Advocates for the federal health care law are celebrating the start of the countdown toward October 1 of next year, when 1.5 million uninsured Ohioans can start shopping a health insurance marketplace called an exchange. But there’s still a lot of uncertainty about who will set up and run that exchange.

Advocates for the law say Ohio has a lot of low-income people without internet connections or unlimited cell minutes, and a lot of people who don’t read, speak or understand English well, and many will never have had insurance. Kathy Levine is with Ohio Consumers for Health Coverage.

Poor Will's Almanack for the third week of Early Fall.

A cardinal sang a little after 7:00 this morning, sang off an on for about an hour. Crows came and went. Robins started peeping their migration signals outside in the honeysuckles about 8:00. When I walk the alley after breakfast, I heard starlings whistling and chattering toward downtown. Sitting in greenhouse working in the middle of the morning., I listened to the tapping of a yellow-bellied sapsucker on the siding of the house, an old friend returning from spring on the way back to Tennessee.

Poor Will's Almanack for the second week of Early Fall.

When the day’s length falls below 12 hours this week, then the sugar beet, pear, cabbage and cauliflower harvests commence in the Great Lakes region. In Wisconsin, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington State, the cranberry harvest begins, berries darkening in the cooler weather.

As autumn leafturn accelerates all along the 40th parallel, the deciduous trees lose all their leaves in northern Canada. In New England and in the Rocky Mountains, foliage colors are approaching their best.

Milkweed pods open in the roadsides when late hosta bloom comes to a close in town and the great pink mallows die back in the wetlands.

A federal study of 18 potential aquatic links between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds says none of them are likely pathways to the lakes for Asian carp.
 
The U.S.  Army Corps of Engineers released the study Friday. It's among reports the agency is producing as it develops recommendations for preventing Asian carp and other invasive species from crossing between the two watersheds.
 
Experts say the easiest way for Asian carp to attack the lakes is through a navigational canal near Chicago that helps connect the Mississippi River with Lake Michigan.