by kosborne
12.16.2010
Help Feed Kids through Public Radio
With the unemployment rate at near-record highs, about 70 percent of Cincinnati Public School students either receive free or reduced-cost lunches, indicating the dire need of local families. To help ensure as many children as possible have enough food to eat when not at school, Cincinnati Public Radio has partnered with two organizations to make donations go farther.
Every pledge made Friday to WVXU (91.7 FM) or WGUC (90.9 FM) will feed four Cincinnati children through Childhood Food Solutions and Green B.E.A.N. Delivery.
by kosborne
08.13.2010
Event Set for Homeless Animals
Two local animal welfare groups are joining forces to commemorate International Homeless Animals Day on Aug. 21.
The United Coalition for Animals and Cincinnati Pet Food Pantry will hold an event at Twin Lakes in Eden Park. It will include music, a blessing of the animals and a candlelight vigil at dusk.
by kosborne
08.05.2010
Free Trees to Good Homes
If your yard could use a little more greenery or you're interested in helping people in the urban core breath a little easier, the Cincinnati Park Board has a deal for you.
by kosborne
06.16.2010
Pet Pantry Has Benefit
Humans and animals alike are invited to attend an event Saturday to benefit the Cincinnati Pet Food Pantry.
Kibble & Ritz 2010 will be held from 6-10 p.m. at the dog park located at the Red Dog Pet Resort and Spa in Oakley. The event will feature booths by various local businesses and offer items for purchase including wine, crepes and Belgian waffles. A raffle with more than 20 prizes, a “Crack the Safe” game and other activities also will be held.
by kosborne
04.09.2010
Free Cardiac Screenings Offered
With so many people laid off or fired these days, one of the worse consequences is some have lost their health insurance. As a result, they are foregoing routine medical care and testing they might otherwise receive to warn of potential problems.
When the Kentucky Coalition of Nurse Practitioners & Nurse Midwives holds its annual convention later this month in Covington, participants will offer free advanced cardiac risk assessment screenings to the public.
When the Kentucky Coalition of Nurse Practitioners & Nurse Midwives holds its annual convention later this month in Covington, participants will offer free advanced cardiac risk assessment screenings to the public.
by kosborne
02.26.2010
Pet Pantry Distributes Food
People who are having trouble providing pet food or cat litter for their pets during the recession can receive free temporary assistance from the newly created Cincinnati Pet Food Pantry.
by kosborne
02.05.2010
Keeping Animals Safe in Winter
With Greater Cincinnati’s worst storm of the season fast approaching and much of the nation already covered in snow, PETA is offering tips about how to keep animals safe in cold weather — along with a little help from Country singer Loretta Lynn.
Although they are naturally equipped with fur coats, dogs and other animals still can suffer from frostbite and exposure, and they can become dehydrated when water sources freeze.
by Staff
01.22.2010
ReUse-apalooza Tonight at Building Value
The nonprofit Building Value organization (which recycles and resells building materials) hosts its first ReUse-apalooza tonight to celebrate the benefits of reuse through art. The fun will include live music from Comet Bluegrass All-Stars, an opportunity to participate in a permanent installation of a community sculpture by Northside's Paul Lashua, step performance by the Allegacy Girls Step Team of W.E.B DuBois Academy, simultaneous chess exhibition by Douglas Dysar, an opera singer, a juggler and much more.
by Bart Campolo
10.20.2009
BART CAMPOLO is a veteran urban minister and activist who speaks and writes about grace, faith, loving relationships and social justice. He's leader of The Walnut Hills Fellowship.
Bart Campolo on Fear and Bitterness
It is Sunday night,
and I am suddenly awake at the crack of too-close gunfire. I creep to
the window without turning on the light, more curious than afraid until
I remember I don’t know if my daughter and her friends are home
from their movie. Looking out, I see three men spread out in the
backyard we share with our neighbors, one moving slowly past the patio
furniture where we had a child's birthday party that afternoon, the
other two crouched by the trampoline my son and his football buddies
slept out on last week. Strangers in our space, clearly visible in the
moonlight, probably carrying guns.
My wife, Marty hands me a
phone and the 911 operator keeps asking how many, what color, how old,
how many shots, until I hiss at her to hurry up and send a car because
they're still out there, calling back and forth to each other, pointing
at the apartments on the other side of our back fence. They move into
the side yard, where they regroup for a moment, and then they walk out
our gate and down our front steps, cross the sidewalk past three women
they seem to know, and get into a gray, late-model sedan parked behind
our minivan, where my daughter was supposed to have parked. God, don't let
her come home now, I think, as I keep narrating to the 911 lady, both
of us knowing the information doesn't really matter. The police always come too
late. Sure enough, the gray car slowly pulls away, coming to a
maddeningly full and legal stop before turning the corner and blending
back into the city night. The three
women’s loud voices trail off in the other direction. It is quiet
again. I am not afraid anymore. I am furious.
Those lousy ghetto bastards—my exact words at 2 a.m.—brought their ignorant violence into our
yard on purpose. They weren't running away from anything. They had a
plan. They brought an audience. I don't know their names, of course,
but I know them just the same, because once they get that careless,
they are all the same. Before I can stop myself, I hope aloud that they
drive themselves off a bridge before they make any more babies. Across
the room, Marty wonders aloud what happened to the kind and hopeful man
who brought her to this place four years
ago, in the name of Love. Finally, we turn on the light and call our daughter. Until she gets home, there is no use trying to sleep.
Hours later, everyone else is
safe in bed, but I am in the bathroom, sitting, thinking, wishing I
could pray. Beside the tub, Marty has left a book of poems. Reading
them, I gradually forget who and where I am. And then I find this:
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn,
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
To buy me, and snaps the purse shut,
when death comes
like the measle-pox
When death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
And I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
And each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don't want to wonder
And suddenly, just as suddenly as those gunshots awakened me, I too don’t want to end up simply having visited this world, or even this neighborhood. I don’t want to end up angry or bitter. No, I
want to believe in my heart that each life, and each name, and each
body is indeed something precious, both to God and to me. I want to
remarry amazement.
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I sit alone for a long time, silently thankful for Mary Oliver,
the poet, and for Marty Campolo, my conscience in many ways, and for
Grace herself, who gives us all our second chances, and then I go back
to bed. Tomorrow is Monday, and we in the fellowship will be eating our supper together.
I wrote this
up the day after it happened, early in the summer. Honestly, two days
after that, life on Hemlock Street went back to normal, which is to
say, life for us and our friends here went back to being pretty
terrific. We might be more fearful if such thugs came that close again,
or if they were aiming at us, but they haven’t, and they aren’t, so
we’re not. If you really want to scare us these days, forget bullets
and focus on that force of evil which truly threatens to destroy the
good life we share here in Walnut Hills: Bedbugs. Think I’m kidding?
Read next month’s letter.
by Hannah McCartney
06.08.2009
This Is Why You're Fat
Over the past several months, Senate leaders have been contemplating imposing an obesity tax on non-diet sugary drinks in an effort to help pay for a renovation of the country’s health care system and lower consumption of a product presumed to be a crucial contributor to obesity in the U.S. Congressional estimates state that a tax of 3 cents per 12-ounce drink could potentially raise up to $50 billion over 10 years.
