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The first step toward upgrading the Yellow Springs skatepark is to bring together the various stakeholders of the park, including skaters, neighbors and neighboring businesses, according to Village Manager Mark Cundiff at the Aug. 16 Village Council meeting.

At the Aug. 16 Village Council meeting Village leaders expressed enthusiasm for a new American Municipal Power, or AMP, solar energy subscription package, and asked Village Manager Mark Cundiff to prepare an ordinance to enable the Village to sign on to the project.

All-day kindergarten at Mills Lawn Elementary School and flexible credit opportunities at the high school are two of the many changes Yellow Springs School District students can expect when classes resume on Wednesday, Aug. 25.

In 1855 the First Presbyterian Church was founded in Yellow Springs when Nancy Love, tired of going by horseback in bad weather to churches in Clifton and other nearby towns, successfully convinced her husband Robert to start, with other locals, a Presbyterian church here in town. Five years later, the members, for $5,000, built the church that still stands on Xenia Avenue today.

John David Romer died peacefully after a short illness Wednesday, July 21, at his home in Welland, Ontario. He was 67. David was a Yellow Springs native, son of John and Ruth Romer, long-time local residents. He attended the Antioch School and was vice-president of the Bryan High School graduating class of 1960.

Recently, members of the New York City-based Faul-Real Theatre Company came to Yellow Springs as part of an Antioch College–Nonstop Institute collaboration. They were here for a week, to stage Oedipus Rex “as Sophocles intended”…

Zach McHugh and Lois Miller won this year’s 26th Annual Village Fun Run. McHugh, a Yellow Springs High School junior, beat a hasty path around the Yellow Springs course to improve from a third-place finish in 2009 to win the event in 11:21. Team Captains Mitchell Brickson and Gabe Amrhein placed second and third overall.

Naida Sutch Gillespie died Tuesday, Aug. 17, while asleep in her living room. Naida’s education included high school in Lake Township, Ohio; a bachelors degree from Taylor University in 1945; a masters from Oberlin Graduate School of Theology in 1953; a M.Div. degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1961…