Bread & Circus Theatre Company Looking for Performers

Bread & Circus Theatre Company is looking for performers for their Saturday Night Cabaret! The cabaret will feature coffee and desserts for our guests and the great atmosphere of the new Harmony Artistic Center (formerly the Tripleforce Artistic Center) just off Cemetery Road at 3979 Parkway Lane in Hilliard (behind Wendy's).

This month’s Cabaret Night will be held on Saturday, August 8th. The show will begin at 7:30 pm.

At this time we are inviting performers of all kinds to be included in the show. If you can sing, dance, tell a joke, or juggle - step up to the mic! If you have a monologue or small scene you've been working on and want to see how it would go over with a live audience - come on down. Other theatre, dance, music companies are welcome, as well as individuals of all ages.

All interested performers should contact Carolyn at ccstritzel@yahoo.com for more information or to book a time slot or two.

Aaron Einhorn launches Comic Hero News

T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents to be integrated into the core DC universe.
Read more in ComicHeroNews.com

Aaron Einhorn's new blog, ComicHeroNews.com, contains comprehensive coverage of news relating to Comic heroes, no matter if you like 'em in comic books, gaming, or media (movies, TV, DVDs, etc.)

His brother Adam designed and created the actual blog while Aaron is in charge of providing content. (In the interest of full disclosure, Aaron and Adam are my sons.)

The current Comic Con in San Diego has been a wonderful source of many announcements and industry gossip and in the current issue, Comic Hero News covers that, as well as many other tidbits of related info.

Check out the website

Freepress invites us to see two movies

You are invited to see the movie
FOOD, Inc.

Free Press Readers receive $2.00 off General Admission and $1.00 off Student/Senior Admission.
You are invited to see the movie
FOOD, Inc.

Free Press Readers receive $2.00 off General Admission and $1.00 off Student/Senior Admission

Wednesday, July 22 – 7:30pm showing only

Just bring this email with you
Drexel Theater, 2254 E. Broad St., Bexley

FOOD, INC. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil off our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

A panel discussion will follow the screening and will broadly focus on issues raised in the film, eating locally produced food, growing food, and indentifying and supporting local food resources. Panelists will include Bill Dawson, Growing Green Program Coordinator, Franklin Park Conservatory; Michael Jones, Executive Director Local Matters; Darren Malhame, partner, Northstar Café; Annerose Schaffrin, General Manager, Bexley Natural Market; and Warren Taylor, owner and fresh milk advocate, Snowville Creamery, Pomeroy, Ohio. Carol Goland, Executive Director, Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association will be moderator. The audience is invited to see the film and stay to join in the discussion.

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Free Press Free Film Night
Tuesday, July 28, 2009 – 7:30pm

A Sense of Wonder
Rachel Carson’s love for the natural world and her fight to defend it

When pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, the backlash from her critics thrust her into the center of a political maelstrom. Despite her love of privacy, Carson’s convictions and her foresight regarding the risks posed by chemical pesticides forced her into a very public and controversial role. The film is an intimate and poignant reflection of Carson's life as she emerges as America's most successful advocate for the natural world. Sponsored by the Free Press, Sierra Club, Central Ohio Green Education Fund, and Drexel Theater.

Drexel Theater, 2254 E. Main St., Bexley
253-2571 – truth@freepress.org

Hot Times Festival, September 11, 13, 13

Reminding everyone that Hot Times Festival is nearing. Scheduled for September 11, 12 & 13, corner Parsons and Main, (Columbus Health Department)

This video clip dates form Hot Times 02, and features a chorus singing "Ride Sally Ride" consisting of Dave Powers (leading the Listen-for-the-jazz All-stars band), Arnett Howard, Don Bullard (who passed away last year) and me in my stage singing debut.

Planning for the event is in full swing with regular meetings every Monday evening (at 7pm) in the "dorm" on the festival grounds.

This is a completely volunteer-run event and we need plenty of helpers, both in planing (before event) and during the event. Volunteers are the only ones who receive and get to wear the coveted"official Hot Times volunteer T shirt"

More info? check out the website: http://hottimesfestival.com/

Walter Cronkite, 3 Mile Island & "Lamar's Folly" in the Climate Bill, by Harvey Wasserman

Thanks to Harvey Wasserman who keeps informing us about important issues, somehow missed by the mainstream media.-charlie

The accolades are still pouring in for departed anchorman Walter Cronkite. Few mention his critical "that's the way it is" reporting on the atomic melt-down at Three Mile Island.

Yet Cronkite and TMI are at the core of today's de facto moratorium on new reactor construction -- which the industry's new champion, Senator Lamar Alexander, now wants to reverse through the proposed federal Climate Bill.

Technicians who knew what was happening shook with terror as Cronkite opened his March 28, 1979, newscast with "the world has never known a day quite like today. It faced the considerable uncertainties and dangers of the worst nuclear power plant accident of the Atomic Age. And the horror tonight is that it could get much worse..".

Cronkite went on to say that "experts" had [wrongly] ruled out the possibility of an explosion. In the ensuing weeks and years, he did not report what remains one of the most heavily censored secrets of the nuclear age -- that significant radioactive fallout did escape from TMI, that it scattered randomly throughout the region, that it landed heavily on certain parts of the downwind population, and thathuman beings (as well as wild and farm animals) were killed and maimed in great numbers.

Cronkite was also not quite accurate in characterizing the TMI melt-down as potentially the worst reactor disaster in US history. On October 5, 1966, human error led to a coolant stoppage at the Fermi Fast Breeder Reactor in Monroe, Michigan, 45 miles south of Detroit. Highly volatile liquid sodium could have exploded, releasing apocalyptic quantities of radiation that would have quickly killed thousands of people and permanently poisoned most or all of the Great Lakes, the world's largest bodies of fresh water. For a full month area law enforcement weighed the possibility of evacuating Detroit.

Like TMI, it's not definitively known how much radiation was released at Fermi, where it went, or who was harmed. Experts still debate why these two accidents weren't even worse, and how the nation barely avoided these radioactive mega-bullets.

There were innumerable technical differences between the two disasters. One was cost: Fermi became a $100 million pile of radioactive rubble, whereas TMI, thirteen years later, was priced at $900 million to build, and about $2 billion as a liability.

But thanks in part to Cronkite, there was also a gigantic gap in news coverage. Fermi got virtually none. I was Editorial Director of the University of Michigan Daily at the time, and Ann Arbor correspondent for Time Magazine and the United Press International. But neither I nor any of my fellow journalists -- including at least one other wire service reporter -- heard a peep about this accident, which stretched through the entire month of our senior year just 40 miles away, and could have killed us all.

I finally did learn about the Fermi catastrophe in 1974 -- eight years later -- while reading John G. Fuller's We Almost Lost Detroit, published by the Reader's Digest Press. In hair-raising detail, Fuller reported on the horrifying story of an entire industry's incompetence, dishonor, fallout and cover-up.

In the ensuing five years, thousands of grassroots citizens marched on proposed reactor sites from Seabrook, New Hampshire to Diablo Canyon, California -- as well as Middletown, Pennsylvania. The mass demonstrations and arrests spawned global news coverage that moved debate over atomic energy into the mainstream. It also prompted the Jane Fonda-Michael Douglas-Jack Lemon Hollywood thriller, The China Syndrome. With eerie accuracy, the movie predicted many technical aspects of what actually happened at TMI -- most of which had been deemed "impossible" by the industry's expensive "experts" and apologists. When it was released within hours of the actual accident, it helped blast coverage all the way to the lead of Cronkite's CBS Evening News.

By 1979 the nuclear industry was -- like today -- on the financial ropes. Despite decades of expensive "too cheap to meter" media hype, the "Peaceful Atom" was absurdly expensive and technologically untenable. All orders placed prior to TMI would ultimately be canceled for a combination of economic, technical and political reasons. It is no exaggeration to say the No Nukes movement helped cancel scores of reactors.

But the essential unworkability of atomic power is what prompted the citizen's movement to stop it. Today's industry has surmounted virtually none of its core challenges, starting with its complete 50-year failure to solve its radioactive waste problem, and carrying through its inability to secure private financing or liability insurance for new construction.

Today's "renaissance" is built on the hope of huge government subsidies, collective public amnesia, and three decades of the Big Lie that "no one was harmed" by the massive, unmonitored radiation releases at TMI. To this day there has been no public hearing to compensate some 2400 central Pennsylvania families who by the early 1980s claimed bodily harm and death from the plant's fallout.

None of that made it to Cronkite's Evening News. Though he became an ardent proponent of nuclear disarmament, the true story of what happened to TMI's downwinders has never cracked the corporate media.

Nor is it certain that the story of another melt-down today would be fully told. Before the mass No Nukes demonstrations and TMI, the networks might have claimed innocent ignorance. Cronkite had the integrity and clout to break through to the American heartland on that all-important first night.

Today's nuke-powered Big Lie machine has never been more powerful. Though a few cable reporters might cover the story, only the internet could be counted to carry the load, with high-paid deniers swarming over every independent blog. A TMI-scale melt-down would instantly evoke a horde of media locusts intent on devouring all coverage and dismissing all health and safety concerns. Their ultimate goal: to protect the massive economic investments in a technology that has long-since become human history's most expensive technological failure.

How effective they might be remains to hopefully never be seen.

But as you read this, the industry has again poured into Congress, this time targeting the Climate Bill. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has called for a "Sense of Congress" resolution to be attached to it that would endorse a doubling of the US reactor fleet -- with 100 new plants -- along with at least $50 billion in loan guarantees to make it happen. My next report will cover these efforts in greater detail.

But as the backroom horse-trading escalates, it is critical that calls start pouring into Congress ( ). The nation -- the world -- cannot afford more Three Mile Islands, especially now that Walter Cronkite is no longer around to report on them.

--
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA is at www.solartopia.org. He is Senior Editor of www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

Camping, catching a fish, Hocking Hills

I DON'T THINK SO: LIFE'S STAGES, a Premiere

WILD WOMEN WRITING'S
production of I DON'T THINK SO: LIFE'S STAGES.

The event will take place August 9th, 2:00 p.m, at the Sherrie Gallerie, 694
N. High Street. Admission free, but reservation required.

All but four seats have been reserved so far. If you wish to attend and do not have a reservation, please contact Katherine by email at Burkman.2@osu.edu. If all seats are taken by the time you contact me, we'll put you on a waiting list.

I DON'T THINK SO: Life's Stages is a play by Katherine Burkman that
consists of 15 monologues. Each character, rebels all, at some
point says, "I don't think so." They range in age from 10 to 72,
hence the "Stages of Life" as a subtitle.

The event is produced by Sherrie Hawk of the Sherrie Gallerie with WILD WOMEN WRITING

Performing in this staged reading are: Haley Hawk, Emily Bach,
Heather Caldwel, Susie Gerald, David Fawcett, Heather Carvel, and
Katherine Burkman, who will also direct.

Enjoy the beautiful art at the gallerie - refreshments provided by
Sherrie Hawk - and the premiere of this play.

Call for Postcard-sized Art

All artwork must be done in postcard size. Any media is acceptable. Fee is $5 for up to 3 cards per artist. Deadline: July 27, 2009.
For more info: robinwillow@hotmail.com

California should pay its people in pot

Here's another one from Harvey. I really like it. -charlie

California should pay its people in pot
by “Thomas Paine”
July 9, 2009

California’s state finances have gone to pot, and that’s what it should use to pay its employees.

Right now the state is issuing I.O.U.’s to those who work for it. Sacramento says they are worth the paper they’re printed on, but most Californians know that’s true only if they are used to roll joints.

The state’s key available assets are in its farms and fields….and in its prisons and legal system.

Medical marijuana is legal in California. Estimates put last year’s traffic in prescription-approved pot at around a billion dollars. If the state were properly organized to tax that and non-medical marijuana---whose dollar volume is many times greater---it might actually have enough money to pay its employees.

By legalizing marijuana, California could immediately free tens of thousands of prisoners at a savings of tens of millions of dollars. Those quick savings could be a down payment on the salaries of its employees (and cover the unemployment benefits that will be due prison builders and guards who will be laid off).

But they, in turn, could go to work GROWING marijuana. With its huge agricultural resources, California could immediately become the world hub of the legal marijuana trade. (Mendocino and other counties are already vying for this title).

It could also pay its employees if not in dollars, then in pot. Here’s how:

Once the legislature decides to legalize marijuana, the state could go into the business of growing its own. (The offices of the Department of Agriculture are not that far from the Bureau of Prisons).

Various California cities, including Oakland, are already raising pot to keep prices down for the legal medical trade. So official expertise is readily available. Like the current and previous two Presidents of the United States, the current Governor of California is known to have extensive first-hand knowledge about the many uses of this precious weed.

Thus the state could grow its own leafy payroll. Some marijuana will be immediately available from the confiscated stashes that have traditionally been consumed by arresting officers.

But there will obviously be a gap between the moment of legalization and the moment the first officially grown buds are ready to pick.

So while California waits, it can issue marijuana futures as pay instead of I.O.U.’s. The futures would include a special dispensation to sell the existing stashes many of the state employees may already be holding (of course, no state employee would break the law, so these will all be MEDICAL stashes).

Being the first state to legalize, California pot would skyrocket in value. Once the actual buds arrive from the government, state employees would be free to sell their redeemed futures in other states, which will then face a dilemma.

In these hard times, the tourist dollars from those “Okies in reverse” fanning out with their pot to sell will be hard to turn down. So will the potential tax revenues. So the other 49 states will be forced to choose between seeing those hard-earned pot proceeds headed to the Pacific in the pockets of previously impoverished California state employees---or legalizing it, taxing it, freeing their own prisoners, and growing it at home.

Tom Joad will have returned to roost, driving the ghost of a Volkwagen bus.

A dozen states have already legalized medical marijuana, Many are having state budgetary problems of their own.

But California is the only one now issuing I.O.U.s to state employees. Its topography, resident expertise and gubernatorial brain cell history make it an ideal candidate for what is bound to come, sooner or later. Why not now?

Yippie!

29th Summer of Mime Theatre at Kenyon School for Mime Theatre Faculty/Student Performance

Friday, July 10, 2009

7:30 PM - Bolton Theater, Kenyon College

Free Admission, Contact: Rick Wamer, 520-990-7425, ricgeocap@msn.com

For 29 consecutive summers, Kenyon College has had the rare distinction of hosting one of the nations longest standing centers for Mime Theatre training and performance in North America. This summer's season's final performance, featuring faculty members, Rick Wamer and Stephen Chipps with students of the adult seminar marks the 29th such annual performance. Showtime is 7:30 pm at the Bolton Theater of Kenyon College, admission free.

The presence of the mimes dates back to the summer of 1981 when Gregg Goldston, C. Nicholas Johnson and Deb Wasserman (the original founders of the School) hosted the first Kenyon seminar with only three to four students. Throughout the past 29 years, students have had opportunities to study under the best mimes in the world. Several visits by the late Marcel Marceau and the Polish mime Stefan Niedzialkowski have been especially memorable to the community and the students and staff of the seminars. "The gift of Marceau and Niedzialkowski, elevated our capacity to truly understand and develop our art," claims Wamer who took on the role of Artistic Director when Gregg Goldston left in 2001 to pursue interests in New York and abroad.

The students benefit from the unique approaches developed by Wamer and Chipps, founded upon the techniques and writing structures created by Marceau, Niedzialkowski, Goldston and Johnson. C. Nicholas Johnson returned for a few days to work with this year's students. "Nick has the amazing gift of helping the students see the essence of the art form. His influence is tremendous in my work, and I consider him an essential influence on the development of the students."

Next year will mark the 30 anniversary of mime at Kenyon College. Wamer promises it will be a memorable summer to look forward to.

The Faculty/Student show will take place on Friday, July 10th, at 7:30 PM at the Bolton Theater of Kenyon College, Gambier Ohio. Admission is free and donations to support the school will be gladly accepted.

C. Nicholas Johnson is the director of Wichita State University’s dance department and Artistic Partner with Sabrina Vasquez of Alithea Mime Theatre.

Nick Johnson was in Columbus for a brief visit last week, on his way to perform with the Mime school in Kenyon. He stopped by long enough for a cup of coffee and conversation beside the back yard pond. Alays a treat!

Hemp Raising Patriot Heroes, by Harvey Wasserman

Article submitted by Harvey Wasserman

Honor Our Hemp-Raising Patriot Heroes

By “Thomas Paine”

It is our patriotic duty to honor our Founding Heroes, America’s greatest hemp growers.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison---virtually all Revolutionary Americans who had access to land---embraced hemp’s critical role in our early economy.

Accordingly, they raised it in mass quantities.

We must now honor them by demanding its immediate legalization, to save our economy and our ecology.

For rope, for paper, for clothing, for food, for fuel, this miracle plant has been a critical crop for cash and survival for 6,000 years, since the onset of ancient China.

Today it is a multi-billion-dollar product there and in Germany and Canada, among other major economies.

There is no rational reason for hemp to be illegal. Some law enforcement “experts” say it resembles marijuana, and therefore must be banned.

What are they smoking? Certainly not hemp, which gives its imbibers little more than a splitting headache and a nasty cough.

Today, marijuana is the largest cash crop in many states and regions of the United States. A billion dollars-worth of it was purchased under medical auspices last year in California alone. Properly taxed, its users freed from our overcrowded prisons, pot’s legalization could offer a giant step out of our financial morass.

But as an agricultural staple, marijuana pales alongside hemp. This miracle weed returns on its own year after year, requiring no pesticides, herbicides or special fertilizers. It is hardy, fast-growing and supremely productive.

A single hemp plant can provide the basis for very high-quality rope, sails for ships, cloth for clothing, paper for documents, seeds for food and oil, the cellulosic base for ethanol, and much more. It is the feed of choice for untold numbers of birds and land animals. It can be the basis for innumerable stressed eco-systems where it survives and thrives with virtually no human input.

As a staple spread across the Great Plains and through the rest of America’s battered farmland, it could help restore our shattered crop base and our devastated rural economy.

Presidents Washington and Jefferson---both of them extremely advanced agronomists---cataloged their techniques for growing hemp at great length. They would simply not comprehend the concept---let alone the reality---that hemp might be illegal.

Early drafts of both the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written on sturdy paper made of hemp.

Now, more than ever, we need the essence of both the documents and the crop.

Save Our Planet! Stimulate Our Economy!!

Honor our Founders!!! Be a Patriot!!!! Legalize Hemp Now!!!!!

“Thomas Paine’s” PASSIONS OF THE POTSMOKING PATRIOTS is at www.harveywasserman.com

Bread and Circus Theatre Auditions for Cabaret Night

Hello all!

We have had our first successful Cabaret night and we are ready for more. The Bread & Circus Cabaret night at the Harmony Artistic Center will take place the second Saturday night of the month. We are currently booking performers for our July 11th & August 8th performances.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A SINGER TO DO THIS! You can do anything.

If you are available and interested in performing a song, skit, monologue or variety act please email Carolyn at ccstritzel@yahoo.com. We had wonderful performers for our first night and the audience wants more.

TRY OUT YOUR AUDITION MONOLOG! Tell a joke or two. Any SCHTICK is welcome!

If you have always wanted to perform but never had the opportunity - here's your chance. If you are a local actor or performer, please think of this as a showcase for you to introduce yourself to the arts community of Columbus. At our first Cabaret Night, we had directors from 4 different local theatre companies in attendance.