Feature

The murder trial of retired Franklin County Sheriff Deputy Michael Jason Meade began in Franklin County Common Pleas Court after jury selection on January 30, 2024 – the day that would have been the 27th birthday of his shooting victim, Casey Goodson, Jr.  

No one, including Meade and his colleagues, denies that Goodson died from six bullet shot wounds to his vital organs from Meade’s Daniel Defense AR-15 automatic rifle that released six bullets with one trigger pull. The bullets passed through a wire mesh and shattered a storm door before entering Goodson’s back as he was opening the kitchen door of his grandmother’s home on Estates Place in northeast Columbus the morning of December 4, 2020. 

As in all murder trials, the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the death of the victim was intentionally caused by the accused. The level of the crime is determined by the circumstances and the mindset of the murderer. 

University presidents, chancellors, and vice-chancellors come and go with unusual frequency today. The average tenure has fallen from 8 to 6 years. News of firings and resignations, and less often hirings fill the front pages of national and higher education dailies. At the same time, major universities seem to learn nothing from their experiences.

Although final decisions rest with Boards of Trustees or Governors—in ageless academic rhetoric, and in the case of public universities in some states final approval by elected state governors, even the pretense of a full, inclusive, clear procedural, and all major interest groups participating search is now rare. Ohio State and Youngstown State exemplify the trends toward minimal input, scant participation, and increasingly unqualified selections.

The first “alt rock” song to ever travel Columbus radio waves was Echo & The Bunnymen’s “Rescue.” Sure, it may not have been the very first progressive rock song played locally. But let’s just call it the truth because this story harkens back to a more fun, more weird, and more cool Columbus. 

The year was 1989. The Berlin Wall was crumbling, and in America, alt rock or progressive rock was making the cool kids lose their freakin’ “I can’t listen to this glam and classic rock anymore!” minds. The station playing Echo & The Bunnymen was 107.1 FM WLRO out of Circleville, an adult contemporary station and able to reach Columbus. It was a Sunday night, and the 31-year-old radio personality who played “Rescue” was a former Ohio State campus kid looking to bring a full-time alt rock station to Columbus. 

“The second I played that first song, the phones went absolutely crazy,” says the now 60-something Gary Richards. That’s him in the suit in the above black and white photo. “The show was an instant sensation.” 

The holidays can generate more household trash, and often you aren’t sure how to dispose of it the right way. What can you do with your Christmas tree or the string lights that have finally flickered out? The leftover food you can’t eat anymore? If Santa gave you a new computer or phone, how do you dispose of the old? Is your blue recycling container so full you can’t stuff one more shipping box or ball of crumpled gift wrap in it?

The City of Columbus offers an environmentally-friendly, one-stop solution at no cost to residents: the new Refuse Collection Waste and Reuse Convenience Center at 2100 Alum Creek Dr., Columbus 43207. 

The Convenience Center, open since November, provides Columbus residents with drive-through service to sustainably dispose of, recycle or reuse a variety of items — from food scraps for composting, to furniture and clothing in good condition for reuse, to electronics and many other materials for recycling.

Clintonville’s Rag-O-Rama – a hipster destination for resale clothes – shut down this past weekend, leaving employees in a lurch and another remnant of Columbus’s soulful and non-corporate past in the proverbial back-alley garbage dumpster.

The Free Press often reminisces on Columbus of the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, when it was more a hip and quirky college town than a lame playground for young professionals and their corporate overlords.

“I’ve been going there for 25 years. After Bernie’s, Surly Girl, Larry’s, Mamas, Outland, Lil Brothers, King Avenue Coffee Shop, Atlantis, Blue Danube, Tee Jayes, Short North Coffee House, and almost all the entire Short North art district, etc. with nothing ever replacing any of it, Columbus is culturally dead,” wrote Michael Moore on the Crazy Mama’s remembrance page on Facebook. For those not in know, Crazy Mama’s on South High off-campus was Columbus’s answer to the punk, new wave and garage band “underground” which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.

If you’ve recently dined out, you’ve noticed that single-use plastic straws are disappearing.

Columbus’s shamed CEO Sean Lane – who failed spectacularly with his shadowy and shady AI software which promised to cut administrative costs for healthcare providers – has somehow once again convinced venture capitalists his AI hocus-pocus can save companies millions in labor costs.

Strange indeed, is how Lane incorporated his new company “GhostDog Inc.” on the same day his previous AI company announced it was going belly-up and didn’t want to be sentient after all, this according to the local BizJournal.

Lane was the much-hyped leader behind Olive AI which closed for good after it bamboozled hospitals and venture capitalists it could automate routine administrative tasks, such as uncovering whether a patient’s insurance had lapsed. But as former Olive AI employees so stunningly exposed on Reddit, Lane’s AI may not have even been true AI.

A coalition of Ohio environmental & community activists is demanding that the Ohio EPA include community members in their investigation of the impacts from the fire at an GFL Environmental Inc. oil refinery on the city’s Northeast side on November 21st.

The coalition, which includes Black Environmental Leaders Action Fund & Black Environmental Leaders Association, Columbus Stand Up, 350, Ohio Working Families Party, Green Worker Alliance and Sierra Club, stands in solidarity with residents throughout Central Ohio who are consistently subjected to environmental risks stemming from a lack of corporate accountability.

On behalf of the coalition, Morgan Harper from Columbus Stand Up stated, “The Ohio EPA should conduct a thorough investigation that includes community members to fully understand the harm stemming from the fire to ensure GFL Environmental covers the costs of remediating those harms.”

A “Unicorn” in the world of business and finance is a privately held company which has raised $1 billion from investors (i.e., Wall Street). Here in Columbus the much-hyped Olive AI, which was a privately held digital health-care company seeking to automate routine hospital administrative tasks, was a Unicorn. And just a few years ago its valuation on paper reached $4 billion.

But as the world of healthcare and Wall Street now know, this Columbus “Unicorn” has gone extinct. The venture capitalists who flooded Olive AI with $1 billion in cash, such as Columbus’s Drive Capital LLC, are desperately trying to get something in return by selling off the remains.

What is disturbing is how venture capitalists saw Olive AI as the greatest of Unicorns. It was regarded as the healthcare IT company to receive the most venture capital funding ever. Exactly how much Wall Street cash Olive AI lost is unknown, some estimate it could be over $100 million.

"Dream Scenario" is a clear metaphor for the toxicity of overnight fame on the average person. It also critiques cancel culture and the dangerous impact of our era's constant interconnectedness. Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli ("Sick of Myself"), he allows Nic Cage to deliver one of my favorite performances of his in years.

The story follows a dull, forgettable, hapless family man named Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage), a tenured professor with a deep passion for evolutionary biology and worries about his own anonymity. One day, Paul discovers he is appearing in other people's dreams at an alarming rate.

Like his real-life presence, he's a non-intrusive observer in strangers' bizarre dreams. He unexpectedly becomes an overnight celebrity, gaining the recognition he's always wanted, but not for the reasons he'd like. As the dreams turn violently nightmarish, Paul is forced to confront his newfound fame as his life spirals out of control.