In memory of Beer Money, a note to Dale Moss.

Dear Dale

I'm glad to see you're back in the game, writing columns for the News and Tribune. Whenever I'm able to deploy my sophisticated e-gadgetry, first perfected during the Main Street Opium Den Scandal, and tunnel through the Great Paywall of Hanson to glimpse the other side, I'll eagerly read your columns in spite of the pop-ups and roll-overs.

I've always been a fan of yours, but there's just one thing about the N and T; sad to say it, and sorry I have to do so, but my advice to you, borne of lamentable experience, is to eschew all future political endeavors if you want to keep the new writing gig in place.

I'd also advise against stepping out of the office to take a leak.

I learned this the hard way; I did my civic duty and aspired to the office of councilman, was promised I'd resume my N and T column if defeated, and then POOF ... the football was withheld, and the erstwhile columnist landed on his back, that gentle 'Bama mud oozing onward and upward, toward chain newspaper heaven.

It's a wound that hasn't healed, and I remain bitter about it. I've always respected you, so let's hope your fate isn't the same.

Good luck,

Roger

PS -- Wanna compare notes? How much are they paying you, and do you even get a free pass into Hansonville?

Mr. Gahan, complete these streets.

In Monday's edition (January 28) of the 'Bama Fried Chicken Pop Up Gazette, Randy Smith's letter to the editor finally was published.

You read it here at NAC first, on the 20th, several days after he submitted it to the newspaper.

NAC Guest Columnist Randy Smith: "Don’t Rush to Build Outdoor Swimming Pool."

But do the people of New Albany need, or even want, a new outdoor pool? As we blow through the second decade of the 21st Century, is building a swimming pool a legitimate and equitable use of tax money?

If my chronology's right, Randy submitted the letter just before Chris Morris editorialized in favor of an aquatic center on a "quality of life" basis (on January 17). Well, I suppose they have to get topic ideas somewhere, don't they?

Speaking of ideas, over at the newspaper's web site, "Eric" takes issue with Randy's reasoning.

No one, least of all the mayor, is thinking in terms of 'political capital' here. Unlike most local pols, Gahan is actually thinking outside the city-govt bubble about ideas that will actually benefit residents of New Albany. Everyone else has moved on from 2011. It's 2013, Randy. Join us. The water's fine.

I agree with Randy that it's perfectly legitimate to ask for evidence of a public groundswell in favor of aquatics.

Show me, Eric. If it's really there, I'll take it into account, but I don't hear the clamor.

NAC did not agree with every move of the mayor's during the first year of his term, but we've found more to like than dislike. In our view, if the administration really intends to think "outside the city-govt bubble," it should begin with a top-to-bottom rethink of the city's street grid, because virtually all city residents use the street grid every day, but the street grid is not organized (it is profoundly disorganized) to meet the needs of all city residents, i.e., those who are not driving cars.

Before the meeting, let's think about differing qualities of life.

Rather, it’s this persistent, unquestioned notion on the part of self-assigned movers and shakers that the highest civic priority when it comes to “quality-of-life” issues is the same old kneejerk-as-usual pablum: The benign “niceness” of swimming and baseball, and the accompanying tendency of the powers that be to lapse into dazed stupor at the very suggestion that prioritizing basic everyday infrastructures of living, from transport to design to neighborhoods, addresses “quality-of-life” issues far more comprehensively than parks and recreation force-fed into a vacuum.

One last piece of reading for Eric, Chris and the mayor's team. Maybe I'll submit a letter to the newspaper ... postdated for March.

Random 2013 Platform Goals 1: Toll Free New Albany and all it entails, ASAP.

During Year Two of the Gahan administration, articulating and implementing a program of evolution toward complete streets in New Albany is a policy that can address multiple needs with one throw.

1. Complete streets are a means of transforming the urban street grid into a diverse, human friendly mechanism for growth.

2. This enhances prospects for the further expansion of retail, offices and even housing downtown, and of connecting downtown to outlying areas by means of the Greenway and other routes radiating outward.

3. Critically, boldness is needed right now, because the closer we get to a tolling regime on some Ohio River Bridges and not on others (read: Sherman Minton), the more likely that New Albany's current one-way street grid reverts to abuse by no-stop pass-throughs to the detriment of any human scale reform. It is time to act.

Heavrin "leaves big shoes to fill," and Morris rushes to shine them.

Roughly what the paper's worth, too.

More of the same: Republicans gather to praise a departing "conservative Democrat" whose congenital obstinacy was to creativity what Bud Light is to pet shampoo.

Meanwhile, forever pining for the sports desk, editor Morris never once detects the irony, never asks a hard question, and never doubts his elders -- and he's regarded as the information conduit to detached, sequestered newspaper management in Jeffersonville, itself yearning for hipster redemption in The Ville.

The first paragraph alone might be the most insipid collection of words I've ever seen in this organ -- and Eddie Laduke wrote there.

Well, let's look at the bright side: Heavrin's out. Maybe the Democrats can find a Democrat next time. Insofar as the Alabama pensioners are concerned, this might just be the time to cry uncle.

Heavrin leaves big shoes to fill; Veteran Floyd County councilman’s last day in office is Dec. 31, by Chris Morris ('Bama Fluffer Digest)

NEW ALBANY — Maybe Ted Heavrin should be involved with the ongoing fiscal cliff negotiations in Washington, D.C. With his no-nonsense style and bipartisan approach, he could probably get things kick-started in our nation’s capital.

Greetings from 'Bama.

Too much Dixie on their minds.

News and Tribune eliminates Sunday, adds Monday, calls it "robust." I call it very bad writing.

I guess that's what happens when advertising salespeople pretend to be journalists in a society where too few people can tell the difference, which makes me feel for the genuine, trained journalists who must listen to people like me pontificate, when their publishers evidently don't read the paper, anyway, or else they would not foist tripe like this on us in the guise of news.

Seriously, real journalists don't write ad copy like this unless derringers wrapped in pink slips are pointed at their heads -- do they?

The News and Tribune will launch a Weekend edition Saturday and also begin publication of a Monday edition starting Monday, publisher Bill Hanson announced Wednesday.

The Weekend edition will feature the combined content of the current Saturday and Sunday publications and will be delivered by mail on Saturdays. It will be available at area retail outlets and newspaper racks starting Saturday morning and into Sunday.

“We are combining two already strong newspapers into one even more robust product — as well as adding a Monday newspaper many subscribers have been asking for,” Hanson said.

Then comes the inevitable, albeit it delayed, punch line:

The Monday paper — like the rest of the week — will be delivered the same day by the U.S. Postal Service. The News and Tribune will not publish a paper on federal holidays because there is no mail delivery.

Reckon that's the real dollars and cents reason for all the smoke, mirrors and bull feces, right?

Another bottom line decision from the Retirement Systems of Alabama, just like the one that has deprived New Albany of its local newspaper for the first time since before the Civil War.

Well, I can speak only for myself and the missus.

I've persisted as a subscriber solely because of the Sunday edition, being an old fart and actually enjoying the feel and smell of newsprint with coffee on a lazy morning off. Hanson's "robust" explanation quite simply is a contrived insult to the intelligence of any thinking human, especially New Albany's newspaper readers, who already are the major losers in the pension fund-driven "combining" of newspaper operations.

Lest the point be raised: Editor Shea Van Hoy has explained to me in detail the reason for my column no longer appearing, and although it's disappointing, I respect both him and the reasoning behind the decision. This is not about that, because I had no intention of dropping my subscription until Wednesday's announcement.

Now, there's no choice. Anyone want to start a newspaper?