Did you know that former major leaguer Dave Collins was a bench coach for IU Southeast?

Plague virus has finished sports for the time being, but here's a local baseball tidbit that didn't seem to be widely reported except right here in the IUS Horizon, the IU Southeast student newspaper.

However, the headline is a head-scratcher. I think they meant to say "five decades." 

Former major leaguer Dave Collins brings over a decade of baseball wisdom to IU Southeast, by Brandon Miniard

Coach Collins helps Grenadiers deal with mental aspect of baseball

Dave Collins still remembered the first time he walked into a big league clubhouse in 1975, just having recently been called up from Triple-A Salt Lake City. One of the players he saw was a pitcher who wore number 30 for the California Angels, a future hall-of-famer by the name of Nolan Ryan. That was when he knew that he had made it to the major leagues.

“One of the guys I looked up to so much as a kid was Nolan Ryan, and here’s Nolan Ryan in the same locker room with me,” Collins said. “So it was hard for me to picture me being in the same locker room with him.”

The Angels were the first of eight teams that Collins played for over a 16-year playing career. During that time, the switch-hitting outfielder posted a career line of .272/.338/.351, hitting 32 home runs with 373 RBI and 395 stolen bases.

After his playing career concluded, Collins coached at all levels from high school to the Major Leagues, his latest stop being the bench coach for the IUS baseball team.

Old farts like me remember things like this: The 1977 Dave Collins Card.

Once I really became a “baseball nerd”, where I recognized player faces to the point of ridicule by my friends, I always stared at the 1977 Topps Dave Collins card, convinced it wasn’t actually him on that card.

It wasn’t until years later that I found out for sure, and that it was Bobby Jones and NOT the former speedster that was staring out onto the field on that slab of cardboard released when I was eight-years old.

Yep, me too, although I was 17. Here's a better view of Collins at the time, because it's really him.

Soon after this Collins was playing for the Reds, and that was the end of the mustache. He excelled at a baseball skill which has gone the way of Burma Shave signs, namely base stealing.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: An "away" game at IU Southeast (my beer chat for the Institute for Local and Oral History).

It is highly flattering for the newspaper at one's alma mater -- a Latin phrase literally translated as "nourishing mother" -- to send a reporter when he offers a lunchtime beer chat ... without beer.

Thanks to Logan Stephens of the IUS Horizon for his coverage, and also to Dr. Elizabeth Gritter for the invitation. I was rusty, but covered the main areas and got them to hit the ball on the ground. With just a bit of polishing, the starting rotation beckons.

Beer expert Roger Baylor speaks about the history of beer in New Albany during IUS visit

Roger Baylor and his knowledge of beer were on full display during his visit to IU Southeast on Thursday, Feb. 27. Baylor discussed the history of beer in New Albany and the surrounding Kentuckiana area during the event.

Baylor has been in the beer business for decades. He recently departed from New Albanian Brewing Company after 25 years. He said he likes to refer to himself as “The Beer Guy” due to his vast knowledge and experience in the beer industry.

The event, presented by The Institute for Local and Oral History, was free for all IUS students, staff and faculty. It allowed them to learn about the history of beer in the area as well as how prohibition affected the local breweries ...

ON THE AVENUES: Until philosophers become kings, beer and food work just fine.

Forever grateful to those readers who examine this column on a weekly basis, allow me to offer an update about the columnist's life.

Since 2005 I've been writing beer columns (and lately the occasional restaurant feature) for Food & Dining Magazine. A few weeks back came the opportunity to provide several short web site posts each week in addition to the quarterly contributions. To be succinct, this suits me. Naturally there is a learning curve, and each day I'm exposed to something new and useful.

Pints&union will be one year old on August 1, and as the beer programmer I've settled into a routine. My expanded responsibilities at Food & Dining constitute a second layering of duties, suggesting closer attention to time management than I've generally been able to muster during my life as an adult. These days I'm wagering that old dogs can learn new tricks.

Departing the New Albanian Brewing Company in 2015 wasn't merely stepping away from a job. It brought to a close almost three decades of this business defining my life. I had no way of knowing that the legal settlement would take two and a half years to facilitate, and little notion of the length of time required to cobble together a post-brewery career.

At this precise moment four years later, it's coming into view. Retrospection is the process of thinking about past events. There is a necessary condition to wax retrospectively, namely sufficient time to gain perspective, and consequently it seems as if I now possess a four-year degree in adaptive reuse -- of myself.

But the reason why today's column is from April 30, 2015 and not July 25, 2019 is because I'm on deadline to complete two pieces for Food & Dining's forthcoming issue, a beer column about Saisons and a feature on Bourbons Bistro. 

As always, thanks for reading and your thoughts are appreciated.

---

ON THE AVENUES: Until philosophers become kings.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Last Thursday I had the great pleasure to take a break from New Albany’s trials and tribulations and spend the day and night in Lexington, Kentucky, as the guest of Transylvania University’s philosophy department.

To be sure, there have been times in the past when Lexington wouldn’t have seemed such a savory destination for an overnight pleasure trip.

After all, I was raised in Southern Indiana, and college basketball naturally prefigured the rural moral (and genetic) code: Indiana University in Bloomington was the beneficent locale of the grail, while the University of Kentucky represented a snarling, lowdown devil. I imagine it wasn’t easy for my mother, who was a UK graduate living in a small Hoosier burg, and subject to commensurate suspicion.

Of course, it’s all bunk, and the whole point of the exercise is to show the many possibilities for mankind’s advancement, from primitive sporting totems and rituals all the way through reading actual books.

I’d been warming to Lexington for a long time, even before February of 2014, when the University of Kentucky hosted a symposium on craft beer writing. I was fortunate to be numbered among the speakers, and the experience was very rewarding.

One of the symposium’s perquisites was a pub crawl with a van and designated driver, and that’s when it became clear to me that Lexington is a fine beer and food city, with cultural enclaves, shops and historic neighborhoods for wandering, even if the prevailing one-way street grid is maddeningly archaic and begs for immediate jettisoning.

Anyway, when Professor of Philosophy Peter Fosl suggested I come visit, it was just a matter of coordinating calendars.

---

Transylvania University is among the nation’s oldest institutions of higher learning. For those like me who persist in associating the name with Count Dracula’s purported home base in Romania, the Latin roots are precisely the same: “Across the woods,” which in this specifically American sense means west of the Alleghenies. Prior to Kentucky’s statehood, it was called the Transylvania Colony, and belonged to Virginia.

My wife Diana accompanied me, and we arrived before noon, parking the car at the Gratz Park Inn. It was a short, pleasant walk to Peter’s office. His typically small and book-filled work space reminded me that there had been a time in my life when I assumed teaching would be my ultimate career choice, once I got around to making one.

It never happened. So it goes. There’s always professional drinking.

My eyes immediately were drawn to a framed event poster of Christopher Hitchens’s speaking appearance at Transylvania University in 2004. It was Peter’s doing, and he said that Hitchens, who remains one of my personal heroes of writing, was a model among high-profile visitors to the campus, accepting a lower than usual fee and volunteering his whole day to various activities rather than merely speaking and running.

Hitchens also stayed in the Gratz Park Inn. Granted, I’m a bush leaguer compared with Hitchens, and yet the symmetry was appreciated, and a degree of separation now has been shaved.

Peter had arranged for me to meet with philosophy majors over lunch at Transylvania’s cafeteria, the overall excellence of which conjured unsettling thoughts of the available “food service” during my own college days at IU Southeast. I certainly hope it’s better there now.

Later in the day, there was a faculty reception at the home of the humanities division chair. I concocted an impromptu beer tasting from selections they’d thoughtfully provided, including NABC and local Lexington breweries (West Sixth, Country Boy and Alltech). There was ample time to explore on foot the Lexington neighborhood around Transylvania, including the West Sixth and Blue Stallion breweries.

---

Getting back to my real reason for being there, Peter wanted me to share my experiences as a philosophy major in the real world, and honestly, it probably helped me as much as it did the students I met at lunch.

As the years roll past, it’s easy to forget the epiphanies and milestones that helped make us what we are today. For me, one of these was IU Southeast and my path to a Bachelor of Arts degree, with a major in philosophy.

My father’s goal for my post-high school career was for me to be awarded an athletic scholarship. This idea was a laughable non-starter, as I possessed considerably more skill as a clubhouse lawyer than an athlete. Eventually, out of sheer inertia, it was concluded that a semester or two at IU Southeast might lead me in a direction -- and boy, did it, though my parents probably regarded it as the proverbial wrong turn at Albuquerque.

My life in academia began with miserable failure, and I’d have flunked out entirely after a semester if not for my advisor’s suggestion of Introduction to Philosophy, a discipline he was unable to describe or explain, but recommended because after all, I’d be compelled to gather a few humanities credits for the core no matter what major eventually was to be declared – or branch of the military joined.

The instructor was an adjunct faculty member by the name of McCarthy, who by the standards of New Albany, circa 1978, was a veritable space alien who excelled in computer programming, of all things. In fact, before the semester was over, he’d gotten a job working with computers in New York State, and was given special dispensation to commute to New Albany for improvised weekend class sessions. One of them took place at the long defunct Leno’s restaurant.

But before all of that, we gathered at a classroom in Hillside Hall, and Prof. McCarthy greeted us with a warning, which I now paraphrase:

“Welcome to Philosophy 101. If you’ve chosen the university experience as a means of compiling a perfect 4.0 GPA, then I recommend you drop this class and choose another, because I do not award perfect scores. There is no such thing as perfection, and if you disagree with me, be prepared to argue your case logically. It won’t matter, because you’ll still not receive an A for this class. Would anyone like to discuss the nature of perfection?”

I was hooked. After all, it might prove to be my only class where a B was possible, much less perfection, and I was all too acutely aware of my own imperfections.

Coincidentally, a push was underway to begin a full-fledged philosophy program at IU Southeast, and soon I met Dr. Curtis Peters, a Minnesotan-turned-New Albanian who sold me on the idea of majoring in philosophy.

In 1982, I became the first IU Southeast philosophy graduate to amass all the necessary course credits while attending the New Albany campus, compiling a cumulative GPA in the vicinity of 3.0, thus handily proving the McCarthy axiom’s innate wisdom. I promptly set about answering the question, “What does a philosophy degree get you?”

For me, it was the opportunity to be a bartender, work in a package store, substitute teach and work numerous other less enriching part-time jobs in route to my eventual way station in the restaurant and brewing business.

However, as should be obvious by now, a philosophy degree has not ever been about specific vocational training. Rather, it is about learning how to think, and yet even this standard falls short in explaining the impact on me.

Philosophy reveals the primacy of knowledge itself, something not unexpectedly absent from high school, where I skated through, almost entirely unchallenged save by a handful of teachers who saw something in me that I didn’t, or couldn’t, grasp. Bookish and introspective by nature, there wasn’t much added reinforcement to high school for me.

Beginning with McCarthy’s introductory philosophy class at IU Southeast, it was like the clichéd light bulb’s illumination: Ideas really existed, and they actually mattered. Ideas had systems, and mankind would be living in metaphorical mud without them. Philosophy taught me how to think, and moreover – perhaps most importantly of all – that it was okay to think. Only then did I realize that high school choir and a brief foray into theater taught me more about life than playing competitive team sports. Muscle tone pertains to the brain, too.

These many years later, have I always live up to the promise of these youthful intellectual ideals?

Of course not. I’m human, and sometimes metaphorical mud wrestling in the marketplace of venom, if not ideas, is a great deal more fun. It remains that the study of philosophy opened my mind and changed me for the better. It cannot and probably should not be the primary course of study for all university students, but it wouldn’t hurt to be an elective for most.

Thanks to Peter, Jack and everyone at Transylvania University for a timely opportunity to re-examine my premises.

---

Recent columns:

July 18: ON THE AVENUES: I'm a citizen of the universe, but I can't take a photo to save my life.

July 11: ON THE AVENUES: Trieste, New Albany and the meaning of nowhere.

July 4: ON THE AVENUES: The 2019 remix, "You want some fries with your redevelopment?"

June 27: ON THE AVENUES: Mourning (and alcohol) in America, circa 1984.

Jennifer Ortiz wants the HRC to educate, and that's needed. She'd best start with the Democratic Party's ideological gatekeeper, Père Nash.

The mayor's vision.

Make no mistake: Appointee Jennifer Ortiz has the right ideas in terms of the Human Rights Commission's potential outreach, and it's to be hoped she succeeds in implementing them.

At the same time, she'll be receiving zero assistance from the local Democratic hierarchy, which fears an HRC it can't control and is fully aware of its own myriad failures when it comes to human rights.

The public housing takeover springs immediately to mind, and the bullying of city employees, and ... campaign finance donor rights matter, too. 

ON THE AVENUES: As long as the Democratic hierarchy keeps the Human Rights Commission under its thumb, it's hard to be optimistic.

Here's a fun fact, to which previous Human Rights Commission appointees will attest, because when the HRC was re-animated a few years back and began discussing ways to publicize and promote its activities, Mayor Jeff Gahan's team let it be known in no uncertain terms that human rights were to be seen, not heard.

It's also ironic that IU Southeast generally is ignored as a community asset, but now has two faculty members on a (currently) five-member board (40%), with another having returned from the gloaming of self-exile to yet again take credit for a commission which only a year ago he'd loudly and publicly "washed his hands" of responsibility.

Has anything substantive changed in a year, apart from the mid-term election drawing closer?

We live in strange, theatrical times.

Having discarded the Human Rights Commission like a used prophylactic, local ruling Democrats fell in love with it all over again when Republicans began the HRC's overdue resuscitation. 

Mayor and party chairman can't have THAT, can they? The blue squad wants to be seen wielding human rights like a savage club, one to be waved menacingly at Republicans, only to be made of foam rubber and generally shoved under the couch for safe keeping.

Good luck, Professor Ortiz. You're going to need it.

Jennifer Ortiz to join New Albany Human Rights Commission, by Steven Krolak (IUS)

 ... In her new role, Ortiz intends to help the HRC become more well known.

“Although the commission was created to respond to complaints of discrimination, I think it is equally important to educate people about the variety of cultures that exist in New Albany,” Ortiz said.

To that end, she is developing ideas for events to commemorate and celebrate various diversity holidays and remembrance days.

This effort also has a practical application that speaks to the commission’s more focused intent.

“Because many people don’t know that the commission exists, it is possible that there are incidents that go unreported,” Ortiz said. “If we don’t know what the problems are, we can’t address them” ...

R.I.P. Bernardo "Bernie" Carducci: "Colorful, outgoing, bigger than life and one of a kind."

I never took a psychology course after high school, and yet it was hard to miss Bernie -- playing intramural basketball, giving him a hard time for drinking Budweiser, among the IUS professors at the Public House, over cigars at Kremer's, discussing his Italian heritage fests, and so forth.

The list never ends. Bernie was an amazing showman, but here's the thing: just about all of it was in the service of learning.

That's the real point, isn't it?

Carducci, iconic psychology professor, dies, by Shannon Greer (The Horizon)

Editors’ note: We have learned the Bernie Carducci, emeritus professor of psychology, died on Saturday, Sept. 22. As we learn more as the week progresses, we will share additional details. In the meantime, we republish this story from September 2017 written on the announcement of his retirement.

Colorful, outgoing, bigger than life and one of a kind. These are all ways that former students and colleagues describe Bernardo “Bernie” Carducci, an IU Southeast psychology professor of 37 years who announced his retirement this summer.

4 shows for only 65 bucks: The Louisville Orchestra's 2018-2019 Neighborhood Series at the Ogle Center.

I've already re-upped our subscription for the forthcoming Louisville Orchestra four-pack at the Paul W. Ogle Center. For music fans, this package is one of the most overlooked entertainment bargains in New Albany, bar none.

For most New Albanians, it's only minutes to campus of Indiana University Southeast on the north side (4201 Grant Line Road), where the parking for these shows is free. The venue is excellent and intimate; your view of the orchestra will be up close and personal.

Here's the schedule, and tickets are available at the LO's web site.

KENTUCKY STRINGS
SAT 13 OCT 2018 | 7:30PM

1812 OVERTURE
SAT 19 JAN 2019 | 7:30PM

AN EVENING IN ITALY
SAT 2 MAR 2019 | 7:30PM

WILLIAM TELL
and OTHER OVERTURES
SUN 14 APR 2019 | 3PM

10 years ago today, Barack Obama was in New Albany.

I hadn't yet joined Facebook, Bank Street Brewhouse didn't exist, and Doug England had only just started his third (and final) term as mayor of New Albany.

It was April 23, 2008, and presidential candidate Barack Obama was in New Albany, Indiana. Not only did Obama go on to become the first ever African-American president, but he even won the state of Indiana in the general election that November.

In short, it was a thousand years ago.

---

Today in New Albany: Barack Obama and a full house.


Barack Obama was in New Albany today, appearing for a "town hall" meeting in the Activities Building at Indiana University Southeast. I took a few photos, few of which are presentable.


Progressive Pints were absent, but so was good ol' country cookin', so it was a wash in that department.


There's going to be an Obama event at the Public House on Saturday afternoon. Since the event is still being organized, I can't tell you any more at this point. Stay tuned.

---

And a follow-up from April 24, 2008.

---

Far better photos from yesterday's Obama visit to New Albany.


That's because I didn't take them. They're either by an anonymous donor or TS. First up is an excellent view of Floyd County party chairman Randy Stumler.


The remainder are of the guest Senator from Illinois. Pick Barack, or select Hillary, but one thing's crystal clear: The GOP catastrophe of eight years running bears immediate correction. Show trials, anyone?

THE BEER BEAT: Your brain on coursework, or expanding the mind one pint at a time.

Just a few weeks ago, I happily contributed a segment to the IU Bicentennial Oral History Project.

I am the student worker of Dr. Elizabeth Gritter. Dr. Gritter is a Professor of History and Director of the Institute for Local and Oral History at IU Southeast. She is also supervising the IUS Campus Oral History Project, which is a part of the larger IU Bicentennial Oral History Project that is being done as a way to commemorate IU's upcoming bicentennial in 2020. For this project, we are conducting oral history interviews of faculty, staff, and alumni who have been a part of the IU Southeast community to learn about their experiences at the school. These interviews are then archived at the libraries at both IU Southeast and IU Bloomington.

It might help to know that from 1978 through 1982, I attended IU Southeast in New Albany. Somehow I emerged from there with a Bachelors of Arts degree (majoring in philosophy) and an impending career of It's Anyone's Guess (majoring in beer).

Majoring in beer?

Evidently. At one point in the oral history interview, I paused for breath following a rambling recollection of perhaps ten minutes' duration, all of it spent detailing fake IDs, Mario's Pizza, the family room at Steinert's, 4-for-1 Thursday nights at the Troubadour -- though omitting the famous case of Wiedemann smuggled into (and out of) the fraternity office via a trumpet case during the campus chemical cloud lockdown -- suddenly aware of my inability to remember anything substantive about any of my classes.

Or what happened to the trumpet.

1981.

I'm exaggerating, but only because even with the widespread availability of dirt-cheap rotgut beer, I couldn't possibly afford to stay drunk my entire college career.

Look, I know there have been times in my life when I drank too much, and college was one of them. I'm neither proud nor apologetic about the daze back in those days. It just was. My grade point average was B-ish, and there wasn't going to be a lucrative tenure in nuclear physics or municipal economic development waiting for me. At times, maybe we all get what we need.

By the way, here's a link. It may even be relevant.

E = mc^2 … and make mine a pint while you’re there, by Tim Adams (The Guardian)

A Cambridge professor forgets that a glass or two can expand the mind with amazing results

Some university professors have always made it their mission to keep their students out of the pub. Professor Eugene Terentjev, head of science at Queens’ College, Cambridge, last week provided a spectacular example of this impulse, in a note sent to his new intake of undergraduates who, he had observed, like a drink.

Professor Terentjev’s letter ran as follows: “Please be careful how you handle yourselves here; remember you are NOT at any other uni, where students do drink a lot and do have what they regard as a ‘good time’ – and you are NOT on a course, as some Cambridge courses sadly are, where such a behaviour pattern is possible or acceptable. Physical sciences is a VERY hard subject, which will require ALL of your attention and your FULL brain capacity (and for a large fraction of you even that will not be quite enough)… People who just TAKE the course, but enjoy their social life, can easily survive in many subjects, but not in this one…”

Because: your damned brain. Skipping ahead, it's delightful to learn that contemporary studies provide support for the notion of working a bit, then relaxing with the gang at a clean, well-lighted place.

Another apparent misconception in the professor’s remarks – that any kind of enjoyable social life would make it impossible to survive his course – sounded even more wrongheaded. We live in a country high in European league tables for working hours, and low in terms of productivity. Those habits are often ingrained in an education and exam culture that prioritises grind over balance. Bertrand Russell’s famous contention that human brains are capable of no more than four hours a day of serious concentration, and that the rest is best spent idling, is borne out in much of the recent science.

Recent studies of work suggest that all productivity declines sharply after 50 hours a week and that the most productive brains need about 20 minutes of inactivity for every useful hour. Crucially, the longitudinal studies show that the single key component of an engaged and productive life is the ability to forge and maintain strong friendship groups. Everything else flows from that.

Perhaps college taught me lots about pub culture, even if I didn't connect all the dots at the time.

Interim executive housing director Duggins eagerly welcomes student nurses to Riverview Tower.

I never said Jeff Gahan's left-hand man had any idea what nursing means, although in precisely two years from today, we can rectify this.

As for Duggins' plan to staff the tower with Cosmo models nurses, the 1st district councilman has issued this statement.

In New Albany, the satire writes itself.

IUS public health nursing lab to locate in Riverview Tower, by Elizabeth Beilman (Advertising Is the Best News of All)

NAHA hopes program to educate residents, too

NEW ALBANY — The unused top floor of Riverview Tower, a New Albany Housing Authority complex, will be converted to a learning space for Indiana University Southeast public nursing students.

Skyview Collaboratory and Wellness Center will host patient simulation rooms with two-way mirrors, where Housing Authority residents and potentially IUS theater students could get paid to role play as patients.

Judy Myers, IUS Public Health Nursing Program coordinator, believes this kind of collaboration with the Housing Authority is unique in the United States.

Public health nursing focuses on preventative health care in at-risk populations, often through visits in patients' homes.

Campaign 101 Workshop at IU Southeast on Saturday, November 18.

(Update: note the revised e-mail registration address above, meddy@leadershipsi.org)

My Leadership Southern Indiana 2017 classmate Chris Loop has taken the lead (pun intended) in assembling this non-partisan workshop for aspiring candidates.

Please spread the word about this great event. This is a FREE informational workshop for anyone who is thinking of running for office and needs some guidance on where to start.

If you're contemplating a run for office -- and especially if you'll be competing as an independent candidate, seeing as we have no party structure for assistance -- this FREE workshop could be very useful.

About that Friday evening in March with Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra at the Ogle Center.

Last night we went to IU Southeast and attended the Louisville Orchestra's performance at the Ogle Center. It was wonderful, but first, a few bars of history.

There was a time during the 1990s, extending into the early twos, when I knew about the LO primarily from being pals (and having beers) with Sid King, who played double bass with the orchestra at the time.

Sid had various dealings with the music department at IU Southeast, where I attended university. The fact of my existence as owner/bartender testified to the power of the philosophy degree pinned to the wall nearest the Guinness tap.

Sid came into the Public House often (though judiciously, of course, and sometimes he even ate food). He brought his musician friends, and this led to the unprecedented cultural phenomenon of the Butt-head Bass Quartet's annual Christmas shows, which is a topic for another time.

They're good memories. Sid and I used to have long chats about the importance of bringing "formal" music to the masses where they drink, riffing on the notion of Paganini standing atop a table in a dive somewhere in Europe two centuries ago and orchestrating happy hour with his bow.

We never got around to implementing any of these ideas, but that's the nature of pub chat, and the point of this digression is to celebrate the LO's creative outreach into the community by playing venues such as the Ogle Center.

The craziness of my existence has abated to an extent that we're able to get back into a routine when it comes to the LO's performances, and while it's certainly not far to drive to downtown Louisville for music, the hop to IU Southeast is even quicker. It reinforces my undergraduate experience there, long before the Ogle Center was built, and it reminds me of the 1990s with Sid and the pub.

Last evening's program was entertaining and educational. The full orchestra opened with Mozart's overture from The Magic Flute (premiered in 1791), and closed with Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1, known as the Classical Symphony (1918).

The dates are important, because while the milieu of Mozart justifies the "classical" shorthand, Prokofiev's symphony is said to have been written in a classical style, but during the "modern" era -- or, as a "neo-classical" work.

One needn't know the difference to enjoy the music. As a pedant, I like learning the differences because it helps me enjoy the music even more. Of course, you're free to close your eyes and be transported to any happy place you like.

Between Mozart and Prokofiev, the LO broke down into sections and performed music intended to showcase brass, woodwinds and strings. This was a delightful opportunity to hear the nuances brought by individual instruments to the sum total of the collective.

Conductor Teddy Abrams noted that only percussion didn't get a star turn, but I rectified this upon returning home by going to YouTube and watching one of the "Neil Peart in isolation" videos.

I especially appreciated Abrams' effort to explain the universal appeal of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, which I've always regarded as the finest eulogy ever, to be played during the pause just before the world ends and the cosmic video screen dissolves to test pattern.

Somber, yes; but also uplifting.

The Adagio is something you feel, and it doesn't matter whether the feelings it engenders can be described with mere words. My mother died two weeks ago, and at some point I looked at the LO's program for the show we'd scheduled before she left, and saw the Adagio listed.

It wouldn't have been her kind of music, not exactly, but Barber's work certainly qualifies as precisely the sort of lamentation and celebration that I needed after her Thursday visitation service, on a Friday evening at the Ogle Center, thinking about life's joys and sorrows and long it's been since Sid and I had a beer together.

When all the threads start weaving themselves and there's music to make sense of the loom -- these are the best times of a all.

For a brief time on Thursday night at IU Southeast, Altan took us to County Donegal -- and Sláinte to that.

The band Altan played a concert at IU Southeast last night.

Chancellor Ray Wallace, now a naturalized US citizen but a born and bred native of Northern Ireland, particularly seemed to be enjoying himself. Undoubtedly I join him in lamenting the absence of Guinness from the numerous jigs and reels. There'd have been more dancing in the aisles with Irish elixir than without it.

Most of us immediately recognize Altan's music as Irish, although throughout the band's 30-year career, its members always have reminded audiences that their aim is to play music from where they were born and raised, in County Donegal.

Let's undertake a video digression to better understand what this specific reference means, but first, a map of Ireland.

County Donegal is shaded dark green in northwestern corner of the island, bordering Northern Ireland. Going all the way back to when I first visited Ireland in 1985, rugged Donegal was described with reverence as offering the Republic's most spectacular natural setting, as well as being the region where Gaelic was spoken by the greatest number of inhabitants.

In the context of native Irish Catholic history, English-speaking Protestantism was a colonial enterprise on the part of the British. The process of assimilation began on the island's eastern side, and over time, pushed "traditional" Ireland to more isolated western coastal areas.

This is why Declan Ganley makes a direct association between Irish poverty and emigration, and the situation in these regions. In many cases what's beautiful to behold as a visitor tells us little about the difficulty of life there.

Ganley speaks standard British English, with little trace of an Irish accent. For a taste of Gaelic, there's this.

The Gaelic tongue brings us full circle to Altan, the band from County Donegal. Group co-founder Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh plays fiddle and sings; sadly, her husband and bandmate Frankie Kennedy died in 1994.

The other fiddler is Ciarán Tourish, whose cousin Martin Tourish plays accordion. The guitarist is Dáithí Sproule, and Ciarán Curran plays bouzouki, which is a Greek instrument not usually found in Irish music. If there is such a thing as "rhythm bouzouki," then that's what Curran does.

In this clip from a few years back, Mark Kelly is the guitarist and former band member Dermot Byrne is on accordion. It seems that Kelly is the recording guitarist but doesn't tour outside Ireland.

Finally, a short film details the depth of Altan's commitment to the music scene in County Donegal.

As Chancellor Wallace noted, in 2017 there was a special St. Patrick's Day in the state of Indiana. It was celebrated more authentically than most of the ones about to occur on the 17th, and in this authenticity is enough historic, linguistic and cultural nuance to engender much thinking between drinks of life-giving Stout ... which I'm now craving at 11:00 a.m. on a Friday morning.

MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY: Louisville City FC's John Neace clarifies, "Construction of a venue in Louisville is our priority."

Let's go back to yesterday's Insider Louisville piece by Boris Ladwig, because it clears the way for Team Gahan's own clarification-to-come:

Neace said that he expects the stadium and the club’s planned soccer academy to be built in two locations, because of space constraints. That means, for example, the academy could be in downtown Louisville, with a stadium in New Albany, or vice versa. Or either venue could be at the east or west ends of Louisville.

Simple mistake; we meant academy, not stadium. Lower ranking city officials might wish to let their cell phones die tonight.

Meanwhile, here's the next economic "development" chess move. I've heard about the fog of war, but this one's convoluted, isn't it?

A STATEMENT FROM LOUCITY CHAIRMAN JOHN NEACE, by Louisville City FC, 01/04/17, 10:15AM EST

“Louisville City FC’s board continues moving forward with development of a soccer-specific stadium in Louisville. While other markets around the region have expressed interest, construction of a venue in Louisville is our priority. We plan to be part of the city’s growth and feel that a stadium in its urban core is best for our fan base and the club’s continued success.”

Green Mouse says: Think NORTH for Gahan's proposed soccer stadium site.

The ultimate in bright shiny objects? Now Jeff Gahan's going to build a pro soccer stadium in New Albany.

Green Mouse says: Think NORTH for Gahan's proposed soccer stadium site.

To repeat: I'm not drinking absinthe for breakfast, and this isn't April Fool's Day in January. Jeff Gahan's going off the rails with a crazy stadium extravaganza, and we're trying to make sense of the megalomania.

A source has told the Green Mouse that the site proposed by Mayor Gahan to build a pro soccer stadium in New Albany (let it sink in) is in the vicinity of Indiana University Southeast. That's all Green was able to get. Note that land immediately north of campus is owned by Indiana University.

But the art of the deal, and all that -- and if there's enough TIF to pawn, almost anything's possible. Last night:

The ultimate in bright shiny objects? Now Jeff Gahan's going to build a pro soccer stadium in New Albany.

 ... As for stunned New Albanians, who'd imagined the mayor's ballyhooed surprise announcement was going to be citywide paving, a new Asian health spa or Bass Pro Shop gift card giveaways at this summer's Bicentennial Park Concert Series, well, they're left to ponder three questions:

Exactly where do we place a potential 20,000 seat stadium?
Exactly how much in "incentives" will it cost?
Exactly how many box seats will trickle down to BOW?

The Green Mouse's source also suggests that New Albany's bid is a bargaining ploy to move Greg Fischer's philanthropy in a more positive (cough) direction, and that a stadium site in Jeffersonville is a far more likely landing spot should the stadium be built in Southern Indiana.

Meanwhile, we're saddened to reveal that the most ideal stadium location of all has been removed from consideration.

It would fit right there in the middle.

Seems the level of toxicity is such that an EPA Superfund cleanup would be warranted, and Jimmy Hoffa might be there, somewhere -- and who wants to deal with it?

Not even Duggins, that's who.

You know, that building where Ace Loan & Sporting Goods used to be (110 E Market St).

Atypically, the New Albany Historic Preservation Commission has little to say about 110 E. Market Street, identifying the former Ace Loan & Sporting Goods as an Italianate commercial building of 1880s-era construction.

During the past year, Steve Resch's crew has been busy rehabilitating this structure.

Late 2014 (Google street view).

Late summer 2015 (NAHPC).

June 2, 2016.

And, a glance into the ground floor interior.

Strange but true: Ace Loan & Sporting Goods operated for 52 years, until the spring of 2015, and the owner never once went upstairs or down. In fact, the stairs going up either removed completely or enclosed.

Steve Resch's vision for 110 E. Market is to entice Indiana University Southeast to establish a fine arts center downtown, with gallery space on the ground floor and classrooms on the second and third floors. He has spoken with officials at IU Southeast as well as local arts groups, and there is qualified optimism.

It's an idea worth pursuing, and we wish him luck in achieving it.

Wednesday night ONLY: "Balloonacy: Lost in Inflation," at 110 E.Market.

Several of Steve Resch's buildings-in-progress have served as temporary venues for art. This is the most recent, at the former pawn shop on Market (across from Comfy Cow).

It's Wednesday night only, so plan accordingly.

---

BALLOONACY: Lost in Inflation

Indiana University Southeast's Fine Arts Program is hosting an art installation in downtown New Albany. 'The Pawn Shop', as we endearingly call it, is our chosen venue for our Social Sculpture class, which encourages the act of creating artwork within the community. This collaboration is our way of breathing new life and repurposing this historic building so that we may invite the public to be immersed in an interactive space.

The installation will include over 1000 balloons to fill the space and handmade 16 mm video will be projected on top of the balloons, allowing the viewer to move within the artwork. Joy Luck will provide refreshments.

BALLOONACY: Lost in Inflation will take place on Wednesday, October 28th at 110 Market Street, New Albany, Indiana. This is a ONE NIGHT EVENT open from 7:00 – 9:00 pm.

Visit our Facebook page to see other work from our artists.

ARTISTS
Amelia Wise
Michael Kopp
Paul Robey
C.J. Bowyer
Aliccia Kasper
Liz Walker
Angie Howard
Bethany Barton
Cody Presley

Further Info:
Brian Harper, Associate Professor of Fine Art, IU Southeast
Email: harperba@ius.edu

It flummoxes me, this party politics Kool-Aid drinking thing.

The Horizon (IU Southeast) reporter does very well with one side of the story.

The problem for longtime observers of the local scene remains the perennial disconnect between what is viewed in the bathroom mirror, and what exists in reality, out beyond the front door of one's home.

I know that both Cliff and Greg are being sincere in their pronouncements. What I'll never understand is how one can accurately diagnose pressing issues, express favor for various cures, and then remain a loyalist of a political party (our Democrats) holding an absolute, unassailable majority of municipal government seats for the past 12 years, but failing to act on either.

It flummoxes me, this party politics Kool-Aid drinking thing.

How can they publicly support a mayor, Jeff Gahan, who has failed to address their issues apart from vacuous private expressions of support hinging on his re-election, and has made prospects for their cures even more remote owing to massive spending for wants, rather than needs?

What am I missing?

Is it cognitive dissonance?

The Stockholm Syndrome?

The insidiousness of group think?

IU Southeast faculty run for New Albany City Council, by Jordan Williams

 ... For Phipps, the interest in city council started in a way similar to Staten’s.

The desire to make a change came about in response to his 2001 move to downtown New Albany.
“I didn’t have a lot of involvement in politics when I lived in the suburbs. I was out of touch with what was going on,” said Phipps.

“I moved downtown and started to see the urban problems that I didn’t see while living in the suburbs.”
Phipps began his crusade for change by going to city council meetings and bringing attention to the variety of concerns being neglected in the surrounding city.

ON THE AVENUES: Until philosophers become kings.

ON THE AVENUES: Until philosophers become kings.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Last Thursday I had the great pleasure to take a break from New Albany’s trials and tribulations and spend the day and night in Lexington, Kentucky, as the guest of Transylvania University’s philosophy department.

To be sure, there have been times in the past when Lexington wouldn’t have seemed such a savory destination for an overnight pleasure trip.

After all, I was raised in Southern Indiana, and college basketball naturally prefigured the rural moral (and genetic) code: Indiana University in Bloomington was the beneficent locale of the grail, while the University of Kentucky represented a snarling, lowdown devil. I imagine it wasn’t easy for my mother, who was a UK graduate living in a small Hoosier burg, and subject to commensurate suspicion.

Of course, it’s all bunk, and the whole point of the exercise is to show the many possibilities for mankind’s advancement, from primitive sporting totems and rituals all the way through reading actual books.

I’d been warming to Lexington for a long time, even before February of 2014, when the University of Kentucky hosted a symposium on craft beer writing. I was fortunate to be numbered among the speakers, and the experience was very rewarding.

One of the symposium’s perquisites was a pub crawl with a van and designated driver, and that’s when it became clear to me that Lexington is a fine beer and food city, with cultural enclaves, shops and historic neighborhoods for wandering, even if the prevailing one-way street grid is maddeningly archaic and begs for immediate jettisoning.

Anyway, when Professor of Philosophy Peter Fosl suggested I come visit, it was just a matter of coordinating calendars.

---

Transylvania University is among the nation’s oldest institutions of higher learning. For those like me who persist in associating the name with Count Dracula’s purported home base in Romania, the Latin roots are precisely the same: “Across the woods,” which in this specifically American sense means west of the Alleghenies. Prior to Kentucky’s statehood, it was called the Transylvania Colony, and belonged to Virginia.

My wife Diana accompanied me, and we arrived before noon, parking the car at the Gratz Park Inn. It was a short, pleasant walk to Peter’s office. His typically small and book-filled work space reminded me that there had been a time in my life when I assumed teaching would be my ultimate career choice, once I got around to making one.

It never happened. So it goes. There’s always professional drinking.

My eyes immediately were drawn to a framed event poster of Christopher Hitchens’s speaking appearance at Transylvania University in 2004. It was Peter’s doing, and he said that Hitchens, who remains one of my personal heroes of writing, was a model among high-profile visitors to the campus, accepting a lower than usual fee and volunteering his whole day to various activities rather than merely speaking and running.

Hitchens also stayed in the Gratz Park Inn. Granted, I’m a bush leaguer compared with Hitchens, and yet the symmetry was appreciated, and a degree of separation now has been shaved.

Peter had arranged for me to meet with philosophy majors over lunch at Transylvania’s cafeteria, the overall excellence of which conjured unsettling thoughts of the available “food service” during my own college days at IU Southeast. I certainly hope it’s better there now.

Later in the day, there was a faculty reception at the home of the humanities division chair. I concocted an impromptu beer tasting from selections they’d thoughtfully provided, including NABC and local Lexington breweries (West Sixth, Country Boy and Alltech). There was ample time to explore on foot the Lexington neighborhood around Transylvania, including the West Sixth and Blue Stallion breweries.

---

Getting back to my real reason for being there, Peter wanted me to share my experiences as a philosophy major in the real world, and honestly, it probably helped me as much as it did the students I met at lunch.

As the years roll past, it’s easy to forget the epiphanies and milestones that helped make us what we are today. For me, one of these was IU Southeast and my path to a Bachelor of Arts degree, with a major in philosophy.

My father’s goal for my post-high school career was for me to be awarded an athletic scholarship. This idea was a laughable non-starter, as I possessed considerably more skill as a clubhouse lawyer than an athlete. Eventually, out of sheer inertia, it was concluded that a semester or two at IU Southeast might lead me in a direction -- and boy, did it, though my parents probably regarded it as the proverbial wrong turn at Albuquerque.

My life in academia began with miserable failure, and I’d have flunked out entirely after a semester if not for my advisor’s suggestion of Introduction to Philosophy, a discipline he was unable to describe or explain, but recommended because after all, I’d be compelled to gather a few humanities credits for the core no matter what major eventually was to be declared – or branch of the military joined.

The instructor was an adjunct faculty member by the name of McCarthy, who by the standards of New Albany, circa 1978, was a veritable space alien who excelled in computer programming, of all things. In fact, before the semester was over, he’d gotten a job working with computers in New York State, and was given special dispensation to commute to New Albany for improvised weekend class sessions. One of them took place at the long defunct Leno’s restaurant.

But before all of that, we gathered at a classroom in Hillside Hall, and Prof. McCarthy greeted us with a warning, which I now paraphrase:

“Welcome to Philosophy 101. If you’ve chosen the university experience as a means of compiling a perfect 4.0 GPA, then I recommend you drop this class and choose another, because I do not award perfect scores. There is no such thing as perfection, and if you disagree with me, be prepared to argue your case logically. It won’t matter, because you’ll still not receive an A for this class. Would anyone like to discuss the nature of perfection?”

I was hooked. After all, it might prove to be my only class where a B was possible, much less perfection, and I was all too acutely aware of my own imperfections.

Coincidentally, a push was underway to begin a full-fledged philosophy program at IU Southeast, and soon I met Dr. Curtis Peters, a Minnesotan-turned-New Albanian who sold me on the idea of majoring in philosophy.

In 1982, I became the first IU Southeast philosophy graduate to amass all the necessary course credits while attending the New Albany campus, compiling a cumulative GPA in the vicinity of 3.0, thus handily proving the McCarthy axiom’s innate wisdom. I promptly set about answering the question, “What does a philosophy degree get you?”

For me, it was the opportunity to be a bartender, work in a package store, substitute teach and work numerous other less enriching part-time jobs in route to my eventual way station in the restaurant and brewing business.

However, as should be obvious by now, a philosophy degree has not ever been about specific vocational training. Rather, it is about learning how to think, and yet even this standard falls short in explaining the impact on me.

Philosophy reveals the primacy of knowledge itself, something not unexpectedly absent from high school, where I skated through, almost entirely unchallenged save by a handful of teachers who saw something in me that I didn’t, or couldn’t, grasp. Bookish and introspective by nature, there wasn’t much added reinforcement to high school for me.

Beginning with McCarthy’s introductory philosophy class at IU Southeast, it was like the clichéd light bulb’s illumination: Ideas really existed, and they actually mattered. Ideas had systems, and mankind would be living in metaphorical mud without them. Philosophy taught me how to think, and moreover – perhaps most importantly of all – that it was okay to think. Only then did I realize that high school choir and a brief foray into theater taught me more about life than playing competitive team sports. Muscle tone pertains to the brain, too.

These many years later, have I always live up to the promise of these youthful intellectual ideals?

Of course not. I’m human, and sometimes metaphorical mud wrestling in the marketplace of venom, if not ideas, is a great deal more fun. It remains that the study of philosophy opened my mind and changed me for the better. It cannot and probably should not be the primary course of study for all university students, but it wouldn’t hurt to be an elective for most.

Thanks to Peter, Jack and everyone at Transylvania University for a timely opportunity to re-examine my premises.

---

Recent columns:

April 27: ON THE AVENUES MONDAY SPECIAL: Et tu, Greg Phipps? Or: Anger and the electoral variability of transparency.

April 23: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Anachronisms and intellectuals, here and there.

April 16: ON THE AVENUES: Say a prayer for NA Confidentialas it conducts this exclusive interview with Councilman Cappuccino.

April 9: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Complexities and simplicities in Boomtown.

April 8: ON THE AVENUES SPECIAL: The proper separation of church and council.

Thanks to Don and Kathy Smith, Wonderland Way works are headed to IU Southeast.

Readers with long memories may recall that in early 2013, I was very impressed with the Wonderland Way exhibition at the Carnegie Center.

Two angles on St. John Presbyterian Church, only 76 years apart.

Of art shops, Try-Centennials, and artists of the Wonderland Way.

Now, thanks to a generous donation, IU Southeast is commencing a permanent collection.

IUS to get artwork worth more than $500,000, by Elizabeth Kramer (C-J)

... The Smiths have collected more than 600 paintings by mostly regional artists, a large portion of them Wonderland Way painters, and last week saw 10 of them installed at the university's Paul W. Ogle Cultural & Community Center as part of The James L. Russell Wonderland Way Collection.

---

Drinking Progressively: Let's make it Tuesday evenings, beginning on November 25.

Indiana University Southeast on athletic diversity: "If You Can Play."

I rarely do college sports touts, but this one's an exception.