Carmen Szukaitis, a 21-year-old transgender fashion model attending Ohio University, will be profiled in Here-TV’s upcoming docuseries, Road to the Runway, premiering this August 5th.

The series profiles twenty hopefuls competing in this year’s annual Slay Model search. Slay Model Management is the premier management company representing transgender fashion talent.

Cameras followed the twenty women to their hometowns, including Athens, Ohio, to uncover their roots: the environments they were reared in and the circumstances that helped shape them into the beautiful, statuesque, fashionable young women they are today. 

Rural Ohio and transgender people go together like oil and sweet water. But thankfully this is Athens, an island of open mindedness.

Nonetheless, Szukaitis, who was raised in Wooster, has faced a lifetime of scrutiny and judgement no “cis” could ever imagine. But after all the sour glances and cold shoulders, she suddenly finds herself on the cusp of stardom.

This column is painful to write. I have been putting it off.

Please understand that the minute I complete writing a column, I begin thinking about the next one. I do not immediately face deadline pressure because I only write once or twice a month. Imagine what it is like for a columnist or newsletter writer who files once a day. There is immediate, mind-numbing deadline pressure.

The late Mike Royko, who wrote several columns a week for the Chicago Tribune, was asked late in life by TV interviewer Larry King what his favorite column was. Royko replied, “The last one.”

I always have my next column in the back of my mind and have the luxury of having two or three weeks of contemplation time. Sometimes the idea for my next column will come to me while mowing the lawn, while falling asleep, while driving, or while having a conversation. I often scribble the idea on a piece of paper and put it where I keep my stack of clippings and printouts that become content for my next column.

Today’s column idea came to me at one of the most peaceful places on earth: Lake Tahoe.

WHO:
Members of the Charter Review Commission

WHEN:
Tomorrow
July 6, 2022
3 pm

WHERE:
City Hall Council Chambers

WHAT:
Last convened as a Commission in 2014, the Charter Review Commission reviews the Columbus City Charter and may recommend changes.  The Charter, originally adopted by voters in 1914, outlines the fundamental rights, powers and responsibilities of the citizens and their elected municipal officials. Any amendments to the Charter would require a vote of Council and the approval of Columbus voters during a future election. The Commissioners met previously on June 22 to discuss further discuss proposals for civil service reforms in the Charter, pertaining to the hiring process and classifications of city employees.  On July 6, Commissioners will discuss feedback from public comment hearings and hold a vote on a final set of recommendations to submit to City Council.  Per Charter requirements, recommendations from the Commission are due to Council by July 10. 

In this day and age of superheroes deluging the big screen with their derring-do, it’s a delight to discover a production performed on the live stage about three very real women grappling with the various vicissitudes of everyday life. This revised revival of playwright Ernest Thompson’s The West Side Waltz is about a trio of females of different ages who reside in an apartment building on Manhattan’s West 72nd Street. The Waltz part of the title refers to the fact that widowed 70-ish Margaret Mary Elderdice (Ellen Geer) is a former classical concert pianist, while her 50-ish neighbor Cara Varnum (Melora Marshall) accompanies her on the violin for household duets. And I suppose that Waltz could also refer to the dance of life that this play poignantly choreographs on the outdoor stage of Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum.

I call for 19th-century urban reforms and an early 20th-century Progressive Era for Columbus, Ohio in 2022.

Columbus clamors for an unimaginable future alternatively as the Columbus Way or Opportunity City. But it has no sense of its past or even its present. If I turn to allegory for the city’s failing infrastructure, this is like building a 32-story skyscraper beside the historic North Market (once the home of city offices) or the ludicrously named Junto Hotel on the banks of the Scioto River without a foundation. Or, to turn to another relevant ecological metaphor, the City engages in slash-and-burn agriculture with no replanting.

We may combine these threads into a plea for sustained attention to the missing contexts of the city’s human and natural ecologies. We may then follow their intersections into the makings and breakings of the lives and the life chances of differently-situated Columbus residents.