Schools buying .xxx domain names

Dec. 12, 2011, Port Clinton News Herald

By Jessica Alaimo

CentralOhio.com

As a red light district forms this year in cyberspace using new .xxx domain names, universities and other groups are mulling strategies for keeping their trademarks from becoming adult websites.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers allowed universities, businesses and other organizations with registered trademarks to have first dibs in October at buying .xxx addresses that contain their trademarks. On Tuesday, ICANN opened up sales to the general public.

The .xxx domain is intended identify pornography sites.

Working to enrich Pike County

Dec. 11, 2011, Chillicothe Gazette

By Jessica Alaimo

CentralOhio.com

PIKETON — When Andrea McDaniel gets home after a long day at the Pike County Career Technology Center, she sends her four kids to their rooms and enjoys 15 minutes of quiet as she switches roles from student to single mom.

There’s not a lot of quiet in her life.

McDaniel, 29, is ambitious, and doesn’t want her kids to grow up on public assistance the same way she did. These ambitions were delayed by a rough marriage, but now being on welfare allows her to go to school.

“I definitely want to at least go for my LPN, but I don’t know if I’m going to be satisfied with that,” she said.

But the Piketon woman also is hesitant. “Sometimes I think, gosh, even if I do have a GED, there’s no jobs here, so does it matter?”

Pike County has the highest unemployment rate in Ohio, now at 15 percent. It’s a Catch-22 for the career center, which trains people for jobs that might not come.

She makes too much to get help, but too little to live on

Dec. 9, 2011, Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum

By Jessica Alaimo

CentralOhio.com

Marilyn Allread is poor. Yet she makes too much money.

She’s taking out payday loans, and spent a month homeless, but she still earns too much to get any kind of public assistance. Recently she found out that she made $2 a month too much to keep her housing subsidy.

The public assistance programs don’t take into account the fact that a big chunk of her paycheck goes toward medical insurance to keep subpar coverage for her health problems.

Here’s the thing about Allread, who previously lived in Pataskala but recently found her way to Canal Winchester. The woman is determined. She wants to work. She wants to stand on her own two feet. But she’s come to realize, she does need a little bit of help.

Building understanding between poor, middle class

Dec. 8, 2011, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette

By Jessica Alaimo

CentralOhio.com

Fatina Evans grew up in a middle-class family on the poor side of a mid-sized Ohio city. Surrounded by poverty, her family followed the same unwritten rules regarding money: If you have it, you spend it, because stressful circumstances make it hard to plan beyond the present.

One day it clicked that her family could afford something nicer, so they moved to a nicer neighborhood. Once there, she said they realized a shift in social norms — people were more likely to save money and maybe refinance a mortgage when money ran short. Neighborly expectations were different, too, because people were more aware of the effect of neighborhood conditions on property values.

While the neighbors were accommodating, the Evans family ultimately decided to move back to their original neighborhood, where they were more comfortable.

Evans said poverty brings about a different code, which drives behaviors the middle class might not understand or even scorn.

11 vie for new congressional seat

Dec. 8, 2011, Lancaster Eagle-Gazette

By Jessica Alaimo

CentralOhio.com

Eleven people are eying the new congressional district that includes the southern part of Fairfield County.

However, the field could change.

Wednesday was the filing deadline for partisan congressional candidates looking to run in the 2012 primary election.

Under the maps passed this fall, Fairfield County is divided between congressional districts.

They lost everything

Dec. 7, 2011, Newark Advocate

By Jessica Alaimo

CentralOhio.com

Ursula Harris was not the type of person you’d expect to meet at a homeless shelter.

At a first meeting, she sat in the corner of the Salvation Army shelter in Newark. She wore makeup, nice clothes and jewelry. She spoke confidently and was willing to be photographed.

Harris, her daughter and her grandkids found themselves at the shelter after they were evicted from their home in Pataskala. It was a nice home, and they lost everything.

This wasn’t the first time Harris fell on hard times — several years ago, she was foreclosed on after losing her job — but it was her first time homeless.

She had been in the shelter for less than a week, and she’ll be out soon, she said — and stronger for the experience.

Harris is a former financial broker. She worked for herself, and when the economy collapsed, so did her finances.

Multiple primaries causing confusion

Dec. 5, 2011, Port Clinton News Herald

By Jessica Alaimo

CentralOhio.com

Ohio congressional candidates don’t know what their districts will look like, or even when their primary will be, but the secretary of state is asking them to have petitions submitted by Wednesday.

The two primaries, one March 6 and the other June 12, stem from the battle over the once-a-decade redistricting process. However, there’s still talk in the House of Representatives of moving up the later primary.

“Having two primaries is not an ideal situation,” Shannon Boston, a spokeswoman for Ohio House Republicans, wrote in an email. “... But we only moved the primaries that are affected by the situation we find ourselves in with the potential congressional map referendum.”

Having two primaries presents a complication for the secretary of state’s office and uncertainty for candidates seeking congressional seats. Here are some questions and answers about the situation.