Volunteers key to recycling effort

Written by Aleen Ratzlaff Tuesday, 29 June 2010 16:45

Standing on her wooden stool, and with some assistance from her father, Tim, Mia Richmond tosses a tin can into the receptacle at the Hillsboro Recycling Center. Volunteers Tim and Mindy Richmond of rural Hillsboro and their children are helping to support free recycling as an option for Hillsboro residents.

“My main thing is that (the recycling center) stays,” said Tim, assistant professor of chemistry at Tabor College. “I really want there to be a free way for us to recycle in Hillsboro.

“I don’t want to have to pay my waste haulers to take my recycling away. I know things are being recycled, and I like to volunteer so it will still be there.”

Every third Saturday of the month, the Richmonds, along with Pat Bartel, work from 9 a.m. to noon.

Recycling regulars have probably met Tim, Mindy and daughters Mia, 5, and Carmen, 2. They have worked at the center for nearly two years...

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Hillsboro concert will showcase native’s Nashville dream

Written by Don Ratzlaff Tuesday, 29 June 2010 16:42

Lehigh native Mandy Ratzloff (right) and band mates Sarah Fleener and Miles Bosworth will perform as Third Wheel Tuesday from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday at Little Pleasures Coffeehouse in Hillsboro. THe show marks Ratzloff's return to Marion County after moving to Nashville in 2006. Mandy Ratzloff isn’t where she aspired to be professionally when she left her Lehigh home four years ago to pursue a country-music career in Nashville, Tenn.

But that doesn’t mean she isn’t happy where her life has taken her to this point.

“It’s great where we are now,” Ratzloff said last week as she and her three-member band, Third Wheel Tuesday, anticipates a homecoming concert at Little Pleasures Coffeehouse in Hillsboro Thursday evening (July 1).

“We really just want to pay the bills with music one day—and not ever have to work again,” Ratzloff said with a laugh. “Being famous would be great, but we really just want to get our music out to a large audience and have everybody hear what we have to say.”

And...

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Fancy times

Written by Hillsboro Free Press Tuesday, 22 June 2010 18:28

About 30 children turned out for a “Fancy Nancy Tea Party” hosted June 15 by the Hillsboro Public Library. The event, part of the summer reading program, was based on the “Fancy Nancy” book series written by Jane O’Conner. Photos clockwise from the top:

• Delora Kaufman (left), children’s librarian, and helper Brittany Schale, pour punch for the guests.

• Millie Sechrist helps Colton Rempel create a wrist corsage out of colored paper and pipe cleaners.

• Gracelyn Just models her completed coursage.

• Kaufman reads another book from the series to her young party-goers...and some moms.

Family parakeet hobby not really for the birds

Written by Don Ratzlaff Tuesday, 22 June 2010 18:26

David Loewen holds one of around 100 parakeets he cares for in the backyard of his Hillsboro home. His father, Dave, started the enterprise some 30 years ago. This hobby definitely is for the birds—but also for the fascination of the son and father who raise and take care of them.

Daves’ Budgie Barn is the name David Loewen and his father, Dave, have given the colorful parakeet enterprise that flutters in the backyard of their home at 116 S. Wilson in Hills­boro.

The Loewens say they have more than 100 birds in the 8-foot-by-8-foot shed they built about four years ago when son David officially assumed responsibility for the birds from his father.

“I was kind of phasing out because nobody was showing interest in it,” said Dave, who started raising parakeets more than 30 years ago after having one as a pet. “Then, all of a sudden, (son David) wanted it, and I figured, well, if he...

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