In the 'Bune today

The New Albany Tribune’s Sunday front-page banner reads “Demolition bids to open for Scribner Place,” wherein Amany Ali contributes a workmanlike survey of the imminent demise of the old Double Seven Tire building and three other structures on what is slated to become Scribner Place.

The YMCA’s current fundraising efforts and Mayor James Garner’s as yet undocumented claim of ripple-effect growth resulting from the project are uncritically discussed.

(As usual, ‘Bune web site updates are as unpredictable as the weather, so a precise link will be provided when it is made available to the long-suffering general public).

Elsewhere in the newspaper, almost lost amid the ephemera of various press releases (sorry, make that “staff reports”), there is a fine column by Joyce Vallance entitled “New businesses have opened in Floyds Knobs,” as well as Dave Davis’s consideration of 1st Amendment issues raised by the recent survey of American young people that showed few if any possessing a clear understanding of free speech (also referenced yesterday here at NA Confidential).

Vallance’s elegantly simple powers of perception, i.e., an ability to look around her, see events happening and describe them in a factual manner, might seem mundane in another publication, but they’re truly noteworthy in context given the utter catastrophe that is today’s most recent column by Ali, a nadir that will be discussed elsewhere in NA Confidential later today.

In like fashion, Davis’s intelligent focus on the implications of the 1st Amendment is crucial and appreciated, coming on the same day that one of our self-appointed local inquisitors, Tony Goebel, proposes the embracing of Christian theocracy as a means of warding off Adult DVD -- and with it any misunderstood notion of freedom of speech and freedom of religion hereabouts.

The ‘Bune spasmodically on-line