With its third production of the season at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion LA Opera remains on a roll. Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco is another eye-popping extravaganza, with director and designer Thaddeus Strassberger’s optically opulent sets that not only recreate and evoke ancient Jerusalem and Babylon during biblical times (like D.W. Griffith did for his 1916 masterpiece about man’s inhumanity to man, Intolerance), as well as simultaneously suggesting 19th century Italy. In particular, Milano’s famed Teatro alla Scala, where Nabucco premiered in 1842.

Friday, November 10, 7-10pm
Ohio Art League, 400 W. Rich St.
Keep Wayne Wild’s Traveling Art Exhibit, Off The Trail, A Conceptual Walk In Wayne National Forest, Comes to Columbus!
Join us for our opening reception on Friday 11/10!
Keep Wayne Wild (KWW), is a group of dedicated volunteers working to protect Wayne National Forest (WNF) from predatory gas extraction activities. KWW works to highlight the beauty and intrinsic value of Wayne National Forest. It is well known that people will protect what they love, and to that end, we have created: “Off the Trail- A Conceptual Walk in Wayne National Forest.” It is our goal to showcase all that is wild and visually powerful about Ohio’s only national forest.

This time, the “the fire and the fury” of American mass murder erupted in church. Twenty-six people were killed, including children, one only 18 months old.

How do we stroke their memory? How do we move forward? This is bigger than gun control. We should begin, I think, by envisioning a world beyond mass murder: a world where rage and hatred are not armed and, indeed, where our most volatile emotions can find release long before they become lethal.

As I read about the shootings at Sutherland Springs, Texas, and studied Devin Patrick Kelley’s troubled bio, I suddenly found myself picturing a coal miner trapped in a collapsed mine. Here was a man trapped inside himself: buried in his own troubles, disconnected from his own humanity and, therefore, everyone else’s humanity. A man in such a state is utterly disempowered.

And in this country, the path back to empowerment — for God know how many people — begins with owning a gun.

Wed., Nov. 8, 7pm
Bexley Public Library, 2411 E. Main St.
In honor of Native American Heritage Month, Marti Chaatsmith, Interim Director of Ohio State University’s Newark Earthworks Center, will speak about her work developing relationships with Ohio's Historic American Indian Tribes. In collaboration with the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, Marti initiated a tribal outreach program to re-introduce tribal governments to sacred places in Ohio and to enlist the support of American Indian scholars. In the Quiet Reading Room.

A big chunk of American democracy is riding on Tuesday’s Virginia election.

The outcome could turn on how well Democrats protect the right to vote….and the right to have the votes accurately counted. 

If Democrat and anti-Trump activists do not work to guarantee everyone’s access to the polls, they could very well lose the election.  The GOP has perfected the use of Jim Crow tactics to prevent from voting countless black, Hispanic and other ethnic citizens by electronic and other means.  The Democrats have been weak at best at protecting those votes. 

They can also expect a “last minute surge” for Republican candidates, followed by “glitches” in electronic voting machines, especially in rural areas where election boards are controlled by Republicans.  If experience in states like Ohio, New Mexico, Wisconsin and elsewhere are any indicator, ballots will be “found” for the Republicans and “lost” for the Democrats in key swing districts.  These could easily determine the outcome.