The farewell tour continues: "Ilmatyynyalukseni on täynnä ankeriaita," from March 20, 2010.

As NA Confidential prepares to ride off into the sunset, I'll be reposting selected bits from the past. This one's from the spring of 2010. Already I was starting to "know" better, but my daddy raised me stubborn. Too bad for me.  

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Ilmatyynyalukseni on täynnä ankeriaita.

Excuse the title. I've been looking for an excuse to use obscure linguistics in a title. Basque was my first choice ... but ...

I can appreciate where you’re coming from. Both of you.

You’ve landed here only recently, and in the course of surveying the landscape, there have been judgments based on first impressions. Some of these will survive scrutiny, others not. That’s the classic, enduring beauty of the learning curve.

I’ve lived here in Floyd County my whole life, and have always had a mailing address within ten or so miles of City-County Building, but because my residency in the city of New Albany only began in 1993, I’m considered an outsider by many (mostly older, mostly bitter) New Albanians. Consequently, I know what it’s like to arrive here and be childishly derided for not being FROM here.

The ones who never accomplished anything will always resent you for your talent, your skill, and most of all, your mobility. If they perceive you being of temporary assistance to them in their goals of universal doltery and egalitarian misery, they’ll lionize you until you think for yourself. Then it will be over, and you’ll feel predictably dirty the next morning.

It’s frustrating, but ultimately, it’s their loss. They can do nothing to improve the planet. You can. The question is: Who wins?

Doers … or delusionals?

My involvement with the eternal morass of New Albanian politics dates back about six years. Before that, I was busy with the original pub and brewery on the north side. When I remarried, we bought a house on Spring Street, and began absorbing contemporary ways of thinking and planning as they pertain to historic urban cores. All I could see was an underutilized, savaged doughnut hole. I had to learn why it had happened, and how best to rectify it.

In the beginning, I looked around and thought I understood the lay of the land. I spoke out accordingly. As I met people who were outside my comfort zone of the Grant Line pub, and who had put much more thought into matters like this than I had, it began to occur to me that my initial snap judgments were utterly and embarrassingly mistaken. Much had been misread on my part, which is understandable given my inexperience.

Too bad I spouted before I grokked, but so it goes. You live, and you learn.

In New Albany, for better or worse, the more one learns, the murkier it gets, and the more affairs become resistant to glib, simple answers of the sort that satisfy the populist in all of us. We want these sort of answers, and badly. It’s easier to believe them and to range outside self-imposed cultural boxes. Unfortunately, they’re seldom true.

Obfuscation, self-destructiveness and perhaps plain ol’ simple insanity are parts of everyday life here, maybe more so than most suspect. So it is that sometimes, you get off on the wrong foot and miss things. It’s difficult to see what’s progressive, and what isn’t. Some times, one must shrug and accept the daily torrential abuse for what it is: Fear, and loathing, and on occasion, chemical imbalance.

In the end, it comes down to this: If you’re smart enough to know better, you’re obliged to ... know better. 

To know. 

That’s the key word. In a city that by and large hates knowledge, hates achievement, and hates itself, knowing is the only conceivable coping mechanism.

The dark side in NA? It’s not the place to be. Trust me. The capable mustn't be divided by pettiness and intemperance, because there are too damned few of us.

"For the good of the nation, the Republican Party as it is presently constituted has to die."

If the end of the GOP truly is near, and somehow I doubt it, it's causing me a great deal of unease. What will replace it?

Are You Ready for the End of the Republican Party? by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

 ... For the good of the nation, the Republican Party as it is presently constituted has to die.

Ever since the late 1970s, when it determined to ally itself with a politicized splinter of American evangelical Protestantism, having previously allied itself with the detritus of American apartheid, the Republican Party has been reeling toward catastrophe even as it succeeded at the ballot box, and taking the country along with it. Crackpot economic theories were mainstreamed in the 1980s. Crackpot conspiracy theories and god-drunk fantasies were mainstreamed in the 1990s. Crackpot imperial adventures abroad were mainstreamed in the 2000s. And all of these were mainstreamed at once in opposition to the country's first African American president over the past eight years.

Modern conservatism has proven to be not a philosophy, but a huge dose of badly manufactured absinthe. It squats in an intellectual hovel now, waiting for its next fix, while a public madman filches its tattered banner and runs around wiping his ass with it. It always was coming to this.

Louisville: "We’ve got the ingredients we need, but no recipe to follow to make a better street."

From the article.

Many of us persist in thinking that in the case of New Albany, smaller size implies greater adaptability. We'd have an easier time combining projects and funds to create critical mass in pursuit of a shared vision.

So much for that. These different funding pots are fiefdoms, politicians are terrified of altering the devil it knows (soul-numbing auto-centrism), and City Hall's vision ... well, you know.

It isn't, so although we might, we don't.

Louisville lacks a meaningful way to build complete streets that benefit all road users; Why does the city implement its safest street designs so haphazardly?, by Chris Glasser (Broken Sidewalk)

The “revised” layout includes a dedicated turning lane to prevent congestion. The resulting configuration slows traffic speeds with narrower driving lanes. There’s space for bikes. Parking lanes are right-sized—not nine feet wide but seven feet, with a two-foot buffer zone. With everything compartmentalized just so, traffic moves more efficiently, even with one less driving lane.

And what’s maybe less obvious is that this road is safer for pedestrians too: slower, more predictable traffic movements make it easier and safer to cross the street.

That “revised” street section is called a road diet. Among traffic engineers and city planners, the safety benefits of such a street design are well-known and well-understood. The debate over their usefulness is over and their benefits are clear.

How about more like this in Louisville?

So why doesn’t Louisville have more of these road diet configurations? One of Louisville’s public works employees told me he has a list of twenty or so city roads he’d like to see get a road diet. And yet in Louisville, we have no dedicated funding source for projects like this.

In the city budgets of the last three years, there has been funding for sidewalk improvements, for bike lanes, and for road repaving—all the ingredients needed for a complete street. But all that money is in separate pots, all going to separate projects. We’ve got the ingredients we need, but no recipe to follow to make a better street. We don’t provide any funding for the holistic approaches that make the street safer for everyone. This needs to change.

Baby Doe ... or the antidote to Pollyanna.

(Thanks to LP for the Twitter prompt)

I'm not going to kid you.

This story is not easy reading, but there are times when Americans need to leave behind our founding Pollyanna Principle, divert our gaze from mindless entertainment and cheap plastic baubles, and think.

Does it make your brain hurt?

So very sorry about that.

For as long as I can remember, the mantra has been repeated again and again: It's their own fault. Those among us who are impoverished or ill equipped for whatever reason to make their way in life, well, its their problem. They must get better, so as not to disturb the self-congratulatory reverie inhabited by the rest of us. Can't they just clean up after themselves and look improved?

It's a variation of the Richard Nixon's words in the movie, Where the Buffalo Roam: "Fuck the doomed."

That's one thing if you're an adult. We can coerce compliance with an endless cycle of consumer debt, further your addiction to substances ranging from meth to Rally burgers, and if that doesn't work, incarcerate you. Fuck the doomed, right?

But what about the children?

Baby Doe: A political history of tragedy, by Jill Lepore (New Yorker)

 ... More than a hundred inches of snow fell in Boston last winter, storm after storm. So the Blizzard of 1978 was on my mind when, not long after daffodils poked up through the last of the long-lingering snow, the lifeless body of a little girl was discovered in a trash bag on Deer Island, cast away.

Further background is here.

Crawford: "Why the water situation in Flint should matter to us all."

As a friend remarked: "Has anyone thought to have the water tested in a few different places in New Albany? Our plumbing is older than Flint's."

That's so cynical. After all, we have something Flint doesn't, an veritable ace in the hole sure to reassure you: Indiana American Water.

Yep.

Kudos to Eric Crawford for this essay. On Facebook, I made a remark that might be construed as patronizing, to the effect that whenever sportswriters actually address important issues, we must congratulate them. This sentiment might have been phrased more elegantly, but I stick by it. Perhaps I'm jaundiced, having seen so many local sportswriters unable to grasp reality outside the games. By any standard, Crawford succeeds here.

CRAWFORD COMMENTARY | Why the water situation in Flint should matter to us all, by Eric Crawford (WDRB)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The water turned to poison in Flint, Michigan, and why should the rest of us care?

It’s not our water. It’s just another tale of government incompetence at best, apathy or dishonesty at worst. And we’ve grown all too accustomed to that. We all have our own tales, no matter what corner of the country we come from.

But here’s why I think it should matter to us. It’s yet another example of a widespread trend in this country.

Anti-intellectualism AND self-centeredness ... or, the thoroughly depressing week that was, Part 3.

Is there any compelling reason why they both can't be killing America, simultaneously?

Anti-intellectualism Is Killing America: Social dysfunction can be traced to the abandonment of reason, by David Niose

... In considering the senseless loss of nine lives in Charleston, of course racism jumps out as the main issue. But isn’t ignorance at the root of racism? And it’s true that the bloodshed is a reflection of America's violent, gun-crazed culture, but it is only our aversion to reason as a society that has allowed violence to define the culture. Rational public policy, including policies that allow reasonable restraints on gun access, simply isn't possible without an informed, engaged, and rationally thinking public.

The bookend essay at Psychology Today isn't so much counterpoint as piling on.

No, Self-centeredness is Killing America: A lack of empathy is at the root of our ills, by Ravi Chandra M.D.

David Niose rightly points out one problem in America: anti-intellectualism and the abandonment of critical thinking in certain sectors of society. However, I think this is simply a spoke on the deeper, more central issue that is at the hub of why we hate, are polarized and sometimes kill in the name of our beliefs. We are very, very self-centered and therefore we believe our own snuff.

John Rosenbarger: Yes, it's a design flaw, and yes, we know who designed it. Why can't we do anything about that?

Today's drive to Indianapolis shouldn't be much different than a daily jaunt down Spring Street, so let's pop the tabs on a six-pack of Rosenbarger Light.

Main Street Deforestation Project: If John Rosenbarger's lips are moving, chances are he's lying about traffic diversion. Here's why.

In other words, Main Street should be the officially designated through route bisecting downtown from east to west. It should be signposted as the One True Through Route. In particular, through trucks should be compelled to use it.

Of course, it's a design flaw. Guess who designed it?

Jeff Speck on John Rosenbarger's 12-ft wide Spring Street traffic lanes: “A 12-foot lane is a 70 mph lane."

England and Rosenbarger claimed victory, by changing absolutely nothing. They built two unbuffered bike lanes next to 70 mph traffic lanes. They did nothing else, and they want you to believe that what they did was heroic and innovative, primarily so one of them can run for office again while the other keeps his job -- again.

Until the reign of error is over, citizens are treated to recurring rounds of double dealing.

ON THE AVENUES: Bridge envy in a time of 18-wheelers.

Trust me on this one: When I’m elected mayor, Rosenbarger will become the highest paid cigarette butt remover this city has ever seen, leaving him free to mutter like a plucked peacock about the eternal stupidity of his political bosses, and the boundless depravity of the general public, but deprived of his ability to punish us any further with Gail Wynand-style “improvements” to the street grid.

Even his greatest achievements must eventually give way to the cold, hard logic of t he intersection.

Rosenbarger giveth and He taketh away; thus shall autos be glorified at the Beechwood intersection with Charlestown Road.

Recalling that John Rosenbarger regularly has hailed this situation as proof of his urban design prowess, read on as Chris Morris gives us the LOL punch line.

The city did not have to buy right-of-way to expand the intersection. Rosenbarger said the bike lanes through the intersection will be absorbed for the road expansion.

But as the photos show, there are no bike lanes through the intersection.

We'd need a matchbook cover to list the achievements.

Answer the question, John Rosenbarger: Can Jeff Speck's ideas work here, or not?

Rosenbarger's appearance at the FAN Fair followed much the same script, including open public doubt as to whether what he is paid to do, can ever actually be done in this city.

It begs a rather obvious question:

Then why pay you at all?

Ever since he decided to use the FAN Fair as a forum to explore the dimensions of his own under-achievement, I've decided to call his bluff. I'm not going to swallow the duplicity any longer. You shouldn't, either.

Ranting on John Rosenbarger's fundamental contradictions in the aftermath of an atrocious day in the neighborhood.

Rosenbarger spend quite a lot of his time yesterday mumbling about the unacceptable costs of congestion, which pretty much proves something I've been saying for a while about inbred political cowardice, and although I'll have more to write about this with time, what I think about this, I phrased in the form of a tweet to Jeff Speck yesterday afternoon:

@JeffSpeckAICP When your city planner outlines complete street options by parsing 50 shades of traffic congestion, you grasp political fear.

He retweeted it, and that makes me feel very good.

Then again, Speck's never seen anything like it, either. Verily, New Albany remains the place where brains go to atrophy. Here's the bonus: Jeff Speck in New Albany: “I’ve never seen anything like that in America."

Sweat Equity for slumlordis Newalbansis.

REWIND: "A very special NA Confidential interview with Anonymous."

We go all the way back to May 30, 2005, to illustrate a certain inevitable axiom: The more things in New Albany change, the more its disaffected character assassins remain precisely the same. The following article represents the only occurrence, within more than 5,000 posts over eight years, of the word "polecat," and surely this must count for something? Spread your vittles on the kitchen table's weather-beaten, Depression-era linoleum, and enjoy this blast from the past ... er, present ... whatever.

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"Anonymous” …

(a.k.a. legalbagle, smalltownusa, concern taxpayer, hometown girl, trucker buddy, proud democrat, redwhiteblue … etc., etc., ad nauseam; age, address, sex, political affiliation and very existence on planet earth completely unknown, and damned well intent on keeping it that way, because what would free speech be without invisibility?)

… has emerged as the foremost hooded Internet spokesperson for New Albany’s unreconstructed, flat-earth Luddites, known hereabouts as Brambleberries owing to the distinctive grazing preferences of Mustela putorius, the common polecat, which accepts a home range of a quarter mile, and is determined not to wander past these self-imposed boundaries.

"Anonymous" is the talk of the town.

Declining persistent NAC requests for a face-to-face interview, which “anonymous” finds even more threatening than progress itself, he or she consented to a far-reaching question and answer session.

To preserve the anonymity of “anonymous,” this groundbreaking interview was conducted utilizing rotary dial telephones, Morse code, smoke signals and carrier pigeons.

NA Confidential:
Thanks for not sitting down with us. You have expressed anonymous opposition to the Scribner Place development downtown, but a wide array of local business and civic leaders feel that Scribner Place is a good idea. Can you explain your position?

ANON:
Propertytaxsewercatastrophewastemayor’sSUV
bigmesswecan’tfolkscutthefatadultDVDjimmyyou
workforuslittlefolksburdenEDITthankgodforlaura
propertytaxlittlepeoplenewfangledparkingcriminal
conspiracygaragepointyheadsaaaaaaaaAAAARGGHHH …

NAC:In Richard Florida’s book, “Rise of the Creative Class,” the author theorizes that future economic development in cities like New Albany might derive from the presence of certain types of workers, who make employment choices according to non-traditional models that incorporate factors such as a community’s quality of life, its tolerance for multiculturalism, and proximity to recreational opportunities. Do you think New Albany has what it takes to prosper in this evolving economic system?

ANON:
Propertytaxsewercatastrophewastemayor’sSUV
bigmesswecan’tfolkscutthefatadultDVDjimmyyou
workforuslittlefolksburdenEDITthankgodforlaura
propertytaxlittlepeoplenewfangledparkingcriminal
conspiracygaragepointyheadsaaaaaaaaAAAARGGHHH …

NAC:
The French writer and political theorist Voltaire is said to have commented, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Based on your comments at Speak Out Loud NA, would you say that you agree or disagree with Voltaire’s sentiments?

ANON:
Propertytaxsewercatastrophewastemayor’sSUV
bigmesswecan’tfolkscutthefatadultDVDjimmyyou
workforuslittlefolksburdenEDITthankgodforlaura
propertytaxlittlepeoplenewfangledparkingcriminal
conspiracygaragepointyheadsaaaaaaaaAAAARGGHHH …

NAC:Good nutrition and regular exercise are important aspects of one’s personal health and wellness goals. Does your family eat salad more than twice a week, or less than twice a week?

ANON:
Propertytaxsewercatastrophewastemayor’sSUV
bigmesswecan’tfolkscutthefatadultDVDjimmyyou
workforuslittlefolksburdenEDITthankgodforlaura
propertytaxlittlepeoplenewfangledparkingcriminal
conspiracygaragepointyheadsaaaaaaaaAAAARGGHHH …

NAC:
Okay, here’s an easier one: IU, U of L, or UK?

ANON:
Propertytaxsewercatastrophewastemayor’sSUV
bigmesswecan’tfolkscutthefatadultDVDjimmyyou
workforuslittlefolksburdenEDITthankgodforlaura
propertytaxlittlepeoplenewfangledparkingcriminal
conspiracygaragepointyheadsaaaaaaaaAAAARGGHHH …

NAC:
Thanks again for the, uh, chat … it really eased our minds.

ANNA and YVONNE:
What 3rd District Councilpuppet Steve Price really is trying to say is:

"Propertytaxsewercatastrophewastemayor’sSUV
bigmesswecan’tfolkscutthefatadultDVDjimmyyou
workforuslittlefolksburdenEDITthankgodforlaura
propertytaxlittlepeoplenewfangledparkingcriminal
conspiracygaragepointyheadsaaaaaaaaAAAARGGHHH."

Ilmatyynyalukseni on täynnä ankeriaita.

Excuse the title. I've been looking for an excuse to use obscure linguistics in a title. Basque was my first choice ...

I can appreciate where you’re coming from. Both of you.

You’ve landed here only recently, and in the course of surveying the landscape, there have been judgments based on first impressions. Some of these will survive scrutiny, others not. That’s the classic, enduring beauty of the learning curve.

I’ve lived here in Floyd County my whole life, and have always had a mailing address within ten or so miles of City-County Building, but because my residency in the city of New Albany only began in 1993, I’m considered an outsider by many (mostly older, mostly bitter) New Albanians. Consequently, I know what it’s like to arrive here and be childishly derided for not being FROM here.

The ones who never accomplished anything will always resent you for your talent, your skill, and most of all, your mobility. If they perceive you being of temporary assistance to them in their goals of universal doltery and egalitarian misery, they’ll lionize you until you think for yourself. Then it will be over, and you’ll feel predictably dirty the next morning.

It’s frustrating, but ultimately, it’s their loss. They can do nothing to improve the planet. You can. The question is: Who wins?

Doers … or delusionals?

My involvement with the eternal morass of New Albanian politics dates back about six years. Before that, I was busy with the original pub and brewery on the north side. When I remarried, we bought a house on Spring Street, and began absorbing contemporary ways of thinking and planning as they pertain to historic urban cores. All I could see was an underutilized, savaged doughnut hole. I had to learn why it had happened, and how best to rectify it.

In the beginning, I looked around and thought I understood the lay of the land. I spoke out accordingly. As I met people who were outside my comfort zone of the Grant Line pub, and who had put much more thought into matters like this than I had, it began to occur to me that my initial snap judgments were utterly and embarrassingly mistaken. Much had been misread on my part, which is understandable given my inexperience.

Too bad I spouted before I grokked, but so it goes. You live, and you learn.

In New Albany, for better or worse, the more one learns, the murkier it gets, and the more affairs become resistant to glib, simple answers of the sort that satisfy the populist in all of us. We want these sort of answers, and badly. It’s easier to believe them and to range outside slef-imposed cultural boxes. Unfortunately, they’re seldom true.

Obfuscation, self-destructiveness and perhaps plain ol’ simple insanity are parts of everyday life here, in a fashion that mimics Faulkner’s fictional Mississippi to the letter, and maybe more so than most suspect. So it is that some times, you get off on the wrong foot and miss things. It’s difficult to see what’s progressive, and what isn’t. Some times, one must shrug and accept the daily torrential abuse for what it is: Fear, and loathing, and on occasion, chemical imbalance.

In the end, it comes down to this: If you’re smart enough to know better, you’re obliged to ...

… know better. To know. That’s the key word. In a city that by and large hates knowledge, hates achievement, and hates itself, knowing is the only conceivable coping mechanism.

The dark side in NA? It’s not the place to be. Trust me. The capable mustn't be divided by pettiness and intemperance, because there are too damned few of us.

Politics for Dummies: A Lamentation for the Rest of Us?

In yesterday’s post (Ain't no river wide enough), my colleague Bluegill both astutely observed and concisely questioned the nature of New Albany’s enduring malady:

As much as I value the revitalization efforts underway, I can’t help but wonder what made us so inhospitable to the creative spirit in the first place, what death led to the necessity of rebirth, especially given New Albany’s obvious appreciation of innovative endeavors in its earlier days.

The automobile and misguided development may have diminished investment in the physical infrastructure of downtown but what killed its intellect?

Is this puzzling dearth of respect for the concept of education in its ideal, necessary sense one reason why the theory and practice of local politics remains devoid of content and utterly dependent on tribalism?

Kochert’s political “danse macabre”: Should we shimmy to it?

At the scene of the degradation on Thursday, and then a second time on Friday at NA Confidential, I reminded an utterly oblivious city council president Larry Kochert that his barely concealed and apparently uncontrollable bias, reflected in a transparently conniving reluctance as presiding officer to exert reasonable control over his own meetings, has the damaging effect of enabling and perpetuating the council’s chronic pattern of unprofessional dysfunction.

Following a weekend’s reflection, I remain entirely confident that a vast majority of sensible people (whoa -- not so fast, David “non-city-resident” Huckleberry; the axe you’re grinding is bigger than Paul Bunyan’s), would, if queried, look upon Thursday evening’s spectacle with the same disgust, and reach precisely the same conclusion, as I did.

Given my certainty that ordinary and honest citizens of New Albany are likely to concur in this purely objective judgment, I nonetheless find myself slightly perplexed, although perhaps not yet troubled, by the blogger’s role in the politically motivated charade last week.

Specifically: Balancing our obligation as citizens to shine a bright and relentless light on the chronic flaws of the council’s obstructionist element, are we not also assisting in its enablement by rewarding misbehavior with much desired attention?

Let’s consider an example close to home.

For more than three years, I’ve observed the phenomenon of CM Price’s steady, alarming regression into what can only be properly understood as self-caricature. The more NAC explicates in painstaking detail Price’s myriad inadequacies as an office holder, all the more loudly and persistently he publicly flaunts these shortcomings, in the process managing nothing less than his transformation into something far more virulent and closely resembling our satiric renderings than he was before we commenced our efforts to expose these compelling reasons to vote against him.

Obviously, as a ward-heeling politician, Price must mobilize his core constituency of like-(in effect, non-) minded Luddites, but beyond that understandable imperative, and the blatant pandering it implies, it would seem that persistently shining our relentless light on his considerable dysfunction has simply inspired further pride in dysfunction – with self-defeating and corrosive effects for a community that must somehow escape Price’s and his ilk's blinders, brake pads and homilies if it is to succeed in rejuvenating itself.

Readers, what do you think? By giving the dysfunctional the attention they crave and providing them a stage upon which to posture, are we merely enhancing the collateral damage to the city?

If so, what’s the solution?

That is, the solution beyond showing them the door in May?