The changes keep coming at the newly minted Springs Market.
Since Aug. 2, dairy and frozen foods manager Erica Rodriguez-Wyant has taken on the role as general manager, overseeing the 30-some employees and keeping Yellow Springs’ longtime downtown grocery store up and running.
Rodriguez-Wyant’s promotion is the latest development at Springs Market — formerly Tom’s Market — since the Gray family sold the store to the Yellow Springs Community Foundation earlier this summer for an undisclosed amount.
The Yellow Springs resident has worked at the grocery for the last year, and most recently, has been working under the wing of professional grocer and interim general manager John Mabbott, whom the foundation hired to help transition the store to new ownership.
Rodriguez-Wyant comes to the position with a background in management — most recently having run a Starbucks, then the C-Shop at Antioch College — and as a mother of three, and all the nearly 30 years of management that entails.
“I’m just so excited,” she told the News earlier this week. “I love this job, the people I work with, the people that shop here.”
It must have been that passion that kept her going the morning of her News interview. A couple hours earlier, before the sun had risen, Rodriguez-Wyant single-handedly unloaded many hundreds of pounds of produce from the day’s delivery truck. Though her denim coveralls were drenched by the end, she still had to unlock the store by 7 a.m. — grocery sales wait for no one.
“Sure, it’s backbreaking work sometimes, but it’s worth it — I just really love this work,” Rodriguez-Wyant said with a grin.
In an email, Kumar Jensen — another longtime local and a project manager for the YS Community Foundation — said Rodriguez-Wyant rose to the top of the nearly 20 candidates in the search process owing to her “knowledge of the store, strong relationships with staff and the community, work ethic and expertise as a problem solver.”
“Erica is an incredibly fast learner, dedicated to her work and her team, and has demonstrated time and again that she is a reliable and dependable leader,” Jensen wrote. “We are truly excited to be able to hire from within and are looking forward to continuing to invest in and support Erica as the store leader.”
Interim manager Mabbott concurred.
“You don’t need to be religious to see her as a blessing,” he told this reporter in aisle four. “She’s a grocer at heart and she loves this town. What else is there?”
Though she has a few days before officially hitting the linoleum and running as manager, Rodriguez-Wyant said she hopes to implement a few needed changes at the grocery store — most of which entail shoring up communication between the store’s departments and staffers, and “figuring out a better work flow,” as she put it.
“So, that means minimizing the ‘who do I talk to’ questions when an employee isn’t sure what to do,” she explained.
By and large, Rodriguez-Wyant trusts her managers to make the right calls.
Behind the deli, Boar’s Head meats and cheeses have been recently phased out in favor of Amish cuts from Holmes County, Ohio-based Troyer Market. Also, paninis are returning to the deli counter imminently, Rodriguez-Wyant said.
For the meat department, she said she and the foundation have been on the lookout not for a new in-house butcher, but rather a local meat purveyor who could drop off smaller and fresher deliveries — a move that will supplant the pre-packaged cuts that the store began selling a few years ago.
An emphasis on local fare is also the priority in the produce department. Rodriguez-Wyant said area growers such as Orion Farms, Peach Mountain Organics and Guided by Mushrooms will always have shelves in Springs Market for their fruits, veggies and herbs. Produce manager William Morgan added that he’s hoping to secure even more produce from village farmers and gardeners, and encouraged any grower to reach out.
Rodriguez-Wyant also noted that she aims to round out the staff a little more: She said she’s looking to onboard a few more cashiers, her replacement manager for the frozen foods department and, understandably, a part-time position devoted entirely to unloading delivery trucks.
“And, of course, we’ll have more and more specials,” Rodriguez-Wyant added. “Right now, for instance, we have a dozen Amish eggs — normally for $7.49 — on sale for $3.99 for a dozen. Also, there’s sweet corn up front.”
Running a small-town grocery isn’t all bushels of corn and discount eggs, though. Rodriguez-Wyant cited the store’s temperamental equipment as a considerable foe. About two weeks ago, on July 15, Springs Market’s 15-door freezer in aisle six went out — the temperature rose to 71 degrees overnight and the store lost more than $13,000 in product.
It was a fluke and the fault of no one, Rodriguez-Wyant said, but still something she desperately hopes to avoid in the future with the aid of live temperature sensors.
Like any good modern grocer, she’s taken to checking cooler and freezer temps from her phone before falling asleep.
Though she and other staffers had to pitch quite a bit of spoiled stuff from that unfortunate malfunction, Rodriguez-Wyant said the village isn’t in jeopardy of losing its crown grocery store amid all the transitions and changes.
“Springs Market isn’t going anywhere,” she said confidently. “It’s changing, so give us a little grace, but it’s here to stay.”
Mabbott offered a few encouraging figures as evidence: He said the store is averaging 600 customers per week, and the typical basket in the check-out lane contains an average of $18 in store product. That’s just a couple dollars shy of the average basket in 2019 — the store’s most recent heyday by Mabbott’s metrics.
Under Yellow Springs Community Foundation ownership, Springs Market continues to chart a path toward the potential development of a co-op ownership model. The latest stride toward such a business model is the establishment of a local volunteer-based steering committee, which the News will detail in a write-up in next week’s issue of the News.
There’s nothing quite like an hour at the hair salon: Whatever you might have been when you stepped through the door — stressed, tired, locks a little longer than you might like — after some time spent having your hair washed, trimmed and styled, you invariably walk away feeling a little new.
It’s an experience local resident and hair stylist Jason Laveck believes everyone should be able to access, forming the basis of his recently launched free haircut, pay-what-you-can and pay-it-forward fund initiative.
Beginning this month, Laveck has committed to providing two free haircuts each month from his chair at In Salon, located at 120 Dayton St., and donations to a fund he’s established will cover additional free haircuts. When his schedule permits, he’s also offering pay-what-you-can appointments.
The effort is Laveck’s own, rather than an In Salon program, and appointments are first come, first served, with a waitlist maintained as donations arrive or new openings become available.
In speaking with the News this week, Laveck said he won’t ask for any documentation from folks who might be in need of the free service — just asking will be enough.
“This is the honor system,” Laveck said. “If you say you need a free haircut, then you need a free haircut.”
Laveck said the new initiative grew from the response to past pay-what-you-can haircut events, as some people continued asking when another would be held, and others contacted Laveck on behalf of those who could use the service. With the new school year fast approaching, he also thought of families unable to add haircuts to back-to-school expenses.
“There’s a need in our community, as small as it is, and as disproportionately wealthy as it is,” Laveck said. “There’s still people here who need these things.”
Laveck has been cutting hair for several years and became a licensed hairstylist in January 2025. As a newer stylist, sometimes with fewer clients than his more seasoned salon partners, he said he considered his open hours an opportunity to do some good.
“I’m still sharpening my skills and everything,” he said. “But I’ve been working on haircuts since before I went to hair school. … So I thought one way that I could use these time slots that aren’t filled is to meet this need.”
As of Monday, July 27, the free haircut fund had received $195 in donations. That’s enough, Laveck said, to cover several haircuts beyond the two he’ll provide himself. He’s set aside time on Wednesdays for the appointments, and those who sign up can look forward to the full salon experience: shampooing, scalp massage, a cut and styling and detox treatments when needed — time spent being cared for.
Laveck said he recently tended to a mother of three who had gone more than a year without a haircut. He gave her a shag cut that worked with her hair’s natural wave, then watched her response when she looked in the mirror.
“She was just so ecstatic that she got this haircut,” he said. “I think it gives people confidence and helps them feel better about themselves.”
It’s confidence, he added, that might carry someone into a job interview or simplify a single parent’s pre-work-and-school morning tasks and rituals. In all cases, Laveck hopes it will offer a fresh view of the person in the mirror.
“Whatever it means to each individual is going to be different,” he said. “It’s going to be a matter of perspective, but it’s going to help. It’s going to help someone in a multitude of ways.”
Laveck said he grew up in Springfield, but his mother worked in the village throughout his childhood. On sunny summer days, she would drop him at Gaunt Park Pool during her lunch break, and when it rained, he’d browse music at Dingleberry’s or comic books at Dark Star.
“I didn’t live here, but I walked around here and enjoyed it, and I felt safe here,” he said.
After years of visiting, Laveck made the village his home in 2020. He said arriving during the pandemic initially made it difficult to settle into the village socially, but working behind a salon chair and listening as neighbors talked through pieces of their lives helped him form new bonds.
“I found it a great point to connect with people here, people I would have never connected with,” he said.
Laveck, who also engages his creative penchant as a photographer, said he fervently believes in using art to give back to his communities; he’s spent a decade organizing “Portraits of Hope,” offering free portrait sessions to cancer survivors and their families, and at press time was preparing to host “Portraits of Hope” sessions at Ellis Park.
Likewise, just as Yellow Springs has offered him a community, he said he hopes he can offer something back via the art of hairstyling: an ordinary, comforting exchange that allows someone to enter without having to justify their circumstances and leave refreshed, having received the same attention as any other client.
“I see it as a goal to … do what I can for this small community that I’ve found comfort and safety in,” Laveck said. “I want others to feel that comfort and safety that I’ve had here my entire life. … I want people to see that there’s still good out there — even if it’s just in an hour-long haircut.”
To request a free or pay-what-you-can haircut, or to contribute to the pay-it-forward fund, contact Laveck via email at jasonsnipsys@gmail.com, message @jasonsnips on Instagram or contact Jason Snips on Facebook.
Because the initiative is his own, Laveck asks that interested folks contact him directly rather than via In Salon.
Village Artisans will present its 42nd annual Art on the Lawn Festival on Saturday, Aug. 8, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., at the corner of Limestone and Phillips streets, behind Mills Lawn School.
More than 75 artists and artisans from Ohio and beyond are expected to gather for the day to display and sell their original creations, including ceramics, drawings, fiber art, garden art, glass, jewelry, leatherwork, mixed media, paper craft, paintings and photography. Food vendors and live music will complement the juried artist booths.
This year’s featured artist is Amy Noffsinger, a multifaceted glass artist from Out of Bounds Creations in Camp Dennison, Ohio. Noffsinger won Best of Show at last year’s Art on the Lawn.
The 2026 event will take place rain or shine, and visitors are asked to refrain from bringing dogs and other pets.
Village Artisans is a cooperative art gallery in Yellow Springs. For more information, call 937-767-1209 or go online to http://www.villageartisans.blogspot.com or the co-op’s Facebook page.
I am an artist. If you, dear reader, only know me through my writing, you may not have known that about me, but it’s true. In fact, most of my time and creative energy isn’t spent on words. It’s spent on images — images that tend to be, as my own artist bio politely puts it, “intense.”
It’s the sort of artwork that isn’t always what people want to see, the sort that quickens the pace of gallery patrons. There are lots of artists like me making art like this, and I would like to take a moment to speak for them and, hopefully, make the case for slowing down and engaging with this work, even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts.
Art, for me at least, is not a place for logic. Pictures are not where I share my complete thoughts and coherent arguments. My images are built from raw emotion, unfiltered feeling and shameless vulnerability. They are the memories that have no words, a look through the unshaded window of my soul.
They take a lot of effort to make, and the results can be, as my best friend has tactfully told me, “dark.”
It is an interesting experience exhibiting this work. I remember very clearly my first art fair. Two out of every three people walking by would take one look at my booth, immediately turn their heads and walk off in search of something more appetizing, searching perhaps for something with more lilies and fewer screaming mouths. That didn’t surprise me or offend me.
Flowers are beautiful. They take skill to render effectively, and such things can bring genuine joy to a person. My booth, on the other hand, was packed with pictures that dealt explicitly with addiction, trauma, self-injury, anorexia, sex, gender dysphoria, etc., and I thought, “Well, you know, maybe this stuff isn’t for everyone.”
But not all of them ran away, and the people who did stop to look stopped and stayed. They stayed and looked for a long time. They talked to me, they bought pieces from me and genuinely engaged with the work in a way that I wasn’t expecting.
It was a very gratifying experience for me, and it was that remaining third of the people, that one in three who didn’t turn away, that got me thinking more about the value of “intense” or “dark” art.
I’ve had many opportunities since that day to share my work and speak with the people who find something there to appreciate. Of course, they have their own varied and individual thoughts about the art, but it seems to come down to them all simply having seen something of themselves in the images.
That’s wonderful to hear as an artist, especially as a “dark” artist, because the need to be seen is exactly why I invest so much of myself into creating this art.
That brings me to finally addressing the other two-thirds of the people, the people who turn away. I understand well the impulse to turn from something that is frightening, but I think that those who do so are doing themselves a disservice.
If you, dear reader, are someone who finds themselves running from the shadow in search of the reassurance of the day lily, let me try to bring you to the dark side, if only for a moment.
Disturbing artwork is an offering. It is the artist reaching out to share a piece of themselves with another person, and it is a precious gift indeed. Every single one of us experiences pain, grief and loss. Every single one of us has been scared. Every single one of us has walked through shadow, but not all of us are willing to stay there, in those painful moments, for the time it takes to turn them into art.
When I look at a piece of art, I may spend five, maybe 10 minutes, with it before moving on. Ten minutes thinking about what I am seeing and what the person who created it must have been feeling.
But, as the creator, I have spent up to 200 hours with a piece. That’s dozens of hours sitting with the memory and the emotion of it. That is the gift of the dark artist: a willingness to sit with that pain and to share it so that another person may step one foot into the shadow for just a moment, see themselves there and know that they are not alone. So that they can step into the pain of their own memory, and maybe for the first time, see something beautiful there.
To be clear, I’m not disparaging anyone’s taste. I do my best not to art-shame, and I’m not expecting anyone to redecorate their home based on my musings.
I worry that this entire essay may read like a bit of branding for an artist who is seeking more attention for her work. Perhaps it is that, but call it what you want — intense, dark, frightening, grotesque — I genuinely believe that we are losing something when we turn away from the horrible in art.
We are training ourselves to turn from the pain of our fellow humans, and worse than that, we are turning away from that part of our own selves that hurts, that cries, that feels unsure or lost. That is often the very part of ourselves that needs most to be seen.
So please, my dear reader, the next time you are out in the world experiencing artwork, fight that first impulse to turn away from the art that is, as a recent viewer of my work called it, “difficult to look at.”
Instead, spend a few intense moments with the darkness. Walk into it with your arms open, because what is waiting there for you isn’t a monster. It is you — you in all your fragile humanity. The you who has been waiting a long time to be seen, to be acknowledged and embraced.
That isn’t the sort of gift you get every day, and it definitely isn’t one you should turn away from. Stay. Look. Find that lost you. Maybe offer them a flower. Hold them tightly for a few minutes and let them know that they haven’t been forgotten.
*The author is an artist and writer living in Yellow Springs. You can follow her work at http://www.mynameisiden.com
Plans to prepare the Pine Forest section of Glen Forest Cemetery for burials led to extensive discussion at the Monday, July 20, meeting of the Miami Township Trustees, as board members debated the cost of adding pine needle ground cover to the site — and more broadly, how decisions about Township cemeteries should be made.
The Pine Forest, intended as a natural burial area for cremated remains, was first presented in 2024 and is designed to hold more than 300 plots. Last July, trustees voted 2–1 to allocate an additional $5,000 to complete the section, bringing its projected total cost at the time to about $23,000.
Trustee Marilan Moir voted against the allocation; at the time, she cited concerns about the scale of the planned expansion and long-term maintenance costs. The Township currently maintains two traditional cemeteries, two natural burial areas — including Oak Grove, established in 2022 — a columbarium plaza and a memorial scattering garden.
Trustee Chris Mucher, who developed and has overseen much of the work on the Pine Forest and other cemetery projects, said at the time that the new sections are valuable public assets and that existing plot sales had helped fund their development.
Questions about cemetery planning and spending continued this March, when trustees reviewed cemetery expenses line by line and discussed how projects should be budgeted, tracked and approved.
On Monday, Zoning Administrator Bryan Lucas presented trustees with a list of work he recommended before the Pine Forest could open. That work included clearing weeds and redefining the Pine Forest section’s boundaries, adding pine needles as ground cover and determining how to use fencing materials already purchased.
Lucas said the marked burial area encompasses about 40,000 square feet, and that estimates from several vendors called for 700–800 bales of pine straw to refresh areas that had previously been covered and establish a thicker layer in sections that had not.
The estimates varied, but several totaled between about $7,500 and $14,000, depending on the number and type of bales and whether delivery was included. Lucas recommended a Franklin-area vendor that would allow the Township to begin with one delivery of 465 bales for $4,725, plus an $85 delivery charge, and then decide whether a second delivery was needed.
Trustee Lori Askeland initially moved to proceed with that first delivery, with Moir seconding.
Mucher objected to the number of bales recommended, saying he had cleared and covered most of the section himself last year with the equivalent of about 50 bales. He said the pine needles were intended to form a relatively thin covering, rather than the one-and-a-half- to three-inch layer on which the vendor estimates were based.
“It was just a covering,” he said. “It wasn’t meant to be a blanket.”
He also said he believed spending more than $10,000 on additional pine needles would not be “a fiscally responsible way to finish off this cemetery,” particularly when other proposed landscaping and fencing had not moved forward.
Moir responded that the board had decided collectively not to install 40 ornamental grasses or extend fencing across the back of the section, but had not voted to halt maintenance. She said the question was not whether the Pine Forest should be completed, but how the board authorizes and oversees that work.
The exchange grew into a larger disagreement about Mucher’s long-standing role in cemetery planning. Mucher said the other trustees had removed his ability to make decisions about the Pine Forest and given the work to a Township employee.
“My ideas have been removed from this consideration,” Mucher said.
“No, we’re considering this as a board,” Moir responded. “That’s the difference.”
“Making it collaborative is not taking it away,” Askeland added. “It’s saying this is a full responsibility of the whole board, including new people who need to be brought up to speed with clear information and with budgets that are written out.”
Mucher said he had carried out much of the work planning and launching cemetery expansions in the past because other trustees had not offered to help develop or maintain those expansions. Moir acknowledged that work, but said she believes the cemetery has reached a point at which it needs a management plan that does not depend on the knowledge or labor of one trustee.
“All three of us aren’t going to be here forever,” she said. “We have to reckon with the fact that this needs a management plan, both financially and physically.”
After additional discussion, the trustees settled on using the materials already available — about 40 bales of pine needle cover — before making a purchase.
“It sounds like we are making consensus to get those weeds cleared, use what we’ve got, see what that seems to amount to and then make a decision about the additional needed pine needles,” Moir said.
Lucas is also developing proposed guidelines and updated pricing for the Pine Forest and other cemetery services, with an anticipated completion date of Aug. 15; he proposed a tentative date for beginning plot sales of Sept. 1.
MTFR approaches full staffing
Trustees voted unanimously to hire Ross Higbee and Teresa Himes as part-time firefighter/EMTs at $19.05 per hour.
“With the hiring of those two individuals, I’m pretty comfortable we will be at full staff,” Miami Township Fire-Rescue Chief James Cannell said, noting that MTFR is currently maintaining three-person staffing on more than 90% of its shifts — a goal established by Cannell upon his hiring last year.
MTFR recently began a new schedule under which full-time personnel work 48 hours followed by 96 hours off. Cannell said the transition has been smooth and that department employees have generally responded favorably. The department had completed 742 runs so far this year, averaging more than 3.6 calls per day.
Cannell also reported that a new ambulance is now expected to arrive in mid-August, about a month earlier than previously anticipated.
Zoning fees updated
On the advice of Zoning Administrator Lucas, trustees approved changes to the Township’s zoning fee schedule. A permit for a new accessory dwelling unit, recently added to the Township’s Zoning Resolution, will cost $200; permits for decks, fences, pools and ground-mounted solar installations, which were previously included in the $100 accessory-structure category, will cost $50.
The trustees will not meet Monday, Aug. 3, because the board will not have a quorum. Its next regular meeting is scheduled for Monday, Aug. 17.
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