On August 15, 2020, the LIFE Food Pantry will host our annual Student Life Shop, back to school event at Prince of Peace Church in Loveland.
Last year, with help from our community, we gave away over 165 backpacks. It’s so rewarding to see the excited faces on the children as they prepare to go back to school.
Each registered LIFE Food Pantry client may sign up their school-age child for this event. Every student will receive a backpack filled with grade-appropriate supplies along with personal care items and school spirit wear.
Registration takes place in July. Please refer to our website for registration details.
For those of you interested in donating, a list of needed supplies is also posted. Lifefoodpantry.org.
Thanks again to everyone who has helped to make this event a success!
Sharon Raess is the Event Co-Chair of the annual Student Life Shop. Contact ger at lifefoodpantry@yahoo.com.
Loveland, Ohio – Based on forecasted weather conditions, (light winds, weak high pressure system, low percentage of clouds), the Southwest Ohio Air Quality Agency is issuing anAir Quality Alert for Saturday, June 20.The Agency expects levels of ozone in the “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” range.
Air Quality Forecast for 06/20/20
.
Do Your Share and Take these precautions:
• Take the bus, carpool, bike or walk instead of driving
• Refuel your vehicle after 8 p.m.; do not top off when refueling and tighten the gas cap
• Avoid idling your vehicle
• Combine trips or eliminate unnecessary vehicle trips
• Keep your vehicle maintained with properly inflated tires and timely oil changes
• Avoid use of gasoline-powered lawn equipment on Air Quality Advisory days
• Avoid use of oil-based paints and stains on Air Quality Advisory days
• Never burn leaves or other yard trimmings
• Always burn clean, seasoned wood in outdoor fire pits, fireplaces and wood stoves
• Do not use fire pits or fireplaces for non-essential home heating on Air Quality Advisory days
• Conserve electricity
Ground-level ozone is a health hazard because people breathe it.It is formed through a complex set of chemical reactions involving hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides and sunlight on calm summer days where the weather may also be warm and humid. High levels of ground ozone affect the breathing process and aggravate asthma in chronic sufferers. The young, elderly, and those with lung diseases are especially susceptible. (Source Wikipedia)
Cincinnati, Ohio – The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is located in downtown Cincinnati, on the banks of the Ohio River.
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center announced June 12 it will reopen July 24. The news comes after what has already been a three-month closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Freedom Center works toward its opening date, it is taking steps to ensure guests’ next visit will be safe and comfortable.
“The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is a place of understanding and dialogue, where we confront our past in order to build a better, more equitable future and the climate we find our country in now makes our mission especially vital,” says Woodrow Keown, Jr., president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. “We’re working diligently to reopen our museum in a safe and responsible way so that we can welcome our community home and work together for inclusive freedom.”
Among the steps the Freedom Center is taking to keep its guests and staff safe upon reopening is instituting timed tickets, which they are encouraging guests to purchase online. Timed tickets will help manage crowd capacity. The Freedom Center is using data on the average length of visit and updated building capacity according to social distancing guidelines to determine the number of tickets sold each hour. In the weeks after reopening, the Freedom Center will reevaluate ticket levels to adjust accordingly. Signage and floor markings will further help guests maintain the proper six feet of distance between groups. Additionally, theater seating has been altered to give guests six feet between each other. However, the status of the 300-seat Harriet Tubman Theater has not been decided, though the museum is hopeful it can reopen in a limited capacity.
Extensive cleaning protocols will ensure the building is cleaned and sanitized multiple times per day, including particular attention to high touchpoint areas like doors, elevators, handrails, countertops and restrooms. The Freedom Center is currently working to make all restrooms and hand sanitizer stations touchless. The Freedom Center is also amending operating days and hours so the building can undergo deep cleaning before opening each day and after close. For the safety of guests and colleagues, masks will be worn by Freedom Center staff at all times and they are asking guests to please do the same.
Due to their high-touch nature, some museum experiences will be altered or closed completely. Many of the museum’s interactives will either be made touchless or updated with foot pedals. Featured exhibition Motel X – which focuses on the combatting human trafficking through awareness and education – is also being updated to remove touch-based interactives but has been extended through September 7. The Rosa Parks Experience, an immersive virtual experience commemorating the Civil Rights icon’s historic demonstration on a Montgomery bus, will not be available upon reopening.
The Freedom Center will continue to share updates on its reopening procedures in the coming weeks.
ABOUT THE NATIONAL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD FREEDOM CENTER
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center opened in August 2004 on the banks of the Ohio River in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. Since then, more than 1.3 million people have visited its permanent and changing exhibits and public programs, inspiring everyone to take courageous steps for freedom. Two million people have utilized educational resources online at freedomcenter.org, working to connect the lessons of the Underground Railroad to inform and inspire today’s global and local fight for freedom. Partnerships include Historians Against Slavery, Polaris Project, Free the Slaves, US Department of State and International Justice Mission. In 2014, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center launched a new online resource in the fight against modern slavery, endslaverynow.org.
NPR reports that Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) is withdrawing her name from consideration as a Vice-Presidential candidate, “calling on the former vice president (Joe Biden) to pick a woman of color.”
Loveland, Ohio – I met local singer/songwriter Javan Pourvakil last Saturday while I was trying to find Joe Timmerman so I could interview him about the river cleanup he had organized. ([Interview] Joe Timmerman Founder of “A Neighborhood Cleanup”)
In that interview, I mentioned how popular the Little Miami River had become for young people this Spring.
Javan and several friends were on Cones Road on the East bank of the river – hanging!
I was rushed trying to find Joe, so Javan and I barely had a chance to introduce ourselves, but I just couldn’t resist asking if I could record him singing and playing. He shared one of his songs he has been working on.
Loveland, Ohio – A “Community Prayer Event” left Kiwanis Park in the West Loveland Historic District at 7:30 PM this afternoon to walk through the neighborhood and across the Co. Thomas Paxton Bridge to Nisbet Park to pray.
Shane Harden a Co-lead Pastor of Branches Church in Miami Township said that he was inspired by Loveland resident Desmond Gault leading walks in Loveland after the death of George Floyd.
“We wanted to continue to bring our community together to pray.” In a release last week Harden said, “We’ll be praying for a lot of things…like for the Floyd family, for peace in Minneapolis and around the country, and for justice.”
The walks through Loveland neighborhoods organized by Desmon Gault lasted for seven days and were in response to the death of George Floyd who died in police custody on May 25 in the Powderhorn community of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
While Floyd, a Black man was handcuffed and lying face down on a city street during an arrest, Derek Chauvin, a white American Minneapolis police officer, kept his knee on the right side of Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds; according to the criminal complaint against Chauvin, 2 minutes and 53 seconds of that time occurred after Floyd became unresponsive.
David Miller is the Editor and Publisher of Loveland Magazine
by David Miller
Loveland, Ohio – Joe Timmerman seems to be awfully young to be so old-school, but he’s both. I got reacquainted with him underneath the home-team basket at a winter basketball game in the Chuck Schmidt Gymnasium at Loveland High School. A Senior at the time, Joe had also been taking photos of the action and he came over and sat down on the floor with me and introduced himself,
He wanted to know if I would publish some of his photographs in Loveland Magazine.
His old-schoolness was when he described his approach to using film cameras and in very creative ways.
‘Liiife’ is within the borders of this black and white double exposure. I used Ilford HP5 Plus film when shooting these two photos — Laine’s face and a tree in my backyard — which share a single exposure. When I put the roll of film in my camera, I wanted to capture 24 portraits, underexposed in studio lighting, to fill the roll. Then, I chose to reel it back in to the point where the first exposure returned to the beginning, and capture 24 nature/lifestyle photos to randomly share a place on the film with the original portraits. The overarching risk factor of losing some personal pictures was left behind after developing the film and seeing what had come to life in the process. – Joseph Timmerman
I was fascinated by his love of negative film and how sometimes he would be very deliberate in shooting a roll of 35 mm negatives in a way that each captured portrait could be used as the foreground for another image. The second image, a double exposure, involved Joe re-loading the already exposed roll of negatives back into his camera and then exposing a second image over the top of each of the portraits he shot on the first go-around.
The results Joe showed me were a wonderful experiment in photography because of the hit/miss nature of composing a second image over the first. There is also the mastery of the correct exposure for each frame. Many of the double-exposures were taken of his girlfriend on their walks into Historic Downtown Loveland from his home. The final products have a rather ghost-like quality.
I had given up film as soon as I purchased my first digital camera to use for Loveland Magazine reporting. It was out of the necessity to cut costs and be able to have the results almost instantly on my laptop and into a story. From my perspective after so many years of traveling to a camera store to buy the film, traveling back again to have the film developed and prints made, and back again for pick-up – Joe is old-school.
Joe Timmerman smiles outside the Cintas Center after he graduated from Loveland High School in 2019. Timmerman is studying photojournalism at Ohio University
I also discovered that night under the basketball hoop that I had known Joe since he was very little but didn’t recognize him. We once attended the same church. I was inspired by Joe that night and did some of my own experiments.
Joe’s old-schoolness even involved making his own paper from scratch for a photo project during his first year at Ohio University.
Joe’s old-schoolness is also how he will credit the way his parents raised him for his concern for the immediate environment around him. I think it more than just that though and appreciate another old-school quality he possesses – Joe is very humble always giving credit to others and he is generous with a “Thank you.”
Joe founded “A Neighborhood Cleanup” in 2019. The inspiration was walking in the East Loveland Nature Preserve with his mother and seeing so much trash left by other visitors. He says that growing up his father taught him to always pick up trash when he sees it, especially in his own neighborhood and the places he loves. Last August A Neighborhood Cleanup cleaned the nature preserve and another spot he loved, the rope swing on the bank of the Little Miami just north of Nisbet Park in Historic Downtown.
Joe has been back to cleaning the rope swing area this spring and last Saturday expanded the cleanup to include the river from Nisbet Park to the rope swing on the opposite river bank – along Cones Road.
An interesting note is that Loveland’s most famous old-school photographer Nancy Ford Cones once lived at the Roads Inn Farm on Cones Road when she took her famous Loveland photos, Her favorite subjects were family and friends she posed on those same river banks that Joe and friends are now restoring to their intended beauty. The Loveland Musem Center has a nice collection of Cone’s photos and many of them have an ethereal, ghost-like quality similar to Joe Timmerman’s double exposures.
This interview took place along the riverbank Joe and volunteers were cleaning last Saturday afternoon.
Joe inspires his own generation, those to come, and those beyond.
“Like” and “follow” A Neighborhood Cleanup on FaceBook and you will be able to support the efforts and know when the next group cleanup is planned. You might also contact Joe and offer to donate garbage bags and gloves as a way of helping.
Here is a link to Joe’s photography website where you can read more about him and see some of his inspiring art.
This is the rope swing seen from the opposite side of the river that A Neighborhood Cleanup worked on last Saturday. As you can see, the river has become a very popular spot that many young people call home. Joe Timmerman and his supporters cleared the robe swing area of trash on June 2.
George Floyd (Photo from George Floyd’s profile on Facebook.)
Miami Township, Ohio – Loveland Magazine reported yesterday that members of the Epiphany United Methodist Church plan to stop traffic by kneeling in the roadway in silent prayer during rush hour on Friday.
Google Map
Their plan is to kneel and pray for 8:46 minutes at the intersection of Branch Hill-Guinea Pike and Loveland-Miamiville Roads at 6 PM, the amount of time Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck before he died, “…and the many victims before him who have lost their lives to injustice.”
This is the Kroger/Walgreen/United Dairy Farmers intersection.
Loveland, Ohio – Calling all student-athletes, coaches, parents, and fans! The Eastern Cincinnati Conference (ECC) recently announced that they will be going through somewhat of a league transformation. In addition to adding three new schools, Little Miami, Winton Woods, and Lebanon, to the ECC for the 2020-2021 sports season they are also looking to add a new conference slogan.
The ECC stated that they would love to bring more awareness and reach to the conference’s brand so the conference decided to have students, coaches, and fans submit slogan ideas. The ECC selected the top 4 slogan ideas and posted them on the ECC website so that anyone and everyone could vote on their favorite slogan! Below are the top 4 slogan selections.
1. Engage. Compete. Conquer
2. Excite. Challenge. Compete.
3. Eastern Cincinnati Conference … top-level competition with community-based values.
4. Engagement. Competition. Community. We are the ECC!
The Slogan Contest allows voters to submit their slogan selection as many times as they want up until Friday, June 26th, 2020. The new slogan will be released in early July. If you would like to participate in the Slogan Contest click the link below to submit your vote!
Website
Hours: 24 HR
Testing Site Type: Emergency Room
Appointment Required: Yes
Doctor Referral Required: Yes
Notes:
TriHealth: If you do not have a physician, you can visit the closest TriHealth Emergency Department for evaluation. If you meet clinical criteria, COVID-19 testing can occur onsite. For those who DO have a primary care physician, you should contact you.
“Testing is one of the main components of our work toward ending the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to interim Hamilton County Health Commissioner Greg Kesterman. “Testing and then isolating positive cases while performing extensive contact tracing is the road map to ending this pandemic. As testing becomes more widely available, we want to make sure the public is aware of how to find testing locations,” Kesterman adds.
The site lists testing locations throughout Hamilton County, along with the requirements and direction for accessing testing at each location. As more testing becomes available, more sites will be added to the list.
If your organization is performing COVID-19 testing and would like to be added to this list, contact michelle.altman@hamilton-co.org.
Each registered LIFE Food Pantry client may sign up their school-age child for this event. Every student will receive a backpack filled with grade-appropriate supplies along with personal care items and school spirit wear. 
![[Video] Listen to local singer/songwriter Javan Pourvakil](https://lovelandmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/maxresdefault-8.jpg)
by David Miller
![[Interview] Joe Timmerman Founder of “A Neighborhood Cleanup”](https://lovelandmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/maxresdefault-6.jpg)
by Cassie Mattia
The ECC stated that they would love to bring more awareness and reach to the conference’s brand so the conference decided to have students, coaches, and fans submit slogan ideas. The ECC selected the top 4 slogan ideas and posted them on the ECC website so that anyone and everyone could vote on their favorite slogan! Below are the top 4 slogan selections.
