NAC's New Albany "Persons of the Year" for 2020 should be obvious.

One cannot come back without first going away, and consequently NA Confidential is winding down after 16 years, but let's not neglect the selection of  New Albany’s "Person of the Year" for 2020.

As in 2019, there'll be no run-ups and time-wasting teasers, although our basic definition remains intact, as gleaned so very long ago from the pages of Time magazine.

Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year) is an annual issue of the United States news magazine Time that features and profiles a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or for worse...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

Obviously the biggest story of 2020 was the COVID-19 pandemic, as yet ongoing in spite of the bleating and jabbering of my fellow aging white men. 

Mercifully the pandemic has kept Mayor Jeff "Dear Leader" Gahan stranded in his Down Low Bunker to an even greater daily extent than in previous years, thus sparing us from the worst excesses of his forever fawning ProMedia propaganda machine. 

And so, with sincere gratitude, we thank Jeeebus for small favors like this temporary shrinking of the mayoral personality cult. 

Meanwhile, we survey the field in search of the next biggest story behind only the coronavirus itself, and ironically, find the answer in the pages of Time magazine.

New Albany's co-persons of the year for 2020 are the city's frontline health care workers and those comprehending the year's movement for racial justice, or precisely the same ones who SHOULD have topped Time's list this year, both of them applicable locally, and both of them with far more relevance to humanity's shared contemporary experience than Mayor Nabob or Councilman Nobody might ever expect to be. 

Following are Time's own definitions, which were rejected, and let us note the ridiculousness of the magazine selecting Joe Biden, although doing so probably delighted His Deafness, Squire Adam, a handful of elderly DemoDisneyDixiecratic grandees and (sadly) a few politically impotent but materially comfy local progressives. I retain hope that the latter will eventually realize they must do, and not merely say. 

Frontline Health Care Workers

"The COVID-19 pandemic has put the world on hold. However, anyone deemed essential—like health care workers, postal workers, sanitation workers, transportation workers and many others—had to keep going. They risked their lives and in doing so, saved countless other lives."

Movement for Racial Justice

"The tragic killing of George Floyd started a movement, not just in America but across the globe. In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, protesters took to the streets, demanding action to fight racial injustice at the hands of police and any entity that embodies systemic discrimination. There have been some positive outcomes since the movement started but it’s far from over." 

---

A decade, including these previous winners:

• 2019 ... Automobile Supremacy in Nawbany
• 2018 ... Jeff Gahan's Money Machine
• 2017 ... #MeToo -- the NA silence breakers
• 2016 ... Chloe Allen
• 2015 ... New Albany property tax payers
• 2014 ... Heroic Non-Incentivized Downtown Developers
• 2013 ... (tie) Houndmouth and "Quality of Life"
• 2012 ... Bill "Slumlord" Allen
• 2011 ... The Sherman Minton Bridge

"On Louisville, Breonna Taylor, and Muhammad Ali."

Photo credit: The Nation.

From one of the few sportswriters capable of mattering, talking straight.  

On Louisville, Breonna Taylor, and Muhammad Ali, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)

Louisville is hallowed ground, the birthplace of Muhammad Ali. It will now, thanks to Daniel Cameron, be also remembered as the home of an unspeakable injustice.

 ... If struggle is truly the secret of joy, then I’ll repeat: It felt like hallowed ground.

Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky Attorney General, has desecrated this hallowed ground. In his ambition to remain a Republican rising star, mentored by McConnell and beloved by Trump, he chose his career over justice and made the decision to use Breonna Taylor’s body as a stepping stone to reach even greater heights ... but to me this is less about the color of Cameron’s skin than a naked and grotesque expression of what it takes to rise in GOP circles: You protect the cops, you blame the dead, and you assert, no matter the cost, that Black lives—particularly the lives of Black women—simply do not matter. 

 For the people of Louisville, Breonna Taylor’s name will not be forgotten as surely as Muhammad Ali’s. Maybe someday people will walk Breonna Taylor Boulevard in downtown Louisville and speak her name not merely as a tragedy but as a turning point towards true justice. Daniel Cameron’s name, if remembered at all, will be thought of like the person who stole young Cassius Clay’s bicycle, which inspired the 12-year-old Clay to take up boxing. He will be the anonymous, ignofarm-near-me/">minious cudgel of immorality whose blows didn’t put the people of Louisville down for the count, but propelled them to rise off the mat.

A Night in Tunisia.

A Facebook conversation about Black Lives Matters and the "Western-prescribed nuclear family structure." If you haven't already done so, accept my encouragement to visit the Black Lives Matters website, and instead of hearing from a friend who heard it from a friend about what BLM is saying, go straight to the source and think for yourself ... for a nice change.

JM: So you totally missed the BLM part where they want to tear down the nuclear family?

Roger A. Baylor: Hmm, "tear down" -- well, I couldn't find that specific wording anywhere. I imagine you are referring to this passage:

"We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable."

I'll readily concede to not knowing exactly where BLM is coming from here, but it's evident that (a) the system of American slavery and botched "reconstruction" did a fine job of disrupting Black "nuclear" families; (b) late period capitalism has pitched in to further disrupt "nuclear" families beyond strictly Black ones; and (c) I'm extremely suspicious about what is being implied by the "nuclear" family in the first place, as it strikes me as code for what always was more cliche than reality. What I glean from the BLM passage is that there are numerous sorts of families, too many to be confined by "Leave It to Beaver." If anyone out there can assist with my education on this matter, I'd appreciate it. In the interim, I don't see the threat in any of this.

Jeff Gillenwater: It’s always amusing when people object to BLM via racist interpretations.

JS: No you're correct. It's of the "It Takes a Village" variety. Not meant to supplant the "nuclear family" but to expand it, like much of the world. Parents look out for each others' kids, especially important when parent(s) work. Elderly are part of the community and not shuffled off to homes to rot away, etc.

JG: More communal, matriarchal community structures are historically prevalent in Africa, hence the notion of Western prescription. It’s been genuinely inspiring to see that in contemporary action via BLM. The level of organization and leadership is impressive. Those who think the movement is limited to protest don’t know or understand much as their ignorant and often hatefully aimed comments tend to make clear ... Black women leading is plenty enough reason for some people to be obviously hyper critical and find something wrong with every (often manufactured) aspect of the movement without ever actually mentioning Black women. They think no one notices their racism/sexism that way. It’s sort of pathetically funny to watch them act as if they’re taking some great stand for justice when they so clearly lack the awareness and courage to even face themselves.

The remainder is here.

"The United States of America is, by its very nature, anti-Black."

Some will be tempted to stop reading after the first three paragraphs. This would be shortsighted. Get past the discomfort, and immerse yourself in the author's point.

Oh, and wear your mask when you're out in public.

Let It Burn, by Robert Jones, Jr. (The Paris Review)

In 2017, I wrote an essay titled “I Don’t Give a Fuck about Justine Damond,” which outlined my perspective on Ms. Damond’s death at the hands of Mohamed Noor, a Minneapolis police officer who also happened to be Somali American and Muslim. My thesis was this: How can I be concerned about a white woman shot and killed by a police officer when there are countless Black people who suffered that fate to the stunning silence and antipathy of the vast majority of white American populace?

The essay was met with the characteristic outrage from white people (but not only white people). They accused me of disrespecting Damond’s memory and being inconsiderate of her family’s feelings. I was also accused of being a hypocrite for not condemning the actions of the cop as I had in previous incidents involving Black victims. Even some of the people closest to me believed that I had crossed a line and thought that I had been too harsh in my assessment and should if not show reverence then certainly remain silent on the matter.

But I could do neither, not with the blood of Black people flowing endlessly in the streets. I insisted that there was a purpose to my position. I had predicted that the outcome of Damond’s death would be unique and that, unlike in the numerous cases in which the murder of a Black person by state agents was considered “justified” and the agents themselves regarded as valiant, the officer who killed Damond wouldn’t have access to the protections or rationalizations that his white compatriots had always been given.

And I was correct.

Without so much as a raised pitchfork, Noor was fired, abandoned by a union that defends even the most egregious actions of its officers. He was swiftly charged, swiftly convicted, and swiftly sentenced to twelve and a half years in prison. And Damond’s family was swiftly compensated, settling for a hefty $20 million from the city of Minneapolis, not at the expense of police forces but at the expense of the taxpayers.

If we are to accept that this is what justice looks like in a penal and punitive nation like the United States of America, the question, for me, is then, why isn’t it applied universally? Why did it take the threat of burning the entire country to ash before the forces of “law and order” would arrest and charge the non-Black (and that’s important to note) police officers caught on camera murdering George Floyd, a Black man? Why are the officers who murdered Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, inside her own home in Louisville, Kentucky, still free to murder another day? Police kill Black people at 2.5 times the rate they kill white people. In 2015, for example, more than a hundred unarmed Black people were killed by police, and only four cops were convicted of any crime in those cases. Experts believe police kill Black people at an even higher rate, but since the nation keeps such spotty records, perhaps intentionally, it’s difficult to grasp and easy for some people to dismiss the magnitude.

The answer to these questions is obvious and yet it’s an answer that this country—from the time it was just a patchwork of greedy and insatiable Europeans who pillaged and plundered the unsuspecting Indigenous people of this land until today—refuses to confront:

The United States of America is, by its very nature, anti-Black ...

Independence Day? One, as Charles P. Pierce writes: "We're in Another One of Those Moments Where the Great Bluff Gets Called."

The speeches referred to by Pierce are lengthy, eloquent and worthy. In my estimation, they're best read prior to hamburgers and fireworks; for those seeking an antidote to The Trumpian tendency to spew verbal sewage, they're especially helpful.

But you see, you must want to learn genuine facts, as opposed to the bilge fed you since kindergarten days.

This Fourth of July, We're in Another One of Those Moments Where the Great Bluff Gets Called, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

It is the same bluff Frederick Douglass called in 1852, and Dr. King called in 1962.

This is a great year to have a Fourth of July. This is a great year to have a Fourth of July because we are in the middle of another one of those historical moments in which the great bluff gets called, loudly, raucously, and in the public square. You remember that great bluff. It is the bluff that Frederick Douglass called in Rochester in 1852.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

It is the bluff that Dr. King called in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1962.

In a sense we've come to our nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds.”

It’s the one that is being called by thousands of people in the streets, and by the removal of every memorial to every traitorous gossoon, and by defiant young people who are pushing all their chips to the center of the table. This is the bluff they’re all calling ...

Politicians paint murals, but protesters make genuine change and real history.

Give 'em time, and we'll have statues of automobiles. I volunteer to be first in line when it comes to bringing those symbols down.

Go Ahead and Destroy That Racist Statue (and Then the System Too), by Jillian Steinhauer (The Nation)

While politicians are painting murals in lieu of undertaking real change, protesters are making history by pulling down symbols of white supremacy.

On June 9, after a week and a half of large, daily Black Lives Matter protests in New York City that began as part of a national uprising in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he was taking action: He would name a street in each of the five boroughs after Black Lives Matter and paint the name of the movement on those roads. The decision came days after Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser received widespread attention for turning a section of 16th Street NW across from the White House into Black Lives Matter Plaza, with the phrase painted in 50-foot yellow letters on the pavement. Meanwhile, a short way down the National Mall, Democratic members of Congress, most of them white, showed up at the Capitol on June 8 wearing kente stoles. They knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds—the same amount of time that Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck—before entering their chambers to introduce the Justice in Policing Act of 2020.

Politicians around the country are performing. They’re trying to show their constituents that they’re working on the problem of white supremacy in ways big and small. They’re using gestures to attempt to broadcast a message—but one that is ultimately hollow. As Shannon Keating put it recently in BuzzFeed News, it amounts to “performative absurdity from powerful people who’ve long avoided real accountability for causing or excusing Black suffering” ...

An amazing NA moment in time -- as the GREEN MOUSE presents NAWBANY WEEK IN REVIEW.

This happened on Saturday in New Albany.

Actually this and two other events dedicated to Black Lives Matter happened on Saturday. The three causes converged downtown, and all of it was incident-free.

As a side note, in 2016 Floyd County as a whole gave Donald Trump a 20-point margin of victory over Hillary Clinton. That's a point or so better than the statewide Indiana tally. Granted, Trump won bigger outside city limits, but not that much bigger.

We'll see what happens next, right here in New Albany. I have a few thoughts about the advisability of keeping a close eye on the political bandwagon-jumpers, but these can wait.

After all, I'm on sabbatical.

Congratulations to everyone for yesterday. It was a very good thing, indeed.

ON THE AVENUES: Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger.

Dearest readers,

At the beginning of 2020, I resolved to play it completely straight and rededicate this weekly column to the proposition that it might be freed from reruns -- for the most part.

I might on occasion incorporate bits of previous writing, or quote myself, but no more cutting and pasting entire past columns -- however much I rationalize that you urgently need to be reading them for a second or third time.

I'm happy to report that I made it all the way from New Year's Day to June 4, and have produced 20-odd columns of fresh material. However, this week I'm struggling, and the block is odd given there is no shortage of available topics. But maybe abundance is the problem, and there's too much to sort through.

Speaking from the perspective of my polemical workbench, the first two months of the year were spent detoxing from daily doses of local political discourse -- or what passes for it in intellectually constipated New Gahania. A new study from the Pew Research Center suggests I've successfully stuck to the terms of the sabbatical 86.7% of the time. 

In March came our moment in medical history, the coronavirus pandemic -- and yes, it was real and remains so quite outside the denials so many of you have chosen to embrace. The attendant dislocations of COVID have been challenging, although the dictates of karma urge me to refrain from complaining when our household vantage point is one of good personal health.

The past two to three weeks have been about America's periodic avoidance of an honest reckoning with history as it pertains to Black Lives Matter(ing). I'll support just about any movement aimed at anti-racism, anti-fascism and anti-robberbaroncapitalism, but at the moment, as an old white guy myself, I'd hate to be lumped in with Bumbling Bill Hanson's elder hostel of white male newspaper columnists pontificating about race from their pulpits in Otisco.   

Oh, and I forgot that it's also an election year. Roughly 1,000 years ago, Bernie Sanders was still in the race and we had a modicum of choice to defeat The Donald. Now we have the sort of Democratic candidate that Squire Adam would fill buckets drooling over. So much for "hope."

Obviously I might be writing about any of these trends, but somewhat curiously there seems to be little for me to add to the ongoing discussion. Maybe the essence of this writer's bottled-up blockage is persistent anger -- at the ongoing and still unspeakably bizarre Gahan personality cult, at the science-denying narcissists unable to look past the tip of their noses, and at the unreconstructed racists reminding me of the prevalence of sheer American dumbassery.

Writing isn't easy when you're angry, or at least it isn't for me. A measure of detachment is necessary, and I haven't been able to manage it lately. Stream-of-consciousness rants are possible, and have been deployed before, but the older I get, the more hesitant I am to undertake them. They're like running a marathon, and absolutely wear me out.

Accordingly, there's is a sizable element of fatigue, and I need to push through it. Let's begin right here.

Knowing that writing more often for pay (a novel concept for me, indeed) would factor into the 2020 workload, I began in January by reducing NA Confidential blog's output (again), from three daily posts to two; probably owing to the six-month or more sabbatical from the rhetoric on behalf of the anti-Gahan resistance, this has resulted in a marked decline in reader interest.

So be it. 

I'm trying to write about beer as often as possible at the Pints&union blog in hopes of keeping a few balls (or beer bongs) hanging in the air until our likely reopening in July -- and don't quote me on what this return will look like, because it isn't yet clear. All I can say is that a new era will dawn, soon.

At Food & Dining Magazine, faced with no real possibility of publishing a summer print edition, we resolved instead to build up the web site and release as much original content as possible on that platform. A share of this surge falls to me, some to others in our stable of excellent writers; either way it takes time to implement, and my learning curve in terms of being a "digital editor" hasn't yet flattened.

I'm not breaking rocks or putting up hay, although at times this year my brain has needed a break.

---

With the traditional restorative activity of travel taken off the table this year by the virus, relaxation has come through the Forever Nostalgia Project: digitizing slides, negatives and photos of past European journeys, of which there have been 40. Around 1995 I abandoned slide film for the most part and went to regular printed photos. By 2005, digital was the norm. Here are the year's results, some of which are being shared at my Facebook page.

1985, the first trip to Europe
1991-92, the Slovak teaching sojourn
1993, Germany, Denmark, points east, etc
1994, Switzerland, Albania and Pamplona (Spain)
1997, Czech Republic and Germany
2003, Main/Tauber/Altmuhl/Danube (rivers) bicycling, Frankfurt to Vienna

In addition, there were a few odds and ends stateside. At any rate, quite a lot of images are left to scan (at least 14 European visits), and they will take years to finish ... but hey, we all need hobbies.

One real-world manifestation of nostalgia about the 2003 bicycling trip is a determination to get our bikes back in working condition. They're at the shop now. Soon, after seven years out of the saddle, there'll be a comeback. It will not resemble the halcyon days of the 2000 - 2008; commuting and the occasional Greenway should be enough.

Reading is a good diversion, too. Here are the year's books to date, in reverse chronological order. My favorites are marked with an asterisk.

*Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, by Frederick Lewis Allen
Which Fork Do I Use with My Bourbon? by Peggy Noe Stevens and Susan Reigler
How We Eat with Our Eyes and Think with Our Stomachs, by Melanie Mühl and Diana von Kopp
*Bliss Was It in Bohemia, a novel by Michel Viewegh
An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, by Elizabeth David
Russian Cosmism, edited by Boris Groys
*The Botanist and the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved for the World, by Christy Campbell
Bluebeard, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut
The Ghosts of My Life, by Mark Fisher
Capitalist Realism, by Mark Fisher
Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginnings of the Modern World, by Thomas Cahill
*The Prague Cemetery, a novel by Umberto Eco
Bavarian Helles, by Horst Dornbusch
Strong Towns, by Charles Marohn
The Tragedy of Liberation, by Frank Dikkotter

Awaiting its tenure on the night stand is the annual blockbuster summertime novel, as calculated to simmer my brain in its own juices. I've never made it all the way through Ulysses, by James Joyce. Is this finally the year?

Musically, it hasn't been a great six months for The Kind of Music Roger Likes. I'm buying fewer CDs of new music, but listening to each of them more closely than before. If you can't go wide, go deep. Here they are, organized in two-month increments. Why? I can't remember.

Album releases 2020, May and June
Blossoms … Foolish Loving Spaces
Ocean Alley … Lonely Diamond
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever … Sideways to New Italy
*Sleaford Mods … All That Glue
Sparks … A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip
*The 1975 … Notes on a Conditional Form
The Used … Heartwork

Album releases 2020, March and April
Grouplove … Healer
*Rookie … Rookie

Album releases 2020, January and February
*Courteeners … More. Again. Forever.
*Titus Andronicus … An Obelisk (2019)
*White Reaper … You Deserve Love (2019)
Wussy … What Heaven Is Like (2018)

Movies and television?

C'mon, regulars readers should know better. However, we've been working our way through the ageless Rumpole of the Bailey canon and a few other British dramas. My memory is shaky, and I may have watched the Downton Abbey movie. If so, I plead excessive gin.

Ah, yes. Drinking, another of my self-defense mechanisms.

It has been strange in this regard, and no one is likely to believe me, but as a guesstimate, I've consumed perhaps half the alcohol in 2020 as I would have swallowed normally.

It isn't clear to me why, although one possible explanation is that I dislike being constantly self-incapacitated during an unprecedented public health crisis, all the while surrounded by sniveling racists, reckless drivers, Trump-co-vidiots, masturbatory nihilists and various other bad actors.

Facing up to my deep-seated anger while keeping relatively sober? Now THAT'S a tall order, and yet I've tried every other way. Maybe playing against type really is best. Fools give you reasons ... wise men never try.

R

---

Recent columns:

June 4: ON THE AVENUES: There, there. People are dying, so you may have to wait until 2021 for your pork chop sandwich.

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.

All this AND the Farmers Market, too? Gads, it really IS New Albany's turn Saturday to contribute to change.

Yesterday, this:

Wait -- I'm getting a pulse ... The Movement and Say Their Names, coming Saturday to NA.

Then, later in the day, the Hoosier Action poster above. Unfortunately I have little more firm information than what is written on it.

Update: the press release arrived Friday just after lunch: "We encourage our Floyd County members to join us tomorrow from 12 pm-2 pm for Together We Rise: Bridging the Gap Rally in New Albany at 311 Hauss Sq.:

Most of us believe that everyone should be able to live a full and healthy life, no matter what we look like or where we come from. But today, Black Hoosiers are under the dual threat of higher fatality from COVID and from police brutality. Throughout our history, brave Americans have joined together across race and place and taken to the streets risking their lives and their livelihoods. And, throughout our history the powers that be have found ways to divide us by casting doubts or sowing fear about our protests. We are encouraging our members to show up to protest not despite but rather because of COVID. We’re taking every possible precaution even as we understand that coming together means increasing our risks. Because we know that, in this moment, staying apart guarantees unacceptable outcomes for Black people. We are long overdue to rewrite the rules and retake our democracy and it is only by showing that the many are willing to stand up to the money that we have the power in numbers to get the care and respect everyone of us deserves.

Hoosier Action first came to our attention in 2017 when the group became involved with opposing Jeff Gahan's public housing putsch, and helping to organize We Are New Albany as a counterweight to the mayor's avarice-fueled imperialism.

Hoosier Action is a new project focused on building the political power of working families and individuals in the state of Indiana. Hoosier Action emphasizes robust community organizing, where campaigns are built around economic and social issues that impact people and communities across the region. Hoosier Action will work to increase voter participation, lift people out of poverty, and build a new political voice for the residents of Indiana who have been left on the margins.

Click here to view a few relevant posts from the period. Here's one of them.

THIS JUST IN: ‘We Are New Albany,’ a campaign to save the homes of more than 1,700 New Albany residents from planned demolition, will publicly launch on Thursday at 4:00 p.m. at the City-County Building.

I may be inferring a bit much, but it seems I recall reading that Hoosier Action's founder Kate Hess Pace, a native New Albanian, had moved back to town. The organization now has an office at 1015 E. Main, so perhaps I remember correctly.

So, we have not one or two, but three Black Lives Matters (peaceful) protests occurring somewhat within the same window on Saturday.

And one of them involves Hoosier Action, the mere mention of which is guaranteed to induce bunker-down heartburn for Dear Leader.

Taking it a step further, remember always that Louisville's Mayor Greg Fischer is New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan's turgid political idol. Fischer has acquitted himself HORRIBLY throughout the recent Black Lives Matter days. Will his eager apprentice do the same?

With three separate events planned for Saturday, will Gahan remain in the down-low bunker, playing whist with Squire Adam and Warren Naps?

Or, if the getting's good, will he appear with an envelope-armed retinue of HWC Engineering donors and take full credit for the peaceful gatherings?

Well, it's Hoosier Action, and Team Gahan has a very long memory. I predict Gahan will emerge from his lair wearing a mask suitable for the occasion.

Wait -- I'm getting a pulse ... The Movement and Say Their Names, coming Saturday to NA.

These two events are occurring almost simultaneously in New Albany on Saturday morning.

The Movement peaceful protest (above)
Say Their Names: Chalk the Sidewalk (below)

More than a few downtown New Albany businesses have expressed support for Black Lives Matters (generally) and these two events (specifically). More than one of these businesses has pledged to distribute water on Saturday morning, or to try to help in other ways.

It's highly instructive to contrast the overall positive, principled vibe of these two events with the predictable comments from those who (shall we say) "oppose" the principles being espoused therein.

Like these.

Shopkeeper: "You look thirsty. Here, have some water."

Angry specimen: "If that SHIT turns violent I blame YOU."

What a way to live.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: I suppose even the racists, fascists and bad actors need their own craft brewery.

Among other things, COVID-19 has proven to be the most effective (albeit inadvertent) truth serum of my lifetime.

The virus is especially effective at targeting and exploiting pre-existing conditions -- in the sense of an individual's physical health, but moreover, the mores and "mental" (British usage) condition of our society overall.

Consequently, given that the American brewing business at all levels, whether macro or craft, always has been (shall we say) "diverse" socially and politically, the coronavirus has made it easier than ever before to see whether your personal system of values is compatible with the brewery (or restaurant, cafe, diner, food truck, espresso stall or weenie stand) you patronize.

The equation need not be restricted to COVID, although it exposed more than a few local operators of the narcissistic anti-science persuasion. The truth serum extends to realities like Black Lives Matter, too.

Lots of folks have operated from the assumption that "craft" beer is left/liberal/progressive matter. They've been mistaken. It's never been quite that simple, and nor should we expect it to be. 

The Steam Hollow Brewing situation in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder has been a staple of the Twitter feed these past few days. Rather than attempt a summary in this space, allow me to redirect you to a site called Absolute Beer, where the story is told clearly and comprehensively.

As a side note, the owners having scrubbed their social media presence, it's not possible to check if they were science doubters during the COVID "lockdown" period. 

Steam Hollow Brewing Faces Backlash for Claiming George Floyd Murder was a Hoax

While millions of people around the country continue to mourn and speak out against last week’s police murder of Minneapolis resident George Floyd, systemic racism, and police brutality, one brewery in Illinois has taken a particularly controversial stance.

Natalie White, the co-owner of Steam Hollow Brewing, based in the small town of Manteno, stated on her Facebook page: “George Floyd isn’t dead, he is a porn star/actor who knows the officer, who isn’t even a real officer. Wake the f up.”

And down came that accursed statue -- Colston in Bristol UK ... and also Castleman in Fischerland KY.

Now we're getting somewhere: "Historic scenes were witnessed in Bristol over the weekend as Black Lives Matter protesters pulled down a controversial statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston and rolled the memorial into the city's harbour."

More here:

BLM protesters topple statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston, by Haroon Siddique and Clea Skopeliti (The Guardian)

Statue that had long been a focal point of local anger rolled down to harbour and pushed into the water

The historian David Olusoga compared the action to the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. However, the home secretary, Bobby Caesar Priti Patel, urged the police to respond. She told Sky News: “I think that is utterly disgraceful and that speaks to the acts of public disorder that have actually now become a distraction from the cause in which people are protesting about.”

And yes, Greg Fischer at last mustered the cojones to remove an inanimate Confederate statue, even if he hasn't yet managed much for living human constituents. It might be wise to hold the applause until we're certain Fischer isn't selling the "replacement sculpture" rights to Brown-Forman to erect a bourbon bottle on the spot.

Louisville Removes Controversial Statue Of John Breckinridge Castleman (NPR)

We've been here before ...

Reconstruction: "Democracy was subverted, and the human toll, however inexact, was enormous." Bye bye, Castleman and Prentice.

Even as we foresee the Champs-Ély-Jéffrey, Berlin "contends with street names of a brutal, overlooked past."

Statue removal? Yes, the Civil War was about slavery -- and I'm just fine with tracing it all the way back to the Founders. Now, let's all go read a book.

To defund police is not to abolish police. It is to reduce and reallocate police budgets.

Photo credit: Mother Jones.

From The Economist: (Order above the law) ... How to fix American policing. The country’s forces kill too many of those they serve. Here is how to change that.

Systemic racism does not mean that all officers are racists or bad people; it means that the system operates in a racially biased manner regardless of individual motivations.

Militarization and violence. Aren't they synonymous?

A paper by Jonathan Mummolo, a political scientist at Princeton, found that police militarisation fails to enhance public safety while also eroding public trust in the police.

That makes sense: military forces are designed to win wars, not trust. The army’s goals and those of the police differ. The army kills its enemies. Police are supposed to serve and protect Americans without violating their civil rights—and to face consequences for violating those rights.

Yet when it comes to killing, few officers face consequences.

Curative measures are a navigational challenge. Police unions are one such outcropping and courts, another.

With courts a narrow avenue for reform, some have started to advocate hitting law-enforcement agencies where it hurts: right in the budget. Advocates in at least 15 cities are waging campaigns to defund the police and use the money on other social services.

Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College professor and defunding advocate, says that people assume “the problem is that individual officers aren’t doing their jobs properly, when the problem really is that they have been asked to do too big a job.” Police have been asked to provide security in schools, respond to people’s mental-health crises and drug overdoses. “Policing is about use of force,” Mr Vitale explains. “It should be a last resort...We don’t want another community meeting with police. We want them out of our lives.”

Barry Friedman, who runs New York University’s Policing Project, has a simpler suggestion: clear legislation.

Rolling Stone provides a fine overview of what it actually means to "defund the police." To defund police is not to abolish police. It is to reduce and reallocate police budgets.

Consider the fact that four Minneapolis police officers responded to a 911 call that described a minor, nonviolent crime. “George Floyd is the perfect case to look at,” Garcia says. “What he was accused of — what the police were called for — was a nonviolent offense: trying to use a fake $20 bill. If we reduce the number of crimes that exist or repeal ordinances which are really bloated with nonviolent offenses that were created during Broken Windows, it will allow police to focus on violent crime — on the crimes where they are actually needed — instead of criminalizing the poor.”

Vaguely reminiscent of the intent of NA-FC schools and the recently rejected safety referendum, eh?

But many of the typical voter's objections apart from the impact on the pocketbooks of ratepayers centered on prevention as namby-pamby; we need more security, not counseling . How many people did I hear or read saying if the money covered armed police, high walls and padlocked gates, they'd be okay with it?

This brings us back to The Economist and another pressing issue.

Unlike most police forces elsewhere, American police patrol a heavily armed country. That can make their job dangerous—between 2000 and 2014, 2,445 died on duty, compared with just 25 in Britain. But police also return fire, killing around 1,000 people each year.

And the rub:

African-Americans are nearly three times likelier than whites to be killed by police. In fact, being killed by police is now the sixth-leading cause of death for young black men. African-Americans are likelier to be convicted, and serve longer sentences than whites convicted of the same crime; they comprise 13% of the adult population, but 33% of the imprisoned population.

Do Black Lives Matter? Team Gahan won't answer, but thankfully others aren't afraid to lead.

Say Their Names: Chalk the Sidewalks is coming to New Albany on June 13.

SoIN is taking a stand by saying the names of those violently killed by systemic oppression and racism. We will be meeting in the downtown areas of both New Albany and Jeffersonville to write the names of those killed as a reminder that we must not be silent and we must say their names. If you are unable to join us for the group event, please participate at your own home as you can. Chalk your sidewalks or driveways with their names.

We will not and must not be silent any longer.

For the New Albany location, we will meet at the corner of Spring and Pearl near the Bicentennial Park.

For the Jeffersonville location, we will meet at the base of the Big Four Bridge.

Good. It's about time for an awakening.

I think it's impressive and commendable that four of the five members of New Albany's Human Rights Commission (HRC)* are displaying admirable social conscience during these potentially transformational times.

Calle Janson (an organizer of Say Their Names), Paul Kiger, Jennifer Ortiz and Ken Brooks all can be viewed on their Facebook pages referencing Black Lives Matter and advocating ... well, for HUMAN RIGHTS. After all, it's why the commission is there, right?

The fifth member of the HRC is Warren Nash, whose public utterances recently have been confined to the usual semi-comprehensible partisan political sycophancy -- for the Democratic Party as well as the municipal administration for which he specializes in backroom fixes, envelope shuttling and the occasion snarl directed against modernity.

Sadly, it's easy to imagine Nash bringing the sidewalk chalking to the Board of Works and Safety for approval and deep editing.

Louisville's ever-shrinking Greg Fischer needs to resign. Nash desperately needs to retire. He is Miss Trixie to Jeff Gahan's Gus Levy (look it up).

The party itself has had almost nothing to say about events in America for the past two weeks. Neither has Gahan, nor any of the mayor's team. I cannot locate an example of an elected Democratic Party office holder in New Albany making a public utterance about social justice, BLM or any other topic that has dominated the national discourse recently.

They just dig deeper and deeper into the Down Low Bunker.

You'd think maybe councilman Greg Phipps would show signs of a pulse, given that he fancies himself the enabler of the HRC -- which has been crippled and hamstrung since its inception (and two re-inceptions) by the very same Democratic Party that enjoys taking credit for the commission just as long as it isn't visible.

To repeat: The Democratic Party controls New Albany. It is a profoundly propaganda-tainted conservative institution -- as I refer to it without a shred of satiric exaggeration as the DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party -- albeit with a good number of progressive-leaning individuals residing inside the party's ideological tent, who for whatever reason constantly defer to the Gahan/Nash elder regressive faction that amply keeps the pay-to-play wheels greased, but possess all the social conscience of a lump of clay.

Consequently, Black Lives Matter probably will come to Birdseye before it arrives at Hauss Square. Local Democrats are absolutely terrified of BLM -- not because of what IT is, but who THEY are ... and aren't.

---

The HRC's last available minutes are dated July 16, 2019

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.

Black Lives Matter? Here PAVING is what matters -- and NAWBANY WEEK IN REVIEW, presented by the GREEN MOUSE.

That's right. Corbin, Kentucky.

Good job, Corbin, Kentucky. By the way, do any of the pretend-progressives in Nawbany have a pulse?

Why The Small Protests In Small Towns Across America Matter, by Anne Helen Petersen (Buzz Feed)

People who’ve watched and participated in the Black Lives Matter movement say that this time feels different. And the prevalence of these small protests is one of many reasons why.

... All over the country, people are showing up — often for the first time in their lives — to protest police brutality and injustice. In tiny ag towns like Havre (Montana) and Hermiston, Oregon, but also in midsize cities Topeka, Kansas, and Waco, Texas; on island hamlets (Friday Harbor, San Juan Island; Nantucket, Massachusetts; Bar Harbor, Maine); and in well-to-do suburbs (Lake Forest Park, Washington; Darien, Connecticut; Chagrin Falls, Ohio). They are showing up at the courthouse. They are kneeling and observing eight minutes of silence — a reference to how long Floyd was pinned to the ground in a knee chokehold by the Minneapolis police officer who was later charged with his murder. They are marching down interstates and waving signs on street corners. Sometimes, like in the town of Alton, New Hampshire (population 5,335), where one woman organized a protest just two months after being hospitalized with COVID-19, only seven people come. Sometimes, like in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, there are thousands ...

... There have been protests in Belfast, Maine. In Farmington, New Mexico. In Tuscaloosa, Alabama. In Bentonville, Arkansas. In Lubbock, Texas. In Idaho Falls, Idaho. The biggest anyone can remember in Paducah, Kentucky, in Bozeman, Montana, in Pendleton, Oregon, in Frisco, Texas, and in Ogden, Utah. In Tacoma, Washington, pastors knelt in the rain, pleading with God. In Bowling Green, Kentucky, three rolling days of protests. In Owatonna, Minnesota, a student-led protest lasted for 10 hours. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, thousands gathered on the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre. In Myers Park, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Charlotte, North Carolina, where black people were prohibited from owning property for decades. And in Petal, Mississippi, where protesters have spent days calling for the resignation of Mayor Hal Marx, who tweeted last week that “If you can talk, you can breathe” ...

Here in the campaign finance paradise of New Gahania, we don't care shit for no damn revolution, because it's street sweeping season!

To which I answer:

Street “sweeping” should not be expanded. It should be ended. The physical process of “sweeping” is largely futile, and there is no United Nations storm water “law” stipulating dust cloud creation as a workable corrective to anything. Genuine drainage impediments like leaves and garbage barely are addressed by “sweeping.”

Until you've seen the townies on their front porches chasing Hostess doughnuts with iced tea and waving at the street sweeper drivers, you've no idea why people like Bob Caesar are elected to office.

Read more here:

ASK THE BORED (IN EXILE): It appears that street sweeping is suspended through April 7, although it should be eliminated altogether.

But there's more: The 4th of July on the 3rd of July is postponed!

New Albany postpones July 3 event following extension of public health emergency (at Hanson's Folly)

Well, at least there's still Harvest Homecoming ... what's that?

Nope. There'll be no waves of orange coursing through the streets this October, because New Albany's civic celebration also has fallen victim to pandemic public health logic. A very tough call for the committee, but absolutely the correct one.

Organizers cancel 2020 Harvest Homecoming Festival amid coronavirus pandemic (at WDRB)

And, there was a primary election and less than 25% of us bothered. This being a presidential year, the voter turnout percentage will increase tremendously in November, and Donald Trump probably will win Floyd County again.

In the interim, the big news out of the primary was the NA-FC school corporation's safety referendum defeat, by a margin of around 5%. Consequently, let's get something straight: Black Lives DO Matter, the COVID pandemic is absolutely real, street sweeping is a horrendous boondoggle, and Van Hagar was better than Van Halen.

Taking all this into consideration, do you really believe the Green Mouse has anything to say at all in the nature of a post-mortem about the referendum?

That'd be plain dangerous. Following are a few headlines.

What budgetary crisis? Nawbany nickel-and-dimes 50K for the homeless, then awards $2.2 million in tax abatements for Sazarac NOD.

LIVE TO EAT: Those new clothes you're wearing, well, they're a tad threadbare. That's regrettable.

Councilman Phipps' future council meeting emergency reduction resolution is another Team Gahan mess. Can it be tossed out with the rubbish?

Floyd County DemoDisneyDixiecrats issue courageously mundane statement about racism, then return to fundraising.

Trump's biblical photo op? It was American history in a nutshell.

The Economist believes America's chronic anger has led to this violent juncture. That's surely true. But where does the anger come from? It makes sense for the downtrodden to be angry. But why the people who have so much? That's level of fear that's hard to fathom.

'How did we get here?': Trump has normalised mayhem and the US is paying the price, by Julian Borger (The Guardian)

The sheer tumult of the Trump era, the unceasing torrent of events that were unthinkable even hours before, has left a nation constantly off balance, unable to find its bearing and grasp how far it has traveled.

The developments of the past 24 hours were a reminder of how slippery the downward slope has been.

More than a hundred thousand Americans are dead from a pandemic after the government’s botched response; there are armoured cars and troops outside Washington metro stations; men in combat gear carrying sniper rifles were seen perched in the open door of a helicopter flying low over the commercial district. A military chopper buzzed a crowd of demonstrators so close to the ground they were buffeted around by the wind from the rotor, a dispersal technique learned in counter-insurgencies abroad.

On Monday, an entirely peaceful protest was driven out of a city square in front of the White House with teargas, baton charges and mounted police, so Trump could pose in front of a church with a Bible.

A priest and a seminarian, who had been distributing water and hand sanitizer to protesters from the steps of St John’s Episcopal, were driven away by police with helmets and riot shields to create an uncluttered tableau. A Bible was procured for Trump from inside the church for him to hold aloft. Journalists asked if it was his Bible. “It’s a Bible,” he replied.

The rate of fresh affronts has often outpaced the capacity to digest – or even describe – them ...

Stick a fork in Fischer. He's done.

I tried to watch Greg Fischer's live comments this morning. No, really. I tried mightily to maintain composure as one mealy-mouthed evasion followed another on the heels of each previous abdication of responsibility.

A self-satisfied imperial mayor, grand poobah of "bourbonism" (the word's OTHER meaning is political conservatism), now reduced to listlessly (rubber) bullet-pointing all the reasons why he is pathetic and powerless.

Apparently the police and national guard sent themselves to assault the citizenry, and if so -- if the mayor isn't responsible and can't do anything about it -- then what's the reason for him being in this office in the first place?

Exactly what is the reason for having such an office, if it isn't to be used? After all, we can eat ham and drink bourbon and wear Derby hats on our own, without Fischer's involvement.

It's tempting to say that when the good times roll, it's easy to make a big show of pretending to lead, but the fact eluding Fischer and his supporters is the illusory nature of those "good times."

They weren't, at least not for everyone; Fischer and Louisville's vapid "leadership" caste couldn't be bothered to address a multitude of societal problems before the explosion, and now have no way to address any of it apart from empty platitudes testifying primarily to their fundamental absence of principle and character.

If Fischer had any such self-knowledge, he'd resign in sheer embarrassment. That's how badly he's botched this. It won't happen, but it damn well should.

(The photo depicts Fischer -- to the right -- at a Floyd County DemoDisneyDixiecratic function a few years back, gladhanding with CM Greg Phipps. In the context of my thoughts here, it's worth remembering that Fischer is Mayor Jeff Gahan's political idol.)

LIVE TO EAT: Those new clothes you're wearing, well, they're a tad threadbare. That's regrettable.

I was working on this post when a notice from my former business popped up on social media feeds.

Good for them.

Pints&union will return next Tuesday, June 9. In exactly what format is, as yet, unknown.

I know it's frivolous to be writing much of anything without acknowledging the Black Lives Matter protests taking place in Louisville, just a few miles from my house. To me they're entirely justified protests, and government's response has been horrendous. Mayor Greg Fischer is underwater, and should resign.

This said, it has been utterly fascinating to see which local food service operators have spoken up about the protests -- during which admired BBQ chef David McAtee was killed by police -- and which have continued hawking their wares on the street corner as though nothing important was occurring, just as they were doing following the pandemic reopening period, as though science had been a ghastly imposition the previous months.

By the way, it may surprise you to learn that COVID-19 did not agree to take a holiday amid the unrest.

Yes, there is a considerable schism within the ranks of local restaurateurs. It was there before, albeit more hidden than not, and kept in check by commonalities and shared experiences. There always were narcissists on one-side and the public minded on another; the coronavirus then pulled back the curtain, and now protests for simple human injustice have sealed the deal.

And yet, in spite of it all, I retain a certain loyalty to the segment, if not some of the less defensible bad actors populating it. I'm not "outing" anyone; they've outed themselves, and I'm confident that lots of folks who "get it" can "see it" clearly without me pointing.

However, speaking for myself alone, it's just not going to be possible for me to be close with some of them any longer. It's going to be difficult for me to patronize them. I intend to keep it to myself, but some of the shrillness and superstition masquerading as public health (and justice for all) have been repugnant.

History sometimes offers us the chance to stand up and be counted. Some restaurateurs are seizing this moment, others not so much. I wish there weren't a scorecard now, but it's there. I can't NOT look at it.

My friend and boss Joe Phillips is on the right side of history.

And here:

Why some restaurants are keeping their doors closed in states that have reopened, despite backlash, by Ashlie Stevens (Salon)

“I have a huge problem with people choosing profit over people. And I would rather go bankrupt"

At Pints & Union, a pub in New Albany, Ind., a skeleton crew readies for a rush of Saturday evening to-go orders. Save the sounds of that kitchen prep, it doesn't feel much like a restaurant anymore. The smell of beer has been replaced by the smell of bleach, while the wooden booths have long been sanitized and subsequently covered in plastic. Occasionally, a pedestrian tries to open the bright red front door —rattling it against its navy frame — but it's been locked for weeks.

Takeout orders are now called into the restaurant and paid for via phone; once they are ready and the customer is outside, only then is the door briefly opened by a masked and gloved employee who places the carryout bag on a small table nearby to be retrieved.

According to owner Joe Phillips, this is the way Pints & Union is going to operate for the foreseeable future as a way to prevent the continued spread of the novel coronavirus. This is despite the fact that Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb cleared all restaurants in the state (save those in three "hotspot" counties: Marion, Lake, and Cass) to open at 50% capacity as of May 4.

"There's a lack of testing in southern Indiana," Phillips said. "There's only one place you can get tested locally — it's the health department — and it's only open on Saturdays from 11 to 1, and you have to have symptoms. So no one is getting tested."

However, in late March, the chief medical officer at Baptist Health in New Albany called Floyd County, in which the city is located, a "hotspot for the coronavirus" after over 20 people tested positive.

The amount of unknowns about the virus and its spread is, Phillips said, his largest deterrent against reopening.

"I have a huge problem with people choosing profit over people," Phillips said. "And I would rather go bankrupt."