The Warm Showers Community: " For Road-Weary Cyclists, a Room, a Couch, Maybe Even a Meal."

Who wouldn't want to host these upstanding citizens? (Tournai, Belgium in 2004)

Boy, did we need this (or something like it) in the Czech Republic in 2006.

Warm Showers

The Warm Showers Community is a free worldwide hospitality exchange for touring cyclists. People who are willing to host touring cyclists sign up and provide their contact information, and may occasionally have someone stay with them and share great stories and a drink. All members agree to host others either now or in the future, but for some members hosting may be in years or even decades in their future.

The mainstream media coverage has commenced.

For Road-Weary Cyclists, a Room, a Couch, Maybe Even a Meal, by Katie Kramon (New York Times)

 ... Warm Showers started small in 1993, but its website now lists 39,000 hosts and 89,000 bicycle tourers — people who hit the road for extended long-distance trips — in 175 countries. It is built, the website says, “on 100 percent reciprocal hospitality.” Hosts offer what they can: a couch, a room, or a place outside to pitch a tent, and sometimes meals, too. They receive no benefit other than the chance to make new friends and hear stories of the road. And unlike the for-profit Airbnb, Warm Showers is run by volunteers.

A wonderful ideal, indeed.

“In our society right now, we don’t know our neighbors, and we aren’t looking out for each other,” he said. “Warm Showers reminds me of something I loved as a child: trust, and taking care of each other, and stopping by the side of the road to help someone in trouble. That’s the kind of world I want to live in.”

Can anyone volunteer a few hours to cover at the New Albany Restaurant & Bar Association booth at Harvest Homecoming?

(Sorry about the faulty header -- I intended it as draft, not for publication)

The New Albany Restaurant & Bar Association has all shifts covered in its Harvest Homecoming booth save for one: Saturday morning from 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. (noon).

The booth is informational only -- just spreading the word about NARBA. If you're connected with the NA food and drink scene and would be able to volunteer to cover these hours, please let me know. 

Thanks!

Bring a broom and become a Baylor for Mayor volunteer.

Between now and November, the Baylor for Mayor campaign will be relying heavily on volunteers to spread the word.

The two major political parties will have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on their accustomed local campaign methodologies, which will be long on yard signs and short on actual content.

We’ll do our best to raise operational funds of our own, but aren’t we all sadly aware of the destructive effects on the American political process of vast expenditures like those projected by local Democrats and Republicans?

Conversely, although they'll have lots of money, I personally have the great pleasure of knowing all sorts of talented, creative people who are accustomed to finding ways of getting things done, from the grassroots up, by whatever means are available to them.

Accordingly, we’ll be running an unconventional, guerrilla-style political campaign, and I’d like for you to help us with it.

Let this be my first of many callouts to you, some of the smartest people I know, to begin the resistance, unleash the hounds, and start flying the Jolly Roger. Do you have ideas? Let me know what they are, and if you need my corpus to do it, I'll be there.

And, of course, we have more pedestrian tasks that need doing. What else would you expect from New Albany’s “Walkable City” candidate if not pedestrian tasks?

We’re aiming for an organizational meeting next week on Tuesday evening, and there are tasks for tending right now. Let me know if you’re interested: mayorbaylor@gmail.com, or 502-468-9710, or message me via Facebook and social media.

Thanks for your support.

RAB

(This message is being cross-posted many places today)

Give me fried chicken, and stop with the top-down beautification propaganda -- both of you.

The single most relevant element that no one at all -- Jeff, Letty, Irv -- seems to understand is that the elusive "wow" factor comes when the excitement bubbles up from the grassroots as populated by dozens of diverse points of view, rather than being dictated from above, whether "above" means one official city group or another temporary collection of volunteers.

Can we be reality-based for just a moment? The planters in question simply cannot be described as "cosmopolitan" without the use of hallucinogenic chemicals, ever -- and my saying so doesn't imply I agree with their removal, only that offering us yet another two-party "solution" makes a strong case for vacating town, not volunteering.

(The independent mayoral campaign platform writes itself)

The problem here goes way beyond Dale Moss's dogged analysis. It remains a case of either this or that; City Hall vs. Clean and Green in a struggle over which elitists decide what "cleaner" and "prettier" and "attractive" mean. Meanwhile, the city's unforgivably obtuse and dysfunctional infrastructure pushes right back to make everything nastier, 24 hours each day, negating well-meaning efforts even if we agreed on the definition of well-meaning.

Fix the damn streets first -- then argue about flowers afterward. Until the infrastructure is made right, this entire argument is a waste of newsprint and time.

MOSS: A plea for ‘green peace’, by Dale Moss (Ad Express & Daily Iowegian)

Two groups commit to making New Albany cleaner and prettier. Beats having none, for sure.

One group would be better.

That way, everything is shared, not split. There’s only cooperation, not competition. One vision, one budget and one set of volunteers ready to work up a sweat better leads to the one ideal.

I count on a merger/peace treaty/meeting of the dueling green thumbs. Please.

It's no big deal: Volunteers will clean what the city's design makes dirty.

This week, we learned that the new $7.6 million aquatic center will be clean. Really, really clean.

“We’ll have the cleanest public pool in the region.”

Apparently this leaves no money for making the city fundamentally better, insofar as becoming better might require paid positions, and so after bringing former One Southern Indiana administrator Tonya Fischer (with a "c") aboard to help New Albany economically develop as "economic development business coordinator," she's now organizing neighborhood clean-ups, probably at the behest of a Democratic grandee who had one too many Bud Lights and watched an 8mm Peace Corps retrospective before throwing some Jefferson Airplane vinyl on the Victrola.

Perhaps we can work with Volunteers for Peace to bring an international brigade to New Albany. They can occupy lawn chairs in front of my house and count the heavy trucks speeding past, and as the unpatrolled arterial streets encourage further decay and neglect, other volunteers can perform temporary, ineffectual clean-ups. Then, when we dupe the Feds into rehabbing some houses, someone can clip off $108K. There'll be dancing in the streets, and hit-and-runs in the crosswalk.

But I digress.

We welcome the advent of the City Services Network.

We shake our heads in wonder that there must be a public volunteer organization on duty as well as a private one (Clean & Green).

We walk down streets and survey the abundant evidence that band-aids like this tend not to address truly fundamental problems, and we drink a lot, and then we ask: WTF?

But consider this: There are people out there who are complimentary about the physical condition of the city.

That's nothing short of stupefying.

New Albany seeking volunteers for future cleanup projects; City Services Network will tackle various tasks, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — Since Mayor Jeff Gahan took office in 2012, he’s had several conversations with people about the physical condition of the city.

There are some who are quite complimentary, and there are others who believe more needs to be done to cleanup certain parts of New Albany.

Gahan said he’s had the vision of launching a volunteer service network for more than two years, and that the time has come to make it a reality.

Volunteers are sought to join the City Services Network, which will be a group of people to take on different types of tasks from sprucing up buildings and properties to aiding nonprofits in the community.

Volunteers needed this week to serve food to workers at the Habitat for Humanity building blitz in Henryville.

I was asked to post this:

"Habitat for Humanity is doing a building blitz with 250 people in Henryville this week. Apparently it is being covered by television on WAVE and WHAS. They need people to serve food to those workers between 4 to 6 p.m. daily, through Friday this week. They are currently short of servers. Would you please do me a favor and post this quickly. Questions should be directed to Martha Cooley at 502.639.6319. 

"This is happening at Crystal Lake Estates just north of Henryville; Martha will give callers further details. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks."