"Germany’s Iron Curtain is now the Green Belt, but turning the old border into a haven for wildlife has taken much more than just letting it be."

An absolutely fascinating outcome.

The Green Curtain, by Andrew Curry (Atlas Obscura)

Germany’s Iron Curtain is now the Green Belt, but turning the old border into a haven for wildlife has taken much more than just letting it be.

For most of its length in Germany, the Iron Curtain was actually a steel fence, and Kai Frobel could see it from his childhood bedroom in the West German village of Hassenberg. The barrier, more than 10 feet tall and made of a kind of mesh specially designed to offer no finger-holds to would-be escapees from East Germany, snaked through the Steinach Valley. It divided the landscape into the domains of documents. On one side, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. On the other, the Warsaw Pact ...

 ... The 866-mile border was one of the most recognizable and politically charged changes to the landscape following World War II. But all of West Germany was transforming, too. As it had in many parts of the world, industrial agriculture was turning what for millennia had been a patchwork of pasture, fields, and forest sprinkled with small towns into a much more uniform landscape—a monoculture of barely distinguishable crops.

In a twist of fate that reverberates decades later, the land on the Death Strip and some areas around it were protected from the plow and the combine. “In the ‘70s, the landscape was drained, cleared, planted,” Frobel says. “The border was the last refuge.”

In the 30 years after the crumbling of East Germany, known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the border between east and west has transformed again, into the Grünes Band, or Green Belt, a swath of protected land that runs from the Baltic Sea in the north all the way to the mountains of Bavaria in the south. It connects more than 100 different types of habitat, from grasslands to marshes to forests. And the corridor—longer than the distance between New York and Chicago, but only about 50 to 200 yards wide; 68 square miles in total, a little bit less than Brooklyn—is home to a staggering 1,200 threatened species.

Not dumbing down: "Wendell Berry’s lifelong dissent."

2011, Louisville Loves Mountains.

On Sunday I launched these words into the social media abyss.

It dawns on me that what I detest most of all on a consistent lifelong basis is the process of “dumbing down,” whether it’s society, business, politics, beer, whatever. Note that I’m not speaking of ignorance; it’s willful stupidity, which is like kryptonite to me. Jeeebus, I hate it so. Rant over. I’m going to hide somewhere in the house, read a book and LEARN SOMETHING just for spite.

I'm already reading a novel (Stalingrad, by Vassily Grossman). Then I saw this book review, which is an extended essay about Wendell Berry.

A Shared Place, by Jedediah Britton-Purdy (The Nation)

Wendell Berry’s lifelong dissent.

ESSAYS, 1969–1990, by Wendell Berry; Jack Shoemaker, ed.
ESSAYS, 1993–2017, by Wendell Berry; Jack Shoemaker, ed.

At a time when political conflict runs deep and erects high walls, the Kentucky essayist, novelist, and poet Wendell Berry maintains an arresting mix of admirers. Barack Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal in 2011. The following year, the socialist-feminist writer and editor Sarah Leonard published a friendly interview with him in Dissent. Yet he also gets respectful attention in the pages of The American Conservative and First Things, a right-leaning, traditionalist Christian journal.

More recently, The New Yorker ran an introduction to Berry’s thought distilled from a series of conversations, stretching over several years, with the critic Amanda Petrusich. In these conversations, Berry patiently explains why he doesn’t call himself a socialist or a conservative and recounts the mostly unchanged creed underlying his nearly six decades of writing and activism. Over the years, he has called himself an agrarian, a pacifist, and a Christian—albeit of an eccentric kind. He has written against all forms of violence and destruction—of land, communities, and human beings—and argued that the modern American way of life is a skein of violence. He is an anti-capitalist moralist and a writer of praise for what he admires: the quiet, mostly uncelebrated labor and affection that keep the world whole and might still redeem it. He is also an acerbic critic of what he dislikes, particularly modern individualism, and his emphasis on family and marriage and his ambivalence toward abortion mark him as an outsider to the left ...

The shape of personal action: "I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle."

Mary Annaïse Heglar is a climate justice essayist and the director of publications at the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York.

I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle (Vox)

Stop obsessing over your environmental “sins.” Fight the oil and gas industry instead.

I’m at my friend’s birthday dinner when an all-too-familiar conversation unfolds. I introduce myself to the man to my left, tell him that I work in the environmental field, and his face freezes in terror. Our handshake goes limp.

“You’re gonna hate me …” he mutters sheepishly, his voice barely audible over the clanging silverware.

I knew what was coming. He regaled me with a laundry list of environmental mistakes from just that day: He’d ordered lunch and it came in plastic containers; he’d eaten meat and he was about to order it again; he’d even taken a cab to this very party.

I could hear the shame in his voice. I assured him that I didn’t hate him, but that I hated the industries that placed him — and all of us — in the same trick bag. Then his shoulders lifted from their slump and his eyes met mine. “Yeah, ’cause there’s really no point trying to save the planet anymore, right?”

Snip to the end.

Here’s my confession: I don’t care how green you are. I want you in the movement for climate justice.

I don’t care how long you’ve been engaged in the climate conversation, 10 years or 10 seconds. I don’t care how many statistics you can rattle off. I don’t need you to be all-solar-everything to be an environmentalist. I don’t need you to be vegan-er than thou, or me, for that matter. I don’t care if you are eating a burger right this minute.

I don’t even care if you work on an oil rig. In some parts of the country, those are the only jobs that pay enough for you to feed your family. And I don’t blame workers for that. I blame their employers. I blame the industry that is choking us all, and the government that is letting them do it.

All I need you to do is want a livable future. This is your planet, and no one can advocate for it like you can. No one can protect it like you can.

We have 11 years — not to start but to finish saving the planet.

I’m not here to absolve you. And I’m not here to abdicate you. I am here to fight with you.

Silence at home, but in Nashville TN, a "campaign to restore and enlarge the city’s tree canopy."

New Albany has a Tree Board, and over the years, I've experienced a great deal of trouble when trying to learn from it exactly what the city's urban canopy plan is, and where the plan (if any) is lodged.

Could I have a look?

I started asking for information two years ago, and never received it. We see dozens of trees being felled all around the city, and some of them replanted, but in spite of requests to be shown the comparative numbers, there remains no accurate public accounting.

In the past, I have suggested that little more can be expected from public officials who don't go outside often enough to know the difference between standing in the sun and standing in the shade -- who drive and never walk, who react and never think. I may or may not have been too harsh.

However, one thing cannot be disputed: while other cities make their tree canopy plans available and go so far as to enlist public participation (see below), ours keeps its urban canopy goals (whatever these might be) safely under wraps, as though they were a state secret.

In New Albany at the present time, there is only one consistent City Hall policy unifying the mayor's stewardship: control in the person of the mayor himself and the mayor's closest confidantes. Whether good, bad or indifferent, all decisions emanate from this need to keep a tight lid on information, and to allow citizen participation only under intricately proscribed and mostly inane conditions.

Residents may or may not find this situation conducive to their lives. I'd merely make the point that there is another way, and there will be alternatives come 2019, and our next round of municipal elections.

Meanwhile, there's Nashville.

More Trees, Happier People, by Margaret Renkl (New York Times)

When cities grow, green space dies. Replanting it has been shown to lift the human spirit.

NASHVILLE — The scene in a tiny pocket park outside Plaza Mariachi here on Nolensville Pike last Wednesday was like a tableau from a Norman Rockwell painting, 21st-century style. Surrounded by signs advertising the Hispanic Family Foundation, Dubai Jewelry, the Dominican Barber Shop and restaurants offering Peruvian, Chinese, Mediterranean and Indian food — as well as a Game Stop franchise and H&R Block — was a small sign that read, “Today: Free trees.”

The arrow on the sign pointed to a pop-up canopy where the Nashville Tree Foundation was hosting its fourth tree giveaway of October. A family standing under the canopy was posing for a photo with the sapling they had just adopted. Carolyn Sorenson, executive director of the foundation, was taking the picture: “Say ‘trees’!” she said.

The tree giveaway at Plaza Mariachi happened to fall on the very day that Nashville’s mayor, David Briley, announced a campaign to restore and enlarge the city’s tree canopy. The effort, called “Root Nashville,” will be overseen by the city and the Cumberland River Compact, an environmental nonprofit, and funded through a combination of public, corporate, foundation and private dollars. Together with several municipal departments and other nonprofit organizations, the initiative aims to plant 500,000 trees in Davidson County by 2050 ...

Congratulations to Cafe 157 for emulating "Strawless in Seattle." Who's next?

Question: But what about when I'm driving?
Answer: You should be driving.

Kudos to Cafe 157 (157 E. Main, downtown New Albany).

This is something other establishments should get behind, although I'll never be able to forget the three criticisms that greeted NABC's million-dollar investment downtown at Bank Street Brewhouse in 2009:

Gasp -- no Diet Coke!
Gasp -- only crappy local wine!
Gasp -- NO SODA STRAWS!

Uh oh ... time for a rant.

It's like this whole notion of "resistance." Donald Trump is the by-product of a broken economic system, and as consumers, we buttress the system each and every day. To resist, we'll need to give something up -- to take something away from economic elites and capital accumulation.

Like plastic soda straws? Could be. It's an environmental issue, but also good practice in bringing principled weight to bear.

Tell you what. I'll be drinking adult beverages straight from the glass -- can you wake me when the "resistance" gets serious?

A Citywide Takeover by Lonely Whale

Leading Seattle businesses and cultural icons committed to incorporating marine degradable alternatives to single-use plastic straws resulting in the radical reduction of plastic straw consumption in Seattle. In September alone, 2.3 million single-use plastic straws were permanently removed from the city. On launch of Strawless In Seattle, the Mayor of Seattle announced that in July, 2018 Seattle will become the largest metropolitan city to ban the single-use plastic straw.

The first campaign of its kind, Strawless In Seattle supports Strawless Ocean's global initiative to remove 500 million plastic straws from the U.S. waste stream in 2017.

"Instead of growth at all costs, a new economic model allows us to thrive while saving the planet."

We've "been there," and only recently.

What do you know? Chance the gardener was right, after all.

Now, to continue the doughnut riff:

Finally, a breakthrough alternative to growth economics – the doughnut, by George Monbiot (The Guardian)

So what are we going to do about it? This is the only question worth asking. But the answers appear elusive. Faced with a multifaceted crisis – the capture of governments by billionaires and their lobbyists, extreme inequality, the rise of demagogues, above all the collapse of the living world – those to whom we look for leadership appear stunned, voiceless, clueless. Even if they had the right courage to act, they have no idea what to do.

The most they tend to offer is more economic growth: the fairy dust supposed to make all the bad stuff disappear. Never mind that it drives ecological destruction; that it has failed to relieve structural unemployment or soaring inequality; that, in some recent years, almost all the increment in incomes has been harvested by the top 1%. As values, principles and moral purpose are lost, the promise of growth is all that’s left ...

George Monbiot, and exploring "the ways in which we could restore political life by restoring community life."

These things sneak up on you, and it's all part of the unceasing learning curve -- and if you really believe you learned everything you need to know in kindergarten, you're doing it wrong.

George Monbiot has been writing for The Guardian for two decades, but only during the past two or three years (sadly, belatedly, stupidly) have I found myself seeking not to miss a word he writes.

Perhaps this paragraph at Monbiot's web site sums it up.

Here are some of the things I try to fight: environmental destruction, undemocratic power, corruption, deception of the public, injustice, inequality and the misallocation of resources, waste, denial, the libertarianism which grants freedom to the powerful at the expense of the powerless, undisclosed interests, complacency.

Monbiot introduces yesterday's column.

This is the third in my occasional series on possible solutions to the many crises we face. It explores the ways in which we could restore political life by restoring community life. This means complementing state provision with something that belongs neither to government nor to the market but exists in a different sphere, a sphere we have neglected.

Here they are, in reverse order.

3. This is how people can truly take back control: from the bottom up

Our atomised communities can heal themselves. Through local initiatives we can regenerate our culture and make politics relevant again

---

2. Our democracy is broken, debased and distrusted – but there are ways to fix it

Trump and Brexit are responses to a political system that’s imploding. But could a radical redesign wrest it from the liars?

---

1. The case for despair is made. Now let’s start to get out of the mess we’re in

There is no going back, no comfort in old certainties. But reviving common ownership is one possible route to social transformation

The next time One Southern Indiana crusades for environmental consciousness will be the first.

Daddy Oligarch wouldn't want his "economic development" plaything taking positions on nasty liberal ideas about the environment. We need more jobs, more roads, more cars ... and more electronic fund transfers to the Cayman Islands.

How to be environmentally conscious in Southern Indiana; Region is improving, but there’s room to grow, by Danielle Grady (Hanson Motorcycle Club)

SOUTHERN INDIANA — Jeff and Roz Wolverton try to be environmentally friendly.

They live in a small downtown New Albany apartment, drive as little as possible … and pick up about 200 bags worth of trash each year.

The couple perform their self-imposed duty about four days a week: clearing detritus from the riverfront and sidewalks.

They started picking up trash in 2002 after a trip to a remote area of Costa Rica. Numerous discarded Coke bottles lined the nearby beach every morning. They’d be picked up, only to be replaced by a new batch of bottles the next day.

When the Wolverton’s returned, they began to notice the trash present in New Albany — particularly along the Ohio River.

“We figure it’s going to show up in the river, then in the Gulf of Mexico and then circle around to Costa Rica and every other place,” Jeff said. “So you just gotta start where you live.”

Resisting? "What is there to learn, for our next four years, from a struggle rooted in native leadership and native rights, which also fought to protect the environment on behalf of all Americans?"

I'd seriously advise you to forget about 2016. The year 2017 is going to be very demanding. You might wish to prepare for it. Keeping this sentence in mind might be more useful than an encyclopedic knowledge of Disney fetishism: "Progress isn’t an entitlement, like a train we simply choose to board, but something to be fought for."

Want to Know How to Build a Progressive Movement Under Trump? Look to Standing Rock, by Audrea Lim (The Nation)

Fighting against white supremacy and neoliberalism takes organizing—and lots of it.

... Justice and victory aren’t mutually exclusive. The problem with much of the “race vs. class” debate is that it either fixates on “winning back” the roughly 25.5 percent of Americans who voted for Trump, or supposes that a single line of rhetoric can mobilize every subset of the working class. But ignoring racial disparities won’t make them disappear. That will only happen when they are eliminated through social and political change.

Whatever the limitations of grassroots struggles like Standing Rock—it is focused around a single task, for one—these are the movements that have been mobilizing masses, building a base and holding the line against white supremacy and neoliberalism. We should build on their work, and support others waging similar, invisible fights (like the White Earth Reservation’s battle against the Line 3 pipeline). We should also create space for those communities to thrive by organizing against white supremacy—and the neoliberal policies undergirding it—in the heartland of America.

“We’ll continue to stand up,” said Allard on the phone, somewhat resigned. This was a reminder that progress isn’t an entitlement, like a train we simply choose to board, but something to be fought for.

Anger and mourning "Inside the Sacrifice Zone."

You're so angry that you consistently vote against your own health?

The book's ultimate aim is to explore the emotional state of the American "right", but importantly, this review helps to remind us that as we've focused on the personal demerits of two horrible presidential candidates, whole areas of critical importance have gone unaddressed.

Climate change?

Environmental concerns?

Anyone?

Inside the Sacrifice Zone, by Nathaniel Rich (The New York Review of Books)

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, by Arlie Russell Hochschild

 ... After seeing his house, neighborhood, and way of life destroyed by corporate greed and state-sanctioned contempt for the natural environment, and many of his neighbors diagnosed with cancer, (Mike) Schaff was forever changed. “They think we’re just a bunch of ignorant coonasses,” he told a Mother Jones reporter. Schaff became an environmental activist, railing against the “disrespect that we have been shown by both Texas Brine and our state officials themselves.” He marched on the statehouse, wrote fifty letters to state and federal officials, granted dozens of interviews to local, national, and foreign press. When state officials claimed they had detected no oil in the bayou, he demanded that the EPA check their work.

But Schaff continued to vote Tea Party down the line. He voted for the very politicians who had abetted Texas Brine at every turn, who opposed environmental regulation of any kind. He voted to “abolish” the EPA, believing that it “was grabbing authority and tax money to take on a fictive mission…lessening the impact of global warming.” The violent destruction of everything he held dear was not enough to change his mind.

Schaff’s story is an extreme but representative example of what so many Louisianian voters have brought upon themselves. “The entire state of Louisiana,” writes Hochschild, “had been placed into a sinkhole.” When confronted with the contradictions in their political logic, Hochschild’s subjects fall into “long pauses.” Cognitive dissonance reduces them to childlike inanity. When asked about catastrophic oil spills that result from lax regulation, one woman says, “It’s not in the company’s own interest to have a spill or an accident…. So if there’s a spill, it’s probably the best the company could do.” Madonna Massey says: “Sure, I want clean air and water, but I trust our system to assure it.” Jackie Tabor, whom Hochschild describes as “an obedient Christian wife,” says: “You have to put up with things the way they are…. Pollution is the sacrifice we make for capitalism,” which is a gentler way of saying that premature death is the sacrifice we make for capitalism. Janice Areno, who worked at Olin Chemical without a facial mask as an inspector of phosgene gas and suffers mysterious health ailments that she believes are “probably related to growing up near the plants,” finds comfort in an anthropomorphic analogy: “Just like people have to go to the bathroom, plants do too.”

But Hochschild is not interested in merely documenting the familiar ways in which this stratum of white Americans has consistently voted against its own interests, economic and otherwise. She wants to understand the cause. She finds all of the familiar explanations lacking.

The Baylor for Mayor meme, October 28: "The city is not the problem, it's the solution."

Jaime Lerner is famous for this quote, which all elected officials in New Albany should consider each morning when popping out of bed:

The city is not the problem, it's the solution.

For more reading: Common sense and the city: Jaime Lerner, Brazil's green revolutionary, at The Guardian.

"The Reign of Recycling": Environmental necessity or religious ritual?

The topic of recycling was discussed at the recent annual meeting of Trash Force, making Tierney's essay timely. It is well-reasoned and provocative.

Would partial recycling of certain valuable items accompanied by a carbon tax on garbage be better calculated to help the environment?

The Reign of Recycling, by John Tierney (New York Times)

IF you live in the United States, you probably do some form of recycling. It’s likely that you separate paper from plastic and glass and metal. You rinse the bottles and cans, and you might put food scraps in a container destined for a composting facility. As you sort everything into the right bins, you probably assume that recycling is helping your community and protecting the environment. But is it? Are you in fact wasting your time?

In 1996, I wrote a long article for The New York Times Magazine arguing that the recycling process as we carried it out was wasteful. I presented plenty of evidence that recycling was costly and ineffectual, but its defenders said that it was unfair to rush to judgment. Noting that the modern recycling movement had really just begun just a few years earlier, they predicted it would flourish as the industry matured and the public learned how to recycle properly.

So, what’s happened since then? While it’s true that the recycling message has reached more people than ever, when it comes to the bottom line, both economically and environmentally, not much has changed at all.

Falling Run 2: A look back at 2006, and "West End Woes."

On a few past occasions, we've taken a look at the unfulfilled potential of Falling Run Creek, as here.

From Yonkers to Falling Run.

Also, earlier today.

The first mention of Falling Run at NAC seems to be April 3, 2006, and this essay by the Bookseller.

As an aside, isn't it ironic how often "West End Woes" and "Dan Coffey" appear in a sentence together? It's almost like cause 'n' effect.

Here is the entire piece from 2006.

---

West End Woes

In most cities, you won't find the congenitally disaffected even bothering to cast a vote, but in New Albany, Indiana, right here on the river, members of that class seem to have found an outlet for their green-eyed resentfulness - warming a seat on the Common Council of the City of New Albany for Districts 1, 2, 3, and 4.

As a public service, NA Confidential is pleased to be able to prepare this brief for 1st District Council Member Dan Coffey to use at tomorrow's Board of Public Works and Safety meeting. (That's the same room you'll be seated in Monday night, since you haven't often been able to find the elusive BoW in session.)

But first, a digression. The missus and I went out last p.m. to gig some trogs, er, frogs, dodging raindrops along the way. It was an educational trip. We ranged across various trouble spots previously highlighted and found a few new ones that will need the attention of our public servants.

Spring is a time to blossom, and the showers came just in time for the city to begin its weekly street cleaning meanders (Don't ignore those red no parking notices, sports fans. NAC readers will have no excuse for getting caught parked on the wrong side of the street on the wrong day).

The early rains did little more than wash a lot of seasonal grime away, but by 5 p.m. the storms had become real gullywashers. My bride escorted me to inspect some of the flood plains and roadways that typically suffer hardest from strong rains.

We were pleased to see great progress being made on the Vance Avenue church pastored by the Rev. Anthony B. Toran. It looks like it's going to be a spacious, yet economical, house of worship before too long. And it is without doubt an enhancement to the neighborhood.

We then proceeded to the Beechwood/Grant Line/Daisy Lane "triplesection," which remains in limbo until the Daisy Lane widening (lane-widening?) project moves further along. I understand that Mr. McCartin owns that plot once used for a gas station/market, and one would assume we can divine just who The Gary is backing this election season from the campaign signs on display there (No, I won't tell you. Go look for yourself!).

A quick hop northwestward to the top of the hill illuminated some of the research we had done earlier in the day with GoogleEarth (go download it to your machine now - it can't find our house, but it will get you close enough to see what detritus is stored behind CM Larry Kochert's back fence).

By satellite, the proposed development across from the Daisy Lane/Schell Road intersection seems like a no-brainer. That is, until you walk the ground. Nearby is the biggest of the city's doughnut holes, the tower farm and flood plain that separates State Streeters from Grant Liners. The site straddles the turn that brings westbound drivers on a true western heading after the three-way stop.

I can't blame the residents along Schell for using this occasion to lobby for improvements to their street. But I'm not sure how traffic on Daisy Lane will affect the flow or volume on Schell. It looks as if someone would really have to go out of their way to use Schell to bypass the aforementioned Beechwood "triplesection," and if they so desired, they would be doing it now.

The Plan Commission and staff, as well as the developer, seem to think that even Daisy Lane won't be overwhelmed by the daily addition of 300 or so vehicles, at least after the road improvements are completed.

This project qualifies as infill development, if not in a "blighted" area, and I'm hard-pressed to argue against it. We sure would like to hear more from its opponents than has been publicly reported.

The northwest corner of Daisy Lane and Green Valley Road is bare of any "Coming Soon" signs courtesy of The McCartin Companies. No word yet on whether that company is still determined to expand the commercial boundaries northward into the residential enclaves. Can it be that a line of demarcation has been drawn?

One sign of spring is the blossoming of candidate political signs. Someone should give a prize to the candidates with the best sign designs. Wonder if that would count as a campaign donation?

Taking a stroll in your own precinct, or a drive across town, may be one of the best ways to figure out who the players are in the May 2 primaries, at least until The Tribune issues its much-awaited thumbnails of the races. If voters start paying attention now, we'll have made better choices in May - and in November.

Though each is unopposed, both Mark Seabrook (currently a Republican city council member) and Randy Stumler (currently a Democratic county council member) have their signs out. I still have to check again to see if there are any contested races in the Republican primary. They do seem to be disciplined when it comes to winnowing the candidates.

I've enjoyed watching these signs sprout, although I'm dying of curiosity to know who Ms. Ali is supporting via yard-sign placement. And I'm making it a point to examine those candidates who've forsworn this particular form of electioneering.

We also climbed the hill to New Beginnings Church. I've been curious about this church since I arrived here. It sure looks nice. But wasn't one of the conditions for building there, particularly on that slope, that the church would put in sidewalks as part of the development permission from the Plan Commission? Why then are there still no sidewalks? Surely the neighbors in the adjacent subdivision are going to be ticked off if that doesn't happen soon.

But back to our stated mission. Despite the frog-strangler, we came up empty on trog, er, frog-sightings, and had to settle on store-bought tilapia for dinner, seasoned with Steak Dance brand meat seasoning and tenderizer. Pretty good stuff. They claim it's "Great for All Meats," and "our family" can attest to that. [THIS SPACE FOR RENT ;)]

We followed the easiest course (downhill) to see if the much-ballyhooed exploding sewer caps were dancing. Nope, at least not on our trip, and we ranged fairly widely around town. Nor did we see any anal-retentives out ruining their shoes - which makes me wonder just how hard for it is for them to leave the house prepared with rubbers - the footwear kind, I mean).

But we did take note of an abominable situation in the West End. The construction of Interstate 64 did much damage to community and commerce in the underpopulated 1st District, but I understand that happened quite a few years ago.

The New Albanian received an anonymous missive recently from those precincts, and perhaps what we saw just two short blocks from CM Coffey's abode is one of the horrors spoken of by his putative constituent.

Falling Run Creek was once a significant waterway, and navigable instead of being merely a watershed tributary. I'm told that riverboats were floated down Falling Run to the Ohio. The "park" alongside it would make a wonderful interpretive center for the history of boat building in New Albany. Even though it is subject to frequent flooding, there are terracing solutions that would make it a vital attraction no matter the water level. Memphis, Tennessee's Mud Island comes to mind as a model for a mini-park that would serve the community while drawing tourists.

But what we spotted on the bank opposite Joe Kraft Park is one of the ugliest abominations I've seen in any urban area. The north bank of Falling Run Creek is derelict. It is nothing less than a dump. You can't tell me the creek waters washed that assortment of goods 30 feet up the bank.

This is clearly the city's responsibility. Joe Kraft Park is clearly the responsibility of the city/county Parks Department, and both need to be cleaned up pronto.

We had no camera handy, and no picture would do this scene justice. Go there and see for yourself. 612 West Seventh Street is the nearest home, but this simply isn't a homeowner's or tenant's problem. It is ours.

So, here's your brief, Dan. You live two blocks from the scene. You told the public you considered Joe Kraft Park to be your own responsibility. You've shown remarkable restraint so far in not demanding that this eyesore in your neighborhood be cleaned up.

We're with you, Dan. Let's get this fixed now. If the city can't afford to put the resources into it because you've obstructed things for so long and tried to offer a government on the cheap, tried to destroy every progressive idea that ever came up, then organize a community clean-up day. Get your pet non-profit improvement association involved. Stream cleanup and anti-dumping legislation are, of course, progressive ideas, but with an election near at hand, surely even you can "break bread" with the progressives for a good cause. 'Cause your volunteers will be, by definition, progressives furthering a progressive cause.

Progressive is as progressive does, as a kind lady told me today. That is correct, ma'am - that is correct.

Falling Run 1: An example at Beargrass Creek?

Read "Beargrass Creek," and think "Falling Run."

Beargrass Creek and the road to revitalization, by Kevin Gibson (LEO Weekly)

 ... He sees the project as having a three-fold benefit: First and foremost, it will stabilize the areas adjacent to the creek, many of which have been used as illegal dumps. Secondly, it will “put more eyes on the creek.” And by doing that, the third benefit will be that with that newfound focus on Beargrass Creek, it will motivate the community to restore it and keep it clean and accessible.

“People do believe in clean water,” Wicks says. “People do believe in healthy streams.”

Grace Schneider: "I live in a cool place."

The C-J's Indiana Bureau reporter, Grace Schneider, offers food for thought during a reflection of her time living and working in Southern Indiana. County government really fumbled the LG & E farce, didn't it?

Reporter in Indiana land: "I live in a cool place."

... The murder stories may boost visits to the paper's website and make my editors happy, but my fellow reporters and I are still pleading that we don't forget public-service journalism — keeping watch on elected leaders and shining light on developments that affect people every day.

In my case, recently it's been asking about an issue Knobs residents care deeply about – why wasn't there more oversight by New Albany and Floyd County leaders over where and how LG&E mowed down a wide corridor of mature hardwood trees on a hillside. The utility is spending $22 million to build a substation and connect with Duke's lines to strengthen a weak spot in the grid. Huge poles are now going up in visible spots, reminding one of John Prine's line from the song "Paradise" — "they wrote it all down as the progress of man."

When I asked about how the route for lines was chosen and what alternatives were considered, an LG&E spokeswoman said there are already lots of power lines in that area. In essence, what's the problem? In some states, picturesque views are carefully guarded, so power lines and lighted billboards undergo far more scrutiny over where they're allowed.

Not here. Floyd County's chief planner told me that utilities have a lot of pull. End of story.

"Affective Labor as the Lifeblood of a Commons," though not at the next 5 o'clock network.

Funny how topics like affective labor never make it to one of those One Southern Indiana daisy-chain mixers at Kye's, with Bud Light, Papa John's and lots of desperate slobbering. It's a really good read, but does the Southern Indiana business community read?

Affective Labor as the Lifeblood of a Commons, by David Blooier

We have so internalized the logic of neoliberal economics and modernity, even those of us who would like to think otherwise, that we don’t really appreciate how deeply our minds have been colonized. It is easy to see homo economicus as silly. Certainly we are not selfish, utility-maximizing rationalists, not us! And yet, the proper role of our emotions and affect in imagining a new order remains a murky topic.

That’s why I was excited to run across a fascinating paper by Neera M. Singh, an academic who studies forestry at the University of Toronto. Her paper, “The Affective Labor of Growing Forests and the Becoming of Environmental Subjects” focuses on “rethinking environmentality” in the Odisha region of India.

Environmental protection? We go "Deep Inside the Main Street Deforestation Project."

From SW Michigan to S Indiana: "How the Chamber of Commerce Hurts Our Community."

Perhaps Southwest Michigan First's antics do not provide an exact match with the persistent chicanery of One Southern Indiana, but it's close enough for rock and roll.

How the Chamber of Commerce Hurts our Community ... Who is Southwest Michigan First putting first? (hint- not the environment and not poor people), by Matthew Lechel

... The problem with the Chamber of Commerce, Southwest Michigan First and the status quo ‘economic development’ community is twofold. Firstly, these groups hold our communities hostage in the name of jobs. The damage this causes impacts our community primarily environmentally, but also culturally and socially. The second major problem with the current economic development paradigm is that the primary product they’re selling (government subsidy of private business) is something we aren’t even sure works. That’s why it’s called trickle down economic THEORY. There’s loads of evidence increasingly showing that taxpayer handouts to profitable companies under the auspice of job creation doesn’t work. Of course there are other folks (particularly those who benefit handsomely) who say trickle down economics does work, and only more time will fully prove that. One thing is for certain, based on past actions the economic developers are not in any way interested in showcasing to the public their gamble with taxpayer resources works. Especially when they can get the local paper to simply assume it is a positive investment and report accordingly.

Hummer owners gag as "Hamburg Announces Plans to Become a Car-Free City Within 20 Years."

Ah, those crazy Germans -- not just talking a good game, but actually seeking to achieve a shift to renewable energy.

Of course, in America we're better off with the Creation Museum and lots of Big Coal and Big Oil to take us there. Thanks to diligent legislators like Rhonda Rhoads, we're also keeping them gays in their places, by Gawd.

Meanwhile, in Hamburg, the Beatles are so 1960s, and even the St. Pauli Girl has become irrelevant in the craft beer age. In Hamburg, a politician can muse aloud about a car-free future, and not be exiled to Ken Ham.

Thanks to J.d. for the link.

Hamburg Announces Plans to Become a Car-Free City Within 20 Years, by Charley Cameron (Inhabit)

Hamburg is currently working on a plan that would eliminate the need for cars within the next 15-20 years, making the city a greener, healthier and more pleasant place to live. The city’s proposed Grünes Netz, or “Green Network” will create pedestrian and cycle paths to connect the city’s existing, substantial green spaces, and provide safe, car-free commuter routes for all residents.

Wendell Berry at Louisville Loves Mountains, Friday night.