Columbus City Charter Issues 6, 7 and 8 were the subjects at an Oct. 6 debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Metropolitan Columbus. But the matters in dispute at the public event, held at the Whetstone Branch Library, involved only Issue 7. If approved by the voters on Nov. 4, Issue 7 would change Columbus’ procedures for citizen-initiated ordinances, referendums, charter amendments and recall elections. .

Michael Curtin, retired from The Dispatch after 38 years and now a state representative for District 17 in the Ohio House of Representatives, was pitted against Jonathan Beard, president and CEO of the Columbus Compact Corporation. Beard is also chair of the Columbus Coalition for Responsive Government, which in recent years has made several tries to place initiatives about city issues on the Columbus ballot.

“When somebody asks, ‘Why do you do it to a gook, why do you do this to people?’ your answer is, ‘So what, they’re just gooks, they’re not people. It doesn’t make any difference what you do to them; they’re not human.’

“And this thing is built into you,” Cpl. John Geymann testified almost 44 years ago at the Winter Soldier Investigation, held in Detroit, which was sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. “It’s thrust into your head from the moment you wake up in boot camp to the moment you wake up when you’re a civilian.”

The cornerstone of war is dehumanization. This was the lesson of Nam, from Operation Ranch Hand (the dumping of 18 million gallons of herbicides, including Agent Orange, on the jungles of Vietnam) to My Lai to the use of napalm to the bombing of Cambodia. And the Winter Soldier Investigation began making the dehumanization process a matter of public knowledge.

Tyshawn Hancock’s family wonders whether or not he was targeted for death by probation officers trained to kill because of his affiliation with the sovereignty movement. Here’s what happened the last day of his life.

If someone skated during the past 27 years, Donnie Humes probably skated with and/or caught them pulling a trick that made their week.

Mr. Humes has been putting out at skateboard zine Smelly Curb since 1987.

Smelly Curb and Old Skool Skateboards are putting on a Halloween Curb Contest on October 26th at the Westerville Skatepark. Issue 44 of Smelly Curb is also on the way.

Humes laughed when I inquired about the content of Smelly Curb Issue one, replying. “The First Issue was really corny. Think about you being awkward and 17, thinking you know everything.”

We were standing on a hill above the Dodge Skate Park bowl on the West side of Columbus, that is part of Dodge Recreation Center. This is the skateboard wing of the Dodge Park Rec Center which Humes helped open and run from 1990-1995.

During these formative years of Columbus skateboarding, Humes and his buddies were pulling grinds on curbs around town on their way to punk shows at Staches.