BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

“Levy” must be Latin for “headache.”
The proposed 8-mill levy for Wilmington City Schools is a headache for taxpayers who have to pay for it, school employees and students who rely on it, school board members who try to sell it to the public, and anyone like me who struggles to comprehend its implications.
I’ve been trying to educate myself about the issues, and although I can’t claim a complete understanding of the Wilmington levy, or Ohio’s unconstitutional need for levies, or the fairness to a community still in the throes of a jobs crisis, I certainly do have a complete headache.
The first pains came as I read through the pages of comments on the News Journal’s story after the schools decided Jan. 14 to place a levy on the May ballot. The levy was described, among other things, as a money grab, an unfair burden on farmers and a misuse of money. A few folks, however, said that the relatively low increase is a small price to pay for education.
The overall indignity

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

​My van’s thermometer registered a 5. Nothing else. No zero followed the 5. Just 5.
Some things should never be single-digit numbers: test scores, batting averages and morning temperatures.
A couple Clinton County schools were delayed because of the weather. A couple weren’t. 
It had not even occurred to me to check to see if my daughter’s school were delayed, because A.) The roads were clear of snow and ice, and B.) This is Ohio, not some fraidy-cat Southern state where they cancel schools at the drop of a flake.
But students here do wait for school buses before 7 a.m., so it makes sense that the coldest weather in four years would factor in. I just didn’t think to check for a delay. Five-degree weather must numb my cerebrum.
This week, southwestern Ohio has been nowhere close to being the iciest part of the United States, and we haven’t even been breaking our own record lows. But it has been colder than I, a weather whiner, had ever wanted to experience again in my life. 
The coldest location Monday in the continental United States was Embarrass, Minn., probably named after the people who chose to live in a place where it gets to 36 below zero.

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

There are friends who laugh together, friends who talk for hours, friends who show up in crisis, friends who share food, friends who may as well be family. 
 I am lucky enough to have many of those kinds of friends, near and far. I can listen to their voices, shop with them, hug them, dine with them and travel with them. I trust them with my family, my pets, my money, my emotional well-being. 
I dare say most of them would bail me out of jail. 
So we’re clear that I’m not an anti-social loner in a Kaczynski cabin?
I just don’t have any Facebook friends. Because I’ve never joined Facebook. I am not one of the 1 billion-with-a-B people on the planet who use Facebook. Seven out of 10 Americans who are active online visit Facebook, according to Nielsen, the folks who also keep track of our TV viewing. 
I’m in the minority, but I’ve never really been one to succumb to peer pressure, which was especially helpful when high-school peers were inhaling nitrous oxide from whipped-cream cans. And on Senior Skip Day at Wilmington High School, I was sitting nerdily in class because I had perfect attendance I didn’t want to ruin. ​

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

Her business was there before Walmart arrived in Wilmington and became her strip-mall neighbor, bringing a great deal of retail traffic with it. Later, her business survived the superstore’s pullout and relocation outside of town. 
From Betamax to Blu-Ray, Jen Andorfer has rented it all at First Choice Video. She has worked there more than half her life and has owned the business since 1992. A teenager from Springfield who loved to watch movies, Jen also eventually owned stores in other southwestern Ohio cities, but the Wilmington store is the one that remains.
“It’s the only job I’ve had since I was 16,” Jen says. 
The Clinton County community embraced First Choice Video, and Jen returned the love. She has only raised prices twice in 23 years. Children can still pick a five-day rental for 99 cents. She rents five videos for five days for five bucks. She uses store walls

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

Just 20 miles east of Wilmington, there is a place where disco balls still cast mirrored magic on roller skaters young and old.
At its essence, it’s just a roller rink, and it’s been there for ages. But there’s a timelessness found there that is reassuring when technology and overscheduling seem to distort spontaneous human community. Kids at Roller Haven in Washington Court House still fall under the spell of the colorful lights, the Top 40 music, the physical challenge and the hypnotic revolutions around the wooden floor.
The music may indicate it’s 2013 — think “Gangnam Style” and “I’m Sexy and I Know It” — but the DJ usually throws in a song here and there from generations back. On weekend nights, teenagers crowd the center of the rink to dance without wheels.
I can still remember my first visit, at age 6, followed by sporadic super-fun skating parties as an adolescent, when Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” was the song