Layh & Associates turned 35 this year. Founded by clinical psychologist and longtime villager Jack Layh in 1980, the multi-specialty mental health practice shows no signs of slowing down.

Yellow Springs residents can expect significantly higher utility rates in the new year. At its Nov. 2 meeting, Village Council voted 5–0 to raise water rates by 30 percent and sewer rates by 15 percent beginning on Jan. 1, 2016. The vote was the ordinance’s second and final reading.

The best response, which isn’t actually a response, is to live as wisely and deeply as you know how. Each of us has one life, and it’s ours to live. The French have a phrase for this, naturally. It’s “vivre la vie,” living life.

Any gambler will tell you the luck is in the draw. For the Yellow Springs Arts Council, the luck is in the draw, paint, sculpt, compose, cook — any of the host of creative activities in which local artists excel.

Community members and staff from Glen Helen, Tecumseh Land Trust, the Trust for Public Land and Antioch College celebrated the permanent preservation of all 1,000 acres of the Glen on Sunday, Nov. 8.

What is it about space and death? Our human lives are so small, so brief. We’re mayflies born to live one day, or one second, or not even one, in cosmic time.

Last Thursday’s Candidates’ Night revealed broad agreement and pockets of dissent among local candidates for this year’s two competitive races, Yellow Springs Village Council and Miami Township Board of Trustees.

The first time I headed to the polls, I was six. It was 1980, a watershed year in national politics, and my elementary school held a mock-contest among the three candidates.

What’s an education? And what’s an education for? The fall issue of the Antioch Review, now on the stands, takes up these tightly related questions in its lead piece, “The Educated Heart.”

Budget season is in full swing. At its last two meetings, Oct. 5 and Oct. 20, Village Council reviewed the proposed 2016 Village budget, which, according to Assistant Village Manager/Finance Director Melissa Vanzant, is “in better shape than in the past,” thanks in part to “more conservative” spending and proposed utility rate increases that, if passed, will bring new revenue to the Village’s enterprise funds.