The Columbus Coalition of Reason (Columbus COR) is hosting their fifth annual “Flying Spaghetti Monster Benefit Dinner,” featuring -what else - a delicious spaghetti dinner with vegetarian, gluten-free and take-out options. The event will take place Thursday, November 10 from 6 until 8:30 pm (serving food until 8:00) at the First UU Church, 93 West Weisheimer Road in Clintonville.

Admission is $10.00 for adults, $5.00 for children aged fourteen and under, with proceeds going to the Mid-Ohio Foodbank. In addition, there will be people collecting canned and boxed goods for the Foodbank. Guests can also participate in both a silent auction of handmade pieces by local artists, and a raffle for items donated by community members and local businesses.

Entertainment for the evening will include live music and brief comments from community members. For the children there will be a variety of supervised games and activities.

I write this column with a heavy heart.

Two fields of endeavor that I care deeply about are disintegrating before my eyes.

In politics, the two candidates for president are deeply flawed and profoundly unpopular.

In journalism, once-evenhanded media institutions and individual reporters have lost their way and become propagandists.

Sadly, I fear that after the election, things will become worse and the warring political camps will start posturing for the next election.

The public has been badly served by all this and now holds both politicians and journalists in disrepute with little possibility of regaining the public trust. The chances of either of them changing their ways and beginning to serve the public without fear or favor -- once the hallmark of a good politician and a good journalist -- are slim.

How did we get to this sad state of affairs?

On the Republican side, Donald Trump, a venom-spewing bully used his superior knowledge of manipulating the media to intimidate his primary opponents and swat them down like flies.

What a year it has been for marijuana policy in Ohio – so far. The stunning defeat of Issue 3 at the ballot box last year framed the citizen-led initiative landscapes for both 2015 and 2016. The infamous measure sponsored by Responsible Ohio would have accorded Ohio’s nascent cannabis industry to just ten wealthy investors. Some say RO lost because it was a monopoly. Others cited full legal. A few didn’t think it lost at all.

Since the mid-90s, Nintendo has been an outlier in the video game industry. Despite a museum exhibit’s worth of attempts by everyone from Sega to Nokia to break into the portable console market, Nintendo’s iconic Game Boy and its later incarnations have been the only real success. Over the last decade, with competitors Sony and Microsoft fighting against each other for the most realistic graphics and the highest-numbered specs in their home consoles, Nintendo’s Wii and Wii U have focused on innovations in gameplay. And while many who think of themselves as “serious” gamers have scoffed at being experimental and family-friendly over pure graphical power, Nintendo has kept to its own path.

At the same time Green Party candidate for county prosecutor Bob Fitrakis was debating Democratic candidate Zach Klein, a Columbus police officer with a history of questionable shootings killed Tyre King, a 13-year-old African American. King’s shooting occurred less than a block away from Fitrakis’s Near East home.