Streets are our most fundamental shared public spaces, but Irv and Bob and Padgett won't grasp this in a thousand million years.

As I contemplate yet again the abysmal ignorance of New Albany's self-assigned community pillars ... there's this wonderful video up top, and wise words down below.

Although I might sooner teach my cats quantum physics than convince Irv and Bob and Padgett to look and read.

Reimagining Our Streets as Places: From Transit Routes to Community Roots (Project for Public Spaces)

Streets are our most fundamental shared public spaces, but they are also one of the most contested and overlooked. Today, and for most of the last century, we have taken for granted the idea that our streets are primarily zones for cars, parking, and the transporting of goods. This has not been the case, however, throughout most of history. Across many cultures and times – since the beginning of civilization, in fact – the street has held vast social, commercial, and political significance as a powerful symbol of the public realm.

I'll be eighty-something on my death bed, and begin laughing maniacally at the memory of Bob Caesar (a councilman, for Jeeebus' sake) insisting that more traffic would pass by his diamond store on a one-way street FROM a one-way street, rather than on a two-way street from TWO two-way streets.

Of course, he'll have triumphed, and in the year 2048, New Albany' s streets will still run one-way.

But I'll still laugh maniacally.

By the way: Where the fuck is noted two-way streets advocate Jeff Gahan?

From the PPS link.

Apocalypse WOW: Pat McLaughlin thinks toll evaders will stop to shop in New Albany. Jeff Gahan doesn't return calls. Welcome to tolling preparedness, New Albany-style.

Imagine how a local newspaper might be functioning as tolling approaches. Imagine the hard questions a reporter might be asking of local officials. Imagine the dialogue that might be engendered.

Keep imagining, because we have no newspaper in New Albany.

Meanwhile, it still isn't clear what the city of New Albany's official position will be with respect to the issues discussed in Green's piece. We suspect servile silence, but only because it's what we've been conditioned to expect from Jeff Gahan, but note that if the council president's uninformed opinion is any indication, we might be better off with no opinion at all.

SUNDAY EDITION | Old overpasses to get more wear and tear as Kentuckiana drivers avoid bridge tolls, by Marcus Green (WDRB)

... “Talking to a lot of people that I know, they said they’re going to change their route of going to Indiana and coming around the Sherman Minton and ride all the way around to avoid paying a toll,” said Natalie Neil, who lives in the Shawnee/Chickasaw neighborhood in western Louisville.

Neil said she uses the Minton twice a day for trips to New Albany. More traffic on the bridge is troubling, she said, because there’s “a lot of increase already.”

And:

Traffic on those structures in Floyd County is expected to increase by as much as 118 percent in the coming decades. Indiana plans maintenance and repair work on four of the overpasses before 2018, according to the state.

The state also aims to paint and maintain the Sherman Minton Bridge within the next four years, said Will Wingfield, spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation. The Minton was closed for about five months in 2011 and 2012 to fix a crack in a load-bearing beam.

This means that very soon, we'll either lose the Sherman Minton for an extended period, and/or see it tolled. But here's the important part (emphasis mine).

Opponents of tolling interstates often cite traffic diversion as a side effect of tolls and rate hikes.

“Tolls are often easily evaded, usually by motorists who are using an alternative route that unfortunately was not built to handle the level and type of traffic experienced due to that toll evasion,” said Stephanie Kane, spokeswoman for the Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates.

After reviewing projections showing increased traffic on the Minton, she said ambulances and other first responders could face delays getting across the river on I-64.

With the Minton remaining toll-free, traffic passing through New Albany is expected to double in the decades to come. Mayor Jeff Gahan did not return a phone message seeking comment, but council president Patrick McLaughlin said “it’s something that’s been constantly on our radar.”

McLaughlin stopped short of agreeing that traffic will rise at the levels predicted by INDOT, but he said any increase could give the city an economic boost.

“When trying to judge human nature,” he said, “no one really knows how that’s going to pan out.”

Paris: We cannot defend values by abandoning them.

Photo credit: The Nation

I'm a cosseted white male American who has traveled a bit, just enough to understand that he doesn't know much at all about the wider world, and as such, intends to think about matters a while longer before spouting glib, ignorant gibberish on social media.

I'm a human with a brain, not Pavlov's mutt. Salivate at the ring of ISIS's bell, and it wins. Yes, I favor crushing terrorism, but not through emulating the methods of terrorists.

These three essays encapsulate my point of view, as stated far better than I'm capable at the moment. Take a moment, read and think.

The Guardian view on the Paris attacks: amid the grief, we must defend the values that define us (The Guardian)

To Defeat ISIS, We Must Call Both Western and Muslim Leaders to Account, by Laila Lalami (The Nation)

Paris: You Don’t Want to Read This, by Peter Van Buren (Common Dreams)

Charleston and the Confederacy ... or, the thoroughly depressing week that was, Part 1.

Once again, in the absence of any shared commitment to historical truth, we turn to a comedian to provide critical insight.

I honestly have nothing other than just sadness once again that we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other and the nexus of a just gaping racial wound that will not heal, yet we pretend doesn’t exist. And I’m confident, though, that by acknowledging it, by staring into that and seeing it for what it is, we still won’t do jack shit. Yeah. That’s us.

Meanwhile, sorry if it hurts your feelings, but the Confederacy was all about racism, folks. History just shouldn't be an elective.

What the Confederate flag really means to America today, according to a race historian, by Roberto A. Ferdman (Washington Post)

 ... But I also think that people invoke the flag because they want to endorse on some level, even if secretly or subconsciously, the very rationale for the Confederacy. When people say 'heritage not hate,’ they are omitting the obvious, which is that that heritage is hate. When someone says it’s about history, well, that particular history is inseparable from hate, because it is about hate. It’s about racism, and it’s about slavery.

Reich: "We the People, and the New American Civil War."

This is a topic so obvious that quite a few of us have tried to ignore it. On the election's eve, don't expect encouraging reading.

We the People, and the New American Civil War, by Robert Reich (Huffington Post)

The vitriol is worse is worse than I ever recall. Worse than the Palin-induced smarmy 2008. Worse than the swift-boat lies of 2004. Worse, even, than the anything-goes craziness of 2000 and its ensuing bitterness.

It's almost a civil war. I know families in which close relatives are no longer speaking. A dating service says Democrats won't even consider going out with Republicans, and vice versa. My email and twitter feeds contain messages from strangers I wouldn't share with my granddaughter ...

I've been reading American Civil War history since I was a babe in the burbs, and there is an accumulated weight of recollection as to the intensity of feeling that took little to ignite into vitriol worse than what is being described by Reich. It was a nasty time, it took a century to even begin recovering from it, and now we seem intent on repeating aspects of it. I attribute this to sheer, unalloyed ignorance of history. Maybe it would be better to omit history, and simply refer to our abundance of just plain ignorance. Back to Reich:

 ... But I think the degree of venom we're experiencing has deeper roots.

The nation is becoming browner and blacker. Most children born in California are now minorities. In a few years America as a whole will be a majority of minorities. Meanwhile, women have been gaining economic power. Their median wage hasn't yet caught up with men, but it's getting close. And with more women getting college degrees than men, their pay will surely exceed male pay in a few years. At the same time, men without college degrees continue to lose economic ground. Adjusted for inflation, their median wage is lower than it was three decades ago.

In other words, white working-class men have been on the losing end of a huge demographic and economic shift. That's made them a tinder-box of frustration and anger -- eagerly ignited by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other pedlars of petulance, including an increasing number of Republicans who have gained political power by fanning the flames.

Selfishness as inverted erotic Ayn Rand weird-out.

The best anti-poverty program around is a world class education.
--Barack Obama, in his 2010 State of the Union address.

According to Rep. Ed Clere’s recently published poll results, New Albanians care little for the notion of education as corrective for their squalor.

CLERE: I asked and you answered

In the future, if the state’s frugal spending and money management creates a reserve that reaches a certain threshold level, should any money above that level be returned to taxpayers through income tax credits or should the reserve be used for education spending?

Sixty-seven percent of respondents favor tax credits, and 33 percent want excess revenue to go to education.

What should the General Assembly’s top priority be?

The response to this question reflects concern over the economy. There were five response options. Job creation, retention and training programs is the top concern for 51 percent of respondents, followed by 27 percent who favor expanded tax relief as their top priority. Sixteen percent rank K-12 education first. Higher education and welfare programs for family and child services each receive 3 percent support as a top priority.

Lesson #765, subsection A1, which tells us too much about life in the Open Air Museum, and leaves us seeking strong drink:

"Give us more fish. Don't you dare teach us how to fish."