Ron Cole's Personal Blog

Downtown Zanesville's First Friday Art Walk has never been more successful. It's being said from every corner of our community, from city officials and business owners, artists and galleries, that downtown hasn't been 'this alive' since the 1970s, back when the major retail stores where still anchored on 4th and Main. It's been a very long time coming, and we all owe ourselves a huge pat on the back for contributing to it all.  With this level of unprecedented success comes even more opportunity for us all. One example of this is our effort to establish an arts council. This is a project that has been in the offing for decades, and like so many other dreamy aspirations of the past it spun its own wheels until now. We raised a lot of money to hire an outside expert who nobody was predisposed to dislike, and up to this point our efforts have finally born real fruit. Our first open-to-the-public town hall was probably the best-attended event in our community's ...

It's on fire. I remember hearing that, and I remember a moment of time standing still. A paralysis came over me. As I try to relive that moment, I still quiver in spite of the time passed. A moment when everything I had ever known was about to pass away, people, things, hopes and dreams, to be replaced by something else; something dark, sinister, and unknowable. If I had been able to foresee the rest of that one day - say nothing of the rest of my life - would I have been able to keep living beyond the ensuing hour and a half? Since ignorance is such good friends with bliss, and because I foresaw nothing but a blur, I kept on living.  What began with a fire became worse, darker, and evil. When the world collectively decides to blame you for a fire that consumed not just a building, but 76 people, including 25 children, there is no healing process that begins in the aftermath for anybody. Plane crash survivors enjoy that sort of thing. Not us, and I was there in the middle of it all...