ON THE AVENUES: Alas, New Albany is less of a place without a bookstore.

Hi, I'm Nawbany's village iconoclast. In my spare time I write sentences and drink lots of beer. 

The onetime PBS anchorman Jim Lehrer died on January 23, and when I heard the sad news, my thoughts raced back to those many occasions during the decade of the 1980s, working evenings at the long departed Scoreboard Liquors, and doing something that almost never happens with me nowadays: watching the evening news via television.

Whenever I spot a package store clerk with eyes glued to an iPhone or laptop, I think back to my entertainment options on slow business nights: a minuscule black and white television set with shabby rabbit ears, from which many a McNeil-Lehrer News Hour was observed. I probably should have been sweeping or stocking, anyway.

The city of New Albany had cable television back then, having handed the keys to the city to the first enterprising operator who stepped forward with hands extended, much as the nation’s railroads once fleeced the federal government for right-of-way privileges extending to the earth’s core in on direction and the moon in the other.

However there was no way Scoreboard’s owners would ever have paid for something quite that frivolous, although store manager Lloyd “Duck” Cunningham gladly would have watched Cubs day games if WGN were available.

In other news, there were sporadic attempts to have the morning’s Courier-Journal delivered to Scoreboard, although these usually came to nothing because the newspapers would so often get stolen. Seems journalism was subject to thievery even when the Binghams practiced it (until 1986, at least).

Given that I usually worked two jobs, time for me was scarce. To make it down from the Knobs a little early for work at Scoreboard meant having the chance to walk a block to the library and catch up on magazines, then in 1988 came a job at Data Courier in Louisville, where I abstracted magazine articles, exponentially expanding my available options to self-educate.

This experience genuinely changed my life, and while the public library remained a go-to-when-could, now there were some publications of sufficient obscurity to require a visit to the IU Southeast library for perusal.

By this time Scoreboard had moved to the corner of Spring and Beharrell Avenue on the other end of town, and I was living in Floyds Knobs with two good friends. We plumped for cable, which in practice meant sports, MTV and CNN. My library visits waned; there wasn’t much time to read, anyway. My social life was active, which is to say I drank far too much.

The overarching point to this opening digression today is that I’ve always placed supreme importance in being informed, by whatever means it takes. Almost certainly to a degree these channels of journalistic expression 30 or more years ago were biased and tainted. It would be foolish to argue otherwise.

Still, it is increasingly hard to imagine they were any worse than the befuddling cacophony greeting me each morning as I try to learn exactly what’s going on in the world. It's as if we cannot possibly know -- which benefits the oligarchs nicely, don't you think?

---

Fast-forwarding 15 eventful (read: exceedingly rough) years, and seemingly as many personal lifetimes, and suddenly it was 2004. There’d be another dozen years to unfold before my NABC tenure concluded, and Diana and I had purchased a house on Spring Street, where we still live.

As for the time of which I'm about to speak, I’m guessing it was October, as I’d just returned from what proved to be the finale of my side gig as European motorcoach beer tour operator.

Diana and I decided to attend an open house at the Moser Tannery, then fully intact and only a short period removed from daily operation. It had been purchased by Al Goodman, who envisioned a museum of tanning among other uses for the buildings, as well as an ecological preserve for the Loop Island wetlands behind them.

Frankly, I didn’t know the natural area even existed. In 2020, it’s the only part of Al’s dream to come to fruition, because sadly, only a few months after the open house, a heavy snow caused the roof to collapse onto the amazing century-old hide tanning bays, completely destroying them.

Subsequently Al couldn’t leverage his plans into existence, and eventually what was left was scooped up by the opportunistic city, which acquiesced in the neglect of the remaining structures until they were torched by arsonists in what might be Jeff Gahan’s most cynical and purposefully scripted moral failure ever.

Ah, but I’m digressing into a previous existence. Apologies, Andrew.

If for no other reason, the open house at Moser Tannery in October of 2004 was memorable because I met Randy Smith for the very first time. I already knew his wife Ann Baumgartle from our time as students at IU Southeast. They informed us of something we hadn’t heard: Destinations Booksellers was soon to open at 604 East Spring Street, a mere five blocks from our house.

Know that in 2004, the downtown food and dining revolution had yet to be launched. The embryo came in 2006 with the advent of Bistro New Albany, which by all rights should be memorialized by a plaque at Brooklyn and The Butcher, which now occupies the space.

Maybe today’s Develop New Albany can work on that if they the governing committee runs out of groveling, self-congratulatory photo-ops.

However, we got by. In late 2004 there was plenty of great beer and pizza at NABC on Grant Line Road, a short bicycle ride from our home. The library remained a reasonable ten minute walk, and providentially, just down the street was a bookstore.

Finally New Albany threatened to become livable.

At its inception in 2004, Destinations Booksellers was New Albany’s first full-service bookstore since 1947. Two years before this, our original brewery at Sportstime and Rich O’s was the first in New Albany since 1935. Whether any of this helped Randy and I to become friends is questionable, but it strikes me as significant in the sense of shared visions.

NABC expanded downtown to Bank Street Brewhouse in 2009, and contracted back to the mother ship in 2019. I left the business for good in 2018. As most blog readers already know, Destinations Booksellers has spent the past two weeks winding down and now has ceased operations after almost 16 years in business, making way for a soon-to-come food service tenant, leaving Randy and Ann to be landlords.

They’re not going anywhere. Neither are we, and yet already I feel the absence of their bookstore. In spite of all the many electronic and technological advances governing the way we interpret the world, receive news and fundamentally communicate, books remain sacred objects to me.

A bookstore, the public library, our private library where there’s no space to put any more books because there are so damn many books … well, these are the churches and chapels for an unrepentant atheist, humanist and rationalist.

I’m grateful for Randy and Ann for Destinations Booksellers. 15-plus years is a great run for any business, and New Albany isn’t exactly the sort of milieu that celebrates “book learning.”

Of course this city wasn’t much for snooty imported (and later craft) beers, either, but I started evangelizing about better beer all the way back in 1983, and had 20 years to prepare the market before we began brewing our own. Aspiration takes time and patience to nurture, and probably most often in life, the seedling fails to reach its full growth potential.

When it does, those are the special times.

Randy and Ann are our friends, and I’ve richly enjoyed the hours I’ve spent browsing at Destinations, attending the civic events held there (like pubs, bookstores need to be community centers), and chewing the fat with the proprietor.

To be honest, it made me proud as a New Albanian that New Albany had its own bookstore. It may be gone, but I won’t forget it. Maybe someday the city as a whole can be the sort of information-friendly learning zone like that room at 604 East Spring was from 2004 through 2020.

Unlikely, but a boy can still dream.

---

Recent columns:

January 30: ON THE AVENUES: Dear Holocaust deniers: If you don't like this post, unfriend me now.

January 23: ON THE AVENUES: Running over the same old ground.

January 16: ON THE AVENUES: I won’t belong to any Dry January that would have me as a member.

January 9: ON THE AVENUES: Elusive sounds of silence.

ON THE AVENUES: If it's about learning and knowledge, then by definition it's a Gahan Free Zone. You're welcome.

ON THE AVENUES: If it's about learning and knowledge, then by definition it's a Gahan Free Zone. You're welcome. 

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

This week’s column begins with the famous words of Duke Ellington.

“Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.”

It’s important we understand his intended meaning. Nowadays the noun “mistress” generally is used to reference an unsavory male power scenario in which the woman is subservient, but the primary definition of the word is different and more positive:

“A woman who has power, authority, or ownership.”

Ellington definitely did not view music as something he controlled and kept in its place, to be shielded from view in an efficiency apartment until he needed it to relieve his desires. If anything, it was the other way around. Music was his life, and it called the tempo.

Wait – it seems there’s a question from the cheap seats: Roger, who is this Duke Ellington fellow, anyway?

Ah, yes. I keep forgetting about the calendar. It’s 2019, and music comes from computers just like bread originates with Kroger.

Duke Ellington (1899-1974) was a musician and orchestra leader in the then-dominant idioms of jazz, big band and swing. To me, he remains one of America’s foremost composers in any musical genre.

My parents raised me on music like Ellington’s, and in 1971 they took me to see a concert in Louisville by his ensemble. The rock and roll bug subsequently bit me hard, but I’m eternally grateful to have been exposed to these old-school variants of American music. They remain huge daily components of my internal soundtrack.

We all hear music differently, and as noted oft times before, my own default calibration prefers catchier tunes. Ellington wrote his share of these, capable of being whistled while strolling or “interpreted” in the shower – and selling a few 78 rpm records in the process.

Music is a big tent, and a well-constructed pop ditty with a hook means as much to me as a classical concerto or Ellington’s own extended suites of conceptual music.

Moving along, there is no rational way to make the transition from “music is my mistress” to “living in the material world” so I won’t even try. Ten years after Ellington passed from the scene a talented woman by the name of Madonna Louise Ciccone had a hit with “Borderline,” a song written by Reggie Lucas.

I heard a snippet a few weeks ago while shopping for groceries, and devolved into a reverie amid the canned vegetable aisle. As surprising as it might seem for casual readers, “Borderline” is a favorite song of mine. Granted, I’d never seek to compare it to Ellington’s “Mood Indigo,” although “I Got It Bad (and That Ain’t Good)” perhaps functions as a serviceable parallel.

“Borderline” always prompts a smile because from sheer serendipity it became a theme song for my early European trips. From the first expedition in 1985 through mid-1990s, it seemed as if whenever I was packing my bag for a trip “Borderline” would play on the radio.

(That’s an increasingly antiquated music dissemination device.)

Indeed, different strokes; lightweight ear candy to some, symbolic prelude to others. Borderlines are for containment, and also for crossing. I had an easy life growing up as a white middle-class male, with no wars to go fight, compulsions to attain wealth or lasting romantic ties (I’d quite likely have traded my imaginary kingdoms for a meaningful relationship, but that’s another whole story).

What I needed was a kick in the butt. It surprised even me when this became self-administered. For 1,001 tiny incremental reasons, my becoming obsessed with the idea of roaming Europe became the foundational theme tying together all the topics of the human experience that struck me as interesting.

Neither internal combustion nor deer hunting was among them. Selling insurance, widgets or houses? Nope. Math absolutely wasn’t a priority. The Arithmetic was a hideous curse, but reading and writing hit closer to the center of the target.

What excited me the most was history, geography, literature, music and art, as components of what we call the Western canon.

The Western canon is the body of books, music, and art that scholars generally accept as the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. It includes works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, music, art, sculpture, and architecture generally perceived as being of major artistic merit and representing the high culture of Europe and North America. Philosopher John Searle suggests that the Western canon can be roughly defined as "a certain Western intellectual tradition that goes from, say, Socrates to Wittgenstein in philosophy, and from Homer to James Joyce in literature".

My own “Borderline” was located and surpassed when I finally accepted that craving an ever greater exposure to this body of knowledge wasn’t a bad thing for a hick from somewhere near French Lick. In fact it was a very good thing, and the pursuit of culture made me happy. Maybe Rite of Spring would have been preferable to Madonna; to each their own.

I chased knowledge for its own sake, not because it would lead to a better job or a higher standard of living. Piles of excess money beyond the minimum required to get by, while allowing an escape every now and then, were never much of a priority or motivation.

Four decades later, an ongoing immunity to the supposed imperative of capital accumulation renders me only shakily American and utterly ineligible for membership in One Southern Indiana -- and that’s something to be extremely thankful for.

I was sure that knowing these things would make me a better person, and after college when funding was tight a lot of it came free of charge. Reading, studying and listening at local libraries (those vicious socialist institutions) were essential to preparing for trips as well as maintaining my sanity when the prevailing philistinism became too much.

Later, when there was more disposable income for books and CDs, the cash went for them and not fashionable clothing, hyper power tools or fancy sports cars. There isn’t anything wrong with any of these discretionary items; they just weren’t for me. These days books, music and art surround us at home, and they’re still representative of mental equilibrium when travel isn’t possible. I can’t imagine life without them.

There’s a sobering realization that in the end, for all one’s efforts, a lifetime of learning counts for little more than skimming the surface. However, this doesn’t deter me or intrude on my idealistic dreams. I’m eager to carry a few fragments of those past manifestations of thought forward for the benefit of the next generation.

If you tell the story in an engaging way, they listen. Indeed, the headlines lie, and the kids are alright.

---

When you’re a youngster, people ask you what you want to be when you grow up. I never had an answer for this question, at least one I was willing to concede aloud. It was different inside:

“Beats me. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”

Looking back with all the benefits of hindsight, all I really wanted to be was well-informed about the world outside. Forever painfully aware of my own myriad social deficiencies, the simple aim was at least to be bright enough to ask intelligent questions and claim a bluffer’s knowledge about topics falling outside my circle of interests -- to be a competent concierge, barkeeper and conversationalist.

Blowing my life savings on a three-month backpacking trip through Europe in 1985 wasn’t about food and drink. Rather, travel would help me find myself by bringing into focus aspects of my character previously unchallenged, while cramming as much as humanly possible of the Western canon into my receptive skull.

Moussaka, Guinness, pickled herring and the joys of a genuine Bavarian beer hall were important, and yet secondary.

If you’ve stuck with me this far, thanks, and I know exactly what you’re thinking: the Western cultural canon omits so very much important about this planet. That’s absolutely true, and it’s something I’ve tried mightily to redress by broadening my exposure to the non-Western bearded white male aspects of “herstory.”

I’m the first to concede these results haven’t been very consistent, and this is disconcerting to me. Given the various biases of a Southern Indiana upbringing, and the fact that my first and abiding love is all things European, improvement requires persistence and an active effort to broaden the scope of examination. Perfection isn’t attainable, and so this campaign will continue. Reader suggestions are always welcome.

In closing, please understand that the preceding is not intended to be construed as “look at me – I’m smart.” At the end of the day, being “smart” means precisely one thing, and that’s realizing how little you really know. All of us must willingly concede the vastness of knowledge outside our immediate spheres, about which we can gather only little bits and pieces.

Ellington occasionally was described as “Duke Elegant,” and my own formulation does not achieve his level of poetry:

"An abiding obsession with knowledge is my mistress." 

In a year and a half I’ll be 60, with no firmer notion today about what I want to be when I grow up than way back when, during the presidency of Adam’s “tricky dickey” namesake Nixon.

But I’m comfortable with the journey. It's been a grand ride. I know what I know, and also what I don’t. Time is running short, and yet there’s no hurry, so let’s kick back, enjoy one or two nice beers, tell the hamster’s spinning wheel to go straight to hell -- and learn something.

---

Recent columns:

February 5: ON THE AVENUES: Our mayor hates non-elected boards -- except when they're his own, which is why "hypocrisy" is spelled G-A-H-A-N.

January 29: ON THE AVENUES: How has the 3rd district councilman fared since this question from 2015: "Et tu, Greg Phipps?"

January 22: ON THE AVENUES: Democrats should judge city council incumbents in districts 2, 3, 4 and 5 by their regressive deeds, not their progressive words.

January 15: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

"If we continue to absolve our urban design of any wrongdoing with these deaths, how are we ever going to make positive changes?"

No matter your station in in life, here's a reminder that if you fancy yourself "progressive," but believe city streets are meant for the convenience of high-speed, pass-through traffic, and not to serve the needs of a healthy neighborhood occupied by humans, then I've got jarring news.

Turns out you're not very progressive at all. That's because street grid design is a social justice issue, too.

Another Metro Atlanta pedestrian blamed for his own death, when urban design looks like the guilty party, by Darin Givens (Medium)

It’s important to improve the way our news outlets report pedestrian deaths and collisions. It’s about respect for the dead, who can’t speak for themselves, but it’s also about the need for change. If we continue to absolve our urban design of any wrongdoing with these deaths, how are we ever going to make positive changes?

Traffic congestion: "The real solution is convincing fewer people in town to own cars, and convincing people who do own cars to use them less to get around town."

Let's get congested -- not the Ohio Valley muck, but the words of Jeff Speck: “Were it not for traffic congestion, we would drive enough additional miles to make congestion."

A few links from the past ...

ON THE AVENUES EXTRA: "No, John Rosenbarger, congestion is our friend. Help us achieve it, or get out of the way."

"On a main street, that which looks like 'vehicle delay' to a traffic engineer looks like economic activity and success to a local merchant."

How very topical: "For the Record, the Feds Don’t Require Streets to Speed Car Traffic."

ON THE AVENUES: When the engineer uttered that scandalous word aloud, it was like Christmas in June.

 ... and something a bit more recent.

Minneapolis-St. Paul traffic isn't a problem. It's part of a solution, by Ward Rubrecht

Ask any driver in the Metro and they’ll tell you traffic’s been bad lately.

Big traffic jams on I-94, 35W, and other major arteries are becoming a matter of routine, and for years our highways have been ranked among the most congested in the country.

The culprit, according to most experts, is the increasing Twin Cities population. Minneapolis has grown by nearly 10 percent since 2010, and St. Paul by nearly 7 percent. More folks in the Cities means more cars on the highway. More cars on the highway means more traffic.

But according to conservative think tank Center of the American Experiment, the real culprit behind all the backed-up traffic is them damn liberals with their hippie-dip buses, trains, and bike lanes.

All that money we’ve been spending on safer, more efficient, and more environmentally ethical transportation solutions should’ve been spent, they say, laying down more blacktop. Widening the highways is the real antidote for the Metro’s congestion problem.

They’re wrong, of course. The reason is an economic principle called “induced demand.” Traffic engineers have known for decades that the only thing accomplished by widening highways is encouraging more people to own and drive cars.

As soon as congestion in one former bottleneck eases due to the the extra lanes, word spreads. That stretch of road gets a good reputation, and more folks get on it with their vehicles. More cars on the highway means more traffic jams, and the whole congestion cycle begins anew.

Meaning: The prescription of building out more lanes on more roads sounds like a good idea, but it’s actually what got us into this traffic jam in the first place.

The CAE report doesn’t just mis-identify the solution. It misdiagnoses the problem. Traffic congestion is annoying, sure — but it’s also a necessary tool to fix what ails Minnesota highways. Hear me out.

We already have too much infrastructure to keep it all in good repair. Adding more blacktop will do nothing more than create decades of increased maintenance costs — Minnesota winters are hell on highways — and make the traffic problem worse. (Picture those months-long lane closures on I-35 and I-94 for routine maintenance each summer.)

The real solution is convincing fewer people in town to own cars, and convincing people who do own cars to use them less to get around town. Viewed this way, traffic congestion is perfect for driving people off the road.

Think of it like the physical pain of a broken ankle. The purpose of the pain is to bring our attention to the ankle, and get us to lay the hell down, and stop stomping on the injury. We could pop a bunch of painkillers and keep walking around, but before long, the painkillers will wear off, and we need another dose.

We’re still moving around, but each new step is just grinding down the bones, further misshaping the ankle. Instead, we need crutches: Something to take the weight off an already stressed system, let it set itself right, and heal.

Traffic congestion is good. Traffic congestion pushes people — elected officials, engineers, and commuters themselves — towards real, lasting solutions. You won’t find any of those in that CAE report.

Embrace the pain, Twin Cities commuters. We should stop hobbling around, even just for a moment, and listen to what it’s trying to tell us.

Yawn, but God bless you, each and every one.

Earlier this spring, I was struck by the words of a member of the band Gomez. He was referring to the frequent question as to why, more than ten years into the band’s career, it doesn't make music that sounds just like the songs on the very first album.

Paraphrasing, he said: “Because you can’t forget what you’ve learned.”

Of course, left unspoken is the assumption that something actually has been learned, but in the case of Gomez, one need only listen to the various recordings to chart the arc of the progression.

Each exciting, breaking, youthful rock star appears on the scene determined to reinvent the wheel, and then, barring an early death by misadventure, he grows up and starts learning how to play his instrument.

Last evening, after returning from the ballpark, I spent a few minutes browsing the NAC archives, and I had much the same reaction. It will be five years this fall since I began writing this blog, and clearly, in the beginning, I had precious little clue as to how things actually work in a place like New Albany. There was a considerable learning curve, and there remains a considerable learning curve. It's daunting, but I relish the fact that there are so many things I don’t know, because learning them is a constantly evolving process that eventually leads to betterment -- and maybe even progress.

Just as surely, there’ll always be newcomers to any game, and they’ll travel the same road with respect to knowledge and the learning curve.

More power to them, and good luck. The only unsolicited advice I can offer is that the ability to listen is a useful, underrated skill. It helps cut the time required of the learning curve, and unless you're one of those people who learned everything in kindergarten, it will lead to you changing your mind.

Often.

I’d say that half of what I thought I knew coming in has been discarded or altered along the way. That’s the way it works, and sometimes, unbelievably to some newbies, the ones who’ve already fought the battles and figured them out can be helpful in the pursuit.

Aside from that, perhaps the newbies would benefit from the knowledge that it's all political.

Five years on, I have to admit that it’s a vicarious thrill to have become a target, and to see that we’ve done your job so well that certain obstructionist elements among those in perpetual disagreement are structuring their platforms using the language we taught them. They'll be organizing forthcoming political campaigns not "for" strategies, but "against" this blog and its contributors, and that's a high compliment, indeed.

It's also why, in the end, NAC’s reality-based community is so important.

Standing in the open makes one into an easy target, but it also provides bountiful credibility that the anonymous bile spewers will never possess. Real people with names and faces take the hits, but we also get the props when we're right, and that sort of ownership simply isn't transferable to that dude hidden behind yonder bush.

The masked obstructionists presumably will have to be themselves when registering to represent their political party the next time around. But how will they secure ownership of their self-congratulatory, pseudonymous brilliance?

Will they embrace their ongoing anonymity and campaign in leftover Rally’s bags?

Or, will they be forced to learn by conceding that voters choose names, not pseudonyms, and follow by wading waist-deep into the hoary tradition of generating yard signs bearing -- GASP -- their own names?

It could be that they're just being used as stalking horses by the party hierarchy, to be discarded for the same good old boys on the ballot when the election draws nearer.

Predictably, at least until “anonymous” appears on the ballot, they'll draft back into reality. When the anonymity they now bizarrely posit as the very source of the force and legitimacy of their ideas is stripped away owing to the immutable requirements of an election they plainly aim to contest, do the ideas themselves become powerless because they’re now to be associated with a face and a name?

If so, doesn’t that tell us a bit about their funadmental fear of being known?

“I have to keep wearing this mask, because if they know who I am, they’ll never pay attention to my ideas.”

Exactly, J.

After all, voters are not entirely stupid, are they?

According to the New Albany Syndrome, it is eternally fashionable to hide, but NAC will continue to be a place where real people write, learn and discuss issues. I’m serene, because I fully trust the verdict of posterity, and the quality of the work we've done here speaks for itself without the qualification of pseudonyms.

My goal has been to write the history of New Albany during my time of involvement in it, and to agitate for meaningful change while doing so. Along the way, I like it that we know each other’s names.

Makes it feel like a real neighborhood to me.