Heard it through the grapevine: This year's Extrapolative New Albany.

I swear that if the idea had occurred to me in time, I'd have hired Steve Price to perform karaoke for our June 20 yard party. Never was Lynyrd Skynyrd so solely missed as last Thursday evening.

We established a joyful dissident's perimeter in Sandra's yard. How fortunate for us that her house adjoined the location of this year's Exclusively New Albany.

The view was peachy. We likened it to perching on a rooftop opposite Wrigley Field and peeking in on a baseball game while drinking one's own, far superior beer.

Everything about the bicentennial edition of Exclusionary New Albany purportedly was "local," save for the multinational beers and wines being vended from the bar. It's too bad such a beautiful setting as Larry Ricke's home was victim to such conceptual futility as Bud Light and Beringer, but it's what always happens when small cabals (England kniggets?) exercise control, and others, who are perfectly well-meaning, permit them to do so.

Come to think of it, "cabal" could be referring to the Floyd County Health Department, which visited last Thursday's DNA party. Shoes do fit, after all.