Do you talk a good Earth Day game? Can’t stand the trash that blows around Columbus throughout the Spring?

Earth Day of course is this Saturday and here’s your chance(s) to take action. Both Green Columbus and Columbus Recreation and Parks Department are hosting events where you can, for instance, fish in a recently stocked Linden pond or spend the day at Genoa Park visiting booths from 40 local environmentally friendly organizations while listening to bands, sipping on some cold beer and sample food trucks.

Green Columbus, a volunteer-driven nonprofit seeking to improve equitable environmental outcomes for people of Central Ohio, says they coordinate the “largest volunteer-driven service event for Earth Day in the country.” The event starts at noon at Genoa Park (on the bank of the Scioto River adjacent to COSI) and goes until 9 pm:

Sustainable Columbus and nonprofit group Solar United Neighbors (SUN) will announce the launch of the Columbus Solar and EV Charger Co-op on April 19th.  The group will help Franklin County residents, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations go solar.  The co-op is launching off the heels of the city announcing that Columbus received a Gold SolSmart Designation Award. The Award recognizes the city’s expansion of solar energy use in their jurisdictions.

"Columbus is proud to continue our partnership with Solar United Neighbors to help residents understand and realize the benefits of going solar,” said City of Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther. "Equitably transitioning to clean energy sources is critical to the Columbus Climate Action Plan, and this co-op is helping our community reach our goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050."

The co-op is free to join and open to homeowners in the greater Columbus Area. Together, co-op members will learn about solar energy and leverage their numbers to purchase top-quality individual solar systems at a competitive price.

As a film historian, when I heard a bioplay was being mounted about silver screen siren Ava Gardner at one of L.A.’s finest theaters, the Geffen Playhouse, it was “Westwood Ho!” for moi. I strapped on my running shoes and said: “Feets, don’t fail me now! Feets, do your thing!” to go see a play about The Barefoot Contessa. All the more so when I learned that Ava, The Secret Conversations was not only starring, but written by, Elizabeth McGovern.

One of the delights of L.A. theater is that our hamlet’s vast talent pool includes big and little screen talents, and what a treat to see McGovern – who was Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated for 1981’s Ragtime, plus Emmy and Golden Globe-nommed for Downton Abbey – tread the boards live and in the flesh. (At my last foray to the Geffen in 2022 I had the pleasure to see Bryan Cranston act in person in Power of Sail.)

Watching a once great nation commit suicide is not pretty. President Joe Biden does not seem to understand that his role as elected leader of the United States is to take actions that directly or indirectly benefit the folks who voted for him as well as the other Americans who did not do so. That is how a constitutional democracy is supposed to work. Instead, Biden and the gang of introverts and neocon war criminals that the has surrounded himself with have done everything that can to inflict fatal damage on the economy through rash initiatives both overseas and at home. A spending spree to buy support from the bizarre constituencies that make up the Democrat Party base while also fighting an undeclared war in Europe have meant that nearly two trillion dollars has been added to the national debt under Biden’s rule, a debt that was already unsustainable at nearly $30 trillion, larger than the United States’ gross national product. Plans to cancel student loan debts will add hundreds of billions of dollars more to the red ink.