Local

The Felice Brothers aren't highfalutin'. The country boys from the Catskills would rather record an album in an unassuming farm garage shared by chickens than in a fancy studio in the big city. And that's just what they did with their new release, “Life in the Dark.” The result is a stark, unvarnished and down-to-earth record, as unpretentious yet thoroughly satisfying as a heaping plate of biscuits and gravy.

The band celebrates it's 10-year anniversary by hitting the road this month in support of “Life in the Dark,” and looks forward to returning to one of its favorite tour stops, the Rumba Cafe, on the15th. “We love coming to your town,” says James Felice, “we've played the Rumba four or five times.”

Columbus produces influential people for various reasons. One reason is Columbus has major learning institutions which provide an influx of young people looking to ripen, who mix with the civilians who exist. One place that exemplified this pure-of-heart culture incubator was Bernie’s Bagels and Deli (and bar) on the OSU campus. The campus bar combined lifer-anarchists with college kids who, in turn, created experiences that helped develop new energies. They finally removed Bernie’s physically. But with this spirit of internal exploration, here is my incomplete guide to something you could do with your next two months to 75 years.

As 96 percent of America's minds descend into election-year madness, driven there by two scoundrels in particular and many more in general, perhaps it is time to ponder the only question that matters:

What would Allen Ginsberg have thought of America 2016?
 

Back in August 1995 when I was in my prime provocateurship at The Other Paper, I decided to treat myself to a little vacation in New York City. I picked a helluva week--and on purpose: Shane McGowan of the Pogues was playing his first post-Pogues live show in America with his band The Popes, that I had to see.
 

And Ginbsberg was doing a reading at The Cooler, a music and performance space in the ultra-hip-by-its-sheer-unhipness meatpacking district in the Gnawed Apple. More than a reading, actually, avant-garde guitarist Marc Ribot would be sitting next to him supplying sounds eclectic to one of the founding freaks of the Beat Generation's words.
 

Saw Shane and Al on consecutive nights--bloody marvelous, both. And of course took in an afternoon Mets game at Shea, after walking 75 blocks through Manhattan.
 

Who is Zach Klein and where did he come from?

On the heels of Represent Columbus’ Issue One, which was perhaps the most partisan political event in memory, the all-Democratic City Council launched a divisive propaganda campaign falsely claiming the issue was a Republican plan. City Council member Mike Stinziano initiated an attack against Represent Columbus co-chair Whitney Smith at a council meeting, pointing out that she is a Republican.

Issue One, the initiative attempting to expand and reform Columbus City Council that was defeated at the August 2ndspecial election, actually had support from the Green, Libertarian, Socialist parties as well as many disgruntled Democrats

The one-party Columbus City Council and its One Columbus PAC, led by Mayor Andrew Ginther’s aide Bryan Clarke, attacked Issue One as being a “Republican power grab” led by “the Party of Trump” associated with the “Koch brothers.”

The recent killing of Henry Green has spawned protests and a deeper look into the practices and tactics of the Columbus Police. Witnesses stated that there appeared to be no reason for the two officers to shoot Green, who had no criminal record. Police claimed Green brandished a gun. The Franklin County Coroner said Green was shot seven times.

The question of whether the Columbus Police Department disproportionately targets Blacks for violence is best answered with direct evidence, including statistics. A new “police accountability tool” created by the website Mappingpoliceviolence.org is useful in this debate.

Mappingpoliceviolence has studied police violence throughout the nation from January 2013 to June 2016. The group’s focus is on the police forces in the 100 largest cities in the country, where 28 percent of all people are killed by police. The Black population of these major cities is 21 percent but Blacks comprise 39 percent of all people killed by police.

One thing is clear about the Smart City grant. Columbus and its sprawl is about to become a petri dish to “creatively reengineer our urban transportation networks” so to avoid global warming and connect the underserved to good jobs. This is the altruistic vision some national pundits have consecrated Columbus with.

The grant is heady stuff for “Test City USA.” A $150 million public and private work-in-progress to test sci-fi transportation technology such as driver-less cars. A plan to build neighborhood hubs with electronic vehicle charging stations that will also have bikeshare and carshare services.

The US Department of Transportation and host of corporate partners – including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc., which chipped in $10 million – chose Columbus over 78 other cities, such as Austin, San Francisco, Portland and Denver.

And while our traffic congestion and its pollution doesn’t compare to Denver’s problems, Central Ohio needs to reengineer its transportation and do it in a hurry. For the last several years anyone who commutes into Columbus has painfully dealt with ongoing major road construction to end the outerbelt’s bottlenecks.

British director Stephen Frears’ latest biopic, about wannabe chanteuse Florence Foster Jenkins (the much Oscar-ed and “much-er” Oscar-nommed Meryl Streep), is a winning motion picture on many levels. Florence Foster Jenkins is at all times highly entertaining and occasionally downright hilarious. Based on the real life, eponymous Jenkins, it is a saga about a woman with limited (if any) vocal talent who somehow managed to pursue a career singing classical music. Let’s take a look at some of the dimensions Florence Foster Jenkins explores.

The stylish-looking film shot by London-born director of photography Danny Cohen (who was Academy Award-nominated for 2010’s The King’s Speech) has a “veddy” English sense of class. Florence makes it abundantly clear that Jenkins was a member of the 1% whose wealth enabled her, through a variety of ruses ranging from audience padding to influence peddling - of critics, elite figures in the rarified world of classical music, such as vocal coaches, music hall impresarios and the  renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini (John Kavanagh), etc. - to buy her way onstage.

They called her the luckiest dog in the world, or so read the ad for an adorable puppy who had just been rescued from a kill shelter in Athens County and was now residing at a shelter in Columbus. We visited her on New Year’s Day 2010. My husband knew if he put her in my arms, I’d be hooked, and I was. We took her home and named her Rosie for the Buckeye’s glorious Rose Bowl victory that same day.

Rosie grew into a spotted black and white mutt about the size of a border collie. She was an athletic Frisbee dog: no toss too long, too crooked or too high. Like all dogs, she chased squirrels and barked at mailmen. She ran through the woods scaring up birds and sniffed deeply in the grass for scents only a dog could know. She led the proverbial dog’s life.

This article first appeared on Reader Supported News

Only so long you can keep this charade
Before they wake up and see they’ve been played
Too many people with their livin’ at stake
Ain’t gonna take it.
The comin’ round is going through
The comin’ round is going through.

t’s not often a single stanza can sum up a whole political system. But those words from Bonnie Raitt ring truer every day as this pathetic “selection” season lurches ever deeper into astounding ugliness.

As evidenced by her new album, Dig in Deep, and her current concert tour, the opposite is true of Ms. Raitt, whose astonishing talent and endless heart just keep growing.

By way of disclosure, I’ve had the privilege of working with Bonnie on nuclear and other issues since 1978.

At the end of July I had the good fortune to see her perform at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. She is on a long tour now, and if you get the chance to catch one of her shows, don’t pass it up.