A Greener and More Peaceful Earth

Dennis Kucinich, 60-ish white guy in a suit at a podium holding up a copy of the Free Press

Ohio’s environment and the planet would be more peaceful and green if Dennis Kucinich was in charge. That was his message when the former Cleveland mayor, former U.S. Congressperson and former presidential candidate spoke Saturday, April 1 at Columbus’ 5th Annual Move to Amend statewide conference. Kucinich’s keynote was entitled “Ending Corporate Personhood and Money as Speech.” He touched on several environmental and social justice issues that could be changed if the Move to Amend movement was successful in passing a Constitutional amendment to reverse several U.S. Supreme Court decisions during the past century and thereby firmly establish that corporations are not people and that money is not free speech.

Kucinich held up the March issue of the Columbus Free Press as he referred to Harvey Wasserman’s article “Ohio’s Crumbling Nukes Face Judgment Day” about the attempt to have taxpayers bail out Ohio’s nuclear power plants. He described Free Press Senior Editor Wasserman as “one of the foremost citizen activists anywhere on nuclear issues.”

Movement comes together to Un-Trump the Budget

Check out below the list of people who have come together on this!

MAN OF LA MANCHA Theatre Review

A Noise Within’s uplifting Man of La Mancha is arguably one of the best shows in town. Based on Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th century novel Don Quixote, this musical with book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion and music by Mitch Leigh, La Mancha became one of Broadway’s immortal masterpieces, with the 1965 production winning five Tonys (including Best Musical and for its peerless star, Richard Kiley), running for 2,328 performances, with four revivals on the Great White Way.

 

La Mancha’s well-deserved success is due, in part, to its exquisite songs that are so beautiful this music could teach larks how to warble. But the music, lyrics and plot also perfectly captured that sixties idealism which subsequent musicals, such as Hair, would likewise come to express. Not long after Dr. King’s lofty “I have a dream” speech, Don Quixote sang about his “Impossible Dream”, wherein the aging, noble knight pledges:

 

THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF COMEDY [ABRIDGED] Theater Review

As its title suggests, The Complete History of Comedy [Abridged] is an incomplete chronicle of what makes people laugh and those jesters who deliberately induce said laughter, from ancient times until today. Starting with a riff on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show monologues telling theatergoers to shut their cells, where the exits are, etc., there is an endless stream of skits, standup, slapstick, one-liners, cream pies, double entendres, in-jokes, topical jibes at those Three-plus Stooges in the Trump regime and much more, as the jaunty Zehra Fazal, Marc Ginsburg and Mark Jacobson bring the annals of amusement to life.

 

Events on April 6

Red words on black saying No Gorsuch counter rally

Anti Gorsuch Counter Rally
Thursday, April 6, 1-2pm
Ohio Statehouse
Trump administration is calling for a pro Gorsuch rally at the Columbus state house tomorrow at noon. That means he is worried about the confirmation and our strong counter-rally will send Portman a strong message!

Micro-plastics, the EPA, Fracking: You Choose! with Dr. Lanno
Thursday, April 6, 7:30-8:30pm
Backstage Bistro, 503 S Front St, Columbus, Ohio 43215

An Open Letter to the Cleveland Indians

Poster with photo of Native American on left side and big cartoony smily Indian face that is Chief Wahoo the mascot of the Cleveland Indians

 My first recollection of  attending a Major League baseball game was seeing the great Mickey Mantle and the legendary New York Yankees play the Indians at the cavernous Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

Decades later, the Cleveland Indians and their iconic logo, Chief Wahoo, are an inextricable part of who I am. I was there for the bat day crowds of 80,000, freakish, exhilarating anomalies in otherwise forgettable 100-loss seasons. I was there for the final game at the old “Mistake on the Lake,” and smuggled in a bottle of champagne so we could toast to the last time we would ever have to see our team play at the old dump, built atop, well, an old dump. I was there to see President Bill Clinton throw out the first pitch at virgin Jacobs Field in that thrilling inaugural game. After hearing rumblings for years about the team possibly relocating, walking into that pristine, gorgeous new ballpark that fine day gave me comforting assurance that one of the few things in life I really cared about was around to stay.

Kossuth Street Garden is a neighborhood gem

Young black boy smiling and holding a very large zucchini on his shoulder, standing in a garden

In a world rife with 24/7 breaking news alerts, chaos in politics and fearful citizens, a tonic can be the healthy foods coming from our community gardens in Columbus.

Kossuth Street Garden has been operational since 2007, bringing social justice in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables and community involvement to a food desert on the near south side of Columbus. This is an area just south of Nationwide Children's Hospital that is third in the nation in black infant mortality rates and is in transition from blight to hope.

The site has a rich history. At one point it was the site of a slaughterhouse in this former predominantly Jewish neighborhood. Men and women liberated from Nazi concentration camps walked to work into the kosher sections of the slaughterhouse. It then became a produce warehouse and which was torn down in 1996.

Your browsing history is for sale

Round circle logo of national security agency with eagle in the middle

Last year, the FCC passed rules that restricted internet service providers, both home and mobile, to only  being able to disclose customers’ online habits on an opt-in basis – you would have to explicitly say they could, versus having to find some obscure sub-page on their web site to opt out. But like so many other protections for everyday people, those have gone out the window, giving your ISP the right to sell everything they can gather about you to the highest bidder.

Every web site you visit, from shopping sites to torrent hosts to medical resources, will now be up for sale, for no other reason than because these corporations don’t think they’re profiting enough from those $50-a-month service packages they’re selling you. They’ll know about your medical conditions. They’ll know what porn you watch. They’ll know if you’re questioning your gender or sexual orientation, and if you’re a teenager doing it on your parents’ computer, they’ll show your parents ads based on that, and no amount of browser history clearing will save you.

Socially Just Dining: The Guild House

Brussels sprouts (front left), grilled Portobello mushroom (front center), toast (front right), kale and roasted vegetables (rear center)

The Guild House, located in the Short North is certainly THE most vegan friendly of Cameron Mitchell’s variety of fine dining restaurants in Columbus, just let the team know you are vegan. The Guild House gets veganizing their tantalizing artisan culinary American cuisine right.

You will be delighted as Carlo, a dining room manager, JP, their executive chef and severs such as Alexa, effectively embody their objectives of genuine hospitality, and ensuring their culinary guild delivers “a lot love in every plate.”

Donald Trump Should Love Hemp

A stack of hemp that looks like straw and some mules in old-fashioned black and white photo

Donald Trump should love hemp. That’s right, you know, hemp is terrific. Just terrific. It’s going to make a tremendous amount of money for people in this great country. Win big. Really big.

… or at least that’s what we’d like to hear him say.

Trying to find the new administration’s position on hemp and hemp alone is like parsing hemp stacks for chemical pesticides and herbicides. Non-existent.

But Donald Trump should love hemp anyway and here’s why.

First the necessary primer. Hemp and its more popular cousin marijuana are related, but still quite different. Both emanate from the cannabis plant, but like, say, the familiar family dog, they are distinct. Canines can be bred to be giant Great Danes or tiny Chihuahuas, gentle and kind Labrador Retrievers or strong and aggressive Pit Bulls. By analogy, the hemp plant can be grown to be strong and fibrous for cordage that sails ships, or molecularly balanced for the oils that treat seizures in small children. Believe me, this plant is incredible.

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