Let's Help Gabriel!

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A Great Cause: A Message From Our Friends NC4k

Two Men and a Truck, Studio DG, and No Drip Painting are joining forces with NC4K, a local nonprofit that supports families facing pediatric cancer, to create something truly special: bedroom makeovers for a Westerville family!

Twelve-year-old Gabriel is currently in treatment for B-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma. To brighten his world and lift his family’s spirits, Gabriel and his sisters, Carolyn (9) and Josephine (5), are each getting a fresh new look for their bedrooms.

Projects like this do more than transform spaces, they bring comfort, hope, and joy to families navigating one of life’s hardest challenges. It’s a reminder that no kid fights cancer alone. Providing these special moments is just one way NC4K supports families facing childhood cancer. Founded in 2007, NC4K is dedicated to making life a little easier and a lot brighter for families during treatment and beyond.

Through direct financial assistance, NC4K helps families cover essential expenses like rent or mortgage payments, utilities, groceries, and gas, easing some of the financial pressure that comes with a cancer diagnosis. The organization also creates special experiences that bring joy and relief during difficult times, from bedroom makeovers to family surprises that spark smiles and hope. And through its signature “events for play” programs, NC4K hosts unforgettable gatherings where families can have fun, make memories, and connect with others who understand their journey. These moments of laughter and togetherness help remind families that they’re never alone in the fight.

Support NC4K Families like Gabriels at give.nc4k.org/cbus

Learn more about NC4K at nc4k.org

Scarlet Letter Trivia

Question: Where does Ohio rank in the Top Ten states for alien sightings
A. 4th
B. 7th
C. 8th
D. 5th

Well, that didn’t last long. Just one week after Governor Mike DeWine banned THC-infused drinks and gummies across Ohio, a Franklin County judge hit pause, issuing a temporary restraining order that blocks the ban from being enforced.

Judge Carl Aveni of the Franklin County Common Pleas Court ruled that DeWine’s executive order overstepped its authority, saying the governor can’t just erase hemp law with the stroke of a pen. “The court’s role is limited to enforcing the safeguard, not to deciding matters of policy,” Aveni said, in the kind of legal tone that roughly translates to “This isn’t your call, Mike.”

The ruling came after several Ohio companies, including Titan Logistics Group, Fumee Smoke and Vape, and Invicta Nutraceuticals, sued the state, arguing that DeWine’s order illegally revoked hemp licenses and contradicted Ohio law, which still classifies hemp as an agricultural product. Their lawyers say the governor’s ban invented a new category called “intoxicating hemp” out of thin air, something the legislature never approved..

DeWine, meanwhile, is standing firm. He says the order was needed because of “an alarming increase” in kids accidentally consuming THC candies disguised as Sour Patch knockoffs. “These are not being tested, and they’re being sold without restriction,” he said, defending the ban as a matter of public safety, not politics.

Business owners disagree. Attorney Jonathan Secrest, who represents the plaintiffs, called the ban “a first-of-its-kind overreach” that’s already causing “irreparable harm” to small retailers. “We’ve never seen a governor make this kind of rule to ban products off the shelves,” he said.

The 90-day order was meant to last until January, but now everything’s in limbo. For the moment, THC-infused drinks and hemp products are technically legal again, unless the legislature steps in or another court reverses course. A full hearing is set for October 28, where both sides will get another swing at defining who actually runs Ohio’s gray-area cannabis market.

So for now, the state’s THC shelves are back open, at least until the next judge, politician, or grandparent with a bad gummy experience weighs in.

We May Have Found The WOW

In 1977, astronomer Jerry Ehman sat in a small control room in Delaware, Ohio, staring at a printout from Ohio State’s Big Ear radio telescope. Among the endless stream of numbers was a spike, an impossibly strong signal, lasting 72 seconds, blasting from deep space. He circled it in red pen and wrote one word in the margin: Wow!

That single word became legend. The “Wow! Signal” remains one of the greatest cosmic mysteries ever detected, 30 times stronger than background noise, precisely tuned to the hydrogen line at 1420.456 MHz, and never heard again. For decades, it was the scientific equivalent of a ghost story: no follow-up, no source, just an eerie 72-second hello that may or may not have come from someone (or something) trying to phone Earth.

Then, of course, they tore the telescope down in 1998 and turned the land into a golf course. Which feels like the most Ohio thing possible, cover up a possible alien message with a 9-hole par 3.

But now, nearly half a century later, scientists are looking at the Wow! Signal again, and this time, the explanation might be even stranger.

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb recently proposed that the signal may have come from 3I/ATLAS, an interstellar object that just happened to be cruising through our solar system three days before the detection. The math checks out: its coordinates were only a few degrees off from the signal’s origin, and if it was the source, its transmitter would’ve needed to pump out between 0.5 and 2 gigawatts of power, about the same as a nuclear reactor.

So either the universe was briefly yelling at us, or something the size of a space rock decided to broadcast at precisely the right frequency for humans to notice. NASA and ESA are already planning to observe 3I/ATLAS this fall with multiple orbiters, just to see if it whispers again.

No one’s saying it’s aliens. But after fifty years of silence, the Wow! still echoes. Maybe we should’ve kept the telescope, or at least checked the golf course for antennas.

Hidden in Plain Sight

Most people walking past the Greater Columbus Convention Center have no idea about that wild, twisting glass facade, and all those crazy angles aren't just random architectural showboating; they're actually a hidden tribute to what used to be there.

The Railyard That Time Forgot…

Before the convention center transformed downtown Columbus in the 1990s, that entire site was a massive, sprawling railroad switching yard. By 1891, rail traffic had become so intense that High Street was blocked for up to 7 hours per day by crossing trains, prompting the need for Burnham's new station with its innovative viaduct solution.

At its peak in 1893, Columbus Union Station handled 112-118 passenger trains a day from 14 different railroad divisions, making it one of the busiest rail hubs in the Midwest! This massive infrastructure is what Peter Eisenman had in mind when he designed the convention center.

The Architectural Easter Egg: So here's where it gets cool (minus losing our entire train system...), when architect Peter Eisenman was designing the expansion, he didn't just want to build a big box and call it a day. Instead, he decided to encode the railyard's memory directly into the building itself.

Look at those intersecting geometric patterns and angular lines that seem to collide and overlap throughout the structure—those are the ghost of the railroad tracks! Eisenman literally took the chaotic, crisscrossing pattern of the old switching yard and translated it into architectural form. It's like the building is a 3D map of what used to be beneath it.

And that famous serpentine glass wall that curves along High Street? Think of it as an abstracted railway line, flowing, dynamic, suggesting movement and journey, just like the trains that once dominated this landscape.

Why This Matters:
Eisenman created what architects call a "palimpsest," a fancy word for something that retains traces of its past, like an old manuscript where you can see the erased text beneath the new writing. The convention center isn't trying to look like a train station (that would be too literal and kind of cheesy). Instead, it captures the essence of the railyard: the complexity, the intersections, the sense of things constantly moving and connecting, the industrial grit transformed into something sleek and modern.

Here's the kicker: most convention centers are these bland, forgettable boxes that could be anywhere. But the Columbus Convention Center is saying, "No, I am specifically here, in this specific place, and I remember what came before me."

Regardless of whether you think it's ugly or reminds you of how we once led the nation in public transit...  Next time you're walking past that building, take a closer look at all those "weird" angles and that twisting glass spine; you're literally looking at railroad tracks reimagined as architecture. The trains are long gone, but their paths are still there, frozen in steel and glass, a secret map that most people walk right past without ever knowing the story.

Trivia Answer

C) 8! If you have TikTok, I can’t suggest getting on there and looking into 3i/ATLAS