’s best game of the season, scoring 30 points in Alexander’s lone win of the season.

But last Friday, even in Alexander’s 12-6 loss to Meigs, the defense played its best game of the season and showed the same potential it flashed in the second half of the Athens game.

Perhaps more importantly for the Spartans, the defense relied less on its seniors and saw their underclassmen step up.

With the Marauders missing star quarterback Coulter Cleland, Coach Earich Dean knew it could be a big day for the defense and built his game plan around being aggressive and forcing the new starter, Wyatt Hoover, to make mistakes.

“But he’s been playing wide receiver all year, so he hasn’t had a lot of reps. So when you make him throw the football, he’s throwing it for the first time in varsity games. It’s a lot different. He hasn’t had a chance to get all the reads in, and he’s going to make those rookie type mistakes, and we pounced on that.”

In the first half, those mistakes surfaced in the form of three interceptions. The first one came in the red zone when Hoover under-threw his man, and Jagger Cain took advantage of the missed throw.

Meigs’ next offensive drive also ended in a pick, as Michael Lash came away with his team-leading third interception of the season. Xander Karagosian came away with the final pick, getting the takeaway with only a minute left in the first half.

Cain, Lash and Karagosian, a sophomore and two juniors, respectively, will all be back for next season and have shown they are core pieces to Alexander’s plans for 2021.

And while the interceptions may have ended in the first half, the turnovers in general did not.

During maybe the wildest set of plays of the game, the Spartans forced a fumble and recovered around midfield, only for them to fumble it back to Meigs on their first offensive play. With the Marauders back in control offensively, what do they do on their first play? Fumble the ball right back to Alexander.

Forcing five turnovers in total, the defense showed an ability to absolutely smother an opponent with aggressive looks and high pressure. With Karagosian forcing the final fumble, it showed they have the ability to do it next year, as

Alexander’s defensive back Jagger Cain (No. 5) runs the ball in the second quarter of a game against Vinton County in McArthur, Ohio, on Friday, Sept. 25, 2020.

(NATE SWANSON | PHOTO EDITOR)

four of the five turnovers were created by an underclassman.

Dean knew there would be growing pains for Alexander this season, but he’s excited about what his team can do in 2021, especially as the season winds down.

“They’re getting their first varsity experience right now, so next year, they’ll have a whole year of experience under their belt,” Dean said. “It’s going to really help them going into next year.”

The defense may have not carried Alexander this season like it showed the promise to against Athens, but it has shown there is hope for next season for Spartans fans

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Joe Burrow Stadium: The John F. Kroner, MD, Locker Room and Jason Reed Strength and Conditioning Center at the east end of R. Basil Rutter Field at Joe Burrow Stadium in The Plains, Ohio. (NATE SWANSON | PHOTO EDITOR)

How Athens resurrected the home of the Bulldogs JACK GLECKLER SPORTS EDITOR The first thing Mike Rider noticed was the 50-foottall light poles collapsed into the end zone. The second thing he noticed were the remains of the press box.

The visitors’ bleachers were upended. The concession stand was crushed by a press box ripped from the bleachers. A sign that hung in the stadium that read

16 / OCT.8, 2020

“This is Bulldog Country” was found three-fourths of a mile away.

R. Basil Rutter Field was in ruins.

“The place was destroyed,” Rider, a member of the coaching staff for Athens’ junior varsity football team, said. “There was just debris everywhere all over the field, a lot of damage to the roof and the locker room. Just a total mess.”

Rider didn’t see the destruction firsthand. He was coaching the junior varsity football game in Chilli-

cothe that evening. What was in front of him was the aftermath of the most violent storm to hit Athens in three decades.

Just before 7 p.m. on Sept. 16, 2010, an EF2 tornado touched down in The Plains and caused significant damage to Athens High School and its football stadium. The school itself suffered minor roof damage and lost two air conditioning units while the field took most of the damage.

Tornadoes in Appalachian Ohio are exceedingly

“

There was just debris everywhere all over the field, a lot of damage to the roof and the locker room. Just a total mess,”

- Mike Rider, member of the coaching staff for Athens’ junior varsity football team

rare. The last time a tornado touched down in Athens County, Jimmy Carter was still president.

When the sirens started blaring that evening, the Athens High School girl’s soccer team was in the middle of a game. Most people weren’t sure how serious the storm was going to be. The girls’ soccer coach initially told the players to take cover in the press box, assuming it’d blow over and the team could finish its game.

“He realized pretty quick that the storm was bad, and he took them into the fieldhouse,” former Athens High School track and field coach Rick Essex said.

“And, of course, the tornado took the press box off.

That was a situation that could have been very tragic, had they remained in there.”

Essex remembers talking to one of the eyewitnesses about the storm. The destruction was instantaneous.

Luckily, no one at the high school was injured during the storm. The same couldn’t be said for the stadium. When the damage was assessed, school administrators realized it’d be months before the field would be in any shape to play on.

The Bulldogs were without a field. There was no chance they’d be able to play in their own stadium for the rest of the season. Ohio University stepped in to ensure Athens could still host “home” games, but it wasn’t the same.

“The kids were going through a lot of emotions,” Essex said. “We certainly didn’t want to go through this, but that was the best case scenario we got in terms of being able to play.”

Administration was running in circles. Insurance claims only covered so much for storm damage, and cleanup was a beast of its own. The prospect of a swift recovery from the tornado was murky, and the school still needed funds to fuel its plan for a new and improved stadium.

The school needed help, and luckily for Athens, it was a phone call away. There was a booster club made for this exact moment — Bulldog Blitz.

Bulldog Blitz was started in 2008 by former Athens football players and those who had connections to the current team. It was meant to be a booster club that catered strictly to Athens’ football program and had raised money for the program in the past.

Essex and Rider were charter members, and Essex was serving as the first president of the organization.

Athens head coach Ryan Adams was a charter mem-

ber as well, helping form the organization early in his tenure as coach. Through Adams, the school had a direct line to Bulldog Blitz and vice versa.

“The high school administration had come up with a fundraising plan and wanted to run it through a nonprofit organization,” Rider said. “We would raise the money and then pay the school back for the money they spent on the rebuild and improvement budget.”

This was the moment Bulldog Blitz was made for.

This was the organization’s finest hour. The Monday after the storm, the members met in Rider’s insurance office on Richland Avenue and began to scheme.

“We started meeting every Monday night for about seven or eight months,” Rider said. “We would make lists of people in the community we could approach for donations and then divide it up among us. You took five names, went and saw those five people and asked them for money each week.”

After a few weeks, Rider and the other members were knee deep in a list of potential donors. Even more were calling after hearing about the rebuild effort from friends and relatives in the area.

Donations poured in as the months went by. Athens alumni from around the country were contacting Essex and Rider in order to show their alma mater the love it deserved. They got calls from people living over 1,000 miles away.

Two vacation rentals were donated for an auction by an Athens alum who became a real estate manager in Hilton Head. $50,000 worth of stock was gifted to the group by an 83-year-old woman who was living in Boca Raton.

“People were very willing to help rebuild,” Essex said. “It was very emotional for people in this area to have your stadium taken out, and if you look at the numbers of people that have pledged money there (it) is amazing.”

By the end of their fundraising efforts, Bulldog Blitz raised $1.2 million for the stadium rebuild effort, over one-third of the total cost of the project.

And the end result was better than they could’ve hoped for.

On Sept. 2, 2011, the Bulldogs hosted a home game.

“

An actual home game. Football was back in The Plains after almost a year.

A new press box sat above the home bleachers with a sign across it that read “Scott Riggs and Family Stadium R. Basil Rutter Field” after one of the donors.

The grass was replaced with turf. A new concession stand sat along a brick wall, engraved with the names of those who donated to the project.

“The amount of time that people put into it was absolutely mind-boggling,” Essex said. “When it was all said and done and we saw it come to fruition, we kinda stepped back and were like, ‘Wow. We really did it.’”

The stadium was packed shoulder to shoulder.

Former Athens residents flew in from across the U.S. to see their alma mater’s rebirth. The elderly woman from Boca Raton, Mary Berry, was among them.

One by one, donors who promised $5,000 or more were announced over the loudspeakers and were walked onto the field. Fans cheered for every name.

These people, many of whom hadn’t lived in Athens for years, bled their bank accounts in order to give Athens the stadium it deserved.

The Bulldogs routed Dawson-Bryant that night 4814 with decades worth of alumni watching from the stands. Athens remained undefeated for the rest of the 2011 regular season. It only broke its winning streak after a playoff loss to Jackson in Week 11. It held an .852 winning percentage for the five seasons following the opening of the new stadium. Adams retired in 2018 as the winningest coach in Bulldogs history with a 9637 record and five playoff appearances.

Essex looks back on the project often. He considered the tornado a turning point for Athens, not just as a football program, but as a community. The sheer volume of the extended Athens community willing to sacrifice its money, time and efforts to rebuild a stadium blew him away. It still does.

“I often look back on it in retrospect,” Essex said. ”It’s like you want to leave a mark in your lifetime. As you get older, you appreciate what people do and the efforts they make. The results are there, and it’s a hell of a feeling to know that you were a part of it.”

@THEJACKGLECKLER JG011517@OHIO.EDU

The kids were going through a lot of emotions. We certainly didn’t want to go through this, but that was the best case scenario we got in terms of being able to play,” - Rick Essex, former Athens High School track and field coach

THEPOSTATHENS.COM / 17

SO LISTEN

Look out for these results in November MIKAYLA ROCHELLE is a senior studying strategic communication at Ohio University For a long time, the Ohio General Assembly has had a Republican Majority. Right now — and since 2012 — the Ohio Senate has a Republican supermajority, and the Ohio House Republicans hold a supermajority as well. Ohio’s party make-up is 42% Republican and 40% Democrat, but our legislature does not reflect that. This is largely due to gerrymandering: manipulating the boundaries of an electoral constituency so as to favor one party over the other.

The House has 99 seats, with 61 Republicans and 38 Democrats. The Senate has 33 seats, with 24 Republicans and nine Democrats.

This supermajority has held the reins of Ohio for eight years. Here are some seats that have a possible chance of flipping this election: Monique Smith, House District 16 (Cleveland) Monique Smith is a Democrat running for the House seat in the 16th District, which incorporates the west side of Cleveland. Smith was a Cleveland City council member from 2010 to 2014 and represented over 52,000 constituents. Smith is running against Re-

publican incumbent Dave Greenspan, who has held the seat since 2016.

Why you should pay attention: The seat has been held by a Republican for several election cycles, but the margin of votes the Republican of the district wins by has shrunk every election cycle. In 2018, Greenspan won narrowly by around 4,000 votes, 53% of the vote to 46% of the vote for the Democratic challenger. In 2014, the seat was won by a Republican, 62% to 38%. Each year, this district is voting in higher percentages for a Democrat.

This election might be the one where the seat finally flips, which will say a lot for Ohio.

Crystal Lett, Senate District 16 (Columbus area) Crystal Lett has worked as a case manager at North Central Mental Health, where she has helped people between the age 14 and 21 with mental health issues. Her work is reflected in her policy plans, which take a major focus on mental health. Her Democratic platform also focuses on women’s issues, such as equal pay for equal work and women’s re-

productive choice. Her opponent, Republican incumbent Stephanie Kunze, has done a lot of work in the State Senate concerning small business advocacy, education and health issues. This district hasn’t had very close races in the past, but this race has been characterized as being the hardest and most expensive General Assembly race for 2020.

Why you should pay attention: In 2012, a Republican ran unopposed to win District 16.

Just four years later, Kunze only took 58% of the vote. If Lett steals the seat, or even puts up a serious fight, it may indicate a shift in favor of Democrats across the state. Both of these candidates do the women of Ohio justice, but which party takes the seat will be telling.

Mark Fogel, Senate District 6 (Columbus area) Mark Fogel is a Democrat who has served America as a fighter pilot in the Air Force. Fogel spent 12 years in the Air Force on active duty. He is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Fogel is running against Niraj Antani, who is currently the state representative for District 42. Antani was previously implicated in the Larry Householder scandal, where Antani said he made the mistake of not reporting a $5000 contribution from Friends of Larry Householder.

ARE YOU AN OHIO UNIVERSITY STUDENT LOOKING FOR WORK?

WE ARE HIRING! 18 / OCT. 8, 2020

Why you should pay attention: Larry Householder ran on a campaign of “draining the swamp,” and he’s a close ally of Antani.

Antani is part of the problem in Ohio politics, and if Fogel can stop him from reaching higher office, it’s a win for all of Ohio. Fogel also brings sensible policies suited for his district: common sense gun legislation, pragmatic advancements in health care access and access to quality and affordable education.

The Republican majority has a strong hold on Ohio. The majority will likely not go away any time soon, but there is a possibility that the supermajority may be disassembled. It’s important to recognize the role that gerrymandering plays in Ohio. The drawing of oddly-shaped districts based on who lives where is how we get a supermajority when the party percentages are roughly the same.

Until the issue of gerrymandering is fixed, Ohioans just have to vote and hope for the best that the Ohio General Assembly more closely resembles the political makeup of Ohio in the future.

Mikayla Rochelle is a senior studying strategic communication at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. What are your thoughts? Tell Mikayla by tweeting her at @mikayla_roch.

5 Akron restaurants that feel like Athens Akron restaurants that resemble some of Athens’ best NOAH WRIGHT OPINION EDITOR If Ohio University students aren’t at the bars, they’re at the restaurants. Athens is a phenomenal food town, and if you find yourself further north missing some of those incredible flavors, Akron has a lot to offer. Here are five Akron restaurants that resemble some of Athens’ best: SIMILAR TO JACKIE O’S: THE LOCKVIEW If you want craft beer, great appetizers and better food in Athens, Jackie O’s is an obvious choice. There are a few restaurants in Akron that fit this mold but not quite the way Lockview does.

There are a few differences between Jackie O’s and Lockview because Lockview is a grilled cheese restaurant. Yes, grilled cheese — but not the way you’re thinking. Lockview takes grilled cheese and makes it quasi-gourmet, which is nothing like Jackie O’s. Nonetheless, both these restaurants double as bars with an incredible beer selection and outdoor dining.

Albeit, Lockview is a little more sleek than the rustic, Appalachian style of Jackie O’s, but the food and drink experience are one in the same.

SIMILAR TO DONKEY COFFEE: ANGEL FALLS COFFEE If one single place in Akron comes close to embodying the energy of Athens, it’s Highland Square. It’s home to record stores, bars, boutiques and even a single-screen movie theater. The comparisons go on, but if you’re looking to get a coffee, listen to some good music, close your eyes and pretend you’re in Donkey on a Saturday morning, Angel Falls is the place to go.

Donkey and Angel Falls serve fantastic coffee (I would give the edge to Donkey), but they also offer a distinct ambiance. Board games, music and quaint, cozy seating are the distinguishing qualities of both.

More than the coffee shop itself, Angel Falls is a portal to a mini-Athens.

Do you miss movies at the Athena? The Highland Square Theatre is a few doors down. Are you craving Whit’s Frozen Custard? Trecaso’s serves ice cream right next door.

It’s no substitute, but it’s as close as you’ll get to feeling right at home in Athens.

the only hummus I’ve tasted that comes close to Salaam’s, and the rest of its menu rivals Salaam as well.

For the undisputed, best Middle-Eastern food in Akron with an experience that will feel familiar, give Aladdin’s a try.

SIMILAR TO AVALANCHE PIZZA: LUIGI’S In all honesty, these two restaurants could not be more different. Avalanche is a carry-out and delivery pizza joint, and Luigi’s is a historic, post-war era restaurant with semi-upscale dining.

However, there is one unifying quality: great pizza.

Luigi’s is a far-superior dining experience to Avalanche. Opened in 1949, Luigi’s has survived an evolving city, the death of the rustbelt and gentrification. The only thing more well-known in Akron than Luigi’s is LeBron James.

Regardless of the difference in dining experience, if you love Avalanche’s pizza, you’ll love Luigi’s.

SIMILAR TO THE PUB: SWENSON’S OK, this one is admittedly a stretch.

The Pub is a bar, and Swenson’s is a 1950s style drive-up restaurant, but they both have the best burger in their respective regions.

Swenson’s opened in Akron in 1934, and since then has gone on to wear the crown of “America’s Best Cheeseburger.”

Swenson’s is an experience from another time. The original boasts classic neon

signs, the servers all run — literally run — back and forth from your car to the kitchen and you order by turning on your headlights.

So, if you’re craving the best burger in Akron, go to Swenson’s and try the best burger in America.

@NOAHCAMPAIGN NW422218@OHIO.EDU

ILLUSTRATION BY OLIVIA JUENGER

SIMILAR TO RESTAURANT SALAAM: ALADDIN’S EATERY Salaam has one of the most diverse food selections in Athens. Its quasi-mediterranean dishes are arguably the best food Uptown. For a near-similar dining experience in Akron, try Aladdin’s Eatery.

Aladdin’s, also located in the incredible Highland Square, is another establishment that would feel right at home in Athens.

The restaurant itself serves primarily Mediterranean food, and it’s incredible. It boasts similar dishes to Salaam but with a more focused Middle-Eastern selection.

Its hummus is personally THEPOSTATHENS.COM / 19

Emerging bands to know Bands from Vienna, West Virginia, you should know BRE OFFENBERGER COPY CHIEF Most people make the 50-minute trip from Athens to Vienna, West Virginia, for the mall (yes, it’s technically in Vienna, not the more well-known Parkersburg) and the higher number of shopping opportunities.

What usually slips the mind when people think of the two sister cities is the underground music scene.

Though these artists have yet to release any albums, they’re all working on dropping music in the near future, and they’re all worth your time. Here are five bands from the Vienna-Parkersburg area you should be keeping an eye on: New Old Age Currently in search of a vocalist, New Old Age is a band looking to maintain the stylings of classic rock while simultaneously blending punk, metal and progressive rock. Each member — Logan Noland on lead guitar, Nic Reidmiller on drums and Zander Geibel on bass and synthesizer — brings something distinct and worthwhile to the eclectic group.

New Old Age currently has two demos, “Blackened Skies” and “Surrounded,” the latter of which is an instrumental, on YouTube. The band does not currently have any albums out, but Geibel promised in a message as soon as COVID-19 subsides and it’s safe again, the band will record.

Safety First Sam Lindenmuth, Camden Hawkins and Josh Fruner want to keep the emo-math rock genre blend alive with their band, Safety First. Citing Tiny Moving Parts as an influence, the boys — Lindenmuth on lead guitar and vocals, Hawkins on rhythm guitar and Fruner on bass — have been working on their self-titled debut.

Hawkins said in a message if they can’t find a drummer by the time they start recording the album, Lindenmuth will act as drummer for the time being.

However, the band plans on creating and releasing an EP before the debut LP to make sure they love what they’re doing. Lindenmuth is also a part of a handful of other bands, including Totally Generic, an alternative rock trio with an impending debut album.

Ryann Renae Ryann Province, who goes by the stage name Ryann Renae, has been drawn to music from an early age. She wrote her first song as a 5-year-old and picked up the guitar within the next two years. A decade later, she’s set to release her debut album, Secrets.

Secrets, which is set to be released within the month, will feature tracks she’s written over the past four years. Renae said in a message her goal is to form a sense of relatability with her listeners, but overall, she just hopes people like what she has to offer.

20 / OCT. 8, 2020

Gardenia With vocals from Zachary McBride, bass from Pierson Gregg, guitar from Andruw Evans and drums from Kaleb Boggs, Gardenia is looking to make waves in the metal scene. Implementing a mix of rock and metal in its creations alongside doing covers occasionally, the band uses music as a cathartic outlet for the inevitable chaos of life.

The band is hard at work trying to officially release music. McBride said in a message the four of them will be back playing gigs in the Vienna area as soon as the pandemic recedes.

West is also the bassist for a pop-punk/rock band called Don’t Freak, alongside Renae on vocals, Noland from New Old Age on guitar and Samantha Lowther on backing vocals. The quartet is currently searching for a drummer, but that isn’t stopping them from recording music once COVID-19 clears up.

@BRE_OFFENBERGER BO844517@OHIO.EDU

Megan West Megan West just picked up bass around a year ago.

She watched a friend form a band and started teaching herself to play out of pure intrigue. From then on, she’s decided she just wants to create something she loves with the people she loves.

ILLUSTRATION BY EMMA DENGLER

fect for you to admire while walking through. Orange Trail also features the “Three Sisters,” dubbed that name for three ancient white oak trees within the park. Two currently survive and are 550 years old. “Big Sister,” the largest of the three, reaches an incredible height of 141 feet. To learn more about Sugarcreek MetroPark, visit its website.

Colors change with the season in the East Loveland Nature Preserve in Loveland, Ohio, on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2020. (JOE TIMMERMAN | FOR THE POST)

Best hiking spots in Ohio You may be missing Athens’ scenic routes, so here are some hiking spots throughout Ohio JULIANA COLANT FOR THE POST These days, we could all use a reason to get out of the house. Hiking is a great way to spend time with others while remaining socially distant.

This time of year can be especially prime for hiking because of the cooler temperatures and colorful, ever-changing trees. Be sure to make an effort this fall to step away from our busy new normal, and enjoy nature. Here are some of the best spots to hike in Ohio: CUYAHOGA VALLEY NATIONAL PARK Cuyahoga Valley National Park offers over 125 miles of hiking trails and is made up of 33,000 acres. This is Ohio’s only national park and boasts beautiful fall colors this time of year.

It is located in Northeast Ohio between the Cleveland and

Akron area. There is no entrance fee for the park, and there are hiking options for every comfort level. Brandywine Gorge Trail is a simple 1.5 mile hike that features a waterfall.

The most popular is the Ledges Trail. It is a moderate 2.2 mile hike that features a gorgeous overlook and rock formations mixed with fall foliage. The Buckeye Trail is known for its peace and quiet. Blue Hen Falls is located within The Buckeye Trail and hosts lovely water views. This trail is known to be more challenging due to its elevation and longer duration.

SUGARCREEK METROPARK Sugarcreek MetroPark consists of multiple trails and is both pet- and family-friendly. It is recognized for offering a variety of scenic nature experiences and foliage. Orange Trail, an easy 1.3 mile trail, is perfect for a quick view of nature’s beauty. Orange Trail is known for its breathtaking Osage Orange Tunnel. Clusters of trees curve to form a tunnel per-

HOCKING HILLS STATE PARK Located in Logan, Hocking Hills State Park is the perfect nature getaway. It is open year-round from dawn until dusk. Hocking Hills also provides rental cabins, cottages and a campground, so you can spend multiple days exploring all this park has to offer. The numerous trail systems are all oneway this year to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The seven different hiking areas include Conkle’s Hollow, Hemlock Bridge Trail, Cantwell Cliffs, Ash Cave, Rock House, Old Man’s Cave and Cedar Falls. Whether you are looking to explore cliffs and caves or walk immersed in trees, Hocking Hills State Park has it all.

OHIO AND ERIE CANAL TOWPATH TRAIL This trail is a part of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park system. However, the trail deserves its own section due to its multiple access points, incredible length (87 miles) and excellent fit for any age.

The Towpath is a relatively flat gravel path suitable for walking or biking. There are 48 trailheads along the 87 miles stretching across four counties (Cuyahoga, Summit, Stark and Tuscarawas).

The Towpath provides more than just exercise; history is woven throughout the trail. It was used from 1827 to 1913 as a course for mules to pull canal boats along the Ohio and Erie Canal. The key visitor centers, located on the route, provide historical and cultural lessons.

JOHN BRYAN STATE PARK Yellow Springs is home to this picturesque 752-acre park.

There are 10 hiking trails to choose from, ranging in length.

Gorge Trail features the limestone gore, cut by the calm waters of the Little Miami River. According to its website, more than 100 different trees and shrubs have been identified in the park, making an excellent spot to admire fall foliage.

Once you are done hiking, you can continue the fun by boating, rock climbing, camping and more at this state park.

@JULIANA.COLANT JC079419@OHIO.EDU THEPOSTATHENS.COM / 21

the weekender Walk, Run, Roll 5K fundraiser goes virtual ABBY BROWN FOR THE POST

This year marks the 14th annual Battle the Blitz Fundraiser, hosted by Ohio University physical therapy majors. However, due to COVID-19, this year’s fundraiser is taking on a different format.

Normally, students and OU alumni can compete in teams or groups in a tournament-style format in which the winning team will earn money for funding and awareness for adaptive sports.

The event also features raffles and other prizes people can win to raise money as well as free-will donations.

The teams typically compete against the Buckeye Blitz rugby team, which consists of all quadriplegic players. The event is held to raise money for the team.

“It’s usually a really good time, and we make really good connections,” Jeremy Finton, the co-director of the Paralympic Sports Club in Columbus and a member of Buckeye Blitz, said.

Not only does the event typically benefit the Buckeye Blitz team, but it also helps the OU physical therapy majors gain a better understanding of quadriplegic patients.

“By it being online, they lose some of the experience of seeing us and getting to know what our lives are like,” Finton said.

While the news of the event not being held in person is difficult for those involved, the fundraiser has found a way to still go on.

“We still want to support the team like we do every year,” Holly Bernhold, president of Battle the Blitz Fundraiser, said.

She and several other physical therapy majors have created a website that outlines some of what the event will entail this year. Instead of a traditional tournament, the group is hosting an event where people can either walk, run or roll if they are in a wheelchair for a full 5K and post a picture of their progress on social media.

“Doing this virtual 5K, we can still promote adaptive sports and allow more peo22 / OCT. 8, 2020

ple than ever to get active,” Bernhold said.

They are continuing their free-will donations through a GoFundMe account along with raffles created by the many sponsors of the event.

“I think it’s really cool that they are still holding this event virtually,” Maggie Old, a junior studying visual communication, said in a message. “It shows everyone’s commitment to raising money for OU Quad Rugby, all while educating others who might not know much about it.”

Funds this year are still going to the Buckeye Blitz team as well as more awareness and advertising for their team as more posts go up online.

“It really gives us a big boost,” Finton said. “While we don’t get to physically see and meet people, we still get to see

the community’s commitment to us.”

Many have already begun to post their progress on the 5K, which not only makes Finton and his team happy, but also makes the physical therapy majors happy.

While the event being online may lose some of the physical connection, it is still showing to have many positive benefits to the community.

“The big point of our event being online is to be able to spread it to more people and get more people involved,” Bernhold said. @ABBY_BROWN20 AB852019@OHIO.EDU

“

Doing this virtual 5K, we can still promote adaptive sports and allow more people than ever to get active,” - Holly Bernhold, director of the Battle the Blitz fundraiser

Photo provided via Walk Run Roll 5K on Facebook

WHAT’S GOING ON? Laugh, learn at Javier Ávila’s show; tour the Athens Asylum ISABEL NISSLEY FOR THE POST

FRIDAY, OCT. 9TH Javier Ávila - The Perfect Latino at 12 p.m., hosted virtually by Ohio U Latino Caucus. Come watch Javier Ávila’s new one-man show, “The Perfect Latino.” Exploring diversity in the U.S. through comedy and poetry, Ávila will deliver powerful messages about inclusion, antiracism and representation. The show provides fodder for continued conversations about the future of America.

Admission: Free Geology Colloquium with Toluwaleke Ajayi and Hannah Bortel at 12:55 p.m., hosted virtually by Ohio University’s Department of Geological Sciences. As a part of The Geological Sciences Colloquium Series, graduate students Toluwaleke Ajayi and Hannah Bortel will be discussing their research. Ajayi will present on “modeling of water discharge in a river impacted by acid mine drainage.” Bortel will talk about “Scallops Through Space and Time: A Study of Scallop Patterns and Consistency.”

100 Ridges Circle. The Athens Asylum is one of the few Kirkbride Asylums remaining. Walk and talk while exploring the grounds and stories of this historical complex with local expert and long-time asylum employee George Eberts. The tour will last for roughly two hours and will occur rain or shine.

Admission: $15 for Southeast Ohio History Center members, $18 for regular non-member adults, $10 for students with a student ID, free for children 12 and under 11th Annual Beer and Cheese Incident at 6 p.m., hosted virtually by Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio.

Jackie O’s Brewery is selling a specially brewed orange and ginger edition of its hazy pale ale. For every crowler sold, a $3 donation will go to Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio. Pick up some brews and join Planned Parenthood for a virtual event that will include a game of human sexuality trivia, important updates about voting in 2020 and a celebration of the Athens community.

Admission: Free

SUNDAY, OCT. 11TH Mixed Doubles in the Pickleball Tournament at 1 p.m., hosted by Parkersburg YMCA at 1920 Park Ave, Parkersburg, West Virginia. On Sunday, mixed doubles teams will compete in the Parkersburg YMCA’s Pickleball Tournament. Winners will receive gold, silver or bronze medals.

Families and friends can cheer for players from spaced seating.

Admission: $20

@ISABELNISSLEY IN566119@OHIO.EDU

Admission: Free

SATURDAY, OCT. 10TH Walking Tour of the Historic Athens Asylum at 2 p.m., hosted by the Southeast Ohio History Center at THEPOSTATHENS.COM / 23

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