Here in SoIn, the Fourth Estate continues to take it on the chin.

Can someone text me when Susan Duncan's "local" chain newspaper finally gets serious about applying these maxims to its coverage of local events, and on a consistent basis?

Until such a time, if it ever arrives, the cliches are slightly cloying. After all, advertising revenue from local governments buys a good measure of complicity, doesn't it?

DUNCAN COLUMN: Living on purpose

Among the definitions Merriam-Webster offers for “per•spec•tive” is this: “The capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance.”

We need that today — a lot of that.

Sometimes we get so engrossed in our day-to-day activities that we can’t, won’t, or don’t see the big picture.

All it takes, oftentimes, is a figurative step back to give us “the interrelation in which a subject or its parts are mentally viewed,” another of M-W’s definitions of perspective.

The other day an online post reminded me that our current decade, as we measure time in years, is nearing its inevitable end.

For someone who manages deadlines daily, I was slightly taken aback. Really? Already? Another one?

Health Department's revenue enhancement + Develop New Albany's event calendar = ?

Tonight is Develop New Albany's annual fundraising event, Exclusively New Albany.

NABC will play no role in this event, but in spite of what you might think, this isn't so much of an issue with me, even if I enjoy tweaking and tweeting about it.

DNA's apparent policy (albeit one that varies by the hour and source) is that there can be no cash vending without organizational membership, and that's fine by me. Briefly, it looked as though we might slip through with a technicality, by teaming with a DNA member business, but then our friend was told that he, too, couldn't vend.

Presumably there'll still be (non-local) alcoholic beverages on hand tonight. If it hasn't already been relayed, someone might wish to warn the vendor (?) of the Health Department's new temporary food permit expectation. This current reality is unjustified, and we'll eventually prevail in overturning it, but in the interim, it adds $20 for charitable purposes (i.e., a poor starving bureaucracy's coffers) each time a vendor pours publicly, even if the requisite ATC permit already is in hand.

In turn, perhaps Develop New Albany hasn't yet done the math, so I'll offer this: When it operates the annual Jingle Walk wine tasting this fall on Thanksgiving weekend, all the participating wineries now will be subject to the new permit procedure: $20 each, on top of what they're already donating, for what amounts to a bureaucratic usurpation.

As such, perhaps DNA is interested in joining the chorus against revenue enhancement protection rackets. The bar and restaurant sector could use DNA's support on this one. Ask yourselves: If this one gets past us, what's next?

However, in the short term: Help your vendor(s) avoid costs for requirements that absolutely no one at the Health Department told them about, and let your vendors know.

World's largest condom machine to eliminate the need for membership dues at the 1117 East Spring Neighborhood Association.

Encouraged by the continuing presence of the Coke machine out in front of the slumlord property on the 600 block of E. Elm, which apparently (but certainly not unexpectedly) has survived the city's stated intent to remove it from its sidewalk, the newly chartered 1117 East Spring Street Neighborhood Association (1117 NA) is delighted to announce that the first step toward its goal of financial independence will be the world's largest condom dispensing machine, to be located on the city's property where a dead tree currently stands.

Whenever the city gets around to cutting down the tree ...

(Psst ... what if they move as slowly on the dead tree as they have on the Coke machine ... then where do we put the condom machine?)

... the 1117 NA will begin constructing its fundraiser.

In other news, the president of 1117 NA, Hugo Baylor (the aria-loving tabby, and one of four cats who are members of 1117 NA) will visit his North Korean leadership counterpart Kim Jong Il next week to seek a grant for $1345.87 that will enable 1117 NA to remove a dead tree from the city's property before the city's target date of 2017.