"This guy cannot sing."

 That was my initial impression of the husky hippie guitar player fronting the band who followed The Neil Show!, namely Electric Orange Peel, on the late Friday afternoon white Gazebo Stage.

Soon I thought, "But who cares? These cats can PLAY!"

Talk about contrasts. The shire's ambassadors of the forest glade Show! were replaced by the single most ferociously dynamic ball of firebird jam bands I have EVER seen.

Lay your arms down at the feet of the keyboardist, he's taking prisoners. The dude dominated like a hellion, playing his organ like a pair of conga drums, smashing chords with both hands chop chop chop, going full metal roller ball like a head-on collision with Mad Max. No mercy! All action.

The song had started out badly sung in a lolling tempo, then went from verse and pseudo chorus to a seven-minute anthemic coda in the key change of FAST. So no real song in between. Fine with me.

In what arguably is the Midwest’s largest boomtown, City of Columbus leadership and the grassroots effort “Neighbors 4 More Neighbors” have been seeking greater housing density for Columbus’s downtown and nearby neighborhoods, such as the Short North.

Just this week City Council unanimously passed a zoning change which could lead to 800 more apartments inside the popular Scioto Audubon Metro Park. 

Those pushing greater density – such as Neighbors 4 More Neighbors or “N4MN” – are adamant this is the path Columbus needs to take. You can put the downtowns of Cincinnati and Cleveland in Columbus’s downtown in square miles, they say.

What’s more, says N4MN, Columbus and Central Ohio has sprawled so far, so fast, its straining resources and government services, to maintain roads, add water lines and provide public transit, etc.

Greater density has also become policy, as Mayor Ginther and City Council in June announced the Columbus Housing Strategy with a core effort “to build more housing at all price points region-wide.” Part of this plan includes a $200 million affordable housing bond on November’s ballot.

Friday, July 15, 12noon-1pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

In January 2022, Intel announced plans to build the largest semiconductor chip manufacturing facility ever built in New Albany, Ohio. The initial investment of $20 billion is the largest single private-sector investment in Ohio history. This initial phase is expected to employ not only Intel staff but construction and service industry workers. This development raises questions over the lasting impacts this facility will have on Ohio. Where will these new employees come from and where will they live? What are the long-lasting impacts on our water and energy resources? What kinds of transportation infrastructure investments should we make to protect our quality of life? How will this affect Ohio’s economic future? This summer, CURA brings together industry experts, researchers, and government leaders for four online-only webinars to discuss these topics and more!

This panel discussion will be moderated by Harvey Miller.

Development Panelists:

The monumental battle over remote work in Columbus and elsewhere is heating up this summer as more traditionalist business leaders are demanding that their employees come to the office much or all of the time. Google maps workers, asked to come back to the office full-time recently, fought back with a petition and threats of a strike, and won a reprieve of 90 days.

Is an insurrection percolating in the MAGA universe? A civil war?

One thing I notice as I read the growing warnings that this is the case is the assumption that suddenly the USA has become a divided nation, a splintered democracy, when, in point of fact, it has always been deeply – and for much of its history, good God, legally – divided.

Indeed, Jim Crow America was the prime model for a certain would-be European dictator.

You may have heard of Adolf Hitler. In Mein Kampf, the biography he wrote before he came to power, he “praises America,” according to Alex Ross, writing in the New Yorker, “as the one state that has made progress toward a primarily racial conception of citizenship,”