Iconoclast View

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Story and photos by Monty Siekerman
Amy Rose and Tim Laubis are into rescues...not the usual pet rescues but they have saved a caboose and a statue from the trash heap.

And, for their engagement, Tim gave Amy Rose a rock...literally, a 16-ton rock, but more about that later.

The caboose has been on their property since 2007; the statue of a Crusade knight on a horse has been there since 2009.

Both have had considerable notice by passersby the past few years since their property is located on busy State Route 81, just east of the school.

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Dandelions...
* Eat them. Certain varieties, usually the long-stemed ones, are used as salad greens, soups, wines, and teas. When cooking, blanch them or saute them to make them more tasty.

* The roasted root is used as a coffee substitute. It's caffeine-free.

* It's one of the ingredients of root beer.

* Provides nectar and pollen for bees and some butterflies.

* Adds nitrogen to the soil.

* Dandelion is an herb used for many conditions, such as loss of appetite, upset stomach, intestinal gas, gallstones, joint pain, muscle aches, eczema, and bruises, laxative, skintoner, blood tonic, and digestive tonic, virus, cancer.

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Wednesday is known as "Hump Day" and it was literally so at ONU this week when students took turns, two riders at a time, on one of the hump-back beasts.

MORE PHOTOS AT THE BOTTOM.

A handler walked the camel around a roped off area for the bumpy ride. Steps led up to the camel's seats, so mounting the animal was easy. A long line of students awaited their turn in chilly weather, a few snow flakes in the air, probably unlike the camel's native home in the hot deserts of the Middle East. 

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And they said it was going to rain.

Not a cloud in the sky and not one disappointed Ada youngster on Saturday. The Ada Area Chamber of Commerce with lots of volunteers hosted a great way to greet spring on Saturday.

The kid-oriented event had games, face painting, a kids' railroad, opportunity to make musical instruments, check in with Santa, plant a tree and take home a tree seeding.

There was lots, lot more.

Monty Siekerman provides Icon viewers with a photo scrapbook of the event. Open the attachment below for more photos.

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It was robot football at ONU this past weekend feature the Polar Bears vs. Notre Dame.

The visitors scored the first two touchdowns making the score 12-0. The downhearted crowd soon was joyous as ONU closed the gap by scoring 10 straight points, including a 99-yard-run that brought the crowd to its feet. The final score was  ND 26, ONU 21. 

CHECK OUT MONTY SIEKERMAN'S PHOTOS BELOW.

Robots don't get broken bones or concussions, but they do break down and are temporarily sidelined. The robot football game drew 400 excited spectators...the crowd was partial to the home team.

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Fifty years ago this week Bluffton experienced the sound of “a thousand freight trains.”
That sound was the Palm Sunday, April 11, 1965, tornado.

At 9:45 p.m., it ripped across the rural Richland and Orange Township landscape. It was like no other natural disaster experienced prior or since then in this community.

Had the tornado’s path been one mile north it would have struck the Village of Bluffton. Had it been 600 feet farther north it would have hit 32 planes parked at the Bluffton Airport.

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