Local

Community Meeting in Support of Miriam Vargas & Family
Monday, February 10, 2020, 6:30- 8:30 PM
Please join us on Monday, February 10th, 2020 at 6:30 p.m. as we continue the conversation on how we can best support Miriam Vargas and her family. Your support over the past year has been much appreciated and we hope you will join us as we share and make plans for the coming months.  Location:  First English Lutheran Church, 1015 E. Main St., Columbus, OH 43205.  Facebook.  

February means Valentine's Day and Valentines mean love therefore this column is just brimming with the stuff.

My first shout-out: Johnny Cash.

I've been reading Robert Hilburn's excellent bio on the Man In Black, Johnny Cash – The Life, and I must say I am struck by two things.

One, how hard 1930s Great Depression life was in rural Arkansas. Cash's family was completely the Tom Joad experience but without the Okie western exodus. Cash's farmer father was past desperation, his family virtually destitute when FDR's administration came to the rescue with 20-acre plots for farmers willing to pay them back.

Cash wasn't expected to pick cotton ‘til he was six. But by four he was hauling water out to his family as they did. There they joined together in singing gospel songs. Indeed, by the age of three he already had mastered his first, I Am Bound for the Promised Land.

State-run parole and probation programs are designed to keep persons convicted of crimes – including a very large number of non-violent crimes – out of prison. But in Ohio, according to a recent Council of State Governments study, “Confined and Costly: How Supervision Violations are Filling Prisons”: “On any given day 10,320 people (or 21 percent of the entire Ohio prison population) are behind bars as a result of a probation or parole violation, at an annual cost to the state of $279 million.”

Parole and probation are court-ordered, non-prison sentences that give offenders a chance to rebuild their lives in a community setting. Not a get-out-of-jail-free-card, each offender agrees to follow a strictly supervised list of conditions that commonly includes mandatory drug testing, keeping regular parole officer visits, paying fines and restitution, holding a job and drug rehab and anger management classes.

More restrictive conditions may include searches, prior approval to open a checking account, travel restrictions, electronic monitoring, curfews and off-limit establishments.

Let’s talk about strains. The word strain has many meanings: there are musical strains, muscular strains, and, yes, marijuana strains. The latter is what one looks for when purchasing cannabis from a dispensary.

Granted, in simpler times, all that mattered was 1.) the baggie held an ounce (the metal meter on the hanging scale read “1”), 2.) no stems, no seeds (Acapulco Gold is … ), and 3. It got ya high. As the plant has grown more well known, simplicity seems quaint. To purchase intelligently and learn which plant properties alleviate aches, pains, nausea, seizures, stressors, tremors and traumas, familiarity with various forms and components of cannabis becomes essential. Strains categorize these components and forms add flexibility to how they are consumed.

Saturday, February 8, 6:30-11pm
1021 E. Broad St., east side door
Parking in side driveway, back parking lot or street
Free, no RSVP required
Join progressive friends for socializing, networkings, refreshments provided by Lavash, music, art, and a presentation on the upcoming priimary elections. 614-253-2571, colsfreepress@gmail.com

Saturday, February 8, 1-5pm
First English Lutheran Church, 1015 East Main Street, Columbus

Generally speaking, I don’t comment on or criticize the voting behavior of others. As old folks used to say when I was growing up, my mouth ain’t no prayer book. But if I live to be one hundred, I will never understand why any black person in this country voted for Donald Trump, and I know at least one who did. Indeed, Trump captured eight percent of the African American vote – the worst in the last forty years, but astonishing nonetheless.

Most African Americans wouldn’t think of voting for a Republican candidate, much less one as racist as Trump. Trump knew this, and at a rally in the predominantly white suburb of Dimondale, Michigan in August 2016, he taunted black voters, urged them to ditch the Democratic Party, and “try Trump.” Mocking what he sees as blacks’ wrongly placed allegiance to the Democratic Party, who many believe take black voters for granted, he said to black Americans: "You're living in poverty. Your schools are no good. You have no jobs. Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed.” Trump then asked, “What the hell do you have to lose?"

I attended the January 8 debut event of Jay Swifa’s Sound GODZ producer showcase, described as an event “where artists play original beats and grooves.”

Because I’d only heard Jay Swifa’s “Jungle” song and Rashad Thomas’ recent production for CoCity, I wasn’t sure if my expectations for the event were constant with my existence as a hip hop fan.

I arrived to find Columbus producer KMB playing hip hop music from the stage. He wasn’t playing arena dubstep circa 2010. KMB understood that there is something warm and inviting about the nakedness of traditional hip hop beats if they aren’t wack in terms of bad rhythm, clutter or completely lacking understand of key.  KMB beats were slightly upbeat, without getting ahead of themselves. KMB utilized multiple similar subtle sounds that don’t sound cluttered or disjointed.

Swifa was up next. Swift’s beats boomed with bass. soft melodies and charismatic rhythms. Swift’s new song sounded Middle Eastern with a hip hop draw to it.

He welcomed Rashad to the stage. Both still are fresh producers.

If the Columbus Dispatch could be trusted to report accurately and fairly about itself, readers would be more likely to trust its coverage of other matters and the paper's circulation and readership might stop hemorrhaging.

Alas, the newspaper and website could not bring itself to write the following lead a few weeks ago when it announced the closing of its Columbus print site and loss of 188 jobs:

“In bad news for the local economy, the Dispatch, that is controlled by the Japanese hedge fund SoftBank, announced the closing of a major local manufacturing facility, its west side print site, and the layoff of 188 employees.”

“This represents an estimated loss of $9,000,000 of annual wage and benefit payments to local residents and a significant loss of municipal and state income tax collection as well as potential property tax losses if the plant remains idle or is reborn with tax abatements.”

In a time when American politics keeps getting more bizarre, yet another bizarre occurrence happened last month when the two leading progressive candidates in the Democratic primary were pitted against each other, resulting in what could only be described as a “hot mic heard around the world.”

Immediately after the Democratic debate in January, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) approached Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to tell him she thought he had just called her “a liar on national TV.” Sanders was going in for the typical post-debate handshake when Warren blindsided him with the comment, ultimately not even shaking his hand. However, because viewers couldn’t hear what was said until later, CNN’s commentators spent the next 24 hours salivating and speculating about what kind of drama had just gone down. Naturally – and as I predicted – CNN magically “recovered” the audio the next day, ultimately revealing what Warren said.