On April 15, Cincinnatians focused their attention on a nearly 400-year-old city 800 miles from us because, in the grand scheme of things, that’s really not so far away. We watched, listened and talked about what happened to hundreds of people at the finish line of the world’s most famous marathon.   

LaSalle High School is in denial about its drug problem. Anytime students stupidly decide to trick an armed drug dealer with counterfeit money, all kinds of socioeconomic and chemical problems are in play beyond the pranksterism and tomfoolery of bored white teenage boys.  

 Every single time Carol and Clyde or Rob and Cammy blankly read the teleprompter, telling us of yet another black-on-black murder, then move to the weather or traffic, I sit quietly devastated. I am not ashamed to tell you that sometimes I cry.  

 Though Norwood is merely five miles north of downtown’s city center, it may as well be smack dab in another time and another place with its barely-there lane lines, its shameful-but-glaring classism and racism for a city its size and its perpetually broke and broke-down demeanor.  

There was trouble at the University of Cincinnati the night of Aug. 6, 2011. Real, life-and-death trouble.  

The end is an equation with a repeating decimal. Worse yet, the end is like spending decades watching a television stuck on a channel broadcasting shows with dreadful, predictable endings, yet living another day to watch those same shows again.    

My drive back from the Toronto International Film Festival cracked open the protective cinema dome, and it did so with a vengeance. NPR rudely awakened me to the news of the attacks on the Libyan embassy that resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.  

Organizers of the annual Take Back the Night vigils and marches across the United States often cite the Thoreau quote as epitomizing one of the movement’s key principles. The power of speaking out, they say, is essential to ending the stigma associated with sexual violence against women.   

Know Theatre of Cincinnati makes a habit of pushing boundaries. The company often stages unfamiliar plays, scripts about topics sometimes tough to discuss. Such productions might not be best-sellers in a particular theater season, but they are important catalysts for essential conversations.