Opinion

Margaret's (Rebecca Hall) life is in order. She's capable, disciplined, and successful. Soon, Abbie (Grace Kaufman), her teenage daughter, who Margaret raised by herself, will be going off to a fine university, just as Margaret had hoped. Everything is under control. That's, until David (Tim Roth) returns, carrying with him the horrors of Margaret's past.

It's about a single mother acting alone to protect her child from some sort of dangerous threat or predator, but we don’t quite know who she is or why she must act alone. The character of Margaret is a complex woman, haunted by events in her past but also extremely in control of her life, or so she thinks. Margaret is a character preoccupied with control: control over her environment, her body, her emotions. Maintaining control is how she keeps her emotional wolves at bay and brings her a sense of pride. But of course, if you’re someone interested in maintaining strict control over yourself and your environment, the worst thing you can possibly do is have a child.

As I continue my search for Columbus’ history and identity, I regularly rediscover the City’s and the city’s willful lack of the foundational elements for a modern city. I return to its absence of typical city reforms toward representative city government in the second half of the nineteenth century and its missing Progressive Era of the early 20th century: that’s capital P, unlike our present-day search for a 21st century progressivism. These are historical anomalies, unlike other cities of its age and size in Ohio and across the nation.

A central element in Columbus’ absent core is the combined extent of mismanagement and lack of management, and both real and likely corruption. As Ohio increasingly takes center stage nationally for corruption permeating its state government, 21st century Columbus takes center stage as its corruption capital.

"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.

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,”

WASHINGTON -
Declaring that “President Biden has been neither bold nor inspiring” and “his prospects for winning re-election appear to be bleak,” the national activist organization RootsAction announced today that it will launch a campaign to prevent his renomination.

With an email list of 1.2 million current supporters in the United States, RootsAction issued a statement saying it is committed to nationwide organizing to prevent Biden from being the Democratic Party’s 2024 nominee for president. This is the first time that a large national organization has announced such plans.

“In 2024 the United States will face the dual imperatives of preventing a Republican takeover of the White House and advancing a truly progressive agenda,” RootsAction said in a statement. With so much at stake, renominating Biden “would be a tragic mistake.” The statement concluded: “A president is not his party’s king, and he has no automatic right to renomination. Joe Biden should not seek it. If he does, he will have a fight on his hands.”

The full RootsAction statement announcing the #DontRunJoe campaign is posted at DontRunJoe.org.

Español abajo

Kreyol anba a

Dear President López Obrador,

We, the undersigned, condemn in the strongest possible terms Mexico’s spearheading of the renewal of the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Office (BINUH) in Haiti. The Haitian people view BINUH’s presence as a foreign occupation that, since 2004, has suppressed Haiti’s independence and sovereignty. We agree. We want you, President AMLO, to seriously consider your role and the role of the Mexican Republic in extending the UN’s mission and continuing the repression of the Haitian people. 

My struggles to gain democratic legal rights and respect for residents in the “city” of Columbus continue. The three documents reprinted here below elaborate the themes of my recent essays. To expand the discussion to a larger public, I include them here.

First, I wrote to the City Council legislative aides, department heads, and City Attorneys with who I am in communication. They were silent for some weeks after I tripped on (illegal) broken pavement and fractured my right leg, and commented that the City’s failure to inspect and enforce its zoning codes makes the city as well as the large corporate property owner legally liable.

June 10, 2022

To my correspondents,

Today for the second time in two weeks that we lost electric power from AEP for multiple hours on a weekday morning. Never an explanation. [This is the week before AEP’s massive and unexplained failures. The City refuses to hold AEP accountable, leaving that to the state’s corruption-ridden PUCO]

This parallels Rumpke's sporadic performances without consequences and City Council’s insulting public clean-up by volunteers—who also pay taxes for public services--days.

This past June 17 was the fiftieth anniversary of the break in of the Watergate Hotel. A surfeit of books have been written about this sorry episode in American history; indeed, two new ones have been published in the last few months. However, Adam Henig’s Watergate’s Forgotten Hero, propitiously timed, is the first biography to explore the life of the unassuming security guard.  

Two years of death and disease and no live music---I hardly recognize myself. Thus it was Comfest '22 gently re-immersed this battered, drifting soul into the mildly healing waters of outdoor song-and-jamfestival-born. Better that way, among the trees, our original friends.

The Park's Gazebo Stage was the site of the first band I've seen and heard since a town named Wuhan changed America and the world. Friday, June 24, I liked how my personal siege was lifted. First force to the rescue entered the freshly opened city gates: The Neal Show!

Neal Havener is every mother's delight: genteel, pleasant, kindly, warm, fuzzy, youthfully middle-aged. Many mellow bones connect in his slim countenance. His music very much like early Simon and Garfunkel--earnest, thoughtful, crafted with respectable chord changes to almost be proud of.

In 2022, Columbus City Council and Mayor Ginther seated a Charter Review Commission, the first since 2014, for the purpose of reviewing the Charter and making recommendations for potential revisions. Their last meeting was this week, and per Charter requirements, recommendations from the Commission are due to City Council by July 10. 

Any amendments to the Charter would require a vote of City Council and the approval of Columbus voters during a future election.

The Columbus City Charter, originally adopted by voters in 1914, outlines the fundamental rights, powers and responsibilities of the citizens and their elected municipal officials. The Charter was last amended via ballot in 2020 to create a civilian police review board and in 2018 to create district representation for City Council.