The books I read in 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has touched tens of millions of people around the world. For us, it precluded the usual work and travel schedules and kept us here at home, where I've probably spent more time in 2020 then the past two or three years combined. 

Bizarrely and for all the wrong reasons, at long last I've had ample time to read. In turn, all this reading has constituted a massive brainfood overload, and I'll make no attempt to summarize the following.

However, at this precise moment in time, here are the three books from 2020 that made the deepest impression. 

Capital and Ideology, by Thomas Piketty 

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson    

War and War, a novel by László Krasznahorkai

  
These were consumed in a frenetic period from late July through November; as the mass insanity engendered by the presidential campaign intensified, so did my need to sept aside and try to make sense of it. After Krasznahorkai's deeply affecting novel, I plunged into non-fiction until the election was concluded. 

Then, turning back to fiction, I learned a final lesson: when your neighborhood is descending into crazed madness, Broch's novel The Sleepwalkers cannot provide the slightest measure of escapist relief. 

But four novels by Kurt Vonnegut in one calendar year might be trying to tell me something, too. 

So it goes; here they are. A final note: 2020 was the year New Albanians said goodbye to Destinations Booksellers. It was a refuge amid the Gahanist mediocrity hereabouts, and will be missed. 

---

Books of 2020 (chronologically in reverse order)

31. Cat’s Cradle, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut

30. Finding Bix: The Life and Afterlife of a Jazz Legend, by Brendan Wolfe

29. The Sleepwalkers, a novel by Hermann Broch

28. Encounter, a collection of essays by Milan Kundera

27. Capital and Ideology, by Thomas Piketty

26. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century, by Wolfgang Schivelbusch

25. Jailbird, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut

24. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson

23. Capitalism & Disability, selected writings by Marta Russell

22. Backlash: What happens When We Talk Honestly About Racism in America, by George Yancy

21. Towards the One & Only Metaphor, a novel by Miklos Szentkuthy

20. Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future, by James S. Shapiro

19. Craft: An Argument, by Pete Brown

18. War and War, a novel by László Krasznahorkai

17. Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms, translated by Matvei Yankelevich

16. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, by Frederick Lewis Allen

15. Mother Night, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut

14. Which Fork Do I Use with My Bourbon?, by Peggy Noe Stevens and Susan Reigler

13. How We Eat with Our Eyes and Think with Our Stomachs, by Melanie Mühl and Diana von Kopp

12. Bliss Was It in Bohemia, a novel by Michel Viewegh

11. An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, by Elizabeth David

10. Russian Cosmism, edited by Boris Groys

9. The Botanist and the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved for the World, by Christy Campbell

8. Bluebeard, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut

7. The Ghosts of My Life, by Mark Fisher

6. Capitalist Realism, by Mark Fisher

5. Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginnings of the Modern World, by Thomas Cahill

4. The Prague Cemetery, a novel by Umberto Eco

3. Bavarian Helles, by Horst Dornbusch

2. Strong Towns, by Charles Marohn

1. The Tragedy of Liberation, by Frank Dikkotter

The great 800-lb pumpkin is silent. The madness yields to peaceful serenity.

Our 2020 non-Harvest Homecoming is under way, and it's a peaceful, easy feeling compared with the usual frenetic amok time, albeit still a tad strange given that with weather like this, we'd be pinned to the tarmac.

Today has been so very normal -- although "normal" will always be a subjective concept in Nawbany, where "We're All Here Because We're Not All THERE."

As first recommended in 2019, here's a new, innovative way to kick off Harvest Homecoming, whether or not it actually takes place: Sardinian throat singing. 

Friday and Saturday should be interesting. Minus the vendors from elsewhere, with some local organizations setting up anyway, and a few businesses staging kinda-sorta HH events, you get an idea as to how a scaled-back festival molded to downtown's actual contours might look. Maybe a springtime bookend fest one of these years? 

However, this year's not-the-fest-as-usual has a new 800-lb gorilla. It's the fact of these little farm-near-me/">mini-celebrations -- how many unofficial beer walks ARE taking place tomorrow, anyway? -- occurring in a pandemic context. Yes, I understand that the governor gave the okay to congregate outdoors, albeit it only recently, but supposedly the mask "mandate" that never really was still applies.

From my vantage point, I've spent the past few months watching local VIPs from both political flush mobs violating the mask mandate frequently and with apparent impunity. It's no longer my self-assigned "job" to call them out, so I haven't. 

However, the unmistakable message I've gotten is that our local political duopoly hasn't been very interested from the outset in leading by example.   

Note that I'm taking great care to be bipartisan, that elusive quality of fairness we all insist should be more prevalent. Let me be clear about what I've witnessed. It's been a firmly bipartisan indifference to science. 

Does any of it matter? 

Beats me. It will always annoy me that from top to bottom in America, grassroots business persons have been expected to enforce "mandates" that neither political entity cares to oversee and be held responsible for implementing. 

In closing, a random HH link from 2018:

Try to imagine Harvest Homecoming if 95% of visitors DIDN'T drive to it -- or, "Why Public Transportation Works Better Outside the U.S."

Our 2020 non-Harvest Homecoming.

It even seems a bit strange to me. In spite of my decades-long indifference to Nawbany's peculiar institution of Harvest Homecoming, the absence of a parade yesterday, and the silence to come this week, combine to produce a sense of loss.

Well, not much, but still ... that's something, I guess.

ON THE AVENUES: There, there. People are dying, so you may have to wait until 2021 for your pork chop sandwich.

I wrote the preceding in June, and rather than repeat myself, just click through and read if you care to. 

Several of the traditional festival vendors are setting up shop around town during the coming days, and The Earl is having its own parking lot party this weekend. Pints&union will be conducting business for the most part as usual, as we have no parking lot. 

If you indulge in any of these make-up events, allow me to encourage you to wear a face mask. Lots of people are getting sick, and many are dying, because too many other people are selfish narcissists. To some, they're assholes.

Ask Donald Trump.

They're why Harvest Homecoming was canceled in the first place. We can do better. If you're interested in getting through this, maybe it's time to try a bit harder. 

ON THE AVENUES: There, there. People are dying, so you may have to wait until 2021 for your pork chop sandwich.

Who ever thought that forty years of narrow selfish leadership of academic, corporate, and political institutions would lead to a population full of raw anger?
-- Matt Stoller

Last week militarized police and the National Guard units were deployed to disperse peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters using counter-insurgency techniques previously devised for use against "enemies" abroad.

This wasn’t sufficiently violent to suit President D. “Nero” Trump, who proposed using armed service regulars to attack American citizens and occupy their cities -- not unlike the Chinese did in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or the United States in Iraq 17 years ago.

Meanwhile in excess of 100,000 Americans have died from a mysterious novel virus, with the number of infections reaching upwards of 2,000,000. Between 30 and 40 million are unemployed, and taking these statistics into consideration over a meal of Olive Garden takeaway and hard seltzer, perhaps another 150 million of us have concluded (a) the virus doesn’t exist, or (b) if it does, it’s perfectly safe because FREEDOM, and (c) in any event the virus that is, or perhaps isn’t, was devised by pussy libtards in cahoots with the Chinese for use against OUR president, and this is why (d) blacks protesting perennial injustice should be crushed with surplus army gear, but whites objecting to science, protesting any semblance of justice for non-whites or failing the physical when attempting to join the local SWAT team must carry their own powerful armaments and weaponry anywhere they please as “penis proxies.”

(Credit LEO Weekly for “penis proxies.”)

Our Big Mac president recently embraced the aforementioned counter-insurgency techniques to have the way cleared for a photo-op at a church, holding a hastily borrowed Bible aloft, upside down, in his best choreographed attempt to appear engaged.

The same half of the population that has rejected science because STOCK MARKET GODDAMMIT applauded vigorously, pausing only to blame blacks for their own targeting by the militarized police.

Amid the bleating and babbling of those shaven-headed old white guys with sour expressions whose monster trucks now routinely travel 50 mph down Spring Street, safe in the knowledge that our own municipal enforcement mechanisms remain in hibernation deep within Jeff Gahan’s agoraphobic “pretend leader” bunker, I’ve spent the past few days wondering about the precise level of violent injustice required to bring forever snoozing New Albanians out into the streets to protest.

Now I know the answer: cancel Harvest Homecoming and watch as the yokels finally are stirred to action.

---

The Harvest Homecoming cancellation announcement came Wednesday evening from the organization’s governing committee. Apparently the officers embraced rationality in consideration of a plain fact grasped by virtually anyone who has ever attended the festival, this being that almost every aspect of the event’s success relies on a high volume of humans, not a few of them drunk, all of them eating, squeezed into relatively small areas of streetscape.

Most of the time this business plan works out as intended. However, 2020 emphatically is not “most of the time.” The committee rightly fed the facts into the public health calculator of spacing and hygiene necessary to contain the pandemic, crunched the numbers, and found -- alas -- that 2 + 2 still equals 4.

Harvest Homecoming will return in 2021, by which time the global health situation probably (although not necessarily “will”) be clearer. Caution? It’s the most balanced attitude toward unknown factors, and something not to be confused with fear.

Of course, as FDR reminded us, we have nothing to fear except being deprived of amenities and diversions guaranteed to us by the United States Constitution … or the Board of Public Works and Safety, at the very least.

---

Within seconds of the meeting’s final gavel, howls of Internet fury arose from the troll-in-the-mirror narcissists, who figuratively descended on Harvest Homecoming with eggs, toilet paper and so very much mangled syntax.

Seeing as I’m a connoisseur of humanity’s limitless capacity for illogical behavior, I risked the rhetorical rubber bullets cascading into a group of innocent bystanders (namely, Harvest Homecoming’s volunteer workers, who don’t deserve the abuse heaped on them by hordes of sheer dullards), strapped myself into several layers of PPE and dove into the social media scrum, only to be deafened by what sounded like hundreds, perhaps thousands of indignant, starving crows.

Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me

You might say it was “enchanting.” Here are several examples.

ML (works at Humana): This is so overblown at this point.

BNB (hospital worker): So you can have thousands of people go protest but we can't have harvest???

WJ: maybe , you should have asked the people of New Albany about the cancellation of the harvest homecoming. before doing it. let us decide if , we want to take the chance or not.

BH (maintenance technician): 250,000 have died from covid...1.2 million died from the flu in 2017...🤔

MD (says he’s a University of Louisville graduate): This is dumb why not wait and see if this thing goes away! Cases she almost gone to zero!

TC: Man. Watch the downtown New Albany business district go belly up now. This was a BIG MONEY deal to a lot of businesses.

What in the name of rolled oysters, elephant ears and frozen chocolate covered bananas is the matter with you people?

I never thought I'd be defending the decision-making of the Harvest Homecoming committee, with which I’ve often differed, but it isn’t hard to put yourself in their shoes. Most of Harvest Homecoming’s governing committee members and volunteers are multi-generational lifers. Love the festival or hate it, they work throughout the year in preparation, and take their tasks very seriously.

This decision to cancel Harvest Homecoming in 2020 almost surely was the hardest thing these folks have ever had to do outside the heavy issues we all face in own personal lives. It’s mind-boggling to accuse them of taking their responsibilities lightly. This whole process must have been traumatic for them.

Did any of you think of THAT?

Here YOU are, masquerading as a “fan” of Harvest Homecoming until the going gets choppy and your field of vision narrows to the chief malady of our nation, in big-ass block letters: ME ME ME ME ME ME ME.

Guess what, doofus: this may come as a surprise, but there are times when it isn’t about YOU; rather, there are times when it needs to be about all of US.

The Harvest Homecoming committee is being responsible and looking to the festival’s long-term prospects. That's savvy. Not everyone hereabouts rejects science, and it’s really hard to imagine big crowds turning out his year. If the committee goes fast, some of the throng will be back this year. If it goes slow, probably most of them will return in 2021.

To be fair, we’ve also heard from non-profit organizations as well as for-profit vendors, for whom Harvest Homecoming is a primary annual revenue source. There’ll be pain, just as there has been for the food and drink business. Losing St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t exactly enjoyable, nor being closed entirely or operating for more than two months on far less than 50% of customary sales volume.

It's what had to be done for the greater good. As with the pandemic writ large, perhaps the pain will lead to fresher thinking. Is there anything that can be done a little bit each day of the year to offset the risk of depending on just one week?

Must we go to the office five days a week, or can we work from home for three?

Is it really necessary for you to spit in my face while extolling the selfless virtues of The Donald?

As for the experts, well, if you’ve never been charged with thinking past the distance to where your car is parked, or planning activities for a few hundred thousand of your closest friends as opposed to heading down to the stop ‘n’ rob for a Big Gulp or three, then you may wish to get a life.

I’m told you can buy one at Amazon, although be forewarned.

The life you buy for yourself might be manufactured in China -- and then what?

---

Recent columns:

May 28: ON THE AVENUES: The late, great Lee Kelly -- by Matt Nash.

May 21: ON THE AVENUES: Godlessness in defense of heathens, infidels, idolaters, atheists, non-theists, irreligious people, agnostics, skeptics, heretics and apostates.

May 14: ON THE AVENUES: Food is my friend, but please, I'm no foodie.

May 7: ON THE AVENUES: COVID tolls for thee -- whatever, so hurry and get your ass back into this seat.

Memorial Day 2020 (4 of 4): History matters, especially on Memorial Day.

There are long, long trails a-winding ...

... through places like France.

Aisne-Marne American Cemetery

With headstones lying in a sweeping curve, the 42.5-acre Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in France, sits at the foot of Belleau Wood. The cemetery contains the graves of 2,289 war dead, most of whom fought in the vicinity and in the Marne Valley in the summer of 1918. The memorial chapel sits on a hillside, decorated with sculptured and stained-glass details of wartime personnel, equipment and insignia. Inscribed on its interior wall are 1,060 names of the missing. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified. During World War II the chapel was damaged slightly by an enemy shell.

Belleau Wood adjoins the cemetery and contains many vestiges of World War I. A monument at the flagpole commemorates the valor of the U.S. Marines who captured much of this ground in 1918.

Respecting the memory of American soldiers who died while in the service of their country is a task perhaps best undertaken with respect for history.

Speaking only for myself, I take it very seriously. It's a habit of thought almost certainly springing from my father's fascination with far-off events that conspired to transport a hick from bucolic Georgetown, Indiana to the Pacific Theater of Operations -- and in his case, back home again.

Others weren't as lucky, and every year on Memorial Day, I pause to reflect on the serendipity of it all.

As a prelude to Memorial Day, there tend to be scolding social media reminders to the effect that Americans fixated on holiday feasting, partying and recreation somehow dishonor the nation's military heritage. To be sure, I contribute my fair share of rants about the general populace and its chronic ignorance of history.

However, I don't think honor and bacchanalia are mutually exclusive concepts. After all, the venerable institution of the wake combines them very effectively, and what's more, the human condition is incapable of sustaining a permanent state of mourning. Life does go on.

Like the vast majority of topics pertaining to human beings, the notion of dying for one's country is inordinately complex. John Gonder once touched on it during a conversation, when he mentioned the notorious escape clause during the American Civil War, where men drafted into the Union Army could buy their way out of service by paying $300 or providing a substitute to serve (and sometimes die) in their place.

During the Vietnam War, songwriter John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival noticed it, too: Exactly how is it determined who risks dying for his or her country, and who subsequently profits from their deaths?

Dick Cheney might know the answer.

Preferably, respecting the memory of American soldiers who died while in the service of their country is a task best undertaken with a respect for history on the part of those still living, along with sadness and regret that human civilization seems not to have evolved to a point of no longer requiring violence to settle issues. War is a ridiculous concept, although humans seem enamored of it.

It's also a holiday weekend, and I suspect you are enjoying it.

Carry on, then.

Memorial Day (Snopes)

Claim: Former slaves reburied dead Union prisoners of war in May 1865, thus creating the modern observance of Memorial Day.

MIXTURE:

TRUE: In May 1865, free blacks in Charleston reburied dead Union prisoners of war and held a cemetery dedication ceremony.

UNDETERMINED: The event referenced above is the origin of the modern Memorial Day observance.

Wikipedia's article goes into greater detail.

Memorial Day 2020 (1 of 4): Howard Zinn asks, "Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?"

Memorial Day 2020 (2 of 4): Charles Ives, from Decoration Day to Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2020 (3 of 4): "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream."

Memorial Day 2020 (4 of 4): History matters, especially on Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2020 (3 of 4): "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream."

I've forgotten the context, but thanks to RG for the idea; in essence, the best way to honor the departed is to live in peace, even if humans seem incapable of doing it and unwilling to try.

As I'm fond of saying, a boy can dream.

Ed McCurdy (January 11, 1919 – March 23, 2000) was an American folk singer, songwriter, and television actor. His most well-known song was the anti-war "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream", written in 1950.

Last night I had the strangest dream
I ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war
I dreamed I saw a mighty room
Filled with women and men
And the paper they were signing said
They'd never fight again

And when the papers all were signed
And a million copies made
They all joined hands and bowed their heads
And grateful prayers were prayed
And the people in the streets below
Were dancing round and round
And guns and swords and uniforms
Were scattered on the ground

Last night I had the strangest dream
I ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war

---

Memorial Day 2020 (1 of 4): Howard Zinn asks, "Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?"

Memorial Day 2020 (2 of 4): Charles Ives, from Decoration Day to Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2020 (3 of 4): "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream."

Memorial Day 2020 (4 of 4): History matters, especially on Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2020 (2 of 4): Charles Ives, from Decoration Day to Memorial Day.

All traditions must begin somewhere.

May 30, 1868: Civil War dead honored on Decoration Day (History)

By proclamation of General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, the first major Memorial Day observance is held to honor those who died “in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” Known to some as “Decoration Day,” mourners honored the Civil War dead by decorating their graves with flowers. On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, after which 5,000 participants helped to decorate the graves of the more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried in the cemetery. The 1868 celebration was inspired by local observances that had taken place in various locations in the three years since the end of the Civil War.

(In 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be celebrated the last Monday in May.)

The composer Charles Ives' father served in the Union Army as a bandmaster.

Decoration Day According to Charles Ives (Prufrock's Dilemma)

Charles Ives wrote of his piece Decoration Day, the second of the four pieces included in his A Symphony: New England Holidays, that it “started as a brass band overture, but never got very far that way.”

Both musical and written remembrances conjure a time long past.

Ives' postface to Decoration Day reads:

In the early morning the gardens and woods around the village are the meeting places of those who, with tender memories and devoted hands, gather the flowers for the Day's Memorial.** During the forenoon as the people join each other on the Green there is felt, at times, a fervency and intensity--a shadow perhaps of the fanatical harshness--reflecting old Abolitionist days. It is a day as Thoreau suggests, when there is a pervading consciousness of "Nature's kinship with the lower order-man."

After the Town Hall is filled with the Spring's harvest of lilacs, daisies, and peonies, the parade is slowly formed on Main Street. First come the three Marshals on plough horses (going sideways), then the Warden and Burgesses in carriages, the Village Cornet Band, the G.A.R., two by two, the Militia (Company G), while the volunteer Fire Brigade, drawing a decorated hose-cart, with its jangling bells, brings up the rear-the inevitable swarm of small boys following. The march to Wooster Cemetery is a thing a boy never forgets. The roll of the muffled drums and "Adestes Fideles" answer for the dirge. A little girl on a fencepost waves to her father and wonders if he looked like that at Gettysburg.

After the last grave is decorated, Taps sounds out through the pines and hickories, while a last hymn is sung. The ranks are formed again, and "we all march to town" to a Yankee stimulant-Reeves inspiring Second Regiment Quickstep-though, to many a soldier, the sombre thoughts of the day underlie the tunes of the band. The march stops-and in the silence of the shadow of the early morning flower-song rises over the Town, and the sunset behind the West Mountain breathes its benediction upon the Day [Memos, 101-102].

** Decoration Day corresponds to the Memorial Day holiday that we currently celebrate in the United States to honor war veterans.

Memorial Day 2020 (1 of 4): Howard Zinn asks, "Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?"

Memorial Day 2020 (2 of 4): Charles Ives, from Decoration Day to Memorial Day.


Memorial Day 2020 (3 of 4): "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream."

Memorial Day 2020 (4 of 4): History matters, especially on Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2020 (1 of 4): Howard Zinn asks, "Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?"

"No politician who voted funds for war, no business contractor for the military, no general who ordered young men into battle, no FBI man who spied on anti-war activities, should be invited to public ceremonies on this sacred day. Let the dead of past wars be honored. Let those who live pledge themselves never to embark on mass slaughter again."
-- Howard Zinn

To me, the most disrespectful act that might be directed against the fallen from past wars, or the veterans still among us, is to accept self-censorship as it pertains to discussing the honest, real-world reasons why these conflicts occurred. There's no "either-or" fallacy stipulating that we all fall into line, or else be considered traitors.

Memorialize, and never stop asking questions, even when the answers are unpleasant. Some day we might learn. If we tolerate silence, then our children obviously will be next. If we tolerate war, pestilence and mayhem, then a little Zinn is good for whatever remains of our souls

Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?, by Howard Zinn

Published on June 2, 1976 in the Boston Globe and republished in The Zinn Reader with the brief introduction below.

Memorial Day will be celebrated … by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors preparing for more wars, more graves to receive more flowers on future Memorial Days. The memory of the dead deserves a different dedication. To peace, to defiance of governments.

In 1974, I was invited by Tom Winship, the editor of the Boston Globe, who had been bold enough in 1971 to print part of the top secret Pentagon Papers on the history of the Vietnam War, to write a bi-weekly column for the op-ed page of the newspaper. I did that for about a year and a half. The column below appeared June 2, 1976, in connection with that year’s Memorial Day. After it appeared, my column was cancelled.

* * * * *

Memorial Day will be celebrated as usual, by high-speed collisions of automobiles and bodies strewn on highways and the sound of ambulance sirens throughout the land.

It will also be celebrated by the display of flags, the sound of bugles and drums, by parades and speeches and unthinking applause.

It will be celebrated by giant corporations, which make guns, bombs, fighter planes, aircraft carriers and an endless assortment of military junk and which await the $100 billion in contracts to be approved soon by Congress and the President.

There was a young woman in New Hampshire who refused to allow her husband, killed in Vietnam, to be given a military burial. She rejected the hollow ceremony ordered by those who sent him and 50,000 others to their deaths. Her courage should be cherished on Memorial Day. There were the B52 pilots who refused to fly those last vicious raids of Nixon’s and Kissinger’s war. Have any of the great universities, so quick to give honorary degrees to God-knows-whom, thought to honor those men at this Commencement time, on this Memorial Day?

No politician who voted funds for war, no business contractor for the military, no general who ordered young men into battle, no FBI man who spied on anti-war activities, should be invited to public ceremonies on this sacred day. Let the dead of past wars be honored. Let those who live pledge themselves never to embark on mass slaughter again.

“The shell had his number on it. The blood ran into the ground…Where his chest ought to have been they pinned the Congressional Medal, the DSC, the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, The Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of Rumania. All the Washingtonians brought flowers .. Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies.”

Those are the concluding lines of John Dos Passos angry novel 1919. Let us honor him on Memorial Day.

And also Thoreau, who went to jail to protest the Mexican War.

And Mark Twain, who denounced our war against the Filipinos at the turn of the century.

And I.F. Stone, who virtually alone among newspaper editors exposed the fraud and brutality of the Korean War.

Let us honor Martin Luther King, who refused the enticements of the White House, and the cautions of associates, and thundered against the war in Vietnam.

Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.

On Memorial Day we should take note that, in the name of “defense,” our taxes have been used to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a helicopter assault ship called “the biggest floating lemon,” which was accepted by the Navy although it had over 2,000 major defects at the time of its trial cruise.

Meanwhile, there is such a shortage of housing that millions live in dilapidated sections of our cities and millions more are forced to pay high rents or high interest rates on their mortgages. There’s 90 billion for the B1 bomber, but people don’t have money to pay hospital bills.

We must be practical, say those whose practicality has consisted of a war every generation. We mustn’t deplete our defenses. Say those who have depleted our youth, stolen our resources. In the end, it is living people, not corpses, creative energy, not destructive rage, which are our only real defense, not just against other governments trying to kill us, but against our own, also trying to kill us.

Let us not set out, this Memorial Day, on the same old drunken ride to death.

And as an epilogue of sorts.

Berrigan, Ellsberg and Memorial Day, by Doug Noble (CounterPunch)

Memorial Day is a day noted for its parades honoring veterans by ennobling, glorifying (and thereby perpetuating) US war and militarism. The peace community in Rochester observes instead a solemn riverside service memorializing the thousands of victims of current US war and aggression, with each victim symbolized by a single rose tossed lovingly into the river’s flow.

Victims memorialized include the casualties of US sanctioned war and aggression, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Syria to Yemen to Somalia to South Sudan to Palestine. Also the many innocent victims of drone attacks, inhumane US immigration and incarceration policies, militarization of the police, and preventable gun violence. And the worldwide victims of catastrophic climate change, fed by US policies of denial and consumption. And an entire global population victimized by the threat of nuclear Armageddon triggered by senseless US provocations of Iran, North Korea, Russia, China.

There would not be enough roses to identify and honor even the tiniest sample of the the thousands of innocent victims lost to aggressive US policies. Such roses could easily choke the Genesee River in sorrow. Yet remembrance, however heartfelt, is still insufficient. After all, in his Gettysburg memorial address, Abraham Lincoln noted the futility of consecrating the war dead without rectifying the war’s cause: “It is for us the living to be dedicated to the unfinished work … so that these dead shall not have died in vain.” What, then, might move us toward peace, a peace threatened, most of all, by our own government’s unrelenting appetite for war?

I turn to the book of Daniel – that is, the book of Daniel Berrigan and Daniel Ellsberg, two icons whose monumental contribution to peace cannot be misconstrued ...

Memorial Day 2020 (1 of 4): Howard Zinn asks, "Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?"

Memorial Day 2020 (2 of 4): Charles Ives, from Decoration Day to Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2020 (3 of 4): "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream."

Memorial Day 2020 (4 of 4): History matters, especially on Memorial Day.

VIDEO: Longboard's Taco & Tiki has closed, but Ian Hall has good news, too.

Ian Hall made the announcement via video this morning on Facebook. Trust me, I know what it feels like to lose one, so best wishes to Ian, Nikki and the Brand Hospitality restaurant group. Overall Brand's brand remains strong at The Exchange Pub + Kitchen and Brooklyn and The Butcher.

There is no word yet as to the next configuration of the soon-to-be vacant space on the corner of Market and Pearl.

You'll notice that in the video Ian is seated in the space many readers will recall as Feast BBQ's original location in New Albany, adjacent to The Exchange on Main Street. The building changed hands after Feast BBQ closed in 2018, and now the top-to-bottom remodeling is complete.

It will be known as the Tavern Hall at The Exchange and function as a dining room and special events space. Kitchen space at The Exchange also has been expanded.

LIVE TO EAT: Longboard's Taco & Tiki will open this Friday, July 27.

From the folks who brought you Exchange and Brookyn, Longboard’s Taco & Tiki is coming to downtown New Albany in 2018.

Let's start a list.

OPENING IN 2020
Board and You Bistro & Wine Bar (TBD; 430 Pearl, where the Cidery was to have been)
Monnik Beer Company (TBD; former Bank Street Brewhouse on Bank)
Recbar 812 (February 3; former La Rosita's on Pearl)
Tavern Hall at The Exchange (event space in the former Feast BBQ)

CLOSING IN 2020
Longboard's Taco & Tiki

Here is last year's summary.

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New Albany's restaurant and bar openings and closings for 2019.

December 30, 2019

Following is our crowd-sourced list of restaurant/bar openings and closings in New Albany for 2019: Indies only; no chains, and just businesses within city limits.

Here's a special category: Floyd County Brewing, which expanded into the Biergarten after launching Grain Haus in 2018. They're still all common ownership, but deserving of note for organization of available space.

Did we miss anyone? There are two reasons why Our Lady of Perpetual Hops isn't on this list: (1) it doesn't have a kitchen, and (b) I'm still not sure whether it's city, fringe area or county. The beers are good, though.

OPENING IN 2019 ... 8 + 3 (see below) = 11
Boomtown Kitchen
Chicago City Pizza
Fistful of Tacos
Get It on a Bun at Booty’s
La Catrina
Tacolicious To Go
The Earl
The Standard Plate & Pour

CLOSING IN 2019 ... 6 + 3 (see below) = 9
Bank Street Brewhouse/Taco Steve
Cox’s Hot Chicken
Hull & High Water
Mandarin Cafe
Red Men Club
Sinaloa

BOTH OPENING AND CLOSING IN 2019 ... 3
Bliss Artisan
El Rico Taco
Mirin

GREEN MOUSE presents NAWBANY WEEK IN REVIEW for 17 January 2020.

William Blake never lived in Nawbany, but he grasps our degraded civic condition better than most residents.

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way … As a man is, so he sees.”

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

So it was that the Green Mouse was chatting with a neighbor as together they ducked and covered to avoid the sawdust borne of the latest wave of lumbering downtown.

"The neighborhood from spring to Ekin, 15th to Vincennes is under attack by hooded, face-masked asshats," remarked the neighbor as a very large man on a very small children's bicycle oozed past.

"Cops say they can't do anything if the asshats are probing and pulling doors, at least without seeing or catching them in the act, but hell, I have video of drug deals next door -- then Todd says no, can't smell it on the video. WTF? Something's got to change in Nawagony!"

"Nawagony" -- now THAT'S a keeper.

Did you know that in days of old, there was no crime in the Soviet Union? Well, maybe there was a little bit, but when the official propaganda channels kept saying everyone had been successfully converted into New Communist Men and Women, how could they be capable of petty capitalist transgressions?

Same goes here in New Gahania. We just concluded an election campaign during which neighborhood crime scarcely was mentioned by the Gahans, Phippses and Nashes of the town, and acknowledging such issues now would suggest they were being ... um, evasive.

Who are you going to believe, them or your own video?

Amid sighs and lamentations, the Green Mouse yearns for that elusive day when folks spend time and money on grassroots fixes for what genuinely ails us, rather than meaningless appearances. Too much Disney, too little reality. The reason NAC can't support this bridge lighting chimera is that it not only absorbs tight money which might go toward mitigating car-centrism, but also diverts short attention spans away from much needed "small bet" reforms, to be yet again ignored by reason of magical fantasy thinking. The fundamental issue remains moving people in some way other than one-person-per-car.

Can we talk about THAT?

New Albany leaders making (expletive deleted) in bridge lighting (NewsBune)

Meanwhile, NAC's idea of usefulness is getting existing street lights consistently lit BEFORE trying to string them across the Ohio River. There are three burned-out lights on Market between State and Pearl, opposite the side of the street where the city just spent a million bucks on luxury appendages. They've been out for months.

Can we afford a mere three bulbs for the orphaned south side of the street? it would help pedestrians see the trip hazards before they fall -- as the Green Mouse evidently was doing as he snapped the first photo.

Frankly, we're amazed. How did a reputable business slip into Colonial Manor without a single City Hall functionary claiming credit for it -- and WITHOUT the city owning the building, which previously had been stated as an absolute prerequisite?

Is free enterprise even legal?

Will the fire inspector shut them down until the fruit baskets are delivered with requisite bulging envelopes?

We're SO confused.

RC race track to open in New Albany shopping center, by Taylor Durden (WAVE 3)

Hoosier RC Hobbyplex opens Saturday at 10 a.m.

Rumor has it the River Heritage Conservancy came away from its recent meeting with Team Gahan utterly convinced it had wandered by mistake into a second grade classroom, as opposed to a municipal brain trust. We're just afraid of insulting second graders.

The Minds Behind Louisville’s Riverfront Revival, by (WFPL)

The conservancy has already purchased about half the land needed for the park. To date, funding support has come from the Paul Ogle Foundation, the Blue Sky Foundation, the Town of Clarksville and other local and national organizations.

Join us again next time as we review the week that was.

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.