Hebron Crossroads 8-18
“Village In Service To The Community”
by Jeff Gill

Next Friday the staff of the village will hold the second Hebron Blood Drive in the lobby and council chambers of the municipal complex. On Aug. 23, starting at 2:00 pm you can pay your water bill and leave behind a pint of blood, too!

Along with some community volunteers (like your columnist), the Red Cross will set up a blood donation center right there on West Main, and while you’re welcome to drop in between 2 and 7 pm, you can call and confirm a time slot at 928-2261.


If you feel a call to some community service, but don’t want to open a vein, mark Sept. 11 on your calendar. Most of us don’t need to be reminded of this first return of the fateful day, but many of us are wondering what to do to mark the day.

Some will be up at OSU-N for the county mayors’ prayer breakfast, and a number of commemorations and observations are offered, such as a moment of silence at 8:45 am at the time of the first hijack-attack on the World Trade Center, or other prayerful events.

Hebron Christian Church has offered to co-ordinate a day of service for 9-11, starting at noon after some of these other memorials have ended.
In brief, we’re all going to get together and paint the village fire hydrants, using the reflective yellow the department prefers, and simply adding a simple “In Memoriam 9-11-01” around the base. A staging area will greet and orient teams, give them paint and maps marked with their set of hydrants, and offer refreshments through the day and music during the evening, closing with a prayer time focused on thanksgiving and commitment.

Hebron village council, during their Aug. 12 committees meeting, gave their unanaimous and enthusiastic support to this plan for community service, open to anyone who can help for an hour or eight on 9-11-02.

You’ll read more updates as we refine the plan in the next few weeks, but mark your calendar now, and join your fellow citizens as we “Respond To The Call” in our town, and salute those who have responded to the call of duty, honor, and country in New York, Washington, Afghanistan, and in many places around the world.


Of course, you were expecting to see some Hartford Fair results and Eastern Star tales this week, but all in good time . . . the details of the fair I’m still assembling, but it does sound as if the 4-Hers from Stablemates and Prime Producers have plenty to be proud of, from horses to Black Anguses to spotted hogs. Stay tuned!

Waxing eloquent over plants last week, I completely skipped over those insect signs of summer’s close: monarch butterflies and cicadas. In my backyard, the milkweed is certainly attracting numbers of the orange and black fluttering friends, and the sound of cicadas was almost deafening last Monday when I left the Licking Memorial Hospital parking lot to walk around Octagon State Memorial (aka Moundbuilders Country Club on a “golf-free day”).

Long undisturbed turf and trees like beeches or hickory are favored homes for cicadas in the years between their generational appearances, and while their Edsel-like grillwork glared up out of the grass all around the Octagon, it only takes a few to show up and make plenty of racket all around Hebron.

New landscaping, like the high bush blueberry planted as habitat for monarchs by Jenny (Cook) and Kent Herreman, is not cicada-friendly, but attracts huge amounts of hardy late summer weeds. Not weeding or mowing are good reason to look forward to summer’s end, but then again I didn’t have to go to Lakewood band camp down at Marengo last week, either. If you like what Jenny & Kent have done along the Main St. side of Hebron Christian, you should sneak down to the employee entrance at LMH and see what Jenny does with her day job. A beautiful sea of flowers, but I’ll bet the end of weeding sounds good to her right now, too.

Wrapping up, if you haven’t seen the new Buckeye Outdoors, you’d better get up there before it expands again and moves everything about. Your faithful columnist suspects there’s a story behind that rhino, and I’d better go get it before Larry steals it for his back porch.
And while our family is eagerly anticipating some new shopping choices in the area, let me note that not only does our Cardinal grocery have the best deli around (which won’t change no matter what opens), but they have the best price on Starbuck’s coffee around!

Jeff Gill is pastor of Hebron Christian Church and former monarch-tagger out at Dawes; if you have signs of the season to report, call 928-4066 or e-mail disciple@voyager.net.