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The reversal of Roe v. Wade will bring about a cascade of legal, health and social problems in Ohio. By CityBeat Staff and Cleveland Scene Staff

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Editor’s note: Some of the people and organizations quoted in this feature frame their abortion language around “women,” meaning a sex assigned at birth. But transgender men, intersex individuals, non-binary individuals and agender individuals also receive abortion care. We will continue to explore abortion issues that affect all individuals in future stories.

n a landmark decision on June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal protection of a patient’s right to decide to terminate a pregnancy.

In the decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Samuel Alito follows the same language and logic he’d written in the leaked draft opinion that Politico published on May 2. In the current decision, Alito — part of a majority conservative court — writes that the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly spell out the right to an abortion, an unenumerated right. The decision in Dobbs reverses a nearly 50-year-old right granted by Roe v. Wade. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer don’t mince words in their

jointly written dissent. “Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens,” the three justices write. The decision has opened up the floodgates for restrictive state bills across the country — including in Ohio, which that night enacted a ban on abortions after six weeks of gestation. These decisions also could open the door for reversing other rights, including further bodily autonomy, being able to marry someone of a different race or the same sex, or having consensual sexual activity or accessing birth control. “No one should be confident that this majority is done with its work. The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone. To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation,” Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer warn in their dissent.

Here’s Where Abortion Currently Stands in Ohio What is an abortion? The Cleveland Clinic defines abortion using two separate methods for the procedure: medication abortion and surgical abortion. The clinic’s definitions are as follows: Medical abortions (nine weeks of pregnancy or less): A woman will take two different medicines (usually within a 48-hour period). The medication is given by a healthcare provider and is either taken in the provider’s office or at home (or a combination of both). Your healthcare provider will give you specific instructions about how and when to take the medications. Surgical abortions: In this type of abortion, a healthcare provider will surgically remove the embryo from the uterus. These types of abortions require mild sedation, local anesthesia (numbing an area) or general anesthesia (fully asleep). Some other terms for surgical abortions are in-clinic abortions, aspiration abortions and dilation and curettage (D&C) abortions. Some reasons women have a surgical abortion are personal preference, too far along in pregnancy or a failed medical abortion. At six weeks gestation, an embryo is not yet a Protests against abortion bans are happening throughout Ohio. M A RY L E B U S

fetus and is about 3.5-6 millimeters, or roughly the size of a grain of rice. In comparison, a blood clot commonly passed during a typical menstrual period is about the size of a dime, or 17 millimeters.

What abortion services are currently legal in Ohio? Prior to Dobbs, abortion was legal in Ohio until 20 weeks gestation; as of press time, it is only legal until just six weeks gestation. Lebanon, Ohio, is the only city in the state where abortion is outlawed, but there was no provider there when the procedure was banned in almost all cases in 2021.

How many abortions happen in Ohio? Ohio Department of Health data for 2020 shows there were 151 cases of abortion care per 1,000 cases of live births. Abortion care, overall, has trended downward since 2000, with the exception of slight increases in 2012 and 2020, according to data released annually from ODH. The gestational time frame when a patient seeks abortion care also has steadily skewed earlier. There were 20,605 legal cases of abortion care in Ohio in 2020, according to ODH. Of those cases, 62.3% happened before nine weeks gestation, and 25.4% happened between nine

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and 12 weeks. That means 87.7% of cases of abortion care occurred within the first trimester. Only about 10% of abortion care cases happened between weeks 13 and 18, and there were 441 cases involving pregnancies of 19 weeks or more.

What kind of abortion care is used in Ohio? About 47% of abortion treatments were carried out using mifepristone, commonly known as the “abortion pill,” according to ODH. The number of patients receiving mifepristone (as opposed to using methods like curettage or dilation with evacuation) has seen a steep increase since 2015, when only 4% of patients were prescribed the pill.

Who seeks abortion care in Ohio? 2020 data from ODH shows that 59.2% of patients were ages 20-29 and 28.9% were in their thirties. Black patients accounted for 48.1% of abortion care patients, with 43.8% listed as white. A majority of patients — 81.8% — had never been married. Patients were likely to already have children, with 24.3% having one child and 38.4% having two or more children.

What kind of abortion care will be available in Ohio now that Roe v. Wade is overturned? The 2019 “Heartbeat Bill” passed by

the Ohio legislature limits a patient’s right to terminate a pregnancy after the detection of a "fetal heartbeat," sporadic electrical flutters which occur after about six weeks and before many people even know they’re pregnant (medical experts say this is not an actual heartbeat). There are few allowances for a person to get an abortion after six weeks, and there are no exceptions for rape or incest. Doctors who perform abortions can be charged with a fifth-degree felony. Previously under an injunction, that bill became state law the evening Dobbs and Roe were decided. Ohio Republicans also are prioritizing bills like House Bill 598, which would eliminate access to abortion care almost entirely. It would only permit an abortion in narrow medical cases, offering loose language that makes medical exemptions hazy. Multiple physicians would need to determine that the procedure is “necessary to prevent the pregnant individual’s death or a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” A doctor can get around some of the hoops in the case of an emergency, but the bill doesn’t define what qualifies as an emergency. HB 598 uses language that does not align with terminology defined by medical professionals. Cleveland Clinic’s definition of abortion refers to the removal of

Selected Characteristics of Resident Induced Abortions in Ohio, 2020 Source: Ohio Department of Health

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an embryo, whereas HB 598 refers to the organism developed from the point of fertilization as “an unborn child.” Nonetheless, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has said he would sign the legislation.

Will there be repercussions for those who perform or seek abortion care in Ohio? Abortion care won’t just be inaccessible but criminal under Ohio's new and potential laws. Those caught performing abortion care could face felony charges, hefty fines and jail time — up to $10,000 and 25 years in prison under House Bill 598. Likewise, “promoting” abortion services would also be a misdemeanor, and a physician could lose their license. For now, Ohio’s bills provide legal immunity to a patient; only those performing abortion procedures would be liable, but patients would be able to sue providers in a wrongful death cause of action. Other bills could be developed that criminalize more participants, including patients.

What do Ohio voters think of abortion access? A Pew Research Center study finds 48% of Ohioans approve of abortion care access in all or most cases. About 61% of Americans nationwide approve of abortion care.

What’s next for Ohio? With Roe v. Wade overturned, individual states have the power to set their own rules about not just abortion, but also bodily autonomy and privacy. The outcome will create vast swaths of land where abortion care is inaccessible, forcing patients to travel great distances for care. Ohioans would need to travel to states like Illinois, New York or Maryland.

Are abortions legal in Kentucky? The decision on Dobbs has effectively and immediately banned abortion care in the state of Kentucky. The Commonwealth’s 2019 “trigger” law bans abortions except in order to prevent the death of or “the serious, permanent impairment of a life-sustaining organ” of a pregnant person. It does not provide exceptions in cases of rape or incest. Kentucky’s law also states that any person who performs an abortion or provides relevant medication can be charged with a Class D felony, which is punishable by up to five years in prison. People in Kentucky who want an abortion can travel to Ohio while abortion care is still accessible in the Buckeye state (for now). Ohio Department of Health data from 2020 shows that 5.7% of abortions in Ohio were for people from out of state. —Madeline Fening

More Legal Rights in Ohio and Beyond Are on the Chopping Block with the Fall of Roe v. Wade

s the United States wraps up Pride month and Juneteenth celebrations, there are questions about how the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on abortion may affect additional human and legal rights. Jen Dye, director for the Nathaniel R. Jones Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, says overturning Roe v. Wade could open a door to other forms of oppression. “Roe was actually decided on this whole idea of the right to privacy, and even though on its face it was about abortion, really the court decided that the issue was about the right to privacy,” Dye says. “It’s kind of like if somebody shouted, ‘Fire!’ in a crowded building, the issue would be freedom of speech, but on its face it’s if somebody can shout, ‘Fire!’ in a crowded building.” The right to privacy is an unenumerated right, Dye explains, which means it’s not explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution. “It’s well-established in a lot of case law and precedent that it is something we can imply and infer that we all have, even if it’s not explicitly stated,” she says. In the Dobbs/Roe decision, Alito cites other rights that Americans have enjoyed that are also unenumerated rights: • The right to obtain contraceptives (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965) • The right to interracial marriage (Loving v. Virginia, 1967) • The right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003) • The right to same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015) “There’s an erosion there,” Dye says.

“Alito in his [then] draft opinion clearly lays out the groundwork to overturn anything that isn’t explicitly stated in the Constitution.” In the June 24 Dobbs opinion, Alito writes, “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” He writes that other unenumerated rights are different from abortion rights because they do not involve the moral question of life, but he also says rights that are not explicitly stated in the Constitution must be “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions.” Dye says other unenumerated rights like interracial and same-sex marriage or sexual privacy are relatively new and apply to citizens that the country’s founders hadn't considered when drafting the document. “Those responsible for the original Constitution, including the 14th Amendment, did not perceive women as equals and did not recognize women’s rights,” Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer write in their Dobbs dissent. “When the majority says that we must read our foundational charter as viewed at the time of ratification (except that we may also check it against the Dark Ages), it consigns women to second-class citizenship.” Dye expands on that idea. “I mean, the Constitution was written in the late 1700s,” she says. “At that time period, it was white men who owned property who counted. They were the only people who could vote, they were the ones who were considered citizens, if you were a person of color, you weren’t even considered human — you were property. Women, while you were considered

human, you were still someone’s property. If we say we want to go back to what the Constitution was written as, that’s what the Constitution was written as.” Approval of interracial marriage is far from “deeply-rooted” in our nation’s history, for example, with Loving v. Virginia decided in 1967. And yet, Alabama only narrowly voted to legalize interracial marriage in 2000, and national Gallup polling in 2002 showed 29% of Americans still opposed interracial marriage. Loving served as precedent for samesex marriage rights that were finally passed in 2015 through Obergefell. Since then, Ohio Republicans have proposed their own “Don’t Say Gay” legislation similar to Florida’s, which prohibits schools from mentioning queer gender identity or sexual orientation, along with other laws that chip at LGBTQ+ rights. And Ohio already is passing laws that signal homophobic and transphobic priorities. The recently passed House Bill 151 bans trans youth from participating in school sports, requiring controversial gender-verification exams on children. The legislature approved the bill 56-28. Additionally, multiple states are waging wars on birth control as they craft their own trigger bans on abortion care, including Missouri, Idaho and Louisiana. In his concurring Dobbs opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas writes that additional rights-granting cases should be re-examined. Dye warns that ongoing culture wars may give way to new laws that ignite old battles, and threatening the right to privacy by overturning Roe would give lawmakers the tools to get started now. “Some people are saying, ‘Oh that’s

alarmist,’ but it wasn’t too long ago when people were saying it’s alarmist to think they’d overturn Roe,” Dye says. Maya McKenzie, media coordinator for Planned Parenthood Ohio, also is worried about the implications for the LGBTQ+ community. “It obviously extends beyond the right to choose whether or not you would have an abortion,” McKenzie says. “But LGBTQ+ people, including transgender men and non-binary people, they can and do have abortions, just like anyone else.” Maria Bruno, public policy director at Equality Ohio, testified against HB 598, the state’s latest abortion ban bill, saying it would be a disaster for LGBTQ+ Ohioans. “At first glance, abortion rights might seem like a distinct legal issue from LGBTQ+ rights,” Bruno testifies in her opposition. “But LGBTQ+ people need this healthcare, and LGBTQ+ rights and abortion rights are tightly entwined together through case law precedent. Picking and choosing when legal precedent matters — and which foundational constitutional rights deserve preservation and which don’t — is a recipe for disaster.” Dye says other human rights decisions could be forced back to the states and that it will be on voters to mobilize to maintain previously protected rights — even though many states like Ohio have been gerrymandered under Republican power. “Those local and state elections are going to be that much more important in terms of policy of where you live,” Dye says. “It’s a lot easier to get state legislation through because state legislator terms are shorter.” —Madeline Fening

Resident Induced Abortions, Ohio, 1977–2020

Source: Ohio Department of Health

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Ohio’s District Maps, Ballot Seats Continue to Shape Abortion Laws Within the State

s noted previously, many Ohioans and most Americans want abortion care to remain in place. But the likelihood of an all-out ban on procedures in the Buckeye State is practically certain as Ohio lawmakers consider next steps after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Here, conservative political games will enable that to happen. The push by Ohio Republicans to ban the procedure has been almost effortless. A statewide ban on abortion care after six weeks gestation already has gone into effect since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe. Two “trigger” bills outlawing abortion care (except in vaguely outlined emergency cases) also are poised to pass. “I think a realistic person would say there is almost no constituency in Ohio for an abortion ban, and yet that is by far the most likely policy outcome we’re looking at,” says David Niven, a University of Cincinnati political science professor who researches gerrymandering and has testified as an expert witness in court cases on the subject. “There’s only one reason why Ohio has a legislature to the right of Mississippi,

and that’s because the maps were drawn to make it that way,” he says. “The maps we’ve been living under for the last 10 years are roughly the second-most gerrymandered in the country.” Ohioans will pick new state lawmakers on Aug. 2 using district maps that the Ohio Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected as unconstitutional for unfairly favoring Republicans. Niven says the U.S. Supreme Court is shifting the decision on abortion care to the states without considering how redistricting is moving policy outcomes away from what voters actually want. “I don’t think ‘Catch-22’ is a strong enough phrase,” Niven says. Nonetheless, the rejected, unconstitutional maps are expected to stay in place for the November general election, when voters will decide who sits in the governor’s seat. Democrat Nan Whaley, who is facing off against Republican incumbant DeWine, says there is a lot she would be able do as governor to resist a ban on abortion care. “The governor’s office in Ohio is about the fourth-most powerful in the country, not only because of line items, but

because of appointments and the work they can do on access around public health. There’s no singular position more powerful, regardless of what the legislature does, than the governor’s seat for this issue,” Whaley says. In order to stop the passage of a ban, Whaley would need real veto power, which is something a Republican-packed House and Senate would prevent. The Ohio Senate is made up of 25 Republicans and eight Democrats, with 17 seats on the upcoming ballot. Currently, there are 64 Republicans in the Ohio House and 35 Democrats. While all their seats are on the ballot, the odds of Democrats taking enough new seats to prevent a three-fifths vote overruling a Whaley veto is slim, Niven says. “Democrats are not going to come close to a majority. The best case scenario is they win enough votes to stop the legislature from overriding a theoretical Nan Whaley veto. But the odds don’t really favor that as an outcome,” Niven says. There are additional offices on the ballot beyond the legislature that could affect the way a ban on abortion care is felt in Ohio.

Rep. Jeff Crossman is challenging incumbent Dave Yost for Ohio’s attorney general position. He says that in order to give Democrats a chance at districts in a way that would be constitutional under the Ohio Supreme Court — and, in turn, give them a shot at influencing or preserving abortion care access — the attorney general needs to hold the redistricting commission’s feet to the fire. Crossman filed a criminal dereliction of duty complaint against the Republican-led commission on May 26, a lead he wants Yost to follow. “The attorney general should be joining in saying these folks are acting in contempt, because that’s exactly what’s happening,” Crossman says. “We’re being ruled, not governed.” (Yost did not respond to our requests for comment). No matter what district maps are or aren’t in place for Ohio — or even if they continue to be deemed unconstitutional — the special election to vote on the legislature is scheduled for Aug. 2. The deadline to register to vote in the special election is July 5. The deadline to register for the November general election is Oct. 11. —Madeline Fening

Statewide Abortion Bans Will Lead to Bleeding, Infection, Even Death in Ohio, Experts Say

r. David Burkons remembers how his classmates got abortion care when he attended The Ohio State University in Columbus in the 1960s. “There was some corner down on Cleveland Avenue,” Burkons says. “You showed up there and a car came by, you got in, you gave him the money, he takes you to have an abortion, you came back.” By the time he graduated from medical school in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court had just issued its decision on Roe v. Wade, legalizing abortion care nationally. Burkons has since delivered babies and terminated pregnancies, serving the choices of patients no matter their decision. Now, with the court overturning Roe 50 years later, Burkons worries about how Ohioans will access abortion care. “There are going to be some deaths involved with this. There will be very serious consequences,” Burkons says. Burkons says that rather than people slipping into a car to be whisked to a secret abortion site, people will order pills online to end a pregnancy from outof-state, both through legal channels and from black-market sellers. “The internet has changed everything,” Burkons says.

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Protesters against the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs/Roe v. Wade decision and Ohio's abortion ban gather in Cincinnati.

Most people — about 47% in Ohio and 54% in the United States — who end a pregnancy do so with a series of prescribed pills, data shows. The first pill usually prescribed is mifepristone (brand name Mifeprex), while the

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second pill, misoprostol (brand name Cytotec), is taken 24-48 hours later. Burkons, who runs several abortion clinics in Cleveland and Toledo, says about 75% of the abortion care he provides is via the pill.

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That timing will be compromised if patients are forced to find pills to terminate their own pregnancies online, Burkons says. The abortion pill currently is only an option during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Burkons says that

Already-Disadvantaged Ohioans Are Poised to Disproportionately Suffer from an Abortion Ban

n April, the Ohio Policy Evaluation Network (OPEN) found that Ohioans seeking a surgical abortion would have to travel up to 339 miles if the legislature were to institute a statewide ban (medical — or pill-based — abortions also are an option). The driving expenses associated with the additional travel could add as much as $400 to an already costly procedure. Abortion is sought predominantly by patients of limited means, according to recent research. OPEN says that roughly 75% of people seeking abortions in 2021 were classified either as poor or low-income, or those making up to 200% of the federally designated poverty line. These patients, advocates say, will disproportionately suffer when abortions are made more burdensome and remote. “Even under existing law, paying for an abortion is a huge impediment,” says Freda Levenson, legal director with the ACLU of Ohio. “It’s not only the cost of travel and childcare to think about, but the lost wages. Low-wage workers aren’t getting paid for time off work.” According to the Guttmacher Institute, only 16 states — the nearest being

after nine weeks and six days, patients risk heavier cases of bleeding, cramping and other complications that could require medical attention. Burkons notes that while pregnancy tests can be used very early, most people don’t even know they are pregnant until after their first missed period, which can be well beyond six weeks. Patients must wait for pills to ship from out of state or overseas, which may not be safe to work before reaching Ohio’s six-week abortion ban that just went into place — or for the even stricter laws in the pipeline. Burkons doesn’t like those odds. “I think what’s going to happen is people will find out they’re pregnant. They’ll find these sites, they’ll order the pills, the pills will come, and it’s going to take a week or two to get the pills, so they’re already going to be further along and it’s going to be a much higher chance they’re going to have problems. And there’s going to be no one for them to call,” Burkons says. Patients who take the right abortion pills within the first ten weeks are likely to have a successful experience, Burkons says, but the uncertainty of how far along a pregnancy might be coupled with the delay of shipping the meds is still only part of the risk. Making sure you’re getting the right pills online is Burkons’ next fear. “What you’re going to see are a lot

roughly $500-$600 and get more expensive every two weeks of gestation. “By the third trimester, we’re talking thousands of dollars,” Scotece says. “And most insurance policies don’t cover abortions, so these procedures are paid for out of pocket.” As of press time, abortion-inducing drugs also are available as alternatives to surgical procedures. However, legal and medical experts predict that Ohio will attempt to restrict those with Roe v. Wade’s fall, despite federal laws that permit mail-order medications. Scotece says that WHO is often a “fund of last resort” that works with local abortion funds and other providers to ensure that patients have all their financial bases covered before traveling to get an abortion. She describes one instance in which a woman’s car broke down on her way home from a procedure and was forced to spend an extra night in a hotel, pay for her car repair and miss an additional day of work. “For a single parent like her, one lost day of wages can be life or death,” Scotece says, adding that WHO case navigators helped the woman not only cover the cost of the hotel and car, but

also paid the lost wages. Women Have Options serves anyone traveling to or from Ohio for abortion care. While Ohio has enacted dozens of restrictions in recent years, it still has a few abortion clinics. Six are full-service surgical centers: three in the Cleveland area and one each in Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati. There are three additional clinics that only provide abortion medication in Columbus, Cleveland and Toledo. Scotece notes that there has been an influx of patients traveling to Ohio from Kentucky for abortion care and says that there are likely to be additional ripple effects of a ban, including rising costs and restrictions associated with miscarriages and infertility. And while disadvantaged Ohioans will suffer the effects of a statewide ban disproportionately, many other people will be affected. “I think a lot of people are unaware of just how common abortion is,” Scotece says. “One in four women have abortions, and so when people think it doesn’t impact them or their families, it absolutely does. The higher and higher costs of abortion care will become really untenable.” —Sam Allard

If abortion pills are limited in supply, there will be a higher rate of incomplete abortions, putting patients at major risk for medical emergencies and — depending on new laws that may crop up — criminal charges.

area. Burkons says that because Ohio can’t prosecute doctors from outside state lines, it’s just a matter of time before lawmakers go directly after the patients seeking to stop or terminate their own pregnancies. “The anti-choice people always say they’re not after the women. They call me the criminal,” Burkons says. “But my parking lot is full and I don’t advertise. People seek us out. When there’s no physicians in the state to prosecute because all this is coming from out of state, you know they’re going to go after the women.” Burkons fears that potential trouble from doctors or the law will keep some patients away from emergency rooms. He advises those searching for abortion pills online to try ordering from a website with a customer support phone number to speak to a doctor or nurse. He also emphasizes that misoprostol and mifepristone are overwhelmingly safe and effective, but patients who are on blood thinners or are anemic should be careful, as they could lose a dangerous amount of blood. Burkons adds that even people who aren’t pregnant have been ordering abortion pills. “They have a long expiration period,” Burkons says. “Women are very smart people. They’re going to find a way.” —Madeline Fening

New York, Maryland and Illinois — and the District of Columbia have laws that protect abortion as of press time. Because some states require a 24-hour waiting period between an initial appointment and an abortion procedure, travel costs for anyone not living near state lines likely would include a hotel stay. “Remember that many Ohioans, even those working full-time and above minimum wage, still struggle to pay for basic living expenses,” Levenson says. “Forty percent of Americans aren’t able to cover a hypothetical emergency expense of $400, using cash on hand or their savings. The struggles that lowincome Ohioans face are only going to get more difficult as access becomes scarcer.” Travel costs, childcare costs — 60% of those seeking abortions are already parents, according to the Guttmacher Institute — and foregone wages are all on top of the cost of the procedure itself. Maggie Scotece, interim executive director of statewide abortion fund Women Have Options Ohio (WHO), says that at their earliest and cheapest, first-trimester surgical abortions cost

of websites — some are going to be legitimate, some are not going to be legitimate,” Burkons says. “If you go on to the internet now and look up ‘abortion,’ you get these crisis pregnancy centers that have very professional and misleading websites that are there to confuse women and keep them from having abortions. I guarantee you these antichoice people are going to be putting up websites like that, and if people get any medication, it’s probably going to be Smarties [candy] or something.” Burkons says that even if a patient can’t get their hands on both misoprostol and mifepristone, taking just misoprostol could work in some cases — but the two drugs are most effective together. If the pills are limited in supply, Burkons says there will be a higher rate of incomplete abortions, putting patients at major risk for medical emergencies and — depending on new laws that may crop up — criminal charges. “Infection, massive hemorrhage, that sort of stuff,” Burkons says. “They’re

going to be bleeding and need to go to the emergency room.” We talked to an emergency room nurse during a Planned Parenthood rally in Cincinnati in May. She didn’t want to disclose her name for fear of reprimand from her employer. “We don’t receive training for this at all,” the nurse says. “They’re putting their bodies at risk, their lives at risk.” She adds that current emergency room staff have almost entirely worked in a world in which abortion care is accessible. Now, she says, they must prepare for patients who are managing medication abortions without the assistance of a doctor and receiving surgical abortions in non-medical environments. “They’re not going to be able to give information on what’s been done to them,” she says. “We’re talking permanent bodily harm. Infection. Death.” Whether or not Ohioans will be able to legally order medical abortion pills through the mail remains a legal gray

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With an Abortion Ban in Place, Ohio’s Attempts to Court Large Companies May Stall

n recent months, Ohio has put on a full-press campaign through JobsOhio, the state’s quasi-public economic development agency, to lure companies to the state. The $50 million ad campaign has been deployed in Texas, New York, and other states with messages touting Ohio’s businessfriendly zero-percent corporate tax rate and cheap cost of living. While major relocation or expansion decisions made by national corporations and large businesses often hinge not on broad reputational strokes of a state (Ohio’s leaders have long fought the idea that the state is “flyover country,” for example) but on the ability to hire workers and extract extravagant subsidies (such as Ohio giving Intel $2.1 billion in incentives to build its new chip hub in Columbus), low taxes and affordable cost of living certainly play a role in courting business. Abortion rights might be a new carrot in those races or — in Ohio’s case — a checkmark against a state. Some large companies in Ohio and other conservative states like Texas and Florida already have been solicited by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy to relocate to a state that will protect access to abortion care. “The overturning of a woman’s right to bodily autonomy — and the chilling effect this decision will have on your ability to attract and retain top female talent by being located in a state which has refused to recognize women’s reproductive freedom — cannot be ignored,” Murphy said in a June letter, which was first reported by NPR. The call to move corporations to states without abortion restrictions will get louder, experts say. “The abortion restrictions are one part of a larger state culture that is not friendly or is hostile toward women, and so attracting top talent, women and families, it’s going to be really hard for some of the businesses in these states,” Nicole Mason, CEO of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, told Fortune in May. In the Supreme Court’s 1992 decision for Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the majority decision noted, “The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.” An abortion ban in Ohio will directly and negatively impact that ability, experts say. In May, economic analysis firm Scioto Analysis released a survey showing that 22 of 24 economists interviewed agree abortion bans in Ohio would have a detrimental effect on the workforce. “The empirical evidence is very clear

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Ohio's abortion ban could put more people who can get pregnant out of work.

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In 2020, statewide abortion restrictions caused $4.5 billion in economic losses, with the vast majority shouldered by Ohio women ages 15-44, who experienced reduced earning levels, a higher number of job changes, and lost opportunities for future earnings due to time away from work when they were forced to carry pregnancies to term and care for children. about the negative impact of unplanned pregnancies on women’s educational attainment, especially when support services are unavailable or unaffordable,” Dr. Fadhel Kaboub, an associate professor of economics at Denison University, said in the report. “Economic research overwhelmingly indicates that abortion rights greatly affect the educational level, career opportunities, earning and wealth enhancement potential for women,” added Dr. Diane Monaco, an assistant professor of economics at Heidelberg University. “Abortion rights advantages are especially profound for historically marginalized women as well.” A disproportionate burden will be carried by those least able to carry it, says Mikaela Smith, a research scientist with the Ohio Policy Evaluation Network at Ohio State University. “Research reflects similar patterns of decreased access to abortion and other reproductive healthcare services among rural residents, suggesting that burdens associated with abortion restrictions will be felt particularly hard by those living in rural areas,” Smith says. “Given that we know that a lack of financial resources is one of the primary reasons people seek an abortion and that being denied an abortion is associated with poorer

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economic outcomes, losing access to abortion — particularly among rural folks as well as people of color and those experiencing financial burdens more broadly — will surely result in negative economic impacts at both the individual and community levels.” Recent studies by the Institute For Women’s Policy Research back that up, showing that in 2020, statewide abortion restrictions caused $4.5 billion in economic losses. The vast majority of that hefty figure was shouldered by Ohio women ages 15-44, who experienced reduced earning levels and a higher number of job changes. They also lost opportunities for future earnings due to time away from work when they were forced to carry pregnancies to term and care for children. These losses could increase even further as a statewide abortion ban will keep more women out of the workforce, creating a loss of productivity, talent and wages that could have been taxed and spent back out into the state economy. An Ohio abortion ban also may mean higher costs for taxpayers, given the data on abortion patient demographics and the impact that not being able to attain one has on the individual’s finances. Ohio residents could be on the hook for contributing to more public assistance, as

funds from Women, Infants and Children (WIC) or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) will be used by those dealing with the economic ramifications of full-term pregnancies and children. Incoming businesses and investments to the state could also be affected, including high-profile sectors like the film industry. A-list films like Carol and Captain America: The Winter Soldier were filmed in Cincinnati and Cleveland, respectively, and Ohio routinely is a beacon for other major films. Business has been growing, too, thanks in part to a generous state tax credit program. The Greater Cleveland Film Commission last year cited a study by Olsberg SPI, an international consultancy agency, that found the Ohio film industry has created $1.2 billion in economic impact since 2009 and has created 6,192 “full-time equivalent jobs.” But professional organizations such as the Writers Guild of America are already urging members to avoid states that enact abortion bans now. “We call on our employers to consider the laws of each state when choosing production locations to ensure that our members will never be denied full access to reproductive healthcare,” the WGA said in a statement in early May (the Greater Cleveland Film Commission didn’t respond to a request for comment). Nationally, some large corporations have begun to step in, offering extra time off and financial benefits to employees who need to travel out-of-state for an abortion, and Cincinnati announced June 27 that it's rewriting its healthcare policy, as well. But that may not be enough to keep Ohio workers — or businesses — from moving to locations with fewer health restrictions. “Eight in 10 college-educated knowledge workers — top talent — view access to abortion and reproductive health care as part of gender equity in the workplace, no more, no less,” says Jen Stark, senior director for corporate strategy at the Tara Health Foundation, in an interview with Voice Of America. “Employers that want to attract top talent into states that have social policies that don’t align with their values will have to do more to make up for this.” —Gennifer Harding-Gosnell and Vince Grzegorek This feature is a collaborative effort by reporters and editors at CityBeat in Cincinnati and Cleveland Scene in Cleveland, including Sam Allard, Allison Babka, Madeline Fening, Vince Grzegorek, Gennifer Harding-Gosnell, Maggy McDonel, Ashley Moor and Maija Zummo.

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NEWS

Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval P H OTO : M A RY L E B U S

Cincinnati Develops New Policies to Support City Employees Seeking Abortion, Other Healthcare

“It is not my job to make it easier for the state legislature and the governor to drag women in Ohio back to the ‘50s,” Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval said. BY A L L I S O N BA B K A

n light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 reversal of the privacy and bodily autonomy that Roe v. Wade had granted for nearly 50 years, Cincinnati officials are in the process of developing new policies to support employees who seek abortions and other healthcare. During a June 27 press conference, mayor Aftab Pureval announced that interim city manager John Curp is advancing a change in the city’s health coverage plan and human resource policies that would protect employees

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seeking healthcare and would reimburse employees for out-of-state travel costs related to those procedures. During the address, Pureval repeatedly and specifically mentioned “women” and abortion, but he, Curp and other council members also alluded to and sometimes specifically mentioned protecting all healthcare, including gender-affirming care. CityBeat has requested clarification and comment from the mayor’s office. “Our Supreme Court, Congress, our governor, state legislature – they have

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all failed us,” Pureval said. “It is not my job to make it easier for the state legislature and the governor to drag women in Ohio back to the ‘50s and strip their rights. It’s my job to make that harder.” As of press time, Pureval is introducing legislation that would repeal a 2001 ordinance restricting the city from covering elective abortions in its health plan. Cincinnati City Council is expected to vote on it during the June 29 meeting, he said. If it passes, Curp will amend Cincinnati’s healthcare coverage to include abortion services.

Curp also will introduce “a comprehensive travel reimbursement policy,” Pureval said. Under the new policy, employees would receive reimbursement for travel for healthcare if that care is not covered under the city’s health plan and is unavailable or restricted within 150 miles of Cincinnati. After the reversal of Roe on June 24, Ohio banned abortion after six weeks gestation except in a handful of circumstances. There are no exceptions in cases of rape or incest, and doctors performing abortions can be charged with a fifth-degree felony. Pureval noted that the city’s reimbursement plan for reproductive healthcare would be similar to those of Cincinnati-based Kroger and other corporations. Curp added that the policy will cover abortion, birth control options, in vitro fertilization and care for transgender individuals and that the cost to the city would be similar to policies elsewhere. “I also want to be clear that the city’s travel reimbursement policy will not only cover travel for abortion-related

services. This is about helping to make sure our city employees have access to any eligible medical care that isn’t available here regardless of future statewide laws,” Pureval said. Pureval also said he has asked city administration to provide a report within 30 days with ways the city can decriminalize abortions as Ohio and other states begin to further restrict or even entirely outlaw abortion care. He has instructed the Cincinnati Police Department not to pursue residents who seek abortions or health providers like doctors and nurses who perform abortion-related care. “We are relying on our administration and our legal department to provide us with the best possible advice to take actions that are protected from overreach by the state legislature. But as we’ve seen with other issues [that have] come before City Hall, this state legislature, despite its commitment to local power, has overreached again and again,” Pureval said. “We anticipate that they will do everything they can to disrupt our effort, but that will not deter us from fighting as hard as we can to protect the women in our communities.” Cincinnati leaders speak out against Roe v. Wade reversal As many of them did once the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Cincinnati City Council members lambasted the court’s decision and feared what it could mean in the months and years ahead. “Back in the 1800s, abortions were legal for white women. They were not legal for enslaved women because enslaved women were considered property,” said Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney, vice mayor. “But we grew up in a different America. We grew up in an America where the fundamental right to liberty wasn’t just for straight white men. Liberty means that we own our own bodies.” “Personal testimony here: I’ve known people who have gotten abortions. I personally have had to make that choice in my life, too. And, so, I know the power of what choosing means,” Cincinnati City Council member Meeka Owens said. Victoria Parks, pro tem president of the council, had especially strong words for the U.S. Supreme Court, saying that in her lifetime, the legislation around civil rights, Title IX and abortion have affected her the most. “I’m really not that old, but the right for women to make a choice about their own bodies happened in my life[time], and I grieve – I grieve – that this Supreme Court has the audacity to try to interfere in a woman’s right to choose what she wants to do. They don’t care about rape. They don’t care about the health of the woman,” Parks

said. “Within my power, everything that I can do, I will fight against this kind of tyranny.” Kearney added thoughts about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who called for reviews of other recent court-granted rights. “I am ashamed of our U.S. Supreme Court. I am especially ashamed of Justice Clarence Thomas and his concurring opinion, and I hope everyone has read it. He said, ‘We haven’t gone far enough in Roe v. Wade; we need to take away other liberties that are fundamental rights. Let’s look at Griswold and take away the right for married couples to have contraceptives. Let’s look at Lawrence and take away that right to have privacy between consenting adults. Let’s look at Obergefell and take away the right to gay marriage.” In his concurring opinion, Thomas wrote, “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” Legal experts as well as civil and human rights activists have long said that reversing Roe could set the stage for reversing other rights. The rights and the major court cases granting them include: The right to obtain contraceptives (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965) The right to interracial marriage (Loving v. Virginia, 1967) The right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003) The right to same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015) “Now, he didn’t mention Loving, the right to interracial marriage, which was passed six years before Roe, because of course that would hurt his own self interest,” Kearney noted. Thomas, who is Black, is married to Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a white woman who is being investigated for pressuring lawmakers to help overturn the 2020 general election in which current U.S. President Joe Biden defeated incumbent Donald Trump. Trump’s false claims that he had won the election – not Biden – helped spark the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, investigators are finding. The interracial marriage between Clarence and Virginia Thomas would have been outlawed without the decision from Loving v. Virginia. Curp said that the state eventually may pursue a lawsuit against Cincinnati for providing protections for its employees. “As the former solicitor, I always expect a lawsuit when the city takes bold action, the same way that we did in Obergefell a decade ago,” Curp said. “I was there for that fight, and we’ll stand for that here for as long as we can.”

Abortion-ban protesters demonstrate in Cincinnati. P H OTO : M A RY L E B U S

State Abortion Bans Go into Effect BY M A I JA Z U M M O

he federal overturning of Roe v. Wade prompted a flurry of activity in Ohio and Kentucky regarding the implementation of each state’s restrictive abortion bans. Ohio Less than an hour after it was announced that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 24, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a motion to lift an injunction against Ohio’s “heartbeat bill.” By that evening, the bill — officially called the “Human Rights and Heartbeat Protection Act” — became law. The law bans abortions in Ohio after six weeks of gestation and requires physicians to determine if there is detectable “heartbeat pulse before moving forward (doctors say this is not an actual heartbeat). If so, the doctor cannot conduct an abortion unless it is “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.” The law contains no exceptions for rape or incest and only applies to what the state describes as “intrauterine pregnancies.” Physicians are required to record and report the medical condition necessitating each patient’s abortion as well as the “medical rationale” behind their decision. That documentation must be kept by the doctor for at

least seven years. Pregnant people also are required to sign a form acknowledging the presence of a fetal heartbeat and the statistical probability the fetus could be carried to term. Doctors who perform an abortion in violation of the law can be charged with a fifth-degree felony, punishable by up to a year in prison. The ACLU of Ohio says it will sue the state “to block the six-week ban.” Kentucky In Kentucky, the Roe reversal spurred the immediate enactment of a so-called abortion “trigger law.” The law bans all abortions in the state, regardless of gestation, except in order to prevent the death of or “the serious, permanent impairment of a life-sustaining organ” of a pregnant person. It also criminalizes procuring, prescribing, administering or selling any medication with the intent to terminate a pregnancy. Physicians also must make “reasonable medical efforts under the circumstances” to preserve the life of the fetus. Under the law, anyone who performs an abortion or provides abortive medications can be charged with a Class D felony, which is punishable by up to five years in prison. The law does not provide exceptions for cases of rape or incest, which Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has called “extremist” and “wrong.”

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ARTS & CULTURE

From bottom left clockwise, artwork can be found on pages 98, 178, 194 and 128 of Wildlife: The Life and Work of Charles Harper. P H OTO : C O U RT E SY O F CHARLEY HARPER ART ST U D I O, W I L D L I F E , G E S TA LT E N , 2 0 2 2

Midcentury Discoveries A new book revisits Charley Harper’s impressive catalog of work with a glimpse into his international impact. BY ST E V E N RO S E N

s new generations continue to rediscover Midcentury Modernism as a beloved art, architectural and design style, the following for Cincinnati-based Charley Harper seemingly is on an indefinite spike. Harper, who eventually landed in Cincinnati but was raised in West Virginia, created paintings, prints and

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illustrations that frequently stylized their nature-related subjects by deemphasizing depth and accentuating colorfulness and geometric characteristics, a common motif around the middle of the 20th century. He died in 2007 at age 84, just as Mad Men began and Todd Oldham’s celebrated Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life was being published.

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Interest isn’t cooling off yet in this centenary year of Harper’s birth – including internationally – helped by the recent publication of the clothbound monograph Wild Life: The Life and Work of Charley Harper by Brett Harper (son and only child of Harper and his artist wife Edie), Margaret Rhodes and publisher gestalten. The Germany-based publishing house proposed the book to Brett, who directs the Charley Harper Art Studio. Publisher gestalten will distribute the Englishlanguage book internationally. As the book’s title indicates, this isn’t just a collection of images; it also has a biographical narrative written by Rhodes, an editor at New York

Magazine with a background in design stories. She spent time in Cincinnati last fall researching Harper’s life – including his time as a gifted Art Academy of Cincinnati student – as well as his flowering as a modernist artist drawn to nature as a subject. “One of the attractions was that I wanted a larger appreciation of Charley’s work in Europe,” Harper’s son tells CityBeat. “Knowing that there were customers in Europe of his prints and posters, I thought it would be a good thing to do it. And also, one of the attractions was that I felt they would have a portion of the book allocated to my mother, Edie, and her work.” (The book includes some of Edie Harper’s work.)

Wild Life also features a biographical narrative about Charley Harper’s life. P H OTO : C O U RT E SY O F C H A R L E Y H A R P E R A R T S T U D I O , W I L D L I F E , G E S TA LT E N , 2022

This is also the centenary year for Edie, who died in 2010 at age 87. She met Harper at the Art Academy, and they married shortly after their graduation in 1947. While her own work in various mediums wasn’t as well known as his during their lifetime, it has flourished recently. Covington arts venue The Carnegie gave Edie a 2017 retrospective, and ArtWorks created a distinctive public mural, on display now in Over-the-Rhine, called “Crazy Cat, Crazy Quilt.” The mural is based on one of her artworks. “[Rhodes] spent some of the time at our archives looking at images we have that are unsold or we will not sell,” Brett says. “People have not seen a lot of those. She also worked with the National Park Service, getting photographs of early layouts for what would be larger posters.” “I think the aesthetic qualities of Charley’s work make it seem like it’s quite simple — like there’s this naivete and picture-book quality to them,” Rhodes says. “Once I started digging into his process, his notes and his ideas, you start to see what’s going on is so deeply considered.” She credits The Carnegie’s exhibition director Matt Distel, whom she interviewed, for comparing Harper to a metronome in the way he refined one style over the years, pushing his approach toward a platonic ideal of perfection. The book is heavily influenced by Harper’s design sensibility — even the table of contents is essentially an art element, appearing like a maze with the print forming circular black lines. Near it are the artist’s famous red ladybugs, simplified to any almost surreal level, with their eye-like black circles giving them an anthropomorphic quality. Overall, the plentiful art reproductions do reinforce Harper’s reputation as a stylized colorist whose love for nature made him a kind of modern, streamlined Henri Rousseau. But the

book also features work that surprises in terms of its minimalism, its restrained color choices or its subject matter. Who knew, for instance, that Harper once designed a trendy CoolRay sunglasses advertisement? Rhodes and Brett chose quite a bit of fascinating archival material for the book, including a 1948 letter from Art Academy dean Robert Coffin to the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation that extolls the artist’s potential. “Mr. Harper is one of the finest young men with one of the greatest potentials in fine arts that I have seen in my fifteen years of association with young artists,” the letter reads. Other interesting artifacts shown in the book include Harper’s 1957 color rendering of his Midcentury Modern “dream home and studio,” designed by architect Rudy Hermes (it was built with changes from the rendering and is owned by Brett today). There is also a 1960 photo of Harper hanging his paintings at the Ford Rotunda in Dearborn, Michigan. First built in 1934 for the Chicago World’s Fair, this daringly modern structure with its layered roof and circular sides was moved to Dearborn and used as a tourist attraction with exhibits until it burned down in 1962. Harper’s paintings, along with the mural that he created in the rotunda’s reception area, were lost in the fire, according to motorcities.org. What is left for Charley (and Edie) to posthumously achieve? His son has one big idea he’d like to pursue if anyone is interested — a museum in Downtown Cincinnati. “I would really enjoy seeing that,” he says. “Ideally, I would like to see something downtown like the [Andy] Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh or Clyfford Still Museum in Denver.” It could connect with a trail that would lead to indoor ceramic tile murals that Charley created at the Duke Energy Convention Center and the John Weld Peck Federal Building, as well as to two ArtWorks outdoor painted murals created in remembrance of the Harpers — Charley’s ”Homecoming,” with two bluebirds near the Hamilton County Courthouse, and Edie’s aforementioned one, Brett says. If a proper entity would run the museum, Brett says, it could also have the previously mentioned suburban house and studio, which might be open for occasional tours like the Pacific Palisades, California, home of the late Modernist designers Charles and Ray Eames. “I think it would be a tourist attraction,” he adds. Buy Wild Life: The Life and Work of Charley Harper at us.gestalten.com. Learn about Harper’s life and work at charleyharperartstudio.com.

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ONSTAGE

Cincinnati Opera’s Fierce and Castor and Patience Give Voice to Underrepresented Stories BY A N N E A R E N ST E I N

U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith and composer Gregory Spears, the creators of Castor and Patience. P H OTO : M I C H A E L P R I E ST

wo world premieres originally scheduled for Cincinnati Opera’s 2020 centennial season will make their delayed debuts in July. On July 6, 9 and 10, Fierce will feature a score by Cincinnati native and renowned pianist William Menefield and libretto by novelist Sheila Williams. Later, Castor and Patience will mark the debut of award-winning 2017-2019 U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith as librettist, or the writer of text sung in an opera, as well as the return of composer Gregory Spears, who was behind the acclaimed Fellow Travelers. Castor and Patience will take place July 21, 23, 24, 28 and 30. Both works offer characters whose voices have been ignored: young women, especially women of color, and Black families whose crises are rooted in the patterns of racist American policies and cultures. Moreover, both operas are part of Cincinnati Opera’s long-term commitment to commissioning operas that highlight underrepresented communities and their stories. Fierce presents stories of teenaged girls channeling their artistry through a

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vortex of challenges, both personal and social. Williams spent more than a year in conversations with young women convened by the Music Resource Center in Walnut Hills and WordPlay Cincy, a Northside non-profit that fosters children’s and teens’ creativity through writing and arts integration. “Nothing was off limits,” Williams tells CityBeat of the discussions that ensued. “I was the fly on the wall.” Williams, whose novel Dancing on the Edge of the Roof was adapted by Netflix for the 2019 film Juanita, says that she used her screenwriting experience in crafting her first libretto. She adds that after hours of deep conversations, a huge challenge was creating a text that could be sung. Williams drew on her love of world mythology to name her four protagonists. All emerging artists, the teens struggle with parents, peers and a brutal cyber world. Vesta “has one foot in childhood and the other poised to step into womanhood,” Williams said. Nyomi is an introvert in an extrovert’s shell. Rumer

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“is a 2022 version of Stevie Nicks, desperately trying to navigate loss and survival,” Williams said, and Morgan juggles her dreams with her parents’ expectations. Although pianist Menefield didn’t participate in the conversations that Williams had with local teenagers, attending the Music Resource Center showcase featuring the young artists provided a clearer sense of the motivations of the characters they created. “There were a lot of text messages and emails as the score took shape,” Menefield recalled. Armed with a creative toolbox that included stage performances at the School for Creative and Performing Arts, solo gigs at Cincinnati Opera’s popular series “Opera Goes to Church” and landmark East Walnut Hills jazz venue Greenwich Tavern, and compositions for instrumental and vocal ensembles (including for PRISM, commissioned by the Young Professionals Choral Collective, which was performed at Carnegie Hall in 2019) , Menefield had confidence to transform Williams’ libretto into song, beginning

with signature arias for the four leads. “Establishing a musical identity for each character was essential,” Menefield explains. “It made it easier to shape the other characters from a musical perspective.” Fierce’s other characters include friends, teachers and a chorus of online trolls. Menefield and Williams forged a strong collaboration for Fierce, tweaking verbal and melodic lines and working with stage director D. Lynn Meyers, who is making her Cincinnati Opera debut. Williams praised her collaborator’s score. “Williams’ music is incredible, a perfect setting for the work.” Menefield tells CityBeat that he is especially excited to see his first opera on the same stage where he performed nearly thirty years ago. For Castor and Patience, composer Spears was eager to work on a new opera with his longtime friend Smith. The two met in 2008 while Smith was teaching at Princeton and Spears was a doctoral student. “After the success of Fellow Travelers, I was more confident about

Fierce librettist Sheila Williams.

Fierce pianist William Menefield.

P H O T O : TA S H A P I N E L O

P H O T O : S H AW N D A L E T H O M A S

approaching Cincinnati Opera to take a risk on us for a new work,” Spears explains. “They had faith in us and gave us the time we needed to develop a story.” Spears and Smith shared a desire to explore little-known aspects of American history, focusing on the effects of racism and the exclusion of Black communities. Spears and Smith took several trips to South Carolina and coastal Georgia to interview people whose lives were affected by policies restricting Black property ownership. As Spears and Smith traveled in South Carolina and coastal Georgia, accompanied by local historians, ethnomusicologists, and poet/photographer Rachel Elizabeth Griffiths whose work appears in the production, a story emerged. The accounts of communities victimized by policies directed against Black land ownership were a shock, especially for Smith, who grew up in Northern California. “I didn’t know much about this,” Smith says. “But we just listened. We looked and learned. And soon the characters began to bubble up.” Smith’s luminous poetry (Life on Mars, Duende) and memoir (Ordinary Light) frequently invoke home and memory, themes that are powerfully present in her libretto for Castor and Patience. She describes the writing process as an act of faith. Spears calls it brilliant and beautiful. “I was intimidated but surprisingly enough I found myself hearing voices and hearing wishes and needs and then the geometry of the story rose up,” Smith said. In the opera, cousins Castor and Patience reconnect at a family reunion. It’s 2008, and Castor is a victim of the recession, cratered by job loss and a balloon mortgage. He’s eager to sell property that’s been in the family since the Reconstruction era in the mid1800s, but Patience’s commitment

to the land and its legacy is equally strong. Reviews in the New York Times and Opera News cited Spears’ ability to let words sing. Smith found that reassuring. “The way he’s able to transmit natural speech musically makes me feel safe,” she says. Spears jotted down musical fragments that became puzzle pieces he fit into Smith’s libretto, which he says loves. Their close collaboration and mutual trust allowed Spears to create music that supports the text and allows the singers to inhabit their roles. Smith notes that Castor and Patience’s conclusion is open-ended and adds that Patience addresses the audience to what it means to be a witness to racism. Smith and Spears agree that the aria calls for confronting and dealing with history. “We deliberately left the property’s location unnamed. The characters’ history is our history and we’re implicated in these systems that have great force on people’s lives,” Smith said. Both creative teams are eager to take on another opera, they say. Smith and Spears already are working on a new commission. Menefield, who teaches jazz piano at the University of Iowa looks forward to a second production, as does Williams, who is tackling her next novel. All four express deep gratitude to Cincinnati Opera for taking risks with their new pieces and providing opportunities to work with emerging performers. “Composers always worked with singers on new operas,” Spears says. “Our singers made such huge contribution, taking it to a new level. To be part of this tradition is such a gift.” Cincinnati Opera’s Fierce will run July 6, 9 and 10, while Castor and Patience will be performed July 21, 23, 24, 28 and 30. Info: cincinnatiopera.org.

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ONSTAGE

Haleh Liza Gafori to Bring Authentic, Intimate Translations of Ancient Persian Poet Rumi to Cincinnati BY L E Y L A S H O KO O H E

Haleh Liza Gafori will perform her translated versions of Rumi’s poetry in Cincinnati on July 13 and 14. P H O T O BY M AT T K I L M E R

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umi, the ancient and revered Persian poet, has had his work translated, diluted and misattributed in equal measure over the centuries since writing them, but Gold, a new translation collection published in March by Haleh Liza Gafori, sets right many of those wrongs. “My ear is tuned to the music of contemporary American poetry, and one of the jobs of the translator is to make new music in the language they’re translating into, because you cannot preserve the music of the original language,” Gafori says. “To be steeped in both cultures, I think, is what makes for a good translator.” Gafori, a New Yorker of Persian descent, is a translator, poet and performer who will be in Cincinnati July 13 and 14 as part of a benefit for local nonprofit The Well. Gold is a collection of 32 Rumi poems, some previously translated and some not. “He has over 3,200 poems in the Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi [one of Rumi’s definitive works],” Gafori tells CityBeat. “It was about which poems I connected to, which I found interesting. I found the images evocative and the messages were sometimes speaking to me and speaking to our times.” One such poem is referenced in the book as “Whatever the Ways of the World.” It is translated from a ghazal, which is a form of poetry that features a string of five or more couplets. These couplets can often stand as distinct units themselves. “When I looked at the translations, there were clearly some errors made, and I thought the importance of the poem – a poem about an intense generosity – it was lost,” says Gafori. “He sets up these apocalyptic visions and asks us, ‘What are you going to do in the face of crisis? Who are you going to be? How much generosity are you going to show? Are you going to rise to the occasion?’ That’s an important question for us to ask at this point.” Before Gafori’s translation, the foremost translators of Rumi included a 19th century Englishman, Arthur John Arberry and Coleman Barks, an American who does not speak or read Persian. Arberry translates the opening line of “Whatever the Ways of the World” as, “Whatever comes of the world’s affairs, how does that affect your business?” Barks, whose translation is based on Arberry’s, is, “What happens in the world, what business is that of yours?” Gafori’s translation is richer, more nuanced, taking into account common Persian expressions and colloquialisms.

Gold is a collection of 32 Rumi poems, some previously translated and some not. P H O T O BY A B I G A I L D U N N

She also considers cultural shifts over the years since Rumi wrote his poetry while paying respect to his overall poetic vision. Gafori translates the opening line as, “Whatever the ways of the world, what fruits do you bring?” “I felt a responsibility,” Gafori says. “I feel a love for the poetry – that’s the first thing – and translation is the most intimate way to engage with a poem. I wanted to [translate], but also there were times when I felt like it was my duty.” Gafori’s appearance in the Greater Cincinnati area will include two days of readings and singing performances of the poetry in Gold as part of the Rumi Nights: Poetry, Song and Friendship event. On July 13, she will participate in an evening of yoga and mindfulness with Embra Studio. The following morning, she will join The Hive for an intimate conversation about Rumi and poetry. The culmination of Gafori’s time here will take place that evening in a special performance at the Woodward Theater benefitting Bellevue, Kentucky nonprofit The Well. “It really is a celebration of our community,” said Stacy Sims, founder of The Well. The Well is home to different programs that put mindfulness front and center, including Mindful Music Moments, a program now in more than 300 schools that leads school children daily in a mindful response to a different musical selection. Incubated in partnership with The On Being Project, created initially in celebration of National Poetry Month, Mindful Poetry Moments similarly uses poetry as a mindfulness prompt. The program features invited guests

“I felt a responsibility,” Gafori says. “I feel a love for the poetry – that’s the first thing – and translation is the most intimate way to engage with a poem.” who share poetry and offers space for attendees to write and read their responses. Gafori was an invited guest to the program when it moved into the virtual realm for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. When Sims learned of her newly-published book, she invited Gafori to Cincinnati. The ultimate goal is to share Rumi’s timeless work with an expanded audience, Gafori says. “The more the merrier, in terms of translation,” says Gafori. “I’m not someone who’s going to sit here and judge, or tell someone not to translate. It’s an intimate experience, and when you’re dealing with a poet like Rumi or [Austrian poet Rainer Maria] Rilke, for instance, they grab you. Many people who read them feel a desire to translate. It’s in the plethora of translations, I think, that we might get very close to the poet.”

Rumi Nights: Poetry, Song and Friendship will be held July 13 and 14. To learn about Gafori or to purchase Gold, visit halehliza.com. For event information, visit thewell.world.

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FOOD & DRINK

Inside Symposium, a new wine bar and cafe in East Walnut Hills. P H O T O S BY H A I L E Y B O L L I N G E R

Im-peck-able Drinks Symposium’s three bars nestle into East Walnut Hills with avian-inspired cocktails and “American tapas.” BY M AG G Y M C D O N E L

new wine bar and cafe has entered the East Walnut Hills culinary scene, albeit with a tricky start. Symposium had a soft opening May 6 only to be closed down days later due to a leaky sink. The wine bar and cafe finally hosted its grand opening on May 11, and as co-owner J. Matt Nickels tells CityBeat in an email, the business has been going strong ever since.

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Nickels knows his way around Cincinnati dining, especially when it comes to drinks. After all, he worked in food and beverage service at Metropole for years, moving on to become the general manager of Boca Group. Then, he was a local wine and sake wholesale importer, and, most recently, the beverage director for E+O Restaurant Group. His newest venture, Symposium, sports a relaxed Hemingway

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cafe-style atmosphere. He says of the space, “We [Nickels and Owen] have always romanticized cafes in literature, Hemingway for example, and stories from the old country [Italy] (Aaron’s nonna and my great grandmother). We love the Impressionist examples of cafe life as well.” The space features a main dining room with a lounge known as The Nest, a private dining and event space called the Rumpus Room, an outdoor patio that currently seats 10 (weather permitting) and Symposium’s three bars. Nickels says that the business also has added two church pews that are orientated towards the St. Francis de Sales church at the corner of Madison Road and Woodburn Avenue – “a little homage to our tall neighbor across the

street,” he says. Each bar offers something different — one serves coffee, the other has drinks and the last, food. The coffee bar presents classic espresso drinks – including lattes, cortados, macchiatos and cappuccinos – all at a very reasonable cost, priced between $3-4. The bar also has drip coffee and cold brew. An abundance of drink options at Symposium can be attributed to the establishment’s full-service bar that has 16 beers on tap, wine, sake, root beer and more. Cocktails known as “Birdtails” are delicious, imaginative and avian-inspired and include the Magpie Gin and Tonic, Macaw Mojito and Bird on a Wire espresso martini. Owen, who previously was the executive chef of Nicola’s Restaurant

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and sous chef of fine dining establishments Boca and Salazar, has created a menu that serves breakfast, dinner and – soon – lunch, Nickles says. Breakfast items include croissants, overnight oats and ricotta toast made with sourdough from local Allez Bakery and topped with fresh strawberry jam. There also is a rotation of pastries and doughnuts. For dinner, Owen offers small plates, canapés, charcuterie and cheese

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boards, all of which are collected as “American tapas.” The canapés, including the truffled grilled cheese with fontina and an onion doughnut with caviar, crema and chives, are unique and delectable. The cheese and charcuterie boards feature ingredients that range from aged ham to marinated melon. Symposium has set up shop in a neighborhood bustling with many new and exciting establishments from hip

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bars to cafes and salons. East Walnut Hills has been welcoming, Nickels tells CityBeat. “To date, folks have been wonderful,” he says Nickels adds that he and Owen have become close with staff from neighborhood establishments like Branch, Anjoy, Solstice and Mochiko – they’ve even gotten tattoos by artist Stephanie Merrill at Lumen Ink, just a few blocks south on Woodburn Avenue. They’ve

also enjoyed meeting folks from Woodburn Brewing, Growler House and HeyDay, who have all offered them a warm welcome, Nickels says. Nickels says he is thrilled to be a part of this community “We aspire to be an all-day destination for the neighborhood.” Symposium, 2835 Woodburn Ave., East Walnut Hills. Info: symposiumcincinnati.com.

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EATS

The Empanada’s Box Brings Argentinian Flavors to Covington BY S E A N M . P E T E RS

Lucas (L) and Diego (R) Nunez, owners of The Empanada’s Box. P H OTO : S E A N M . P E T E RS

nternational travel is expensive, so the easiest way to visit Argentina is at a table loaded with empanadas and chimichurri alongside a gourd of yerba mate in The Empanada’s Box, which opened on Covington’s Pike Street in June. Empanadas – baked turnover-like hand pies stuffed with a variety of savory and sweet fillings – are extremely common across Latin America and have become prevalent in our region thanks to Argentine families like Lucas Nunez, his aunt Fabiana and his uncle Diego at The Empanada’s Box. After graduating from Findlay Launch, the storefront accelerator program for food-related businesses at Findlay Market, The Empanada’s Box now runs its own brick-and-mortar location where Tuba Baking Co. previously had operated in the Mainstrasse area.

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Co-owner Lucas Nunez, who also serves as head of sales and marketing, moved to Cincinnati from Miami when Diego suggested they work alongside each other in the kitchen at Ché, the bar/restaurant responsible for introducing a lot of Over-the-Rhine residents to Argentine cooking, including Diego’s empanadas. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020 and affected restaurants everywhere, the Nunezes decided to work for themselves, confident that Diego’s talents as a chef would be put to good use in a kitchen of their own. “This is our passion and we want to show people a little piece of our culture,” says Nunez, the family’s fluent English speaker who tends to act as both their voice and interpreter. “We love Cincinnati, we live here, and now being part of Covington, Kentucky,

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Chimichurri is traditionally served over grilled meat, but goes really well on empanadas. P H OTO : S E A N M . P E T E RS

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An array of empanadas with rice, salad and alfajores. P H OTO : S E A N M . P E T E RS

we love that area too. We just want to spread our empanadas and make people happy through our food.” As they worked toward this recent opening, Findlay Launch was a massive asset for the burgeoning family business. The Nunezes were introduced to the program after working in Findlay Kitchen, a non-profit food business incubator. Findlay Launch provides startups in the food industry with learning opportunities, connections and resources, and a select few applicants like the Nunez family are invited to set up shop temporarily in one of the program’s storefronts on Elm Street. The Empanada’s Box began its limited run at that location in September and wrapped up in June to take the business to Covington. The menu at The Empanada’s Box features more than 20 different fillings for the empanadas. Sample traditional Buenos Aires-style bites with ground beef, onion, red pepper and scallions, or have a Cincinnati chili-style empanada seasoned with Colonel De Gourmet Herbs & Spices’ Cincinnati style seasoning chili powder. The array of empanada fillings is international, with flavors from Jamaica, Singapore, Louisiana, India, the Phillipines and

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more. Have a sweet tooth? There are many options to explore. The apple empanada – filled with green apple, brown sugar, raisins and cinnamon – is an indulgent dessert that happens to be vegan. There’s also a selection of imported Argentine candies along with housemade cookies filled with dulce de leche and powdered sugar that are perfect bitesize treats. Yerba mate is one of the specialties of The Empanada’s Box. This green tea is an essential part of the day for many in Argentina, sipped through a filtered metal straw from a specially prepared gourd. Originally cultivated in Argentina’s neighboring Paraguay, Diego drinks it three times daily as a way to relax with his wife Fabiana, who handles the restaurant’s financial aspects along with helping in the kitchen. The beverage is best served at 180° F, though people increasingly are enjoying it served over ice and sweetened with agave Patrons can enjoy food from The Empanada’s Box in several ways. If you’re looking for a table, the new restaurant seats about 20 people, with each table able to accommodate two to three diners. There, you can order at the

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Alfajores are small caramel cookie sandwiches dusted in powdered sugar. P H OTO : S E A N M . P E T E RS

counter and take a seat while you wait for empanadas fresh from the oven. These empanadas also travel extremely well, maintaining their temperature and structure even after a lengthy car ride. Frozen empanadas are an enticing option, too, as you can select individual pastries from the full menu, easily prepared in the oven at home. No matter which route you go, buy a

jar of Diego’s chimichurri, an herbaceous salsa-like sauce that’s traditionally served over grilled meats but accompanies empanadas perfectly with its acidity and saltiness, punctuated by the chopped aromatics. The Empanada’s Box, 212 Pike St., Covington. Info: theempanadasbox.square.site.

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MUSIC

China Crisis. P H O T O : R OY SHUTTLEWORTH

Legacy Lines After more than 40 years, China Crisis is still fully enjoying the ride. BY B R I A N BA K E R

lthough ‘80s synth pop icons China Crisis never broke out in America, they were one of the hottest new wave commodities to emerge from the Liverpool scene. The group earned gold records and charted 10 hit singles in Great Britain and a number of other countries, including their lone top 10 smash, “Wishful Thinking,” in 1983. With keyboardist/vocalist Gary Daly and guitarist/vocalist Eddie Lundon as the band’s only constants, China Crisis notched several impressive accomplishments. Two of the biggest were enticing Steely Dan guitarist Walter Becker to produce their third and fifth

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albums (an honor, considering Steely Dan was one of China Crisis’ avowed influences, along with David Bowie, Brian Eno and Talking Heads) and sharing stages with the likes of Tom Verlaine, Haircut 100 and Simple Minds. While China Crisis only has seven studio albums to date along with some gaps in their history – five years between 1989’s Diary of a Hollow Horse and 1994’s Warped by Success, and then another 21 years before their last recorded effort, 2015’s Autumn in the Neighbourhood – don’t make the mistake of thinking that the band’s current U.S. tour represents a comeback of some sort. The band has rarely been

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off the road for too long, as evidenced by the five live albums that have been available over the years, plus they’ve remained on the industry’s radar with no fewer than five retrospective collections over the past three decades. Co-founder Daly has a spectacularly sunny perspective on China Crisis’ long run, preferring to look at its legacy rather than its history. “The music never dies,” he tells CityBeat from his Liverpool home. “A lot of bands will continue and there will only be one original member and sometimes not even that, and that just tells you the music lives forever. The people who make it don’t, but if you get lucky, your

song gets sung forever.” Daly is fairly certain that China Crisis’ upcoming show at Ludlow Garage is the band’s Cincinnati debut (“I’d remember that name, Cincinnati...people in Europe talk about Cincinnati as a music city.”). He’s certain that fans and firsttimers alike will find something to love in the band’s presentation. “It might be, ‘What the hell? What do they even look like now?’” Daly says. “But I think people will be pleasantly surprised when they get to see us in Cincinnati because the music is as spritely and vibrant as it was 40 years ago when we started making it.” “Technology has helped with that

“It takes us about two hours to get through each evening; we go from the very beginning right up to now,” says Daly. “We play it by ear each night. We turn up at a place where people are eating and drinking and sit down, and we play that set. We turn up at a rock and roll venue, and we play that set.” because absolutely everything now is accessible. It’s fascinating,” he continues. “Drum machine sounds, Roland Jupiter 8 synth sounds, DX7 sounds – we can reproduce them all. I think we actually sound a bit better than we did a while ago because the technology wasn’t great then, and now it’s sharp.” China Crisis has been a fixture on the road for the bulk of its 40-plus year existence, and during that time, the band has played in every conceivable (and sometimes inconceivable) situation, from one-off dates to full scale tours to festivals, in an equally wide-ranging type of venue. As such, Daly and Lundon (and on this tour, keyboardist/programmer Jack Hymers and saxophonist/percussionist Eric Animan) have perfected the art of molding their setlist and live presentation to match the personality of the venue and audience. And on this current American tour, China Crisis’ set could very well include songs that Daly and Lundon wrote via Zoom during the pandemic. “It takes us about two hours to get through each evening; we go from the very beginning right up to now,” says Daly. “We play it by ear each night. We turn up at a place where people are eating and drinking and sit down, and we play that set. We turn up at a rock and roll venue, and we play that set. We’re on a stage with a lot of other people, we know how to do that.” “We’ve just done the Classic Crisis Tour in Britain, which was a theater tour with visuals and a story and we knew exactly what we were doing each night in each venue,” he adds. “It’s not like that when we go to the States and we’re doing 26-odd dates in God knows what kind of venues.” Given the time that has elapsed since Daly and Lundon first assembled China Crisis in 1979, it’s natural to wonder what

songs from their brief but potent catalog still resonate for the two songwriters. When Daly answers the question, he doesn’t cite specific songs but rather the range of emotions that accompany each track. “The ones I absolutely love, you can hear as young lads, feeling our teens, in love with our girlfriends and loving our lives and our mates, getting a record deal, having all those early successes,” says Daly with a measure of pride. “And I’m not talking about the hit records, but the little obscure album tracks that we play from the first or second records. And some of the songs from Autumn in the Neighbourhood are great to play because there’s a bit more depth to them and they’re a bit more composed. We’ve obviously learned and developed and grown and some of them are a bit deeper and about actual life events and you can feel that as well.” After the five year gap following the tour to support Diary of a Hollow Horse in 1989, the longest time China Crisis has been off the road was during the coronavirus outbreak. They were in the midst of a particularly hectic schedule, juggling two separate American circuits and a run through Europe, when everything ground to a halt. “We were heading toward Ireland in March. We were literally on the plane and Eddie was already in Ireland, and he messaged us and said, ‘Go straight to the Aer Lingus desk when you get off the plane and get a flight back to Liverpool. They’re shutting down Ireland,’” Daly recalls. “We’d heard it all on the news and you’d see the Chinese planes and everybody’s in masks. Ed was saying, “It’s not good,’ and I was like, ‘What are you on about?” When it did kick in, I thought, ‘Maybe a few months, everything will be back.’ It was such a shock.” As bands increasingly return to the stage, the age range at shows is growing, particularly in the audiences of legacy acts like China Crisis. While Daly has seen a preponderance of slightly older generations at China Crisis gigs as well as shows of all sorts – and he wonders if today’s music fans have largely turned their backs on the live experience – he’s encouraged when he sees younger people. “You can tell when there’s families coming, and that’s always lovely,” says Daly. “I always tease the kids; ‘Okay, who brought you? Who’s made you come?’ And it’s always, ‘No,we had your tapes on in the car.’ They’ve grown up with it, and they know it because their mom and dad played it all these times that they remember. It’s a really lovely thing.” China Crisis plays Ludlow Garage (342 Ludlow Ave., Clifton) at 8:30 p.m. July 8. Info:ludlowgaragecincinnati.com.

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SOUND ADVICE

Death Cab for Cutie P H O T O : J I M M Y F O N TA I N E

Death Cab for Cutie with Illuminati Hotties July 7 • PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation Has it really been 25 years since Death Cab for Cutie surfaced out of the Pacific Northwest? President Bill Clinton was beginning his second term and the Internet was not yet pervasive when singer/songwriter Ben Gibbard formed what would become an enduring outlet for his tuneful brand of indie rock marked by lyrics at once self-lacerating and universal. The band’s 10th studio album, Asphalt Meadows, is set to drop Sept. 16, but the guys aren’t waiting to hit the road — an extensive North American tour kicks off with a stop in Cincinnati July 7 and concludes in late October with a pair of shows in their home base of Seattle. The record’s uncommonly terse first single, “Roman Candles,” opens with a persistent kick drum and driving bass before blossoming

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into glorious noise pop complete with military-style beats, processed guitar and soaring synths. Then there’s Gibbard’s voice, which still sounds like the indie rock version of James Taylor — modest but expressive, yearning but earth-bound. “‘Roman Candles’ is about the crippling, existential dread that goes hand in hand with living in a nervous city on a dying planet, and that the only way to be in the moment is to let it all go,” the band said in a press release that accompanied the single’s release. “The lyrics were cobbled from a couple of different songs dealing with my general sense of anxiety; the feeling that the fabric that weaves a functioning society together was crumbling during the pandemic,” Gibbard added in the same release. Death Cab has played a handful of live shows over the last 10 months, each featuring songs from across the band’s discography, and now they’re enlisting

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Gin Blossoms P H O T O : FA C E B O O K . C O M / G I N B L O S S O M S A Z

the help of fans to dig out some deep cuts. “With a new tour comes new setlists!” Death Cab wrote in a recent Twitter post. “What older songs do you want to hear on the Asphalt Meadows tour that we haven’t played in a while?

… Can’t guarantee we’ll tackle everything, but we’ll read your suggestions & take them into account!” Death Cab for Cutie performs July 7 at PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation. Doors open at 6 p.m. Illuminati Hotties

Barenaked Ladies P H O T O : WA R N E R M U S I C C A N A D A

will open the show. There are no COVID-19 protocols. Info: promowestlive.com. (Jason Gargano)

Barenaked Ladies, Gin Blossoms, Toad the Wet Sprocket July 20 • PNC Pavilion Summer is the time for nostalgia acts, and for good reason. Who doesn’t love reminiscing about good times at the park or the beach while the bands that provided the soundtracks are literally right there? The upcoming show at PNC Pavilion is pretty much made for that. Alt-pop acts Barenaked Ladies, Gin Blossoms and Toad the Wet Sprocket were ubiquitous during the ‘90s and ‘00s, licensing their tunes for countless productions, including “It’s All Been Done” for the original Beverly Hills, 90210, “Til I Hear It from You” for Empire Records and “Good Intentions” for Friends. None of the bands have become stagnant, either. Barenaked Ladies wrote the theme song for The Big Bang Theory, staged a series of ocean cruises and even developed the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor “If I Had 1,000,000 Flavours,” named after the group’s fanfavorite song. BNL’s latest album Detour de Force dropped in 2021, delayed – like

the tour – by the COVID-19 pandemic. Gin Blossoms also stayed busy with new music and lots of touring. Since a short hiatus in the late ‘90s, the band has recorded three more studio albums, including 2018’s Mixed Reality. Gin Blossoms also hit the road with other ‘90s acts like Everclear and Collective Soul. Likewise, Toad the Wet Sprocket took a break after finding ‘90s fame but regrouped for a series of small-venue shows before reuniting for good in 2010. Since then, Toad re-recorded their albums while releasing new ones and launching bigger tours with Counting Crows and Smash Mouth. The band’s latest album Starting Now was released in 2021. To add to the summer vibe at the show, ticketholders for the combo tour – dubbed “Last Summer on Earth,” now in its sixth iteration – will get a beer tasting and a download of a Barenaked Ladies album. Moreover, Xennials, who finally are reaching the age at which a 9 p.m. bedtime sounds luxurious, will appreciate the concert’s early start. Barenaked Ladies, Gin Blossoms and Toad the Wet Sprocket perform July 20 at PNC Pavilion. Show starts at 6:30 p.m.; doors open at 5 p.m. There are no COVID-19 protocols. Info: riverbend. org. (Allison Babka)

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Square It’s At CROSSWORD

BY B R EN DA N E M M E T T Q U I G L E Y W W W. B R E N DA N E M M E T TQ U I G L E Y.C O M

Across 1. It once did Windows 6. Yukon and Acadia maker 9. Script consultant? 14. Skier’s transports 15. “That’s the best you got?” 16. Spoiled brat’s cry 17. Quick view of a thing that needs oiling? 20. WYSIWYG 21. Broadcasting 22. “I ___ to tell you something” 23. ID with two dashes 25. Program-leaving key 27. Go “whee!” while parachuting? 35. Kansas governor ___ Kelly 36. Batty 37. Luka Dončić, for short 38. Comic strip character with an anatomically incorrect tongue 39. “Semper Fidelis” composer 40. Holy See head honcho

Down 1. With 58-Down, “Agreed!” 2. Events to serve up 66-Across 3. Hawaiian island

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34. Man’s name that sounds like a part of a roof 35. Cuts (off) 39. Civil War Fort 40. Identify 42. In need of rain 43. Sports bar decor 45. Won’t take no for an answer 46. “Fetch the smelling salts!” 49. No. in a car ad 50. Blue hue 51. Sign of oxidation 53. Character who was #1 on Entertainment Weekly’s “Star Wars Top 100 Characters” 54. Varieties 55. Central components of a puzzle? 57. Off 58. See 1-Down 59. Birmingham buttocks 61. Author Arundhati 62. Mic systems

4. Game 7 feeling 5. Farm-to-table food prog. 6. Fed 7. Puzzle within a puzzle 8. Tea with a kick 9. Punching device 10. “So you’re saying there’s a ___” 11. Point at the dinner table 12. Never happening again 13. Stick in the mud? 18. Coffee blend 19. ___ Green (Scottish eloping spot) 24. With with Irish, China, and Java 26. What to call her 27. Mayor of London ___ Khan 28. Knotty Incan calculator 29. Only NFC team to never have played a Super Bowl 30. Occupied 31. Really unpleasant 32. Messy campfire treat 33. Punching sound

41. Spot on a card 42. Kirsten of “The Power of the Dog” 43. Some riding mowers 44. Winces in someone’s face? 47. Wordle owner, for short 48. “Catch 21” channel, for short 49. Its day lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds 52. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” escapee 56. “That’s how you do it!” 60. Stashed away energy? 63. ___-Japanese War 64. Half of a candy duo 65. Mythic glows 66. See 2-Down 67. Mooncalf 68. Grace and sophistication

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CityBeat June 29-July 12, 2022

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