The books I read in 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has touched tens of millions of people around the world. For us, it precluded the usual work and travel schedules and kept us here at home, where I've probably spent more time in 2020 then the past two or three years combined. 

Bizarrely and for all the wrong reasons, at long last I've had ample time to read. In turn, all this reading has constituted a massive brainfood overload, and I'll make no attempt to summarize the following.

However, at this precise moment in time, here are the three books from 2020 that made the deepest impression. 

Capital and Ideology, by Thomas Piketty 

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson    

War and War, a novel by László Krasznahorkai

  
These were consumed in a frenetic period from late July through November; as the mass insanity engendered by the presidential campaign intensified, so did my need to sept aside and try to make sense of it. After Krasznahorkai's deeply affecting novel, I plunged into non-fiction until the election was concluded. 

Then, turning back to fiction, I learned a final lesson: when your neighborhood is descending into crazed madness, Broch's novel The Sleepwalkers cannot provide the slightest measure of escapist relief. 

But four novels by Kurt Vonnegut in one calendar year might be trying to tell me something, too. 

So it goes; here they are. A final note: 2020 was the year New Albanians said goodbye to Destinations Booksellers. It was a refuge amid the Gahanist mediocrity hereabouts, and will be missed. 

---

Books of 2020 (chronologically in reverse order)

31. Cat’s Cradle, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut

30. Finding Bix: The Life and Afterlife of a Jazz Legend, by Brendan Wolfe

29. The Sleepwalkers, a novel by Hermann Broch

28. Encounter, a collection of essays by Milan Kundera

27. Capital and Ideology, by Thomas Piketty

26. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century, by Wolfgang Schivelbusch

25. Jailbird, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut

24. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson

23. Capitalism & Disability, selected writings by Marta Russell

22. Backlash: What happens When We Talk Honestly About Racism in America, by George Yancy

21. Towards the One & Only Metaphor, a novel by Miklos Szentkuthy

20. Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future, by James S. Shapiro

19. Craft: An Argument, by Pete Brown

18. War and War, a novel by László Krasznahorkai

17. Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms, translated by Matvei Yankelevich

16. Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, by Frederick Lewis Allen

15. Mother Night, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut

14. Which Fork Do I Use with My Bourbon?, by Peggy Noe Stevens and Susan Reigler

13. How We Eat with Our Eyes and Think with Our Stomachs, by Melanie Mühl and Diana von Kopp

12. Bliss Was It in Bohemia, a novel by Michel Viewegh

11. An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, by Elizabeth David

10. Russian Cosmism, edited by Boris Groys

9. The Botanist and the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved for the World, by Christy Campbell

8. Bluebeard, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut

7. The Ghosts of My Life, by Mark Fisher

6. Capitalist Realism, by Mark Fisher

5. Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginnings of the Modern World, by Thomas Cahill

4. The Prague Cemetery, a novel by Umberto Eco

3. Bavarian Helles, by Horst Dornbusch

2. Strong Towns, by Charles Marohn

1. The Tragedy of Liberation, by Frank Dikkotter

On (or off) the Avenues, there's got to be a morning after.

What I do want to nudge you to consider is this: everything you are passionate about at the national level has a local analog that needs your attention. 

-- Charles Marohn (Strong Towns; "It's All Local Now")

No, there haven't been any columns lately, and very few posts. This is to be considered a status report. 

As confided previously, this blog is being allowed to wither on the vine. There's a place and time for everything, and 15,000+ posts during 16 years are enough. This particular soapbox is being dismantled. Another will be erected elsewhere, although it will not be entirely the same. ON THE AVENUES will make the transition. Beyond that, I'm unsure.

It is an oft-told story, but worth a quick rehash. NA Confidential arose from my deep frustration with the (seeming) pointlessness of political involvement at the "macro" level of nation state. Hours, days, and years arguing about what should happen "up there," but no real way to be heard or to influence the outcome. It's actually easier that way; it absolves the individual from doing anything about it except talk.

This was in 2004, and as the presidential contest approached (W's re-election would be a bitter disappointment), I decided to look out the front door, down the three-lane, one-way racetrack running past our house, and see what could be done at the grassroots "micro" level. 

As noted, this change of focus played out over an unexpectedly lengthy period. Here's something I wrote at Fb yesterday, as we await confirmation that Trump has been dumped:

I thought this would be an excellent time to announce a return to active local participation, much like the Dick Nixon account at Twitter, given that I feel little different than I did in 2004 when W's re-election turned my interest toward the street outside. 

Then it occurred to me that it took 13 years of local participation to turn this one-way street to two ways. That's right: 13 years. 

Furthermore, since I'm not a Republican and am still effectively blackballed (blackmailed?) into silence by reigning DemoDisneyDixiecrats -- whose stripes haven't changed since Tuesday -- there's no pathway available to me to do much of anything apart from coded commentary, a nice reading list, plenty of alcohol and the occasional sausage. 

Okay, so be it; consequently, the new web site will be called Expatriate in Place, or Open Air Exile, or something like that. I'll be delighted when Trump departs. But it's the same unforgivingly stupid Nawbany outside these four walls.

It appears Joe Biden will win the election, but I'm not "celebrating" one damn thing beyond the singular and profound relief afforded by NOT being compelled to listen to Donald Trump's nonsensical, narcissistic bleating and babbling every single day of my life.

I have almost no confidence that the Democratic Party, as currently configured, can do much of anything positive in the years to come. My position has been, and remains, that in spite of differing appearances, our two major political parties are conjoined in their duopoly. If they both can’t be vaporized at once, one must collapse and the other will soon follow. 

And I don’t care which one goes first.  

Consequently, I have as little interest now, as in 2004, in wasting time debating broad macro topics with no conceivable way of being heard. But locally, the pillars of the community have me effectively blockaded, scourged and blacklisted, primarily because of the past 16 years I've spent reminding them of their tendency to be utterly without clothes (politically and in terms of consciousness, not -- heaven forbid -- in the sense of public nudity).

They're all in favor of truth, until the truth is they're undereducated, incompetent, and in many instances outright venal. It shatters their self-delusions, and they get touchy (but not feely). Tough shit, although I'll concede there's a price to be paid when you're the one spotted holding a ball-peen hammer. 

What happens next? I don't know, and neither do you. 

History has shown, time and again, that absolute certainty is a fool's errand. The pandemic already has proven that everything we take for granted and flip overnight into an entirely different reality. 

So I plan to be loitering around the perimeter for while, working my two jobs, scanning the landscape, and forever mindful of the year 2015, when the incumbent mayor tried ineffectually to take a swipe at me: "Roger’s never done anything in a positive manner to help the city of New Albany.” 

In 2017, I explained why he's completely full of shit in making this assertion, because he never spent a single day in his life being entrepreneurial with his own money, and I mention his haplessly ignorant words now only because they're a powerful reminder that there are numerous ways outside ruling elites, social cliques and "the HWC fix is in" to be involved, accomplish things, make a difference and agitate for change. 

One of my favorite W.C. Fields stories may or may not be true, but it's a good one about the comedian on his deathbed. 

As the end approached, on that Christmas Day in 1946, an old writer-friend named Gene Fowler entered the hospital room and there was Fields, a self-admitted agnostic, thumbing through a Bible. 

 “What are you doing, Bill?” asked the incredulous Fowler. 

 “I’m looking for loopholes,” Fields whispered.  

Pretty much. NAC can die, because it will make the dipshits happy, and as such, it's my loving gift to them. 

Me? I'm looking for loopholes.

Update: NAC is heading for the exits, but we're not there quite yet.

ON THE AVENUES: I'm voting for Biden. Otherwise it's Trump's burgeoning fascist GOP death cult.

ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to the last will and testament of NA Confidential.

Update: NAC is heading for the exits, but we're not there quite yet.

I'm still moving toward the ultimate goal of putting NA Confidential to rest. 

ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to the last will and testament of NA Confidential.

There still isn't a firm timetable for the conversion, although at this point it's reasonable to assume that postings won't come to a complete halt until later in October, or even early November. 

As of now, I'll be reducing activity to only one post each day. There is much transitioning to do, and I'm busy with other tasks.  

The new web site is built and functional. Now it must be decorated and some furniture moved inside. The NA Confidential archive, all 15,000+ posts since 2004, is secure; if tomorrow morning Blogger might sink beneath the waves, there'd be a backup.   

Your patronage is appreciated. Thanks. 

ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to the last will and testament of NA Confidential.

It cannot be denied that I’m a slow learner, a late bloomer and a serial procrastinator. 

This much is perfectly clear. Actually, I’ve never cared enough to even try dodging these compliments. 

The odd part has always been that once I get around at long last to learning, blooming and/or making up my mind, it’s a done deal. Once a decision has been determined, right or wrong, it is pretty much irrevocable with me.

So it was last week when I awakened to thoughts about NA Confidential’s future, and concluded it has none, at least in its present format. I'll continue writing elsewhere, and soon the blog will cease to exist as an active, ongoing entity.

NAC began in 2004 as a way of channeling a long-gestating insight, this being the importance of grassroots localism. It was and remains my view that people tend to obsess about hugely complex national and international topics to the exclusion of approachable issues outside their front doors, and in their own communities, because theatrically pontificating in broad terms is easier than getting involved with the grit and grime of specifics.

NAC started out as a diary of sorts, a place to chronicle my journeys, promote the beer businesses I was involved with at the time, channel my inner Mencken, and write about anything I damn well pleased. Other folks helped out with writing (Randy, Jeff, Lloyd), and then they didn’t. 

The blog grew into a public gathering spot, a function that ebbed drastically once social media exploded. All along, it was a spot to broach subjects no one else would. I followed these stories where they took me, and it didn't always make people happy. 

They're entitled to their own opinions, although not their own facts.

NA Confidential’s first post was on October 22, 2004. Who even imagined we’d still be talking about it in 2020? I didn't.

You don’t need a gumshoe with rotten breath and one too many alimony payments to figure out the problem with this town. It’s something in the water that causes people here to lose their vision. Q: What do New Albanians call Southside's mashed potatoes? A: Freedom Foie Gras. Well, we’re here to change all that.

Ha! 

Change all that?

A tad cheeky, and ultimately a point to debate, although others can decide the extent, if any, of the blog’s influence hereabouts. Irrespective, the blogging experience has changed me, and nowadays I’m at a crossroads amid the crossfire. Consequently, there are several good reasons for acknowledging various irrefutable realities and drowning the blog in the nearest available bathtub.

Allow me to explore the reasoning.

---

Localism? Not so much. Between our toxic social media fixation, the pandemic and Trump’s invasive cult of personality, interest in provocative takes on local matters in Nawbany has largely disappeared. Readership has responded accordingly, by plummeting. This should please my betters. 

Part of this decline owes to the scattershot essence of Blogger; it is an utter piece of crap, and a dysfunctional platform overall. For at least a decade Blogger has been unsuitable for my intentions. Now it’s largely unusable owing to recent revisions, and I should have exited long ago when the going was good. That one's on me.   

In addition, I turned 60 in August, and began paying attention to what the mirror (and my wife) was trying to tell me about the meaning of life. In short, it’s time for an autumn (of my years) deep cleaning and reboot. What better time than multiple, horrifying daily existential crises?

Then an e-mail notice came, reminding me it was time to renew my rogerbaylor.com domain name. Having finally learned a bit about WordPress owing to my position as digital editor at Food & Dining Magazine, and with the publication’s house web guru Jason around to advise me, starting anew at my own web site suddenly became an attractive option.

The year 2020 already was the most tumultuous year of my life, and probably yours, too. Why not end it with closure, by euthanizing NAC, and moving forward to something different?

---

Of course there’s another aspect to the blog’s impending termination, a process which began in earnest the moment last year’s municipal election cycle concluded.

Jeff Gahan’s unprecedented third mayoral term (save for C. Pralle Erni’s four), and especially his increased margin of victory in the 2019 election, constituted voluminous (and perhaps inevitable) handwriting on the wall. It was a clear, unmistakable vote for civic fantasy, and against truth telling, whether by a malcontent like me or on the part of perpetually somnolent local newspapers … or anyone else, for that matter. 

It was, in fact, a slam dunk. 

Accordingly, a solitary dissident at a blog parked at the woefully deficient Blogger hell hole simply cannot hope to make a difference in such a dismal, uncomprehending milieu. Ironically, what it can do is make the dissident’s own position unsustainable -- and it has. 

None of this thrills me, but the truth of it is simply undeniable, and that’s why I’ll go through the narrative a final time before NAC self-destructs. Accordingly, let’s award credit where it’s due, sans snarkiness. 

I fought Nawbany, and Nawbany won. 

That's it, in a nutshell. As an intelligent, well-educated and worldly person, I can fully appreciate the tactical deficit of my coordinates in this pandemic year, as pinned down in a fox hole with massed (metaphorical) artillery pointed in my general direction. 

Well played, dominant cadres. I've learned that "it's the way things work here" is more than a recurring promise; it's a big-ass buzz saw, and I'm sliced, diced and vanquished. 

Evidently “check mate” means the same thing in all of those European languages I wish had come easier to me so as to facilitate being a joyful expatriate. It looks like we’re marooned here until the house is paid off. After that, Ireland (or Malta, or Bolivia; whatever), here we come. 

Verily, the governing Nawbanian clique's “lone dissident on the grassy know-it-all” containment strategy for the past seven years has proven to be highly effective. Granted, it took a few dozen of them to whip one blogger acting alone, but make no mistake: The lash of the nabob's whip is real, and accordingly, I’m whupped. 

Cutting me off from any “official” political and governing dialogue is only a small part of it, because the community pillars have completely succeeded in institutionalizing a local perception of me as social misfit and pariah, to be shunned by “right thinking” people as if I were a member of India’s untouchable caste.

Evidently if you whisper often enough that Roger’s a dangerous nutcase, otherwise sane and intelligent people will start to believe it. The ones who don’t? They'll merely say they regret the inconvenience, but just can’t risk being seen with you – you understand, they’ll say amid the furtive glances, it’s just business.

Yes, I understand the obligations of current accounts, although frankly, some of you should be ashamed to spend hours denouncing the perfidy of national Republicans while simultaneously encouraging crickets to chirp when it comes to the eually repellant habits of local Democrats. That’s cowardice, and it’s also hypocrisy. I genuinely feel bad for you, but really? 

Toss a starving dog a bone. Maybe just a wee shred of resolve, every now and then?

What’s more, in so many of these "tsk tsk" instances, it has not mattered in the slightest what I actually said or wrote to prompt a flurry of finger-wagging; folks have concluded automatically that I’m mistaken, not to mention disreputable, based on what they imagined me saying or writing, and not actually hearing or reading it. Purportedly it is understood by those who – you know – understand these sort of things.

Frustrating, but also quite brilliant. 

I’m stymied, hung out and left to dry. Like I said, full credit where it’s due. The Kool-Aid is strong, and I am weak. Long live the junta!

---

Furthermore, the ruling elite came to an astute recognition that while they cannot hurt me personally, people around me are vulnerable. It’s a crude, blunt-edged form of reprisal, as well as a highly efficient one. In good conscience I can no longer risk the threat of collateral damage to innocent bystanders.

Additionally, because the leading element in New Albany has successfully characterized NA Confidential in its diverse entirety as the equivalent of deranged snuff porn fetishism, the blog’s “brand” is compromised, stuffed into a straw man's cubbyhole and tainted by association.

Masterful, indeed.

My earnest efforts in 2020 to remove the political element from the blog have been easier than I imagined, but ultimately it's futile. The torture is unlikely to stop, the Blogger platform remains inadequate for future writing, and the blog as currently constituted is dead in the water, adroitly blockaded by local arbiters, blithely shunned by the aspirant vanguard, and abjectly short-circuited by its own host platform.

I can take a hint and surrender, dear (leader).



---

Granted, I might start again at a new website and continue calling it NA Confidential. But it needs to be retired. At the forthcoming Roger Baylor Dot Com there will be an archive of the 15,000+ posts appearing at NAC since 2004, albeit completely inactive in terms of new content. It will be maintained strictly for historical interest, and as a sketchbook for future writing. 

Resurrecting NAC wouldn’t be the same. I played the game and lost. So it goes. It may not have been fair or square, and yet make no mistake; I knew exactly the nature of the surreal absurdity I was getting into way back in 2004, purporting to chronicle the life and times of a city that hasn’t been on the cutting edge of anything since the 19th century, and probably never will.  

As proof, note that in their most recent races, Donald Trump (Republican President), Jeff Gahan (Democratic Mayor) and Scott Blair (Independent City Council) each won the 6th council district by almost exactly the same percentage of vote as the others.

Huh? If you can explain that, then it’s your turn to grapple with this town’s psychotic DNA.

Looking at it objectively, NAC can be said to have accomplished some positive outcomes; just the same, it is exhausted. So is the blog's creator. 

NAC is the only Nawbany blog that truly mattered, ever, except blogs seldom matter here, ever, especially when pursuing the sort of subject matter that differs with the prevailing "mentality" (rest assured I use this term guardedly).

In the beginning, back in 2004, good friends warned me that we're a barely literate, perennially dirty little river town, and likely would always be this way, forever.

I laughed.

I’m laughing no longer. Stick a fork in me, because I’m done.

To those who have read, thanks for reading, and for all your support over the years. When the new digs are ready, I’ll let you know, as long as you let me know if we ever arrive at answers to the opening questions.

New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?

---

September 24: ON THE AVENUES: Magic and loss. 

September 17: ON THE AVENUES: Stuck inside of Nawbany with the Flanders blues again.

September 10: ON THE AVENUES: The Weekly Wad lives on in the minds of malcontents.

September 3: ON THE AVENUES: If you really want to be my friend.

ON THE AVENUES: Magic and loss.

For one who is accustomed to recording his thoughts on paper, because he has always understood in his particular case that writing is the very best way to make sense of things, it follows that once properly ordered, thoughts can make the leap from written to spoken language. 

Not before.

In short, if I cannot articulate a topic in writing, chances are I’ll do no better trying to explain it to you in conversation.

Some might say this process is bass-ackwards, given that the implications are broader than the enumerated recipe for Cincy chili or a description of what happened on a certain day in Moscow in 1999. Also involved are feelings and emotions encompassing far more complexity than the norm, which must be retrofitted in writing so I can convey them in chatter.

Naturally small talk can proceed without pre-authorization. That’s what it is: small, mostly inconsequential, and how about those Packers? An absence of forethought has fewer implications when little more than the meaningless passing of time is the goal.

But as the far too often maligned band Chicago’s keyboardist, singer and songwriter Robert Lamm once observed, “Time passes much too quickly, when we’re together laughing” (Beginnings, 1969), and later, “Forever is a long, long time – longer than we ever realize” (Forever, 1986).

“I wish I could sing it to you,” crooned Lamm during Nixon’s first term.

I’d settle for being able to write it, and now I’ll try to do so.

---

A close friend from high school died recently. In itself, while profoundly sad, this isn’t unusual. It happens in turn to all of us, and with each of us.

Every rose has its thorn, and every beginning an end. We are finite creatures. We come eventually to a conclusion. In Lamm’s 80s-era ballad, he spoke of “forever” not as the cosmic duration of his love; rather, the active element of love ends with his death or his lover’s.

Consequently, Lamm promised, “I’m going to love you the rest of my life.” Life spans are the delineation of love, and a terminus. The word “forever” then is repeated, but ignore this. It is necessary for the song’s musical arrangement to make sense, not the sentiment itself.

After all, this is a pop tune, not theology.

When I say we were close friends in high school, it’s a statement of fact. We were very tight then. And, factually, our friendship did not survive for very long after high school. Alas, it wasn’t merely the expected usual happenstance that we went our separate ways, although geographically, we surely did.

There was a rupture of some sort. It definitely was an estrangement. A point came when he left no doubt that we were no longer friends. I’d run into him here and there, at reunions and occasion visits home. He’d acknowledge me, but a stiff Arctic breeze ran through the courtesies. I cannot recall having a substantive conversation with him literally in four decades.

Happily, by all accounts he lived a vigorous and productive life in California during the past 30-odd years, both professionally and personally. A lovelier family would be hard to imagine. To me, they’re his greatest achievement. His career in the film industry was stellar. None of it comes as a surprise to me, because we all knew he was destined for great things. There was no doubt.

And yet, those decades are Lindsey Buckingham’s second-hand news to me. My high school friend chose to exclude me from his life. My affection was unrequited. In the words of the Hoosier novelist, so it goes.

It puzzled me greatly for all those years, and always will. It also hurt tremendously, because to be brutally frank I idolized him, from the moment we became friends in 1974-75 all the way to the present day, even two weeks after he was claimed by cancer, far too young.

It’s an injustice, the c-word. I’ve been in pain and anguish, mourning his passing as intensely as that of my own two parents. My eyes are wet writing this. I feel so bad for his wife and kids – and one grandchild, I think.

Obviously, there’ll be no resolution now. Lamm was right. Time passed much too quickly; the laughter stopped too soon, and forever remains a long, long time.

But I will say this.

A few years ago it occurred to me that I’d always blamed myself for committing the offense, for doing “something” – whatever the hell this really means – to prompt the estrangement. Evidently it was easier, or maybe simply less painful, to carry this burden of guilt with me than admit that maybe my hero was anything less than perfect.

So, finally I stopped blaming myself. It wasn’t easy.

Life’s a mystery, and human beings are not mathematical formulas. We all are flawed, each and every one of us. Kaka can and will occur. I have dark patches, and the black dog has been known to come around. Maybe with him, too.

I’ll always dearly love my friend, and smile when I think about the old days – good, bad or otherwise. We were a good team, while we were. I’m sure he had his reasons, and I respect them. In the end, our separation was as much his loss as it was mine, a 50-50 split.

You did good, Mikey. You absolutely rocked it. I’ll always miss you. I’ll never forget you.

Goodbye.

---

It’s funny, but for a very long time I resisted the urge to refer to myself as a writer, perhaps because we’ve grown up in a dysfunctional society that can’t fathom a person “being” something if it can’t be measured by time sheets or a tax return.

That’s bogus, of course, but it’s precisely who we are.

I’m the first to concede that four decades of purported adulthood spent writing sentences probably haven’t earned me a single year’s poverty-level American wage. Fortunately this isn’t the only way to look at it. Writing is what I do, irrespective of other considerations, and it’s been a part of what I’ve always “done.”

As far back as my package store days, stocking the famous “import door” of the walk-in cooler in the barren physical and intellectual wasteland of early 1980s downtown New Albany, I photocopied sheets at my own expense with beer prices and descriptions, and handed them to regular customers in lieu of a web site.

For the first ten years of the Public House, I wrote, edited and published the FOSSILS homebrewing club newsletter on basic sheets of paper with staples and stamps. The club was non-profit, but since our business hosted the majority of meetings and club members also were regular customers, there was a tangential and mutually beneficial relationship with revenues.

There you have it. I’m a writer.

I think and process information in terms of writing.

Most of the time I follow my muse from sheer compulsion, not in pursuit of pay. At times, the money comes. To me, it’s all good. We shouldn’t be asking people what they do for remuneration, anyway.

It’s gauche.

In closing, here’s a snippet of dialogue from Warren Beatty’s epic film Reds (1981). Beatty, as journalist/socialist John Reed, is meeting with factory workers trying to unionize when the cops arrive to break up the "unAmerican" gathering.

Cop: This is an illegal assembly.

Reed: Excuse me, Officer. These men have the legal right to assemble. That's all they're doing.

Cop: We know what the hell they doing. What the hell you doing?

Reed: Me?

Cop: You.

Reed: I write.

Cop: You write? You wrong. Get him out of here!

Let the record show I have NOT so much as implied or suggested in the slightest that the policeman is employed by the city of New Albany.

In any event, my name’s Roger, not John. 

---

Recent columns:

September 17: ON THE AVENUES: Stuck inside of Nawbany with the Flanders blues again.

September 10: ON THE AVENUES: The Weekly Wad lives on in the minds of malcontents.

September 3: ON THE AVENUES: If you really want to be my friend.

August 27: ON THE AVENUES: Structural racism, white fragility, and my old school.

ON THE AVENUES: Stuck inside of Nawbany with the Flanders blues again.

I’ve never denied the extent to which angst and aimlessness characterized my early twenties. Somehow I had stumbled through university and emerged with a degree. Beyond this, my future was a big fat question mark.

At some point in 1983, I decided the answer was to take a trip to Europe.

It took almost two years to save enough money to finance this seemingly crackpot solution, but in 1985 I managed to go and do it. As crazy as it sounds now, those three months in Europe on less than $25 a day opened my eyes and meant far more to me than a Europhile in the making merely scratching an itch.

Only afterward did I come to understand how planning the trip, working to finance it, and actually achieving such a goal on my very own time and dime finally provided a sense of direction utterly missing before. It was a first step in the process of finding myself. 

Granted, I was extremely fortunate to have an opportunity to make these European crusades the focus of my life for almost a decade. I know it. I’m thankful for it.

But it’s equally true that once smitten, I worked hard as hell to make my excursions into educational seminars abroad rather than leisurely vacations. For me, they were the equivalent of graduate school. 

Accordingly, I always tried as best I could to teach, and to pass along to others what I’d learned while roaming abroad. A few years later when my passion for travel merged with good beer as a viable career, one might say that the myriad possibilities for a cultural fusion became clear.  

I was alone while traveling in Europe in 1985, apart from a few days with my cousin. As the years passed, friends and family increasingly became involved. My affiliation with the Public House began in earnest in 1992, and with it came an exponential broadening of a circle of friends sharing an interest in beer and brewing.

By 1995, I was toying with the idea of learning about beer by putting together little groups of these friends, using public transportation. The first trip came in spring when seven of us chased beers in Prague and Bavaria. That same year in fall a quartet convened In Belgium, and in 1997, another itinerary for five took us to Germany and Czech Republic.

My confidence steadily grew. European beer industry connections were developing nicely thanks to the Public House. In 1998 the time was right to push things up a notch.

I contacted a Belgian mom ‘n’ pop motorcoach company and started making arrangements for a spring group tour through Netherlands and Belgium, visiting numerous beer shrines and absorbing much local non-yeast culture along with them. 16 persons signed up, which was enough to make the money work.

Key point: be sure the bus has a toilet. 

Somehow, most likely via Tim Webb’s Good Beer Guide, a hitherto unknown locale called Poperinge, tucked obscurely into a corner of Belgium near the French border, came to my attention. I’d almost made it there in 1995 during a daytrip from Brugge to Ieper (Ypres), the Great War battleground, but there wasn’t enough time. Now, in 1998, Poperinge seemed promising.

Intrigued, I duly contacted the Poperinge tourist office (was it newfangled e-mail yet, or the fax of old?) and learned that they were hip to the gradually escalating possibilities of beer tourism.

A whole plan of operation had been implemented for tour buses filled with inebriates just like us, including a local English-speaking guide, a brewery tour of the Van Eecke brewery in Watou (now called Leroy), beers at a traditional old-school café and the chance to play old-school tavern games there, and admission to the Hop Museum in Poperinge.

This half-day excursion from Ieper seemed perfect for my still cautiously choreographed organizational baby steps, and so I booked it.

The Poperinge visit proved to be a great hit with the group, especially the AuNouveau St.-Eloi rural tavern and de facto community center. There had been an unfortunate fire at the main building just before our arrival, and the whole operation as moved to an adjacent outbuilding, but it was filled with friendly people and a good time was had by all.

(The tavern has since been rebuilt, and the outbuilding is its festival hall.)

Later, back in Poperinge at the hop museum, a complete stranger sidled up to me and asked if my name happened to be Roger. I immediately recalled the scene from the film Top Secret, and the double agent ostensibly selling “souvenirs, novelties (and) party tricks."

If this had been Moscow in 1987, I’d have assumed this mysterious man was about to solicit my thoughts about a black market currency exchange at the best possible rate.

However, the estimable Luc Dequidt was no Soviet-era entrepreneur. Rather, he was chief of Poperinge’s tourist bureau. Having monitored my communications with his staff, Luc wanted to convey personal greetings and make sure our tour was going smoothly; and by the way, was I aware of the next installment of the triennial beer and hop festival, coming in 1999?

Hmm. 

By sheer coincidence, I’d already started plotting to up the beer tour ante in 1999 and doubling the group size for a more ambitious, wider-ranging itinerary. The festival became a part of the plan. 

Let it suffice to say that Luc and I have been friends ever since the hop museum meeting in 1998, and the only beer and hop fest I’ve missed since 1996 was in 2011, when I was incarcerated at the NABC Bank Street Brewhouse Brewhouse penitentiary, serving a sentence of my own making.

I could not have foreseen the immense impact on my subsequent European travels of this fortuitous meeting with Luc. As we’d say in the food and drink business, I quickly became a regular.

---

From 1998 through 2008, I turned up in Poperinge under one or another pretext nine times, missing only 2003 and 2006. Five times there was beercycling involved; motorcoach beer tours accounted for three; and in 2007 the late Kevin Richards and I dropped by in late winter for a few days of beer drinking, just for the fun of it.

The NABC Bank Street Brewhouse project started in 2009, and my travel life was altered. For three years, we didn’t go anywhere. Since then, I’ve been to Poperinge only twice (2014 and 2017), and both stays were nostalgic and enriching.  

If not for the pandemic, we’d have been in Poperinge this weekend (September 18, 19 and 20) for the fest and parade. My fingers are crossed for next year’s postponement dates. COVID-19 obviously far outweighs our travel plans, but a boy can and must dream.

It's probably obvious that I spent all week thinking about the many lovely days I've had in Poperinge and environs. One way to approach making sense of them would be to make lists, like favorite recurring parade floats, the countless wonderful meals and beers at establishments like the Hotel Palace, Poussecafe, Café de la Paix, and ‘t Hommelhof (in Watou), or those legendary local beers one always returns to.  

The problem is that I’ve spent just enough time in Poperinge, and on so many occasions, as to become slightly confused about what exactly happened, when and why.

There were city walks and countryside bicycle rides, brass bands and rock concerts, food and drink, frolics and laughter, and those somber, touching visits to the World War I cemeteries intermixed with farms all over the countryside when you think nothing could possibly be funny, ever again.

My thoughts constantly reference the intrepid traveler’s recurring conundrum. Way back in 1985, I spent those three inaugural months in a state of perpetual euphoric motion enabled by a Eurailpass. It was no more than an overview, if a dazed and exhausted on occasion.

For the encore in 1987, so much had yet to be explored – but how could I go all the way to Europe a second time and NOT return to places like Vienna, Munich and Copenhagen, which I adored (and still do)?

But  ... what about the other towns, cities, valleys, mountains, rivers and seaside idylls? Furthermore, why not small areas instead of larger ones? 

And yet, shouldn’t you spend extra time in the locales that intrigue you most, and get to know them better?    

In the end it all blends together into a pleasing, reaffirming  sensation for me. From the moment Luc introduced himself at the hop museum 22 years ago, Poperinge has been welcoming. It's a part of me now. Going there never seems like a “waste” of time, which might be better spent elsewhere. To the contrary, the feeling always is is comfortable, and I never fail to learn something.

To me, that’s what traveling is all about. Cheers to Poperinge, and another chapter on the way in 2021. 

---

Recent columns:

September 10: ON THE AVENUES: The Weekly Wad lives on in the minds of malcontents.

September 3: ON THE AVENUES: If you really want to be my friend.

August 27: ON THE AVENUES: Structural racism, white fragility, and my old school.

August 20: ON THE AVENUES: When love and hate collide – or, my father and the governor.

Mother Nature's Son.

When I was a kid, my family started taking annual vacations Out West, this being my father's preferred part of the planet in exactly the same way as Europe eventually became mine.

Yes, there are photographs. When I finish digitizing the last 35 years, maybe I can get to them. 

Rog Sr. was an outdoorsman at heart, and the point of our journeys was to avoid spending any more time than necessary in cities -- of which there were quite few in the Dakotas and Montana, anyway.

The first westward extravaganza came in 1969, when I was nine years old. The secondary motivation for making these trips was my father's desire to reconnect with a few World War II buddies; one was close to Denver, another near Laramie in Wyoming. For some reason we were in Utah for the moon landing, and watched it on a motel room television.

As a result of these holidays, America's national park system became an obsession with me, as well as a peek into the way my brain works, or doesn't.

Nature in the abstract was all well and good with me, at least from a distance, and I enjoyed walking through the fields and woods in pre-subdivided Georgetown. The same was true of places like Yellowstone and Glacier parks, but what grabbed me at the time was the very concept of a national park, the manner of its adfarm-near-me/">ministration, and the way the concept was presented to visitors.

Specifically, I became aware that each national park unit we entered would have someone on duty to hand us a small interpretive brochure at the visitor's center, with a map and basic information.

These became a collector's item for me. Back home, I'd write letters to the various parks throughout the country, asking them to please send me the official government printing office pamphlet, as well as other information. I'd check out library books about the national park system and make lists of the various formats (national monuments, national historic sites, etc).

I was ten, maybe eleven.

At some point later, the National Park Service changed the design, and I was aghast at this shameless assault on tradition. Not only that, but the park offices began asking for stamped, self-addressed envelopes.

Blasphemy!

And yet the bug still managed to bite, even in high school. Grudgingly, when I was in junior high school, my father had agreed to organize trips around visits to the designated battlefields and historic sites pertaining to the American Civil War.

The topic mildly interested him, but the problem was that these places (a) were not located Out West in God's Country, and (b) tended to be too near major cities. But we managed somehow, and as a Civil War buff, I was delighted.

(It occurs to me that my mother was a part of all this, naturally, and it is a measure of her sphinx-like demeanor throughout her life that I couldn't begin to tell you what her opinion was about any of it. She literally never expressed a preference.) 

Anyway, I decided to become a park ranger, although not because the natural world drew me to this career choice. I merely wanted to be the guy in the uniform at the visitor's center, giving the talks about what the site meant, especially the stories about its history.

As you might imagine, eventually it dawned on me that history itself was the lure, and this had little to do with natural parks in any specific sense.
Consequently, my university major was philosophy; however, this will have to be another story for another time.

Until then, here's every U.S. National Park ranked.

ON THE AVENUES: On patience, grieving, puzzles and a necessary sabbatical.

How poor are they that have not patience!
What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
Thou know'st we work by wit, and not by witchcraft;
And wit depends on dilatory time.

-- Iago, in William Shakespeare's Othello

I seldom pay attention to inspirational platitudes, seeing as the vast majority are rubbish, but if there's any single one I can embrace, it's this: "Be patient and trust the process."

Recently when I confided this sentiment on social media, some readers interpreted “the process” as something tainted by the political, and an evil to which I was surrendering: Roger, the process is a nasty tyrannical burden emanating from the communist/fascist enemy, with “we the people” as pathetic victims, and so of course we must resist!

(Note the proper use of an exclamation mark.)

Phooey.

This is not my intent.

To me “the process” summarizes time-honored best practices as they pertain to who we are and what we do in our daily lives. It’s a Zen phenomenon, at least for me. Our lives are short, and they won’t get any longer by coming and going in a heated rush. Develop your process and trust it. Avoid sugar highs and shortcuts; rather, build for what lasts.

In turn, this leads to a second useful tactic: "Stop dumbing down; start smartening up."

Obviously plenty of people have become rich and famous by trading in low common denominators, and to such a pervasive extent that blithering idiocy 24-7-365 is the norm in L’America.

However, because intelligence has been rendered a battered and under-valued attribute, it is precisely the one I’m delighted to espouse, both as a perennial contrarian and from the common sense perspective that best practices and lasting values cannot be accrued from the short-term whims of pure escapist dipshittedness.

There is one more: "Don't just do something -- stand there."

Yes, it is undeniable that occasions regularly arise when fast, direct action is needed. However when short attention spans borne of spasmodic, kaleidoscopic knee-jerking become institutionalized, the steady progress of the long haul falls victim to ephemeral expedients, which usually aren’t necessary and too often are plainly harmful.

There’s a kicker to all this, of course. One must be in a position to have sufficient opportunities for self-improvement, which the hypocritical American robber baron capitalist system regularly denies significant portions of the populace. Without equality of opportunity, my musings are null and void, and I know it.

What’s more, even in the best possible scenario, the individual must possess the self-confidence to excel, which usually requires the steady reinforcement of patience and fortitude if the goal is to ensure lasting achievement.

Speaking only for myself, as a white male afforded every conceivable opportunity, self-confidence still can be sorely lacking. What I do possess of it was gained over a long period of time by incremental steps, always seeking to smarten up, generally refusing to dumb down, playing those contrarian percentages, carving out niches, developing a better work ethic, and embracing the art of the obtuse.

But hey -- whatever works for you. I’m just the village iconoclast. In fact, the missus says my best and worst qualities are exactly the same: patience, stubbornness and an enduring refusal to tolerate fools.

There is nowhere to hide when your wife is a social worker, and surely her analysis is correct.

---

All this being said, my 2020 is going to be about important decisions; not the overcooked folderol of the presidential election, but whether I’m willing to concede defeat here in Nawbany and admit I'm licked -- and no, this has nothing whatever to do with politics.

Contrary to legend, which of course I’ve written and cultivated myself, it actually is possible for me on widely scattered occasions to acknowledge mistakes, cut bait and shift supply lines ever so cautiously, although only after I've played every last card and exhausted all avenues of potential redress.

Here's the problem: What do you do when nothing can be done?

That's the question, and if I had an easy answer, I'd inform you and start pursuing it. I’m disappointed and frustrated, and it’s going to take a clear and orderly process to deal with these emotions.

Allow me to vigorously stress that anger or bitterness isn't any part of it, just an ongoing inability to compel the pieces of various puzzles to fit into place. I can see the pieces, and fathom the broad contours, but I can't get them together. Can these puzzles ever be completed to my satisfaction? That's another good question without a glib response.

If I’m to be completely honest, my mood during the past two weeks already has provided ample clues to the source of the friction, because my subconscious evidently decided unilaterally that year’s end in 2019 was the ideal time for me to indulge in some serious grieving on the general theme of endings -- not in the sense of deaths, illnesses, breakups or any other real-world crises, but the “just learn to deal with it” decommissioning of ideas, expectations, hopes and dreams resting inside my own damn head.

These modalities likely won't come to pass. They have proven obsolete or impossible, and as such must be contextualized, filed away and put to rest. If I'm to finish grieving, this is exactly what must happen. Verily, it will be tough to accept realities I've fought so long and hard to change, but largely failed to wrestle to the ground.

Perhaps I’m making progress with acceptance, because as 2020 dawns, there is considerable optimism.

---

In an unrelated note …

For a very long time I’ve been threatening to alter my terms of engagement and involvement with local affairs. Admittedly, these previous resolutions have been miserable failures. As with the fictional mobster Michael Corleone, just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in.

More accurately, I willfully pull myself back in, but not this time.

After 15 years, it’s time for a real sabbatical, at least six months to start and then with various options for renewal. True, I’ll never cease commenting entirely about the Chronicles of New Gahania, primarily because I’m far too opinionated to achieve total abstinence -- and besides, you’re entitled to my opinion.

However, taking into consideration the incredible diversity of the world beyond the city limits of this small burg, there are other ways to use creative time at my disposal than continue out-performing the News and Tribune on a pro bono basis.

Let’s be blunt. As currently constituted the newspaper isn’t going to improve, not ever. New Albany’s incumbent ruling class luminaries and prevailing social elites aren’t going to become more open and inclusive, either. The newspaper’s ownership would have to change, the politicians be voted out, and the self-anointed beautiful people compelled to ingest a few doses of long overdue humility.

It’s never completely hopeless, but the immediate future looks challenging, and as I’ve noted oft times before, a new generation must step forward and relegate the likes of me to smaller, supporting, character-driven roles.

In fact they are. As I write, they’re stepping up. Accordingly I’m eager to do what I can to help them, and hope yet to someday giddily toast their success in achieving what I could not.

In the meantime, for me 2020 will be dedicated to scraping barnacles from the hull in preparation for my next (and in all actuarial likelihood, final) quarter-century on Planet Earth. This means catching up on long-deferred projects, taming several paperwork jungles, and earning a few dollars more with my writing.

Accordingly, the NA Confidential blog is being scaled back. Writing for pay as I'm doing now takes time, and the blogging quota will fall to two posts per day, down from four in 2017. If a news item takes more than 20 minutes to write and format, it won't be posted. I'll be riffing off the rising generation of dissidents, and doing longer-form commentary less often. I no longer have 25 hours a week to devote to research.

I won’t be attending many meetings apart from the first city council soiree in January. I need to witness those 1st and 5th district council seats, with fresh new faces seated in them, in order to revive my waning interest in residing here.

Those of us working and living downtown have a year to prepare for the existential micro-crisis of a lifetime, namely Sherman Minton bridge repairs. Pardon the scatology, but we’ll have to get our shit together -- and I’m not convinced we’ll manage.

However as I move into the final reel, it is absolutely clear to me that those persons best placed to make it through the coming madness will be ones who exercise patience, trust their processes, reject dumbing down, embrace smartening up, and avoid doing something rash, all because they have the foresight to stand there and think about it before pushing any buttons.

Good luck to you all, and let me know if you need anything. I’ll happily consult for a beer or two, and this column isn’t going anywhere. You’re going to rock this. See you in July.

---

Recent columns:

December 26: ON THE AVENUES: Four more years? Heaven help us all, but there are five reasons to be optimistic.

December 21: ON THE AVENUES HOLIDAY SPECIAL: Truth, lies, music, and a trick of the Christmas tale (2019 Remix).

December 19: ON THE AVENUES: These parents oppose their children's exposure to the PURE Initiative as part of the NA-FC Schools curriculum. Here's why.

December 12: ON THE AVENUES: He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day.

The books I read in 2019.

One year ago I resolved to spend more time in 2019 engaged in reading, not from a Kindle or similarly soul-numbing modern electronic gadget, but old-school and tactile.

Mission (perhaps surprisingly) accomplished.

I wouldn't know how to go about choosing a favorite from among the books listed below. "Light" reading is largely alien to me, and generally I'm not seeking to be "entertained" in any conventional sense.  There are exceptions, although in large measure I read to learn. 

Having said this, and conceding that seven of these books pertain in greater or smaller measure to the European locales we recently toured (Croatia, Slovenia and particularly Trieste), it seems clear that the latter half of 2019 was a tantamount to a university course on the history of these areas.

No credit hours will be awarded, but those aren't necessary to learn something, and I did -- and Pynchon's Vineland was, yes, very entertaining.

Back in August, I also got around to updating a list.

ON THE AVENUES: The 32 most influential books in my life.

---

2019 Reading List

Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, a novel by James Joyce

James Joyce and Italo Svevo: The Story of a Friendship, by Stanley Price

Yugoslavia, My Fatherland, a novel by Goran Vojnovic

The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, by Mark Kurlansky

Sicilian Summer, a travelogue by Brian Johnston

Stalingrad, a novel by Vassily Grossman

Comrade Baron: A Journey through the Vanishing World of the Transylvanian Aristocracy, by Jaap Scholten

Confessions of Zeno (Zeno’s Conscience), a novel by Italo Svevo

Slovenia – Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture, by Jason Blake

Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, travel/history by Jan Morris

Vineland, a novel by Thomas Pynchon

Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, non-fiction by Louis Sell

Baudolino, a novel by Umberto Eco

Dreamers, a fact-based novel by Volker Weidermann

Baseball in a River Town, local history by Justin Endres

Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece, a travelogue by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Avignon Quintet, five novels by Lawrence Durrell

• Monsieur (1974)

• Livia (1978)

• Constance (1982)

• Sebastian (1983)

• Quinx (1985)

Read my food and dining (and drinking) news items at Food & Dining Magazine.

It has been something like 15 years since I started writing beer columns for Food & Dining Magazine, and since 2016 I've been branching out to the occasional profile and feature.

Effective right about now, I'm contributing two or three weekly news items to the website. A few of them have been published already; the list is here. Subject matter is all over the map, and that helps make the job fun. It's similar to what I've been doing here at the blog, with a different framework.

You are invited to tune into Food & Dining Magazine's web site or Facebook page and read all about it.

ON THE AVENUES: Where do we go from here?

I’m …

“Chicago is an edgy avant-garde fusion rock band”

… old, and this song from 1970 perfectly encapsulates my mood in the down-buzz aftermath of last Tuesday’s primary election.

You’d be forgiven for assuming that keyboardist Robert Lamm wrote it. He was the band’s most prolific composer during the early years, and served as mouthpiece for a decidedly left-wing political conscience that faded later as the hits came fast and furious.

Actually “Where Do We Go From Here?” was the first song ever penned by bassist Peter Cetera, later to become a middle-of-the-road love-song-emoting pop star. The horns are absent. In it, Cetera surveys the socio-political landscape in America at the time and emerges hopeful, if puzzled.

That’s understandable. The Summer of Love had passed through Woodstock in route to a big crash at Altamont; now Richard Nixon was on top, the crew-cut adults were keen to crack the whip on a counter-culture that itself was becoming ever more disillusioned. Moreover, Vietnam remained an 800-lb gorilla.

Here’s the pivot: Where do we go here in Nawbany, circa 2019?

Deaf Gahan’s hefty wallet was enough to defeat David White, and the incumbent is the DemoDisneyDixiecratic nominee for mayor despite hemorrhaging 15% of his 2015 primary vote total, something other analysts seem determined to ignore.

Wait -- we have other analysts apart from NA Confidential?

According the usual suspects it was a quasi-Biblical outcome, with Hitching Post fried chicken and loaded Rice Krispies Treats standing in for fish fingers and loaves. The Kool-Aid flowed like wine, or at least it cascaded in the fashion of storm water obeying the laws of gravity from the heavenly heights of the Summit Springs chain-think strip mine.

One Gahan functionary, evidently disturbed by the imminent prospect of a job loss, happily took to Facebook to celebrate, crediting God herself for preserving pay-to-play patronage in our fair town.

It would have been the ideal occasion for a gospel choir "come-to-Duggins" moment, except that during Gahan’s 16-year career of mind-numbing mediocrity he’s done almost nothing to empower minority rights and advancement in this city.

“He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”?

Perhaps, but for now Deaf is most fond of “Disneyland Uber Alles.”

---

Naturally it was disconcerting to watch as the misgoverning clique, their elite party hacks and various other engorged sycophants merrily pelted the opposition with Jorge Lanz’s ceaseless C-notes while thumbing their noses at the Election Board’s dignified request to behave at the polling places, prior to doubling down on the Bud Light Mang-O-Ritas.

However, as previously noted, the electoral math emerging from May 7 is looking quite solid for Republican challenger Mark Seabrook.

Most importantly, Gahan's intrinsic crookedness no longer can be doubted. He’s a con man, a bully and an addict, dependent on the campaign finance revenue stream from out-of-town contract seekers, and thus compelled to keep the Ponzi scheme alive with projects funded by cash infusions from wherever he can pocket them.

Soon Team Gahan will be “borrowing” money from eatery tip jars. Whatever. Your grandchildren can deal with it.

Precipice, meet Wile E. Gahan. Few of White's supporters will vote for Hizzoner. Some of them may sit out the general election, but most will opt for Seabrook. Combine the corrosive trends of two-term attrition with those 300 votes Gahan lost Tuesday, and Dear Leader’s autumn ceiling is looking like 3,000 votes at most -- and this doesn’t factor the chunk subtracted from the Democrats by Dan Coffey's probable independent candidacy.

(May 15 update: for a consideration of Coffey's potential impact as an independent candidate, go here and here)

Seabrook can win in November, and he might win convincingly. To be sure, Gahan will have $175,000 of pay-to-play money available for saturation sliming, and he'll be willing to spend every last cent of it to keep the gravy train rolling. All the same I believe a derailment is coming, so it’s straight to hell (or the Cayman Islands) for our malignant narcissist-in-chief.

Anchor Elvis soon will be leaving the building, because I have a feeling God will be siting out the general election.

---

My post-primary thoughts have been sober and reflective, as with Eric “Otter” Stratton’s prescient 1978 pronouncement.

I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.

Customarily this task falls to me, and yet I’m also mindful of Groucho Marx’s famous injunction.

"I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."

Short of Falling Run being renamed “The Rubicon,” there’s a camel somewhere in a full-body cast. This time the post-election housekeeping feels different to me, even transformational. Resolutions aplenty are in the offing, one in particular.

Granted, I’m always venting about an impending exit from the resistance treadmill, only to drag myself back into the maelstrom when the second-raters annoy me. Now something seems to have changed. If I can’t entirely disengage, how exactly to reformat the nature of engagement?

I’ve been asking myself lots of questions like this, leading to one central query: I’ll be 60 years of age in August of 2020, and accordingly, what can I see myself doing these next few years?

The top answer to emerge from this dialogue is what I cannot visualize myself doing, and that’s serving as 3rd district council person.

Consequently, Greg Phipps will be delighted to learn that he’s safe. I’m not seeking public office this year. What the future holds is anyone’s guess; after all, never say never. However, I’m saying “highly unlikely” -- and for the following reasons.

First and foremost, I’ve said all along that my candidacy was exploratory and depended on the well being of family and household. We’re doing fine, thank you, but we’re coming very quickly to a time of numerous decisions that will impact our future. Simply stated, the inhabitants of the 1117 East Spring Street Neighborhood Association, human and feline, come first.

I’d make a damned effective council person, and even if Phipps won this fall, I’d make him work far harder than he has before for the right to continue as a obedient rubber stamp for a soulless, agoraphobic mayor. In so many ways, one passive and the other manipulative, they’re perfectly matched politically. The real fun comes in imagining Phipps’ council performance to come, when outnumbered by Republicans, without the mayoral safety net.

I imagine he’d resign rather than face the challenge.

In addition, working with David White for the past 18 months has gifted me with valuable lessons. Love him or hate him, David’s conception of public service (his “people first” really wasn’t a slogan) and his commitment to the ideal of this service are admirable qualities, and as such I believe the Democrats sacrificed an opportunity last week when he lost.

Contrasting David’s service-oriented outlook with my own office-holding inclinations led to intense introspection. Is public service really what I want to do? Is this my preferred place in the cosmos?

Honestly, no. It isn’t. The sweetest spot of all for me in terms of dedication and intensity is the daily practice of writing, and in the art of the polemic in particular. It’s what makes me tick, and how I can best contribute.

Especially now, with the News and Tribune coming off its most vacantly inept performance in recent memory while pretending to “cover” a New Albany municipal election, NA Confidential has taken on greater importance as an alternative source of information.

The News and Tribune has proven definitively that it won’t be part of any conceivable solution, at least in Floyd County. This newspaper is dead to me, and I propose to treat it accordingly from this point forward.

It’s not pinin'! It’s passed on! This newspaper is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the floor it’d be pushing up the daisies! Its metabolic processes are now 'istory! It’s off the twig! It’s kicked the bucket, shuffled off the mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-NEWSPAPER!!

Finally, there’s the matter of my ongoing involvement with Pints&union, where Joe has been remarkably indulgent and supportive as I’ve followed my local political obsessions to their logical conclusion. We have a deal and I intend to honor my part of it by doing my utmost to help make Pints&union the success it deserves to be.

Coincidentally the demise of Bank Street Brewhouse has contributed mightily to my current frame of mind, as did attending the funeral of my friend Rick Lang last week. These whiffs of mortality conjure considerations of legacies, and they also prompt an assessment: How much is left in the tank? How many minutes are on the game clock? How best to direct my energies?

Where do I go from here?

To repeat: Home and Hearth ... Pints&union ... NA Confidential.

I’ll keep writing, agitating, clarifying and informing. I’ll keep these writing and publishing options open. I’ll continue to help as best I can as reporter, satirist and polemicist. I’ll follow my muse, and there's no backing away from the resistance, albeit not into another campaign for office.

But find me a way to live in Belgium, Estonia, Sicily or Western Massachusetts, and every single word I’ve written today goes right out the window.

As always, thanks for your support.

---

Recent columns:

May 6: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Ghosts within these stones, defiance in these bones (2018).

May 5: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Our great and noble leader soon will be going away, so let's break out the țuică and make a joyful noise.

May 3: horse-race-rehash-sadly.html">ON THE AVENUES HORSE RACE REHASH: Sadly, the Kentucky Derby no longer is decadent and depraved. It’s just another vacuous capitalist bait ‘n’ switch.

April 23: ON THE AVENUES: Gehenna, Franklin Graham, Jean-Paul Sartre and Fred Astaire lead us straight to Hell.

A pundit's life of living publicly, or wow, it's been a while since a nice, healthy Sunday rant.

Roughly once a year I feel compelled to issue this explanation of a pundit's life as lived in public view, so here goes.

I'm fairly confident that after 30+ years as an employee, owner and employee again, working in various sectors of the food and drink business, I've made many more friends than enemies. If this weren't the case, it's hard for me to believe I'd have gotten this far. If you're one of the enemies, you may not be reading these words, but a few thousand friends and casual acquaintances might be doing so.

I thank you all, and especially those who hold the old-fashioned view that it's possible to agree here, disagree there, and remain friendly all the while.

As such, just know it's a point of pride with me that I've seldom found myself unable to have a beer or coffee alongside a person with whom I disagree. The act of sharing a table can have a remarkably salutary effect; amazingly, it often leads to a state of co-existence approximating "live and let live."

Exceptions? They exist, and prove the rule.

Yes, I have lots to say and I'm not shy about saying what I think. Concurrently, anonymity does not jibe with my system of values -- never has, never will -- and whatever I say or write always comes with my name attached to it, come what may, right there, openly and perhaps even "bigly."

There's no stealth, surprises or male cow feces in my writing life. At times I'm right, other times wrong, often both simultaneously, and because life's a dialectic, the processes of self-knowledge and learning never, ever stop. In fact, being wrong is necessary to even begin understanding what's right. Cherish being mistaken, and appreciate the lessons you are taught as a result.

I'm six feet four inches tall, and weigh too damn much (okay, around 255 lbs), the point being invisibility isn't a likely outcome for me. I stand out in a crowd, that's just the way it is, so I might as well remain transparent and out in the open. There are dozens of ways to reach me, to tell me what you think, to differ, to agree, and to get down to a dialogue -- or tell me I'm an asshole. Trust me, you won't be the first.

But there's one thing I'll never understand, because as outspoken, engaged and polemical as I can be, it has not once occurred to me (hypothetically) to call up Robert Massey, the Louisville Orchestra's CEO, and tell him we can't buy concert tickets any longer because I heard the principal cellist say she dislikes Pilsner Urquell.

Because: her dislike of the finest Pilsner-style lager this planet has yet to produce has absolutely no bearing on her ability to perform the music. It is no reflection on Massey's stewardship of the orchestra, and matters not one iota as to our appreciation of the musical experience. It's a dog that won't hunt and a complete non-starter.

It would be petty and rather childish for me to feel this way, to have this reaction or worst yet, to act on it. If I did, Massey's response should stress that how one functions as an employee is one thing, and what he or she believes, does and says in their free time is something very different.

Right? Now the weary sighhhh that always concludes these digressions.

NA Confidential welcomes submissions, contributions and thoughts. Am I spot on or full of it? Write and tell me why, and our readers can be the final judge. The metaphorical door is always open. You must only resolve to make use of it, but none of this can occur if you're unwilling to be as open with me as I am with you.