History in blackface slaps the present moment awake.

What? The governor put that picture on his yearbook page? In 1984? The wave of outrage, the demand for his resignation — from Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s own party, the Democrats — can’t be dismissed with a shrug and an apology. His career may be over, thanks not simply to an act of youthful stupidity but to the context that made it possible: good old American racism.

In a society where world population is on the rise and citizens are increasingly connected through technology, theorists claim the infamous “six degrees of separation” has narrowed to “three degrees.” How many individuals know someone who has battled cancer, struggled with diabetes, dealt with seizures or contracted HIV? Likely everyone reading this knows at least one person dealing with one (or more) of these severe health concerns. The need for consistent access to healthcare increases significantly when combining those challenges with environmental factors such as: pollution, pesticides, volatile chemicals and shrinking biodiversity. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one in eight deaths worldwide is linked to air pollution exposure.

One month ago, I moved from my beloved Arcadia Avenue to the suburban paradise of Upper Arlington. I had my reasons, and I don’t regret the decision. But I do miss the noise and life of the city. There has also been something of a learning curve – dumping metal debris in my front yard for scrappers to pick up is not OK. I also had to buy a snow shovel.

As my consolation for the move, I decided that I was going to take advantage of my nearly doubled square footage and indulge myself with a real music room. A good chance to consolidate the drums, pianos, ten or so guitars, pennywhistles and other miscellany that was formerly stashed in every corner of my old house. And a place to put that duct taped together couch.

I hope so much that I will stay musically active and, unlike a lot of basement bars and man-caves, the room will be more of a functional space than a shrine to a past life. But hanging guitars on the wall got me excited, and the next thing you know I’m installing vintage style sconce lights and buying lava lamps. One thing led to another, culminating in a whiskey fueled online poster shopping spree at 1:00 AM.

The St Louis River of Northern Minnesota will be as Vulnerable to Annihilation as were Brazil’s Rio Doce and Paraobeba Rivers (pictured below) – if the PolyMet Project is Allowed to Proceed

(Trying to understand why every Brazilian mining catastrophe has been blacked-out by the Duluth News-Tribune)

The photos and videos in this supplemental Duty to Warn column need to be viewed by everybody living downstream from the proposed PolyMet mine tailings lagoon – scheduled to be built near Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota, a St Louis River river-town in northeast Minnesota. Hoyt Lakes is the northernmost of the 12 river towns on the St Louis River estuary which empties into Lake Superior, the least polluted of the Great Lakes. Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world (by surface area) and it contains 10% of the entire world’s remaining fresh water.

City leaders have said trying to find parking in the Short North, even during peak hours, is a First World problem.

“I do agree that this is a First World problem, but parking is emotional because it affects you every day. It is a quality of life issue,” says Robert Ferrin the city’s assistant director for Parking Services. “There are people who are absolutely unhappy with this. Everyone looks at success differently.”

But tell that to long-time Short North and surrounding neighborhood homeowners who are planning to live in their home a lifetime.

Short North homeowners, feeling the squeeze of gentrification, say our city government, which has long been sold-out to high-end developers, made a bad parking problem even worse by not pushing back against a decade of overdevelopment.

“The community isn’t being listened too,” says Kevin Truitt, who’s owned his home on 3rd Avenue since 2011. “Instead, the city is thinking, ‘How can we develop the Short North? How can we benefit the developers?’ The parking problem is one element of this and the residents who have actually lived in the neighborhood for years are being tossed aside.”