Ideas, and whether the street department can remove them before the infection sets in.

First and foremost, it must be remembered that while NA Confidential has become many things to many people during the course of the past two years, it originated in 2004 as the voice of the senior editor.

This is not to suggest that the contributions of Randy and Jeff, my highly esteemed colleagues, are subsidiary. To the contrary, I regard both of them as possessing writing skills superior to my own, and taken as a team, I’ll put us up against any other. We may not win, but I know we’ll be competitive.

When it comes to my own writing, it’s just that: Mine.

It’s a voice that readers are free to accept or dismiss, and to embrace or ignore, because that’s what free speech is all about. Integrity and responsibility go hand in hand, and that’s why I’m not wearing a mask – if my name’s on it, then I wrote it, and in turn, I’m prepared to answer for it.

If you’re not wearing a mask, you’re welcome to comment and to join the discussion.

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Do I have an agenda?

An agenda is much like a you-know-what, and rest assured that we all have one. My agenda, and the reason for NA Confidential’s very existence, is to locate the heart of the dysfunctional New Albany Syndrome, and to drive a stake composed of equal parts modernity and rationality straight through it so that future generations just might enjoy a beter place to live and better life within it.

While it would be very nice if we all could work together to achieve this objective, such unity might be too much to hope for in an admittedly imperfect world, where agendas mutate into vendettas much too quickly, and people remain bound by political allegiances that are impervious to scrutiny.

Too bad. Either way, I’ll continue to write. Thanks for reading.

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Here’s an excerpt from a letter to the editor that appeared in the Sunday edition of the Tribune. The writer expresses well-founded annoyance with drainage problems at her residence:

I don’t have a basement, but I do have a yard that floods each time it rains. And I have to worry about our garage that was turned into a bedroom, because of flooding. We have pumps that we have put into the ground in our back yard to keep things from flooding. We built a concrete wall around our fence to stop the water from flooding us in the back. We still flood in the front.

Her conclusion?

I can say I’m sick of New Albany, no one wants to help. It’s always we don’t have the money. Yet we have one of the highest sewage rates in the state. How about forgetting the YMCA or wanting downtown New Albany to have a huge business district? I know there is nothing downtown that I want to go to. It’s easier to go to the mall or Wal-Mart. So how about our city officials getting off their desk chairs and see what problems they could solve?

I have a few questions.

Is there really a direct causal relationship between a half-century of unwillingness to pay for sewer repairs and the fact that the city of New Albany doesn’t have enough money?

Is there really a direct causal relationship between the writer's problem and what we do, or don't do, to further economic development in a different part of town?

If the downtown were economically “huge” again, wouldn’t that result in increased revenue, at least a portion of which might come from outside the boundaries of Indiana?

Just because I don’t understand rocket science, does it follow that I deny the principles of propulsion?

Does the fact that I’m personally not an aficionado of country music mean that I’m willfully blind to the possibilities inherent in a money-making machine like Coyote’s? I may choose not to spend my money there, but it can’t be denied that for a certain segment of the population, it’s a desired destination.

Isn’t an efficiency of choice the ultimate objective when it comes to planning the operation and growth of any entity, including a city?

Isn’t it peculiar that for so many people, problem solving in the present and planning in the future tense are regarded with obvious hostility as mutually exclusive concepts?

Must we throw the baby out with the storm water?

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Small wonder, though, that conceptual thinking is so profoundly devalued hereabouts even though it remains the crucial missing link between man and ape.

As a city, we’re as mentally flaccid as much of America is obese – entirely unaccustomed to being challenging ourselves, much less being challenged by our elected officials, who persist in regarding the realm of ideas as something tantamount to poison ivy, to be avoided if at all possible and preferably pulled up by the roots (of course, only if there’s the money and the will to send the street department to do the job).

We somehow seem to prefer a local governmental system of political patronage to one that functions impartially according to its own statutes and legal standards. When one must constantly grovel and repeatedly petition those in a position of authority to spin Fortuna's wheel of selective assistance, then our system of law obviously does not functioning as intended.

Why do we accept this state of dysfunction? How can you blame citizens from resorting to other means to achieve results when progress is so slow in forthcoming -- and more importantly, when a basic platform of stated aims is so entirely lacking?

Oddly, we compound the misery by eagerly voting for state and federal candidates who earnestly promise that they’ll starve the local authorities of the money required to maintain the municipality, and then we complain bitterly when finally a campaign promise is kept, and consequently, there’s no money to maintain the municipality ... then finally we bizarrely resolve to further the disparity that we ourselves, chose by voting for those ward-heeling local candidates who pander by promising to spare us a 20-cent-a-day surcharge that will help make things right … but really, even the saintly Wal-Mart preferred by the letter writer won’t permit us to load our cars full of plastic parts from the sweatshops of China without first extracting payment.

Boy, and didn't that magical tax refund disappear down the Wal-Mart sinkhole fast as you please?

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It's fair to ask: To whom am I addressing this missive?

Perhaps my friend Healthblogger can be of assistance, but my thoughts today have something to do with erring by treating symptoms, rather than diagnosing and treating the root cause of the malady in question.

You know who you are.

If you’re in the habit of crediting inspirational personages like Gandhi, FDR and Dr. King, then you’re conceding the efficacy of an idea-based life, aren’t you? Each of these figures from history were flawed, as we all are, but each went straight for the gut i terms of their life's work: Imperialism, fear, racism.

You acknowledge the power of these ideas, but if you refrain from putting them into practice in the role you’ve chosen, you’re far more of a cynic than I’ve ever been … and while I retain a curious affection for cynicism, perhaps my expectations were set too high in the first place.

Why don’t ideas matter at the grassroots level? Why not idea-based campigns for progress?
How can we be “for” your organization without something to be “for”?

Let me know … if you’re still interested in what I think. If not, I'm not insulted.

Just disappointed.