ProgressOhio

My opposition to Columbus' casino-in-progress isn't vehement or any way morality-based, it's just a Not in My Neighborhood kind of thing.

Yes, it bothers me that Franklin and surrounding counties voted against Issue 3 to allow casino gaming in Ohio, but a casino will be foisted on us anyway. And it bothers me that we allowed out-of-state corporations to rewrite the Ohio constitution. Plus, these outsiders apparently can circumvent local zoning laws, much to the dismay of Arena District and Grandview Yard neighbors. In addition, the FOP really sold-out its soul on Issue 3 endorsements. And, oh yeah, we can now look forward to lawsuits from Native American tribes who want to build casinos here.

These things trouble me, but I guess we have to get used to it and move ahead. Alas, the casino nut has been cracked in Buckeyeland. But what kind of casino?

It will be windowless, I bet. Lots of free parking, so more high-rise parking garages need to be built. A lavish buffet -- most likely a pretty good deal if you can eat before 3 p.m. Throbbing background music. Like most Midwest casinos, there will be a cheesy faux-Vegas feel to it.

At least it won't be a fake riverboat casino that are common in this part of the country. What is the deal with Midwesterners gambling while floating?

I don't want a casino in my neighborhood, but if the developers insist, I won't be boycotting it. I just hope they'll have a roulette table.

Columbus Day is nothing to celebrate, especially if you're Native American. It marks the beginning of Christopher Columbus' "discovery" (read: exploitation) of the "New World." (Technically, he landed first in The Bahamas, not North America, on October 12, 1492, 500 years after European Leif Ericson led the Norse here.)

There was nothing new about the New World -- people had been living here without heavy metal weaponry for thousands of years. For European theologians, this was a problem. It really messed with their biblical view. There were not supposed to be people here.

Their solution was to enslave the native people in the name of a Catholic God. As Columbus wrote, the natives "ought to make good and skilled servants."

Disease brought by white settlers nearly eliminated the native people. While you can't pin this tragedy on Chris, it is true that he was one of North America's most prolific slave traders...a sad symbol of oppression and genocide for indigenous people.

Italian-born and Spanish-financed, Columbus was a risk taker -- you gotta give him that.

I don't feel particularly shamed by my hometown namesake. (Truth or Consequences, NM, YOU should feel ashamed.) I'm just saying we need to be culturally sensitive about the Columbus hero myth-legacy.

In New York, Columbus Day is a big Italian festival and everyone in the city gets the day off because of parade traffic. Here, Columbus Day is more of a marketing opportunity -- Experience Columbus [whee!] with a Santa Maria red-tag sale.

As a piece of public art, I really like the giant Chris Columbus downtown. The statue is a gift from the people of Genoa, Italy, which is darn nice of them.

Maybe I've been watching The History Channel too much, but I've been thinking. Five hundred years after the people of Columbus are dead and gone and Ohio Stadium crumbles, big bronze Chris will still be here.

As you well know, the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Like me, you probably can't explain the hows and whys of mito-powering, but your memory is fixed from high school biology. We know what we know.

Well, maybe we should reexamine some of those fixed ideas. Like, for example, what we told over and over again in high school history: the bombing of Hiroshima ended WWII and therefore saved lives. If that's true, why nuke Nagasaki?

And Chris Columbus discovered the New World. Really? There was nothing new about it -- people had been living here for thousands of years.

Rote learning is faux understanding. You can see how it happens -- we take the easy way out when it comes to teaching our kids. Those newly gifted with speech always have questions. It's so much easier to respond to Why-is-the-sky-blue? type questions with "because God made it that way." What a cop-out.

The "Question Authority" bumper-sticker philosophy still makes sense. Who knows, there may be a mitochondria lobby trying to influence our thinking about cellular energy use. Follow the money.

I was going to compose a snappy little essay about my observations at this year's Ohio State Fair, so I decided to review what I posted last year, OhioStateFairphilia. Surprisingly, this post described nearly exactly my feelings about this year's fair. So I guess there's no point in repeating myself.

There's another word for the deja vu nature of the fair -- tradition. This is the 156th fair. The Ohio Revised Code specifically mandates that "primes" be awarded to certain AG producers at the fair. Obviously the fair is a big deal for some people (and often these people ride in golf carts).

The fair is intended for rural Ohioans. I'm just a bystander in their world of 4-H projects and roasted corn. The llamas, alpacas, beaver, owls, bobcat, otter, sea lamprey preserved in a jar, and yes, groundhog, were neat to see too.

And I appreciate the Honeycomb cereal sample, breast cancer awareness backscratcher, nifty Ohio Lottery Bandaid dispenser, National Robotics Challenge ballpoint, Dads dog food, and loads of Homeland Security literature including "Preparing Your Pets for Emergencies."

I don't even own a pet. I guess I just got greedy.

Of course, there are some minor changes this year. There's a teeny kayak pond in the ODNR park. The poultry and commercial buildings got badly needed paint jobs and renovations. And unlike fairs of my youth, I believe today's Pork Queen has a sense of irony.

The usual Sham-Wow knockoffs and food dicers occupied the Bricker Building, but I noticed a long-time exhibitor was missing this year -- the Right to Life group. This is kind of a shame, as I had decided that instead of scowling as I have in the past when encountering their booth, I would smile and say something nice like, "I appreciate the kind of outreach you're doing here." Who knows, maybe they could prevent someone from having an abortion -- and that would be great.

Unfortunately, I didn't have an opportunity to foster a mini beer summit with the Right to Lifers. But I'm going to continue to try harder to break my cyclical thinking. Traditions are OK, but the prejudicial thinking has got to go. Them vs. Us gets you nowhere.

Another adventurous young man has died hiking in searing hot Grand Canyon NP:

(CNN) -- Search teams combing the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona found a body on Saturday believed to be that of a missing 20-year-old hiker, the National Park Service said.

Bryce Gillies, a student at Northern Arizona University, left last Saturday for his backpacking trip through the Deer Creek-Thunder River area of the park, and said he would return on Monday. A search effort was launched on Tuesday after he was reported missing....

More than 100 hikers have died at the park between 1925 and 2006, half of them fatal falls, according to Michael Ghiglieri and Thomas Myers, authors of "Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon."***

On a recent solo trip to Petrified Forest NP (beautiful and otherworldly, but sadly looted) and Grand Canyon NP, I purchased the aforementioned book at the Bright Angel gift shop. The clerk looked me over carefully and inappropriately, I thought, asked me if I had a travel companion. After I read the book, I understood the clerk's concern. Ever since Thelma & Louise came out, there's been a rash of people trying to drive over the rim of Grand Canyon.

(It's funny. When I was younger and used to travel alone on business, I sometimes got the feeling that hotel staffers thought I was a hooker. No one ever thinks that anymore. Now they think I'm there to kill myself.)

Death in Grand Canyon is a fascinating piece of documentation. There are many more ways to die besides jumping off a cliff. Heat strokes, heart attacks, drowning in the Colorado River, rock falls and flash floods are popular ways to go. Young men are the vast majority of victims of preventable deaths. All it takes is a poorly planned hike or "shortcut" into the canyon.

Most notably at the Grand Canyon, 128 people died as a result of a mid-air collision of United and TWA planes on June 30, 1956. Many of the victims were airline employees and their families enjoying a low-altitude sightseeing tour. Recovering the bodies and debris was a challenging and dangerous operation. "The carnage of this accident was so hideous that it alone spurred the formation of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)."

My love of natural American splendor as well as morbid curiousity was once again satisfied with the purchase of Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park by Lee H. Whittlesey. A predecessor to the other national park death books (I believe there's one for Yosemite too), it is thoughtfully written by a park ranger/historian/personal injury lawyer.

When you think of Yellowstone, pic-a-nic baskets and bear attacks come to mind. But that's not the case anymore. Bears, thankfully, have been relocated away from tourist areas. Wolves have been introduced as well. Feeding wild animals is strictly taboo. You might get charged by a bison, but animal attacks in the park are rare these days.

What is unique about Yellowstone is its roiling hot springs, geysers, fumaroles (steam vents), mud pots and other hydrothermal features. The only other places on the planet you will find geysers are New Zealand and Iceland, and none of them are as predictable as Old Faithful (erupts every 40-90 minutes).

Those brilliant aquamarine hot pools look inviting. Perhaps swimming was what 9-year-old Andy Hecht of Williamsville, NY had in mind when he walked along the Crested Pool boardwalk with his parents June 28, 1970.

"A puff of wind apparently blew the pool's hot vapor into Andy's eyes, momentarily blinding him at a turn in the walkway. Some accounts claim Andy tripped at the edge of the boardwalk, which had no guardrail. At any rate, he plunged into the pool where the water temperature was over 200 degrees F. Andy tried vainly to swim a couple of strokes, then was scalded to death and sank. According to two national magazines, the last glimpse his mother had of him was seeing his rigid, stark-white face, the mark of pain and apprehension of death, sinking into the boiling water....Eight pounds of bone, flesh, and clothing were recovered the following day."

Please watch out for your fellow hikers and perhaps visit Cuyahoga Valley NP. It's free and there's no risk of falling into a hot pool.

I bought a state tourism booklet The Wonderful World of Ohio, copyright 1965, at Half-Price Books for a buck. This turned out to be a wonderful sarcasm bargain, since the brochure appears to be penned by Big Jim Rhodes himself and the cover is a rip-off of the Disney TV show logo.

So what's wonderful about Ohio? Well, "Profit Is Not A Dirty Word in Ohio" is mentioned repeatedly, as is -- weirdly -- water skiing. (Can you imagine water skiing in the Ohio River today? It gives me intestinal flu just thinking about it.)

Here are some snippets you might enjoy....

"Nature gave Ohio more than 44,000 miles of streams. Man has impounded 10,000 additional acres."  Impounded?

"Ohio's scrappiest fish is the smallmouth bass."

"Quail abound and the tough, ring-necked pheasant sets the game bird hunter's heart to pounding. The cry of the coonhounds punctuates nocturnal silence as they race to tree their quarry."  Sounds like someone really enjoys running with the dogs at night carrying a rifle.

"Only two states outproduce Ohio in electric machinery, lighting equipment, paper and paper products, engines and turbines, wire works, signs and advertising novelties, and plumber supplies and equipment."  Gosh, only two?

"'America's Ruhr Valley' is the titled earned by Youngstown by its steel mills."  Ruhreally?

"Ohio [agriculture] firsts include....a rumen fistula (window in the cow's side)...."  I'm afraid to google this.

You just don't get punchy PR copy like this anymore: "In Ohio, safety is everybody's business in plant and home. This is another of the things which make the world of Ohio wonderful."

Today, there are some less-than-wonderful things about Ohio, including our high unemployment and foreclosure rates, pollution, Joe the Plumber, South Dakota-like abortion protesters, and the Creation Museum (own it, KY!). But I still think it's a darn good place to live.

I almost miss them -- the door-to-door religious proselytizers roaming my neighborhood, always in groups of three to five women and pairs of white-shirted young men wearing nametags. I honestly don't know and don't care what their particular religious affiliations are. All I know is they're at my door, coyly asking for money.

I've not had a solicitor of the religious variety come to my door in the year since I complained here: Do Not Call, Solicit or Proselytize, please.

I kinda miss the religious proselytizers because I'm the kind of gal who enjoys a good tete-a-tete about making moral judgments, i.e., I'm a bitch. The older I get, the less I care about offending people. These arrogant religious people are ganging up on me on my property and I have a right to defend myself verbally.

The last time a group of women knocked on my door "accepting donations" (as opposed to selling magazines which requires a permit), I asked them where they lived and would they mind if I came to their homes at dinnertime so I could tell them my religious beliefs?

Indignantly, the eldest Proselytista said they were going door to door to talk to people and pray for their illnesses and problems. Really?  Wouldn't y'all be better off doing that in a less fortunate area than my upper middle class neighborhood?

My sarcasm caused one of the women to openly weep. (Buck up, sweetie. I imagine it's gonna be a long haul to heaven for you.)

Maybe they took me seriously when I told them to put me on their Do Not Proselytize list. (Alternative theory: bitching here on PO made a difference.) Either way, I sorta miss them.

Post Bonus: Hendrix lyrics

The Michael Jackson memorial service, to my surprise, made my eyes well up several times. Jennifer Hudson and Stevie Wonder sang beautifully, Brooke Shields spoke sincerely, Paris sobbed, Marlon mourned his stillborn twin and even Al Sharpton got to me.

Since almost all of Hollywood and Harlem has related their MJ memories by now, I'll tell my middle-aged white woman from Ohio story before it fades away.

It was 1970 or maybe 1971. Motown was the preferred dance music of suburban kids like me. A rain-out at the Ohio State Fair caused back-to-back scheduling of the Osmond Brothers and Jackson 5 in the grandstand. I came for the Osmonds (a pre-Marie good show featuring Donny), and stayed in my fold-up wooden chair for the Jacksons (a great show).

The Jacksons were dressed in paisley shirts, bell bottoms and suede fringe vests. They performed ABC, Stop the Love You Save, and Rockin Robin. It was quintessential bubble gum pop. The brothers moved as a group, but it was obvious Michael was a standout with that booming voice of his.

I adored their afros, their flat noses, their sharp dance moves. Black kids seemed so cool; kids like me seemed to have no ethnicity at all. We had, um, surfer music.

It was disappointing in later years when MJ seemed to take on my pasty feminine appearance. Weirder still was the drawn-out child molestation trials and his accusations of racism against his record producer. But you know, celebrities are different than you and I.

(Btw, in regard to the child molestation charges, has anyone come forward to say "Michael Jackson ruined my life"? I don't think so.)

MJ's signature moves, specifically the Moonwalk (difficult) and the Robot (easy), seemed to congeal his inter-generational appeal. My sons' college-aged friends and I all like his music -- most unusual.

Many people have observed that MJ's appeal crosses racial and generational lines. I can personally attest to that. I want to remember him as that little black kid belting out "I'll Be There" on the grandstand stage in the August Ohio sun.

My late dad rarely talked about his experiences in the Army Air Corp. It is from old newspaper clippings that I know that he piloted 21 combat missions over Germany in an A-20. A few of those missions were nail-biters -- just barely landing at his base across the Rhine River after taking enemy flak to his fuel tank, for example.

I don't even have a point of reference to understand what real Nazi warfare must have been like for him. Video games? How pathetic.

Unfortunately, by the time I got around to asking my dad probing questions about his war experiences, he was suffering from Parkinsons disease and often delusional.

"Did you find the base OK?" he'd ask from his nursing home bed.

"Yes, Daddy, no problem." Was it the Parkinsons or the meds for the Parkinsons? I'm not sure, but this went on for 12 years. It is what it is.

In one of his more lucid moments he told me his most exciting wartime experience was coming home -- piloting a single-engine prop plane across the Atlantic with a stopover in Africa. It's funny that this peaceful mission was what he remembered most vividly.

Though he wasn't a military careerist type, my dad like the Army. Before he enlisted he graduated from Ohio State with a business degree. He was devastated to be rejected from fraternity membership there. Raised by a single parent, he did not have the social benefit of a dad with a fat bank account. The Army didn't care about that -- they took him at face value for the smart, capable guy that he was.

Part of my dad's legacy is that he disliked fraternities, country clubs and all things elitist, despite his personal success. Although he was a Republican, I think he would have appreciated that Barack Obama is neither a Skull-and-Boner nor a His father-his father-his father kind of guy.

My dad left behind a leather-bound photo album with shots of his army buddies, aerial fighter pilot scenes and French postcards (the boring kind, like the Eiffel Tower). There are also candid pictures of Hitler and Mussolini mixed in with his personal photos. I now realize that he probably purchased these photos post-war, but when I was a kid looking at this album, I took it for granted that my daddy was hopping around Europe, taking Polaroids of Der Fuhrer. Of course! All in a day's work for a quiet WWII war hero.

I planted a small tuft of Robert Mitchum Peppermint a few years ago between our fence and driveway. I don't know why this herb is named after the '50s film noir star of Cape Fear and Night of the Hunter (where Mitchum plays a super-creepy preacher with "Love" and "Hate" tattooed on his knuckles). I guess some horticulturist just liked the actor and wanted to honor him.

I like Bob Mitchum too -- the guy got busted for smoking pot in the '40s. A true risk taker. He's vintage beefcake with a honey voice and stoner eyes. Like Bettie Page, he's sexiest in black and white.

So in honor of Mitchum, I planted just one little seedling (too bad it couldn't have been a more useful medicinal herb), and now I've got invasive peppermint shooting out everywhere, busting through the driveway blacktop. If you park in our driveway, you get minty-fresh tires and vague thoughts of Christmas.

I also have Annie Hall Thyme growing, which got me thinking about celebrity-named plants (and Woody Allen movies). It seems the most nameable plants are roses. There are dozens of roses named after real people. There are country singer roses (Reba McEntyre, Minnie Pearl), First Lady roses (Barbara Bush), political leader roses (Helmut Schmidt, JFK), lots of entertainer roses (Elizabeth Taylor, Henry Fonda, Rosie O'Donnell, Carrot Top), a troubled carmaker nameplate rose (Chrysler Imperial), as well as a few inexplicable rose names (Weight Watchers Success and Stainless Steel).

Why not develop a strain of Tina Louise Gingeroot, Lindsey Lohan Chickweed, Miss California Melons or Rod Parsley-in-the-Pulpit?

A separate garden area would be necessary for invasive political species. Next to the Phlox News Hackberrys, for example, you might find a Burning Bush, Dickweed Thistle, Monica Lewinsky Honeysuckle, Rod Blago Forget-Me-Nots, Don't Ask, Don't Tell Ladys Slippers and Enhanced Interrogation Nettles.

Delicate species, such as Columbine: The Flower, are at risk of being choked out by Beltway Virginia Creeper and Lobbyist Milkweed.

It's best to use Bleeding Hearts as a border to the Big Guvment Garden. It doesn't produce anything edible, but you never have to prune it.