Rogue Machine Theatre, which won 2018’s Best Season Ovation Award, is known for pushing the envelope with plays that challenge conventions. A number of the edgy theatre company’s productions deal with the thorny theme of racism, including the stellar One Night in Miami, a rare revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs, American Saga: Gunshot Medley - Part I (on July 6 Rogue Machine is remounting Dionna Michelle Daniel’s searing drama) and Dutch Masters.

The latter was directed by Ovation Award winner Guillermo Cienfuegos, who also helms Rogue Machine’s curtain lifter of its new season at Venice’s Electric Lodge, David Jacobi’s Ready, Steady, Yeti, Go, as part of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere. Like the above mentioned dramas, Yeti also deals with the subject of bigotry - but with a big difference.

What? Another mass murder?

Almost missed this one: Virginia Beach. Twelve killed on May 31, plus the killer himself, who was a city employee — an engineer. He had legitimate access to the building where he shot people on three floors. His guns were legally purchased. Nothing about him, prior to the tragedy, indicated he was unhinged.

Except, well. an anonymous source told the New York Times “the suspect had no history of behavioral problems until recently, when he had begun acting strangely and getting into physical ‘scuffles’ with other city workers.”

So something had come loose — and the passing news coverage lurches into Lonerville. Another lost, isolated loser with a bunch of guns takes out his perceived enemies. We mourn, we shake our heads . . .

Foghat released its self-titled British boogie debut; T. Rex, its third album, The Slider; and Chicago's V was America's number one thanks to its feelgood hit, Saturday In The Park.

It was also Chicago's last album without a Peter Cetera-written song.

We didn't know it, but our culture was seeing the true end of the visionary '60s and tiny little signs of Seventies Cheese would later be recognized. Cetera was soon going to slime us with his musical mayonnaise like we were French fries at the fair.

Elvis was switching performance residencies in Vegas from the Hilton to the MGM's Grand Hotel (his pay jumping to $200,000 per week from $125K) and prerecorded tape was challenging the primacy of the LP.

And Jimmy Cliff's The Harder They Come was number two in Bangkok.

What magazine would've featured all that jazz on its cover (except for the Bangkok tidbit, which was inside)?

Billboard, from Oct. 7, 1972 – my senior year in high school – and the music industry's main weekly publication. And unintended culture chronicle.

Ohio House Bill 6 would eliminate Ohio’s energy efficiency and clean energy programs. It would replace them with a charge on every Ohioan’s electric bill that would go to bail out First Energy’s crumbling leaking nuclear plants and two coal-fired plants, one of which is in Indiana.

Opponents to H.B. 6 will be gathering at three locations across the state during the first week in June [Toledo on June 3, Columbus on June 5, and Akron on June 7] to protest this unacceptable dirty energy tax on Ohioans. Wind and solar power are cheaper and can replace nukes and coal, but not if we are subsidizing the dirty power.

Contact: Joe DeMare, 419-973-5841 or joe@joedemareforagreenfuture.org