The newspaper remembers Karem's Meats: "Closed after 53 years, remembered for selection, service."

Previously noted here.

Consider it newspaper's "official" obit.

As the photo above illustrates, there are places where Karem's still is "open"; the ghost sign at the old location remained affixed throughout the period of Plaza Drive operation, and persists to the present day even though the building was razed.

Weird, though quintessentially New Albanian.

Karem's Meats, closed after 53 years, remembered for selection, service, by Danielle Grady (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — Almost one year after a change in ownership and seventh months after switching locations, Karem’s Meats in New Albany closed last week after 53 years in business, dismaying generations of locals who visited the meat market for its fresh selection and customer service.

“…We just weren’t making projections,” said Matt Nash, who bought Karem’s Meats from Greg Karem last March. “The move hurt us more than we expected it to.”

Nash, who is also a New Albany city councilman, had grown up around Karem’s and thought purchasing the business was a “good opportunity.” But after a new company purchased Karem’s strip center to raze it, Nash moved the meat market from its longtime State Street location to a building three miles away along Plaza Drive. Many customers didn’t follow him despite the addition of a deli. By January, Nash was no longer able to pay his bills, and felt that he couldn’t keep the business open, especially while supporting a young family.

Greg Karem, who sold Karem’s after five to six years of serving as caretaker to his wife, said he was disappointed that the shop had closed, but hopes Nash “lands on his feet.”

The obituary and visitation arrangements for Bettye Sue Baylor (1932 - 2017).

Brother Donald (l), sister Jean (r) and baby Sue (circa 1933).

Diana and I thank you yet again for the many kind thoughts, condolences and memories. As was her habit, my mother left clear instructions for how she wanted arrangements to be made, and I've done my best to comply, with only a couple of judgment calls required. Following is the obituary I wrote. You'll find information about arrangements at the end.

---

Bettye Sue Baylor, 84, of New Albany, Indiana died on Sunday, March 12, 2017.

Sue was born on October 9, 1932 in Henderson, Kentucky to Elva and Anna Allen. Her father was a successful farmer, and her mother a one-woman farm household management team. Sue was the youngest of eight children. She had four brothers and three sisters, one of whom (Jean Halbert of St. Petersburg, Florida) survives her.

Elva and Anna were determined that their children would have the opportunity for higher education, and one after the other, they departed Henderson for Lexington and attended the University of Kentucky. Sue graduated from UK with an education degree in the spring of 1954. She quickly accepted a job offer from tiny Georgetown High School in Indiana, and began her career teaching home economics – primarily cooking and the art of the kitchen.

Shortly after Sue arrived in Georgetown, a mischievous town matchmaker arranged a date for her with Roger G. Baylor (1925 – 2001), noted local baseball player and a veteran of World War II. Soon they were married, and in 1960, their son Roger A. Baylor was born. By the mid-1960s, the Baylor family had settled permanently on the east side of Georgetown, in a house on a wooded hill overlooking the former reservoir. Sue remained there until 2014, when she downsized to the Villages at Historic Silvercrest in New Albany.

Floyd Central High School began operations in 1967, absorbing Georgetown’s grades 7 – 12. Sue moved with them. Her new home economics department was state-of-the-art, and the “natural” order of the curriculum set in granite: girls took home economics, and boys took shop. She advised a sizeable Future Homemakers of America chapter, and found time to earn a master’s degree at Spalding.

As Sue’s teaching career progressed, times changed and home economics gradually was de-emphasized. Nonetheless, to this very day, hundreds of Sue’s former students shop for groceries, prepare meals, set their tables and even wash dishes according to lessons learned from her. It’s a remarkable legacy, and in response to popular demand, here is one variant of Sue’s recipe for no-bake cookies, which so many of her students recall with fondness.

---

CHOCOLATE NO BAKE COOKIES

2 cups sugar
¼ cup cocoa
½ cup milk
½ cup peanut butter
1 stick butter or margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups oats

Mix sugar, cocoa and milk in saucepan and bring to a boil for 1 minute. Then add peanut butter, butter, vanilla and oats. Mix well. Drop onto wax paper.

---

As an educator, Sue was efficient, highly organized and relentlessly professional. Each day, she came to class ready to teach. These traits carried over to her life at home, but she also enjoyed hobbies like flower gardening, reading and travel.

In addition, the colors blue and yellow played a major role in Sue’s life away from the classroom.

From Adolph Rupp through Anthony Davis, Sue cheered for her alma mater’s basketball team, the “Big Blue” Wildcats, never refraining from her rooting interest even when completely surrounded by throngs of Hoosiers and Cardinals.

Sue also resolutely followed in the footsteps of her father, referring to herself without fail as a Yellow Dog Democrat, i.e., someone who’ll vote for a yellow dog before even remotely considering a Republican. For decades, she supported and made donations to many educational, environmental and social justice causes.

It was a fine run for a farm girl from Western Kentucky, and Sue’s family is grateful to Silvercrest’s staff members for their kindness and consideration during her final illness, with thanks also to Hosparus for its timely assistance.

2014.

Bettye Sue (Allen) Baylor is survived by her son Roger A. Baylor and his wife Diana (New Albany); sister Jean; and an extensive network of nieces, nephews and their families, far too numerous to list here. Sue was equally fond of her longtime neighbors in Georgetown, who really were like family to her.

Sue chose cremation, and her ashes will be buried along with those of her late husband in a private service later this spring at Wolfe Cemetery in Georgetown.

There’ll be a public visitation from 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 23, at Gehlbach & Royse Funeral Home, 7420 Highway 64 in Georgetown, Indiana (812-951-2131).

In lieu of flowers (please), donations are requested to support the Imagination Library Project in Floyd County. The project provides monthly, free books to children from birth to age 5, fostering an early love of reading.

Checks can be made to the New Albany-Floyd County Education Foundation, with “Sue Baylor” in the memo line: NAFC Education Foundation, 2813 Grant Line Road, New Albany IN 47150. On-line, go to www.nafcedfoundation.org/donatenow/ for a PayPal link, and don’t forget to designate "Sue Baylor" in the notes section.

How Donald Duncan's second obituary came to be written.

Photo credit: New York Times.

First there was an obituary.

Donald W. Duncan, 79, Ex-Green Beret and Early Critic of Vietnam War, Is Dead, by Robert D. McFadden (NYT)

Mr. Duncan, who died in obscurity in 2009, wrote in 1966 of witnessing atrocities by American troops and helped organize antiwar protests.

The, a week later came the explanation. It sheds light into the editorial process at a newspaper (just imagine if ours attempted any such), and suggests that it's still possible to disappear in plain sight in places like ...

An Obituary Runs Seven Years After the Subject’s Death. What Happened?, by William McDonald

Obituaries editor William McDonald explains why The Times decided to remember a once-famous activist who had slipped into obscurity, seven years after his death.


... In sum, Mr. Duncan made an appreciable impact on the national discussion of the war; he had for a time been a newsmaker, and by The Times’s rule of thumb his death was thus newsworthy. The obituary ran online on May 6, and in the paper on May 8.

What was unusual about the obituary, however, was how belated it was. Mr. Duncan had died seven years earlier, on March 25, 2009. And therein lies a tale, about a life in which notoriety gave way to its flip side, obscurity, and about a journalistic decision in which one imperative of reporting — to be timely — deferred to a greater one: to simply get the story out.

 ... Madison, Indiana, where Donald Duncan's death notice appeared seven years ago.

Duncan's 2009 obituary in the Madison Courier.

"He probably never wore a top hat or a frock coat; he had no pomp or manner."

The full article is worth more than a glance.

Naturally, we interpret a 91-year-old essay by reading into it all we know about the events unfolding since. It is a useful exercise to try to suspend those judgments and look fresh at items like Bertrand Russell's depiction of Lenin as a high priest of the "Marxian gospel," or that "compromise was another of his strange virtues."

The USSR came into being an unprecedented experiment in "economic revolution," against the express wishes (and active intervention) of world capitalism. From the vantage point of 2015, we know how it worked out there, but it's hard not to feel a tremor of recognition now, in the age of the Kochs and their 1% plutocracy, when reading this:

"Political democracy without economic liberation is a farce."

January 21, 1924: Vladimir Lenin Dies (The Nation)

... Lenin is dead. His country has had to make many painful compromises since his ragged crew took power, but it is running the railroads and marketing the wealth of Russia today. The Communist Government preaching and, to the best of its ability, practicing the gospel of economic revolution, still fills the breast of [Secretary of State Charles Evans] Hughes with alarm. Whatever may come of it in Russia that doctrine—that political democracy without economic liberation is a farce—has swept the Western world, and the Western world will never again be quite the same. The French Revolution was crushed, but it molded the history of nineteenth-century Europe. The Russian Revolution is compromising; Lenin is dead and Trotzky is ill, but they will long continue to make history.

R.I.P., Manuel Baker.

I didn't know Manuel Baker for very long, nor saw him all that often, but there's something about him that always will stick with me.

Around the time the Fermenters of Special Southern Indiana Libations Society (FOSSILS) got started in 1990, some of us regularly attended meetings of the LAGERS club. The acronym stands for Louisville Area Grain and Extract Research Society, and it predates FOSSILS by a year or so.

Manuel was a LAGERS stalwart before moving to Florida in the early 1990s. Being retired, he always had time to work the LAGERS booth at the Kentucky State Fair. He was genial and fond of telling wonderful stories, like the time he explained one of his experiences during World War II.

Seems that the American forces had begun the push onto German soil, and had paused on the outskirts of a town. Manuel's unit had been specifically warned that a nearby brewery was off-limits for fear of remaining snipers -- and having learned for the first time that a brewery was nearby, Manuel and several others decided to reconnoiter.

Access to the brewery was gained without incident, and stores of beer were located. There ensued a rest period, during which these remaining stocks were substantially reduced. Having conducted sufficient intelligence gathering, the soldiers emerged to make their way back -- and immediately came under fire. Fortunately, there were no casualties, but there was a stiff fight, and after returning to camp, there was "Hell to pay," as Manuel described it.

Obviously, the incident took place after the Battle of the Bulge. I don't recall Manuel ever alluding to the battle, or to his Bronze Star earned there. The obituary is the first I've heard of it.

Manuel was a fine fellow, and deserving of a pint consumed in his honor. I encourage readers to do this. When it comes to his generation, the ranks are thinning ... as eventually they will in our own. Cheers to Manuel ... and thanks for a story I'll never forget.

---

BAKER, MANUEL A., died September 14, 2013 in Oviedo, FL.

He was born June 10, 1919 in Muskegon, MI, he served in the 3rd Armored Division of the U.S. First Army during World War II in Germany where he earned a bronze star at the Battle of the Bulge. He was active in the 3rd Armored Division Association, eventually becoming Vice-President for the Southern Region. He ended his business career as General Manager of Fontaine Truck Equipment in Louisville, KY. Retirement allowed him time to further his wood working skills and take up genealogy, where he discovered his ancestors first came to North America in 1725, and his wife's ancestors in 1625.

To a friend's description of him as "a true gentleman, a good friend and a great man" can be added a loving husband and father.

He is survived by his wife of 67 years, Juanita Kelsey Baker; brother, Clarence; son, Gregg; and granddaughter, Kathryn.

He requested no memorial service, and that donations be made to the Wounded Warrior Project: www.woundedwarriorproject.org in lieu of flowers.

RIP at WFPL: "Grady Clay, An Urban Visionary."

It's a fine appreciation of Grady Clay's life and work, but all I the only person chuckling at the irony of Keith Runyon's authorship?

Grady Clay, An Urban Visionary

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By KEITH RUNYON

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Credit The photo is courtesy Oldham County Historical Society

Grady Clay

When Jane Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961, perhaps the most significant book on American urbanism in the 20th Century, it was not a surprise that one of the experts she quoted was Grady Clay. He was the urban affairs editor of The Courier-Journal, and anyone who cared about city planning knew Grady and the work he was doing in Louisville in those days. It must have been a good life for them; both were born in 1916, and each lived nine decades. (Jane Jacobs died in 2006; Grady died early Sunday morning.)

Herbert Streicher has died. Stage name: Harry Reems.

“Nobody under 50 even knows who I am now. Unless you’re a porno historian, and then you’re really sick.”

“I’m the thread to tell the story of social change in America.”

-- Harry Reems, quoted in 2005 (see "The Afterlife of a Porn Star," by Dave Itzkoff)

It isn't everyday that a Utah real estate agent's death merits national headlines: Harry Reems dies at 65; porn actor starred in 'Deep Throat' (Los Angeles Times)

The Economist on Richard III.

Before my job at the long defunct UMI Data Courier back in '88, I didn't know what The Economist was. It still isn't entirely clear, given that the Brits call it a newspaper, and to Americans, it looks like a magazine. Maybe I saw a few issues in college while amassing information for my term paper on Eurocommunism. At any rate, once I began abstracting  The Economist, I was hooked. Apart from a few fallow periods when money was tight, I've been a subscriber to the print edition since 1989.

What continues to impress these many years later is the uniform style; numerous contributing writers with distinctive voices, but written and edited into a "house voice." Prior to my immersion into the Internetz, The Economist was my weekly recap of the planet: Current affairs, politics, economics, science, books, and the very first article I read upon arrival, the obituary at the very end.

This week's essay about the deceased exemplifies the publication's sense of both style and humor: Richard III (Richard Plantagenet), dead since 1485, but whose bones recently were rediscovered and positively identified, having spent the past five centuries in a shallow grave beneath the stones of an abbey, itself long since transformed into a parking lot. The obituary fuses history, literature and science into a clever but respectful summary of a life relinquished in the distant past.

I appreciate good writing, and this is good writing.

NO VIPER, toad or hedgehog; no unformed bear-whelp, or lump of foul deformity. Instead, the man dug up from the car park of Leicester Social Services in September had, for the most part, an ordinary shape. His height was a little above average for the time when he had lived. His limbs were regular and delicate—almost feminine, the scientists said. Pace Shakespeare, there was no withered arm. There was, however, a severely sideways-twisted spine, the result of scoliosis that had probably emerged in adolescence. It would have put one shoulder higher than the other, making him stand shorter than he was. He might have needed extra cushions in his chairs, and extra tugs when putting on those robes of green velvet and crimson cloth of gold so lovingly detailed in his orders to the Wardrobe. But then a king would get that sort of help anyway.