BEER MONEY: New Albany Is A State of Mind (2009).

As noted in today's previous post, my two-years-and-five-month run as a guest columnist at the pre-merger New Albany Tribune began in 2009. This was the very first column, which ran on January 10. The photo was my official newspaper photo, as attached here to a 2010 column about something I'm no longer allowed to address openly, hence the "redacted" discretion. 

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New Albany Is A State of Mind

You might recall that roughly 2,500 years ago, there lived the Greek philosopher called Socrates, a man whose dogged pursuit of knowledge endeared him to succeeding generations of admirers, although not to his fellow Athenians. In fact, most of his neighbors considered him not only an annoyance, but a heretic, too, and if there’s anything to be gleaned from reading history, it’s that there’s always time enough for a priest to throw another heretic on the fire.

So goes the eternal tyranny of the majority, and yet thanks to Plato’s writings, we now recognize Socrates as a peerless moral and social critic. Appropriately, he has been honored by the tag of gadfly, a term for describing “people who upset the status quo by posing upsetting or novel questions, or just being an irritant.”

That’s my kind of guy, although naturally gadflies are detested by small, non-expandable minds of the sort that are the norm in human societies the world over, and who assign themselves the task of protecting the status quo whether or not it is sensible.

Accordingly, you can picture the scene in the agora, with Socrates and his small band of youthful followers avidly questioning accepted beliefs, while the “little people” of Athens hover nearby, muttering, and eavesdropping on the dialogues.

These many centuries later, I can almost hear the anonymous bellow from behind the adjacent stone wall, followed by the pitter-patter of fleeing sandals:

“Hey, Socrates, if you aren’t happy here, then why don’t you get the hell out and leave us alone?”

Socrates stayed, of course, and was made to pay dearly for it. During a period of political upheaval, he was put on trial and convicted of corrupting the morals of Athenian youth. Offered the opportunity to devise his own punishment, the philosopher wryly suggested that his “sentence” include a regular monetary stipend and free meals for life.

Instead, the humorless judges gave Socrates the choice of exile or death, and he opted for the latter, drinking the hemlock, cementing his martyrdom, and proving that in ancient Greece as in modern-day America, folks don’t take kindly to having their premises examined, not to mention taxed … but let’s leave Their Man Mitch’s properties and proprieties out of it, shall we?

---

And so there I was, cradling a craft-brewed pint of beer within the cozy confines of Connor’s Place and reflecting on the dubious merits of “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” when suddenly that nagging, familiar existential question reared up and bit me … again.

“New Albany is a state of mind … but whose?

Numerous other pressing questions have come and gone since I was a youngster growing up in Georgetown, experiencing the sort of small town ambience remembered with warm fuzziness primarily by those who never actually lived through the crushing boredom of it all, queries like, “Where can we get served?” and “Is it really cheating if the teacher doesn’t catch you?”

But nowadays the tough questions keep getting harder to answer, like this one:

Have you ever been standing in the supermarket, trying to fathom the industrial process bakeries use to remove the flavor and texture from white bread in order to make it marketable to the terminally fearful among us, when suddenly a remarkably obese woman down the aisle starts screaming obscenities at her own helpless children, and you realize that all this prattle about free people making informed choices to suit their individual needs must be coming from those who’ve never driven an automobile through New Albany’s decaying streets, artfully dodging listless vagrants, texting drivers and the occasional neglected, doomed dog or cat?

---

In 2008, Barack Obama enunciated “change” and “hope” as electoral mantras, and predictably, local voters went big for Obama’s befuddled Republican opponent. Therein lies a glimpse of New Albany’s personalized 800-lb gorilla, and the civic psychosis that so degrades our future prospects as a city. It is our persistent failure to muster any degree of comprehension as to what is occurring in the larger world outside the municipal devil we know, and to imagine another way of life.

As an example, consider the simple notion of riding a bicycle in an urban setting. Doing so in New Albany can be profoundly dangerous, in part because of the gaping potholes, and more importantly, as previously observed, because local drivers are notoriously unskilled and inattentive. However, the problem goes beyond an absence of empathy.

Numerous New Albanian drivers actually can’t imagine riding a bicycle, and moreover, they can’t imagine life outside the confines of an automobile – and if they can’t imagine something, how on earth could anyone else?

To them, anyone who is able to imagine biking and also to achieve it must be mistaken or defective, and poses a vague threat. Any person riding a bicycle surely must be too poor to afford a car, or is restricted to biking owing to mental illness, a DUI conviction, bad personal credit or contrarian tendencies.

In other words, a heretic. Do I hear the sound of flicking Bics?

In this and related matters, the New Albany Syndrome is a very real and self-defeating malady, and one of my goals in life is to somehow locate the source of the dysfunction and drive a stake composed of equal parts modernity and rationality straight through its heart so that future generations just might enjoy a better place to live and work.

Socrates had it right: The unexamined life is not worth living … and the examination begins now.

Lords of the Sharrow? This blog's editors discuss cycling opportunities in Jeffersonville as compared with New Albany.

Bluegill posted a characteristically insightful thought about cycling.

Jeff: I listen to Jeffersonville’s mayor touting increased cycling opportunities there. Then I look out the window here in New Albany where preexisting infrastructure is actually better suited to cycling opportunities but our mayor and planners have worked to specifically remove bicycles from nearly every plan and space. That’s a big difference, one for which New Albany will pay for a long time if not corrected.

I replied.

Roger: And of course we both recall our purportedly (is puppet-edly a word?) council rep Greg Phipps stating aloud that Jeff Speck’s views on the matter of bicycling were just crazily out of sync with mainstream New Albany (read: alien to Gahanism) and merited adjustment (read: outright removal). But there they are, all the Phipps signs in the yards of “progressives,” who’ll praise Jeffersonville’s Republican Mayor for bicycling initiatives even as they vote for Phipps and Gahan, otherwise known as Lords of the Sharrow. #IronyFreeNawbany

Jeff: Yes, on all accounts.

Roger: That's what I thought, although occasionally we all need a bit of verification to make sure we haven't gone insane ...

Jeff: “Well, sure, I prefer the policies of so-and-so, but this time I’m voting for the one in the blue shirt, because I really like blue shirts, too.”

Roger:

Jeff: LOL. Three Republicans and a dentist’s office.

---

Democratic mayoral candidate David White understands that change begins with a whole lotta scrubbing, and NA Confidential advocates just such a deep civic cleansing. 

After eight years on the job, Mayor Jeff Gahan's list of stunning "achievements" is long, indeed: tax increases, budgetary hide 'n' seek, self-deification, daily hypocrisy, public housing takeover, non-transparency, pay-to-play for no-bid contracts, bullying city residents and bullying city employees. Eight years is enough. It's time to drain Gahan's swamp, flush his ruling clique and take this city back from Gahan's Indy-based special interest donors. 

NA Confidential supports David White for Mayor in the Democratic Party primary, with voting now through May 7. 

One week later, the street department is clearing the heck out of certain crosswalks.

Last week.

Sounds overly complicated to me. The City Hall employee who parodies me at Twitter reads what we're saying at NAC. It is relayed to the mayor, who passes it along to Warren & the Bored of Works, which sends a carrier pigeon to the street department, and voila -- a clean crosswalk, only one week later.

It might be simpler if we were City Hall.

Hmm ...

If protests reflect anger at inequality, then why isn't New Albany protesting?

As we take a look at Mark Bittman's superb essay, it seems like a question worth asking.

Have there been protests here in New Albany?

If so, did media cover them?

I believe there were protests in Louisville, and perhaps these drew from the surrounding region, although this points to a sad fact: Fairly soon, we'll have to pay a bridge toll to leave our own town for a protest in Louisville.

Unless we just speedily pass through NA on the way there, via the Sherman Minton. But that's another story.

Perhaps I'm overlooking NA's innate perfection; as in Soviet vassal states of old, there is no need to protest when one lives in the worker's paradise.

(drums fingers, whistles the Internationale)

No ... that isn't it, either.

Is It Bad Enough Yet?, by Mark Bittman (New York Times)

THE police killing unarmed civilians. Horrifying income inequality. Rotting infrastructure and an unsafe “safety net.” An inability to respond to climate, public health and environmental threats. A food system that causes disease. An occasionally dysfunctional and even cruel government. A sizable segment of the population excluded from work and subject to near-random incarceration.

You get it: This is the United States, which, with the incoming Congress, might actually get worse.

This in part explains why we’re seeing spontaneous protests nationwide, protests that, in their scale, racial diversity, anger and largely nonviolent nature, are unusual if not unique. I was in four cities recently — New York, Washington, Berkeley and Oakland — and there were actions every night in each of them. Meanwhile, workers walked off the job in 190 cities on Dec. 4.

The root of the anger is inequality, about which statistics are mind-boggling: From 2009 to 2012 (that’s the most recent data), some 95 percent of new income has gone to the top 1 percent; the Walton family (owners of Walmart) have as much wealth as the bottom 42 percent of the country’s people combined; and “income mobility” now describes how the rich get richer while the poor ... actually get poorer.

ON THE AVENUES: New Albany Is A State of Mind (2009).

ON THE AVENUES: New Albany Is A State of Mind (2009).

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

On January 8, 2009, my inaugural “Beer Money” column appeared, as written for the local newspaper that has been known as the News and Tribune since 2011, when the agents representing the pensioners of Alabama merged two local newspapers and put an unceremonious end to (a) local autonomy, and (b) my column. 

Socrates awaits a coherent explanation, but I digress. In 2013, both Connor’s Place and the England administration are gone (I mourn only the former), and  last fall, New Albany’s alleged “Democrats” again had their chance to endorse a Republican's (Mitt Romney) politics of exclusion. The examination mentioned below has proceeded apace, with and without the newspaper column, but in this city – as in America at large – the students remain hesitant to study for it. Consider this annual reprint to be a reminder, and enjoy the Swill Walk, suckers.

---

You might recall that roughly 2,500 years ago, there lived the Greek philosopher called Socrates, a man whose dogged pursuit of knowledge endeared him to succeeding generations of admirers, although not to his fellow Athenians. In fact, most of his neighbors considered him not only an annoyance, but a heretic, too, and if there’s anything to be gleaned from reading history, it’s that there’s always time enough for a priest to throw another heretic on the fire.

So goes the eternal tyranny of the majority, and yet thanks to Plato’s writings, we now recognize Socrates as a peerless moral and social critic. Appropriately, he has been honored by the tag of gadfly, a term for describing “people who upset the status quo by posing upsetting or novel questions, or just being an irritant.”

That’s my kind of guy, although naturally gadflies are detested by small, non-expandable minds of the sort that are the norm in human societies the world over, and who assign themselves the task of protecting the status quo whether or not it is sensible.

Accordingly, you can picture the scene in the agora, with Socrates and his small band of youthful followers avidly questioning accepted beliefs, while the “little people” of Athens hover nearby, muttering, and eavesdropping on the dialogues.

These many centuries later, I can almost hear the anonymous bellow from behind the adjacent stone wall, followed by the pitter-patter of fleeing sandals:

“Hey, Socrates, if you aren’t happy here, then why don’t you get the hell out and leave us alone?”

Socrates stayed, of course, and was made to pay dearly for it. During a period of political upheaval, he was put on trial and convicted of corrupting the morals of Athenian youth. Offered the opportunity to devise his own punishment, the philosopher wryly suggested that his “sentence” include a regular monetary stipend and free meals for life.

Instead, the humorless judges gave Socrates the choice of exile or death, and he opted for the latter, drinking the hemlock, cementing his martyrdom, and proving that in ancient Greece as in modern-day America, folks don’t take kindly to having their premises examined, not to mention taxed … but let’s leave Their Man Mitch’s properties and proprieties out of it, shall we?

---

And so there I was, cradling a craft-brewed pint of beer within the cozy confines of Connor’s Place and reflecting on the dubious merits of “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” when suddenly that nagging, familiar existential question reared up and bit me … again.

“New Albany is a state of mind … but whose?

Numerous other pressing questions have come and gone since I was a youngster growing up in Georgetown, experiencing the sort of small town ambience remembered with warm fuzziness primarily by those who never actually lived through the crushing boredom of it all, queries like, “Where can we get served?” and “Is it really cheating if the teacher doesn’t catch you?”

But nowadays the tough questions keep getting harder to answer, like this one:

Have you ever been standing in the supermarket, trying to fathom the industrial process bakeries use to remove the flavor and texture from white bread in order to make it marketable to the terminally fearful among us, when suddenly a remarkably obese woman down the aisle starts screaming obscenities at her own helpless children, and you realize that all this prattle about free people making informed choices to suit their individual needs must be coming from those who’ve never driven an automobile through New Albany’s decaying streets, artfully dodging listless vagrants, texting drivers and the occasional neglected, doomed dog or cat?

---

In 2008, Barack Obama enunciated “change” and “hope” as electoral mantras, and predictably, local voters went big for Obama’s befuddled Republican opponent. Therein lies a glimpse of New Albany’s personalized 800-lb gorilla, and the civic psychosis that so degrades our future prospects as a city. It is our persistent failure to muster any degree of comprehension as to what is occurring in the larger world outside the municipal devil we know, and to imagine another way of life.

As an example, consider the simple notion of riding a bicycle in an urban setting. Doing so in New Albany can be profoundly dangerous, in part because of the gaping potholes, and more importantly, as previously observed, because local drivers are notoriously unskilled and inattentive. However, the problem goes beyond an absence of empathy.

Numerous New Albanian drivers actually can’t imagine riding a bicycle, and moreover, they can’t imagine life outside the confines of an automobile – and if they can’t imagine something, how on earth could anyone else?

To them, anyone who is able to imagine biking and also to achieve it must be mistaken or defective, and poses a vague threat. Any person riding a bicycle surely must be too poor to afford a car, or is restricted to biking owing to mental illness, a DUI conviction, bad personal credit or contrarian tendencies.

In other words, a heretic. Do I hear the sound of flicking Bics?

In this and related matters, the New Albany Syndrome is a very real and self-defeating malady, and one of my goals in life is to somehow locate the source of the dysfunction and drive a stake composed of equal parts modernity and rationality straight through its heart so that future generations just might enjoy a better place to live and work.

Socrates had it right: The unexamined life is not worth living … and the examination begins now.

ON THE AVENUES: New Albany (remains) a state of mind.

ON THE AVENUES:  New Albany (remains) a state of mind.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Again this week we indulge in rewinding, this time to January, 2009, and my inaugural “Beer Money” column. It was written for the local newspaper that has been known as News and Tribune since 2011, when the agents representing the pensioners of Alabama merged two local newspapers and put an unceremonious end to (a) local autonomy, and (b) the column. Socrates awaits a coherent explanation, but I digress. In 2012, both Connor’s Place and the England administration are gone (I mourn the former), and soon, New Albany’s alleged “Democrats” will have their chance to endorse Mitt Romney’s politics of their exclusion. The examination mentioned here has proceeded apace, with and without the newspaper column, but in this city – as in America at large – the students remain loathe to study for it.

You might recall that roughly 2,500 years ago, there lived the Greek philosopher called Socrates, a man whose dogged pursuit of knowledge endeared him to succeeding generations of admirers, although not to his fellow Athenians. In fact, most of his neighbors considered him not only an annoyance, but a heretic, too, and if there’s anything to be gleaned from reading history, it’s that there’s always time enough for a priest to throw another heretic on the fire.

So goes the eternal tyranny of the majority, and yet thanks to Plato’s writings, we now recognize Socrates as a peerless moral and social critic. Appropriately, he has been honored by the tag of gadfly, a term for describing “people who upset the status quo by posing upsetting or novel questions, or just being an irritant.”

That’s my kind of guy, although naturally gadflies are detested by small, non-expandable minds of the sort that are the norm in human societies the world over, and who assign themselves the task of protecting the status quo whether or not it is sensible.

Accordingly, you can picture the scene in the agora, with Socrates and his small band of youthful followers avidly questioning accepted beliefs, while the “little people” of Athens hover nearby, muttering, and eavesdropping on the dialogues.

These many centuries later, I can almost hear the anonymous bellow from behind the adjacent stone wall, followed by the pitter-patter of fleeing sandals:

“Hey, Socrates, if you aren’t happy here, then why don’t you get the hell out and leave us alone?”

Socrates stayed, of course, and was made to pay dearly for it. During a period of political upheaval, he was put on trial and convicted of corrupting the morals of Athenian youth. Offered the opportunity to devise his own punishment, the philosopher wryly suggested that his “sentence” include a regular monetary stipend and free meals for life.

Instead, the humorless judges gave Socrates the choice of exile or death, and he opted for the latter, drinking the hemlock, cementing his martyrdom, and proving that in ancient Greece as in modern-day America, folks don’t take kindly to having their premises examined, not to mention taxed … but let’s leave Their Man Mitch’s properties and proprieties out of it, shall we?

---

And so there I was, cradling a craft-brewed pint of beer within the cozy confines of Connor’s Place and reflecting on the dubious merits of “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” when suddenly that nagging, familiar existential question reared up and bit me … again.

“New Albany is a state of mind … but whose?

Numerous other pressing questions have come and gone since I was a youngster growing up in Georgetown, experiencing the sort of small town ambience remembered with warm fuzziness primarily by those who never actually lived through the crushing boredom of it all, queries like, “Where can we get served?” and “Is it really cheating if the teacher doesn’t catch you?”

But nowadays the tough questions keep getting harder to answer, like this one:

Have you ever been standing in the supermarket, trying to fathom the industrial process bakeries use to remove the flavor and texture from white bread in order to make it marketable to the terminally fearful among us, when suddenly a remarkably obese woman down the aisle starts screaming obscenities at her own helpless children, and you realize that all this prattle about free people making informed choices to suit their individual needs must be coming from those who’ve never driven an automobile through New Albany’s decaying streets, artfully dodging listless vagrants, texting drivers and the occasional neglected, doomed dog or cat?

---

In 2008, Barack Obama enunciated “change” and “hope” as electoral mantras, and predictably, local voters went big for Obama’s befuddled Republican opponent. Therein lies a glimpse of New Albany’s personalized 800-lb gorilla, and the civic psychosis that so degrades our future prospects as a city. It is our persistent failure to muster any degree of comprehension as to what is occurring in the larger world outside the municipal devil we know, and to imagine another way of life.

As an example, consider the simple notion of riding a bicycle in an urban setting. Doing so in New Albany can be profoundly dangerous, in part because of the gaping potholes, and more importantly, as previously observed, because local drivers are notoriously unskilled and inattentive. However, the problem goes beyond an absence of empathy.

Numerous New Albanian drivers actually can’t imagine riding a bicycle, and moreover, they can’t imagine life outside the confines of an automobile – and if they can’t imagine something, how on earth could anyone else?

To them, anyone who is able to imagine biking and also to achieve it must be mistaken or defective, and poses a vague threat. Any person riding a bicycle surely must be too poor to afford a car, or is restricted to biking owing to mental illness, a DUI conviction, bad personal credit or contrarian tendencies.

In other words, a heretic. Do I hear the sound of flicking Bics?

In this and related matters, the New Albany Syndrome is a very real and self-defeating malady, and one of my goals in life is to somehow locate the source of the dysfunction and drive a stake composed of equal parts modernity and rationality straight through its heart so that future generations just might enjoy a better place to live and work.

Socrates had it right: The unexamined life is not worth living … and the examination begins now.

Dirty little minds.

Saturday, October 1 is going to be a fun day in New Albany.

For one, there'll be a renewal of the Harvest Homecoming parade party institution (in a local election year, no less) at the Confidential domicile. 2011 will be the seventh edition, and for complete information, merely change the date in last year's preview to October 1, and read:

Let's protest tolls, heckle 1Si, and drink beer at NAC's Harvest Homecoming Parade Gala at 1117 ESSNA.

October 1 also is the day NABC has chosen to release ThunderFoot 22-oz bomber bottles for carry-out purchase by the general public. ThunderFoot bombers will be available all day on the 1st (only!) at both NABC locations, and if there's any left over, Southern Indiana commercial accounts get the next stab, then our friends at Cavalier Distributing Inc.

But there's even more. After the NAC bash and parade has concluded, there'll be a pig roast (all ages, with burgers and hot dogs, too) and an NABC cash beer bar at Something Different II on 3rd Street by the floodwall. A percentage of the proceeds from beer sales will go to 1st District Councilman Dan Coffey's annual Christmas Party for children in his neighborhood.

Plan on a moveable feast: 1117 East Spring Street Neighborhood Association for the parade, a stroll to Something Different for food and drink, and then an afternoon/night cap at Bank Street Brewhouse and carry-out ThunderFoot. Verily, Gregg Seidl might graft the events of the day onto his walking accounts of nefarious (or ironic) New Albany.

In which the Riverfront Amphitheater calendar is examined.

The New Albany Riverfront Amphitheater's schedule of events appeared a few days ago, and the season opened last night with Henry Lee Summer.

Several of you have asked about craft beer availability at the concessions area. Here is what I know.

As exclusive craft beer vendors with requisite catering permit, NABC expressed interest in two events, Celts on the River (June 18) and Strassenfest (September 17). The understanding last year was that other caterers would offer a craft component, whether through NABC or another local brewer, but since I don't know who the other vendors are in 2011, this has yet to be codified for 2011. Your best bet is to tell the "committee" that you'd like a craft option.

Scanning the entertainment booked for this summer reveals the following genres. What do you think about the demographic balance therein? It's highly white, isn't it?

Heritage Festival Series
Celts on the River (Irish/Celtic)
Fiesta Latina (Latin American)
Strassenfest (German)

Cover bands/nostalgia acts
Kudmani
Louisville Crashers
Lunar Beach House (Jimmy Buffett tribute band)
Monarchs
The Rigby’s (Beatles tribute band)

Country and Western
Hugh E. Bir
Joe Diffie
Aaron Tippin
Sammy Kershaw
Confederate Railroad

Jazz
Bobby Falk Band
Jamey Aebersold
The Unlimited Band (jazz/funk)

Rock/Pop
Henry Lee Summer (Indiana native)
Midnight Outlaw (Hair/Sleaze/Glam/Progressive/Heavy Metal)
Cabin (Louisville band)

Can’t locate information:
Circus (with Midnight Outlaw)
Scott Kirby (Key West-based singer or jazz artist?)

One of these signs does not belong. Can you tell which one?

Why political yard signs?

It didn't take long for Professor Erika to be victimized ... again.

As Chris Morris reported last Thursday, 1st district council candidate Vicki Denhart says that someone is stealing her signs; specifically, gone missing from Padgett-owned property (an entirely legal sign placement scenario, as opposed to the signs soon to be sprouting from the verges, which are city-owned rights-of-way) is a sign the size of this one:

As I try to imagine how a conniving Cappuccino-laden Copperhead snake might shake and slither such a sign to the ground -- perhaps it was merely ingested whole and swallowed -- permit this observation: We seem to be witnessing a veritable "arms race" when it comes to political signage sizes. Moreover, a Tribune website comment on the Denhart story hones in on the real point with admirable force:

jimgray wrote:

How bout NO SIGNS. I'm personally sick of seeing the proliferation of yard size signs on every available corner, right-of-way and telephone pole. Just about every possible profession, lawn services, cement purveyors, Nanny providers, groomers and yes, politicians place these signs any and everywhere. Nothing but visual pollution as far as i'm concerned.

Can't really steal a sign that's not there.

Bravo to that. I've always believed that the majority of illegally placed signs, as described by jimgray, constitutes street spam -- ripe for citizen's arrest and removal. Private property is another matter; in the absence of codes governing such placement, the ugliness must be tolerated. So it goes.

But we're missing the real issue: Why is visual pollution so enduring a component of political campaigns hereabouts? Has a yard sign every voted? Is there any reason to believe that hundreds of signs stacked atop each other at major intersections do anything except obstruct the view and cuase accidents?

The whole thing is idiotic. Consider the effusive irony of my receiving a postcard last week from Sampan, the Utica printing firm owned by folks who wouldn't consider voting for an unreconstructed leftist like me in one or more thousand years. In its first-ever known mailing to my address, Sampan asks me to consider buying Jumbo Yard Signs. I'm guessing this is because I'm now in a political race, and having filed, the very first thing I must do is blanket the landscape with trash.

Perhaps I must. Must I? Candidate Denhart claims to have already spent $1,200 on yard signs. I'd be tempted to ask how a low-paying city council seat could possibly be worth that much money, except that it's a question she herself generally places in the mouth of her alter ego, Erika, and uses to pillory her opponents.

The ironies are proliferating, too. Unfortunately, they may be the only things that grow here on the flood plain.

Ironies (and straight lines) abound.

Only one day after St. Daniels artfully exposed his sensitive side in a conference call with Hoosier journalists, going so far as to acknowledge "concerns that have been brought up by the residents of Southern Indiana in relation to the bistate bridge project," our newly re-elected State Representative used his weekly Tribune slot to offer professional resolutions for the coming year: CLERE: Session will require resolve from all.

• I resolve to be more accessible. Over the last two years, I have worked hard to be accessible. Still, I know there are some folks who have had trouble connecting with me, and I resolve to find new ways to be even more accessible.

• I resolve to listen ... I want to hear from you. If you live in my district, you will soon receive a survey, which will also be available online, but if you have a question or concern, please don't hesitate to go ahead and get in touch.

• I resolve to do my homework and ask tough questions ...

• I resolve to get more folks from Southern Indiana to participate in the legislative process.

Now, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I might know of a place to start, and ... what's that? It was written by WHO?

But as Hungadunga is my witness, I thought Matt Nash wrote them!

Nearer my church to thee? "The Gary" bolts the garish for renewed downtown digs.

More proof that irony has been bred out of the gene pool.

Or is it a (financial) deathbed conversion?

Newly-renovated White House Centre nearly at capacity, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune).

... the recession has in some ways benefited the Centre, with companies looking to downsize. Gary McCartin, owner of The McCartin Co. Inc., moved to the second floor of the Centre from Charlestown Road.

“With the economy the way it is, we had to lay off people and we had too much space where I was at,” he said. “With the common areas, I can conduct my business the same as with a space 10 times the size.”