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On June 22 over 50 Unitarian Universalists gathered outside the Wendy’s on Woodruff & High calling attention to the nation-wide boycott of the Ohio-based fast food chain.  The protest happened in tandem with the Unitarian Universalist Association, with hundreds of thousands of members worldwide, officially endorsing the Wendy’s boycott.

It’s a new chapter of a long story: the Free Press has covered the now 3 ½ year campaign urging Wendy’s to join the Fair Food Program with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) for farmworker dignity.  The Program entails corporations paying one penny more per pound of tomatoes purchased and agreeing to buy from reputable farms that uphold basic rights such as breaks, shade, and zero tolerance for wage theft and sexual harassment — conditions all too common in the industry. All of Wendy’s major competitors in the fast-food industry — McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, Taco Bell and Chipotle — are partners in the Program. 

This is a banner week for South Seas Cinema, the film genre set in/shot at the Pacific Islands. It is being kicked off by writer/director Taika Waititi’s gem, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which was made on location in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This good-natured, well-made film is a sheer delight and absolute joy to behold (and although there is some off-color language and violence, is recommended viewing for most children and families).

In essence, Wilderpeople is about an urban Maori (the indigenous people of NZ) juvenile delinquent type, Ricky Baker (the droll, roly-poly Julian Dennison), who is placed in a foster home somewhere out in the bush. There, he is begrudgingly adopted by “Uncle” Hec, a Caucasian ex-con and “bush man” played by the great Sam Neill. (Did you know that in addition to co-starring as Dr. Alan Grant in 1993’s Jurassic Park and 2001’s Jurassic Park III, as well as in 1999’s Hawaii-set Molokai, Neill grew up in the South Island of New Zealand and co-directed/co-wrote an insightful documentary about that country’s movies called Cinema of Unease?)

Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum’s production of Tom is artistic director Ellen Geer’s adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1851 abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Geer, who also directed, added post-Civil War scenes depicting Stowe (Melora Marshall), who is still fretting over slavery. These additional 1886 vignettes enable the playwright to presciently ponder the plight of Blacks after the Reconstruction Era, but also in our own times wherein police and vigilante violence, institutionalized racism, the racist Trump candidacy, and more continue to beset and bedevil African Americans. These Stowe sequences, which are stowed away and interwoven into the fabric of the play - which is mostly a dramatization of the original book - also allows Tom to explore feminist issues, particularly the role of women in literature. After all, Stowe was, as Lincoln (perhaps apocryphally) called her, “the little lady who made this great war.”

Unitarian Universalists are engaged in the Black Lives Matter movement and are mobilizing in the broader movement for black liberation. At 5 p.m. on Thursday, June 23, the Unitarian Universalist Association is hosting an interfaith State of Emergence rally at the Ohio Statehouse in collaboration with the Ohio Student Association, the People’s Justice Project, UU Justice Ohio, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Union of Reform Judaism, and the United Church of Christ.

Most Unitarian Universalists are white, but they don’t see this as a reason to sit on the sidelines of the struggle for racial justice. The entire ministry team and several members of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus turned out for the June 15 Justice for Henry Green protest wearing yellow Standing on the Side of Love T-shirts.

A rising tsunami of U.S. nuke shut-downs may soon include California’s infamous Diablo Canyon double reactors. But it depends on citizen action, including a statewide petition.

Five U.S. reactor closures have been announced within the past month. A green regulatory decision on California’s environmental standards could push the number to seven.

The summer solstice of course is June 21st and we need to honor those who perhaps best celebrated Mother Earth’s longest day: Native Americans. While not definitively known, the summer solstice’s most sacred Ohio celebration in antiquity probably took place at Serpent Mound in Peebles County. And again, because no one definitively knows how old Serpent Mound is, the celebration itself could be thousands of years old. This year’s celebration begins this weekend and of course hosted by Friends of the Serpent Mound.

The following feature on Ohio Native American history and Indian mounds by an Ohio Bear Clan Seneca is a message to today’s Ohioans. Simply put, we need to recognize our ignorant past and amend our future.

Young viewers can learn valuable lessons from Finding Dory: lessons about perseverance and learning to celebrate their individuality. Let’s just hope these future drivers don’t pick up any ideas about traffic safety.

A climactic scene has Dory, the blue tang fish, and Hank, her octopus pal, driving a truck the wrong way down a freeway while other vehicles swerve frantically to avoid them. Funny? Maybe for the kids in the audience, but adults’ enjoyment might be tempered by memories of the countless tragedies wrong-way drivers have caused in real life.

Beyond teaching the dubious message that reckless driving is harmless fun, the scene may strike some as odd for another reason. Namely, it places two marine animals in an environment where they’re completely out of their element. And it’s far from the only scene where this is the case.

Beginning around the halfway point or sooner, the plot takes the plucky but forgetful Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) to the human-run Monterey Marine Life Institute. As a result, she spends most of her time hopping from one water receptacle to the next rather than swimming around in the deep blue sea.

On June 6th at the weekly City Council meeting they granted yet another multimillion dollar tax abatement to another major corporation with gross profits over a billion dollars. This time it was to UPS. Council member Elizabeth Brown, who chairs the Economic Development Committee, did her best to try and justify this tax abatement. In my comments to City Council, I suggested that UPS is not in danger of bankruptcy and her reply to that was she wants to make sure that companies like UPS do not fall into bankruptcy.

Really?

She then tried to tout her extensive experience in Economic Development since she used to be the Downtown Development Manager for the Department of Development.

Her duties?

You guessed it, to focus on helping companies to expand into sites in Downtown and the surrounding area (Short North) through income tax incentives and other tax giveaways. The perfect go to person for a handout. She also claimed that our surrounding suburbs give away much more in terms of tax incentives and we could have lost UPS.

Bulls#%t!

Study a picture of Jesse Hughes, my fellow old-timers. The lead singer and funny man of Eagles of Death Metal reminds you of who?

To this loving son of the '70s, I see in him:

--first and foremost, one or two members of Foghat, the quaalude boogie band spin-off of England's venerable blues-jazz band, Savoy Brown. A little bit 'Lonesome Dave' Peverett and a whole lot of Tone Earl, drummer. Unreconstructed long-hairs who couldn't hide their musicianly machismo if they tried, while at the same time being, you know, being skinny, unaggressive musicians.

--Diamond Jim Dandy of Black Oak Arkansas, the first of the flamboyant talent-less southern American home-grown boogie bone-heads. More on that in a bit.

--'Diamond' David Lee Roth, the king of such entities, and the greatest of the ass-less chaps set. Without peer. And yet a true original.

In concert at the Newport May 28, the EODM with the third great 'Diamond,' namely Hughes, put on a show of insouciant '70s-esque cock-rock the likes of which makes you realize the cliche 'everything old is new again' is an evergreen phrase of eternal usefulness.