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8 GUIDE TO YELLOW SPR INGS | 2021– 2022 makes some 95 percent of all book plates sold in the United States, and does around $250,000 of business a year. Then there is Dr. Paul Webb, a pioneer in the devel- opment of space suits. “The intellectual climate of Yellow Springs is good for anybody in an unusual business like mine,” Dr. Webb explains. “Most places, an innovator is regarded as an odd ball. Here we fit into the picture.” Meanwhile, as our town’s business babies grew up, Mor- gan’s second theory proved correct; the creative elements he had promised streamed into Yellow Springs. Philadel- phia industrialist Samuel Fels founded his Institute for the Study of Human Development here. Charles Kettering built his Photosynthesis Research Center in Yellow Springs, and the U. S. Air Force established anthropological and behavior research projects here. Even the traditional artist’s garret, when transplanted to Yellow Springs, often turned into a flourishing business. Painter Bob Metcalf devel- oped a nationwide clientele in stained-glass windows. Artist Read Viemeister’s studio grew into an eight-man industrial design firm. Sculptor Seth Velsey called on his knowl- edge of stone to develop a granite surface plate (essential equipment in laboratories doing precision work) that proved superior to the tradi- tional iron precision plate in general use. His granite plates, with a surface variation of not more than ten one-hundred- thousandths of an inch, are now used by most of the big manufacturing companies. At the center of village life is our prize-winning newspa- per, The Yellow Springs News, which goes into 90 percent of our homes each week from a garage converted into a printing plant with a cluttered, countrified editor’s office. Editor Kieth A. Howard — Kieth’s father took seriously McGuffey’s rule of “i before e except after c” — covers village doings, editorializes on world affairs and prints letters to the editor without fear or favorit- ism. This is the most-read column, in which practically everybody in town old enough to write, condemns, praises and blows off steam. One letter recently expressed a suspicion that our village was oversupplied with radicals, egg-heads and crackpots. “I seldom agree with any- thing Yellow Springs people do or say,” it adds, “but I hope the day never comes when any- body manages to suppress the most interesting little town in America.” Amen! ♦ A flash mob showed up at the June 2011 Street Fair. Another flash mob was organized a few weeks later as the village vied for the title of “most fun town” in the country. | PHOTO BY AARON ZAREMSKY Continued from page 7 100 Corry Street • 937-767-2823 Open by Appt. Wed.–Sat., 1–5 p.m. 5 Clay St., Clifton, Ohio YS Kids Playhouse YSKP’s Traveling Tabletop Theater is a mobile puppet theatre that will bring contemporary and traditional manifestations of puppetry to areas and neighborhoods in Yellow Springs and surroundings. Get in touch today and join us in the audience or on the stage! www.yskp.org www.facebook.com/theyskp 937-545-1478 f lemo.jf@gmail.com