Bench to Nowhere: Fear of the Un-Porcine

A Cool Town Toon (mid-week bonus)

Click on image to enlarge.

Get the real skinny: CDC Swine Flu Page

Yahoo/AP: H1N1 influenza A giving pigs a bad name

Ralph Keyes' Retroterm of the Day: Scuttlebutt

On nineteenth-century British ships, a wooden cask, or butt, held drinking water. Its lid had a dipping hole called a scuttle. The two pieces combined were called a scuttlebutt. As would later be true of office workers sipping water from water coolers, sailors commonly shared gossip beside these containers while quenching their thirst. In time scuttlebutt itself became synonymous with gossip, rumors, or inside information.

Reposted with permission: RalphKeyes.com

350 new jobs just six miles from YS

Looking for a job? There are 350 new jobs opening up in the business park on Dayton-Yellow Springs Road in Fairborn.

Dayton Daily News: Company returns 350 jobs to area

Greene county fails on ozone, gets a C in particle pollution

American Lung Association released a report today on the state of the air in the U.S. How did we fare? The only surprise for me was that we didn't get an F in particle pollution. I guess the Greene Envirnmental Coaltion's "no tire burn" campaign paid off.

State of the Air 2009: Greene County

Ralph Keyes' Retroterm of the Day: Mrs. Robinson

In honor of movie character “Mrs. Robinson,” the older woman played by Anne Bancroft in The Graduate who tried to seduce young Dustin Hoffman, we still call a seductress like her Mrs. Robinson. This is easier to say than “an older woman who hits on a younger man.” More fun, too.

Reposted with permission: RalphKeyes.com

Dr. Harry Berley passed away Friday

Dr. Harry M. Berley, an Antioch alum and one of the founders of Community Physicians in Yellow Springs, died on April 24. He was 91.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. on Friday, May 1, at Friends Care Assisted Living, 170 E. Herman St.

Antioch University Chancellor looking to move from YS

Antioch University Chancellor Toni Murdock has a "for sale" sign in front of her house in Yellow Springs. Is this a sign of movement of a more significant nature? Well, maybe yes and maybe no, according to Antioch University Director of Public Relations Lynda Sirk in a telephone interview today.

"When Toni came to Yellow Springs it was to help and facilitate the college while the board was trying to get it back on its feet," Sirk said.

Now that the interim board and the university are on the brink of reaching an agreement, and Antioch McGregor has a new president, Dr. Michael Fishbein, there is less reason for Murdock to live in Yellow Springs. Antioch University has five campuses in four states coast-to-coast and Murdock also owns a home in Tucson, Ariz. According to Sirk, Murdock is happy with the way the negotiations with the "board pro tem" have been going, especially after a positive meeting this past Friday.

"Toni is turning her attention to the five campuses nationwide," Sirk said. "She has been spending most of her time on the road, governing from the air. If her home in Yellow Springs sells in this economy, she will live in Tucson until she decides where to go."

According to Sirk, the university's central administration offices will remain here and Murdock will be a frequent visitor.

"We won't notice any difference," Sirk said. "Even though her office is right next to mine, we conduct a lot of business by email. This is not a harbinger of anything but good news: the positive direction of the negotiations [for an independent Antioch College]; and the new President at McGregor."

Ralph Keyes' Retroterm of the Day: Cliffhanger

Those who filmed oldtime weekly movie serials knew moviegoers were likely to return if they left their hero or heroine in dire distress at the end of each segment—tied to railroad tracks as a train approached, sinking in quicksand, or hanging from a cliff. From this comes the term “cliffhanger” to characterize any dramatic, unresolved situation.

Reposted with permission: RalphKeyes.com

Bench To Nowhere: The Art of Disappearance

A Cool Town Toon

Click on image to enlarge.

Related posts:

Hot Topic

Bench To Nowhere: The Art of Annoyance

Art or Annoyance? Fear and Loathing in Yellow Springs

Borchers, Penn State 4th in Championship of America 4x800 relay

That's Sam Borchers, who has been hampered by cramps all season, coming from behind to take the lead, then relinquishing it in the second leg of the Championship of America 4x800 meter relay at the Penn Relays this weekend. Penn State would finish fourth in the race.

Video courtesy of Flotrack.org.

Related posts:
Borchers wins in Arizona
Borchers, PSU 9th in NCAA finals
Borchers, Penn State distance medley team qualify for finals
Borchers qualifies for Big Ten 1500 m final
Borchers ready for Big Ten and NCAA Indoor Track Championships

Community Yard Sale (Corrected on 4/27)

This from Chamber of Commerce Director Karen Wintrow:

Community Yard Sale
Saturday, May 16 from 9 am to 5 pm

Set up your own Yard Sale on this date with many other individuals and organizations in the community. All proceeds are yours alone. Take advantage of the regional promotion the Chamber will be doing for the event.

If you're not interested in having your own sale, donate your items to Glen Helen for their sale that day. And WYSO is accepting donations of old records or CDs also; please call 769-1387.

Please contact the Chamber office if you’re planning to have a sale so we can add it to a list that will be available for visitors to find all of the locations.

Another welcome benefit is that the Village Clean Up is scheduled the week after the Yard Sale so anything you don't sell can be placed in your normal trash pickup location and Rumpke will be picking it up the following week.



Karen Wintrow
Executive Director
Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce
937-767-2686
www.yellowspringsohio.org

The date of the event was corrected to the 16th, thanks to a reader comment and, thereafter, Karen Wintrow submitted additional changes.

Related post: Be Green in the Springs

Glen Helen Calendar Photo Contest

You only have until the end of next month, if you want to submit photos for the 2010 Glen Helen Calendar Contest. The last date for submissions is May 31, 2009. There is no entry fee. The 12 winners will be credited for their contribution to the calendar and will receive one free copy. Proceeds from calendar sales go to support the Glen.

Click here for the rules and an entry form.

Ralph Keyes' Retroterm of the Day: stump speech.

European settlers noted that Indian leaders stood on stumps of downed trees to address members of their tribe. This made so much sense that they adopted the practice themselves. By the mid-nineteenth century it was common to refer to political “stump speeches,” and to campaigning in general as “stumping it.”

Reposted with permission: RalphKeyes.com

Hot topic

We are still getting comments on Art or Annoyance: Fear and Loathing in Yellow Springs.

Obituary: Eugene Pitstick (4/21/09)

Eugene F. Pitstick, 84, of Cedarville, passed away Tuesday April 21, 2009 in Greene Memorial Hospital.

Greene County Dailies: a lifelong member of St. Paul Catholic Church in Yellow Springs

WYSO to hold t-shirt contest and garage sale

News from WYSO's Jacki Mayer:

Every now and then we could all use a nice, new t-shirt.

And that includes WYSO...

WYSO is holding a t-shirt design contest. If you win, your design will be worn by WYSO listeners and friends around the world.

The contest will run until May 15th.

Click here for contest rules

***

WYSO Garage Sale

Saturday, May 16th From 9-5

We hope you'll stop by the WYSO performance space to shop!

800 Livermore St, Yellow Springs

If you have old records or CDs that you'd like to donate to WYSO's Garage Sale: Please call 769-1387 or Click here to make arrangements via email

Please put "Garage Sale" in the subject line

Ralph Keyes' Retroterm of the Day: Moxie.

When we say someone has “Moxie,” we hark back to a soft drink that was the leading pepper-upper of its era. In its heyday before World War II this drink was so popular that a song was written about it: “The Moxie Fox Trot.”

Reposted with permission: RalphKeyes.com

Winery to open on Jackson Road

The grand opening of a winery started on Jackson Road by Jim Brandeberry is scheduled for the 4th of July weekend.

Dayton Daily News: Winery to open near Yellow Springs

Dealing with the shrinking volunteer pool

For the past nine years, I have been attending meetings of the boards and committees of a number of Yellow Springs nonprofits, either as staff, or as a board member. What was initially traumatic for me, speaking my mind at a meeting of sharp, dedicated people, has become as comfortable as the proverbial old slipper. During those nine years, the dynamic of the pool from which those boards draw their volunteers has changed. In short, volunteers have become older and fewer. I am neither the only one, nor the first to have noticed this. The shrinking volunteer pool, and what to do about it, has become the hot topic at almost every meeting I attend. In the process, I have become an advocate of disbanding organizations that have fulfilled their mission and merging others, where their missions will allow it. Yellow Springs, a village with a population of 3,700, has over 100 nonprofit organizations. I guess I'm thinking that if we are going to have fewer volunteers, we need to have less demand for their services.

In my day job as the Foundation Administrator of the Yellow Springs Community Foundation (YSCF), I am in a good position to notice what has been going on with local NPs. The first such situation to catch my attention was when Center Stage, the amateur theater group, ceased to function and donated their remaining assets to YSCF in memory of Jean Hooper. That was a few years ago. The next was the Leadership Institute, which, after four years of running the Leadership Yellow Springs program, couldn't recruit a big enough class to make continuing the program worthwhile. I was originally the administrator of that organization. I eventually resigned and joined the board. Shortly thereafter, we took her down. What we were selling, nobody was buying. So we disbanded and turned our assets over to YSCF to be used for "leadership purposes" consistent with our mission statement. Currently, the Yellow Springs Endowment for Education is in the process of becoming a donor advised field of interest fund at YSCF. They will continue to exist as an advisory committee for the types of grants they have traditionally funded for the schools. I guess you can call this a merger. Another long-time organization is talking to us about a similar arrangement. At the Library Association, where I serve as treasurer, we are taking a different tack. We are reducing the number of board members from nine to seven and meeting bimonthly, instead of every month.

This multitude of wonderful organizations was started by forward-thinking, civic-minded villagers who have mostly either aged to where they can no longer participate, or have passed on. They could not have foreseen the decline in village population and probably assumed that there would always be folks like them to run these groups. Almost every person I know who serves on a board where I am involved, also serves on at least one other board or committee. They often serve on three or four and are rapidly approaching burn-out. Unless, we can establish a younger volunteer pool, we will have to continue with our efforts to down-size the NPs. Efforts are being made in that direction. The problem is to identify potential volunteers and put them together with volunteer opportunities that suit their talents and preferences.

One of the groups I attend as a representative of the Community Foundation is the Nonprofit Network. It is a somewhat informal group made up of top staff of village nonprofits that have staff. We have been so consumed by this discussion that we have taken the opposite tack from the Library Association and increased our meetings from bimonthly to monthly. One of the things we are doing is identifying volunteer opportunities to satisfy the community service requirement for high school students. Hopefully, by catching them early, we can instill in them the same enthusiasm for volunteerism that the founders of these organizations had.

Rainbow Over Omar Circle

I was hoping someone would send me a rainbow photo from the past few days. Ralph Keyes submitted this one.

Ralph Keyes' Retroterm of the Day: Alphonse and Gaston.

A popular comic strip a century ago featured two bowing and scraping French dandies who treated each other with elaborate deference. “After you, my dear Alphonse,” one would say, only to be told, “No, after you, my dear Gaston.” Its protagonists made such a big impression that Alphonse and Gaston remains shorthand for two people who elaborately defer to each other.

Reposted with permission: RalphKeyes.com

Bench to Nowhere: The art of annoyance

A Cool Town Toon

Click on image to enlarge.

Relevance: Art or Annoyance? Fear and Loathing in Yellow Springs

Ralph Keyes' Retroterm of the Day: in lockstep.

A century ago, many American prisoners were made to march with their right hand resting on the right shoulder of the man before them. With heads bowed, no talking allowed, they could only shuffle awkwardly in what was called a lock-step shuffle. Today we apply that term to rigid conformists. They are in lockstep.

Reposted with permission: RalphKeyes.Com

Onfroy, GunderKline set meet records at Old KTC track

Alexis Onfroy set the meet record at the Old KTC on Friday night winning the 1600 meter run with a time of 4:38.62. Teammate Jacob GunderKline won the 3200 with a new meet record of 9:59.23.

Greene County Dailies: YS boys second at Old KTC

Thermal photo from the party at the Emporium last night

In this heat generated photo I am the cool one on the left.

The hot one in the middle is Amy Lee and the luke

warm one on the right is Barb Forster.

Last night at the kickoff party for the new green business in town, netzerohome, mechanical engineer Mark Campbell was taking photos of partygoers with a heat sensitive camera that will be used to detect weak spots in a home's insulation. The principals in the business are Yellow Springers Dan Rudolf and Bob Brecha.

Chanteuse Emma Woodruff was wonderful, her voice evoking Buffy Ste. Marie, Odetta, Janis Joplin and Melanie. She definitely knew her audience. It was a good party.

There is an article about netzerohome in this week's Yellow Springs News.

Ralph Keyes' Retroterm of the Day: Cha ching

This slang term for money comes from a 1992 ad for Rally’s hamburgers that featured a fast-food guy at a rival chain who shouts “Cha ching!” every time he rings up a pricey new item. His shout mimicked the sound of old-time cash registers.

Reposted with permission: RalphKeys.com

Art or Annoyance? Fear and Loathing in Yellow Springs

Editor's note: This story has waited so long to be reported it has become Yellow Springs' very own elephant in the living room.

Almost very day for the past six months, a man has been driving to Yellow Springs from Springfield, sitting on a bench in the middle of downtown and beating on a large drum for five or six hours. Next to him on the bench is panhandler's jar filled with singles. With his persistence and seeming determination to remain drumming in front of Tom's Market in spite of mounting objections, one would think that this man has been deeply committed to playing the djembe, a deep carved African drum, for a long time. Not so. He has been drumming for only about a year, he said in a recent interview.

According to King Kenneth, the name he used to identify himself to this reporter, he has been beating his big bongo in front of Tom's for about six months. For six months prior to that, he practiced every day up in Springfield, where he lives; not in his apartment, but on a vacant lot he owns on the corner of Wittenberg Avenue and Grand Avenue. He started by banging on a white plastic garbage pail. Then he turned to practicing on the Senegalese drum he got a good deal on in a store in Dayton. He played until his hands swelled and split. After that on any day when the temperature was over 40 degrees, he said, he would drive down to Yellow Springs, a place he has been visiting for some 50 years, and plunk down in front of Tom's, usually between one and six p.m.

When asked how he learned to play, he said, "Yahweh taught me."

His speech was sprinkled liberally with Biblical references as he claimed that reaction to his playing has been mixed, but mostly favorable. The police have been called a number of times, mostly by merchants directly across Xenia Avenue, he admitted.

"The police can't do anything," he said, "because people have been drumming and making music here for a long time."

He tries to cooperate and recently has cut down on the volume and frequency with which he bangs his drum, he said.

"The lady across the street in the beauty parlor, Lori, if she comes out and gives me the thumbs down, I will stop for awhile," he said. "It was the barber shop that called the cops. One day I tried ringing a little bell. I'm just making a joyful noise to the Elohim of Israel."

He greeted passersby amiably all the while we talked.

"I believe in peace, unity and harmony," King Kenneth said. "Some people, drumming makes them happy. You can't play with anger in your heart."

Asked what he did before his current gig, he said he was "a soldier in the army of Yahweh since I was 25."

"I have always been a self-employed entrepreneur," he said. "Nobody will hire me. If they hire me, it's to set me up."

One of the things he does is sell bottled water from his lot in Springfield, where, he said, he also has two horseshoe pits and supervises the games. Some folks would rather that he continue doing that instead of drumming in Yellow Springs.

Pam Hogarty, owner of Unfinished Creations said, "It is absurd that one man can disrupt the entire downtown."

Hogarty has called the police several times and has been told that there is nothing they can do about it, as there is no ordinance to cover it.

"He's driving us crazy," she said. "I can't even open my door anymore. I can't hear my customers. Now he's showing up at noon. He used to start at 1:00 pm. I called the police again today."

According to Hogarty, the merchants are getting together to try to do something about it, possibly go to the Village Council or the Chamber of commerce.

The manager of one village business, who requested to remain anonymous, said she heard reports that the drummer is verbally abusive to young women on street. This does not surprise her.

"He has been banned from our store for harassing the young women who work here," she said. "The tourists think he is very cool. I think he is very annoying. He is not a good drummer. I like to open my door in good weather. I can't stand it. It's awful."

Several employees of nearby businesses refused to comment for this article out of fear of reprisals.

"He's always looking to start a fight," the anonymous manager said.

One man, who for years has been sitting on one of the benches in front of Tom's talking to passersby, said he cannot carry on a conversation anymore. He tries to show up when he knows Kenneth is not going to be there, he said. He also asked to remain anonymous. According to him, Kenneth claimed to have been a boxer when he was younger.

"He threatened one of the ladies here, saying she didn't know what he was capable of," the bench-sitter said.

According to the man, Tom Gray came out of the market one day and asked Kenneth to leave due to customer complaints. Gray could not be reached for comment for this article.

"Many days, especially Saturdays, Kenneth is on the bench by 11 a.m.," the man said. "He adds to the list of town characters, but the other characters' patience is being worn down. They can't hear each other, so they flee."

Priscilla Moore, owner of Mr. Fub's Tea Party, which is right next to Tom's, said she has had to field customer complaints about the noise. Personally, it hasn't bothered her too much, she said. But the weather has been cool and her door has been closed. She wonders if she will be able to keep the door open when it warms up.

"It's sort of annoying, the constant, monotonous rhythm," she said. "It's not an appropriate place to be. He is wearing out his welcome."

Lori Deal, owner of The Shop, disputes Kenneth's account that a simple thumbs down from the porch of her beauty parlor across the street quiets his drum.

"He made that offer," she said. "I tried it once and he turned it up."

According to Deal, the tourists, who don't have to listen to the drumming every day, like it, but the locals don't.

"It is an inconvenience and an annoyance to me businesswise," she said. "I like to create a certain ambience for my customers with soft jazz. I am not happy he's there."

Ralph Keyes' Retroterm of the Day: on the wagon.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century men with drinking problems showed their resolve to quit by vowing that they’d rather drink water from the wagon that wetted down dusty roads than liquor. They were on the water wagon. Those who resumed drinking fell off the wagon.

Reposted with permission: RalphKeyes.com

Business After Hours at Nonstop

Showing off the newly renovated and newly green space at

Mill Works to Chamber members and friends this evening.

The ugliest tree in town

This 75 ft Black Locust stood next to my driveway until yesterday afternoon when Tim Edwards and crew cut it down. I always thought it was the ugliest tree in town. It was also dangerous. Last September when the remnants of a hurricane came through, it dropped a 200 lb limb onto neighbor Huey Livingston's driveway. Fortunately, there were no cars parked on that spot. Had the wind been blowing the other way, it probably would have wiped out Amy's, car which was parked in our driveway. It only missed it by a few feet. We can all breathe a little easier now that it's down. It looks better, too.

Front Porch Forum

I'm not sure this could ever replace the Emporium in YS, but it is a really interesting use of the Internet on a very local level. Article on the Orton Family Foundation Website: Starksboro Gathers on Virtual Front Porch. See also FrontPorchForum.com.

Thanks to Laura Carlson for the heads up on this.

If you have anything you would like to see posted here, you can either comment on a post or send me an email.

Be Green In The Springs

It’s a Great Time to Visit Yellow Springs for events, shopping, dining and hiking.

April 17th – 3rd Friday Fling

» Magic Draft at Super-Fly Comics & Games

» Explore our distinctive shops, galleries and restaurants, many are open until 9:00 pm and later.

» The Art Space at 108 Dayton St. 6:00 - 9:00 pm; Art Opening & Reception; Dayton artist Jessica Roller exhibition “Squirrels and Squirrels”, paintings that visually explore themes about time, nature, and identity.

» Happy Hour Yoga at Yoga Springs Studio at 108 Dayton St. at 6:00 pm

» The Emporium wine tasting and live music at 6:30

» Movies at the Little Art Theatre at 7 & 9

» Folk Dancing at the Bryan Center from 7-9:00p.m. For all ages and abilities.

» Sunrise Café Martini Bar & Tapas from 9:30 pm - 2:30 am

» Beer Making Demo at Main Squeeze, 7:30 - 9:30 pm

» Dance the night away at Peach's Grill starting at 10 pm with a modest cover charge

April 18th 12:00 - 4:00 pm Earth Day Fair Bryan Center Lawn (rain space - First Presbyterian Church ) » Child-Friendly Fun - Seed Planting - Create Re-wearable T-shirts (bring an old tee to renew!)» Interesting Energy Information

April 19th Glen Helen Raptor Center Earth Day Program2:00 pm; 1075 S.R. 343

Future Events:
May 15-16 Bike Yellow Springs
Friday, Yellow Springs Grand Prix bike race starting at 5 pm
Saturday, Yellow Springs Road Race starting at 10 am

Karen Wintrow
Executive Director
Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce
937-767-2686
http://www.yellowspringsohio.org/

What is this?

The term blog is a contraction, actually more like a double contraction, of the term Web log. For many it is a personal journal; for some, a professional endeavor. Most of the big newspapers have online editions that include a collection of blogs. They look a lot like op-ed columns. For me this blog is a hobby that falls somewhere in between. It is a hobby that I hope satisfies a public need, albeit a very local public need. And because it is a hobby, by definition, I do it because I enjoy it. Like most of the hobbies from my past, if it stops being fun, I simply won't do it anymore.

I have been told that I am competing with our local newspaper. I find this hard to believe. This undertaking has no paid staff and makes zero dollars. It has never been my intent to compete with the newspaper. In fact, I have been complimentary to the paper and may even have referred some readers. My blog includes a link to their online edition and I have sometimes deferred to their in-depth coverage of an issue that I only had the time and resources to scratch the surface of. Other times, I have covered stories that, it seems, they have had no interest in covering. In a way, I am a supplement to the newspaper, a sort of front-end supplement. By that I mean, since the Internet gives me the means to provide up-to-the-minute coverage of breaking news, and the local paper is a weekly, I can break a story and tell my readers that they can expect to read more about it when the paper comes out. That's an odd way to compete.

So let me declare it right now: I am not competing with the Yellow Springs News; I intend them no harm; and I urge you to read the paper every week! If you don't have a subscription, get one right now! I believe you can even do it online. If they think I am competition, they can easily start their own blog. If I am dragging them kicking and screaming into the 21^st century, perhaps I have provided an additional service to the community. Someday, we are all going to get our news this way. And on another someday, even more advanced technology will supplant this way of delivering news. That's life in the computer age.

There was an interesting article in the online edition of the New York Times, yesterday: 'Hyperlocal' Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers. It all boils down to how to make a buck out of reporting the news. It seems the guy who has no interest in making money off something has always been a threat.

Les Groby at the Emporium's wine-tasting tonight

Local singer/guitarist Les Groby will be at the Emporium's Underdog Café in downtown Yellow Springs, tonight. Wine tasting begins at 6:30; music will be from 7:00 till 10:00. No cover charge.

Is this retaliation?

Yesterday, the Yellow Springs News published a letter from Harvey Paige that urged residents to oppose the Springfield Air National Guard Base's training mission for Dutch pilots. This morning, the F-16's have been scrambling all around the skies over town in what seems like retaliation. Paige's well reasoned and well researched letter points out that the Dutch are making their noise here, not in the Netherlands.

A couple years ago, I interviewed the Colonel-in-charge about this problem. One of the things I learned was that the Dutch version of the F-16 uses a different (and apparently noisier) engine than the American planes. They fly these planes over here from the Netherlands, refueling them several times over the Atlantic. As I recall, there are 16 of them. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them there and send one or two trainers to teach them in the skies over Holland? Or would that drive home the unpopular point that they are our still our allies in the war in Afghanistan?

Ralph Keyes' new book reviewed in YS News

Check out this week's issue of the Yellow Springs News for my review of local writer Ralph Keyes' latest book, I Love It When You Talk Retro.

More about the book, including a video, on Keyes' Website.

Borchers wins in Arizona

Local middle-distance runner Sam Borchers, now competing as a sophomore for Penn State, won the 1500 meter run at the Jim Click Shootout at the University of Arizona, Saturday. His time of 3:50.89 bested second place finisher Dylan Fitzpatrick of Arizona by .04 seconds and scored 10 points for the Nittany Lions.

Borchers is the reigning Big Ten 1500 meter outdoor champion.

Les Groby at the BRDhouse Saturday night

Local guitarist and singer Les Groby, who performs popular songs from the 1920s to the present with an emphasis on the Swing Era, will be performing on Saturday, April 4, from 8:30 until 11:00 pm at The BRDHouse Music and Arts Co., 565 South Main Street in Englewood.

"Bob and Sheila Daugherty, formerly of Dayton Band Instrument Co., have created a really nice performance space and coffee bar in their new store in Englewood," Groby writes. "It's worth seeing if you haven't been there yet. No cover charge, but tips are appreciated. This will be my second time playing there. I hope to see some familiar faces follow me there!"

http://www.youtube.com/LesGroby

http://www.brdhousemusicandarts.com/

Report: Bakari started drug ring while in YSHS

According to a WHIO-TV news report Monday, local man Umoja Iddi Bakari, an alleged drug king pin who recently committed suicide while in custody, started his drug ring while still a student at Yellow Springs High School. This came to light as a former girlfriend and alleged courier pleaded guilty in Greene County Court.

WHIO-TV: Woman pleads guilty for role in drug investigation

Dayton Daily News: Alleged Yellow Springs drug dealer's girlfriend will testify