Local

Rev. Gary Witte calls out the ones responsible for the tax abatements that take money from the Columbus city schools. On April 24, approximately 400 Columbus school teachers marched to the headquarters of one of the local corporations that has received a "15-year, 100 percent property-tax abatement last year for a new $225 million office complex in downtown Columbus to be completed by 2024," according to ThisWeek newspaper. Holding a banner that stated "Cover My Students" they descended upon the firm CoverMyMeds to protest how that corporation will "avoid more than $50 million in property taxes thanks to the abatement it received from the city," reported WOSU Radio. The teachers' union says the abatements hurt the public educational system in Columbus because it relies on property taxes for funding. 

No names will be mentioned, nor place of performance. No band name, no bar name, no set list. This...group...is real. It exists. It must never see this review.

Because I don't want to hurt their feelings. Nor do I want to die. One of 'em looked like Charles Manson.

Anonymous they must remain. Or I am a dead man.

It isn't just a bad review. It's a sad review. Old goat classic rock zombies--Facebook is loaded with them--and not very good, it's doubtful these guys could ever play. And at this late stage of the game nor ever will they.

But playing bad isn't the greatest sin in the world, no sir. Playing bad and thinking you're playing good isn't the greatest sin either.

No. The worst sin in the world is playing really bad, thinking you're really good--and also thinking you are really, really bad-ass while playing like crap thinking you're great. At a really old age.

I guess what am trying to say is you may as well pose like you have a ravenous armadillo in your pants 'cuz you suck so badly anyway.

Last month, Ohio governor Mike DeWine signed controversial Senate Bill 23into law. The law, which bans abortion as soon as six-weeks into a pregnancy, is an almost total ban on the procedure, as many people do not even know that they are pregnant by six weeks. While the bill does include an exception in the case a pregnant person’s life is at risk, there are no exceptionsfor rape and incest included in the legislation.

From the Presbyterian Church (USA) Office of Public Witness
For a year now, Palestinians in Gaza have been creatively and bravely protesting for their freedom by marching towards the fence with Israel to demand an end to the blockade of Gaza and respect for their rights.  In response, Israel has met unarmed civilians with live sniper-fire, killing over 200 and injuring tens of thousands, including paramedics, journalists, children, and people with disabilities. In total, 45 children have been killed.  Click Here to Contact Congress.
 

A newspaper reporter friend told me that his paper's coverage policies were determined by the editor's interests rather than the readers' interests.

That could be a reason why newspapers are losing audience these days.

Dispatch editor Alan Miller demonstrated this quirk of leadership in the April 14 edition when he wrote about his father's restoration of a barn in Holmes County and included a picture.

That's 85 miles northeast of Columbus and way out of the Dispatch coverage area.

No other Dispatch journalist could have done it. Only the editor.

I wonder if it signals that Miller is nearing retirement. After four years of cost-cutting and dancing to the GateHouse corporate tune, Miller may be ready for the family farm, so to speak.

Spectrum News 1 Quotes Yours Truly, Columbus Free Press

A Coalition to #FreeMasonique is calling for a National Week of Action to draw attention to Masonique Saunders and has begun a calling campaign to Ron O’Brien asking him to drop the charges against her.Masonique has been sitting in Columbus’ juvenile jail since December, after being charged with aggravated robbery and felony murder, and is awaiting a May 9 court date. She spent her 17th birthday, March 18, in jail. Masonique’s mother is struggling to help her and to pay legal bills.

In December 2018, a Columbus police officer shot and killed Julius Tate Jr., a 16-year-old Black boy, during a sting operation, claiming he had a gun. The police then pinned their murder on Masonique Saunders, Tate’s girlfriend, on the premise she was party to a felony happening during the murder. Read more in the Free Press May article by Sarah Mamo: “A sting, a police murder and a cover-up.”

Farmer-tanned golfers smoking cigars and swigging beer are gleefully swatting their ball in and around the Octagon Earthworks, built 2,000 years ago by Native Americans in what is now Newark.

The Octagon is arguably a massive lunar temple considering it tracks the moon’s major cycle of 18.6 years. Some experts believe it is twice as precise as Stonehenge and equally impressive as the Great Pyramid. Nevertheless, the Octagon has been besieged by a private golf course for over 100 years.

The Free Press and others have witnessed golfers tee off on the Octagon’s mounds instead of designated tees. The golfers also drive their carts on the mounds themselves. Such blasphemy would inspire many Native Americans to call on their moon goddess Hanwi to smoke them into oblivion.

However, ending golf at the Octagon could soon be a reality, where it will be open to the public and restored to its prehistoric glory as a ceremonial pilgrimage site built by the Hopewell culture (100 BC to 500 AD).

Columbus’ original beatnik and prime hippie #1 Charlie Einhorn passed into the cosmos in April 2019. So central was Charlie to Columbus’ budding counterculture of the 1960s is that the first headshop took its name from his musical instrument, Charlie’s Guitar. His good friend and co-conspirator Stan Bobrof told the Free Press Charlie’s Guitar was “where it’s at.” Charlie is now drinking coffee and reminiscing with Stan in paradise.

One of the most interesting and unknown aspects of Charlie’s life was his escape from the holocaust and journey to Belgium and eventually the United States. He later relished teaching new immigrants English as a Second Language, because he could relate from his own experiences.

The Freep itself owes a huge debt to Charlie Einhorn and his wife Lynn Stan for the uncountable hours they put in – way into night laying out the paper in the 1990s. Charlie moved the Free Press out of the paste-up stone ages into the desktop publishing era. His creative ideas for the cover were some of the best in Freep history.

Sunday, April 28, 1-3pm
Exhausted by the onslaught of anti-woman legislation coming out of our statehouse? Feeling helpless to fight back? No worries! Come on down to the Sunlight Market this Sunday. Listen to local music, check out some art from local artists, pick up some free emergency contraception, and bring your donations for Women Have Options - Ohio, an organization keeping abortion accessible no matter what laws our state passes.
All tips and half of all art proceeds will go toward WHO/O.
 

Nineteen-sixty-eight was the like the runaway carousel in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Strangers on a Train. The Vietnam War, the assassinations of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and United States Senator (D-MA) Robert F. Kennedy within two months of each other, the chaos at the Democratic convention in Chicago, urban rebellions and their attendant horrors in black enclaves across the United States, the black gloved fists at the 1968 Summer Olympics, the election of former Vice President Richard Nixon to the presidency–these things and more made it an annus horribillis. Yet at the same time, sports magic was happening in Columbus, Ohio.