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The last time there was a serious discussion about poverty in America was during the presidential campaign of 2008 when former United States Senator John Edwards (D-NC) announced his intention to run for the office from the back yard of a home in New Orleans. The city was still reeling from the impact of Hurricane Katrina in 2005–the natural disaster that made poverty in America visible again.  Edwards had been identified as a champion for the poor throughout his legal career during which we successfully represented plaintiffs in seemingly unwinnable cases as they fought large corporations, physicians and others, winning multimillion dollar settlements for his clients.  He was also the director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Law.  During his political career Edwards had proposed that the government should place poor people in middle class neighborhoods through the use of one million housing vouchers.  The idea went nowhere, and once again, poverty fell off America’s agenda.

I was asked to write an article about “420.” Apropos, I guess, considering my name. So I began conceptualizing the piece. Perhaps a few interesting innuendos and stoner stories peppered with a traipse through time. As light-hearted as 420 seems to be, there are also uneasy overtones to this holiday of the high. Where to begin.

How about at the beginning. The vaunted Wikipedia confirms that “four-twenty” was coined at San Rafael High School forty-five years ago as clandestine code used by some students to denote a specified time and place for consuming cannabis – 4:20 pm in the shadow of Louis Pasteur. The term morphed to mean a need to find weed. Mushrooming through the local Grateful Dead culture, 420 landed in the hands of High Times’ Steve Bloom in the 1990s, pollinating globally through one of cannabis culture’s most time-honored magazines.

So with the approach of this hempy holiday, a happy 420 to you!

The final year for using medical marijuana illegally on 420 could be 2016 as two groups are seeking to put a medical marijuana amendment on this November’s ballot. Parallel to these 420 activists are Ohio lawmakers who introduced a medical marijuana bill a week before April 20th.

State lawmakers plan on fast-tracking the bill (House Bill 523) to Gov. John Kasich before any November ballot, and they said if it passes this summer, Ohioans could be using medical marijuana by 2018.

The two groups seeking a citizen vote on medical marijuana – Ohioans for Medical Marijuana and Grassroots Ohio – will most likely stay the course, as they have said they don’t have confidence in the Republican-dominated Ohio Legislature passing an effective law. Thus Ohio could have competing medical marijuana measures on this fall’s ballot.

Orphan struggles to survive in mesmerizing ‘Jungle Book’

The best movie I’ve seen so far this year is about a boy who was raised by wolves. It may also be the most harrowing movie of the year to date.

Disney’s The Jungle Book tells the story of Mowgli (Neel Sethi), who lives with the wolf pack that took him in as an infant. Though he clearly doesn’t fit in with the other “cubs,” he’s loved and protected by adopted mother Raksha (Lupita Nyong’o) and the rest of the clan. He’s also watched over by Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), the stern panther who brought the orphaned child to the wolves in the first place.

Mowgli’s odd but comfortable existence is upset during a dry spell that brings the human-hating tiger Shere Khan (Idris Elba) to the local watering hole. Honoring the truce that’s enforced when the water level is low, Shere Khan spares the boy’s life but claims the right to kill him at a later date—or to take revenge on the rest of the wolf pack if he’s denied this privilege.

The Community Festival
Thursday, May 5, 7:30 PM - MEMBERSHIP MEETING
Goodale Park Shelterhouse Building
(come at 7 for a meal - bring your own plate and utensils)
www.comfest.com

On April 4, the same day that California and New York State raised their minimum wage to $15 an hour, supporters from grassroots organizations spoke in Columbus City Hall to remind City Council members of  their campaign promises and push for a clear commitment to raising the minimum wage to $15 in Columbus.

“We’re a city where children go to bed hungry because their parents have to decide whether to buy food or pay rent,” said Jordan Patton, a Capital University law student and member of Socialist Alternative. “We’re a city where the corrupt grow richer, while people working multiple jobs struggle to pay their rent on time.”

  In the great energy field called the universe, there are many energies. When a musician expresses his, we can use any number of hoary old cliches to describe what they do. Hendrix's was fire; the Stones, sex; the Beatles, melodic rainbows; Black Sabbath, devil's feces; Tori Amos, cramps; Allman Brothers, southern rivers; Bon Jovi, hairspray; Pink Floyd, hallucinatory drift; the Grateful Dead, burning braided armpit hair.
    Et cetera.
   With relative newcomer 36-year-old Kurt Vile of five albums to his name, the word 'vibe' comes up a lot. And I must concur. I spent the evening with him recently, Saturday, April 3, to be exact. It was in a nice-sized room, the ageless Newport specifically, but it could have been a broom closet. I haven't felt closer while standing farther from an artist. Something about that boy, I must admit, makes it easy to breathe the same air he does.

Disturbing signs of the time-tested “Strip and Flip” strategy for stealing elections have already surfaced in 2016. Will they ultimately decide the outcome, as they have in too many recent elections?

The core approach is to STRIP citizens of their voting rights, then FLIP the electronic vote count if that’s not enough to guarantee a win for the corporate 1%.

Historically, “stripping” has been based on race. It’s rooted in the divide-and-conquer strategies of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Today it centers on racist demands for photo ID and other scams designed to prevent blacks, Hispanics, the young and the poor from voting.

When Ben Folds performs with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra April 9 at the Ohio Theater, the acerbic singer/songwriter will be making his second stop in six months and his fourth such visit since 2013 to the Capital City. Those who saw his Nov. 14 show at Express LIVE will most likely be in for a totally different experience. And that show was different from the 2014 concert at Columbus Bicentennial Park or the one he gave with the Ben Folds Five in 2013 at the Lifestyles Community Pavilion.

In a telephone interview from New York, Folds said that aspect is one of the many things he enjoys about his career.

“That whole 360 life thing makes me happy,” said Folds who was a judge on NBC’s acapella singing competition show THE SING OFF from 2009-2013. “I can go do an NBC television show, walk off that stage and walk onto another and play ‘Bitches Ain’t Shit’ by Dr. Dre, then go play with an orchestra, and then do a chat roulette gig. I dig that.