Next month, the state’s most important environmental/conservation organization plans to give Taft its award for lifetime achievement as a consistent backer of policies and programs for clean air and water. So the governor who skipped his green fees is being recognized as Mr. Green. The Ohio Environmental Council says it will bestow the honor Nov. 10 at its annual “Green Gala” in Columbus.

Taft is being seen in hindsight as the kind of R who wasn’t afraid of standing up for the environment. That is a rarity in today’s GOP, where Rush Limbaugh routinely denounces tree-huggers as enviro-fascists, and the EPA is widely portrayed as a jobs-killing hydra. Of course, few remember that Republican President Richard Nixon created the EPA. Nor do they seem to recollect that Teddy Roosevelt — when he wasn’t hunting elephants or elk — is the patriarch of the national park system.

Taft gets credit for taking on his own party, which recently considered tapping water from the Great Lakes. He had supported strict limits on withdrawing water from Great Lakes feeder streams for industrial and mining purposes — those streams replenished Lake Erie. Taft believed the Great Lakes were resources that needed more protection from special interests; they did not need more abuse and exploitation.

Taft also favored reauthorization of the federal Clean Water Act, and he wanted Superfund legislation fixed to add so-called “brown fields,” which were old industrial sites that could be cleaned and put back into use as commercial real estate. He supported an energy policy that would have 25 percent of all U.S. energy coming from renewable sources by 2025. He pushed natural gas companies to set aside funds to help low income families pay their heating bills.

As far back as 2003, Taft was urging governors and Congress to take drastic action to stop the spread of the Asian carp, the giant jumping fish that now are in the Ohio River near Cincinnati. He called such invasive species “perhaps the most serious and potentially destructive threat” to Ohio’s natural ecosystem. His warning about all the invaders came too true. Since then, Emerald Ash Borers have appeared and destroyed too much of Ohio’s forestland. And Asian longhorn beetles are on the march in Clermont County, where the Department of Natural Resources and Forest Service have drawn battle lines against the pest. Taft worried about water pollution, too. He said too many beaches were closed from bacteria and sewage, and he saw the solution as “not better information about when to close the beach, it’s not having to close the beach in the first place.”

So Taft is getting a thoughtful reappraisal. He may have been comfortable at play on the country clubs. But his reputation is coming back from low ebb.  

Newly restored digital copies of 73-year-old maps detailing where U.S military veterans are buried throughout Hamilton County will be unveiled Wednesday.

The Hamilton County Recorder’s Office recently received map books dating to 1939 that were thought to have been destroyed. Created by the Works Progress Administration, the map books register the burial location of every veteran in the county who had served dating back to the Revolutionary War.

The maps list details about area veterans who served in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the War with Mexico, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and World War I.

Eventually, the records were transferred to microfiche between the 1950s and ‘70s, and the map books were given to a local resident. The filmed copies began degrading over time and are of poor quality, causing problems for historians, genealogical researchers and others who tried to use them.

A member of the Ohio Genealogical Society ultimately acquired the original copies of the map books and presented them to the Recorder’s Office in February. Since that time, the office has worked to transfer the images to a digital format and enhance their quality. All of the images now are available on the Recorder’s Office website.

County Recorder Wayne Coates will unveil the newly restored records at 2 p.m. Wednesday. The event will be held in Room 205 of the County Administration Building, located at 138 E. Court St., downtown.

Human rights activist and author Kerry Kennedy, one of the late Robert F. Kennedy’s daughters, will be in Cincinnati Friday to speak about women who create social change.

Kennedy will appear at an event sponsored by the Woman’s City Club of Greater Cincinnati. The speech will begin at 7:30 p.m.
at the Millennium Hotel, 150 W. Fifth St., in downtown Cincinnati.

Tickets to the event cost $25 for the lecture or $125 for the lecture and a reception with the speaker afterward, and are available online in advance or at the door.

She will present a speech entitled, “The Power of One: Stories of Inspiration 
from Women on the Cutting-Edge of Social Change.”

Kennedy, 52, is president of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Justice and Human Rights in Washington, D.C. Also, she is chairwoman of the Amnesty International USA Leadership Council.

Kennedy is author of the best-selling books, Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk about Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning, along with Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World.

She is the seventh of Robert F. Kennedy’s 11 children. From 1990-2005, she was married to Andrew Cuomo, the current New York governor and son of Mario Cuomo.

Founded in 1915, Woman’s City Club has worked to foster civic reform and social justice in Cincinnati. Among its many activities, the club helped establish the city’s first race relations committee and held study circles on various issues to encourage greater civic participation.

If you know an individual or group that volunteers their time to preserve and promote historic documents or sites in Hamilton County, you can nominate them for an award.

The Hamilton County Recorder’s Office is accepting nominations for its annual Griffin Yeatman Award. Created in 1994, the award recognizes people who work to help others understand historic preservation and promote public interest in the topic.

Application forms may be accessed here.

Past winners include Gorman Heritage Farm, Cincinnati Police Museum, Indian Hill Historical Society, the Cincinnati Observatory and American Jewish Archives, among many others.

The award is presented for excellence in historical preservation, research or achievement that has contributed to the preservation of buildings, sites, structures and objects pertaining to Hamilton County's history.

Deadline for submissions is March 31.

Griffin Yeatman was a Cincinnati pioneer and the Hamilton County recorder from 1828-35. He ran the Square and Compass Tavern, which was visited by famous guests including George Roger Clark, Andrew Jackson and Aaron Burr. Also, Yeatman was the first recorder elected to the position by Hamilton County citizens.

A group that supports preserving the historic Gamble House in Westwood is angry that Cincinnati building inspectors aren't enforcing the law at the property, which is allowing heavy rainfall to damage it while a court battle drags on about whether to save the mansion from demolition.

Bob Prokop, of Save the Historic Gamble Estate Now, said the city's inaction about securing the house contradicts what a building inspector told him would be done at the property in an email from last spring.

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In following with Cincinnati tradition, I'll begin this story by telling you where I went to high school.

In April of 2001, I was senior at Lakota East High School in West Chester. I was deeply involved with the school's enthusiastic journalism program. Unlike many teen-agers, I did not suffer from indecision. I knew I wanted to be a photojournalist.

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Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 decision that stopped the presidential election recount in Florida and handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush.

It's difficult to believe that was already 10 years ago. And it's amazing still that A) the Supreme Court acted in such a blatantly political manner to step in and resolve a state election issue, halting a legal recount, and B) that Americans didn't take to the streets to revolt against the power grab by Bush and his Republican cronies.

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Today is Veterans Day, which began as Armistice Day on Nov. 11, 1919, the one-year anniversary of the end of World War I. President Eisenhower formally made it Veterans Day in 1954.

HBO airs a new documentary film tonight, Wartorn: 1861-2010, focusing on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among U.S. soldiers as well as soldier suicides from the Civil War up through the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Actor James Gandolfini is the film's executive producer and conducts on-camera interviews. Watch a preview here.

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With all the blather about banning or restricting the construction of mosques in the United States because of Islam's alleged connections to terrorism, now is a good time to examine exactly what the religion is and what its central tenets are.

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Several dozen Cincinnati residents will participate in Saturday's “Reclaim the Dream” rally in Washington, D.C.

The rally was organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network after it was announced that conservative TV talk show host and self-described “rodeo clown” Glenn Beck was holding a demonstration on the mall in Washington, D.C., on the 47th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King's historic “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

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