• The annual food/music fest Taste of Cincinnati — Cincy’s unofficial “start of the summer” — doesn’t begin until tomorrow, but tonight you can get an outdoor music fix that couldn’t be more “summery.” Reggae Culture Splash 2013 goes down 7-10:30 p.m. tonight at Washington Park (1230 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine). 

The event features a stellar lineup of contemporary Jamaican Reggae stars, headed up by singer/songwriter Luciano, who is credited for helping keep socially/religiously inspired Roots Reggae music thriving in the face of an increasingly electro-dependent Dancehall craze.

Speaking of Dancehall, fellow Culture Splash performer Sister Nancy is credited as being the first female DJ in the genre and is also a fantastic vocalist. Also scheduled to appear are producer/artist Milton Blake, local collective Black Youth Faith and more, including DJing from I Vibez, Queen City Imperial Sound System and Frankie D. 

Unlike most Washington Park concerts, Culture Splash is not a free event. Tickets for Reggae Culture Splash are $25 at the gates. The tickets will be available starting at 5 p.m.

An after-party will be held at Grammer’s (1440 Walnut St., Over-the-Rhine) at 10 p.m.; admission is $10 before midnight and $20 after.

• For some more local Reggae flavor tonight, you can check out Cincinnati Reggae greats The Cliftones celebrate the release of their latest single, the fourth to be issued this year, with a show at Southgate House Revival in Newport. The 9 p.m. event also features performances by Magic Jackson and The Almighty Get Down. 

In January, just before winning the 2013 Cincinnati Entertainment Award for “Reggae/World Music,” the group released “Hard Ground,” which was mixed by noted producer Jim Fox (who has worked with Black Uhuru, Barrington Levy, Culture and other Reggae superstars and legends).

In March, The Cliftones’ “Hold Steady” was released. That one was mixed by DJ Prophesy (Bassnectar, Glitch Mob) and mastered by one of the greatest Dub producers ever, Scientist. 

The ’Tones latest, “Gone (Warn Mi),” is another Prophesy/Scientist collaboration, as is the "limited release" track the group dropped on Soundcloud recently, "Run Come Down." Check both out below:

Be sure to show up early to tonight's release show; free download cards for the new single will be given to the first 100 people through the door. The group will unveil another single in late June and are planning on issuing a 12-inch vinyl EP in August. The Cliftones are gradually moving toward a full-length release; it’s tentatively scheduled to drop in October. For more on the group, visit thecliftones.com.

A quick Google search confirmed the terrible news that The Doors keyboardist had passed away on May 20 in Germany while seeking treatment for bile duct cancer.

By virtue of my mid-'50s birth, I am an actual child of the '60s and the parade of my musical heroes joining the choir invisible has seemed to pick up the pace here in the new millennium. So many have fallen, it's difficult to keep track.

My dear friend Rob, a high school bud from my Michigan hometown, has for years sent out emails with the name of a recently deceased musician in the subject line, which has led those of us in our immediate circle to refer to him as The Reaper. A few years back, he sent us an update about a new Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album and from his simple subject notation I came to the horrifying conclusion that Tom and the boys had gone down like Lynyrd Skynyrd. 

Rob was in the midst of trying to send us all a message from his phone about Ray's passing when he got my email. He hates it when I scoop him, but this was not a scoop that I could lord over The Reaper. This was as devastating as a death in the family. 

I teared up a few weeks ago when my comedy hero Jonathan Winters died and it was the same when Ray's death became a verifiable fact. Ray Manzarek wasn't simply one of the thousands of musicians who I greatly admire. He was the guy who made me listen to music.

My earliest exposure to Rock came, oddly enough, via The Ed Sullivan Show. For you youngsters, Sullivan was a well-connected entertainment reporter who wound up hosting radio shows in the late '20s and emceeing theater revues in the '30s and '40s which led to one of the first television variety shows, Toast of the Town, in 1948. Eventually renamed after its stiff but brilliantly intuitive host and talent booker, The Ed Sullivan Show occupied the Sunday-at-8 p.m. slot for 23 years.

Sullivan didn't care for Rock & Roll, but he knew teenagers were viewers and would attract advertisers, so he began booking the artists that would become the foundation of Rock in the '60s. I saw The Beatles on the Sullivan show in 1964, when I was 7 years old — I liked the music but I distinctly remember thinking, "I wish those girls would stop screaming so I can hear it." By the following year, The Beatles became a cartoon series and largely stopped being real people in my comic-book-obsessed head. 

Sgt. Pepper changed that in 1967. So much changed in 1967.

The catalyst for all that change was The Doors' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in September of that magic year. I didn't know anything about the band beyond its interesting name. I always watched Sullivan for the bands (although I was just as intrigued by the plate spinners, magicians and comics; George Carlin was an early favorite), so I looked forward to it as much as any of the others who had displayed their wares for Sullivan's audience.

Until The Doors' hypnotic vibe came pouring out of the tinny speaker in my grandparents' old black-and-white Zenith, music had been little more than an accessory in my life. I didn't follow music or collect it or pay much attention to it beyond checking it out on the occasional TV program (Sullivan, Hullabaloo, Shindig, sometimes American Bandstand on a rainy Saturday). The bands were fun and interesting to watch — by then I'd seen The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Dave Clark 5 (whose big beat, roiling Farfisa organ and frenetic guitar hooked me more than most) and many more — but I had not yet been infected with the Rock virus.

That September evening, I camped out in front of the TV to see what Sullivan had in store before The Doors played the final segment. There were the standard array of variety acts that made Sullivan a star in his own right and there was a sweaty, bug-eyed comic who was pretty funny (it turned out to be Rodney Dangerfield, making his TV debut). 

At commercial, I ran into the kitchen, probably for a chocolate chip cookie stack, and when I got back to the living room, there was Ed, arms folded across his chest, ramrod straight as if a stagehand had shoved a mop handle up his ass all the way to the base of his skull. 

"Now, The Doors...here they are with their newest hit record, 'People Are Strange.' "

The insistent lope of the first single from The Doors' sophomore album, Strange Days (which was still a week away from being released), emanated from the television and I stood staring at the set, afraid to sit down for fear of missing something. In two brief minutes, I was galvanized, pulverized and mesmerized, between Robbie Krieger's three note guitar intro, Ray Manzarek's circus organ, John Densmore's shuffling beat and Jim Morrison's trance-like presence. The best was yet to come.

Without a break, The Doors — with dozens of actual doors forming a backdrop — segued straight into their real hit, "Light My Fire," which had come out just after the first of the year. When I heard Ray's masterful intro, I remembered having heard a bit of it on the car radio before my father changed the station, presumably to get away from it. 

For the first time in my life, I got music. 

"Light My Fire" seeped into my DNA and I went through what seemed like an alchemical transformation, touched by the philosopher's stone of The Doors' cryptic groove. It felt like every molecule in my body had changed places with every other molecule in my body. Outwardly, I looked no different. Inwardly, I was not and would never be the same.

Morrison was clearly a compelling figure onstage as he writhed without seeming to move to any great degree — and the emphasis when the word "fire" erupted from his throat was hair-raising — but it was Ray Manzarek who commanded my attention. I kept wanting the camera to get back to Ray so I could watch his hands and see how they corresponded to that transdimensional sound he was creating. Morrison's smoldering role in The Doors' passion play was clearly evident, but Ray's position was so much more subversive and fascinating to me. 

By the time the Doors completed the two-and-a-half minute single version of "Light My Fire," I was paralyzed (the first time I heard the long version, probably a few months after the Sullivan show, my head nearly exploded). It was the first time I can remember thinking, "Play something else. Play that thing over. Play someone else's song. Just do that to me again."

From that moment on, I pursued music. I found the cool radio stations that played Rock and Pop and began paying strict attention. Motown had already been in full swing for a few years and that sound got its hooks into me as well. I kept an eye out for a repeat Sullivan performance by The Doors but it never happened; little did I know at the time that Ed and CBS executives had told the band to change the "girl, we couldn't get much higher" lyric in "Light My Fire" because of its possible drug connotation, which Morrison agreed to do and then either defiantly or nervously forgot. Sullivan was furious and reportedly shouted at the band after the show, "You'll never do the Sullivan show again," to which Morrison allegedly replied, "Hey, we just did the Sullivan show."

Over the next four years, my reverence for The Doors grew exponentially and I continued to be captivated by everything they attempted. I was not deterred by what some critics deemed inferior songs on Waiting for the Sun and The Soft Parade, and the epic tales of Morrison's booze-and-drug consumption merely added to his mythic status. Only his conviction for public indecency was worrisome, from the standpoint that a jail term could have stopped them from recording and touring. 

I was not even dissuaded when I realized that Ray was only four years younger than my father.

After its April 1971 release, L.A. Woman became the soundtrack for the end of my sophomore year in high school and the beginning of my 14th summer. On July 3, 1971, my stepbrother Rick and I were listening to WVIC in Lansing when we heard the news of Morrison's death from a supposed heart attack in Paris, where he had decamped just after the release of L.A. Woman. 

I was devastated, but I thought, "At least it wasn't Ray."

After Rick and I discussed what we thought were the band's possible options for a while, I sat down with pen and paper and wrote a letter to the surviving Doors, imploring them not to quit in the wake of their terrible tragedy. I told them, "You can't quit. It's not what Jim would have wanted, it's not what we want and, if you're honest with yourselves, it's not what you want." 

I found a Doors fan address in one of my Rock mags and mailed the letter off a few days later. (I would send an eerily similar letter to the Allman Brothers four months later, just after the death of Duane Allman; those are the only two fan letters I have ever sent). 

A few weeks later, I received a hand-signed form letter from Danny Sugerman, who was The Doors' second manager, which stated that the band appreciated their fans' concern and best wishes and they were definitely staying together and working on a new album that would be released in the fall.

Other Voices was an amazing album, although critics generally hated it. I looked at as if it were a Ray Manzarek solo album; from that perspective it was great. The following year, they pushed even further into Jazz territory on Full Circle and then decided to officially end The Doors. Ray began his real solo career with The Golden Scarab in 1973, followed by 1974's The Whole Thing Started With Rock and Roll, Now It's Out of Control.

Scarab was magnificent (particularly the unhinged instrumental, "The Moorish Idol," the first song I heard from the album on a college radio station), as it offered up serious musical chops but also something that Morrison found difficult to achieve; whimsy and humor. Out of Control was aptly named as it was slightly chaotic, but it was Ray so I found plenty of ways to love it. I still do.

After that, Ray took a zig-zag approach to his solo career. An Electronic Rock version of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana," a collaboration with Phillip Glass, was extremely cool, but his work after that was sporadic at best. He did a couple of cool albums in the late '70s with his new band, Nite City, and he produced the first three X albums in the early '80s (their version of "Soul Kitchen" is harrowing). 

As an artist, Ray tended to stick to collaborative situations (although he did release a true solo album in 2006, an instrumental set of originals titled Love Her Madly, presumably the soundtrack to a B-movie he wrote, directed and starred in). In recent years, he had done a couple of albums with slide guitarist Roy Rogers, including the blazingly excellent Translucent Blues in 2011. And of course, he and Krieger famously pissed off John Densmore when they relaunched The Doors, first as Riders on the Storm, then as the 21st Century Doors and then, due to legal acquiescence, as Manzarek/Krieger.

The fact is, with Doors record sales topping 100 million worldwide, Ray could do whatever he wanted to do, for as long as he wanted to do it and he did just that. But it could be equally argued that Ray did exactly what he wanted in The Doors as well, because that gothic Rock sound didn't exist before The Doors' debut album in 1967. While many tried to replicate it in the aftermath of their staggering success, no one could quite master the formula of Morrison's shamanic poetry slam, Densmore's fluid pulse and Krieger's combination of Rock swagger and Jazz swing. 

Most importantly, they could not fathom the incredible musical ability and intuition of Raymond Daniel Manzarek, and without that, there would be no Doors. 

I would have come to Rock in some form or fashion; weeks after seeing The Doors on Sullivan, I heard Jimi Hendrix's "Foxey Lady" and "Purple Haze," yet another subatomic moment, and weeks after that was my first mindbending spin through Sgt. Pepper. 

But it was all teed up because of The Doors and their singular keyboardist, the man who revealed the universe of music to a 10-year-old boy in Michigan and sent him on a pilgrimage to find more of the same, a journey that continues to this day with the same passion and dedication that marked its initial steps over half a century ago. 

I would guess that my marching orders from Ray right now would be similar to those I offered to him and his grieving bandmates in 1971: Keep going, because it's what I want, it's what we want and, if you're honest with yourself, it's what you want.

The music for this weekend's Taste of Cincinnati event — running Saturday-Monday — is heavier on local cover bands than it's been in a while, with only a small handful of acts that perform primarily original music. In years past, The Enquirer's weekly paper offshoot had presented some high-quality original artists (i.e. those who write all of their songs) in front of the P&G boob towers, but with the run of those weekly papers ending (for now) with the corporate shuttering of Metromix, perhaps the fest is in need of some booking guidance. (Too bad there isn't another weekly in town that has been covering original local music for the past nearly 20 years … cough, cough … that might be able to help.)

Still, there are some great local artists at Taste this year, performing everything from R&B, Jazz, Bluegrass, Salsa and Blues to the predominant styles of Rock, Country and Pop throughout the event.  

Here's a handy schedule for this weekend's tasty sounds. Taste of Cincinnati takes place noon-midnight on Saturday and Sunday and 12-9 p.m. on Monday. Find food, music and other fun stuff along the Taste path (six blocks of Fifth Street downtown, between Race and Broadway streets).

Saturday: Rattlesnakin' Daddies (noon, Kentucky Ale Beer Garden Stage); Naked Karate Girls (noon, Christian Moerlein Beer Garden Stage); Stonehouse Trail (3 p.m., Yuengling Beer Garden Stage); Final Order (4 p.m., Christian Moerlein Beer Garden Stage); Jamison Road (4 p.m., Kentucky Ale stage); Hott Stuff (6 p.m., Yuengling stage); 4th Day Echo (7 p.m., Christian Moerlein stage); Arlo McKinley and The Lonesome Sound (7 p.m., Food Truck Alley); Eugene Goss & Triage (7 p.m., Taste Experience); Pistol Holler (8 p.m., Kentucky Ale stage),

Sunday: Ricky Nye (noon, Yuengling stage); Kentucky Myle (noon, Kentucky Ale stage); Robin Lacy & DeZydeco (12:30 p.m., Christian Moerlein stage); Azucar Tumbao (3 p.m., Yuengling stage); 3 Day Rule (4 p.m., Christian Moerlein stage); The G. Burton Story (4 p.m., Food Truck Alley); Danny Frazier Band (4 p.m. Kentucky Ale stage); Perfect Sequel (6 p.m., Yuengling stage); Eugene Goss & Triage (7 p.m., Taste Experience); DV8 (8 p.m., Christian Moerlein stage); The Cincy Brass (8 p.m., Food Truck Alley); Dan Varner Band (8 p.m., Kentucky Ale stage).

Monday: The Turkeys (noon, Yuengling stage); The Sonny Moorman Band (12:30 p.m., Christian Moerlein stage); The Tracy Walker Band (1 p.m., Food Truck Alley); Kelly Thomas & the Fabulous Pickups (2 p.m., Kentucky Ale stage); Pete Dressman & S.U.N. with Kevin Finkelmeier (3 p.m., Yuengling stage); Leroy Ellington & the E-Funk Band (3:30 p.m., Christian Moerlein stage); Ralph & the Rhythm Hounds (5 p.m., Food Truck Alley); Kentucky Timbre with the Boone County Caterwaulers (6 p.m., Kentucky Ale stage); The DVB Trio (6 p.m., Yuengling stage); Stays In Vegas (6:30 p.m., Christian Moerlein stage).

Find everything you need to know about this year's Taste at tasteofcincinnati.com. Here's a map of the site with the various stages and food vendors marked:

If you have any questions about Cincinnati, CityBeat’s staff will do its very best to answer if you submit them here.

The Ohio Ballot Board certified an amendment that would legalize medical marijuana and industrial hemp in Ohio. Petitioners will now have to gather 385,253 signatures to get the issue on the ballot — most likely this year or 2014. CityBeat previously covered Ohio’s medical marijuana movement in greater detail here.

Republican county commissioners are asking the Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana Regional Council of Governments to pull $4 million in streetcar funding, but the city says OKI can’t legally do it. Commissioners Greg Hartmann and Chris Monzel, who are also members of the OKI board, made the request in a letter. City spokesperson Meg Olberding says OKI was simply an agency that passed the money along as it worked through the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to OKI to the Southwest Ohio Regional Transportation Authority (SORTA), and the agreement doesn’t allow OKI to interfere any further. This morning, the city’s Twitter account tweeted, “City has confirmed with Feds that OKI cannot pull streetcar $ bc funds are already obligated to this federal project.”

Ohio released its first ever statewide report on voter fraud yesterday, called the “Post-2012 General Election Voter Fraud Report.” Secretary of State Jon Husted said the report shows voter fraud exists, but it’s “not an epidemic.” That coincides with previous findings from researchers: An extensive study of the nation’s databases by News21, a Carnegie-Knight journalism initiative, found no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Ohio Democrats are proposing more accountability rules for JobsOhio, including adherence to public record laws, open meeting laws, state ethics laws for employees and full state audits. JobsOhio is a privatized nonprofit agency established by Gov. John Kasich and Republican legislators to eventually replace the Ohio Department of Development. They claim the privatized nature of the agency allows it to respond to economic problems more quickly, but Democrats say the agency redirects public funds with minimal oversight.

Cincinnati will host a march against genetically modified organisms Saturday as part of the international March Against Monsanto. The movement’s organizers are calling on participants that explain the facts of genetically modified organisms, encouraging “no slandering, no opinions or paper — just facts.” The protest is scheduled for 1 p.m. at Piatt Park.

A.G. Lafley is reclaiming the top spot at Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble. The company says the change is not part of a deeper issue.

The 35th annual Taste of Cincinnati begins tomorrow.

Win or lose, the University of Cincinnati baseball team has a lot of fun.

An adorable Labrador Retriever puppy had her heart cured after a minimally invasive heart procedure — the first ever in the Tri-State.

Salamanders have some lessons for humans when it comes to regrowing limbs.

Cincinnati Shakespeare Company finishes its run of Measure for Measure this weekend (CityBeat review here). It's a dark tale of hypocrisy and manipulation, with a few glimmers of ribald humor. Director Brian Phillips has transported the story from Renaissance-Era Vienna to the United States of the 1920s when Prohibition made everyday occurrences of fast living and bad behavior. (Can you say Boardwalk Empire?)  In 20 seasons, CSC has only staged it once before, but this is a production worth seeing because of the strong acting company — especially Brent Vimtrup, Kelly Mengelkoch and Nick Rose. Billy Chace does a nice job with the comic bits, too, even though they feel weird in this difficult story of self-righteousness and double-dealing. Tickets: 513-381-2273, x1.

Among something like 300,000 Cincinnatians, CityBeat's editorial staff of six isn't necessarily representative of all the interests, concerns, likes, dislikes and qualms of humans in this fair city.

That's sort of what inspired us to launch our first-ever Answers Issue, so we can give all you happy — and unhappy — readers proof that we listen and make conscious efforts every day to write about what matters to you and what we think should matter to you. Now we're flipping the tables a little bit, in hopes of better enlightening you — and ourselves — on what makes life in Cincinnati tick. 

Here's how it's going to work: You think of questions about life in the Queen City you want answered, but can't solve with the help of Wikipedia, Siri or your mom. That means anything on city politics, arts and culture, food, sports, neighborhoods, goetta, the rumored little people town in Colerain Township, what the Rumpke does when assholes put styrofoam in recycling bins, etc. 

You submit your question (check out the Answers Issue page here), and our dutiful reporting team will pick the ones we like best, divide them up and bring you back the answers — as best we can — in an issue sourced directly from you guys.

Put us to work! Get those questions rolling. The question submissions form is your oyster.

Monsanto, a large corporation with a self-described focus of “producing more, conserving more and improving lives," focuses on innovation in agricultural production and claims to have “an eye on the future.” Included in their Sustainable Yield Initiative of 2008 are the benefits of biotechnology, or the genetic modification of farmed products. The March Against Monsanto will be held to combat this process, as well as other practices like Monsanto’s efforts to overturn European Union regulation on obligatory labeling. The march’s primary organizer, Tami Monroe Canal, says she started the movement because she was concerned for her daughters’ lives.

“I feel Monsanto threatens their generation’s health, fertility and longevity,” she explains. “I couldn’t sit by idly, waiting for someone else to do something.”

A precursor meeting announcement for the Cincinnati march emphasizes that this movement is not a “fist waving” event. Says the Cincinnati organizer Dana Haan, “It is a peaceful yet assertive demonstration in which we evoke public awareness of what is happening with Monsanto and our food and the future of it.”

Organizers throughout the United States are calling on participants to bring handouts that explain GMO processes in fact form, with “no slandering, no opinions or paper — just facts.” March participants are striving to prove that the genetic modification of foods is more detrimental than beneficial to individual health, citing studies conducted on GMOs that suggest the presence of pesticides in some modified products, as well as evidence that consumption of GMOs leads to cancer, infertility and birth defects.

With more than 100,000 likes on Facebook and an event list ranging from Boulder, Colo., to Cairo, Egypt, support for the March Against Monsanto has skyrocketed since its inception in February of this year. Advocating not only an end to GMOs but also various solutions for achieving this goal, March leaders assert that they will continue to expose Monsanto’s secrets, “taking to the streets to show the world and Monsanto that we won’t take these injustices quietly.”

The Cincinnati march will take place at Piatt Park at 1 p.m. For more information, visit the MAM Facebook page or the MAM website.

Correction: This story originally gave the wrong location and time in the sub-headline.

A group is ordaining Roman Catholic women priests despite Vatican opposition, and Debra Meyers will be Cincinnati's first woman to go through the ordination on May 25. Meyers told CityBeat the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests' movement is about pressuring the Catholic Church to be more inclusive, including with women, LGBT individuals and other groups that may feel left out by the Church's current policies. The full Q&A with Meyers can be read here.

In the latest budget plan, Councilwoman Laure Quinlivan is asking all city employees, including cops and firefighters, to take eight furlough days, which she says would save enough money to prevent all layoffs. That plan follows a motion co-sponsored by council members Roxanne Qualls and Chris Seelbach, which would eliminate all fire layoffs and reduce police layoffs to 25.

Hamilton County commissioners voted to stop all sewer projects yesterday in opposition to the city's "responsible bidder" policy, which requires most contractors working with the Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) to have apprenticeship programs. City Council, spearheaded by Seelbach, passed the measure to encourage more job training options for workers, but the county government says the measure is unfair and puts too much of a strain on businesses working with MSD. The issue will likely head to court.

Commentary: "Good News Reveals Budget Deception."

At last night's budget hearings, Councilman Charlie Winburn repeatedly brought up the city's so-called "credit cards," which are really procurement cards that are often used by the mayor to entertain and attract businesses to Cincinnati. Winburn says the use of the cards is outrageous when the city is considering laying off cops and firefighters, and Councilman Chris Smitherman says the system needs more controls. The cards are set up so they can only be used by city employees for certain services, and City Manager Milton Dohoney Jr. says the cards make the system more efficient, which means lower prices for the city.

A bill in the Ohio House revives the Medicaid expansion, which was previously opposed by Republicans as part of the budget process. Gov. John Kasich is one of the top Ohio Republicans who supports the expansion, but it's unclear how far the bill can move this time, considering many Republicans are still opposed. CityBeat covered the expansion, which would insure half a million Ohioans and save the state money in the next decade, in further detail here.

The Ohio General Assembly passed a bill yesterday that would effectively ban Internet "sweepstakes" cafes, which state officials say are prone to illegal gambling activity. State Sen. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, says the bill is a "shoot ‘em and let God sort it out" approach because the bill generalizes against all Internet cafes instead of imposing specific regulations that would only target offenders. If Kasich signs the bill, it will become law.

The Ohio Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit advocacy group, submitted 589 petitions to the Ohio Senate opposing a measure that would force Ohio's public universities to decide between $370 million in out-of-state tuition revenue and giving out-of-state students documents required for voting. The measure was originally sneaked into the Ohio House budget plan, but Senate officials are removing it from the budget bill and appear likely to take it up in a standalone bill. CityBeat covered the original measure here.

Greater Cincinnati home sales are continuing picking up. There 2,388 homes sold in the region in April, up 22.65 percent from the year before — even better than March's 13.5-percent year-over-year rise.

Researchers are now suggesting rubbing a certain kind dirt on wounds.

In order to avoid deficits for fiscal year 2014 and beyond, the Contemporary Arts Center on Monday laid off four employees and Director/Chief Curator Raphaela Platow announced other cost-saving measures.

The four positions were associate curator of education, exhibitions director, development director and director of communications and community engagement. Additionally, Platow herself took a 20 percent salary reduction for the upcoming fiscal year.

Platow said cost-saving decisions were approved by the Board of Trustees in April. The board has mandated that the CAC reduce its dependency on its endowment for operational expenses by roughly $60,000 a year for the next five years. The CAC estimates that cutback, as well as an expected drop in support from major funders, would create an operating-budget deficit for the next fiscal year without these moves. The operating budget for the current fiscal year, which ends in August, is $3.1 million.

She also said there are no plans to raise admission fees or reduce hours of operation.

While the four eliminated positions represent 16% of the institution’s staff, there will be several new hirings of “redefined and reorganized” job descriptions, she said. “By redefining, I mean changing to a different skill set and position, sometimes on a very different salary level. This is what we have to do to move forward,” Platow said.

A previously announced new curatorial hire, Steven Matijcio, arrives from North Carolina in June and will be involved in announcing the 2013-2014 exhibition season on June 26.

(More information will be included in The Big Picture column in the May 29 issue.)

Local job numbers continued their positive trend in April, with Cincinnati’s unemployment rate dropping to 6.9 percent and the rest of the region following suit. Michael Jones, research director at the University of Cincinnati Economics Center, attributed the job gains to improvements in manufacturing and continued growth in health care jobs. Still, the public sector continued to lag behind the private sector — a trend Jones says could change in the coming months as government budgets are adjusted to match higher tax revenues resulting from the recovering economy.

Downtown’s population growth slowed last year as available housing failed to match demand, according to Downtown Cincinnati Inc.’s annual report. In the past few years, the city has pursued multiple actions to meet demand, particularly through public-private partnerships. Most recently, City Council approved leasing the city’s parking assets to raise funds that would help build 300 luxury apartments, but that plan is currently being held up in court.

The second phase of The Banks riverfront project will cost $62 million, according to the report from Downtown Cincinnati Inc. That’s smaller than the first phase, which cost $90 million. The second phase of the project is expected to begin this fall, and it should bring 300 apartments and 60,000 square feet of street-level retail space to the area by the end of 2015. The Banks also plans to build a $45 million hotel, which is also expected to be complete in 2015. The funding for the projects is coming through multiple public-private partnerships.

After the final public hearing on the city budget Wednesday, Councilwoman Laure Quinlivan plans to introduce her own budget plan that would avoid all city employee layoffs. A statement from Quinlivan did not give much in the way of details: “My plan saves all city jobs and restores all neighborhood programs. It requires common sense and shared sacrifice of all city employees.” Most recently, council members Chris Seelbach and Roxanne Qualls co-sponsored a motion that would eliminate fire layoffs and reduce police layoffs to 25 by making cuts elsewhere.

The Ohio Senate plans to vote today on a measure that would effectively close down hundreds of Internet “sweepstakes” cafes around the state in an effort to eliminate illegal gambling activities. The cafes’ operators insist their activities are not gambling but rather a promotional tool that helps sell Internet time and long-distance phone cards.

Cincinnati’s zoning hearing examiner says he’s trying to reduce the time it takes to go through the zoning hearing process to less than 60 days.

Three major Ohio universities, including the University of Cincinnati, and four hospitals, including Cincinnati Children's Hospital, are teaming up to find out what causes premature birth.

Beginning July 1, some Ohio interstates will allow drivers to go 70 miles per hour. Find out which ones here.

At congressional hearings yesterday, U.S. senators criticized Apple for legally taking advantage of the complex American corporate tax system, but Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul put the blame on Congress:

Russia is building robots to “neutralize” terrorists, and other researchers are working on robots that will attempt to rescue people after disasters.

The creator of the GIF says it’s pronounced “jif.”

Local joblessness fell sharply in April, continuing a positive trend as Cincinnati’s economy recovers from the Great Recession, according to new data from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS).

“We’re continuing to see the same positive trend at both the local level and the state level,” says Michael Jones, research director at the University of Cincinnati Economics Center.

Cincinnati’s seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate dropped to 6.9 percent in April, down from a revised 7.4 percent in March and 7.4 percent in April 2012.

In the past, the unemployment rate sometimes dropped as people gave up on looking for work and left the civilian labor force, but the April report reflected genuine improvements in the local economy. The civilian labor force and amount of people with a job were higher, and the amount of people without a job dropped.

The news was similarly positive for the rest of the region. Greater Cincinnati’s seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate dropped to 6.5 percent, down from 7.2 percent in March and 7 percent in April 2012. Hamilton County’s rate hit 6.3 percent, down from 6.9 percent in March and 6.8 percent the year before.

Jones says the health care sector has been one of the leading areas of growth in the local economy, but the April report also showed strong gains in manufacturing — allaying fears raised in recent months that the industry, which Jones calls “volatile,” was beginning to recede.

“We’re starting to see that upward swing again,” Jones says. “We’re not back on track ... but we’ve erased the last couple months of losses.”

Still, the public sector has continued to decline, reflecting budget cuts made at all levels of government in the past couple years.

Jones says it’s common for the public sector to lag behind the private sector, so it’s possible there will be government job gains in a few months once government budgets are updated to match higher tax revenues resulting from the recovering economy.

In Ohio, the seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate was 6.7 percent in April, down from 7.3 percent the month before. Nationwide, the rate was 7.1 percent, down from 7.6 percent.

Job numbers are obtained through household surveys by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which uses the data to measures the amount of people employed relative to the civilian labor force. The numbers are adjusted for seasonal factors at state and national levels, but not at the local level. Since the numbers are obtained through surveys, they are often revised with stronger data in later months.

I recently watched Parks and Recreation in its entirety over the past two weeks, so if I cancelled plans with you, it’s not because my cat was sick. I was watching hours and hours of Netflix. Sorry. It goes without saying that I’m now fully obsessed with Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson), who, as it turns out, actually is married to Megan “Tammy Two” Mullally and actually is a master woodworker. Anyway, Offerman was on Jay Leno last week to promote his upcoming film, Kings of Summer. He also performed a song he wrote for his wife (NSFWish), "Rainbow Song." Apparently he’s sung this ditty on a few other talk shows, but I’ll take anything to get me through to P&R Season Six — which has been confirmed!

Saturday’s SNL finale was filled with lots of weirdness and sads. Ben Affleck did a so-so hosting job, but there were a lot of awkward moments from the start. Ben’s monologue referred back to his Argo Oscar acceptance speech (is that really as timely as your could get, SNL writers? Oh, wait. There was also a Gigli joke. Oy.) about how he loves his wife but marriage is work and blahblahblah because I guess some people thought that was kind of shitty for him to say. Well, Mrs. Affleck, Jennifer Garner, came out to faux-bicker with him but it mostly came off as a desperate “We’re married and we love each other, OK?!” confirmation. Was anyone even worried about them? Also, it really looked like he was crying when he introduced musical guest, Kanye West. Kim K's baby daddy debuted two songs from his upcoming album, Yeezus, and he was in full performance art mode (also, the censors let hella N-words slip through the cracks.)

Then came the tears. Last week it was announced that Seth Meyers will be leaving the show to host Late Night next year; Bill Hader also said this would be his last season. The two went out with a bang during a Weekend Update segment with Bill’s flamboyant city correspondent, Stefon. (Oh, and Amy Poehler co-hosted Update for old time’s sake.) Stefon took us on a wild ride that included a wedding, Anderson Cooper and all those crazy, presumably made-up characters from his club reviews (including Menorah the Explorer and human traffic cones).

There had also been additional reports that Jason Sudekis and 11-year vet Fred Armisen were heading out. Though Jason hasn’t made an official announcement, he joined Fred and Bill onstage for a reprisal of Fred’s fictional Punk pioneer, Ian Rubbish. Fred’s Portlandia co-star Carrie Brownstein, Kim Gordon, Aimee Mann and others rocked the stage with The Bizarros. :'(

Beyoncé may or may not be pregnant — Gawker considers all the possible “conspiracé theorés” here. As I go set up Google alerts for an official announcement (and ponder if/how this would affect her summer U.S. tour, specifically the Nashville concert that I will be attending), go look up the name of your Destiny’s Child with the Bey Bey Name Generator. And check out her newly leaked single, “Grown Woman” (the song from that epic Pepsi commercial).

Spinderella cut it up one time! The true star of Salt-N-Pepa, DJ Spinderella, will be in town at the Aronoff Center with Shaquille O’Neal and a slew of comedians for Shaq’s All-Star Comedy Jam June 1. Seriously, that’s a real thing.

And here's Taylor Swift being grossed out by Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez's Billboard Awards PDA: