his is a story primarily about corrupt practices by the Burlington City Council, in its headlong determination to force a neighboring city to be the base for a weapon of mass destruction, the nuclear capable F-35 fighter-bomber (in development since 1992, first flown in 2000, still not reliably deployable in 2018, at a cost of $400 billion and counting). Yes, the premise itself is corrupt: Burlington owns the airport in South Burlington, so South Burlington has no effective say in how many housing units Burlington destroys in South Burlington to meet environmental standards for imposing the quiet-shattering F-35 jet on a community that doesn’t want it and won’t benefit from it.

President Trump says – and the Supreme Court affirms – that we are “a nation of laws,” but no one questions “who” is making those laws.  It takes a people’s movement to overturn unjust law and advance rights. And Ohioans are launching just that: a Community Rights movement to protect and enforce rights to clean air, water, and local community self-government.

It is a movement born out of necessity in this state. The oil and gas industry owns state legislators, and local government officials carry out state directives under threat of being sued and facing bankruptcy. In Pennsylvania, even the judiciary is punishing lawyers defending communities from fracking harms.

As fracking, pipelines, compressor stations, and wastewater injection wells inundate communities, it’s clear to residents they will find no remedy in the EPA, ODNR, and certainly not in their legislators.

Friday, February 2, 2018, 7:00 – 9:00 PM.  Game Night!  Join us for a game night to have fun and raise funds! 

Indeed, a very near and dear friend has declared: my death is imminent, be prepared. Hospice forthwith. All good things must pass. Great things will always be remembered. Now what the hell are you going to do?

Acorn Bookshop hasn't just been a great little bookstore to me over the years – it's been one of my favorite places on our troubled Earth.

I have a favorite rock I visit and sit upon in Puerto Rico every time I go, to watch the ocean breathe and roll at me and the sun turn orange before it blinks its eye goodbye for the night.

Between that rock and the Acorn Books towering history section or its art shelves, when I'm not home laying on my sexy couch that never denies my ass, those are my two favorite haunts.

"Bookstore George" Cowmeadow Bauman, owner and proprietor, occasional tuxedo-ed in-store showman and raconteur, my favorite Connecticut Yankee (even though he's from Pittsburgh), sat me down shortly after the New Year in the store's back-office. He gave me the news: the Acorn was closing.

Nearly 50 years of uranium enrichment have brought serious radioactive contamination to what was once lovely countryside at Piketon, Ohio. The misidentified Portsmouth Nuclear Site (PORTS) at Piketon is operated by the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE.) The DOE unbelievablely brought reprocessed high-level radioactive waste to the site and ran it through the enrichment buildings for years, contaminating PORTS with plutonium and other transuranic elements – some of the most dangerous entities on earth.

Cleanup of the site has begun, but it has uncertain funding and may not be completed for years. The DOE is violating its own requirements by refusing to perform an Environmental Impact Statement to determine the necessary depth of cleanup.

The Southern Ohio Diversity Initiative (SODI) was designated by the DOE as an Ohio nonprofit Community Reuse Organization in 1997. The purpose of SODI is ‘to advance, encourage, and promote the industrial, economic, commercial, and civic development of Pike, Jackson, Ross, and Scioto Counties.” They are looking to bring new industry to the PORTS site.