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Words 1960s coffeehouse with a peace sign for the zero and details about the event

Friday, November 2, 7:30pm, King Ave. United Methodist Church, 299 King Ave.

Civil Rights Sit-Ins. Bell-Bottoms. Anti-War Marches. Student Power. Afros. Mini-Skirts. Hippies. Riots. Space Flights. The Generation Gap.

Those hallmarks of the turbulent 1960s will be rekindled on Friday, November 2 at this year’s annual “Spirit of the ‘60’s Coffeehouse.”

Bill Cohen will lead a candle-lit, musical, year-by-year journey through that era, with familiar 1960s folksongs, “news reports” of sixties happenings, displays of anti-war buttons and posters, and far-out sixties fashions.

Plus, Bill will also challenge the audience with sixties trivia questions.

Proceeds from the suggested $10 donation (at the door) will go to the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. Refreshments will be available at no additional charge. Free parking will be available on the streets and in the lots just south and west of the church.

The show begins at 7:30pm in the church basement but get there early for a good seat.

This program is suitable for adults and mature teens.

Older man with black hat, white hair and beard, sunglasses, sitting on a chair on stage with his arms spread wide with lots of tattoos and a red rock and roll electric guitar on his lap

One of the unrecognized benefits of music is its value as an anthropological tool. Music functions as the soundtrack of a culture, identifying norms and taboos and painting a vivid picture of the lives of its listeners. Music is also invaluable for keeping tabs on the present. For example, according to insideradio.com, there are an estimated 118 million country music fans in the United States. Other than folk legends about a place called “Tennessee” and some unpaid water bills, we know very little about these people.

In the early 70’s, anthropologists Steve Goodman and David Allen Coe performed the first real musical research on the subject, the results of which were eventually published in song format as “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.” According to Goodman and Coe, country music fans in the 70’s were a primitive culture centered around mama, trains, trucks, prison and getting drunk.

People of color outside at a rally one woman in front waving a red, blue and yellow striped flag

The Problem of the Borderline

In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line." Paraphrasing Du Bois, we propose that the problem of the twentieth-first century is the problem of the borderline -- above all, the borderline between the global North and the global South. As we write this, the right wing in the United States are in a frenzy of xenophobia, whipping up fear and hatred against a caravan of Honduran migrants crossing Mexico and heading toward the US border, just as their European counterparts have against migrants from Syria and Afghanistan, Kosovo and Albania, etc.

White man with glasses laughing posing with  white women with shoulder length blonde hair holding a plaque and smiling

Monday, October 8 was the 2018 Free Press Annual Awards Ceremony at Woodlands Tavern. It was supposed to be “Columbus Day” – but we at the Free Press were happy to hear that the city of Columbus DID NOT commemorate Columbus Day this year. City offices and services remained open. Though they did not admit the decision had anything to do with public outcry or changing the holiday to Indigenous People’s Day – it may still be a step in the right direction to finally stop celebrating the genocidal maniac who didn’t really discover our city or America for that matter.

Instead, it was an occasion to honor local community activists, artists and volunteers. Free Press Editor Bob Fitrakis presented awards to the year’s honorees. The “Free Press Volunteer Award” went to Steve Caruso, who has given so much time, effort and expertise to the Free Press for many years. He provides computer technical support, handles social media, ensures our websites and domain names are up to date, fixes air conditioning/lights/TV/internet connections, helps with salons, plays music, and is an all-round great person to have around.

The Precautionary Principle: "Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage to environmental or human health, exploitation by any corporate or personal entity that could damage the environment or the health of humans must be delayed until there is absolute scientific certainty that damage can be totally averted.”

 

"Altruism is a great evil...while selfishness is a virtue." -- Ayn Rand, atheist author of Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead andThe Virtue of Selfishness whose books were the inspiration for the American libertarian movement.

 

Migrant caravan 1,000 miles from US border poses NO threat

he actual news, as of October 28, was that the migrant caravan of mostly Honduran asylum-seekers posed NO imminent threat to the US. Even Mexico doesn’t treat the caravan as a threat. The caravan is traveling through southern Mexico. The caravan is more than 1,000 miles from the US border’s nearest point. Nobody knows how many people are in the caravan, estimated at 7,000 at its peak. Currently the caravan is shrinking, with estimates running around 3,500. Some Hondurans have decided to go home. An estimated 1,700 have applied for asylum in Mexico. By all reliable reports, the caravan has been peaceful and has been peaceably received by Mexicans along its route. The only unusual thing about this caravan was its initial size, and now that, too, is unremarkable.

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