Last month, Ohio’s lieutenant governor Mary Taylor made headlines by not getting the endorsement for governor from her state party and subsequently putting them on blast for doing so. In a speech madeto the Ohio Republican Party’s State Central Committee on February 9, Taylor – who is up against Ohio’s attorney general Mike DeWine for the gubernatorial nomination following months of reshuffling within the party– did not hold back. She opened her remarks by calling the venue “Mike DeWine’s living room,” thanked the press for coming so they could televise DeWine’s “coronation,” and went on to slam his campaign for its “air of inevitability” as well as the Ohio Republican Party for “all of the good ol’ boy bullying and backroom deals that have gotten us to this point.” By the end of her speech it was clear Taylor wasn’t actually gunning for the endorsement, nor did she want it in the unlikely event she received it.

A thriving community where wisdom prevails is the Columbus Metropolitan Library’s vision and mantra. But this doesn’t apply anymore to the Main Library’s next door neighbor the Grant Oak apartment complex, a quasi affordable dorm for college students attending CCAD, Franklin University and Capital University. And much like many lower-income peoples who were living downtown (ie, Bollinger Tower), they too are set to be thrown out into the cold.

Grant Oak, seven red-brick buildings built in the 1940s, was sold in January by the library’s Board of Trustees to the city’s pet developer the Pizzuti Companies for $1.26 million even though the Franklin County Auditor’s Office valued the property at $3 million. Thus the library, which could always use the money, shorted themselves roughly $1.75 million in taxpayer’s dollars.

True, Pizzuti Companies had the inside track because they were recently under contract to oversee ten other library construction projects, but $1.75 amounts to a lot of books and other services that could be utilized by the numerous collegians and high schoolers who use the libraries to further themselves.

Will the #MeToo/Time’s Up movement have a lasting effect on Hollywood? Too soon to say, obviously, but it’s already had a profound effect in the short term. In the weeks and months leading up to the March 4 Academy Awards ceremony, several men have seen their fortunes fall thanks to the film industry’s long-overdue revolt against sexual harassment. To recap:

▪ Harvey Weinstein: The mogul whose alleged serial abuse sparked an entire movement has been ejected from both his own film company and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which means he’s been uncharacteristically absent from this year’s Oscar competition. 

▪ Kevin Spacey: The actor was deleted, post-production, from All the Money in the World after being accused of sexually assaulting underage males. Making a terrible situation even worse, he issued a kind of non-apology apology combined with the ill-timed announcement that he’d decided to come out as a gay man. (Christopher Plummer was brought in to reshoot his scenes and won an Oscar nomination for his efforts, making him perhaps the only male celeb who’s benefited from the movement.)

Since Pepper Potts in the very first Iron Man movie in 2008, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has given us solid, well-written women – in supporting roles. And when it comes to feature films, that’s where it’s kept them. Even the testosterone-saturated DC Comics movies managed to give Wonder Woman a movie of her own – and one that stood out from the mediocrity of the rest of them – before Marvel Studios did the same for any of their women.

But there are signs that they’re slowly getting the idea: The fans of the MCU deserve movies about women, too, and not just as friends and teammates and love interests to white guys played by men named Chris.

We’ve gotten a couple good woman-led TV shows out of the MCU so far – the Captain America spin-off Agent Carter and the Netflix exclusive Jessica Jones – and the Wasp gets to share title billing for Ant-Man and the Wasp, but until recently there was only one upcoming movie on their slate with a solo female character. That would be Captain Marvel, which is already filming with Brie Larson as the title character, scheduled for next year.

On January 23, 2018 in Kentucky a 15-year-old male student brought a handgun into Marshall County High School and killed two students and injured eighteen others. On Valentine’s Day a 19-year-old male student brought a AR-15 rifle to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida and killed 17 students and teachers.  The next day in West Palm Beach a Port St. Lucie 14-year-old male brought two guns to school after making threats to “shoot up” the school. It’s reported that his mother insists the threat was a “joke.”

On February 19, five days later, a Florida Forest Hill High School 18-year-old student was charged with bringing a knife to school. He also had a gas mask and three days before had referred to the Las Vegas mass shooting to his classmates. On February 20, six days later, an Ohio Jackson Middle School seventh grader brought a gun to school and shot himself in the bathroom.