Roman God-Like Man.

"A monument is not a descriptive account of history, but instead a historical artifact that tells a story about power."

I have a new bucket list destination: the Citadel Museum.

The eight-ton Lenin's head used to be attached to the statue of the Soviet leader that stood at Leninplatz, in East Berlin, which as you'll recall is where I worked while employed for three weeks by the parks department in the capital of the GDR in the summer of 1989.

The statue was taken down after unification in spite of neighborhood opinion in favor of it remaining, and it would appear to have been dismembered. The head was exhumed in 2015.

I highly recommend clicking through and reading the article.

The Museum Where Racist and Oppressive Statues Go to Die, by Daniela Blei (Atlas Obscura)

Germany has found ways to display problematic monuments without elevating them.

LAST YEAR, URTE EVERT RECEIVED a 400-pound church bell imprinted with a small but unmistakable swastika, and she faced a conundrum. Evert is the director of the Citadel Museum in the Berlin suburb of Spandau, and the bronze bell—cast in 1934 for the ascendant Nazi regime—hung at the nearby Evangelical Church of Hakenfelde until the astonishingly recent date of 2017. Evert hoped to add the Nazi artifact to the museum’s permanent collection of toxic monuments: busts of militaristic Prussian rulers; statues of Aryan athletes and warriors; and an eight-ton granite head of Vladimir Lenin, which took two years of political and bureaucratic wrangling to dig out of the ground. But first, Evert had to weigh the risks of exhibiting a church bell installed during the Nazi period. What would the bell represent, and what could visitors learn from it? And could it become a kind of shrine for members of far-right or neo-Nazi groups?

Evert’s job at the Citadel Museum, which is housed in the former provisions depot of a Renaissance-era fortress, is to critically examine the culture of monuments. Rather than scrubbing the area of statues that symbolize racism, antisemitism, and other forms of violence and oppression, the museum aims to contextualize the past, putting uncomfortable realities on display in productive, educational, and sometimes challenging ways.

“Inside the museum, visitors confront at eye level statues and monuments that used to represent power,” Evert says. “You can touch everything. Nothing is put on a pedestal. You can talk about what makes you mad.” Since December, the Nazi church bell has been on permanent loan. It inspired a special exhibition on Spandau’s churches under National Socialism, a collaboration between college students and the museum ...

... The idea for a museum of spurned monuments came from Andrea Theissen, the former director of the Spandau Citadel, who curated the opening in 2016. Each statue was left in the condition she received it—many were dismantled under orders from the Allies—complete with bullet holes and damage from bombs. The museum’s message is clear: A monument is not a descriptive account of history, but instead a historical artifact that tells a story about power. In a setting that invites scrutiny, visitors can study Berlin’s monuments to grasp more clearly who had power and how that power was used.

Don't forget Tuesday's "food and dining" memorial fundraising event honoring our friend, the late Matt Brewer.

A reminder about tomorrow's fundraiser. Check the list of a dozen participating establishments, have a bite, and clink a glass to a wonderful human being.

As many of you already know, a young man who skated the streets of New Albany almost daily, spreading warmth and kindness all around, was taken from us far too early.

Restaurants around New Albany have come together to honor his legacy and support his family in their time of need by offering a special night of memorial fundraising.

This Tuesday, join participating restaurants in memory and support of Matt Brewer and his family. Proceeds from sales will be donated to the Brewer family in peace and love.

Brooklyn and The Butcher
Gospel Bird
Hull & High Water
District 22 Pizzeria
Longboard's Taco & Tiki
Pints&union
Big Four Burgers + Beer
Floyd County Brewing Company
River City Winery
Double Barrel
Brownie's "The Shed" Grille & Bar in New Albany

#LiveLikeMatt -- and how you can help Matt Brewer's wife and family.

The cookies are from Sweets by Morgan, located at 533 Spring Street in Jeffersonville.

Starting Thursday August 9th at 10am we will have these cookies available at the shop until further notice.

There will be no price listed on these, we just ask that you make a cash donation. 100% of the money raised will be donated to the wife and family of an amazing man we all lost on Monday night.

Matt Brewer was a friend to all and enemy to none. He had a smile that would brighten your worst day and all of us here at Sweets by Morgan will now strive to #LiveLikeMatt.

If you are unable to stop by the bakery, please consider making a donation to the GoFundMe page. Every $1 helps.

At the GoFundMe page, $11,680 of the page's $10,000 goal has been raised by 248 people in one day. Get over there and add to the pot.

On behalf of Matt Brewer and to help Brook Brewer during this time, we are asking for any possible donation. The money will go towards any emergency and hospital costs, funeral and memorial service, and any extra help for Brook. Any amount at all will help the cause, and we all know Matt would have given the shirt off his back if he had one on.

Yes, indeed; we know it.

Look, I'm a jaundiced 58-year-old who has been blogging for 15 years come November. A few days ago, NAC's 13,000th post was published. Not one of them ever surpassed 11,000 page views, until the sad news came that we'd lost Matt, and I posted it.

That post?

So far it has 45,585 page views -- and 245 shares at Fb.

I'm not telling you about these statistics for any other reason than they numerically attest to the depth of love and affection we all felt for this wonderful guy. That's 45,000 page views -- and only 37,000 people in all of New Albany. That's an intensity of emotion unprecedented in my time observing local affairs.

As Andrew Nicholson pointed out earlier today, Matt's sad passing also has brought out the best in his people, who are rallying around Matt's family in this time of need. In like fashion, Andrew passes this along.

The ER at Baptist Floyd Hospital is having a cookout this Friday to benefit Brook Brewer and Matt, can you get the word out? $5 a plate can also help out with side dishes or any donations welcome. The night shift is also planning something for Saturday night, I will send details when available.

The local newspaper of record provides coverage of yesterday's gathering of hundreds at the skate park on the riverfront. There's a plan afoot to rehabilitate the skate park, and Matt was involved as a consultant. It is slated to be called the New Albany Flow Park, which is nice enough, but it's a replaceable name since overtaken by events.

By community acclamation, it's now the Matt Brewer Flow Park, or some similar wording of explicit recognition. I strongly encourage local powers that be to endorse this naming notion without further delay. Bureaucracy can be damned -- we all know Matt's name needs to be on a facility of which we all can be proud.

Let's not settle for less.

Loved ones remember New Albany man killed while skateboarding, by Chris Morris (News and Tribune)

Brewer remembered as a 'great guy'

NEW ALBANY — There was something special about Matthew Brewer according to those who knew him. He always had a smile on his face and a positive word to say.

"We always looked up to him, he had a lot of skating knowledge," Chris Flores said Tuesday afternoon at the New Albany Skatepark. "He was just a really nice guy. He was nice to everybody."

Flores, and other friends of Brewer's, attended a special gathering at the skatepark to remember their friend who was killed Monday evening around 9:30 at Spring and East Ninth streets from injuries sustained after being struck by a minivan while riding his skateboard.

The accident is still under investigation, according to New Albany Police Chief Todd Bailey.

Judy Brewer and her husband David were at the skatepark Tuesday and were moved by the number of friends and acquaintances who showed up, many with skateboards in hand to honor their son, who had adopted skateboarding as a way of life ...

THE BEER BEAT: This humble plinth could be the spot where we memorialize the myriad victims of Prohibition.

It is imperative for the future health and well-being of the municipality that we embrace historical consciousness, hence my contention that the victims of the savage and deranged social experiment known as Prohibition -- surely America's second-worst idea ever, albeit well behind human slavery in terms of ramifications -- be memorialized, preferably adjacent to a watering hole that reminds us of what the heinous teetotalers tried to take away.

This effort may well become the focus of the rest of my life. Less than a year ago, I surveyed the background:

“In a house once standing here, New Albany’s chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union advocated for Prohibition and abstinence from ‘Demon Alcohol.’ But Prohibition proved to be a disaster, and so it is vitally important that we remember the WCTU’s efforts favoring Prohibition, all the better for us to reject Prohibition, now and forever.”

Of course, my permanent departure from the New Albanian Brewing Company precludes the realization of the Prohibition memorial at the precise spot where the WCTU's headquarters once operated; currently, this square footage serves as Bank Street Brewhouse's outdoor seating area.

Perhaps a plaque might eventually be erected there as part of a walking tour incorporating too many vital historical insights to enumerate here. The central point remains: Prohibition was absurd, and every aspect of remembering its lessons is factually verifiable. It is non-fiction.

To return yet again to the words of Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." There needs to be a memorial to the idiocy, because it must not be forgotten.

I suspect the major problem with using the concrete plinth (circled in the photo above) as the base of a memorial art installation is that it belongs to the alley, and hence to the city. However, everything's negotiable, and it costs nothing to ask questions. If the project is deemed feasible, then I'll pursue it.

Until then, savor these words by H.L. Mencken.

The Prohibitionists, when they foisted their brummagem cure-all upon the country under cover of the war hysteria, gave out that their advocacy of it was based upon a Christian yearning to abate drunkenness, and so abolish crime, poverty and disease. They preached a millennium, and no doubt convinced hundreds of thousands of naive and sentimental persons, not themselves Puritans, nor even democrats. That millennium, as everyone knows, has failed to come in. Not only are crime, poverty and disease undiminished, but drunkenness itself, if the police statistics are to be believed, has greatly increased. The land rocks with the scandal. Prohibition has made the use of alcohol devilish and even fashionable, and so vastly augmented the number of users. The young of both sexes, mainly innocent of the cup under license, now take to it almost unanimously. In brief, Prohibition has not only failed to work the benefits that its proponents promised in 1917; it has brought in so many new evils that even the mob has turned against it. But do the Prohibitionists admit the fact frankly, and repudiate their original nonsense? They do not. On the contrary, they keep on demanding more and worse enforcement statutes — that is to say, more and worse devices for harassing and persecuting their opponents. The more obvious the failure becomes, the more shamelessly they exhibit their genuine motives. In plain words, what moves them is the psychological aberration called sadism. They lust to inflict inconvenience, discomfort, and, whenever possible, disgrace upon the persons they hate — which is to say, upon everyone who is free from their barbarous theological superstitions, and is having a better time in the world than they are. They cannot stop the use of alcohol, nor even appreciably diminish it, but they can badger and annoy everyone who seeks to use it decently, and they can fill the jails with men taken for purely artificial offences, and they can get satisfaction thereby for the Puritan yearning to browbeat and injure, to torture and terrorize, to punish and humiliate all who show any sign of being happy. And all this they can do with a safe line of policemen and judges in front of them; always they can do it without personal risk.

"Simply substitute 'War on Drugs' for 'Prohibition,' and see what you think."

Six years after Kevin Hammersmith's passing, the Little League complex named in his honor nears completion.

Six years ago yesterday, Kevin Hammersmith was killed in car crash on Indiana 111. I'll never forget hearing the sad news from a high school friend, which in that weirdest of modern twists came to me via Facebook.

Kevin’s philanthropic endeavors are the stuff of local legend, and they will be for years to come. It is my firm belief that in his eagerness to be of assistance to the community, he far transcended expectations in terms of his job, something which testifies eloquently to his bedrock sense of self, of purpose, and of social obligation in the noblest of old-fashioned applications. He did it because he meant it. If any one person in this city deserves a statue, it’s Kevin, although he’d roll his eyes and squirm at the suggestion.

I haven't backed away from the statue suggestion, although perhaps an amphitheater plaque and a ballpark are enough. The photos above, courtesy of New Albany Township Little League, reveal Kevin Hammersmith Memorial Park off Charlestown Road, obviously close to being ready for a 2018 debut.

It had better be ready, given that on Monday, November 27, the Harritt Group will be auctioning off the components of New Albany Little League's longtime home on Mt. Tabor Road: Little League Ballpark Equipment Auction.

There'll be understandable worries as the final build-out progresses toward spring, but the new complex is a done deal. Naturally, there are 1,001 relevant "could have, should have, would have" discussions about such a facility, ranging from its auto-centric location to proper funding, and not excluding the perpetual city-county turf war, which often reads suspiciously like the script of the film Duck Soup by the Marx Brothers.

However, if these baseball fields must be, then I'm happy they're dedicated to Kevin Hammersmith.

You're missed, my friend.

THE BEER BEAT: It has been three years since BSB's original kitchen closed, so let's return to "Ice Cold WCTU (A Modest Proposal)."

Today marks three years since NABC closed the original kitchen at Bank Street Brewhouse.

May 13, 2014: It's time to reinvent, so changes are under way at NABC’s Bank Street Brewhouse.

Earlier in 2017, Evansville's Tin Man Brewing announced the end of its restaurant concept, followed shortly thereafter by the news that the brewery was available for purchase. I believe Tin Man is still brewing amid a hazy future, but at the time I was reminded in visceral fashion what it felt like when we emitted a similar explanation. To say that I commiserate with Tin Man is an understatement of vast dimensions.

Naturally, 2014 was a tumultuous year. I wanted to reinvent Bank Street Brewhouse as a destination taproom, and numerous auditions occurred, including a food truck experiment with Big Four Burgers, pop-ups with Dan Thomas (One night stand: Hot fried chicken pop-up coming to New Albany) and at year's end, a plan to install Taco Punk on weekends.

By then, we'd already had problems maintaining the "statutory compliance" menu of frozen hot dogs, powdered milk and instant coffee: Law-abiding by weenie was never this viral.

By January of 2015, I'd decided to run for mayor and take a leave of absence, which turned permanent shortly thereafter -- and no, they haven't paid me a dime yet. Perhaps it's time to make an attorney rich.

All in all, it's been a charmed life, and I have few regrets. One of them is that it wasn't possible to follow through on what undoubtedly was my greatest idea: Ice Cold WCTU, a museum and conceptual memorial to the victims of Prohibition, doubling as the unique shtick to draw customers to the brewery.

Of course, many elements of the idea might be free-standing, or function the same in a different setting. All that would be missing is the awesome irony of the beer garden as former site of the WCTU's headquarters.

Following is a reprint of a column detailing Ice Cold WCTU (July 24, 2014). I'll never give up on this idea. It's only a matter of time.

---

ON THE AVENUES: Ice Cold WCTU (A Modest Proposal).

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Once upon a time in downtown New Albany, a house stood in the space between Bank Street Brewhouse and the Ricke & Associates agency to the north. If there is an extant photo somewhere, I haven’t seen it, although it is safe to assume an appearance somewhat like that of the Ricke house itself, or the Fox law office on the other side, probably positioned close by the street in traditional row house fashion.

Before the house was demolished around 1955, it had been used for a very long time by New Albany’s branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. In case you didn’t know, the WCTU’s mission was to create a “sober and pure world” through “abstinence, purity and evangelical Christianity.” City guides dating from 1954 all the way back to 1919 identify the house as the WCTU chapter’s headquarters.

The following was written in 1937.

In the year 1852 Mr. John Crawford built and sold to Mr. Silas Day the large brick house on the west side of Bank Street now owned by the W.C.T.U. This was an example of a New Albany home of the better class in the 1850s and 1860s.

We don’t know when the WCTU bought the house, although in 1882, New Albany’s chapter merited mention in the “Minutes of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of Indiana at the Annual Meeting.”

The New Albany WCTU’s zenith was in the early 1900s, during its ultimately successful campaign for statewide and later national Prohibition. Fortunately, Prohibition’s myriad and well-documented failures served to discredit America’s teetotalers far better than my puny words ever could. Today, the craft brewing revolution flourishes in New Albany on the very same spot where beer’s enemies once conspired.

That’s delicious, and it’s why we need a monument to victory over the prohibitionists.

---

The project I’m proposing is called Ice Cold WCTU, and it aims to provide a unique, fully functional entrance to Lloyd’s Landing, the NABC “beer garden” adjacent to Bank Street Brewhouse. Lloyd’s Landing is named for the late Lloyd Wimp, who I’m confident would have enthusiastically approved of this idea.

Ice Cold WCTU is designed to be multi-faceted. It addresses the history and architectural heritage of New Albany, provides a conceptual “memorial” suitable for becoming a genuine tourist attraction, addresses themes of art and sustainability, and will be the only thing like it, anywhere.

That’s because the WCTU helped bring about Prohibition, and Prohibition almost killed brewing in America – and so who better than a local brewer belonging to the new, flourishing “craft” generation to commemorate the killjoy villainy of the WCTU?

The memorial plaque might read:

“In a house once standing here, New Albany’s chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union advocated for Prohibition and abstinence from ‘Demon Alcohol.’ But Prohibition proved to be a disaster, and so it is vitally important that we remember the WCTU’s efforts favoring Prohibition, all the better for us to reject Prohibition, now and forever.”

Here’s how it might work.

At the entrance to Lloyd’s Landing, facing Bank Street, we’ll “trace” the front of the former WCTU house. This structure will take the form of pergolas (on the Lloyd’s Landing side, to eventually be linked to a shelter house or patio improvements) and an artistic façade or “false front” rising higher on the street side, constructed mostly of salvaged and recycled building materials. Because the front would mimic the roofline of the (an) old house, there’ll be at least the suggestion of a restored streetscape.

The facing will be representational, not an exact reproduction. It might be painted, or not. Vines or hops might grow on it, or not. Gaps could be complemented with shutters, window frames and other architectural mementoes, or not. It is to be artistic, not a duplicate. I envision an interpretive plaque, as worded above, as well as a life-sized, all-weather cutout bearing the photographic image of WCTU members – the Wild Women of the WCTU, next to whom visitors can pose for selfies.

But there’s even more.

---

Bank Street Brewhouse’s fully enclosed, former outdoor patio area already has been dubbed the WCTU Reading Room, and there is just enough unused wall space therein to redeploy as a museum, with exhibits explaining the WCTU, Prohibition, and their deleterious effects on civilized society.

The grand opening can be preceded by a community-wide art contest, in which local artists riff on a theme of fundamentalist zealotry. For the occasion, we might clear the former dining room of furniture and display the art there. Behind the art, through the window, lies the brewery, and if those machines kill fascists, surely they eradicate prohibitionists as well.

Ice Cold WCTU simultaneously pushes so many red hot buttons that I’m hard pressed to count them all.

It restores a streetscape, references New Albany’s history and recognizes the city’s architectural heritage.

It serves as a permanent art project and tourist attraction.

It provides a focal point to rebranding Bank Street Brewhouse, something we need in the absence of a kitchen, giving us a place to begin or end brewery tours.

Best of all, every aspect of it is factually verifiable. It is non-fiction. To return yet again to the words of Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." There needs to be a memorial and a museum to the WCTU and Prohibition, because they must not be forgotten.

Now all I have to do is figure out a way to finance Ice Cold WCTU. If ever there was a Kickstarter project capable of succeeding, this is it.

Anyone know a grant writer?

As for the recycled materials, paging Mr. Steve Resch …

Steve, if you’re reading …

ON THE AVENUES: Ice Cold WCTU (A Modest Proposal).

ON THE AVENUES: Ice Cold WCTU (A Modest Proposal).

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Once upon a time in downtown New Albany, a house stood in the space between Bank Street Brewhouse and the Ricke & Associates agency to the north. If there is an extant photo somewhere, I haven’t seen it, although it is safe to assume an appearance somewhat like that of the Ricke house itself, or the Fox law office on the other side, probably positioned close by the street in traditional row house fashion.

Before the house was demolished around 1955, it had been used for a very long time by New Albany’s branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. In case you didn’t know, the WCTU’s mission was to create a “sober and pure world” through “abstinence, purity and evangelical Christianity.” City guides dating from 1954 all the way back to 1919 identify the house as the WCTU chapter’s headquarters.

The following was written in 1937.

In the year 1852 Mr. John Crawford built and sold to Mr. Silas Day the large brick house on the west side of Bank Street now owned by the W.C.T.U. This was an example of a New Albany home of the better class in the 1850s and 1860s.

We don’t know when the WCTU bought the house, although in 1882, New Albany’s chapter merited mention in the “Minutes of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of Indiana at the Annual Meeting.”

The New Albany WCTU’s zenith was in the early 1900s, during its ultimately successful campaign for statewide and later national Prohibition. Fortunately, Prohibition’s myriad and well-documented failures served to discredit America’s teetotalers far better than my puny words ever could. Today, the craft brewing revolution flourishes in New Albany on the very same spot where beer’s enemies once conspired.

That’s delicious, and it’s why we need a monument to victory over the prohibitionists.

---

The project I’m proposing is called Ice Cold WCTU, and it aims to provide a unique, fully functional entrance to Lloyd’s Landing, the NABC “beer garden” adjacent to Bank Street Brewhouse. Lloyd’s Landing is named for the late Lloyd Wimp, who I’m confident would have enthusiastically approved of this idea.

Ice Cold WCTU is designed to be multi-faceted. It addresses the history and architectural heritage of New Albany, provides a conceptual “memorial” suitable for becoming a genuine tourist attraction, addresses themes of art and sustainability, and will be the only thing like it, anywhere.

That’s because the WCTU helped bring about Prohibition, and Prohibition almost killed brewing in America – and so who better than a local brewer belonging to the new, flourishing “craft” generation to commemorate the killjoy villainy of the WCTU?

The memorial plaque might read:

“In a house once standing here, New Albany’s chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union advocated for Prohibition and abstinence from ‘Demon Alcohol.’ But Prohibition proved to be a disaster, and so it is vitally important that we remember the WCTU’s efforts favoring Prohibition, all the better for us to reject Prohibition, now and forever.”

Here’s how it might work.

At the entrance to Lloyd’s Landing, facing Bank Street, we’ll “trace” the front of the former WCTU house. This structure will take the form of pergolas (on the Lloyd’s Landing side, to eventually be linked to a shelter house or patio improvements) and an artistic façade or “false front” rising higher on the street side, constructed mostly of salvaged and recycled building materials. Because the front would mimic the roofline of the (an) old house, there’ll be at least the suggestion of a restored streetscape.

The facing will be representational, not an exact reproduction. It might be painted, or not. Vines or hops might grow on it, or not. Gaps could be complemented with shutters, window frames and other architectural mementoes, or not. It is to be artistic, not a duplicate. I envision an interpretive plaque, as worded above, as well as a life-sized, all-weather cutout bearing the photographic image of WCTU members – the Wild Women of the WCTU, next to whom visitors can pose for selfies.

But there’s even more.

---

Bank Street Brewhouse’s fully enclosed, former outdoor patio area already has been dubbed the WCTU Reading Room, and there is just enough unused wall space therein to redeploy as a museum, with exhibits explaining the WCTU, Prohibition, and their deleterious effects on civilized society.

The grand opening can be preceded by a community-wide art contest, in which local artists riff on a theme of fundamentalist zealotry. For the occasion, we might clear the former dining room of furniture and display the art there. Behind the art, through the window, lies the brewery, and if those machines kill fascists, surely they eradicate prohibitionists as well.

Ice Cold WCTU simultaneously pushes so many red hot buttons that I’m hard pressed to count them all.

It restores a streetscape, references New Albany’s history and recognizes the city’s architectural heritage.

It serves as a permanent art project and tourist attraction.

It provides a focal point to rebranding Bank Street Brewhouse, something we need in the absence of a kitchen, giving us a place to begin or end brewery tours.

Best of all, every aspect of it is factually verifiable. It is non-fiction. To return yet again to the words of Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." There needs to be a memorial and a museum to the WCTU and Prohibition, because they must not be forgotten.

Now all I have to do is figure out a way to finance Ice Cold WCTU. If ever there was a Kickstarter project capable of succeeding, this is it.

Anyone know a grant writer?

As for the recycled materials, paging Mr. Steve Resch …

Steve, if you’re reading …

Ghosts of the WCTU, revisited.

These days, we drink beer on the same spot where in olden times, Prohibition was plotted by fanatics. Lately is has occurred to me that as an aficionado of history, a commemorative plaque alone may not be sufficient to scratch the itch, seeing as I firmly adhere to the Santayana dictum, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Consequently, a plan is taking root. Due diligence is yet to be completed, so in the interim, consider this project in Florida (thanks KG), which artistically and conceptually "traces" the footprints of former structures.

Prohibition is an "experiment" that doesn't need repeating. I suspect most of us imagine it won't, but to me, it's important to remember why the idiocy occurred in the first place.

Stay tuned for more.

WWI readings: From what was torn asunder to what was not rebuilt.

I've started reading The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark. Less than 100 pages into this examination of the pre-war European scene, the magisterial tone is gripping and intense. There's something to be said for burrowing into a study of century-old stupidity as a salve for the daily pain of coping with the contemporary variety, surrounding you on all sides, sucking the air from rooms.

But enough about my life in New Albany.

So far I've learned about Serbian porcine husbandry, Austro-Hungarian economic development initiatives in Bosnia-Herzegovina and what international loans really meant in terms of the recipient. All these are factors in the run-up to the Archduke's assassination in 1914.

Clark's preface alone is worth the price of admission, suggesting that far from being remote and isolated phenomenons, the antecedents of World War I have again become timely and relevant for us, 100 years later. How similar in temperament are the Black Hand and Al Qaida? After all, the spark that lit a conflagration in 1914 came as the result of a state-sponsored terrorist act. The most consistently disproved theory in history is that it can't happen again.

A Tour of the Eerie Villages France Never Rebuilt After WWI, by Mark Byrnes (The Atlantic Cities)

The Battle of Verdun, an 11-month struggle in northeast France between German and French forces during World War I, left hundreds of thousands on both sides dead (recent casualty estimates range between 700,000 and just under 1 million). When the fighting finally ceased in late summer 1917, the Germans had retreated, leaving small villages along the battlefields completely destroyed. As a tribute, many were never rebuilt ...

We will not forget you.

It's been a year since Lloyd left us, and a week since I laid out this first-year memorial page in the hope of finding the photos and writing a paragraph without crying. I couldn't. One of these years, maybe it will be easier, but not this one. Lloyd, we miss you. Rest in peace.

Josh Kelly memorial and fundraiser is on Saturday, September 25.

I did not know Josh Kelly, who died on August 21 at the age of 28, but my heart remains heavy at the news.

I've known his father, Lee Kelly, since before Josh was born, and the longtime New Albany High School teacher, and director of the WNAS radio and television programs there, was a huge influence on me during formative times. I'll admit to being somewhat less than a stellar student back when Lee drove up the hill to teach one radio section at Floyd Central. Both then, and during the years afterward, Lee taught me a great deal about life. I'm grateful for that, and now, these many years later, I grieve for the family's loss.

Not unexpectedly, Josh had many friends, and quite a few of them are patrons of one or the other NABC location. They're planning a softball tournament this coming Saturday, September 25, as a memorial and fundraiser for Josh Kelly.

Also, Eric Norrington has set up this portal for donations: The Kelly Family Fund.

Remember, consider taking part, and please donate. NABC will be offering a portion of the proceeds at Saturday's Strassenfest to the cause.

Tomorrow: Blood drive honoring Officers White and Denzinger.

The following reminder came yesterday from an NAC correspondent, and is detailed in Whole community shares grief, by Harold J. Adams (The Courier-Journal):

At the Buffalo Trace office of the American Red Cross, plans were being made for a blood drive in honor of Denzinger and White. The blood drive is scheduled tomorrow from noon until 8 p.m. at Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church at 2212 State Street in New Albany.

Red Cross manager Karen Cook said cards will be available for donors to sign that will go to the officers' families.

We're honoring a respectful pause for reflection in the local blogosphere, and will be back on Thursday afternoon.