What I'm thankful for this week

(We'll be back on Friday, November 23. Have a good Turkey Day ... RAB)

Regardless of who you thank and why you thank them, it remains that sharing homegrown pleasures with friends is a good thing.


Freakwater

When Dylan sings "she knows there's no success like failure, and that failure's no success at all", he may as well be singing about Freakwater. Fiercely independent and totally disregarding of musical trends, Janet Bean and Catherine Irwin have made some of the finest country records ever put down, yet they're virtually invisible to the country music audience. They've cultivated a passionate fan base, but it's so diffused that making any real money touring seems impossible.

Perhaps their fortunes will improve upon the release their new record, Thinking of You. . ., but perhaps not. Problem is, Freakwater's music is faithful to the spirit, but not the letter, of country music's laws. As a result, they live a bastardly life, always on the outside of any side there is. "People with a punk background may think we're purists, but country fans think we're freaks," Irwin said in 1995. And that perception hasn't really changed.


People like this in school

The studio will focus on linking the pedestrian realm of downtown Louisville, especially Main Street, to the waterfront and even across the river to Indiana. Students will research the existing conditions as a basis for understanding the tissue that ties the city to the river, and how it can be enhanced. The problem is daunting, which precludes normal urban interventions. Instead, students will be asked to make a guerrilla attack on the Louisville waterfront, to imagine the improbable as a means of enlarging what is possible, and to restore the civic splendor of this timeless natural resource.


The peculiar magnetic field created by living in downtown New Albany nearly equidistant from Ken Pyle in one direction and Roger Baylor in the other


This Will Oldham / Bonnie Prince Billy show on WFPK's Live Lunch archive


Going to the country to see friends


That people all over town are talking about transportation

Our region deserves transportation solutions that:
- Address the financial, energy and environmental realities of the 21st Century
- Meet the needs of all people, regardless of socioeconomic status
- Are developed through an open, understandable public process


Feel free to pile on.