After a long and courageous battle with cancer, Mary Beittel went passed away the morning of Saturday, August 19th. She was loved by many and will be missed. Mary and her husband served for over three decades as the leadership partnership which created and managed The Open Shelter in Columbus. Mary and Kent were were stalwart champions for the homeless, those caught in poverty and those marginalized. Mary worked best in the background and had strong organizational skills in keeping the books and handling finances. She balanced Kent's passion and outspokenness with quiet effectiveness and calming steady management. They were great partners and loved each other protectively. She loved working with people who were in desperate and chaotic situations, giving them hope and an opportunity to recover her life. She had a great sense honor and was stubborn in her mission to stand up for those who live on the edge. The Free Press offers condolences to her family and honors her as a Free Press hero.

Losing your wife is tough enough. Imagine losing your wife and subsequently being told you’re no longer fit to raise your son.

That’s the situation the title character faces in Menashe, an intimate story set in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn. Directed and co-written (in Yiddish) by Joshua Z. Weinstein, the film is said to be inspired by the real-life experiences of its star, Menashe Lustig.

We first meet Menashe, a clerk in a Hasidic grocery, nearly a year after his wife’s death. We learn he’s been forced to give up his adolescent son to his married brother-in-law, Eizik (Yoel Weisshaus). Why? Because according to his rabbi’s reading of the Torah, the boy is better off being raised in a two-parent household.

Menashe chafes against the order because he loves his son, Rieven (Ruben Niborski), and is lonely living on his own. However, there’s little he can do about it short of remarrying, which he seems unprepared to do. If Menashe tries to take Rieven back, he’s warned, the boy will be expelled from the local Hasidic school.

Eden Burger’s mission is to “save the f’n world” (go guys go!). They share a building with the south OSU campus area local bar, Village Idiot. Eden Burger officially launched their new high-quality, fast food, artisan vegan burger, fries and banana-based shake business with an exciting array of burger options.

There are two types of burgers: 1-black bean and rice based, and 2- organic and breaded fried tempeh, with eight different burger styles from Western BBQ to Hawaiian. The burgers can be fried or grilled and all are made from predominantly organic ingredients. They have the quintessential burger accessory ensemble such as pickle chips, onion rings and fried tenders with buffalo sauce and a litany of premium toppings (like fresh avocado) and sauces. Gluten-free options are also available.

In Columbus, like any other city in America, we have been caught up with the constant unleashed rhetoric of thoughts that are beyond unbelief, from President Donald Trump. With his public endorsement of the KKK and hate groups of America, while denouncing terrorism in the same speech, people – rational thinking people – are more confused then ever with how this man became President of the United States.

Now with the threat of racism returning to its historic place in America, the home of the free who are white, minorities and people who are not racist are in a state of indecisiveness regarding who can be trusted and who is wearing the mask. What is the real reason that we, the American people, were ignored in the public vote, and forced to become prisoners of a reality show that can be found on Twitter. Surely the powers that be that decide the electoral votes had a plan when they went against the majority vote of the peoples’ choice. Surely.

To understand the status of marijuana in Ohio, one must start at the beginning. No, not in prehistoric times as one of humanity’s oldest crops, nor in 1851 when medicinal efficacy was first documented in the “Report of the Ohio State Medical Committee on Cannabis Indica.” Skip past the Uniform Controlled Substances Act of 1969 that Ohio used to classify the plant as so vile as to cause the arrest of 20,000 residents each year. Move beyond legislation that Republican Governor “Big Jim” Rhodes signed in 1975 making Ohio the sixth state to decriminalize small quantities.