Dear George,
Having grown
up in a small town of 10,000, I’m always astonished by events that crop up in
big city news. Cincinnati’s metro area is 200 times the size of
Menominee, so there are 200 times more of everything, including weird
happenings. The New Year in Cincinnati hasn’t disappointed so far.
Here are some of the un-Menominee-like events that have transpired in the Queen
City in 2016’s first two weeks.
Love,
Dave
40 Days
for Cursewords. On Jan. 5 Jaclyn (“Cutie”) Pleatner was
sentenced to 40 days in jail for “telecommunications harassment”. Two
years ago Pleatner and her husband signed a contract to buy a $1.2 million home
in Cincinnati’s wealthiest suburb. However, when they learned that their
upcoming next door neighbor had previously been convicted of attempted murder,
they backed out of the deal. The house seller filed suit for $350K, and,
in the course of the legal proceedings, Pleatner sent e-mails to him, calling
him “a real SOB” and “a despicable specimen of mankind.” That’s
telecommunications harassment, the judge ruled. Begging for lenience,
Pleater’s lawyer said being incarcerated would be very hard on her since she
lives in a mansion and has never been jailed before. The judge was
unmoved. He did, however, reduce her initial 180-day sentence to 40 days
and two years probation. It still seems like a harsh penalty for
offensive language. (Cinc. Enq., 1-6-16)
Cincinnati
is Number Eleven.
Cincinnati has a long-standing reputation for being prudish, partly because of
legal battles in the 1970’s with Larry Flynt and Hustler. On the other
hand, it is the home and national headquarters of Deep Romance*, the nation’s
largest purveyor of adult sex toys. Deep Romance rated Cincinnati the
eleventh sexiest city in the U.S. in 2014, based on direct sales and online
orders of its products. The firm began in 1993 in the owner’s suburban basement
and expanded over the years to a national business which had $138 million in
sales in 2014. Deep Romance announced last week that it had acquired one
of its competitors, Passionate Soirees.* Now the firm will have 25,000
consultants who organize parties of friends and neighbors to sell products
which I cannot even mention on this family-oriented blog. (Cin. En.,
1-11-16)
Treats
for Teach. Eddie
Cochinski, age 19 and a recent Springbarrow H.S. student, pled guilty to
bringing brownies laced with hashish to school and giving a brownie to one of
his teachers. A hallway camera also caught Cochinski handing out
intoxicating brownies to fellow students all day long at his locker. One
of the brownies contained 1.5 ounces of hashish, more than enough to
incapacitate everyone in the school but the gym coach. (Cin. Enq.,
1-13-16)
Gun-happy
Ohio. With a
long rural tradition, Ohioans are enthusiastic about guns. Recently the
Republican-dominated Ohio House passed a bill which allows concealed handguns
in day care facilities, police departments, private planes, airport terminals
(before going through the metal detectors), and most other public places. The
bill is now pending in the Ohio Senate. Handguns, of course, remain
banned from the statehouse because that’s where the legislators actually work. (Cin.
Enq., 12-9-15)
Fake
Guns—At Your Peril.
Police associations and departments around the state are not enthusiastic about
arming the citizenry, presumably because millions of guns lead to various
catastrophes. Even fake guns aren’t good. One recent case involved
a 45-year-old white guy named Richard Trenbink who was wearing blue pajama
bottoms when he attempted to rob two stores in Cincinnati’s West Side using a
Daisy BB pistol. Police located him walking along Sunset Avenue and, when
he reached toward his BB pistol, killed him with a shot to the head. The
mayor commented, “If you point a gun at a cop, they are going to shoot.” (Cin.
Enq., 1-12-16)
Bad Aim. Guns can also cause trouble when
people aren’t very good at using them. The other day an 18-year-old named
Marlin Johnson was selling marijuana to two men in his West End home when the
deal went wrong. Johnson shot up everybody in the place — the first guy,
the second guy, and himself as well. Johnson is charged with felonious
assault against his two victims, but fortunately he wasn’t charged with
self-shooting. (Cin. Enq., 1-13-16)
Really
Bad Driving. Handguns
aren’t the only lethal weapons in Cincinnati. 19-year-old Carli Tamera
got into an argument with her husband while driving their Nissan Sentra near
downtown. She smacked him in the head and deliberately crashed their car
on his passenger side into a guard rail. The car then swerved across
three lanes of the road and collided head-on with a large tree. Thanks to
air bags, the unhappy couple survived, and Mrs. Tamera is charged with
felonious assault. You hear a lot about not texting while driving, but
talking can be even worse. (Cin. Enq., 1-13-16)
Poopy Ideas. It turns out that Cincinnati’s
waste incinerator is falling apart, and it will cost a small fortune to fix it
or to build a new one. However, it would cost only half as much to build
a facility that converts human waste into fertilizer that could then be used on
area farms. The converter would smell pretty awful, but it would be
enclosed in an air-tight facility. Nobody seems to have asked farmers if
they want to cover their land in human poops. (Cin. Enq., 1-15-16)
Anti-Zombie
Persecution. Jon
Walker Thwarner was found guilty and sentenced to three days in jail for using
a megaphone in his protest to support zombie Xmas displays. Suburban
township trustees had banned a homeowner’s zombie nativity scene in December
because it supposedly violated zoning restrictions. Thwarner staged a
protest of the township’s action at the Hamilton County courthouse, using a
zombie puppet and other props. The judge said he had a right to express
his opinion, but the megaphone disrupted courtroom trials. Thwarner had
been arrested earlier when he promoted the comedy act of a wheelchair-bound
teenager by asking passers-by in the park if they wanted “to laugh at the
crippled girl.” (Cin. Enq., 1-6-16)
Despite all
this excitement, we’re still only two weeks into the New Year. I expect
there’s a lot more to come.
*Pseudonyms
used throughout.
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