From jaw-dropping YMCA sightings to belated C-J findings, it's been that kind of week.

Last evening the Confidentials dropped in on One Southern Indiana’s “5 o Clock Network” monthly kibbitzorama, which took place at the gleaming new YMCA on Main Street. It was my first chance to glimpse the interior, and not only is the facility a bona fide knockout, it’s enough to make a person wonder how it could have taken so long for the city to spend $20 million of someone else’s money to assist in bringing the YMCA’s own fundraising effort to fruition.

(Like Radar O‘Reilly once said, “Wait for it.”)

In a week already filled to the brim with strange incongruities, not the least of which has been the trognonymous testimony of every Internet-emboldened coward in the city's existence in support of a nationally quoted local racist, you can imagine how strange it was to enter the sparkling YMCA lobby and find none other than former co-councilpersons Bill and Anna Schmidt in attendance.

Did I mention my intention to attend a church service this weekend?

I’ve picked an excerpt from one blog entry to briefly illustrate why this sighting is enough to raise eyebrows, crack unprotected mirrors and send area pots and kettles on the trail of tears to Birdseye. Dude, pass the garlic.

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From July 4, 2006: Passing notes during class, and other Monday post-mortems.

As many readers already know, the latest challenge to the Scribner Place project on the part of New Albany’s rogue council faction went down in fully deserved flames on Monday evening.

Our own All4Word provided sterling NAC coverage of the meeting: He wears a “K” on his chest, but it doesn’t mean “strikeout.”

Randy reported here:

For the record: Voting to kill Scribner Place were CM’s Coffey (District 1), Schmidt (District 2), and Price (District 3). All other members in attendance voted against any notion of killing the project and creating a lasting stain on the name of New Albany.

Note yet again – perhaps for the final time – that three of the four council members representing the city’s historic core of business and residential areas joined together to support CM Bill Schmidt’s cowardly resolution to renege on the city’s commitment to Scribner Place, in effect openly opposing a downtown revitalization effort that would greatly benefit their own districts, and by extension, the entire city.

No matter how many times it happens, such self-defeating behavior persists in defying rational explanation, but in the end, these are the patently unrepresentative and simply tragic depths to which these three overmatched politicians have plummeted in response to inner demons characterized by consistent, spasmodic, and knee-jerk opposition to change, revitalization and reform.

Don’t we deserve better?

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Well, we’ve gotten better in the limited sense of the YMCA project finally being completed, and as a bonus Schmidt, who worked tirelessly against it, was summarily displaced in last year’s election. My mentioning all this no doubt will inspire the foam-flecked anonymites to rail anew on whichever blog that still accepts submissions in cyber-crayon, but seeing as their time is passing so quickly, it no longer really matters.

Life’s too short to suffer hypocrites, don’t you think?

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With reference to our recently well documented antebellum attitudinal deficiencies, the Louisville Courier-Journal finally located the David Ward story. The question is, where did they get it?

Sparks fly after Floyd man's racial comment on election; New Albany man opposes Obama, by Dick Kaukas.

A comment by a New Albany antiques dealer, who was quoted in a Chicago Tribune story as saying he would vote for Republican presidential candidate John McCain "mainly because he's not black," has set off a flurry of local criticism.

Kaukas duly noted commendable statements issued by Democratic Party Chairwoman Marcey Wisman and New Albany’s Mayor Doug England.

England, a Democrat, added, "Through our actions as well as our words, the entire local community should repudiate this type of ignorance and intolerance."

Later yesterday, England said in an interview that he was acting on his own, responding to a remark that he considered "racist," and was not simply reacting to requests from a blogger.

A blogger? Here in New Albany?

While I find it odd that the reporter Kaukas felt obliged to make references to blogs and bloggers without identifying them, I’ve only been an official journalist since Wednesday evening. Can't we just publicly give credit where credit’s due?

Freedom of Speech?