Apr 12, 2024 4 min read

MISS: Washington Crown Center is one of a legion of shopping centers that have experienced difficult times in recent years, with the COVID-19 pandemic playing a part, along with anchor stores like Bon-Ton and Sears vanishing off the landscape and changes in consumer habits brought by online retail. Crown Center has experienced a bit of an upswing recently, but it wasn’t helped at all by a water line break that led stores located inside the mall to be closed for three days this week. Some stores with exterior entrances stayed open, but had to resort to making portable toilets available. North Franklin Township swooped in Wednesday and repaired the line after what the township supervisors said was inaction on the part of mall owner Michael Kohan. When contacted by the Observer-Reporter, Kohan wouldn’t elaborate on why action was not taken sooner to fix the water line, and didn’t sound all that enthusiastic about the mall. When asked if he would consider selling it, as some in the township want him to do, Kohan replied, “If I have a good offer from a buyer, of course. If the township has any prospective buyers, I’d be more than glad to do that.” In the grand scheme of things, Crown Center being without water for three days may not matter all that much, but it was a public relations blow the mall definitely did not need.

HIT: Before Monday’s solar eclipse happened, there were reports that some communities where the eclipse would be total were declaring states of emergency because of an expected influx of tourists. The National Guard was even called out in some states. Thankfully, however, there were no reports of any major problems within the line of totality that stretched from Mexico to Canada and had states from Texas to Maine in its path. In this region, the eclipse was at 96% totality, and some clouds obscured the view of the moon briefly blocking out the sun. Those who traveled to Erie or west into Ohio, where the eclipse was total, were given quite a treat – a subtle, gradual darkening, and then just before totality was reached, streetlights coming on followed by a couple of minutes of nighttime darkness, with the sun standing in the sky like a ring as the moon covered it. Then, just as quickly as it began, it was over. Within about a half-hour, it was a regular spring afternoon again. Polls have indicated that some Americans no longer trust science, but the fact that we are able to predict eclipses decades in advance to the minute is a powerful argument that scientists deserve our trust.

MISS: In his short-lived campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy put forth a proposal that would raise the voting age from the current 18 to 25, unless those younger than 25 got a passing grade on a citizenship test or served six months as a first responder or in the military. It all sounded very high-minded, but it looked for all the world like an effort to get voters who largely don’t support the GOP off the voting rolls. Now, Eric Hovde, a Republican Senate candidate in Wisconsin, apparently supports an idea that would take away voting rights from older adults. He recently said on a Fox News podcast that older adults who live in nursing homes should not be able to cast ballots because they only have “five, six months life expectancy.” Of course, residents of nursing homes often live quite a bit longer than five or six months, but perhaps Hovde was mixing up nursing homes with some hospice programs, which do care for people expected to live only six months or less. But people have the right to vote until they draw their last breath, unless they have been found incompetent. It’s just that simple.