Jamie Galen’s uncanny incarnation of Truman Capote in the first act of ​playwright Jay Presson Allen’s 1989 Broadway adaptation of Capote’s writings and ruminations, Tru, is a must-see tour de force. The one-man show is set in the glitterati’s penthouse overlooking the glittering lights of Manhattan and the UN Building wherein the In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s author muses out loud and answers phone calls on Christmas Eve, 1975. At this moment critics and beau monde “pals” feel aggrieved that “Tru,” as he’s nicknamed, has betrayed their trust by publishing a chapter of his unfinished tell-all tale Unanswered Prayers in Esquire Magazine that dares tell the “Tru-th” about the lifestyles of these rich and famous “friends.”

Columbus is witnessing two labor movements, and while Starbucks United has had success, the other more local of the two, Wex Workers United, says it is in a standoff with its boss, the Ohio State University.

Wex Workers United or “WWU” and its affiliate union, AFSCME Ohio Council 8, first asked OSU for voluntary recognition three months ago because an “overwhelming number” of Wexner Center for the Arts employees support unionization, but there’s been no answer from the university.

If OSU refuses to allow the union, Wexner Center workers would take a vote. But OSU, WWU, and the State Employment Relations Board or SERB, must first come to an agreement that a vote should be made, and the university hasn’t consented to this either.

Early Franklinton and Columbus’ forgotten beginnings

Dismissed, when even noticed by City government and city residents alike, Columbus’ historical, political, economic, social, and cultural origins lay in Franklinton. The district is now on the southeastern edge of downtown but it was long the center. Historians, geographers, archaeologists, and genealogists can read the signs on the ground and in the libraries. But they are unknown to most residents including the governing class and their inseparable developers. Among many reasons are Columbus’ lack of any traditions of professional self-study, the failings of its educational and cultural institutions, and the disinterestedness of its journalists. (See my essays on the City of Columbus and the University District in Columbus Free Press; contrast them, for example, with Ed Lentz’s Columbus Dispatch’s antiquarian vignettes always taken out of historical context and without consideration of significance. Franklinton is not in the index of only serious scholarly book on Columbus, Kevin Cox, Boomtown Columbus. Ohio State University Press, 2021)

On May 4, the Israeli Occupation High Court approved one of the largest forcible transfers of Palestinians from their land since 1967. Over 1,300 Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta, an area in the south Hebron hills, are facing forced displacement by Israeli forces on a moment’s notice. Palestinian Bedouins have lived on this land for 918 years. 

Masafer Yatta is an area in the South Hebron Hills area of the occupied West Bank consisting of fourteen Palestinian villages that is home to 13,000 inhabitants. Its economy is based on farming and raising of sheep and goats.  In the 1980s, the Israeli army designated part of this area a closed military zone for training and sought to remove the communities for this use. Palestinian residents have continually faced demolition of their homes, cisterns, water mains, roads, structures, and schools. Israeli military equipped with bulldozers destroys it all. Israel forbids Palestinians to build homes on their own land, connect to water and power grids, and graze livestock. 

Right from the get go I must gush that in terms of sheer scale – optically and sonically – as staged by LA Opera, Aida’s scene set outside of the city walls wherein the masses are assembled to all hail the conquering heroes is among the most magnificent sequences I’ve ever experienced at a live theater in my entire life. Amidst fluttering banners and brandished weaponry, there are dancing girls, soldiers, priests, citizens, royalty and prisoners of war as the ancient Egyptians celebrate their returning, victorious army, who have just vanquished the Ethiopian invaders (as in ACT II, SCENE 2 of the original libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni – but in LA Opera’s version directed by Francesca Zambello, this colossal triumphal scene takes place at the end of the first act, before the curtain drops to signal intermission).