Welcome to NAWBANY WEEK IN REVIEW for 10 January 2020.

The best part of Christmas is when it finally ends.

Welcome to a new weekly feature at NA Confidential. I remain on sabbatical from heavy polemical lifting, but it takes no time at all to collect a few headlines, eh?

NAC's reader comment of the week was made in response to this passage in yesterday's ON THE AVENUES column about the elusiveness of silence.

Rumor has it that when the River Heritage Conservancy got together with Mayor Jeff Gahan’s political patronage team to describe genuinely exciting plans for a world-class park unit astride the Greenway in Clarksville, the session didn’t go very well. “It was like trying to talk to second-grade students,” one of the presenters is said to have commented afterward.

Reader W wrote, "I bet the River Heritage Conservancy lost Mayor Jeff Gahan’s political patronage team when the team realized the Conservancy was saying "REforestation" instead of "DEforestation".

The results of the past week's logging at Market and 9th seemingly confirm this astute judgment.

In New Albany, men are men and trees ... are still very scared.

The first city council meeting of the year also took place on Monday, and the Butt Plug Preservation Society rejoiced as Tiberius Severus Octavian Elagabalus Septimius Augustus Claudius Hadrian Gluteus Maximus Caesar-- Protector of Fitting and Proper Scribnerian Values, Deliverer of all Downtown Datedness, Master of the Ex-Mercantile, and Guardian of the Gates -- was elected council president, thus ensuring continued Democratic Party dominance of the appointments-fixing process.

Welcome, my son -- welcome to The Machine.

However, the two biggest stories of the week had to do with independent local businesses -- or, those entities supplying the tax revenue to maintain failed politicians like Bob Caesar.

We're gaining Monnik ...

Monnik Beer Company will open a second location in downtown New Albany at the former Bank Street Brewhouse.

 ... but losing Destinations Bookseller.

Turn the page: Destinations Booksellers is closing after 15 years at 604 E. Spring St.

The former book store won't be vacant very long, and The Green Mouse believes you'll approve of what's to come.