Whistling while you work toward progress.

Elsewhere I’ve posted a Saturnalia opening night recap of sorts. Check it out if you’re interested. The brewery’s now back to brewing, and maybe I can settle down to enjoy the season.

When my night crew reported for duty last evening at five, I continued to help out when needed until after nine, but also enjoyed the opportunity to indulge in conversation with customers.

Obviously, this is the great joy of my line of work – people having a good time, eating, drinking, talking and enjoying life. It’s what a pub was intended to be.

During the last few months, many of these discussions have centered on what’s happening in New Albany. People from many walks of life are curious. They’ve heard rumors about a new eatery downtown – what can I tell them about it? They’re asking about the Greenway, about Scribner Place, and about all those nice old buildings downtown, who might use them, and how?

Significantly, a sizeable number of these people are not from New Albany. Louisvillians are asking these questions.

This week I received a phone call from overseas from a man who was born and raised in Southern Indiana and now is scouting possibilities to relocate here and open a business.

I provide information, try to answer questions, wave my arms a lot, and seek to perpetuate the notion as often as humanly possible that good things are happening in New Albany in part because there is an ever widening circle of people involved with the effort who are both talented and stubborn. They won’t take “no” for an answer.

There’s still doubt and skepticism, and understandably so given New Albany’s past level of often hermetic dysfunction.

However, the important thing to me is that at least some people are starting to believe in the possibilities, and while it may sound trite to paraphrase the sports analogy in such a manner, we’ll definitely miss out on 100% of the possibilities we don’t attempt to fulfill.

Obviously, nothing occurs overnight, but much groundwork has been laid during 2005. Strangely for me, I find myself in the “glass half full” camp for one of the first times in my life.

In 2006, there’ll be little time for the slander, rancor and hatred that characterizes the city’s professional nay-saying class; rather, their dead weight must be carried forward, like an unfortunate surcharge for progress – the price of doing business -- and what’s more, it must be borne happily by those of us who can see the possibilities inherent in the city of New Albany.

I’m damned optimistic. I hope you are, too.