I Got the News: Sorry, but Uncle Walt's not going to save you, either.

I'm shocked ... SHOCKED ... to learn that "Disney is not only underreporting its COVID cases but clearing COVID-positive employees to return to work."

Four sources familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast that Disney has kept the total number of positive cases at the district under wraps, alerting unions only to the positive test results of their members—often days after the fact, risking further exposure—and leaving workers to guess for themselves why colleagues disappeared for days at a time, or why 11 people from the 12-person Horticulture Irrigation team didn’t show up to work for a full week.

All sorts of folks in positions of authority here and throughout the country, most often Democrats locally but in truth it's a bi-partisan thing, absolutely worship Disney for keeping its streets clean.

Of course, they're forgetting that a Disney theme park is not the real world. That's an important consideration, isn't it?

In fact, I reiterate: Veneration of Walt Disney is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.

Grow up, folks.

Verily, I wasn't made for a world this stupid: "Visiting Disney World is the modern version of a medieval pilgrimage."

Like the time Disney's for-profit masterminds proposed a history theme park, including "a new vision of a Disneyland for slavery."

"The weirdness of historical Disneyfication" failed miserably, but it accurately presaged the Dickey Error.

As Charles "Strong Towns" Marohn noted in a 2018 article about crony capitalism, Disney's in it for the money just as much, if not more, than any other power-wielding multinational:

When a company like Walt Disney, which had $25 billion in gross profits last year, can demand—and receive—decades of tax amnesty from a city like Anaheim, a city with a $1.7 billion budget that is struggling to pay pensions, maintain streets and provide basic services, something is broken.

Perhaps it isn't possible to prove categorically that Walt Disney himself was "sexist, anti-Semitic and racist, aside from the backlash against the now-banned Song of the South."

But his successors shouldn't be absolved from fleecing generations in pursuit of obscene profits. Shouldn't we be embracing history's verdicts, not fleeing headlong from them?

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

It transpired last weekend that the missus and I were walking eastbound on Market Street when we heard music loudly throbbing from the inside of a late model VW hatchback parked up the way.

As we got closer to the thumping, it became clear the song was “The Winner Takes It All” by the 1970s-era supergroup ABBA, which at this juncture was being rocked out from inside the hatchback by a respectably attired young male who probably was born during the last Viagra-propelled dregs of Bill Clinton’s administration.

Startled upon seeing us, the ABBA fan immediately lowered the volume, and this puzzled me. Personalized interior karaoke revelries like his are far superior to the public type, which require greater numbers of humans to be traumatized.

The experience reminded me of a warm day earlier in the month, when I gently steered my nondescript beet-red 2009 Ford Fusion into its usual parking spot on Spring Street in front of the house, front windows rolled down, as I belted out “Heavy Jacket,” a song by the Manchester UK rock band Courteeners.

It might be noted that my rendition of this exciting number enjoyed only a vague proximity to tunefulness.

But I had a strange feeling, and before disembarking shot a quick glance to the south, revealing two of the kids who live in the duplex across the street seated on their porch, both looking at me with mouths agape as though I’d just landed a spacecraft from Jupiter.

True enough; I hope they don’t seek refuge in harmful behaviors after witnessing the spectacle of my merciless butchering of those innocent notes. However, a little bit of escapism never hurt a soul, especially within the Gahanic confines of New Agony.

The moral of my story: without music, it wouldn’t even be worth owning a car.

---

Escapism isn’t a particularly difficult concept to grasp, being “the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.”

Not to get overly philosophical, as doing so might send the Redevelopment Commission a-scurrying en masse for refuge in the bunker to be closer to mayor’s campaign petty cash box, but what’s the standard proportion of pleasant reality to unpleasant reality?

For instance, is being “bored” necessarily an unpleasant condition -- or is it merely boring? Is there a ratio to be triggered making escapism desirable?

Which of the two conditions, reality or escapism, is expected to be the predominant factor in one’s life? Shouldn’t it be more reality, less escapism, or does believing so mark me as the sort of person who can remember a time before cell phones?

Because it certainly does seem to me there was an epoch when escapism meant a brief period of removal from reality as a whole, perhaps the hours required to take in a film, show, ballgame or church service; go for a bicycle ride, hike or swim; read a book, practice a craft, tend a garden or grill a steak.

Ever-popular forms of escapism like drinking, drugs, gluttony and onanism bear mentioning, too, but with your indulgence I’ll leave self-medication and addiction aside for the moment.

Also, to anticipate a potential objection, while it’s true that Thomas Jefferson made mention of “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence for Everyone Except His Slaves, I believe this is to be taken as “pleasure = absence of pain,” not ready access to streaming.

It strikes me that thanks to the changing nature of work, and surely also attributable to the pervasiveness of electronic and digitized entertainment options, American society is presently engaged in escapism far more often than it concedes to reality. To me, escapism has “trumped” reality.

Obviously there is a socio-economic aspect to this equation, and it isn’t my aim to evade it, either. The greater the number of lower-paying jobs one must work to survive, the less available time to escape the accumulated drudgery. My point is that when escapism becomes the norm, it doesn’t bode well for those human skills required to cope with reality, beginning with the ability to distinguish between the two.

I’ve read my share of fiction, and watch at least two movies each year whether or not they’re regarded as “must-see” (painfully seldom, in my view), but it remains that reality always has comprised the bulk of my entertainment: documentaries, non-fiction, conversation, activities like walking and (formerly) biking, political debates, and the like. I'm a literalist overall. All hail the untrammeled imagination, though what I really want to know is what's true.

Music is an escape of sorts, I suppose; still, for the most part, genres like science fiction and fantasy don’t speak to me. I don’t play games, and mindlessness isn’t a state into which I enjoy descending.

Consequently I’m fascinated by the extent to which escapism has become the norm all around me, from which I’m forced to extrapolate that for lots and lots of people I know personally, reality is unpleasant … or else why work so hard escaping from it?

---

I was thinking about reality versus escape on Tuesday morning at the merchant meeting hosted by Develop New Albany.

Somewhat joyfully for me, the program was 100% reality-based: a fellow who had developed ways to assist in "preparing" home recycling objects so as to increase the likelihood they’ll actually be reused (for example, melting aluminum cans into ingots), and the SOS Pac’s presentation in support of the NAFC Schools’ referendum for safety and mental health expenditures. Whether yea or nay on the referendum, that’s as real as it gets.

And yet so much of downtown’s revitalization these past 15 years is predicated on a form of escapism.

In addition to a lineup of food and drink establishments, all of which survive to some extent because discretionary incomes are such that many people go out to eat and drink as opposed to cooking (and fermenting?) more inexpensively at home, downtown has a theater, a magic shop, an enchanted forest (outdoor frolic venue), a forthcoming marketing campaign designed like comic books, art-as-charcuterie-boards ... not to mention Recbar 812, a 25,000-square-foot Super Bowl of  arcades with hundreds of pinball machines and video games to help adults be kids again.

More power to them all, and obviously there’s nothing wrong with any of these modes of escapism, except for this one relevant ancillary factoid, which may or may not be an 800-lb guerrilla perched around the bend, about to interrupt the reverie and impose reality: the 36-48 month long period allotted for Sherman Minton Bridge repairs, which are about to teach us a critical truth about America’s post-war development patterns.

Automobile supremacy giveth and taketh away in equal measure.

The toll-free bridge has been pleasant. Now we’ll see what happens when it operates (conceivably) with only one lane open in each direction for four whole years. In short, downtown might become a mere shrug of INDOT’s engorged bureaucratic shoulders; just collateral damage, not unlike those Vietnamese villages that we destroyed in order to save them.

What completely baffles me is here we are, about a year away, and during the past two merchant mixers I’ve attended nothing whatever has been said about the period of disruption to come. Nor has a peep emanated from City Hall. There is no visible sign of a planned coping mechanism, pre-marketing campaign or pro-active responsiveness. Rather pins drop, crickets chirp; somewhere a sad mutt barks.

Given the paper-thin profit margins native to most independent businesses, is it far-fetched to suggest that “Shermageddon: The Sequel” could close 30% of the indies located in downtown New Albany during the first two or three months? Perhaps I’m being an alarmist -- or too conservative by half.

Wait, what was that?

You want to get away, to escape?

Amid a conditioned response of monopolistic automobile-centrism, and as ABBA segues into "Waterloo," it's a bummer to realize there’s no way for 95% of downtown New Albany's customers to escape reality without using a car.

---

Recent columns:

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.

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

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

ON THE AVENUES: Prom planning's nice and all, but New Albany still needs an autonomous independent business alliance.

“Good morning, Mr. Baylor. How are you doing?”

“Well, I’m doing fine, and as soon as I haul this kitty litter home it will be time for another coffee, and maybe that will help a bit, at least until cocktail hour. Actually, you can make a pretty strong argument for cocktail hour almost any time of day, except you run into those pesky wee hours when the bars are all closed, but that’s why sensible folks keep their liquor cabinets stocked at home, because your living room never closes. Flasks are even better. They keep your libation of choice toasty and close, and did you know that flasks were popularized during Prohibition? That’s right, we needed a 13-year-long flask to maintain harmony until the bars reopened after Repeal. Hell, we still do. If it was up to me, we’d have a museum about Prohibition, and force the school kids to go. Until then, there’s always cold beer and hot tickets.”

“You’re all set. Have a great day, Mr. Baylor.”

---

I won't deny that a quarter-century of small business ownership has left me a tad exhausted. Near the end of my NABC tenure I often wistfully recalled the words of John Kennedy Tootle's fictional Miss Trixie from his novel, A Confederacy of Dunces.

"Am I retired?"

But it's hip to be square, so last week I attended Develop New Albany's neighborhood soiree at Breakwater. As parties go, it wasn't too bad. The food and music were great, the acoustics horrendous and the beer selection embarrassing, but what left me baffled like always was the preposterous litany of talking points as presented by a succession of DNA board members in a feat of non-ironic propaganda that would have curled Khrushchev's hair.

Did I mention Nikita was bald? The Breakwater residents in attendance were looking around and saying, dude, who are these people?

Let's paraphrase DNA's ludicrous City Hall-ghosted script.

Independent businesses have invested $60 million or more in downtown New Albany these past ten years -- and so DNA will continue to take credit for the success of these investments in spite of the plain fact that DNA has had absolutely nothing whatever to do with them.  

All a guy can do is stand there clutching his flask and thinking, "Hallucinate often?" Yes, there are many things a high school prom planning committee can legitimately achieve, occasionally stepping out of character by utilizing an idea that wasn't brazenly stolen from someone else, but for them to persist in claiming a leading role when it's really been someone else's time and money is ludicrous and surreal -- and it needs to stop.

This is why New Albany's next mayor must immediately redirect DNA willingly or otherwise back toward National Main Street’s Four Point approach, thus helping DNA to get its local mission right for once, and by doing so openly address a key element of economic vitality by stating the unvarnished truth:

New Albany's ongoing revitalization has been led almost entirely by independent locally-owned small businesses, which have invested cash, energy and creativity alongside a cadre of primarily hometown local developers and builders. As such, the next logical grassroots step is for City Hall to help midwife an independent business association -- then get the hell out of the way.

I've bounced this idea off David White, and he gets it. If Mark Seabrook and Dan Coffey are reading, please let me know what you think.

Back in 2011, an independent business association is exactly what Jeff Gahan told some of us he was going to put his weight behind. He didn't, and as we've since learned, he couldn't, any more than my cat can sprout wings and zoom to a grain-fed all-mouse deli in New Jersey.

Gahan's only default mechanism is control, and he annexed DNA in precisely the same fashion as the housing authority, hitching it to his own circled wagon and rendering this purportedly non-political organization into an in-house appendage of his re-election campaign.

Coming soon: mandatory ribbon cuttings for all New Albany businesses -- five or six times until November, if necessary to re-enthrone Dear Leader.

Naturally, using DNA as a plaything provides greater benefits to Gahan for keeping his cult of personality afloat, but an independent business association would offer far greater returns in economic advancement for the entire city. Sadly, beginning in 2012 we learned the hard way that when City Hall generates a head wind against you, it's unlikely you'll be getting up to speed.

This isn't to excuse the independent locally-owned small business community for a certain level of ongoing passivity, only to recognize with eyes wide open that while Gahan has alarmingly few abilities as a cash-stuffed political hack, one of them undoubtedly is a degree of skill at playing the "divide and conquer" game.

Bullying goes hand in hand with this, and fear of the consequences makes it problematic for indies to resist, so pending the imminent electoral flushing of the patronage clique, indies can get started by heeding the advice of the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) and embracing a simple but eloquent truth: 

 "There truly is strength in numbers."

AMIBA's characterization of the situation follows. If you own a business or know someone who does, please read and share it.

Because Community Matters

Think of your favorite shop, restaurant, farm or service provider. We’ll bet it’s a homegrown business. Independent locally-owned businesses are essential to a vital local economy and community character. They’re where the locals go. They’re owned by our friends and neighbors, or maybe even by you.

Community-serving businesses are the backbone of local economies, civic life, local charities, and wealth creation for millions of citizens, as well as a training ground for future generations of entrepreneurs.

Problem: Today, independent businesses face unprecedented competition from larger chain competitors, internet merchants and franchises that enjoy national or international branding power and major economies of scale. As a result, community-based businesses comprise a smaller portion of our economy than ever before. We’ll lose much more than places to shop, dine or do business if we allow current trends to continue.

A Proven Solution: Many cities and towns have discovered a model, pioneered by the staff of the American Independent Business Alliance, to counter these trends successfully and help local entrepreneurs thrive. More than 85 communities in North America now boast Independent Business Alliances to unite independent businesses across all sectors, along with concerned citizens to build vibrant, durable local economies. AMIBA can help you use our models to implement an effective buy local campaign, pass pro-local public policies, facilitate effective collaboration among local businesses and more. There truly is strength in numbers. Learn more about benefits of AMIBA affiliation or the four realms of IBA work. You’ll love what an IBA can do for your business or community!

Why expend the effort? Because division is so costly.

When it comes to power, a vacuum is a condition waiting to be filled. In New Albany, with Gahan's default imperative remaining absolute control to the exclusion of intellectual content, entities like DNA (and to an extent One Southern Indiana) are delighted to fill the vacuum created by the absence of indie self-organization, which if achieved would advance the indie business segment's economic interests as a cohesive bloc and make possible the concentration of power as a purpose-built collective.

How many members of Gahan's City Hall clique have ever owned an independent small business? If indies are to have an organization, shouldn’t it be an organization whose primary purpose is to advance the clout of indies? Indies themselves know best, don't they? 

What's more, there is no reason why a New Albany Independent Business Alliance (for a model, think LIBA, the Louisville Independent Business Alliance) could not exist in cooperation with a reformatted DNA’s economic vitality mission, as a component of what National Main Street now refers to as “cross-cutting Community Transformation Strategies." Genuine possibilities exist.

The point is this:

Independent locally-owned small businesses have driven New Albany’s revitalization, and yet in terms of decision-making, the reins are nowhere close to the hands of the folks who’ve done the work.

Why do we not insist on input -- on power -- commensurate with our achievements?

Gahan desires a rubber stamp, not an active and equal partner, but if the mayor and his lickspittles are unwilling to cooperate, shouldn't we be eager to usher forth the era of "next" as quickly and expeditiously as possible?

#FireGahan2019

---

Recent columns:

February 26: ON THE AVENUES: Pretty in pink slips, aren’t they? Those who mutilated Speck need to be cashiered.

February 22: ON THE AVENUES SPECIAL: Take your cult of personality and shove it, Dear Leader.

February 19: ON THE AVENUES: I'd stop drinking, but I'm no quitter (the 2019 Gravity Head remix).

February 12: ON THE AVENUES: If it's about learning and knowledge, then by definition it's a Gahan Free Zone. You're welcome.

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

Real-life Freddie Mercury: "The Queen frontman was debauched, outrageous – and proud. We celebrate a rock legend in tight shorts, leather and leotards."

I watch very few movies of any sort, and I'm not a fan of the genre known as biopics. They can be good, but my preference is a serious documentary filmed by a serious documentary film maker, or better yet, a serious book written by a serious author.

Yes, this may sound dry and -- dare I say it -- even pedantic. But for me, it's entertaining to learn. Knowledge is good. I like to know things.

In a pinch, just watch the Live Aid video. You can backtrack from there.

Guaranteed to blow your mind: the real Freddie Mercury, by Alexis Petridis (The Guardian)

Unlike the sanitised character in the new film Bohemian Rhapsody, the Queen frontman was debauched, outrageous – and proud. We celebrate a rock legend in tight shorts, leather and leotards

Bohemian Rhapsody is a film that suffered from a difficult gestation. It was announced in 2010 but, in the intervening eight years, everyone from the lead actor to the screenwriter to the director either bailed or was replaced, in some cases several times. Freddie Mercury was first to be played by Sacha Baron Cohen, then Ben Whishaw, although it’s hard to see how either could have done a better job than the actor the role eventually went to, Rami Malek, whose incredible performance is the film’s one unequivocal triumph.

You can see why they pressed on with its making. For one thing, few artists have been so hawkish in posthumously extending their brand as Queen: since Mercury’s death in 1991, there have been jukebox musicals, umpteen archive releases and documentaries, as well as attempts to reboot the band without him. For another, Mercury’s story is clearly one worth telling. If anything, he seems a more remarkable figure in hindsight than at the height of his career.

The child of Parsi parents, who formed his first band at school in Mumbai, Mercury was an Asian frontman at a time when Asian visibility in rock was virtually nil and racism was overt (intriguingly, the guitarist in Mercury’s Bombay school band was Derrick Branche, who went on to appear as Mr Gupta in the famously problematic ITV comedy Mind Your Language). Island Records boasted an Anglo-Indian prog band called Quintessence, but there was certainly no other Asian rock star on Mercury’s scale. He was a gay man who, while never coming out publicly, put his sexuality front and centre in his performances and songwriting, apparently without his audience realising what he was doing.

In his autobiography Head On, Julian Cope recounts the experience of supporting Queen at Milton Keynes Bowl in 1982, as part of the Teardrop Explodes, and being showered with homophobic abuse by their fans. “[They] shouted, ‘Fuck off, you queer!’ at me,” recalled an incredulous Cope. “Wow, they dig Monsieur Freddie and they call me queer. So much for the workings of the average mind.”

Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t bad on the issue of Mercury’s race, a subject usually ignored or dismissed as beside the point in the story of Queen. We see Mercury facing down racist abuse while working as a baggage handler at Heathrow and from an audience member at an early gig. But its depiction of his sexuality is more troubling. It’s a film that seems to view the fact that Mercury was gay as little short of a tragedy. His homosexuality leaves him lonely, unable to share his bandmates’ domestic happiness as they settle down into marriage and parenthood. It drives a musical wedge between the band and their frontman, whose ideas for songs and styles are increasingly founded on his experiences in gay clubs and viewed as antithetical to the spirit of the band.

It also seems to give him a taste for hedonism that makes him unreliable and unprofessional: according to the film, the rest of Queen seem to have spent the late 70s and 80s tutting and rolling their eyes at Mercury’s behaviour before demurely excusing themselves from whatever deranged bacchanal their singer was leading the charge at and going to bed early. Anyone with a passing interest in the band knows this is nonsense. A reporter from the US magazine Circus who attended the legendarily debauched launch party for their 1978 album Jazz noted with surprise: “Brian May seems to be the true organiser of the night’s carnival.” Yet watching the film, you think: “God, imagine being in a band at the height of the most sybaritic decade in rock with this bunch of prigs.”

ON THE AVENUES: There has never been a better time for an Independent Business Alliance in New Albany.

ON THE AVENUES: There has never been a better time for an Independent Business Alliance in New Albany.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Before we begin, kindly indulge a relevant digression amid the Chronicles of New Gahania.

“Good morning, Mr. Baylor. How are you doing?”

“Well, I’m doing fine, and as soon as I deposit this pittance of a check, it will be time for another coffee, and maybe that will help a bit, at least until cocktail hour. Actually, you can make a pretty strong argument for cocktail hour almost any time of day, except you run into those pesky wee hours when the bars are all closed, but that’s why sensible folks keep their liquor cabinets stocked at home, because your living room never closes. Flasks are even better. They keep your libation of choice toasty and close, and did you know that flasks were popularized during Prohibition? That’s right, we needed a 13-year-long flask to maintain harmony until the bars reopened after Repeal. Hell, we still do. If it was up to me, we’d have a museum about Prohibition, and force the school kids to go. Until then, there’s always cold beer and hot tickets.”

“You’re all set. Have a great day, Mr. Baylor.”

---

Last week, I glanced in the general direction of Develop New Albany and suggested DNA begin healing itself by heeding the relaunch of National Main Street’s Four Point approach.

ON THE AVENUES: DNA, National Main Street, the Four Points, and how it might yet be possible to get this thing right for once.

After all, isn't cooperation a two-way street?

One of these points has to do with economic vitality, and in the New Albanian sense, economic vitality almost entirely has to do with independent locally-owned small businesses.

This week on Tuesday there was another merchant mixer meeting, and as has been the case so many times in the past – in fact, as it occurs each time I attend a merchant mixer meeting – I couldn’t help observing that in the context of downtown New Albany's ongoing revitalization, the effort has been led almost entirely by independent locally-owned small businesses, as well as a cadre of local developers and builders.

Yes, there are caveats aplenty. New Albany’s revitalization is imperfect and incomplete, but insofar as humans have returned to a once deserted downtown, it’s because independent locally-owned small businesses have taken the risks, invested, and transformed New Albany from a metro Louisville punch line into something different.

How different, and whether the results are sustainable, constitute the next huge hurdle. You’re entitled to my opinion, so here it is.

Independent locally-owned small businesses are mistaken to think that this hurdle can be cleared by disengagement, or by waiting for this or any other city government to dictate the terms.

Rather, independent locally-owned small business owners must evade the intended diversion of time spent micromanaging periodic events and instead put their mouths where their money is by heeding the advice of the American Independent Business Alliance and embracing a simple but eloquent truth: "There truly is strength in numbers."

AMIBA's characterization of the situation follows. If you own a business or know someone who does, please read and share it.

Because Community Matters

Think of your favorite shop, restaurant, farm or service provider. We’ll bet it’s a homegrown business. Independent locally-owned businesses are essential to a vital local economy and community character. They’re where the locals go. They’re owned by our friends and neighbors, or maybe even by you.

Community-serving businesses are the backbone of local economies, civic life, local charities, and wealth creation for millions of citizens, as well as a training ground for future generations of entrepreneurs.

Problem: Today, independent businesses face unprecedented competition from larger chain competitors, internet merchants and franchises that enjoy national or international branding power and major economies of scale. As a result, community-based businesses comprise a smaller portion of our economy than ever before. We’ll lose much more than places to shop, dine or do business if we allow current trends to continue.

A Proven Solution: Many cities and towns have discovered a model, pioneered by the staff of the American Independent Business Alliance, to counter these trends successfully and help local entrepreneurs thrive. More than 85 communities in North America now boast Independent Business Alliances to unite independent businesses across all sectors, along with concerned citizens to build vibrant, durable local economies. AMIBA can help you use our models to implement an effective buy local campaign, pass pro-local public policies, facilitate effective collaboration among local businesses and more. There truly is strength in numbers. Learn more about benefits of AMIBA affiliation or the four realms of IBA work. You’ll love what an IBA can do for your business or community!

---

Readers with long memories will recall that six or seven years ago, there began an effort to form an independent business alliance under the auspices of AMIBA. It was called New Albany First.

Currently, New Albany First is as defunct as Monty Python’s infamous parrot, and because the organization failed to gain traction, some will conclude that the principles it espoused also have been discredited.

I strongly disagree. To the contrary, I’m here to suggest that these principles are more important than ever before.

When it comes to power, a vacuum is a condition waiting to be filled. In New Albany, with local government barely a blip on the chart as it pertains to support for independent locally-owned small business development, groups like DNA and One Southern Indiana seek to fill a vacuum created by the inexplicable, ongoing inability of independent local small business owners to organize themselves, to advance their economic interests as a bloc, and to take seriously their potential power as such a purpose-built collective.

If business owners are content to outsource this clout to an organization, then shouldn’t it be an organization whose primary purpose is to advance the clout of business owners?

However, there is no reason why a New Albany Independent Business Alliance (for a model, think LIBA, the Louisville Independent Business Alliance) could not exist in cooperation with DNA’s economic vitality mission, as a component of what NMS now refers to as “cross-cutting Community Transformation Strategies." Genuine possibilities exist, but before they're leveraged, a level of clarity must be attained. This will take longer than hour-long meetings, once each month.

As for the legacy of New Albany First, we should be able to chalk it up to experience, and learn from our mistakes, but I’m less concerned with organizational details as I am with making the most important point of all to New Albany’s independent local small business owners.

Independent locally-owned small businesses have driven New Albany’s revitalization, and yet in terms of decision-making, the reins are nowhere close to the hands of the folks who’ve done the work.

Why do we not insist on input commensurate with our achievements?

---

August 11: ON THE AVENUES: DNA, National Main Street, the Four Points, and how it might yet be possible to get this thing right for once.

August 4: ON THE AVENUES: Federal funding mechanisms total eighty percent. The other half is unalloyed political malice.

July 28: ON THE AVENUES: An imaginary exercise tentatively called The Curmudgeon Free House.

July 21: ON THE AVENUES: We have our own Big Four Bridge. They’re called Main, Market, Spring and Elm.

July 14: ON THE AVENUES: Weeds, porch appliances and our civic Gospel of Appearances.

A note on community.

It's beyond absurd when anyone who works so hard to force their own will upon a community without input or consensus from that community responds to any criticism with claims of anti-community bias, negative outlook, and/or cynicism on the part of others. Using personal friendships and political clout to dominate proceedings and get one's way is the opposite of community building.

To the extent that certain "community leaders" ever grasp that, broader cooperation and collaboration may be possible. To the extent that they don't, conditions will continue to devolve. As a matter of that devolution, the only thing for which those "leaders" will be able to take credit is the destruction of potential and the unnecessary and counterproductive imposition of self-inflicted limitations on community strength.

A special addendum for Mayor Gahan: I very much hope that you understand the above in ways that your predecessor, who exacerbated said devolution, did not. A lot of the people currently whispering in your ear don't get it, either. If you pay close attention, you'll notice that their calls are most often not for increased inclusiveness but instead seek favor for their own very limited decision making.

There are numerous examples from around the region and country as to how to facilitate broader participation in community planning and implementation but they have consistently chosen not to employ them, even as they have continued to erroneously insist that they somehow represent community will or "good" sans the communication needed to establish what that actually is. Strong-arm tactics from the mayor's office in support of such absurdity will be counted as such, though I strongly prefer that not be the case and suggest we will all be better off if it isn't.