A Whirlwind of a Week
Have you ever had one of those weeks that was a culmination of both good and bad? I just had one and after coming out on the other side, I feel mentally drained and exhausted. I worked, I attended several meetings in the evenings, one of our cats passed away and The Enquirer published an opinion article I wrote that was their ‘most read’ opinion article of the week. I did all of that on top of being a parent of two seven-year-old twins and finishing up an ESL teaching certification at the University of Cincinnati. I’ll touch on some of these issues in this blog post, so buckle up for week of highs and lows.
The Lows
Thursday evening rolled around and the only thing on my evening agenda was to kick back and relax. I spent Wednesday attending two after-work meetings where I spent 11 hours basically working. Unfortunately, one of our beloved cats had other plans. Our cat Baby, who my wife rescued as a kitten on the side of the road 11 years ago, began howling and urinating uncontrollably. Seeing that the cat was in distress, Yula quickly took her to the first vet we could find that was open at 6:00 PM. That turned out to be the Noah’s Ark animal hospital in Fort Wright, Kentucky. If you’re lucky enough to have a cat of your own, you probably know most cats aren’t particularly fond of being shoved into a pet carrier and then being driven 25 minutes away. Unfortunately, the stress of the car ride escalated Baby’s condition and by the time she arrived at Noah’s Ark, things were looking rather bleak. After some tests, we learned she had kidney failure. The unfortunate reality for Baby was that going to the vet was always highly stressful for her and it was a massive fight trying to get her into a pet carrier. During a vet visit that occurred a few years ago the vet informed us Baby had some health issues that may eventually cause her to pass away so we decided to ultimately let her live out her days in our home and make her as comfortable as possible. The past few years were good all the way up until Thursday evening.
I’ve realized that one of the hardest things about life is death. The permanent removal of someone from your life who was important to you can break you. We loved Baby and although she was a bit odd, probably due to her traumatic start to life, she was still mostly friendly and put up with two rambunctious children for seven years without complaints. I’d like to think we gave Baby a good life, considering the rough state she was in when my wife found on the side of a road. There’s been a lot of death impacting my life lately and when a loved one or friend passes away, it can be extremely challenging to deal with. The reality is that life stops for no one and we must keep trucking on and making the best of it. In 2020, I remember after immediately learning my dad passed away, I realized that my children’s poopy diapers weren’t going to change themselves, despite all the messed-up things happening to me in life. I still am unsure if I had appropriate time to grieve, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. The lesson I continue to learn from death is don’t take anyone or anything for granted and work to lead a meaningful life you can be proud of. The opinions of others are ultimately null and void, so long as you are happy and showing kindness and authenticity to others.
Yula and our three cats. Baby is in the top right. Nesta is the bottom left and Selassie is on the bottom right. Nesta and Selassie were found together as kittens. They are 12 years old and still kicking.
The Highs
The other thing that happened Thursday was the Cincinnati Future’s Planning Commission released a 74-page report making recommendations on how they think Cincinnati can continue to grow. This commission was primarily made up of corporate CEOS, executives and presidents. These people are known as “corporate overlords” in my household. Sharon Coolidge at The Enquirer pointed out that a good portion of them didn’t even live in the city of Cincinnati. Unsurprisingly, they want to raise taxes for Cincinnati residents as well as impose a $15 a month garbage fee for residents. All of these things will have to be put on the ballot and voted on by Cincinnati residents. Good luck getting that passed.
I professionally and respectfully responded to the commission’s recommendations via an op-ed I submitted to The Enquirer. On Twitter, you may have seen that I took a less formal tone, lambasting the report and the corporate elites trying to make life worse for Cincinnati residents. I don’t want to continue to beat a dead horse, but I’ll share two points that really drove me absolutely insane about the Cincinnati Future Planning Commission and their piss-poor report.
The first issue is that I spoke with one of the four ‘labor representatives’ that participated in this commission and I was told their opinions were not considered or valued. This is unsurprising when you consider the chairman of the commission is Proctor and Gamble’s CEO, Jon Moeller. I’ve long said Cincinnati is a city ran by corporations (Kroger, 5/3 Bank, Great American Insurance, Western and Southern, TQL and P&G being the big ones), and this lousy commission and their report validates my theory. They’re lucky I was not one of the ‘labor representatives’ on the commission because I would’ve raised absolute hell. I would’ve reminded them that tax dollars and public assets exist to help actual people instead of the corporations they work for. Unsurprisingly enough, they recommended selling off public assets and encouraging city residents to make ‘minor sacrifices’ like paying $180 a year for garbage and paying more in taxes. Easy for some millionaire to say. Maybe these Cincinnati based corporations should make some minor sacrifices and stop siphoning tax payer money in the form of corporate welfare. Maybe we should stop giving away public assets and tax dollars to 3CDC, a group of people that is unaccountable to the tax payer.
What I would love to see in front of City Hall every time our elected officials and business overlords piss us off
The second issue is the optics of this entire thing are God awful. It’s shameful that the tax payer had to cough up $1 million so millionaires who live in Indian Hill could tell us how to run our city. Who actually cares what Katie Blackburn of the Bengals thinks will be good for Cincinnati? Let’s just look at the track record of how the Brown family has run one of the most dysfunctional NFL franchises since the team’s inception in 1967. They screwed over the Hamilton County tax payer in the 90s and they still continue to screw us over in the year 2024. If Katie Blackburn’s economic advice is similar to how her and her family run the Bengals, I say thanks but no thanks. Inheriting an NFL team from your dad doesn’t make you an expert on city planning and taxes, despite whoever created this commission would have you believe. To conclude, I’m highly suspicious that most of the people on this commission were experts on how to run a city. They do seem like experts when it comes to finding ways to get City Hall to give them tax breaks and surviving off the teat of the taxpayer, however. I could rant and rave about this for hours. But just know I’m highly disappointed in this commission and the politicians that sanctioned it and put it together.
I choose to live and work in Cincinnati, a place I have always called home. I take pride in being from Price Hill, a neighborhood that has a reputation that is undeserving and untrue. This city absolutely owes me nothing because it has provided me with a great life. If these corporate executives are so concerned about Cincinnati, maybe they should live here in our community. These corporate overlords do not have our best interest at heart and I think we should all be highly skeptical of this report. They only care about money and corporate welfare.