Local

Anti Gorsuch Counter Rally
Thursday, April 6, 1-2pm
Ohio Statehouse
Trump administration is calling for a pro Gorsuch rally at the Columbus state house tomorrow at noon. That means he is worried about the confirmation and our strong counter-rally will send Portman a strong message!

Micro-plastics, the EPA, Fracking: You Choose! with Dr. Lanno
Thursday, April 6, 7:30-8:30pm
Backstage Bistro, 503 S Front St, Columbus, Ohio 43215

In a world rife with 24/7 breaking news alerts, chaos in politics and fearful citizens, a tonic can be the healthy foods coming from our community gardens in Columbus.

Kossuth Street Garden has been operational since 2007, bringing social justice in the form of fresh fruits and vegetables and community involvement to a food desert on the near south side of Columbus. This is an area just south of Nationwide Children's Hospital that is third in the nation in black infant mortality rates and is in transition from blight to hope.

The site has a rich history. At one point it was the site of a slaughterhouse in this former predominantly Jewish neighborhood. Men and women liberated from Nazi concentration camps walked to work into the kosher sections of the slaughterhouse. It then became a produce warehouse and which was torn down in 1996.

The Guild House, located in the Short North is certainly THE most vegan friendly of Cameron Mitchell’s variety of fine dining restaurants in Columbus, just let the team know you are vegan. The Guild House gets veganizing their tantalizing artisan culinary American cuisine right.

You will be delighted as Carlo, a dining room manager, JP, their executive chef and severs such as Alexa, effectively embody their objectives of genuine hospitality, and ensuring their culinary guild delivers “a lot love in every plate.”

Donald Trump should love hemp. That’s right, you know, hemp is terrific. Just terrific. It’s going to make a tremendous amount of money for people in this great country. Win big. Really big.

… or at least that’s what we’d like to hear him say.

Trying to find the new administration’s position on hemp and hemp alone is like parsing hemp stacks for chemical pesticides and herbicides. Non-existent.

But Donald Trump should love hemp anyway and here’s why.

First the necessary primer. Hemp and its more popular cousin marijuana are related, but still quite different. Both emanate from the cannabis plant, but like, say, the familiar family dog, they are distinct. Canines can be bred to be giant Great Danes or tiny Chihuahuas, gentle and kind Labrador Retrievers or strong and aggressive Pit Bulls. By analogy, the hemp plant can be grown to be strong and fibrous for cordage that sails ships, or molecularly balanced for the oils that treat seizures in small children. Believe me, this plant is incredible.

As a journalist, you can often find out more from looking into someone’s eyes than listening to the words out of their mouths.

It might sound corny, but on Tuesday night in Flint, Michigan, where I hosted a town hall discussion for The Young Turks, I learned of the utter disaster that never stopped being a disaster by simply looking into the eyes of fallen Americans.

These were citizens injured on the battlefields of war—only they never signed up for the army or traveled abroad. Instead, they were mere victims of the ongoing war on the poor, waged by a corrupt government innately more interested in making money and staying in power than making the right decisions for its citizens.

“These $20 filters don’t work,” Flint resident, Adam Murphy, said. Murphy, a 37-year-old father of five, has been poisoned to the point of having severe neurological problems that cause him seizures. His child was also born with high lead levels.

“I have to get on some expensive medications that Medicaid doesn’t cover,” he said, adding that the government is lying to citizens in telling them it’s safe to drink the Flint water with a filter.

It is almost impossible to find a picture of Chuck Berry where he isn’t holding a guitar, typically a Gibson ES-350T or ES-335. Although the 335 is probably more common in the photo vaults, most of records that Berry made during his heyday in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s – “Maybelline,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Roll Over Beethoven” etc. – were cut with the 350T.

The 350T is a semi-acoustic archtop, something of a cross between an amplified acoustic guitar such as the ES-150 and full solid bodies such as the Les Paul. A solid center block permitted electric amplification without too much feedback, while the hollow pockets on both sides of the guitar featured f-shaped sound holes which permitted the instrument to be played acoustically. Like most of the guitars of its era, it was intended for guitarists playing in the jazz orchestras popular at the time. Its arched body is a piece of craftsmanship, the work of a master luthier. They cost shit-tons of money.

Wednesday, April 5, 9am-3pm
Trinity Church, 125 E. Broad and Ohio Statehouse
Want to learn how laws get made at the Statehouse, and how you can have more influence on the process? 

Innovation Ohio, Progress Ohio and For Ohio's Future are hosting a statewide Citizen Lobby Day on April 5 to demystify the process and arm advocates and activists with tools and training to be more effective citiizen activists.

Plan to come for part or all of the day. There will be opportunities to:
- get trained on how to get results at the Statehouse
- testify in committee
- meet with state legislators and staff
- attend a hearing and legislative session.

Sign up to participate at http://act.progressohio.org/signup/citizens-lobby-day/

The Columbus Dispatch apparently is abandoning its hard-right editorial page slant with the departure of Glenn Sheller, announced March 19. It advertised the vacancy in journalismjobs.com on March 2.

The longtime editorial page editor reflected an ultra-conservative point-of-view that was horribly out of step with the newspaper's core audience in deep blue Columbus and Franklin County, as I have pointed out more than once in this column, Sheller's head in the sand perspective may have been costing the print and web product thousands of subscribers and readers, not to mention advertisers.

In a column announcing Sheller's departure, Dispatch editor Alan Miller quoted publisher Bradley Harmon as saying that the next editorial page editor should reflect the “need for diversity to better mirror the growing, evolving region we serve.”

Harmon's statement could be interpreted to mean that Sheller's views were not congruent with the region's.

In honor of Earth Day, Ohio Republicans and Donald Trump in the White House have unleashed a two-prong attack to destroy clean air and clean water in the Buckeye State.

Ohio House Republicans destroy renewable energy

The Ohio House Republicans pushed through a bill ending government assistance for renewal wind and solar power in Ohio. By a 65 to 29 vote, House Bill 114 passed and will now go on to the Senate. Governor John Kasich vetoed similar legislation in December 2016. There were 66 House Republicans and it only takes 60 to override a veto. It would take 20 votes to override a Kasich veto in the Senate. Last December’s veto only garnered 18 Senate votes.

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil

Like millions of students, I never liked math. I thought it scary, mysterious and evil. I joke that I can’t even sit next to math professors during meetings! Generally a bright student with high grades, my lack of prowess at math let me down every time. And then in the ninth grade, the lottery placed me in Arnold Anderson’s general math class. He had a reputation for transforming struggling math students into, if not math wizards, students who would see that math was no longer mysterious and could even be interesting and—borrowing a term from my students—fun. (My favorite mathematical task? Balancing equations.) It was the first time I was interested in math, liked math and earned As in math. Alas, that was the last time for me; I managed to make it all the way to a PhD without math. I came to ruefully regret my lack of math prowess when I began my career in higher education. I was the person who always interrupted meetings so that someone could explain the math behind the data so ubiquitous in our field.