Closings and bannings

It is always a little disappointing when a local place you frequent closes down. On Sunday it was announced that The Jury Room was sold and would be reopened in a couple of weeks. My wife and I liked the place a lot, we thought the staff was great. When we brought my severely autistic son who does not eat off the menu due to his eating disorder, they were always accepting and accommodating.

It was weird that the owner, Liz Lessner, was relatively quiet about the closing online in that when one of her other establishments recently closed, she was very open, in painful detail, during the process of the close. With the Jury Room, there was no process, but this happens.

The local newspaper published what I think is a fluff piece about the closing that seemed more like damage control to me.

Why damage control? A former employee was publicly posting about financial difficulties and Columbus Underground, a local message board, was also getting a few posts about the situation. Questions were asked, some I thought legitimate. There were people defending Lessner and others not so much.

I decided to reach out to Liz. We exchanged some respectful emails and I felt comfortable she told me her side of the story.

Meanwhile the Jury Room thread on Columbus Underground attracted various sock puppets, trolls and deflectors, including the site's own food critic. Not a very professional move on her part. One poster was banned from the site and created a blog about Columbus Underground censorship.

I understand that Columbus Underground is Walker Evans' site, and he has rules. But his ways of moderating the site are quite arbitrary. He'll allow trolls, and newly created user names to post all kinds of libel, bullying and misogyny, but when questions are asked of a city business owner, posts begin to get deleted. He deleted my link to the blog post immediately and sent me a private message about the terms of service of the site being violated. We exchanged some messages and I told him he was promoting bullying and misogyny through his site and could have done better in handling the Jury Room thread.

We all like a few laughs, but when internet mob rule runs a website unfettered while important questions go unanswered, it might be time to rethink my interaction with a local message board.

Male America loves guns more than people

The hits just keep coming don’t they? A few days ago an irresponsible journalist named Terrence McCoy published this sensationalist click bait disguised as a news story.  The following poem, that I wrote over two years ago is a bit foreshadowing.

Also that idiot stabbed three people in his apartment then drove around as he shot three more. The family lawyer brings up Aspbergers and too many people say “see?” Guy was nuts, hated women and had an extremely false sense of entitlement. Few are saying another man with a gun is a mass murderer. My condolences to all the families who lost loved ones in this tragedy.

Children in Cells

Mr. President, Chairman, Dignitaries.

Your children are one cell division away from being biologically imprisoned for life

They look like you, us,  but cannot speak for themselves;

So we as their parents, advocates and caregivers have to speak for them

While their country is abandoning them, and so many others, behind a layered war jester mask of compassion,

You ladies and gentlemen, claim the country is going bankrupt and we can no longer afford entitlements

Yet, so are these parents whose insurance is not good enough to care for their children

When a bean counter says a five year old child with an eating disorder will not be covered because food is not medically necessary but rubber stamps lap band surgery on a teenager, can’t you see there’s a problem?

Or are you all too occupied with taking profits in weapons and misery to see families fall apart?

This condition is said to effect one in one hundred
One in one hundred and fifty
Proportion does not matter when they will add up to millions.

These children will not be locked up in attics any longer

You will see them at tables in restaurants you frequent

You will sit next to them in coffee shops and artisan ice cream parlors

You will not be able to placate them with incompetent ventriloquist promises as empty as your soul

You have closed the institutions you once locked them in

You have eliminated funding for safe group homes for them to live

You will not be able to put them in jail unless you manufacture crimes of the innocent, and I am not putting it past you that you will try

It hurts to love, when what is damaged, is yours.

What you helped create, what you will not see to completion before you die - when the land he belongs to will not assist as his hand is stretched, hoping for some help

Receiving nothing but a platitude and talking point by another deceiver

At night before you sleep, you will hear all their babbling whispers

They will be telling you they’re growing up

Autistic toddlers turn into autistic teenagers turn into autistic adults

There will be multitudes of them waking you

At dawn, you will hear their cries for understanding and acceptance

Before you dream you will get on your eggshell knees, grateful you are not their parent

When you are awake, you will ignore them all

When you leave your tinted window enclave, you will be run over by a steamroller of the silent, 

Just because your victims cannot pick you out of a lineup, does not make you any less a criminal

Even then you will remain ignorant of all the mistakes you continue to make