Is anyone interested in crafting a local platform while drinking craft beer?

Winter is coming, and for me, it's a less hectic time compared with warm weather and the many outdoor activities that occur then.

And, there'll be city elections in New Albany next year.

Also, we have the WCTU Reading Room at Bank Street Brewhouse, which can be heated in winter. With luck and enough money, we'll have it air conditioned by the time the weather heats up in 2015.

For a long time, I've wanted to attempt something like the exercise I'm about to suggest. It's been tried before, here and there, and never to any degree of consistency.

Time: Maybe a Wednesday evening, each week, roughly 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., at the WCTU Reading Room at BSB.

Idea: A weekly open discussion about what is to be done locally, in any and every sense, in preparation for city elections next year. If you will, the development of the ideal civic platform, shaped by weekly chats and brainstorming. Anyone is welcome, and the intent is ecumenical. The result might serve as a blueprint, or a yardstick. There may or may not be a result. I view it as a loosely organized and evolutionary process. Come and go as you please; no mandatory anything.

How do we make this a place where we want to stay, not leave? Can we?

Is anyone interested in such a reverse brain drain? I'm happy to host it, but it's Dutch treat on the beers.

The NewAlbanist on tactics of self-selection and self-rejection.

Fresh off his star turn as "Soapy Sam" Ballard in "Rumpole and the Big Henry Bain Sauce and Egg Man" ... just kidding.

It's been wonderful to experience the bookseller's erudition of late. I keep company with the finest expository writers in town (Randy and Jeff), and reading them enriches me. I'd say it makes me a better writer, except only sobriety can do that -- and what a price.

The bookseller defines his term:

Today’s word from Ben Schott’s Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition

Bösewichtsduckmäusrigkeit – Cowardice in the face of malevolence.

Pronounced [boo-ze-vicchts --dook-moyz-rihg-kite]

Then he moves to The NewAlbanist for the details.

Bösewichtsduckmäusrigkeit It Ain’t
Bösewichtsduckmäusrigkeit It Ain’t, Part 2

We had a few discussions over the weekend with regard to an earlier post, one in which I lamented the seeming withdrawal of one and the patent abdication of many others when it comes to seeking elective office.

I am reminded that such decision do not take place in a vacuum. The vapidity of New Albany government is the product of both self-selection and self-rejection.

There are two primary tactics practiced by incumbents.

As an oblique comment on the general theme of civic engagement, there's an anecdote I enjoy repeating which goes something like this.

I'll be discussing New Albanian social conditions and trends, conceding that (of course) the best and brightest always leave town to seek opportunities elsewhere, and usually someone will squint and reply, "I see you're still here."

Yes, so true -- but why further encourage the brain drain by being elected?