Beauty and trance and grace--are you getting near the amount you need?

As Keith Richards has said, everybody needs some trance in their daily lives. Same for the other two artistic virtues. Our impoverished inner worlds are thirsting, dehydrated as they are of these not-so abstract elements. I am very sure of this, adamantly so. Wanna fight about it, Zippy?

I didn't think so.

The other day I was at my usual haunt, Luck Brothers coffee house, waking up around noon, gazing out the window as the house blend was working its stimulative magic on my consciousness. Todd the Lad had a mostly brilliant mix playing as he usually does, partially instrumental, some vocals, mellow...when it happened.

I became part of the sound painting.

There’s not a single independent record store on High Street across from campus. Thus the apocalypse for off-campus has officially arrived even though the bell has been tolling for the previous two decades.

True, the internet has caused record stores to almost go the way of the dinosaurs, but to think there’s not a Used Kids, a Johnny-Go’s, or a Magnolia Thunderpussy between Lane and Chittenden says a lot. High Street has become antiseptic, or better yet, a septic tank of corporate bull poop. And a Target is on its way, whoop-de-do.

Ohio State and their non-profit Campus Partners got to work in 1995 following the tragic murder of OSU student Stephanie Hummer and they should be commended. But you may remember how Campus Partners said they wouldn’t demolish High Street’s independent and quirky vibe.

Now their mission to clean-up High Street is approaching an end stage. It’s clear however “clean-up” was a veiled way to describe how they wanted to also corporatize campus. In essence, make it more appealing to rich parents and their trust-fund children who are considering OSU for higher education.

In order to shed some clear illumination on what is really at stake in Alabama's December 12 US Senate Election, I am submitting this pair of letters from two key Alabamans regarding Roy Moore. Alabama may be a long way geographically from California, but these two letters brings us closer together!

The first, from the first accuser of Roy Moore going back to sexual manipulation when she was 14 and he was a 32 year old Assistant District Attorney, recently ran in Alabama.

The second, that of his former Law Professor, Guy Martin, was also published his in Al.com, the largest newspaper media group in Alabama, on Sept. 21, just before the Alabama Primary. We acknowledge the high principles of the journalism displayed by Al.com, in their originally publishing these two letters, and thank the editors there for their courage and their integrity in leading this effort, and making clear, as they put it recently, that they don't want to be "on the wrong side of History."

Letter from Leigh Corfman to Roy Moore:

How did fentanyl get into a Franklin County jail cell and kill Brent Gibney? His parents want an answer to this question after their son Brent Gibney, 29, died at Grant Hospital on October 4. He had been found unconscious “in his cell” at the Franklin County Jail, according to the Franklin County Sheriff’s office.

Debbie Gibney, Brent’s mother, told the Free Press that the Franklin County Coroner’s office confirmed to her that her son died of a fentanyl overdose. “They told me had two and a half times the lethal dose of fentanyl in him,” she said.
Grant Hospital medical records obtained by the Free Press document that Gibney’s urine test came back positive for fentanyl.

Gibney’s parents were never contacted about their son’s death by county jail officials. In a statement to the Free Press, Debbie claimed that “We actually heard from another inmate about his passing.” She said, “The Franklin County Sheriff’s Department is not saying why or what killed him,” though the Franklin County Sheriff’s Official Offense Report noted that “unknown white powder” was in Gibney’s cell.

he most dangerous thing about the North Korean missile launch is the reaction of the unprincipled, under-informed, white identity extremist sitting in the Oval Office. If there’s a nuclear war coming out of this manufactured “crisis,” the buck will have stopped with him. Not that President Trump doesn’t have other fools egging him on to risk global chaos and destruction in response to an imaginary, inflated threat from an impoverished nation of 25 million people. Sadly, this is not a surprising development after more than sixty years of aggressive US behavior toward North Korea.