BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

Unless an 11th-hour deal was made last night, the sequester has sequested. The automatic cuts of $85 billion will be trimmed from the federal budget over the next seven months. 
Federal workers are freaking out about future furloughs. Hundreds of thousands of nationwide jobs will be lost, and the economy that was picking up speed will slow down again. Airports and military-base communities will be the hardest hit.
To a Clinton County resident, it sounds a lot like a DHL pullout.
It’s tough to get worked up about the substantial loss of jobs in a place that has already lost a substantial amount of jobs. Clinton County’s unemployment rate went from a low of 5 percent in April 2008 to a high of 19.1 percent in January 2010. It was at  9.7 percent ...

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

Just a few weeks earlier, I had been sitting in the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, tears of appreciation streaming down my face during “Nabucco,” the opera that made Giuseppe Verdi famous.
Far from the living memorial to President John F. Kennedy, I found myself in a grand performing arts venue once more, appreciative tears flowing anew. The production wasn’t an epic Italian opera — just kids strumming harps and creating rhythm with buckets — but I was filled with gratitude that my daughter would feel so comfortable on a stage as beautiful as any in the nation.
Tucked into downtown Wilmington is another living memorial — this one to Charles Webb Murphy’s mother — that is truly one of the most beautiful theaters anywhere. For a city our size, it is an anomaly.
The marquee can illuminate the entire block and wake up a sleepy little town, but the building’s true beauty lies within. The intricate interior ...

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

At the end of the day, we were either walkers or bus riders. That was in the paleolithic age, before precious family gasoline was spent for school transportation, spawning the arrival of a third category: the “pick-ups.” 
I was a bus rider. My parents picked me up from Martinsville Elementary School a handful of times. Otherwise, I had to spend a couple extra hours each weekday commuting on a big, yellow Bluebird bus.
I’d wait at the end of my driveway until the bus doors would swing open, the heat would blow in my face, and I’d inhale the familiar yet nauseating smell of pleather seats and rubber aisleways, sometimes mingled with that strange sawdust that covers vomit — a nasty side effect of mixing children, motion, and diesel fumes.
I was also part of that unlucky passenger category of being first on, last off. My ride each morning started extra early, and my ride each afternoon ...

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

My mother hoped it would be a phase.
My husband still ranks it up there with the world’s most harrowing announcements. 
It was 21 years ago that I decided to stop eating meat, just months before I married a hardcore carnivore. 
The carnivore knew I wasn’t trying to foist my choice on him  — or anyone else, for that matter. I made the decision for myself only. I’ve cooked meat regularly since then, and I can surreptitiously eat around meat in anything served to me. 
Mainly, my husband was worried that our ability to dine out — one of his favorite pastimes — had come to a screeching halt. 
That didn’t happen, though it does still bother him when I have to resort to ordering a plate of french fries or a small garden salad. For the most part, there’s some kind of item ...