ON THE AVENUES: I've got the spirit, but lose the feeling.

Aimlessness, ennui, and frustration.

These three words don’t begin to describe my mood during the year or so immediately following high school graduation in 1978. You’d need to add measures of angst, disaffection and frustration to the mix, not to mention an ongoing, crippling shyness.

To be more succinct, I was an extremely unhappy camper -- and then, as now, I detest camping. I hadn’t the slightest idea what I was supposed to do with my life.

Small wonder The Who’s quintessential Quadrophenia album spoke to me so insistently at the time.

I am not the actor
This can't be the scene
But I am in the water
As far as I can see

Of course it’s been 42 years since then, and honestly I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. The difference between now and before is sheer stagecraft. I’m much better adjusted to performing. As an adult I've become the actor. At some point along the way I learned that people can be shy extroverts, and there’s no law against faking it until you make it.

In fact, faking it has served me quite well.

But in 1978, I was at sea. For my inaugural semester at Indiana University Southeast, I signed up for four evening classes. It was a disastrous foray into academia. I failed one and managed somehow to beg an incomplete out of another. Such was my dysfunction that I derived no solace from solid academic performances in the other two, English Composition and Intro to Philosophy.

In fact, these two courses were harbingers of a future pathway forward, even if I couldn’t see it. In retrospect, I just didn’t know myself. Self-knowledge came only with time.

I’m a slow learner, which means that almost always, I’m also a late bloomer. If you want fast, decisive decisions, look elsewhere, because I may not be the best choice. I’ll hoard every last second you give me to think about it, then run the variations through my head multiple times.

Once focused, that’s where I remain. Getting focused can be an ordeal.

In addition, that horrid shyness made post-high school life challenging. The IUS class I failed in the fall of 1978 was Public Speaking. I should have refused the option when the counselor suggested it to me, but I couldn’t find the words to express my terror. I didn’t know what to say to myself, much less to other people.

To be truthful, coping mechanisms for shyness didn’t become clear until I was well into my twenties. In the beginning, I needed barriers to survive: a teacher’s desk between the students and me, the counter separating the liquor store clerk from his customers, and a nice row of taps like a picket fence from behind the bar.

I’ve proven to be a patient adult, and things gradually fell into place, although four decades ago shyness made it excruciatingly hard to find new friends. At first my friends after high school were the same as during high school, at least the ones who stuck around and didn’t go away to university.

Maybe all of us who stayed here had certain socialization issues.

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The year following my high school graduation, I joined with a few of these friends to stage what we referred to at the time as a “commando raid.” It was juvenilia to such a brain-dead degree that my adult brain fairly recoils from the memory.

It seems that rudimentary steel gates had been installed at the roadway entrances to Floyd Central, our alma mater. This struck us as the first step toward a future police/education state; a blow needed to be struck for freedom of mobility, and who better to do it than us?

Besides, we were underemployed, bored and profoundly misdirected. Our bizarre conclusion was to advocate freedom of movement by preventing the school buses from leaving. The gang pooled pocket change, bought a few padlocks and coordinated our watches.

Just as the closing bell sounded one spring afternoon, we descended from three directions and padlocked the gates shut, reasoning this would make us famous.

A senior mole still on the inside subsequently reported a farcical outcome as annoying as it was utterly predictable. The bus drivers saw everything as it unfolded, and our cheap padlocks were no match for humongous bolt cutters wielded by yawning janitors who came trotting from the building within seconds of our getaway.

The whole episode lasted a few minutes at the very most, and we looked so foolishly impotent that the administrators didn't even bother tracking us down. For me, the exercise actually generated a learning point, which was profound embarrassment. I no longer was in high school, and evidently needed to broaden my horizons.

After all these years, and quite apart from the youthful idiocy of our ill-fated stunt, the stated purpose of those schoolyard gates recently has come back to me. They were supposed to help secure the grounds at night and on weekends, when no one needed to be reposing on school property anyway.

However, if my memory is to be trusted, the gates seldom were used. It quickly became obvious that school activities ran seemingly around the clock, and students, teachers and staff were coming and going at all hours. The gates soon were padlocked open, and started rusting. Taxpayers griped in letters to the newspaper: why waste a thousand bucks on gates that weren’t being used?

All of it -- the gates, those objections and our commando raid -- seems ridiculously quaint looking back from the vantage point of 2020.

Nowadays when topics of school security and safety arise, we're no longer talking about three or four flimsy gates, but armed guards, weapons, x-ray machines and in all likelihood quite soon, the micro-chipping of humans in the same way we did our cat at the vet last week.

Not to mention mental health services and counseling, the proposed funding for which comprise the bulk of monies being sought in 2020 by the school corporation via the current “safety” referendum ballot issue.

Damn straight; we do live in a different world. See what four decades of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and proliferating neoliberalism can do to a society’s sanity? When RayGun took office in 1981, the disassembling of America began in earnest. Joe Biden’s dementia-accented ascendancy this week seems calculated to assure there’ll be a two-party continuance of the fundamental neoliberal rot, with maybe a symptom or two addressed in passing before the inevitable veto by Amazon, Wall Street and the gendarmes of capital accumulation.

It's a good thing we still have books.

---

Coincidentally, the late Mark Fisher’s amazing Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? closed out March atop my nightstand, from whence I devoured it in three sittings.

In his book The Selfish Capitalist, Oliver James has convincingly posited a correlation between rising rates of mental distress and the neoliberal mode of capitalism practiced in countries like Britain, the USA and Australia. In line with James’s claims, I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill?”

It isn’t acceptable, is it?

Maybe it’s a fast food diet of pure sugar, the plastic fragments coursing through our veins, or the modern global economy’s reduction of work to frantic kaleidoscopic gigging.

Fischer’s view is that when alternatives to robber baron capitalism can no longer even be imagined, bat-shit craziness is the logical outcome for all except the 1%.

(In retrospect, listening to Joy Division while writing these words may not have been my best idea ever.)

I’ll never be entirely sure whether my inner turmoil during high school and shortly thereafter was the usual hormonal accompaniment to acne and masturbation, or something deeper. The odds overwhelmingly favor the former, but it strikes me as useful in the context of a public education that young people have access to mental health services.

Far more useful would be immediate and pervasive revolution against neoliberalism, and yet I understand how few Americans are in a position to undertake the corrective measures. I’m a patient man, and I trust that in time, they will, even if it’s after my time.

In the interim, allow me to state publicly that I’ve no issues with the school corporation’s referendum. I’ll campaign neither for nor against it, but if you have strong feelings either way, please submit them for publication. My blog is your blog.

In the main, my fellow baby boomers have been major bummers; my generation of unreconstructed narcissists has acquiesced in a greed-driven economic system built to benefit engorgement for the few, with the expense of a natural by-product of mental (and often physical) illness left to be borne by the many.

I’m for doing what we can to mitigate the effects, and while I'm on the topic, remember to vote for Bernie Sanders early and often. Maybe soon we can prevent this institutionalized insanity instead of slap bandages on the contusions produced.

---

Recent columns:

February 27: ON THE AVENUES: There is a complete absence of diversity among regular News and Tribune columnists.

February 20: ON THE AVENUES: For downtown New Albany, escaping reality might soon be a bridge too far.

February 13: ON THE AVENUES: War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

February 6: ON THE AVENUES Alas, New Albany is less of a place without a bookstore.

Bourdain Day at Pints&union "brought awareness to issues of mental health and suicide prevention."

Credit Joe, Cassie, Calvin and the rest of the crew at Pints&union for an informative and well-attended Bourdain Day program.

"Bourdain was simply a journalist. And journalists can’t recognize him because they can’t recognize what real journalism is anymore."

"How suicide prevention is becoming part of Anthony Bourdain's legacy."

Given the nuances of the topic, and this being the first such remembrance since Bourdain's death last year, striking a proper balance was a challenge. They got it right, and kudos are merited.

Pints & Union remembers Anthony Bourdain, discusses suicide prevention, by Brooke McAfee (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — Pints & Union owner Joe Phillips is among the many people who view Anthony Bourdain as a hero.

So on "Bourdain Day," he wanted to commemorate the late chef/writer/TV host's life in a meaningful way. Community members raised their glasses Tuesday to Bourdain at the New Albany pub and brought awareness to issues of mental health and suicide prevention.

Tuesday, June 25 would have been Bourdain's 63rd birthday, and it has been more than a year since he died by suicide on June 8, 2018. Several weeks ago, chefs José Andrés and Eric Ripert recognized their friend by proclaiming his birthday "Bourdain Day" ...

"Then, on the 10th anniversary of his death, my mother sat us down and explained the concept of suicide."

I tend to avoid glib assertions when it comes to being in touch with my emotions. Males tend to be handicapped in this fashion, and as an only child who spent much time alone reading, I've been inclined toward melancholy reveries and elegiac reflections as opposed to interaction.

Exacting details aren't necessary for me to say that during the past few months, the suicide of a friend has caused me to re-examine my point of view about taking one's own life, especially as it pertains to the subsequent pain of family members.

It's an examination in progress, and I've nothing transformational to divulge just yet. But while an essay like the one linked here probably would have escaped my attention six months ago, at this precise moment I'm deeply affected, particularly since it is the point of view of a woman who lost her father to suicide early in her life, as a young child.

Aisling Bea: ‘My father’s death has given me a love of men, of their vulnerability and tenderness’, by Aisling Bea (The Guardian)

The comedian’s father killed himself when she was three. She was plagued by the fact he made no mention of her or her sister in the letter he left. Then, 30 years after his death, a box arrived

My father died when I was three years old and my sister was three months. For years, we thought he had died of some sort of back injury – a story that we had never really investigated because we were just too busy with the Spice Girls and which one we were (I was a Geri/Mel B mix FYI). Then, on the 10th anniversary of his death, my mother sat us down and explained the concept of suicide. Sure, we knew about suicide. At 13, I had already known of too many young men from our town who had taken their own lives. Spoken about as inexplicable sadnesses for the families, spoken about but never really talked about … “terrible tragedy … nobody knows why he did it”. What we had not known until that day, was that our father had, 10 years beforehand, also taken his own life.

"Global threats, from extremism to mental illness to humanitarian emergencies, can only be addressed if we take seriously the economic systems that foster them."

I'd like to thank Senator Donnelly for making my point for me. It saves time that way.

It's been a few months.

Back by popular demand: "Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems."

Think of it as a concise explanation of how both "major" American political parties are playing the very same hand, operating from the very same fundamental economic assumptions. In a few quantifiable ways, Democrats and Republicans differ on social issues, which have been elevated into culture wars, which in turn keep the 99% at each other's throats while the fundamental assumptions remain unchanged.

Neoliberalism Is Killing Us: Economic Stress as a Driver of Global Depression and Suicide, by Noelle Sullivan (Truthout)

 ... Perhaps it's time to acknowledge the role of our current global economic system in exacerbating the very problems we're trying to address, from extremism to mental health crises. Of course, there are no panaceas when it comes to mental health, but it's time we began acknowledging some of the structural issues that fuel anxiety and depression.

Perhaps it's time for economic innovations, instead of the tired claims around reduced government spending, tax cuts and deregulation.

ON THE AVENUES: They're coming to take me away.

ON THE AVENUES: They're coming to take me away.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

I was raised to give a damn, and it isn’t easy stepping away from that.

Conversely, I taught myself to self-medicate in times of extreme duress – and staying upright while inside a bottle is no picnic, either.

This year it’s been harder than ever.

I gaze longingly at those nice, clean receptacles of gin, bourbon and rum, and dream about blissful weeks drinking breakfast by dawn’s early light – or after lunch, whichever comes first.

For the most part, I’m sidestepping temptation. I may need a hobby, or a job.

Gads. It's come to that?

This year there have been numerous sources of dissonance worthy of attribution, and yet they’re little more than blips of background noise compared with the 800-lb simian’s source of unrelenting daily pressure: Trump, Clinton, and the deplorables on all sides of the most offensive exercise in so-called democracy I’ve ever seen in 56 years of near certainty that the only Americans who aren’t certifiable lunatics are those who remain oblivious to the idiocy, whether through drugs, alcohol or sheer cantankerousness.

I’d dearly love to join them, except I just cannot seem to succeed in tuning out the clatter. Why was my upbringing so oppressively responsible?

My parents weren’t deep readers. They perused the daily newspaper, watched television news and listened to the radio during a forgotten age when worthwhile chunks of genuine information sometimes penetrated the advertisements.

Perhaps my father’s keen interest in news and current affairs was compensation for the absence of formal education. He joined the Marines, went off to war at the tender age of 17, and later completed his G.E.D., but I always had the sense he felt something was missing.

At any rate, whatever the motivation, he taught me to care about the world at large, and for this I’m appreciative.

My maternal grandfather was involved in civic affairs in Henderson, Kentucky, and my mother inherited his interest in politics, generally referring to herself as a “Yellow Dog Democrat,” which means she’d sooner vote for a yellow dog than a Republican.

Vulgar talking yams (to quote Charles P. Pierce) are another matter. My mom just turned 84, and when I went to see her earlier today at Silvercrest, she was watching Donald Trump speak in Florida.

Mother: What do you think of Trump?

Son: He’s an idiot.

Mother: You don’t think he’ll win?

Son: Doubtful. He’s an idiot.

Mother: I sure hope he doesn’t.

Her absentee ballot rested on the coffee table, and my guess is you can chalk one up for Hillary Clinton. After all, my mom would sooner vote for a yellow dog than a surreal absurdity.

---

As for me, I’ve been examining the sample ballot in a desperate attempt to spot viable options, whether local or national.

As previously noted, I’ll be voting for Dennis Roudenbush (Floyd County Commissioner) and Ed Clere (State Representative). Because I can trust Randy Smith (at-large) and Rebecca Gardenour (District 4) to reject the “good old boy” network of acolytes eager to shine Superintendent Hibbard’s shoes, they’re my choices for NA-FC school board.

I met Dale Bagshaw for the first time last year, and he’s both earnest and honest. Moreover, it’s been fascinating to see his position on two-way streets evolve. Dale has my vote for County Council.

Beyond these races, the labored mulling continues as the liquor cabinet beckons.

For President of these Disunited States, I simply will not waste my vote on a major party candidate. The most likely choice remains the Green Party’s Jill Stein as a write-in, although I’ve toyed with the idea of writing in Bernie Sanders, Jeff Gahan, David Duggins, Max the Wonder Chimp or even me.

If you detect notes of sarcasm, disdain, derision, contempt and disgust, you’re about halfway there, and I’m not sure the second half is traversable without more martinis than my liver is prepared to ingest.

---

Of course, this is the crux of it. As with the music I can’t avoid hearing at the supermarket or the road signs I am unable to stop reading, it seems impossible for me to ignore the Great Electoral Train Wreck of 2016.

I want so badly to push it aside – to digest edifying novels, not installments of Five Thirty Eight; to imagine Mike Pence playing outfield for Rockheads (I mean Rockies); and to pretend that the Democratic Party is sufficiently progressive for me to support it.

Alas, I’m condemned to pay attention, reel in revulsion, take a second glance, vomit, gaze at the peanut gallery, and remain frozen unhappily into place, destined for further and unceasing punishment. Waking every morning to a news cycle guaranteed to insult the intelligence of our concrete retaining wall feels like a sledgehammer to the cranium.

And yet, I keep coming back for more. Is it a braindeath wish? Hypnotic suggestion? Misguided sobriety?

Two weeks ago, addressing New Albany’s maddening, protracted gavotte with those gold-paved Disney-endorsed two-way streets running through Jeff Gahan’s head, I wrote that it has become wearying to know that if I don't publicly rebut malarkey-spreaders and civic has-beens, no one else will.

I’ve managed to refrain. Don’t ask me how. Going to Wisconsin for the weekend helped – the Badger State has its own problems, but at least escaping the stifling inanity of Harvest Homecoming had a calming effect on me.

So will our Sicilian holiday during Thanksgiving. I'm looking forward to seeing Mt. Etna close up and personal, drinking wine, and eating the local pasta dish made with anchovies and fresh sardines. There may be pistachio gelato, and a day trip to Malta.

Knowing the mafia is busy wetting beaks should make the city of Catania feel just like a Redevelopment Commission meeting, albeit one where the language is more sensible to innocent bystanders.

Pardon the digression.

It is tremendously frustrating to keep one’s counsel when misinformed community pillars dispense propaganda about two-way streets that's so distorted Trump would blush, but I’ve managed, and maybe this is a turning point.

Yes, it’s excruciatingly hard to disengage from something this passionate – and as noted, it’s someone else's turn, at least for a while.

Did I mention we brought home three and a half cases of beer from Wisconsin? If you’ll pardon me, it’s time to put the hammer down and inventory those tasty sedatives.

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October 6: ON THE AVENUES: His nose knows tolls and polls (2010).

September 29: ON THE AVENUES 3-PK, PART THREE: Survey says … Irv’s street grid agitprop won’t be putting Diogenes out of work any time soon.

September 29: ON THE AVENUES 3-PK, PART TWO: Inkem binkem notamus rex, protect us all from the city (still) with the hex (2014).

September 29: ON THE AVENUES 3-PK, PART ONE: Chocolate covered frozen banana republic, or "understanding" Harvest Homecoming, our peculiar institution (2014).

September 22: ON THE AVENUES: On two-way streets, a modest proposal for the consideration of my disoriented one-way counterpart.

Jeffrey Lee Puckett on mental health and Will Russell.

I've never met Will Russell, although we have mutual acquaintances who freely testify to his talent and charisma.

These past few months have not been kind to Russell, and it has been sad and surreal these past few months to observe a figurative car crash play out in real time on social media, all the while reading as Russell's friends continue to ask, "Can't something be done?"

As the status update often affirms, it's complicated.

Jeffrey Lee Puckett explains why. We may know Puckett as the C-J's music reporter, a seat he seems to have occupied since the Beatles played Shea Stadium, but in this piece, Puckett patiently and skillfully tells the story of Russell's mental health struggles. It is well written and highly recommended, whether you know Russell or not ... because you probably know someone who grapples with similar issues.

Mental illness at heart of Will Russell's struggle: Will Russell's story is one of longtime mental health issues and recent headlines tell only part of that story

Louisville entrepreneur Will Russell has been making news for nearly 14 years. Most of it has been good, and good for the city, but a recent spate of arrests and increasingly erratic behavior have put him in a dramatically different kind of spotlight.

Russell’s accomplishments are well-known. He co-founded Lebowski Fest, an annual event that has gone global with sister festivals in more than 30 cities. He opened WHY Louisville, a Kentucky-themed gift shop, at 1583 Bardstown Road, in 2005 and added a second location at 806 E. Market St. in 2013. And this year began with Russell deep into a project to open Funtown Mountain, a Cave City amusement park.

All of it has been threatened by a severe manic episode related to Russell’s bipolar disorder, a condition with which he has struggled since his teens, according to his father, Bill Russell. The manic episode began last year following a deep depression, and the 39-year-old's return to substance abuse after nearly 20 years of sobriety became apparent in July when he was first arrested on drug charges ...

I write twice monthly for LouisvilleBeer.com, usually publishing on the 1st and 15th. This latest piece should arouse the linoleum lizards to further paroxysms of bile and vituperation.

Take It Off! Take It Off!

As if you hadn’t already noticed, I’m a beer-loving and occasionally wine-dabbling habitué of all manner of bars, pubs, taverns and adult watering stations. They’re the only locales on Earth where I feel truly comfortable.

But there’s even more to it. Emulating other renowned Falstaffian trenchermen in fact and legend, I live to eat and not the other way around.

Given these compulsive proclivities of heightened caloric intake, potential weight gain tops the list of occupational hazards. Fortunately, my above-average height has been very useful as parlor trick, enabling me to creatively distribute many of those inconvenient excess pounds on an angular frame.

While remaining aware that inexorably advancing age brings with it varied and sundry health-related booby traps, my fitness motto has remained unchanged: If I feel good, then it’s all good.

Well a young man ... he ain't got nothin' in the world these days.

In case you were wondering, The Stone is a "forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless." This is a long and worthwhile read. Right, wrong or indifferent, it represents an attempt to think about root causes of phenomena, rather than our glib tendency as a nation to skate along the realm of symptoms.

Guns and the Decline of the Young Man, by Christy Wampole (The Stone, part of the New York Times Opinionator blog)

Adam Lanza was a young man. Jacob Roberts was a young man. James Holmes is a young man. Seung-Hui Cho was a young man. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were young men.

We can all name a dozen or so hypotheses about why they kill: their parents’ unlocked gun cabinet, easy access to weapons on the Internet, over- or under-medication, violent video games and TV programs, undiagnosed or misdiagnosed mental disorders, abusive or indifferent parents, no stable social network, bullying. However, young women are equally exposed to many of the same conditions yet rarely turn a weapon on others. This leaves us wondering about the young men.

There is something about life in the United States, it seems, that is conducive to young men planning and executing large-scale massacres. But the reasons elude us ...

Today's Tribune column: "Scorned by the Gang of Pour."

There you have it: 900 words, when all I had to do was say, "I'm not going to the meeting tonight."

BAYLOR: Scorned by the Gang of Pour

I’m better now, but last month I was in rough shape.

The strange, misshapen dreams first started at some point after I “came out” as a tragically misplaced European, but before Miller Lite began bragging aloud about the three whole hop cones used to flavor every 10,000 barrels of carbonated dish water.