This just in from Steve LaDuke, member of the Board of Public Works and Safety.
NA Confidential previously had asked Steve to keep us posted on the board's decision concerning Locust Street, as discussed two weeks ago and tabled until the board's meeting this morning.
The board has decided to ...
Re-define the use of Locust St., including:
- NA-FC School will install lockable, operating gates on Locust St.
- These gates will be closed from 6:30 AM - 4:00 PM during the months of August - May.
- The gates will be open all other times.
- When open, Locust St. will have 2-way traffic between Vincennes St. and Silver St.
- Install signage on Locust St. at Vincennes St. & Myrtle Ave. explaining Locust St. operating hours.
- Yellow line curbs on Locust from Vincennes to Myrtle and post "No Parking at Anytime" signage.
- Double yellow line the middle of Locust St.
- Install signage at Depauw stating no through traffic.
- The School resource officer will patrol Depauw Ave. during pick-up and drop off to help enforce traffic rules on Depauw.
- Install stop signs at Myrtle Ave. and Locust St.
We also wanted everyone to know the city, residents and schools will continue to monitor the situation and continue to tweak the plan as needed. We want to have a traffic count performed once we are able to open Locust St. as well as a traffic count during school. It was the intention of the Board of Public Works to take immediate action no matter what decision, however because of the rain for the rest of the week, it looks like we will not be able to stripe the street until next week.
Wednesday Media links:
Locust Street set to reopen, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor.
One Take on the Locust Street Decision, at Volunteer Hoosier.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Cerveza in the Afternoon: Pamplona's Festival of San Fermin.
You may have read that several participants were gored over the weekend while “running” with the bulls at the annual Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain.
Two others died after falling from the high walls on the northern side of the old hilltop city.
The following was written following my first experience at San Fermin in 1994, and in editing it, I’ve altered a few passages to include information gleaned from subsequent trips in 1996, 1998 and 2000.
-----
I cannot imagine any recurring European urban tableau that possibly matches the annual Festival of San Fermin (July 6 through 14) in Pamplona, Spain.
The fall of the Berlin Wall probably packed more of a punch, but it was a one-time celebration that required three decades of preparation, while in Pamplona, they do it every year.
In ascending order of intensity, I've witnessed a May Day parade in Vienna, Greek political rallies and Munich's fabled Oktoberfest, and none of these events so much as approach the multi-faceted lunacy of San Fermin.
Pamplona’s distinctive strain of craziness is a fascinating hybrid. Spectacular public displays of orgiastic, besotted and scatological indecency occur alongside demonstrations of a proud and dignified adherence to traditional values that extend too far back into time to be completely understood.
San Fermin is a primitive, almost mythological celebration that is expressed through daily, seemingly disparate, elements. Confrontations between man and bull, gatherings of grandparents and grandchildren to share hot chocolate, outpourings of religious conviction, incessant marching musical mayhem and extraordinary alcoholic lubrication all suffice as snapshots during festival days.
The morning hours provide the first shock to those visitors craving normalcy, as huge beasts and eager humans take to the streets of Pamplona in a bid to memorialize the death of the festival's namesake patron saint, martyred by being dragged through the street by a bull.
Trouser Stains and Pavement Burns.
One thing is for certain. The greatest two minutes in sports do not take place at Churchill Downs each May.
The greatest two minutes – well, “few” minutes -- in sports is Pamplona's "Running of the Bulls," which takes place each morning for eight days during San Fermin. The six bulls to be featured in the evening's bullfight, accompanied by six horned heifers for a total of twelve, are released into barricaded streets and driven 900 meters -- a little more than half a mile -- to their pens in the bull ring.
In the path of the bulls are hundreds – no, thousands – of thrill-seeking festival-goers, and some are actually sober.
For many of the true believers, the run each morning is a quasi-mystical experience that metaphorically represents mankind's most primitive fears and primal urges, now buried in our collective subconscious, and brought to the surface during the mad daily race through the streets.
Other runners are simply unconscious, having been consumed, digested and expelled by the singular intensity and alcoholic promiscuity of the festival that never sleeps.
Late each evening, as the throngs of human celebrants eat and drink, and marching bands lead impromptu parades down the narrow streets past dancing and sleeping revelers, the following morning's bulls are led to pens at the foot of street called Cuesta de Santo Domingo.
Early in the morning, workers begin assembling the barricades -- wooden beams the size of railroad ties set into existing posts -- that enclose the route of the running: Santo Domingo, into the small Plaza Consistorial, then a left turn onto Carrer Mercaderes, followed by a very hard right onto Carrer Estafeta.
The street called Estafeta accounts for roughly half the distance of the run, and it leads directly to the Plaza de Toros and the entrance to the bullring itself.
The hard right turn from Mercaderes onto Estafeta is the scene of many brutal collisions between man and beast (and, for that matter, man and man). The bulls often crash headlong into the particularly sturdy barrier erected at this turn before righting themselves to charge up the extremely narrow Estafeta straightaway, where numerous alcoves, waist-high windows and recessed doorways tempt the runners with visions of safe haven.
At about 7:30 a.m., cordons of police begin moving people -- some asleep, some awake -- from the route of the run. Once the human debris has been cleared, sanitation workers swiftly remove the piles of festival trash, sweep down the asphalt and scatter sawdust on the urine slicks that are an ever-present feature, both visually and aromatically, of a festival where many people drink and few bother with the few portable WCs.
The viewpoint of the bulls can never be known, but the human participants in the run generally can be divided into two groups. The vast majority wishes to be able to return home and tell their friends that they "ran with the bulls."
The remainder, including both native purists and foreign aficionados, really want to run with the bulls -- to run near the bulls, ahead of the powerful animals or alongside, and to inject an element of strategy into what is essentially a scary business for all involved.
In order to separate the two groups, and to account for the large numbers of runners involved, two waves of runners are sent to a starting position on Estafeta that is at least 2/3 of the way through the course. Thus, the masses are permitted to jog a few yards into the bullring and declare victory, and the crowd is reduced somewhat for the rest.
The greatest few minutes in sports begins at 8:00 a.m. when a rocket explodes, signaling the release of the bulls from their pens. A second rocket sounds almost immediately, indicating that all the animals are off and running.
The bulls are driven by expert native runners, who wield canes and will use them if necessary -- not on the bulls, but to lash runners who attempt to touch the bulls or create problems that might lead to the animals becoming separated.
As long as the bulls are together, at least loosely grouped and charging forward, the run is fairly smooth and the greatest number of injuries occur as a result of humans falling over one another. The situation can turn considerably nastier if a bull or bulls are separated. It is then that the massive animals become truly annoyed and begin charging people with the object of ramming, goring and tossing them across the street with a flick of the head.
There have been at least a baker’s dozen fatalities since the 1920s, and serious injuries are recorded each year. It is said that three of the deaths came on one day when a group seeking safety in an Estafeta doorway was cornered by a single bull.
Still, when all factors are considered, running with the bulls probably isn't much more dangerous than driving a car in America, where fellow citizens chatting on their cell phones, eating Rallyburgers or applying their makeup while attempting to navigate a vehicle are at least as threatening as carefully bred, half-ton fighting bulls.
The running ends at the bullring. The bulls are driven into their pens to await their participation in the evening's ritualistic bullfight, and the crowd of triumphant runners mills around the ring while more throngs party in the stands. At intervals, heifers with sawed-off or padded horns are sent into the ring to wreak havoc among the drunken mass of exhilarated humanity.
Meanwhile, the aficionados are absent, having already adjourned to bars like the Txoko on the Plaza de Castillo for post-run champagne and lengthy analysis.
Sleeping's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Drink.
There is no beginning or end to anything during San Fermin, and there is nothing to compare to the absolute certainty that is experienced during Oktoberfest in Munich when the powers that be say that it's time to go, and the whole festival ground closes up shop well before midnight.
However, for the sake of the narrative, I'll say that a festival day in Pamplona begins with the running of the bulls and the post-run festivities (drinks and a light breakfast at a bar or coffee shop), continues through daylight hours that are filled with music, dancing, religious processions and endless partying, pauses (maybe) for some semblance of a siesta or brief nap in mid-afternoon and again as the evening's bullfight takes place (always ending before dark, as there are no lights), then spills out onto the streets for eating, drinking and related activities until around midnight, when the nightly fireworks display announces the (end? beginning?), and people begin to consider going to eat the evening meal.
At some indefinable point shortly thereafter, everything dissolves into alcohol-driven chaos and one begins to see the sleeping bags tossed on any green spot not yet taken or urinated on.
San Fermin's credentials as a world-class party are indisputable and enduring, and yet it should be noted that despite everything that is thoroughly adult and often wretchedly dissipated about the eight-day festival, it still is an oversized family festival at heart.
Once I was in the Plaza Consistorial when the parade of the Gigantes (giant puppets representing different facets of the Pamplona experience) passed through, dazzling everyone present, but especially captivating the children, who were being energetically photographed and videotaped by their indulgent and equally excited parents.
Children in the official San Fermin uniform of white shirts and red scarves are everywhere, and their special milieu somehow co-exists with that of the Euro-trash, party nation that descends on Pamplona for the celebration. It couldn't happen this way in America, but apart from occasional lapses it seems to work in Pamplona -- don't ask me how.
Good food is available in abundance during the festival. One time I picnicked in the comfortable shade of the trees in the park along the old town walls, and on another occasion indulged in still more fresh bread, chorizo (spicy salami), anchovy-stuffed olives and thin, peppercini-like peppers while watching an Andalucian troupe perform traditional song and dance near the Citadel, an old fortress upon whose grounds camped many of the younger celebrants.
Thanks to the discerning selections of my cousin Don Barry and his friends, I’ve enjoyed several outstanding restaurant meals during San Fermin. At one meal we were fortunate to be seated next to an articulate, multilingual gentleman who attempted to explain the symbolic significance of the festival, the running and the bullfight. As he spoke, he made short work of fried trout with ham stuffed in the gills -- a specialty of the mountainous region between Pamplona and the French border.
One of our best meals was in a Basque social club (formerly the home of an extreme-left separatist movement), where we were taken by a couple of American veterans of Pamplona's annual party wars.
The entrance was an open storefront where beer and snacks were being sold to passers-by. Behind it were several big partitions like those used in classrooms and offices, which bore inconspicuous, hand-lettered sheets of paper that announced the presence of the eatery behind the partitions, where communal tables sagged beneath the weight of steaming cauldrons of stew and salad platters.
There and elsewhere, we were greeted by ample portions of mixed green salads with onions, tomatoes, black olives and tuna, white bean soup, ever-present baskets of crusty bread, hearty red wine, bacalao (dried, salted cod cooked in tomato sauce), and bull stew (rich beef stew purportedly containing the meat of the previous day's fighting bulls).
Alcohol in varying forms was freely consumed, including cognac, champagne, wine and beer.
The Beer in Spain Comes Mainly Plain.
Ernest Hemingway wrote about Spanish beer in the glossary to his book about bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon:
"Cerveza ... draft beer is served in pint glasses called dobles or in half-pint glasses called canas, canitas or medias. The Madrid breweries were founded by Germans and the beer is the best anywhere on the continent outside of Germany and Czecho-Slovakia ... in Pamplona the finest beer is at the Cafe Kutz and the Cafe Iruna. The beer at the other cafes cannot be recommended."
Then again, Hemingway was not a beer writer. For those accustomed to diversity, only a few Pamplona cafes can be recommended, although Irish ales (Guinness, Kilkenny) and European lagers are increasingly available.
San Miguel, Mahou, Aguila and Estrella are the most commonly seen Spanish beers. All are mild, golden lagers; none have sufficient hop bite to justify status as pilsners. While in Pamplona, I’ve chosen San Miguel most often, both in bottles and on draft. It is malty and almost sweet, with just enough of a dry finish to avoid being cloying.
Each of the four mentioned above brews a lager of higher alcohol content (in the range of 5.5 - 6.5% by volume) that might be characterized as a Dortmunder/Export style.
I tried one of them, Aguila's Master, and found it to be a fuller-bodied improvement over regular Aguila. Unfortunately, only the everyday lagers generally are found on draft in Spain, and the best that can be said of them is that they fill their limited purpose capably, especially on a hot day.
Life and Death in the Bull Ring.
Once, on my penultimate night in Pamplona, with nothing else to do and friends either socializing or actually in attendance at the evening’s bullfight, I stopped in a bar for beer and tapas. Fortunately, the bullfight was being televised, so I sat down to watch two of the six bulls and study the dynamics of the event.
Perhaps owing to books like Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon and James Michener's Iberia, I was fascinated and eager to go to the bullring, as we’d be doing the following evening.
The morning of bullfight day began with observing the run, and drinking began early at the Windsor, where many of the American aficionados gather to trade observations, pontifications and gossip.
My cousin Don's French friend Christian, a passionate follower of the bulls, had just arrived from Montpelier, and he was just as eager as the rest of us to attend the bullfight that night. After a fantastic lunch at the venerable Mauleon restaurant near the bullring, Christian waded into the mob of ticket scalpers lining the Paseo Hemingway and emerged with tickets.
More preparatory consumption of beer and Pacheran, the local aperitif, was undertaken, and in due time, our group entered the bullring and found our seats.
Much has been written about the Spanish cultural institution of the bullfight. Hemingway warned his readers to think of the bullfight not as a sport, but as a tragedy.
It is as Papa said.
When the bull, which has been bred and raised for four or five years for no other purpose than to make his one appearance in the ring, enters the arena, he is doomed to die. The bull may take a human or two with him (less likely today than in the pre-penicillin era, when even a minor goring might lead to a severe infection), but he will not live, and so it cannot be said that the bullfight is a contest between equals. However, it is a fascinating event and one well worth attending.
In the modern bullfight, six bulls are fought and killed by three matadors -- one at a time, for a total of two bulls each. In Pamplona during the festival, this action has as its backdrop a rowdy crowd in the cheap seats (those not shaded from the late afternoon sun), most of whom are drinking from buckets of sangria or liter bottles of beer or spraying their libations on those seated near or below them.
Before the bullfight, these white-shirted spectators stagger through the streets toward bearing their libations. After the bullfight, they stream out of the bullring toward the bars, now bathed in wet hues of pink and red.
The death of the bull is strictly choreographed, and nothing that precedes it happens without a reason.
At first, the bull is goaded into charging padded horses whose riders (picadors) use a long, bladed lance to work over the bull's huge, humped neck muscle.
Next, men on foot (banderilleros) -- virtual ballet dancers -- plant short shafts with harpoon points into the same muscle. By weakening the bull's upper neck to lower the animal's head, these actions help to prepare the bull for the entrance of the matador, whose task it is to lead the bull through an artistic program of maneuvers with his capes and then to dispatch the tired, confused bull with the single thrust of a sword through the animal's shoulder blades.
I am guilty of over-simplification in the preceding. As Hemingway wrote over a half-century ago:
"I went to Spain to see bullfights and to try to write about them for myself. I thought they would be simple and barbarous ... but the bullfight was so far from simple and I liked it so much that it was much too complicated for my then equipment for writing to deal with and, aside from four very short sketches, I was not able to write anything about it for five years - and I wish I would have waited ten. However, if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all."
A few brief paragraphs just can't do justice to the diverse elements and strategies of the bullfight.
Here is one example. At the very beginning, when the bull charges into the ring, a committee of banderilleros with large capes awaits to lead the animal through brief maneuvers. Soon the men flee, and the bull emerges "triumphant" from this first encounter, the purpose of which is to permit the matador to observe the animal's behavioral patterns -- how it charges, which horn it favors, and so on. The subsequent efforts of the picador and banderilleros are meant to correct the tendencies thus observed and to regulate, insofar as possible, the bull's physical bearing.
All these things occur without a scoreboard or a clock. The success of the matador and his associates is judged by the paid customers in the stands (the fans, in American-speak), who applaud or jeer accordingly -- and sometimes do worse.
Hemingway explained his feelings about two detestable bullring servants in Death in the Afternoon:
"These two that I speak of are both fat, well-fed and arrogant. I once succeeded in landing a large, heavy one-peseta-fifty rented, leather cushion alongside the head of the younger one during a scene of riotous disapproval in a bull ring in the north of Spain and I am never in the ring without a bottle of Manzanilla (dry sherry wine) which I hope yet I will be able to land, empty, on one or the other at any time rioting becomes so general that a single bottle stroke may pass unperceived by the authorities. After one comes, through contact with its administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action. If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it."
The End: The Bull.
To kill properly, the matador must use his muleta (a special, smaller cape) to lower the bull's head and expose the point of impact, then skillfully bury the sword in a small target area while avoiding the potentially fatal goring that might be inflicted by a horn should the bull raise his head at the wrong instant.
None of the six bulls I saw were killed cleanly; there were no perfect thrusts of the sword that drop him instantly.
In 1932, Hemingway was complaining about the lack of great killers among Spain's matadors, and Michener echoed these thoughts in the 1960s, adding that in his many years of attending bullfights he had never witnessed one in which all aspects of the confrontation had been performed to perfection.
I did not come away from the bullring with any major misgivings as to the cruelty of the institution of bullfighting. The torture inflicted on the bull prior to his death is of brief duration, and certainly there would be more suffering if the animal were being prepared for veal production rather than public execution.
Those animals judged fit to be fighting bulls enjoy a four- to five-year lifespan that is as idyllic as any in the animal kingdom (for those who are wondering, the characteristics of the fighting bull are transmitted through the animal's mother, thus serving the purpose of a situation in which even the most successful products of breeding science must die at the peak of their performance).
Anyone critical of bullfighting and also eats meat might profit from speculating on methodology of the slaughterhouse before decrying the death of the fighting bull.
The End: The San Fermin Experience.
After the bullfight ended, the sun was setting over the streets of Pamplona and the waning hours of San Fermin as we exited the bullring and walked along with the crowd toward the Mauleon, the aficionado’s restaurant and bar where we had eaten earlier.
Many people were chatting and drinking in the streets that cross in front of the entrance. I said goodbye to Don and his friends, downed a bit of the bubbly that poured freely, then returned to our room to pack and prepare for the early train to Madrid the following morning.
As it turns out, there is an end to San Fermin.
It comes when you’re leaning against your bag at the bar of the train station buffet, sipping coffee and watching an old man next to you swallow his morning brandy, and you realize that you’re still wearing the emblematic bright red scarf.
You think about removing it, and then remember what a good time it was, so you say the hell with it.
And you get on the train when it sidles up to the platform, and leave, only temporarily, thinking about next time.
----
Web sites:
Guia San Fermin
The San Fermin Festival
Two others died after falling from the high walls on the northern side of the old hilltop city.
The following was written following my first experience at San Fermin in 1994, and in editing it, I’ve altered a few passages to include information gleaned from subsequent trips in 1996, 1998 and 2000.
-----
I cannot imagine any recurring European urban tableau that possibly matches the annual Festival of San Fermin (July 6 through 14) in Pamplona, Spain.
The fall of the Berlin Wall probably packed more of a punch, but it was a one-time celebration that required three decades of preparation, while in Pamplona, they do it every year.
In ascending order of intensity, I've witnessed a May Day parade in Vienna, Greek political rallies and Munich's fabled Oktoberfest, and none of these events so much as approach the multi-faceted lunacy of San Fermin.
Pamplona’s distinctive strain of craziness is a fascinating hybrid. Spectacular public displays of orgiastic, besotted and scatological indecency occur alongside demonstrations of a proud and dignified adherence to traditional values that extend too far back into time to be completely understood.
San Fermin is a primitive, almost mythological celebration that is expressed through daily, seemingly disparate, elements. Confrontations between man and bull, gatherings of grandparents and grandchildren to share hot chocolate, outpourings of religious conviction, incessant marching musical mayhem and extraordinary alcoholic lubrication all suffice as snapshots during festival days.
The morning hours provide the first shock to those visitors craving normalcy, as huge beasts and eager humans take to the streets of Pamplona in a bid to memorialize the death of the festival's namesake patron saint, martyred by being dragged through the street by a bull.
Trouser Stains and Pavement Burns.
One thing is for certain. The greatest two minutes in sports do not take place at Churchill Downs each May.
The greatest two minutes – well, “few” minutes -- in sports is Pamplona's "Running of the Bulls," which takes place each morning for eight days during San Fermin. The six bulls to be featured in the evening's bullfight, accompanied by six horned heifers for a total of twelve, are released into barricaded streets and driven 900 meters -- a little more than half a mile -- to their pens in the bull ring.
In the path of the bulls are hundreds – no, thousands – of thrill-seeking festival-goers, and some are actually sober.
For many of the true believers, the run each morning is a quasi-mystical experience that metaphorically represents mankind's most primitive fears and primal urges, now buried in our collective subconscious, and brought to the surface during the mad daily race through the streets.
Other runners are simply unconscious, having been consumed, digested and expelled by the singular intensity and alcoholic promiscuity of the festival that never sleeps.
Late each evening, as the throngs of human celebrants eat and drink, and marching bands lead impromptu parades down the narrow streets past dancing and sleeping revelers, the following morning's bulls are led to pens at the foot of street called Cuesta de Santo Domingo.
Early in the morning, workers begin assembling the barricades -- wooden beams the size of railroad ties set into existing posts -- that enclose the route of the running: Santo Domingo, into the small Plaza Consistorial, then a left turn onto Carrer Mercaderes, followed by a very hard right onto Carrer Estafeta.
The street called Estafeta accounts for roughly half the distance of the run, and it leads directly to the Plaza de Toros and the entrance to the bullring itself.
The hard right turn from Mercaderes onto Estafeta is the scene of many brutal collisions between man and beast (and, for that matter, man and man). The bulls often crash headlong into the particularly sturdy barrier erected at this turn before righting themselves to charge up the extremely narrow Estafeta straightaway, where numerous alcoves, waist-high windows and recessed doorways tempt the runners with visions of safe haven.
At about 7:30 a.m., cordons of police begin moving people -- some asleep, some awake -- from the route of the run. Once the human debris has been cleared, sanitation workers swiftly remove the piles of festival trash, sweep down the asphalt and scatter sawdust on the urine slicks that are an ever-present feature, both visually and aromatically, of a festival where many people drink and few bother with the few portable WCs.
The viewpoint of the bulls can never be known, but the human participants in the run generally can be divided into two groups. The vast majority wishes to be able to return home and tell their friends that they "ran with the bulls."
The remainder, including both native purists and foreign aficionados, really want to run with the bulls -- to run near the bulls, ahead of the powerful animals or alongside, and to inject an element of strategy into what is essentially a scary business for all involved.
In order to separate the two groups, and to account for the large numbers of runners involved, two waves of runners are sent to a starting position on Estafeta that is at least 2/3 of the way through the course. Thus, the masses are permitted to jog a few yards into the bullring and declare victory, and the crowd is reduced somewhat for the rest.
The greatest few minutes in sports begins at 8:00 a.m. when a rocket explodes, signaling the release of the bulls from their pens. A second rocket sounds almost immediately, indicating that all the animals are off and running.
The bulls are driven by expert native runners, who wield canes and will use them if necessary -- not on the bulls, but to lash runners who attempt to touch the bulls or create problems that might lead to the animals becoming separated.
As long as the bulls are together, at least loosely grouped and charging forward, the run is fairly smooth and the greatest number of injuries occur as a result of humans falling over one another. The situation can turn considerably nastier if a bull or bulls are separated. It is then that the massive animals become truly annoyed and begin charging people with the object of ramming, goring and tossing them across the street with a flick of the head.
There have been at least a baker’s dozen fatalities since the 1920s, and serious injuries are recorded each year. It is said that three of the deaths came on one day when a group seeking safety in an Estafeta doorway was cornered by a single bull.
Still, when all factors are considered, running with the bulls probably isn't much more dangerous than driving a car in America, where fellow citizens chatting on their cell phones, eating Rallyburgers or applying their makeup while attempting to navigate a vehicle are at least as threatening as carefully bred, half-ton fighting bulls.
The running ends at the bullring. The bulls are driven into their pens to await their participation in the evening's ritualistic bullfight, and the crowd of triumphant runners mills around the ring while more throngs party in the stands. At intervals, heifers with sawed-off or padded horns are sent into the ring to wreak havoc among the drunken mass of exhilarated humanity.
Meanwhile, the aficionados are absent, having already adjourned to bars like the Txoko on the Plaza de Castillo for post-run champagne and lengthy analysis.
Sleeping's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Drink.
There is no beginning or end to anything during San Fermin, and there is nothing to compare to the absolute certainty that is experienced during Oktoberfest in Munich when the powers that be say that it's time to go, and the whole festival ground closes up shop well before midnight.
However, for the sake of the narrative, I'll say that a festival day in Pamplona begins with the running of the bulls and the post-run festivities (drinks and a light breakfast at a bar or coffee shop), continues through daylight hours that are filled with music, dancing, religious processions and endless partying, pauses (maybe) for some semblance of a siesta or brief nap in mid-afternoon and again as the evening's bullfight takes place (always ending before dark, as there are no lights), then spills out onto the streets for eating, drinking and related activities until around midnight, when the nightly fireworks display announces the (end? beginning?), and people begin to consider going to eat the evening meal.
At some indefinable point shortly thereafter, everything dissolves into alcohol-driven chaos and one begins to see the sleeping bags tossed on any green spot not yet taken or urinated on.
San Fermin's credentials as a world-class party are indisputable and enduring, and yet it should be noted that despite everything that is thoroughly adult and often wretchedly dissipated about the eight-day festival, it still is an oversized family festival at heart.
Once I was in the Plaza Consistorial when the parade of the Gigantes (giant puppets representing different facets of the Pamplona experience) passed through, dazzling everyone present, but especially captivating the children, who were being energetically photographed and videotaped by their indulgent and equally excited parents.
Children in the official San Fermin uniform of white shirts and red scarves are everywhere, and their special milieu somehow co-exists with that of the Euro-trash, party nation that descends on Pamplona for the celebration. It couldn't happen this way in America, but apart from occasional lapses it seems to work in Pamplona -- don't ask me how.
Good food is available in abundance during the festival. One time I picnicked in the comfortable shade of the trees in the park along the old town walls, and on another occasion indulged in still more fresh bread, chorizo (spicy salami), anchovy-stuffed olives and thin, peppercini-like peppers while watching an Andalucian troupe perform traditional song and dance near the Citadel, an old fortress upon whose grounds camped many of the younger celebrants.
Thanks to the discerning selections of my cousin Don Barry and his friends, I’ve enjoyed several outstanding restaurant meals during San Fermin. At one meal we were fortunate to be seated next to an articulate, multilingual gentleman who attempted to explain the symbolic significance of the festival, the running and the bullfight. As he spoke, he made short work of fried trout with ham stuffed in the gills -- a specialty of the mountainous region between Pamplona and the French border.
One of our best meals was in a Basque social club (formerly the home of an extreme-left separatist movement), where we were taken by a couple of American veterans of Pamplona's annual party wars.
The entrance was an open storefront where beer and snacks were being sold to passers-by. Behind it were several big partitions like those used in classrooms and offices, which bore inconspicuous, hand-lettered sheets of paper that announced the presence of the eatery behind the partitions, where communal tables sagged beneath the weight of steaming cauldrons of stew and salad platters.
There and elsewhere, we were greeted by ample portions of mixed green salads with onions, tomatoes, black olives and tuna, white bean soup, ever-present baskets of crusty bread, hearty red wine, bacalao (dried, salted cod cooked in tomato sauce), and bull stew (rich beef stew purportedly containing the meat of the previous day's fighting bulls).
Alcohol in varying forms was freely consumed, including cognac, champagne, wine and beer.
The Beer in Spain Comes Mainly Plain.
Ernest Hemingway wrote about Spanish beer in the glossary to his book about bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon:
"Cerveza ... draft beer is served in pint glasses called dobles or in half-pint glasses called canas, canitas or medias. The Madrid breweries were founded by Germans and the beer is the best anywhere on the continent outside of Germany and Czecho-Slovakia ... in Pamplona the finest beer is at the Cafe Kutz and the Cafe Iruna. The beer at the other cafes cannot be recommended."
Then again, Hemingway was not a beer writer. For those accustomed to diversity, only a few Pamplona cafes can be recommended, although Irish ales (Guinness, Kilkenny) and European lagers are increasingly available.
San Miguel, Mahou, Aguila and Estrella are the most commonly seen Spanish beers. All are mild, golden lagers; none have sufficient hop bite to justify status as pilsners. While in Pamplona, I’ve chosen San Miguel most often, both in bottles and on draft. It is malty and almost sweet, with just enough of a dry finish to avoid being cloying.
Each of the four mentioned above brews a lager of higher alcohol content (in the range of 5.5 - 6.5% by volume) that might be characterized as a Dortmunder/Export style.
I tried one of them, Aguila's Master, and found it to be a fuller-bodied improvement over regular Aguila. Unfortunately, only the everyday lagers generally are found on draft in Spain, and the best that can be said of them is that they fill their limited purpose capably, especially on a hot day.
Life and Death in the Bull Ring.
Once, on my penultimate night in Pamplona, with nothing else to do and friends either socializing or actually in attendance at the evening’s bullfight, I stopped in a bar for beer and tapas. Fortunately, the bullfight was being televised, so I sat down to watch two of the six bulls and study the dynamics of the event.
Perhaps owing to books like Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon and James Michener's Iberia, I was fascinated and eager to go to the bullring, as we’d be doing the following evening.
The morning of bullfight day began with observing the run, and drinking began early at the Windsor, where many of the American aficionados gather to trade observations, pontifications and gossip.
My cousin Don's French friend Christian, a passionate follower of the bulls, had just arrived from Montpelier, and he was just as eager as the rest of us to attend the bullfight that night. After a fantastic lunch at the venerable Mauleon restaurant near the bullring, Christian waded into the mob of ticket scalpers lining the Paseo Hemingway and emerged with tickets.
More preparatory consumption of beer and Pacheran, the local aperitif, was undertaken, and in due time, our group entered the bullring and found our seats.
Much has been written about the Spanish cultural institution of the bullfight. Hemingway warned his readers to think of the bullfight not as a sport, but as a tragedy.
It is as Papa said.
When the bull, which has been bred and raised for four or five years for no other purpose than to make his one appearance in the ring, enters the arena, he is doomed to die. The bull may take a human or two with him (less likely today than in the pre-penicillin era, when even a minor goring might lead to a severe infection), but he will not live, and so it cannot be said that the bullfight is a contest between equals. However, it is a fascinating event and one well worth attending.
In the modern bullfight, six bulls are fought and killed by three matadors -- one at a time, for a total of two bulls each. In Pamplona during the festival, this action has as its backdrop a rowdy crowd in the cheap seats (those not shaded from the late afternoon sun), most of whom are drinking from buckets of sangria or liter bottles of beer or spraying their libations on those seated near or below them.
Before the bullfight, these white-shirted spectators stagger through the streets toward bearing their libations. After the bullfight, they stream out of the bullring toward the bars, now bathed in wet hues of pink and red.
The death of the bull is strictly choreographed, and nothing that precedes it happens without a reason.
At first, the bull is goaded into charging padded horses whose riders (picadors) use a long, bladed lance to work over the bull's huge, humped neck muscle.
Next, men on foot (banderilleros) -- virtual ballet dancers -- plant short shafts with harpoon points into the same muscle. By weakening the bull's upper neck to lower the animal's head, these actions help to prepare the bull for the entrance of the matador, whose task it is to lead the bull through an artistic program of maneuvers with his capes and then to dispatch the tired, confused bull with the single thrust of a sword through the animal's shoulder blades.
I am guilty of over-simplification in the preceding. As Hemingway wrote over a half-century ago:
"I went to Spain to see bullfights and to try to write about them for myself. I thought they would be simple and barbarous ... but the bullfight was so far from simple and I liked it so much that it was much too complicated for my then equipment for writing to deal with and, aside from four very short sketches, I was not able to write anything about it for five years - and I wish I would have waited ten. However, if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all."
A few brief paragraphs just can't do justice to the diverse elements and strategies of the bullfight.
Here is one example. At the very beginning, when the bull charges into the ring, a committee of banderilleros with large capes awaits to lead the animal through brief maneuvers. Soon the men flee, and the bull emerges "triumphant" from this first encounter, the purpose of which is to permit the matador to observe the animal's behavioral patterns -- how it charges, which horn it favors, and so on. The subsequent efforts of the picador and banderilleros are meant to correct the tendencies thus observed and to regulate, insofar as possible, the bull's physical bearing.
All these things occur without a scoreboard or a clock. The success of the matador and his associates is judged by the paid customers in the stands (the fans, in American-speak), who applaud or jeer accordingly -- and sometimes do worse.
Hemingway explained his feelings about two detestable bullring servants in Death in the Afternoon:
"These two that I speak of are both fat, well-fed and arrogant. I once succeeded in landing a large, heavy one-peseta-fifty rented, leather cushion alongside the head of the younger one during a scene of riotous disapproval in a bull ring in the north of Spain and I am never in the ring without a bottle of Manzanilla (dry sherry wine) which I hope yet I will be able to land, empty, on one or the other at any time rioting becomes so general that a single bottle stroke may pass unperceived by the authorities. After one comes, through contact with its administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action. If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it."
The End: The Bull.
To kill properly, the matador must use his muleta (a special, smaller cape) to lower the bull's head and expose the point of impact, then skillfully bury the sword in a small target area while avoiding the potentially fatal goring that might be inflicted by a horn should the bull raise his head at the wrong instant.
None of the six bulls I saw were killed cleanly; there were no perfect thrusts of the sword that drop him instantly.
In 1932, Hemingway was complaining about the lack of great killers among Spain's matadors, and Michener echoed these thoughts in the 1960s, adding that in his many years of attending bullfights he had never witnessed one in which all aspects of the confrontation had been performed to perfection.
I did not come away from the bullring with any major misgivings as to the cruelty of the institution of bullfighting. The torture inflicted on the bull prior to his death is of brief duration, and certainly there would be more suffering if the animal were being prepared for veal production rather than public execution.
Those animals judged fit to be fighting bulls enjoy a four- to five-year lifespan that is as idyllic as any in the animal kingdom (for those who are wondering, the characteristics of the fighting bull are transmitted through the animal's mother, thus serving the purpose of a situation in which even the most successful products of breeding science must die at the peak of their performance).
Anyone critical of bullfighting and also eats meat might profit from speculating on methodology of the slaughterhouse before decrying the death of the fighting bull.
The End: The San Fermin Experience.
After the bullfight ended, the sun was setting over the streets of Pamplona and the waning hours of San Fermin as we exited the bullring and walked along with the crowd toward the Mauleon, the aficionado’s restaurant and bar where we had eaten earlier.
Many people were chatting and drinking in the streets that cross in front of the entrance. I said goodbye to Don and his friends, downed a bit of the bubbly that poured freely, then returned to our room to pack and prepare for the early train to Madrid the following morning.
As it turns out, there is an end to San Fermin.
It comes when you’re leaning against your bag at the bar of the train station buffet, sipping coffee and watching an old man next to you swallow his morning brandy, and you realize that you’re still wearing the emblematic bright red scarf.
You think about removing it, and then remember what a good time it was, so you say the hell with it.
And you get on the train when it sidles up to the platform, and leave, only temporarily, thinking about next time.
----
Web sites:
Guia San Fermin
The San Fermin Festival
Monday, July 11, 2005
NA Confidential to the County Council: Larry Kochert? Must be a wrong number. Now, carry on, thank you ...
As many of you already know, I grew up in Georgetown, attended Floyd Central High School and Indiana University Southeast, lived in Floyds Knobs for a time, then finally moved into New Albany, where I’ve been ever since.
In other words, being “here” is a lifelong thing for me, adding up to almost 45 years of continual residence in Floyd County (excepting time spent abroad), and 15 years within the New Albany city limits.
I fully intend to remain in New Albany for so long as I own a home and a business here, although I’m not ruling out retiring with Diana to a thatched cottage in Ireland or a flat along the Mediterranean in the south of France.
Dream on, Roger.
Growing up in Georgetown, long before the attractions of Guinness and bouillabaisse were manifested, I was instructed that the city of New Albany regularly caught all the breaks, while the remainder of Floyd County received paltry leftovers and bitter doses of condescension.
Now that I’m living in New Albany, I’ve heard it said more than once that Floyd County catches all the breaks, while New Albany is forced to make do with crumbs handed over grudgingly with a rosy-cheeked sneer by folks who need to be taken down a notch.
All of which would be palpably absurd even if residents of city and county alike weren’t living in the Andorra of Indiana, a county so small that perhaps our best recourse to losing Caesar’s was (and is) suing Harrison County to force our immediate annexation to them – and the Boat.
Of course, all this can be explained by looking briefly at post-WWII patterns of residential development, with a smidgen of Indiana’s legal framework thrown in to spice the proceedings.
The distribution of power is the traditional aim of all politics, and not unexpectedly, it is the origin of the many turf wars and cat fights that have flared between Floyd County and the city of New Albany.
It’s far past time to put an end to all this, for the achingly simple reason that there’s far too much to be done to let the voices and attitudes of the past continue dictating needs of the present and plans for the future.
This perpetually recurring city/county debate is senseless, tedious and counterproductive, especially given the presence in the city and in the county of so many of the necessary factors, albeit in embryonic stages, for growth in the coming economic conditions.
To my friends in the county, permit me ask only that you ignore the discredited remnants of the ancien regime in New Albany. Rest assured that sensible, forward-looking citizens here in the city are outraged and embarrassed by the ward-heeling political antics of our Kocherts, Coffeys and Prices.
We’re finally coming together, trying belatedly to organize and to dispel fear and misunderstanding borne of decades of torpor and underachievement, and as our Councilman Jack Messer noted last Thursday, it’s going to take sacrifices, belt-tightening and hard work for us to succeed.
Scribner Place is a big step in the right direction – for all of Floyd County, not just New Albany.
Scribner Place will be good for city dwellers and county residents alike, and to those of you who’ve offered support, we’re appreciative that you can see the benefits as clearly as we do, and glad that you’re considering making a pledge to help get the project started.
I believe we’re being offered an opportunity not just to jump-start downtown in a manner never before attempted, and one in keeping with sound economic principles, but also to inaugurate a new era of cooperation between the city and the county.
There cannot possibly be losers in this scenario, with the possible exception of the nay-sayers who are more comfortable living in the squalor they know rather than join in the attempt to lift the community and to move it forward.
A new generation of non-partisan community leadership has arrived on the scene, and while no one denies that the previous generation still has cards to play, we all should ignore their desperate political gambles, undertaken owing to the dawning realization that for them, the game’s nearly over -- unless they pay attention to the changing rules.
Progress: It’s too important for bluffing. We hope you agree.
In other words, being “here” is a lifelong thing for me, adding up to almost 45 years of continual residence in Floyd County (excepting time spent abroad), and 15 years within the New Albany city limits.
I fully intend to remain in New Albany for so long as I own a home and a business here, although I’m not ruling out retiring with Diana to a thatched cottage in Ireland or a flat along the Mediterranean in the south of France.
Dream on, Roger.
Growing up in Georgetown, long before the attractions of Guinness and bouillabaisse were manifested, I was instructed that the city of New Albany regularly caught all the breaks, while the remainder of Floyd County received paltry leftovers and bitter doses of condescension.
Now that I’m living in New Albany, I’ve heard it said more than once that Floyd County catches all the breaks, while New Albany is forced to make do with crumbs handed over grudgingly with a rosy-cheeked sneer by folks who need to be taken down a notch.
All of which would be palpably absurd even if residents of city and county alike weren’t living in the Andorra of Indiana, a county so small that perhaps our best recourse to losing Caesar’s was (and is) suing Harrison County to force our immediate annexation to them – and the Boat.
Of course, all this can be explained by looking briefly at post-WWII patterns of residential development, with a smidgen of Indiana’s legal framework thrown in to spice the proceedings.
The distribution of power is the traditional aim of all politics, and not unexpectedly, it is the origin of the many turf wars and cat fights that have flared between Floyd County and the city of New Albany.
It’s far past time to put an end to all this, for the achingly simple reason that there’s far too much to be done to let the voices and attitudes of the past continue dictating needs of the present and plans for the future.
This perpetually recurring city/county debate is senseless, tedious and counterproductive, especially given the presence in the city and in the county of so many of the necessary factors, albeit in embryonic stages, for growth in the coming economic conditions.
To my friends in the county, permit me ask only that you ignore the discredited remnants of the ancien regime in New Albany. Rest assured that sensible, forward-looking citizens here in the city are outraged and embarrassed by the ward-heeling political antics of our Kocherts, Coffeys and Prices.
We’re finally coming together, trying belatedly to organize and to dispel fear and misunderstanding borne of decades of torpor and underachievement, and as our Councilman Jack Messer noted last Thursday, it’s going to take sacrifices, belt-tightening and hard work for us to succeed.
Scribner Place is a big step in the right direction – for all of Floyd County, not just New Albany.
Scribner Place will be good for city dwellers and county residents alike, and to those of you who’ve offered support, we’re appreciative that you can see the benefits as clearly as we do, and glad that you’re considering making a pledge to help get the project started.
I believe we’re being offered an opportunity not just to jump-start downtown in a manner never before attempted, and one in keeping with sound economic principles, but also to inaugurate a new era of cooperation between the city and the county.
There cannot possibly be losers in this scenario, with the possible exception of the nay-sayers who are more comfortable living in the squalor they know rather than join in the attempt to lift the community and to move it forward.
A new generation of non-partisan community leadership has arrived on the scene, and while no one denies that the previous generation still has cards to play, we all should ignore their desperate political gambles, undertaken owing to the dawning realization that for them, the game’s nearly over -- unless they pay attention to the changing rules.
Progress: It’s too important for bluffing. We hope you agree.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
From fireworks to politics, an unusually bountiful Sunday Tribune yields much for consideration.
Today’s Sunday Tribune is filled with noteworthy material – so here are a few notes.
Congratulations are due the newspaper’s staff for its timely and topical articles and commentaries in today’s edition. If the newspaper’s web site were operated in as timely a fashion, at least one link could be offered to the pieces below, but we’ll provide it (or them) later.
County officials looking at Scribner Place, by Kyle Lowry, Tribune County Reporter.
The story:
Floyd County’s commissioners and county council seem ready to assist with Scribner Place funding in spite of high-dollar obligations of their own, but some city council leaders have been less than cordial while asking for help.
“Floyd County Commissioner Steve Bush and county council member Dana Fendley both are strong supporters of the Scribner Place project and each agreed that the county could, most likely, come up with around $100,000 or more for the downtown effort …
“ … although Fendley supports the project and is willing to help with funding, she said she is appalled at the way the city council has handled the matter.”
NA Confidential adds:
While obstructionist Siamese Councilmen Dan Coffey and Steve Price anchored the “no” vote at last Thursday’s meeting, and CM Bill Schmidt incomprehensibly abstained from going on record, CM Larry Kochert used his time to pontificate on the nature of political cooperation between city and county … and a more counter-productive, belligerent sermon it would be difficult to imagine.
We don’t pretend to know the origins of Kochert’s obvious animosity toward the county, and naturally we’d be foolish to imagine that there are none in the county who’d gladly return Kochert’s “favor” if given half a chance, but if any specific, clear and shining example of why city politics must be brought into the 21st century can be provided here on short notice, it is his convoluted “fair share” campaign,” wherein the germ of a good idea – the county should be on board in some manner with Scribner Place – is relegated to the appendix of the argument, to be completely overwhelmed by Kochert’s bizarre need to publicly berate the very same people who he expects to co-operate with him.
Make that, with “us.”
Let’s wipe away the souring political grease coating his skids, and ask this one simple question: Does, or doesn’t, Larry Kochert really support Scribner Place?
First, his obfuscation with respect to a working definition of “fair share,” and then his boorishly intemperate behavior toward the county during the meeting in question, sadly combine to spotlight the worst excesses of the “good old boy” backroom system symbolized by few better than Kochert himself.
Thankfully, this populist, ward-heeling model of 19th-century thinking was courageously denounced at the same meeting by Kochert’s recently arrived counterpart, Councilman Donnie Blevins, our city council’s truest voice of conscience amidst the insufferable clatter and din of Coffey’s incessant, pathological grandstanding, Price’s pleas borrowed from reruns of “Hee Haw” to run the city “like grandma would,” and Schmidt’s abject failure to take a position on the most important issue the city council may face this year.
You can bet Kochert wasn’t listening to Blevins, his fellow councilman, who doesn’t have Kochert’s long experience in politics to draw from. But you can also bet that Blevins understands why it’s wrong to embarrass the city by abusing the county at the precise time that city-county relations have a chance of improving.
Messer should be commended, a commentary by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor.
The story:
On Thursday night, City Councilman Jack Messer’s introduction of the resolution detailing Scribner Place funding permitted him time to explain his support of the project, but far more than that, it allowed him to explain the reasons why he chose to enter public service, and to issue a rare challenge to the political class to do what is right, not just what is expedient for the continuation of careers.
“Before the council voted on the (Scribner Place) resolution, Messer did what I wish other political figures would do. Not petrified by the thought that he might not get re-elected, he announced that he supported Scribner Place and support the plan that would use property taxes as a backup …
“ … Messer’s words were a breath of fresh air at a meeting where entirely too much time was taken up with political malarkey and bitterness. He should be commended for speaking his mind and not worrying about the political ramifications. There are other politicians in Floyd County who could learn from Messer’s example.”
NA Confidential says:
Amany Ali does a marvelous job of recognizing Councilman Messer’s contribution to last Thursday’s meeting, and although all council representatives voting for Scribner Place deserve commendation for their principled stances, Messer’s address to the audience, and his comments to fellow council members, almost certainly and deservedly will become the stuff of legend.
Here’s why.
Throughout the run-up to the Scribner Place vote, upstanding citizens confused and frightened by impending change have been manipulated by certain calculating elements -- some well-intentioned, others unfortunately not – who are in opposition to New Albany’s ongoing efforts to move forward.
Time and again, fear and loathing have been stoked. Sincere efforts to explain the way a city works have been dismissed. Progressives have been attacked as pointy-headed, out of touch – and to be truthful, even threatened. Freedom of speech has been curtailed.
In short, citizens have been turned against each other by fellow citizens who quite simply should know better – assuming, of course, that they haven’t meant worse from the beginning.
Jack Messer’s words last Thursday night demolished this “culture war” argument once and for all.
Here is a New Albany resident, a concerned taxpayer, a policeman of long standing, a public servant – a man who is as fully representative of the community as any could ever hope to be – walking tall and announcing that he understands why some of his fellow New Albanians are scared, but that there’s absolutely no reason for them to be; that much hard work certainly is yet to come; but unless something is done now to reverse the fortunes of New Albany, that there will be no city to pass on to the next generation -- and this work must begin now, by all of us, and for all of us.
Brilliant. Thank you, Jack, and thanks to Amany Ali for her take.
Council needs to act more dignified, by Jim Nichols, Executive Editor of the Evening News and New Albany Tribune.
The story:
The author, who is new to Floyd County politics, attended last Thursday’s city council meeting, and although he was prepared for it to be interesting owing to the Scribner Place vote, he simply wasn’t prepared for Circus Maximus, city council-style.
“What made this meeting one for the ages was the demeanor of the meeting. Lack of demeanor is more appropriate ...
“ … A New Albany woman had a beef with Councilman Dan Coffey and she let everyone know it. Phrases like “poor white trash” and “you were promised a job” were tossed back and forth …
“ … The exchange was something you’d expect after a six-pack or two. I don’t think either party in the argument had been drinking, but I’d have a clearer understanding of their exchange had that been the case.”
NA Confidential says:
Yep, Jim, welcome to the Open Air Museum.
Although you somewhat simplistically opted to use erratic local businesswoman Valla Ann Bolovshak’s presentation of “Robert’s Rules of Order” to the council as an example of something that should help the latter, and failed to recognize Bolovshak’s seemingly magnanimous gesture as part of the ongoing problem of meeting-night grandstanding rather than the part of the solution (remember that at least one council member has publicly and repeatedly stated his aversion to reading), you nonetheless capture the anarchic spirit of some council gatherings, and recognize that the “blame,” as such, comes from both sides of the table.
Fireworks and old houses don’t mix, by Chris Morris, Tribune Managing Editor.
The story:
On the Fourth of July, as firefighters extinguished a garage fire probably caused by fireworks, Chris’s neighborhood “looked like a war zone” and people ignored the firemen while continuing to ignite fireworks.
“We can celebrate our country’s independence without blowing up half the town. So next year, let’s leave the fireworks to the experts. And let’s make sure state legislators revisit this issue in the upcoming session.”
NA Confidential says:
Right on, Chris. And while you’re at it, can we somehow gently remind the pyromaniacs among us to clean up their refuse upon conclusion of the show – and perhaps limit it to the pre-midnight hours?
New Albany deserves a YMCA and aquatic center, a guest column by Mike Ricke.
The story:
The leader of fundraising efforts for the YMCA eloquently describes the benefits of the project to come.
“Despite political positioning and misinformation, my co-chair, Carol Libs, and our entire committee have to date raised over $5.2 million to build the YMCA …
“ … While the YMCA is the right answer for the citizens of New Albany and Floyd County, please don’t expect it to erase years of citizen apathy, frozen leadership and neglect overnight.”
NA Confidential says:
We say only that Mike Ricke has said it all. We close with these words from his guest column:
“Can you imagine the long-term benefits to our community by having seniors with knowledge and wisdom interact with youth who crave attention and need positive direction?"
What, and do more for the city than bitch anonymously about their property taxes?
That'd be a first, but perhaps many such firsts are coming for the city of New Albany.
Congratulations are due the newspaper’s staff for its timely and topical articles and commentaries in today’s edition. If the newspaper’s web site were operated in as timely a fashion, at least one link could be offered to the pieces below, but we’ll provide it (or them) later.
County officials looking at Scribner Place, by Kyle Lowry, Tribune County Reporter.
The story:
Floyd County’s commissioners and county council seem ready to assist with Scribner Place funding in spite of high-dollar obligations of their own, but some city council leaders have been less than cordial while asking for help.
“Floyd County Commissioner Steve Bush and county council member Dana Fendley both are strong supporters of the Scribner Place project and each agreed that the county could, most likely, come up with around $100,000 or more for the downtown effort …
“ … although Fendley supports the project and is willing to help with funding, she said she is appalled at the way the city council has handled the matter.”
NA Confidential adds:
While obstructionist Siamese Councilmen Dan Coffey and Steve Price anchored the “no” vote at last Thursday’s meeting, and CM Bill Schmidt incomprehensibly abstained from going on record, CM Larry Kochert used his time to pontificate on the nature of political cooperation between city and county … and a more counter-productive, belligerent sermon it would be difficult to imagine.
We don’t pretend to know the origins of Kochert’s obvious animosity toward the county, and naturally we’d be foolish to imagine that there are none in the county who’d gladly return Kochert’s “favor” if given half a chance, but if any specific, clear and shining example of why city politics must be brought into the 21st century can be provided here on short notice, it is his convoluted “fair share” campaign,” wherein the germ of a good idea – the county should be on board in some manner with Scribner Place – is relegated to the appendix of the argument, to be completely overwhelmed by Kochert’s bizarre need to publicly berate the very same people who he expects to co-operate with him.
Make that, with “us.”
Let’s wipe away the souring political grease coating his skids, and ask this one simple question: Does, or doesn’t, Larry Kochert really support Scribner Place?
First, his obfuscation with respect to a working definition of “fair share,” and then his boorishly intemperate behavior toward the county during the meeting in question, sadly combine to spotlight the worst excesses of the “good old boy” backroom system symbolized by few better than Kochert himself.
Thankfully, this populist, ward-heeling model of 19th-century thinking was courageously denounced at the same meeting by Kochert’s recently arrived counterpart, Councilman Donnie Blevins, our city council’s truest voice of conscience amidst the insufferable clatter and din of Coffey’s incessant, pathological grandstanding, Price’s pleas borrowed from reruns of “Hee Haw” to run the city “like grandma would,” and Schmidt’s abject failure to take a position on the most important issue the city council may face this year.
You can bet Kochert wasn’t listening to Blevins, his fellow councilman, who doesn’t have Kochert’s long experience in politics to draw from. But you can also bet that Blevins understands why it’s wrong to embarrass the city by abusing the county at the precise time that city-county relations have a chance of improving.
Messer should be commended, a commentary by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor.
The story:
On Thursday night, City Councilman Jack Messer’s introduction of the resolution detailing Scribner Place funding permitted him time to explain his support of the project, but far more than that, it allowed him to explain the reasons why he chose to enter public service, and to issue a rare challenge to the political class to do what is right, not just what is expedient for the continuation of careers.
“Before the council voted on the (Scribner Place) resolution, Messer did what I wish other political figures would do. Not petrified by the thought that he might not get re-elected, he announced that he supported Scribner Place and support the plan that would use property taxes as a backup …
“ … Messer’s words were a breath of fresh air at a meeting where entirely too much time was taken up with political malarkey and bitterness. He should be commended for speaking his mind and not worrying about the political ramifications. There are other politicians in Floyd County who could learn from Messer’s example.”
NA Confidential says:
Amany Ali does a marvelous job of recognizing Councilman Messer’s contribution to last Thursday’s meeting, and although all council representatives voting for Scribner Place deserve commendation for their principled stances, Messer’s address to the audience, and his comments to fellow council members, almost certainly and deservedly will become the stuff of legend.
Here’s why.
Throughout the run-up to the Scribner Place vote, upstanding citizens confused and frightened by impending change have been manipulated by certain calculating elements -- some well-intentioned, others unfortunately not – who are in opposition to New Albany’s ongoing efforts to move forward.
Time and again, fear and loathing have been stoked. Sincere efforts to explain the way a city works have been dismissed. Progressives have been attacked as pointy-headed, out of touch – and to be truthful, even threatened. Freedom of speech has been curtailed.
In short, citizens have been turned against each other by fellow citizens who quite simply should know better – assuming, of course, that they haven’t meant worse from the beginning.
Jack Messer’s words last Thursday night demolished this “culture war” argument once and for all.
Here is a New Albany resident, a concerned taxpayer, a policeman of long standing, a public servant – a man who is as fully representative of the community as any could ever hope to be – walking tall and announcing that he understands why some of his fellow New Albanians are scared, but that there’s absolutely no reason for them to be; that much hard work certainly is yet to come; but unless something is done now to reverse the fortunes of New Albany, that there will be no city to pass on to the next generation -- and this work must begin now, by all of us, and for all of us.
Brilliant. Thank you, Jack, and thanks to Amany Ali for her take.
Council needs to act more dignified, by Jim Nichols, Executive Editor of the Evening News and New Albany Tribune.
The story:
The author, who is new to Floyd County politics, attended last Thursday’s city council meeting, and although he was prepared for it to be interesting owing to the Scribner Place vote, he simply wasn’t prepared for Circus Maximus, city council-style.
“What made this meeting one for the ages was the demeanor of the meeting. Lack of demeanor is more appropriate ...
“ … A New Albany woman had a beef with Councilman Dan Coffey and she let everyone know it. Phrases like “poor white trash” and “you were promised a job” were tossed back and forth …
“ … The exchange was something you’d expect after a six-pack or two. I don’t think either party in the argument had been drinking, but I’d have a clearer understanding of their exchange had that been the case.”
NA Confidential says:
Yep, Jim, welcome to the Open Air Museum.
Although you somewhat simplistically opted to use erratic local businesswoman Valla Ann Bolovshak’s presentation of “Robert’s Rules of Order” to the council as an example of something that should help the latter, and failed to recognize Bolovshak’s seemingly magnanimous gesture as part of the ongoing problem of meeting-night grandstanding rather than the part of the solution (remember that at least one council member has publicly and repeatedly stated his aversion to reading), you nonetheless capture the anarchic spirit of some council gatherings, and recognize that the “blame,” as such, comes from both sides of the table.
Fireworks and old houses don’t mix, by Chris Morris, Tribune Managing Editor.
The story:
On the Fourth of July, as firefighters extinguished a garage fire probably caused by fireworks, Chris’s neighborhood “looked like a war zone” and people ignored the firemen while continuing to ignite fireworks.
“We can celebrate our country’s independence without blowing up half the town. So next year, let’s leave the fireworks to the experts. And let’s make sure state legislators revisit this issue in the upcoming session.”
NA Confidential says:
Right on, Chris. And while you’re at it, can we somehow gently remind the pyromaniacs among us to clean up their refuse upon conclusion of the show – and perhaps limit it to the pre-midnight hours?
New Albany deserves a YMCA and aquatic center, a guest column by Mike Ricke.
The story:
The leader of fundraising efforts for the YMCA eloquently describes the benefits of the project to come.
“Despite political positioning and misinformation, my co-chair, Carol Libs, and our entire committee have to date raised over $5.2 million to build the YMCA …
“ … While the YMCA is the right answer for the citizens of New Albany and Floyd County, please don’t expect it to erase years of citizen apathy, frozen leadership and neglect overnight.”
NA Confidential says:
We say only that Mike Ricke has said it all. We close with these words from his guest column:
“Can you imagine the long-term benefits to our community by having seniors with knowledge and wisdom interact with youth who crave attention and need positive direction?"
What, and do more for the city than bitch anonymously about their property taxes?
That'd be a first, but perhaps many such firsts are coming for the city of New Albany.
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Today is the Indiana State Fair's Brewers' Cup Competition 2005.
Saturday we'll be in Indianapolis for the judging of the Indiana State Fair's Brewers' Cup Competition 2005. Last year, the New Albanian Brewing Company won the Brewers' Cup Best of Show with our Bourbondaddy Stout, a strong dry stout aged in Woodford Reserve bourbon barrels.
I'd like to predict another win for the hometown team this year, but won't. The competition is fierce, and includes breweries from surrounding states. There also is a homebrewing division, with the overall winner given the chance to take his or her recipe to a sponsoring microbrewery (last year, Upland Brewing in Bloomington) and help prepare a batch professionally for sale throughout the state.
It's always fun to attend such functions in Indianapolis, and explain to people where New Albany is located, as most people there think Kentucky begins somewhere around Columbus.
I'd like to predict another win for the hometown team this year, but won't. The competition is fierce, and includes breweries from surrounding states. There also is a homebrewing division, with the overall winner given the chance to take his or her recipe to a sponsoring microbrewery (last year, Upland Brewing in Bloomington) and help prepare a batch professionally for sale throughout the state.
It's always fun to attend such functions in Indianapolis, and explain to people where New Albany is located, as most people there think Kentucky begins somewhere around Columbus.
Friday, July 08, 2005
UPDATED: More on last night's historic City Council approval of Scribner Place.
4:00 p.m. - Friday coverage of last evening's City Council meeting:
Council moves forward on Scribner Place, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor.
More Notes from the Trenches, by Randy Smith (Volunteer Hoosier blog).
Notes From the Trenches, by Randy Smith (Volunteer Hoosier blog).
---
If you're into the market for local political futures, here's a tip.
Jack Messer: Buy.
Steve Price: Sell.
As the Courier-Journal’s Ben Zion Hershberg reminds us, there’s still next Tuesday’s County Council session to consider before the last Scribner Place hurdle is cleared:
New Albany backs Scribner Place; Final commitment depends on county, by Ben Zion Hershberg of the Courier-Journal (limited shelf life for C-J links).
At last night’s city council meeting, Councilman Larry Kochert took great care in publicly defending his "qualified" support of Scribner Place, which for many weeks remained artfully undefined, at least insofar as his implied meaning of “fair share,” but while doing so, CM Kochert lobbed more than one shot at the county in general and its elected leaders specifically.
Not the best way to win friends and influence people, but NA Confidential defers to Kochert’s many years of political experience and assumes the best.
By the way, whenever one hears Councilmen Kochert, Bill Schmidt and Dan Coffey use the poor state of the city’s infrastructure as reason to delay and obfuscate, are we the only ones who think of the combined decades of council presence that they have contributed, and wonder how such deterioration ever was allowed to proceed with them as watchdogs?
Perhaps we’re being naïve. Again.
Meanwhile, over at Speak Out, Lout (NA), open season has been declared on NA Confidential and its administrator in the wake of last night's historic council session, with the Speak Out moderator scattering unsubstantiated accusations and the "little people" responding as if on cue with cries for "bans" and censorship.
It's sad to see people so unhappy, and yet so happy to remain unhappy. Something about the devil you know, I guess.
Last night, a citizen speaker actually used city council speaking time to demand that Mr. Baylor and Mr. Smith apologize for accumulated rhetorical offenses against a wide range of local personages.
Ms. Baird, you're right. After long and careful consideration, I’ve decided to own up.
Yes, I shot J.R.
Sorry ‘bout that. It won't happen again.
As for the remainder …
No.
Registered users, please feel free to contribute your views on last night's council session.
Council moves forward on Scribner Place, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor.
More Notes from the Trenches, by Randy Smith (Volunteer Hoosier blog).
Notes From the Trenches, by Randy Smith (Volunteer Hoosier blog).
---
If you're into the market for local political futures, here's a tip.
Jack Messer: Buy.
Steve Price: Sell.
As the Courier-Journal’s Ben Zion Hershberg reminds us, there’s still next Tuesday’s County Council session to consider before the last Scribner Place hurdle is cleared:
New Albany backs Scribner Place; Final commitment depends on county, by Ben Zion Hershberg of the Courier-Journal (limited shelf life for C-J links).
At last night’s city council meeting, Councilman Larry Kochert took great care in publicly defending his "qualified" support of Scribner Place, which for many weeks remained artfully undefined, at least insofar as his implied meaning of “fair share,” but while doing so, CM Kochert lobbed more than one shot at the county in general and its elected leaders specifically.
Not the best way to win friends and influence people, but NA Confidential defers to Kochert’s many years of political experience and assumes the best.
By the way, whenever one hears Councilmen Kochert, Bill Schmidt and Dan Coffey use the poor state of the city’s infrastructure as reason to delay and obfuscate, are we the only ones who think of the combined decades of council presence that they have contributed, and wonder how such deterioration ever was allowed to proceed with them as watchdogs?
Perhaps we’re being naïve. Again.
Meanwhile, over at Speak Out, Lout (NA), open season has been declared on NA Confidential and its administrator in the wake of last night's historic council session, with the Speak Out moderator scattering unsubstantiated accusations and the "little people" responding as if on cue with cries for "bans" and censorship.
It's sad to see people so unhappy, and yet so happy to remain unhappy. Something about the devil you know, I guess.
Last night, a citizen speaker actually used city council speaking time to demand that Mr. Baylor and Mr. Smith apologize for accumulated rhetorical offenses against a wide range of local personages.
Ms. Baird, you're right. After long and careful consideration, I’ve decided to own up.
Yes, I shot J.R.
Sorry ‘bout that. It won't happen again.
As for the remainder …
No.
Registered users, please feel free to contribute your views on last night's council session.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
In historic vote, New Albany's City Council approves Scribner Place project, option #1.
In a long, tense and occasionally strained session, the council approved Scribner Place bonding according to the first option, with the so-called Coffey Plan never entering into the picture.
Councilman Jack Messer spoke eloquently for the majority (6-2-1, with councilmen Coffey and Price opposing and CM Schmidt bizarrely abstaining), challenging New Albany to succeed.
Salary for the ordinance enforcement officer position also was approved, this time unanimously.
There'll be more to say, but it's late. What are your impressions of the meeting tonight?
Councilman Jack Messer spoke eloquently for the majority (6-2-1, with councilmen Coffey and Price opposing and CM Schmidt bizarrely abstaining), challenging New Albany to succeed.
Salary for the ordinance enforcement officer position also was approved, this time unanimously.
There'll be more to say, but it's late. What are your impressions of the meeting tonight?
Volunteer Hoosier's "Scribner Place Talking Points," or the perfect antidote to troglodyte rumor-mongering.
Randy "Volunteer Hoosier" Smith offers the following succinct summary of the case for Scribner Place and the "Option 1" funding plan.
Follow the link to read the remainder of his comprehensive survey of the issues, as we head into tonight's climactic City Council meeting.
Remember that beginning at 5:00 p.m. today, the Constituency for Progress will be conducting a teach-in in front of the City-County Building.
I'd love to meet and chat with NA Confidential readers, so come on down and visit before, during or after the council meeting. I'll be the one with the sign that reads "Coffey Plan = D.O.A."
Scribner Place Talking Points, by Randy Smith.
1. Scribner Place is the essence of what a city can do to spur investment.
2. Scribner Place offers the lifestyle amenities demanded by prospective new businesses and residents. Furthermore, it creates an environment that will foster investment in more such amenities.
3. Scribner Place takes full advantage of the already-built infrastructure of downtown and promises to bring restaurants, pubs, music venues, retailers, and office jobs back to downtown.
4. The best financing plan does not threaten to raise property taxes. Option 1 would conserve city resources, promote a stronger and more vibrant tax base, and keep property taxes lower than they would otherwise be.
5. The aquatic center is more than a swimming pool for the "elite." It will offer a place for recreation and exercise to all comers, with city (and presumably county) residents able to buy passes. Its possible management by the YMCA, extended hours, and year-round operation makes it a real draw to outlying communities that could make it a revenue generator.
6. A "yes" vote sends the signal that New Albany is changing its attitude toward commercial investment, tourism, and lifestyle amenities. A "no" vote will likely be the death knell for downtown and will relegate New Albany to years of faltering services and higher taxes. As a bedroom community for Louisville, New Albany and Floyd County can't survive on residential development alone.
7. Downtown is uniquely suited to the type of specialty independent retailing that contributes most to a community. Independent businesses throw off 75% more to the local economy than does the same size chain store. A thriving and compact downtown business district, once rejuvenated by Scribner Place, will be a benefit to the environment by curbing the trend toward urban sprawl.
8. Having a livable community is the goal. Scribner Place is a big step in that direction.
9. Investment capital will look to the city and county as partners instead of as impediments. As participants in development, the city and county can create a development environment that serves their citizens instead of the speculators and slumlords. Scribner Place announces that smart growth is the future for Floyd County.
10. With city/county involvement, the YMCA can proceed to build a state-of-the-art facility that will be the gem of the metro region.
11. With city/county involvement, further development initiatives can begin right away. One investor is considering immediate investment by building additional stories above the YMCA for offices and conference centers. The demand for that space is there right now, with one tenant ready to sign a lease if the private investment comes through.
12. Isn't it about time Floyd County and New Albany as governments began to see a return on the outlays we make to accommodate a nearby casino? Can we possibly turn down $20 million in private money from Caesars Foundation?
Follow the link to read the remainder of his comprehensive survey of the issues, as we head into tonight's climactic City Council meeting.
Remember that beginning at 5:00 p.m. today, the Constituency for Progress will be conducting a teach-in in front of the City-County Building.
I'd love to meet and chat with NA Confidential readers, so come on down and visit before, during or after the council meeting. I'll be the one with the sign that reads "Coffey Plan = D.O.A."
Scribner Place Talking Points, by Randy Smith.
1. Scribner Place is the essence of what a city can do to spur investment.
2. Scribner Place offers the lifestyle amenities demanded by prospective new businesses and residents. Furthermore, it creates an environment that will foster investment in more such amenities.
3. Scribner Place takes full advantage of the already-built infrastructure of downtown and promises to bring restaurants, pubs, music venues, retailers, and office jobs back to downtown.
4. The best financing plan does not threaten to raise property taxes. Option 1 would conserve city resources, promote a stronger and more vibrant tax base, and keep property taxes lower than they would otherwise be.
5. The aquatic center is more than a swimming pool for the "elite." It will offer a place for recreation and exercise to all comers, with city (and presumably county) residents able to buy passes. Its possible management by the YMCA, extended hours, and year-round operation makes it a real draw to outlying communities that could make it a revenue generator.
6. A "yes" vote sends the signal that New Albany is changing its attitude toward commercial investment, tourism, and lifestyle amenities. A "no" vote will likely be the death knell for downtown and will relegate New Albany to years of faltering services and higher taxes. As a bedroom community for Louisville, New Albany and Floyd County can't survive on residential development alone.
7. Downtown is uniquely suited to the type of specialty independent retailing that contributes most to a community. Independent businesses throw off 75% more to the local economy than does the same size chain store. A thriving and compact downtown business district, once rejuvenated by Scribner Place, will be a benefit to the environment by curbing the trend toward urban sprawl.
8. Having a livable community is the goal. Scribner Place is a big step in that direction.
9. Investment capital will look to the city and county as partners instead of as impediments. As participants in development, the city and county can create a development environment that serves their citizens instead of the speculators and slumlords. Scribner Place announces that smart growth is the future for Floyd County.
10. With city/county involvement, the YMCA can proceed to build a state-of-the-art facility that will be the gem of the metro region.
11. With city/county involvement, further development initiatives can begin right away. One investor is considering immediate investment by building additional stories above the YMCA for offices and conference centers. The demand for that space is there right now, with one tenant ready to sign a lease if the private investment comes through.
12. Isn't it about time Floyd County and New Albany as governments began to see a return on the outlays we make to accommodate a nearby casino? Can we possibly turn down $20 million in private money from Caesars Foundation?
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
July 6 Tribune editorial: Future of downtown in Council’s hands.
Here is the complete text of today's firm editorial endorsement of the Scribner Place project, as offered by the New Albany Tribune, which inexplicably does not archive its editorial page on-line.
------
Tomorrow night could be the start of something great in New Albany. Or, if some members of the City Council have their way, it could be the end of another great idea to improve downtown New Albany.
The council will vote on a resolution that will commit $400,000 in EDIT dollars to Scribner Place – a downtown project that includes a YMCA and indoor swimming facility.
The vote could go either way.
The city will have to secure a $16.8 million bond to complete Scribner Place. The Caesars Foundation of Floyd County has already committed $1 million a year for 20 years to help build the facility.
That gift could be in jeopardy tomorrow night if the council fails to approve the funding formula.
Also, in the past two weeks, county officials have said they would be willing to pay for some of the development. In the past they have declined, but seem to be on board now. That is a huge plus.
There is no doubt this is a big step for the city, and the council to take. But it’s an idea, and a $20 million gift, we can’t afford to say no to.
This should not be a political issue. This is a New Albany issue. This will improve our downtown area, which needs a shot in the arm.
Hopefully, the council will study the issue and approve funding for Scribner Place. That would definitely be a step in the right direction.
------
Tomorrow night could be the start of something great in New Albany. Or, if some members of the City Council have their way, it could be the end of another great idea to improve downtown New Albany.
The council will vote on a resolution that will commit $400,000 in EDIT dollars to Scribner Place – a downtown project that includes a YMCA and indoor swimming facility.
The vote could go either way.
The city will have to secure a $16.8 million bond to complete Scribner Place. The Caesars Foundation of Floyd County has already committed $1 million a year for 20 years to help build the facility.
That gift could be in jeopardy tomorrow night if the council fails to approve the funding formula.
Also, in the past two weeks, county officials have said they would be willing to pay for some of the development. In the past they have declined, but seem to be on board now. That is a huge plus.
There is no doubt this is a big step for the city, and the council to take. But it’s an idea, and a $20 million gift, we can’t afford to say no to.
This should not be a political issue. This is a New Albany issue. This will improve our downtown area, which needs a shot in the arm.
Hopefully, the council will study the issue and approve funding for Scribner Place. That would definitely be a step in the right direction.
UPDATED: Memo to City Council: Sweep aside the mistakes of the past and approve Option #1 of Scribner Place (Phase I) financing.
The New Albany Tribune, our only local newspaper of record, does not publish on Monday. On Tuesday, two days before the most important City Council meeting of the year, the newspaper devoted its front page to a new missing child program, “Seussical” the musical, and whether it is safe to eat Ohio River fish.
Today, belatedly, the Tribune makes an effort to be topical:
City Council to vote on committing $400k to Scribner Place, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor.
----
Steadily, and with at least some of the uncertainty eased -- perhaps even inexorably – New Albany’s Scribner Place project seems to be emerging from its navigation of the largest expanse of treacherous by-ways native to the local political process.
Along the way, and irrespective of the final financial details necessary to lift it from the architect’s drawing board to bricks and mortar reality, the conceptual nature of the project itself has garnered an impressive array of endorsements throughout the extended community.
Newspapers, politicians, business associations, neighborhood associations, men and women on the street – all have joined together in rare unanimity to publicly support Scribner Place as a crucial first step toward the betterment of Floyd County in general, and downtown New Albany in particular.
In fact, apart from abrasive, noisy, sel-serving but ultimately negligible fear mongering instigated by an anonymous clique of embittered Internet trolls, there has not been any significant opposition to the overall merits of the project itself, at least on the part of those willing to go on the public record with their objections … and their names.
According to our records, 3rd District Councilman Steve Price is the only one to do so, stating at an S. Ellen Jones Neighborhood Association meeting that he is against Scribner Place, period, and considers the money slated for it to be better used elsewhere.
There may be a handful of other opponents we’ve missed, but at least for some, it has been fiendishly difficult to isolate the precise gene denoting sincerity, since they tend to favor a passive/aggressive approach with respect to hedging their bets, along the lines of “I’m for it, even though it’s going to fail in the end, just like anything New Albany does.”
It is a notoriously poor argument -- it really isn't an argument at all, not that this means anything to the functionally illiterate -- but surely it provides the perfect drumbeat of a segue to the Wizard of Westside, 1st District Councilman Dan Coffey, whose presence on any public stage is the unfailing harbinger of riotous farce.
For reasons that remain hazy amid the unchecked, ward-heeling grandstanding that perpetually defines his daily political performance, Councilman Coffey has at various times spoken both for and against Scribner Place, stating last week that it “has to happen,” but at the same time informing the Courier-Journal that he doubts it will do any good in assisting economic development.
And yet, ever attuned to the surreal, the always opportunistic Councilman Coffey first scattered these conflicting signals the way that your dog putters around the yard, diligently marking territory, then immediately scrambled to reposition himself as the second coming of Neville Chamberlain by waving his blank notebook and offering a compromise plan that would “save” Scribner Place in our time by privatizing it before it was built – thus negating its very reason for existence, and doing so before the first nail is struck.
Because nothing from nothing still leaves nothing, Councilman Coffey's plan was politely applauded and subsequently yawned out of the room, freeing him to return to his favored lesiure time activity of Byzantine plotting in preparation for his next political campaign.
Unfortunately, the saga doesn’t end with Councilman Coffey's barbecued bologna.
The 4th District Councilman Larry Kochert also has tried to have his Scribner Place and gut it, too, by claiming to adore the plan, but qualifying his adoration by tying it to support “in kind” from the county government – and, until very late in the game, not divulging the exact size of the annual support check that he expects the county to cut before he climbs down from the fence he’s lovingly built for maximum straddling.
Between Price’s ongoing and blatant sabotage of the interests of his own increasingly progressive district, Councilman Coffey’s transparently self-aggrandizing efforts to wash Scribner Place right out of the city’s hair, and Councilman Kochert’s demure considerations of citywide dowry (say, a couple hundred thousand a year, a half-ton of tangy Capriole goat cheese and a vat or three of that deelish Huber red vino), one might arrive at the conclusion that some among New Albany’s sitting city council are, shall we say, somewhat less that well equipped to lead the city into the 21st century.
Such a conclusion has the saving virtue of complete accuracy, but more importantly, others on the City Council seemingly are ready to lead, and they’re now the ones who must step to the forefront and hasten the process not only of launching the Scribner Place project, but also of doing so according to the financing plan that makes the most sense for residents of all sizes, and finally (if all that weren’t enough) commencing the process of ending the disruptive Reign of Error foisted on the citizens of New Albany by the council’s Gang of Four.
Likewise, Mayor James Garner must come to the assistance of the council's moderates and act in the best interests of the city of New Albany by forcefully occupying his bully pulpit and resolutely urging the adoption of Option #1 of Scribner Place, Phase I financing, which pledges the city's taxing authority as backing for the project, and consequently will result in a significant savings over the lifetime of the bond.
Readers, you already know that NA Confidential differs with those among us who would seek to tie the city’s future to an exceedingly narrow definition of break-even accomplishment, and who remain far too eager to cite the admittedly numerous failures of the past as an all-purpose excuse not to excel here and now.
In the context of the Scribner Place project, the best way to break New Albany’s seemingly perpetual cycle of underachievement is most emphatically not to try and tiptoe past rearguard roadblocks erected by obstructionist Brambleberries both inside and outside the council, and risk settling for a less seaworthy financing plan that only temporarily stands to appease the irrevocably lost voters of a minority opposed to Scribner Place from the beginning, but rather, to expend the necessary political capital to unapologetically smash to bits New Albany’s detestable inferiority complex by opting for the best available plan.
And that is Option #1.
It is neither the Mayor’s plan, nor the YMCA’s plan; neither NA Confidential’s plan nor "concern taxpayer's" plan, neither your plan nor my plan alone, but rather, New Albany’s Plan.
Beginning this Thursday night, it will be time to get to work on a viable future for this city. Let's support those public servants who see the way forward.
Today, belatedly, the Tribune makes an effort to be topical:
City Council to vote on committing $400k to Scribner Place, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor.
----
Steadily, and with at least some of the uncertainty eased -- perhaps even inexorably – New Albany’s Scribner Place project seems to be emerging from its navigation of the largest expanse of treacherous by-ways native to the local political process.
Along the way, and irrespective of the final financial details necessary to lift it from the architect’s drawing board to bricks and mortar reality, the conceptual nature of the project itself has garnered an impressive array of endorsements throughout the extended community.
Newspapers, politicians, business associations, neighborhood associations, men and women on the street – all have joined together in rare unanimity to publicly support Scribner Place as a crucial first step toward the betterment of Floyd County in general, and downtown New Albany in particular.
In fact, apart from abrasive, noisy, sel-serving but ultimately negligible fear mongering instigated by an anonymous clique of embittered Internet trolls, there has not been any significant opposition to the overall merits of the project itself, at least on the part of those willing to go on the public record with their objections … and their names.
According to our records, 3rd District Councilman Steve Price is the only one to do so, stating at an S. Ellen Jones Neighborhood Association meeting that he is against Scribner Place, period, and considers the money slated for it to be better used elsewhere.
There may be a handful of other opponents we’ve missed, but at least for some, it has been fiendishly difficult to isolate the precise gene denoting sincerity, since they tend to favor a passive/aggressive approach with respect to hedging their bets, along the lines of “I’m for it, even though it’s going to fail in the end, just like anything New Albany does.”
It is a notoriously poor argument -- it really isn't an argument at all, not that this means anything to the functionally illiterate -- but surely it provides the perfect drumbeat of a segue to the Wizard of Westside, 1st District Councilman Dan Coffey, whose presence on any public stage is the unfailing harbinger of riotous farce.
For reasons that remain hazy amid the unchecked, ward-heeling grandstanding that perpetually defines his daily political performance, Councilman Coffey has at various times spoken both for and against Scribner Place, stating last week that it “has to happen,” but at the same time informing the Courier-Journal that he doubts it will do any good in assisting economic development.
And yet, ever attuned to the surreal, the always opportunistic Councilman Coffey first scattered these conflicting signals the way that your dog putters around the yard, diligently marking territory, then immediately scrambled to reposition himself as the second coming of Neville Chamberlain by waving his blank notebook and offering a compromise plan that would “save” Scribner Place in our time by privatizing it before it was built – thus negating its very reason for existence, and doing so before the first nail is struck.
Because nothing from nothing still leaves nothing, Councilman Coffey's plan was politely applauded and subsequently yawned out of the room, freeing him to return to his favored lesiure time activity of Byzantine plotting in preparation for his next political campaign.
Unfortunately, the saga doesn’t end with Councilman Coffey's barbecued bologna.
The 4th District Councilman Larry Kochert also has tried to have his Scribner Place and gut it, too, by claiming to adore the plan, but qualifying his adoration by tying it to support “in kind” from the county government – and, until very late in the game, not divulging the exact size of the annual support check that he expects the county to cut before he climbs down from the fence he’s lovingly built for maximum straddling.
Between Price’s ongoing and blatant sabotage of the interests of his own increasingly progressive district, Councilman Coffey’s transparently self-aggrandizing efforts to wash Scribner Place right out of the city’s hair, and Councilman Kochert’s demure considerations of citywide dowry (say, a couple hundred thousand a year, a half-ton of tangy Capriole goat cheese and a vat or three of that deelish Huber red vino), one might arrive at the conclusion that some among New Albany’s sitting city council are, shall we say, somewhat less that well equipped to lead the city into the 21st century.
Such a conclusion has the saving virtue of complete accuracy, but more importantly, others on the City Council seemingly are ready to lead, and they’re now the ones who must step to the forefront and hasten the process not only of launching the Scribner Place project, but also of doing so according to the financing plan that makes the most sense for residents of all sizes, and finally (if all that weren’t enough) commencing the process of ending the disruptive Reign of Error foisted on the citizens of New Albany by the council’s Gang of Four.
Likewise, Mayor James Garner must come to the assistance of the council's moderates and act in the best interests of the city of New Albany by forcefully occupying his bully pulpit and resolutely urging the adoption of Option #1 of Scribner Place, Phase I financing, which pledges the city's taxing authority as backing for the project, and consequently will result in a significant savings over the lifetime of the bond.
Readers, you already know that NA Confidential differs with those among us who would seek to tie the city’s future to an exceedingly narrow definition of break-even accomplishment, and who remain far too eager to cite the admittedly numerous failures of the past as an all-purpose excuse not to excel here and now.
In the context of the Scribner Place project, the best way to break New Albany’s seemingly perpetual cycle of underachievement is most emphatically not to try and tiptoe past rearguard roadblocks erected by obstructionist Brambleberries both inside and outside the council, and risk settling for a less seaworthy financing plan that only temporarily stands to appease the irrevocably lost voters of a minority opposed to Scribner Place from the beginning, but rather, to expend the necessary political capital to unapologetically smash to bits New Albany’s detestable inferiority complex by opting for the best available plan.
And that is Option #1.
It is neither the Mayor’s plan, nor the YMCA’s plan; neither NA Confidential’s plan nor "concern taxpayer's" plan, neither your plan nor my plan alone, but rather, New Albany’s Plan.
Beginning this Thursday night, it will be time to get to work on a viable future for this city. Let's support those public servants who see the way forward.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
New Albany's "little people" find their savior, at least for the next five minutes.
Things that make you go “hmmmm” … from the new Diggin’ in the Dirt blog:
—Lt. Governor Becky Skillman got to see Mansion Row Friday afternoon (July 1) during a meet-and-greet for the Republican Party faithful at the Admiral Bicknell Inn. Thanks for the yummy leftover hors d'oeuvres, VA. I love that olive spread.
VA is Valla Ann Bolovschak, owner and innkeeper at the Admiral Bicknell bed and breakfast, and, we’re told, a Bush/Cheney stalwart of long standing.
Under normal circumstances, this information would not be noteworthy, but according to anonymous spokespersons for New Albany’s self-styled “little people,” i.e., disgruntled home owning white Democrats, Valla Ann has arrived in New Albany just in time to lead these supposedly “oppressed” taxpayers on a Norquist-inspired Fatwah against the 21st century.
Uh huh.
Is it just us, or have Early Times sales skyrocketed lately?
Speaking as a fellow businessperson, NA Confidential finds much to like about Valla Ann, and we genuinely respect what she has done to make her home one of the anchors of Mansion Row.
We’ll leave it to others to helpfully explicate the less salutary aspects of Valla Ann’s long-running and very public feud with the Democrat who currently occupies City Hall, noting sadly that her affiliation with the GOP unfortunately runs counter to many of NA Confidential’s personal positions in politics and culture, thus complicating objectivity in such matters.
However, the woefully counter-productive perversity of her new legion of fans is another topic entirely, and one that we can’t help skewering.
By giddily throwing themselves at the feet of a card-carrying Republican, whose party (in explicit national platform terms) is institutionally committed to starving the city to feed the exurb, New Albany’s “mad as hell,” anti-progressive, lunatic fringe seriously undermines its cherished and utterly false self-image as the criminally neglected “little people.”
Actually, this is just as well, since the term “little people” in this context bears no more descriptive meaning than “new and improved” on a jug of generic laundry detergent.
Quite simply, if you’re a home owning white person in New Albany, you’re a “little person” in the same way that George W. Bush is just another chainsaw-toting Texan.
New Albany’s real “little people” are renters at or below the poverty line, underemployed or unemployed, many of them Black and Latino, and few of whom possess the luxury of Internet access to complain of their being downtrodden and ignored.
Few of them are demanding to take “back” their city, because they had little part in it to begin with.
Wildly and disproportionately privileged by comparison with the city’s genuine “little people,” a snarling sub-strata of disaffected, white, middle class, home owning Democrats now turns to a recently arrived Republican to save them from themselves, with arms open and hosannas fully audible, and while this turn of events provides ample grist for examinations into the degradation of the human condition in New Albany, circa ’05, it remains that garbage trucks in high summer have a more favorable aroma than hypocrisy of this malodorous variety.
It is beyond dispute that New Albanians traditionally are their own worst enemies, consistently dismissing palliative measures and bizarrely drawing solace from their own semi-literate depths of futility. One would hope that at some point this recurring cycle of pain would become tiresome to them, but it remains that the truly dysfunctional have no hope of getting better until they want to do so.
The “little people” won’t get any bigger until they stop whimpering and desperately seeking a "leader," shed the populist drivel that thrills them, and start thinking critically about the world that lies outside.
To persist in doing otherwise is to continue being used by those who know better … and to be discarded, yet again, when the usefulness of the “little people” comes to an inevitable end.
—Lt. Governor Becky Skillman got to see Mansion Row Friday afternoon (July 1) during a meet-and-greet for the Republican Party faithful at the Admiral Bicknell Inn. Thanks for the yummy leftover hors d'oeuvres, VA. I love that olive spread.
VA is Valla Ann Bolovschak, owner and innkeeper at the Admiral Bicknell bed and breakfast, and, we’re told, a Bush/Cheney stalwart of long standing.
Under normal circumstances, this information would not be noteworthy, but according to anonymous spokespersons for New Albany’s self-styled “little people,” i.e., disgruntled home owning white Democrats, Valla Ann has arrived in New Albany just in time to lead these supposedly “oppressed” taxpayers on a Norquist-inspired Fatwah against the 21st century.
Uh huh.
Is it just us, or have Early Times sales skyrocketed lately?
Speaking as a fellow businessperson, NA Confidential finds much to like about Valla Ann, and we genuinely respect what she has done to make her home one of the anchors of Mansion Row.
We’ll leave it to others to helpfully explicate the less salutary aspects of Valla Ann’s long-running and very public feud with the Democrat who currently occupies City Hall, noting sadly that her affiliation with the GOP unfortunately runs counter to many of NA Confidential’s personal positions in politics and culture, thus complicating objectivity in such matters.
However, the woefully counter-productive perversity of her new legion of fans is another topic entirely, and one that we can’t help skewering.
By giddily throwing themselves at the feet of a card-carrying Republican, whose party (in explicit national platform terms) is institutionally committed to starving the city to feed the exurb, New Albany’s “mad as hell,” anti-progressive, lunatic fringe seriously undermines its cherished and utterly false self-image as the criminally neglected “little people.”
Actually, this is just as well, since the term “little people” in this context bears no more descriptive meaning than “new and improved” on a jug of generic laundry detergent.
Quite simply, if you’re a home owning white person in New Albany, you’re a “little person” in the same way that George W. Bush is just another chainsaw-toting Texan.
New Albany’s real “little people” are renters at or below the poverty line, underemployed or unemployed, many of them Black and Latino, and few of whom possess the luxury of Internet access to complain of their being downtrodden and ignored.
Few of them are demanding to take “back” their city, because they had little part in it to begin with.
Wildly and disproportionately privileged by comparison with the city’s genuine “little people,” a snarling sub-strata of disaffected, white, middle class, home owning Democrats now turns to a recently arrived Republican to save them from themselves, with arms open and hosannas fully audible, and while this turn of events provides ample grist for examinations into the degradation of the human condition in New Albany, circa ’05, it remains that garbage trucks in high summer have a more favorable aroma than hypocrisy of this malodorous variety.
It is beyond dispute that New Albanians traditionally are their own worst enemies, consistently dismissing palliative measures and bizarrely drawing solace from their own semi-literate depths of futility. One would hope that at some point this recurring cycle of pain would become tiresome to them, but it remains that the truly dysfunctional have no hope of getting better until they want to do so.
The “little people” won’t get any bigger until they stop whimpering and desperately seeking a "leader," shed the populist drivel that thrills them, and start thinking critically about the world that lies outside.
To persist in doing otherwise is to continue being used by those who know better … and to be discarded, yet again, when the usefulness of the “little people” comes to an inevitable end.
$4 haircuts return to downtown New Albany.
Yes!
Man working to revive a dying profession with NA-based barber college, by Chris Morris, Tribune Managing Editor.
Randy Smith and I met the owner, Marshall Pence, a while back when he stopped into Destinations Booksellers.
We talked him into taking in a city council meeting that same night, and Councilman Cappuccino’s bravura performance made quite an impression on Marshall.
Happily, Marshall decided to open the barber college, anyway.
Good luck, and welcome to New Albany. I need a haircut badly ...
Man working to revive a dying profession with NA-based barber college, by Chris Morris, Tribune Managing Editor.
Randy Smith and I met the owner, Marshall Pence, a while back when he stopped into Destinations Booksellers.
We talked him into taking in a city council meeting that same night, and Councilman Cappuccino’s bravura performance made quite an impression on Marshall.
Happily, Marshall decided to open the barber college, anyway.
Good luck, and welcome to New Albany. I need a haircut badly ...
Monday, July 04, 2005
Here's a cause that "Concern Taxpayer" and "NA Resident" can really get behind.
Poor Writing Costs Taxpayers Millions, by Justin Pope, AP Education Writer.
"States spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on remedial writing instruction for their employees, according to a new report that says the indirect costs of sloppy writing probably hurt taxpayers even more."
And the taxpayer advocates themselves?
"States spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on remedial writing instruction for their employees, according to a new report that says the indirect costs of sloppy writing probably hurt taxpayers even more."
And the taxpayer advocates themselves?
The Declaration: No rhetoric -- just read it!
The Declaration of Independence ... from the Avalon Project at Yale Law School.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Corn on the 3rd of July?
Mrs. Confidential and I made a belated appearance this evening at the official New Albany 4th of July celebration at the venerable Trinkle Dome on the riverfront.
The fireworks were far better than I expected, the music was loud enough to be heard on Spring Street, the overall church supper ambience a fitting testament to booking agent Bob "Stone Deaf Band" Trinkle’s formica-clad genius for the lowest common denominator, and the obligatory rendering of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” depressing beyond the ability of mere words to convey.
Did I mention that the fireworks were good?
The fireworks were far better than I expected, the music was loud enough to be heard on Spring Street, the overall church supper ambience a fitting testament to booking agent Bob "Stone Deaf Band" Trinkle’s formica-clad genius for the lowest common denominator, and the obligatory rendering of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” depressing beyond the ability of mere words to convey.
Did I mention that the fireworks were good?
Saturday, July 02, 2005
"You Can't Go Home Again": Progress and good beer in New Albany.
I've tried to write for as long as I can remember, and for just as long, the written word has alternately soothed and mocked me.
During these many years of heartwarming successes and teeth-grinding failures, my otherwise fickle muse has consistently advocated one thing above all else: Write about what you know.
So, I began writing about beer in earnest in 1990, and if memory serves me, tens of thousands of my words on the topic of beer were offered pro bono to the planet at large until 1999, when the Louisville Eccentric Observer (LEO) agreed to pay me $40 to spend $800 of my own money for a trip to Denver, Colorado, and an article on the Great American Beer Festival.
For the past year, I've contributed a beer column to Food & Dining, a Louisville-based quarterly magazine that is essential reading for local restaurant goers.
Since November, 2004, many of you have been reading this blog, and you're probably asking a perfectly legitimate question: What does beer and beer writing have to do with the life and times of New Albany, and specifically, with the stated aim of NA Confidential?
My answer lies within the following piece, first written in 1998, and republished here for the umpteenth time. A good number of you have read it before, and I appreciate your indulgence as I post it for the consideration of the many who have not.
Consider it the longest business card in the world, and it just might make more sense.
-------
You Can't Go Home Again.
I had my back to the light and my face was upon the things where the light fell. My face, by which I looked upon things that were in the light, was itself in the darkness ... Augustine, Bishop of Hippo
There may be Biblical precedents for the notion of the self-analytical literary confession, although to my knowledge the first writer to explore the idea that "it takes one to know one" was Augustine (born 354 A.D.), later made St. Augustine, but at the time just an ordinary cleric obsessed with his sinful past.
From the vantage point of later life, and during the course of various ruminations that were designed to make the case for conversion to Christianity, Augustine freely referred to his youthful lusts, debaucheries and indiscretions, cataloguing and dissecting them, and offering them for the painful scrutiny of his readers.
By doing so, he became perhaps the first public figure to emit a primal scream, predating John Lennon by at least 1,550 years, unburdening himself as a means of seeking catharsis for seemingly irreconcilable inner desires, addressing his internal dissonance, recognizing it, and conquering it in the name of something far better.
For Augustine, the problem was sin.
For the Potable Curmudgeon, it is swill.
It has been a long and arduous path to self-knowledge, trudging upwards from the desperate and degraded depths of Schaefer "Weekender" 30-packs to the sublime pinnacle of vintage Alaskan Smoked Porter, but at least the swill-soaked years of my wayward youth were not passed in vain. From them are derived valuable glimpses into the human psyche, and possible explanations for why the majority of American beer drinkers remain in the same abject, leaden state of bondage that I managed to forego.
How do I know this shtick so well?
Because I was there, baby. I could spend the next decade drinking Guinness, and I’m still not sure the overall balance of a lifetime would be tilted to good beer over bad. The truth is, I was really bad for a long, long time … and then I got better, although it took a long, long time.
Now I’d like to see to it that you don’t have to go through the same thing. I want to make the world safe for drinkers of good beer, and for the next generation to be spared the hardships we had to endure.
There are questions: Must one necessarily experience bad beer to gain an appreciation for good beer, or can understanding and knowledge of the good somehow be gained in the absence of the bad, and without that point of comparison?
What happens to you when you gain knowledge of the good, but see so much bad still entrenched all around you?
How the hell did I get here?
Apart from a handful of wee nips as a child, taken from bottles of my father’s beer, my first solo "cold one" was consumed at a junior high school party. Actually, four of us split a can of (shudder … cough … it wasn’t easy for Augustine, either) Budweiser. The primary objective of this action, which took place out in the woods, a safe distance from the prying eyes of the hostess’s parents, seemed to be the establishment of street credibility by having beer on our breaths and mimicking the outward appearances of drunkenness, with which all were familiar, if not by personal experience.
It was a stormy April a year later when the gang staged the first of many campouts at the Floyds Knobs farm of one of my closest friends at the time. I dutifully helped to drag three cases of Fall City longnecks up a wooded bluff, leading from the chilly waters of a creek where they had been hidden by a sympathetic senior football player.
For these efforts, I was amply rewarded with by first genuine and unstaged bout of inebriation, a rite of passage made tolerable by the icy flavorlessness of the beer, which numbed my teeth, bolstered my confidence, and gave me an escape from shyness.
We were oblivious to the elements, paying no heed to the rising wind and rain that heralded the arrival of a storm, but Jeff’s parents were paying attention, and soon we saw the headlights from their pickup truck coming down the dirt path. We were told that tornadoes had been spotted, and we’d best move the party, beer and all, to the barn by the house. Our paranoia subsided once we realized that they didn’t care about our drinking as long as we stayed put, and we piled into the bed of the pickup, lay on our backs, stared up into the swirling eternity and swore through stinging raindrops that we could see tornadoes fornicating – except that wasn’t the exact word we used.
Another year later, when my friends began getting their driver's licenses, the bountiful paradise of Louisville’s west end liquor stores beckoned to us, just beyond the provincial confines of New Albany, down Vincennes Street to the K & I toll bridge, and over the Ohio River into Portland. It was then that the frustrating struggle to find a brand of beer that did not totally disgust me began in earnest.
Owing to my sadistically youthful appearance, I wasn’t often the one chosen to go inside Liken’s or the Corner Store and try to get served, so I was at the mercy of my companions’s tastes in beer. This was problematic, because at this stage the "flavor" of a beer was little more than an unpleasant impediment to ingesting its alcohol and trying to look cool while grimacing. My friends liked Sterling and Pabst; I didn’t, but they were doing the work, and I was in no position to argue, so I had to adapt.
I was never very good at math, but some numbers added up for me: The colder the beer was kept, the less taste it would have, and the more I could drink of it. My mission in life became cooler maintenance, to take the cheapest styrofoam cooler I could find, nurture it, protect it from harm, and most importantly, to keep it filled with ice. If I could keep the bottom from falling out and find a safe place to stash it, we could save a buck or two the following weekend.
This helped. However, summertime meant that I had problems finishing the beers before they began to get warm. This led to embarrassment on more than one occasion. I would be jammed into the back seat of a late model junker, without the female companionship that the backseat imagery of rock ‘n’ roll demands, but with an ice-cold can of beer straight from the cooler, gamely making it through the first frozen gulps, then suffering the dismaying recognition that it still was Sterling, Pabst, and Falls City, and realizing that it tasted too bad to finish.
After a sufficient interval had passed, and I determined that I was supposed to have finished the now warmed and thoroughly vile beer, I would throw the "empty" out the window -- but in the still of a humid summer evening’s drive in the countryside, I sometimes misjudged the distance from the open window of the moving car to the stationary, muffled cushion of a grassy roadside.
The ignominy was instant and damning: A loud "thump" as the half-full can hit the unrelenting pavement, and the abuse that followed, not all good-natured, because after all, we drove all the way to Louisville for that beer and spent every last dime we had on it, so how the hell can you waste it like that!
It was in this manner, slumped shamefully in the back seat of my friend’s car trying to choke down a warm Sterling, that I resolved to become a better beer drinker than all of them. I was an athlete then, and contrary to legend, I never drank during basketball season (although beer and baseball went together like, well, beer and baseball), so my beer drinking practice sessions had to be squeezed in during summer and off-seasons.
Others began to plan their careers in physics, cosmetology, and insurance sales; meanwhile, I conspired to be the best at beer. Gradually, over time, things began to fall into place.
I found a beer that I really liked: Schlitz in the 16-oz "tall boy" cans. Next, there was a craze for Little Millers and Little Kings; at only 7 oz each, they could be consumed before they got warm, and in multiple doses that gave good story: "Yeah, we each had 12 beers on the way over here." I learned that malt liquor packed a punch, especially when clad in those bright silvery blue cans of the Bull.
Finally, America’s beer barons came through with the ultimate solution for the problem of teenage drinkers who wanted to drink beer, but couldn’t cope with the rough pungency of the full-flavored beers of the post WWII era: Light, low-calorie lagers, of which Miller’s Lite was the first widely distributed example, although there were others, like Anheuser-Busch’s Natural Light.
The advent of light beer was a revolution, albeit a regressive one, and after a quarter century of light beer, it’s almost impossible to remember the time before it became as much a part of the fabric of American life as white sandwich bread baked from the paste that your elementary teacher used to warn you against eating.
What she didn’t tell you is that if you add water and ferment the paste, it becomes light beer, with all the character you would expect from such a concoction, which is none; this was the point then, and it remains the point now, and it’s easy to see why light beer became such a phenomenon.
When I became a bit older and began visiting bars -- not before 1979, when I was 19, and gaining in frequency to the present day – most of the old men were drinking traditional manly beers like Pabst, Sterling and Miller High Life. At some point shortly thereafter, I became aware that almost all of them had switched to Lite, Bud Light and even Old Milwaukee Light. Price seemingly wasn’t the issue; if anything, they’d traded up and were paying more to cover the cost of Miller’s television ads.
After long consideration, I concluded that a lifetime of Sterling and City finally had gotten to them, and when they realized that light beer was socially acceptable to their peers, under the rationalization that it was less filling, thus enabling them to drink even more beer than before, they fled their traditional brands as fast as their terminally damaged taste buds would carry them. Better the nothingness of wet air than something terminally foul, and you could hear the sighs of relief in air-conditioned lounges and softball fields all across the nation.
The advent of light beer, the castrato of the world of beer, had the same effect on me, at least initially. Less flavor in a beer really was desirable when compared with the odiousness of full flavor at the time, and in the absence of any other standard of comparison that might define full flavor in a positive fashion.
In an odd sort of way, and one that might have been avoided if other stylistic choices were readily available as they are today, light beer became a step-ladder for me. I was able to drink enough of it, and sufficiently often, to finally develop a taste for the generic entity of "beer flavor," which I would define as those qualities helping to differentiate between beer, cola and orange juice, and which light beers do possess, albeit it in a substantially diluted form.
The olfactory convenience of light beer bought me some time, and in sheer bulk it helped to satisfy some of the frantically hormonal cravings of my college days. It wasn’t drinking, it was swallowing; it was affordable, and this suited me at the time.
It didn’t suit me for long. Light beer may have been a utilitarian means to an end, and a temporary release (not unlike masturbation), but to me it never was an end itself, even when I was drinking it. When I reached the magical, mystical age of 21, the legally mandated pressures of adolescence were suddenly gone (although the self-imposed cultural ones remained), and finally I could examine the wares at Cut Rate Liquors in Jeffersonville at my leisure.
There were many imported beers, a few of which were British ales, and many more international lagers. Money was a problem, so sampling these beers meant splurging, but at least they were different, and they hinted at broader horizons.
Fortunately for me, two good friends intervened at this juncture and were able to provide personal testimony for two of the mysterious beers on Cut Rate’s import shelf, and the impact of tasting these two previously unknown beverages would have a profound effect on my way of thinking about beer.
Larry went away to college and returned with Guinness Extra Stout, and Dave did the same, introducing me to Pilsner Urquell, then sold in four-pack cartons for a lofty $3.99 plus sales tax.
I was intrigued. I’d had Molson, Labatts and Beck’s, but what was the spicy flavor in the Pilsner Urquell, that piquant bitterness cutting through creamy grain flavor, and something that I didn’t remember experiencing before? Dave wasn’t sure, but he thought it was the hops. Whatever it was, I liked it, and the Guinness, black like coffee, dry and heavy, macho in some way that I was not able to put into words, was unlike any "dark" beer I’d ever had.
You mean there were different sorts of dark beers, too? Dark beers were not new to me, although I hadn’t the first idea why they were dark, or how they were made, or how they differed from the massive blackness of Guinness that cut a swath through my soul.
arly on, in ’78 or thereabouts, there had been a dark beer from a long-defunct Chicago brewery called Peter Hand (it also made an extra light beer of some sort), and it was followed onto Cut Rate’s shelves by Augsburger Dark. Occasionally we had purchased Lowenbrau Dark, having accepted without question Miller’s advertising strategy of "tonight, let it be Lowenbrau," and saving the Americanized version of a German dunkel for special times.
There had been other sightings of dark, but none like Guinness. Don Da Leon’s, a deli and imported foods store located in the Quadrangle in Jeff, was far ahead of its time (I had a bottle of Kirin there in 1978) and put Schlitz Dark on draft some time around 1981, but even before that, Mario’s Pizza on Charlestown Road in New Albany had a dark beer, the brand now forgotten, on draft.
Just after having Guinness for the first time, I saw Stroh’s Bock and tried it. What was bock? It was what was left over at the bottom of the vats after spring cleaning each year, or so I was told, with serene and authoritative confidence, by an old man at Steinert’s who said he wouldn’t touch the dark stuff for fear of its 20% alcohol content. Later, when I learned that the tales of spring scrubbing and heightened potency were utter nonsense, I was embarrassed for having been so stupid.
At first, we mixed the Guinness with lager beers; on more than one occasion, we took a six-pack into the K & H Café in Lanesville and made black and tans with draft Budweiser. The Gods saw fit not to punish me for this transgression, and soon I graduated to straight Guinness … and I’ve been there ever since. As Mark Francis once noted, the perfect Black and Tan isn’t halves of stout and pale ale mixed in a glass, it’s a pint of each, mixed in your stomach.
Unfortunately, there were many years of practice and refinement yet to come, because merely being introduced to good beers like Guinness and Pilsner Urquell did not automatically transport me to a state of pure bliss and enlightenment. Progress was painstaking and incremental, with old, tested temptations and new, unexplored domains vying for hegemony over my mind, my palate and my wallet.
By 1983, I was working part-time at the old Scoreboard Liquors in New Albany and seeking to stock one door of the walk-in cooler with imports (remember, micros were still several years away), and I continued to do this right up until 1992, when I went into the business at Rich O’s.
Beginning around 1984, I would no longer drink light, low-calorie beer. In 1985, I traveled to Europe for the first time, and this was followed by journeys in 1987, 1989 and 1991, and others since. After each trip, it was harder than the one before to go back to my old haunts and to drink cans of Strohs or draft Budweiser, but I must confess that I did go back and do precisely that, at least until 1992. Even the inception of the FOSSILS homebrewing club in 1990 did not entirely divert my attention away from the swill that had ruled my youth, although I can truthfully say that Budweiser has not touched my lips for almost
six years.
I don’t know why it took so long for these obvious lessons to take root. For ten years, between my first Guinness and my last can of atrocious Budweiser aboard an Amtrak train bound to Chicago for a job interview and a visit to the Goose Island brewpub, around four lengthy trips to Europe and submersion in the continent’s still vibrant beer culture, and right up through the first year and a half of FOSSILS, swill remained a part of my life. I can say that swill’s hold over me steadily diminished during this time, but this does little to absolve me.
However, I can spot a few trends that help to understand my actions, and by extension, provide some insight into the motivations of the unenlightened majority of the population, for whom the arguments I’m setting forth here are no more relevant than the theological abstractions of the medieval academics who transformed Augustine’s earnestness into dogma to undergird the Inquisition.
You can’t know what you’re missing if you haven’t been exposed to it, and when you have, familiar habits and conveniences don’t change easily.
It takes an act of calculated volition to escape the subtle noose of conformity that American consumer culture imperceptibly tightens with every ubiquitous ploy in its considerable arsenal, with every billboard, television advertisement and sponsorship agreement that assaults our senses in a typical day.
To begin escaping it, you have to be willing to question beliefs that seem all the more sacrosanct owing to the almost religious conviction with which they are advanced.
You must try to cease thinking in terms of packaging and presentation, and begin thinking in terms of essences and ultimates, to abandon the orthodoxy that more for less is always better, and to recognize that enlightenment is far preferable to ignorance even when broader understanding brings with it "unpatriotic" and "antisocial" perceptions and connotations on the part of your peers.
This last part is the hardest part. It comes when you’ve been able to do these things, and by doing so, you find yourself utterly and irrevocably at odds with the culture of your upbringing. The past and the people who populated it retain a pull on you, but you know that you can never go back to it. It, and they, will have to come to you – or be damned.
It is unlikely that Augustine drank beer. If he did, it wasn’t beer as we know it today, but human nature is a constant that pulses throughout the long, intervening centuries. He lived in an age when certainties were being methodically stripped away as the Roman empire disintegrated into chaos, and numerous other forces competed to occupy the resulting vacuum. In the midst of societal disarray, he looked at himself and saw obvious parallels with his past, with his own aimlessness, lewdness, and overall lack of thought and misdirection, and although his memories of earlier times were in many respects remarkably balanced, seemingly to the point of nostalgia in some instances, they symbolized a life and a mode of thinking that were no longer options for him. They comprised a life he could no longer live.
His mature Christian beliefs were a framework for self-interpretation, as well as providing the foundation for his advocacy of Christian belief as the balm for troubled days in the present, and as a means of transcending the old ways collapsing all around his world.
For my money, the sociology of human beings making alcoholic beverages and drinking them, both privately and publicly, is the most complex, intimate and fascinating of all such systems that seek to explain our behavior in the context of interaction with others. All the elements are there: Religiosity, education, science, individual and group psychology … on and on, with all aspects of the human experience, the bodies and the blood, capable of being poured into a glass and consumed.
The power and intensity of the metaphor is enhanced by knowledge, and this alters your relationship with the people who are taking part, and with the elixir in the glass.
Of course, one tinkers with these fragile relationships at his own peril; once released, the genie might be reluctant to crawl meekly back into the bottle, and so it has been with me. It takes a certain hardness of heart to realize that your beliefs are beyond compromise, even if the result is a schism with the past.
I’ve come a long way toward achieving my goal of being a better beer drinker than all the rest of them – not in terms of volume, but in terms of understanding. If celebrating this accomplishment means sharing with them the detestable liquid that started us all down this path, and partaking of the liquid they still venerate, as though nothing has changed in twenty years of incessant, clamorous change, then I’ll have to regrettably pass, and urge them to come to me on my terms … or not at all.
During these many years of heartwarming successes and teeth-grinding failures, my otherwise fickle muse has consistently advocated one thing above all else: Write about what you know.
So, I began writing about beer in earnest in 1990, and if memory serves me, tens of thousands of my words on the topic of beer were offered pro bono to the planet at large until 1999, when the Louisville Eccentric Observer (LEO) agreed to pay me $40 to spend $800 of my own money for a trip to Denver, Colorado, and an article on the Great American Beer Festival.
For the past year, I've contributed a beer column to Food & Dining, a Louisville-based quarterly magazine that is essential reading for local restaurant goers.
Since November, 2004, many of you have been reading this blog, and you're probably asking a perfectly legitimate question: What does beer and beer writing have to do with the life and times of New Albany, and specifically, with the stated aim of NA Confidential?
My answer lies within the following piece, first written in 1998, and republished here for the umpteenth time. A good number of you have read it before, and I appreciate your indulgence as I post it for the consideration of the many who have not.
Consider it the longest business card in the world, and it just might make more sense.
-------
You Can't Go Home Again.
I had my back to the light and my face was upon the things where the light fell. My face, by which I looked upon things that were in the light, was itself in the darkness ... Augustine, Bishop of Hippo
There may be Biblical precedents for the notion of the self-analytical literary confession, although to my knowledge the first writer to explore the idea that "it takes one to know one" was Augustine (born 354 A.D.), later made St. Augustine, but at the time just an ordinary cleric obsessed with his sinful past.
From the vantage point of later life, and during the course of various ruminations that were designed to make the case for conversion to Christianity, Augustine freely referred to his youthful lusts, debaucheries and indiscretions, cataloguing and dissecting them, and offering them for the painful scrutiny of his readers.
By doing so, he became perhaps the first public figure to emit a primal scream, predating John Lennon by at least 1,550 years, unburdening himself as a means of seeking catharsis for seemingly irreconcilable inner desires, addressing his internal dissonance, recognizing it, and conquering it in the name of something far better.
For Augustine, the problem was sin.
For the Potable Curmudgeon, it is swill.
It has been a long and arduous path to self-knowledge, trudging upwards from the desperate and degraded depths of Schaefer "Weekender" 30-packs to the sublime pinnacle of vintage Alaskan Smoked Porter, but at least the swill-soaked years of my wayward youth were not passed in vain. From them are derived valuable glimpses into the human psyche, and possible explanations for why the majority of American beer drinkers remain in the same abject, leaden state of bondage that I managed to forego.
How do I know this shtick so well?
Because I was there, baby. I could spend the next decade drinking Guinness, and I’m still not sure the overall balance of a lifetime would be tilted to good beer over bad. The truth is, I was really bad for a long, long time … and then I got better, although it took a long, long time.
Now I’d like to see to it that you don’t have to go through the same thing. I want to make the world safe for drinkers of good beer, and for the next generation to be spared the hardships we had to endure.
There are questions: Must one necessarily experience bad beer to gain an appreciation for good beer, or can understanding and knowledge of the good somehow be gained in the absence of the bad, and without that point of comparison?
What happens to you when you gain knowledge of the good, but see so much bad still entrenched all around you?
How the hell did I get here?
Apart from a handful of wee nips as a child, taken from bottles of my father’s beer, my first solo "cold one" was consumed at a junior high school party. Actually, four of us split a can of (shudder … cough … it wasn’t easy for Augustine, either) Budweiser. The primary objective of this action, which took place out in the woods, a safe distance from the prying eyes of the hostess’s parents, seemed to be the establishment of street credibility by having beer on our breaths and mimicking the outward appearances of drunkenness, with which all were familiar, if not by personal experience.
It was a stormy April a year later when the gang staged the first of many campouts at the Floyds Knobs farm of one of my closest friends at the time. I dutifully helped to drag three cases of Fall City longnecks up a wooded bluff, leading from the chilly waters of a creek where they had been hidden by a sympathetic senior football player.
For these efforts, I was amply rewarded with by first genuine and unstaged bout of inebriation, a rite of passage made tolerable by the icy flavorlessness of the beer, which numbed my teeth, bolstered my confidence, and gave me an escape from shyness.
We were oblivious to the elements, paying no heed to the rising wind and rain that heralded the arrival of a storm, but Jeff’s parents were paying attention, and soon we saw the headlights from their pickup truck coming down the dirt path. We were told that tornadoes had been spotted, and we’d best move the party, beer and all, to the barn by the house. Our paranoia subsided once we realized that they didn’t care about our drinking as long as we stayed put, and we piled into the bed of the pickup, lay on our backs, stared up into the swirling eternity and swore through stinging raindrops that we could see tornadoes fornicating – except that wasn’t the exact word we used.
Another year later, when my friends began getting their driver's licenses, the bountiful paradise of Louisville’s west end liquor stores beckoned to us, just beyond the provincial confines of New Albany, down Vincennes Street to the K & I toll bridge, and over the Ohio River into Portland. It was then that the frustrating struggle to find a brand of beer that did not totally disgust me began in earnest.
Owing to my sadistically youthful appearance, I wasn’t often the one chosen to go inside Liken’s or the Corner Store and try to get served, so I was at the mercy of my companions’s tastes in beer. This was problematic, because at this stage the "flavor" of a beer was little more than an unpleasant impediment to ingesting its alcohol and trying to look cool while grimacing. My friends liked Sterling and Pabst; I didn’t, but they were doing the work, and I was in no position to argue, so I had to adapt.
I was never very good at math, but some numbers added up for me: The colder the beer was kept, the less taste it would have, and the more I could drink of it. My mission in life became cooler maintenance, to take the cheapest styrofoam cooler I could find, nurture it, protect it from harm, and most importantly, to keep it filled with ice. If I could keep the bottom from falling out and find a safe place to stash it, we could save a buck or two the following weekend.
This helped. However, summertime meant that I had problems finishing the beers before they began to get warm. This led to embarrassment on more than one occasion. I would be jammed into the back seat of a late model junker, without the female companionship that the backseat imagery of rock ‘n’ roll demands, but with an ice-cold can of beer straight from the cooler, gamely making it through the first frozen gulps, then suffering the dismaying recognition that it still was Sterling, Pabst, and Falls City, and realizing that it tasted too bad to finish.
After a sufficient interval had passed, and I determined that I was supposed to have finished the now warmed and thoroughly vile beer, I would throw the "empty" out the window -- but in the still of a humid summer evening’s drive in the countryside, I sometimes misjudged the distance from the open window of the moving car to the stationary, muffled cushion of a grassy roadside.
The ignominy was instant and damning: A loud "thump" as the half-full can hit the unrelenting pavement, and the abuse that followed, not all good-natured, because after all, we drove all the way to Louisville for that beer and spent every last dime we had on it, so how the hell can you waste it like that!
It was in this manner, slumped shamefully in the back seat of my friend’s car trying to choke down a warm Sterling, that I resolved to become a better beer drinker than all of them. I was an athlete then, and contrary to legend, I never drank during basketball season (although beer and baseball went together like, well, beer and baseball), so my beer drinking practice sessions had to be squeezed in during summer and off-seasons.
Others began to plan their careers in physics, cosmetology, and insurance sales; meanwhile, I conspired to be the best at beer. Gradually, over time, things began to fall into place.
I found a beer that I really liked: Schlitz in the 16-oz "tall boy" cans. Next, there was a craze for Little Millers and Little Kings; at only 7 oz each, they could be consumed before they got warm, and in multiple doses that gave good story: "Yeah, we each had 12 beers on the way over here." I learned that malt liquor packed a punch, especially when clad in those bright silvery blue cans of the Bull.
Finally, America’s beer barons came through with the ultimate solution for the problem of teenage drinkers who wanted to drink beer, but couldn’t cope with the rough pungency of the full-flavored beers of the post WWII era: Light, low-calorie lagers, of which Miller’s Lite was the first widely distributed example, although there were others, like Anheuser-Busch’s Natural Light.
The advent of light beer was a revolution, albeit a regressive one, and after a quarter century of light beer, it’s almost impossible to remember the time before it became as much a part of the fabric of American life as white sandwich bread baked from the paste that your elementary teacher used to warn you against eating.
What she didn’t tell you is that if you add water and ferment the paste, it becomes light beer, with all the character you would expect from such a concoction, which is none; this was the point then, and it remains the point now, and it’s easy to see why light beer became such a phenomenon.
When I became a bit older and began visiting bars -- not before 1979, when I was 19, and gaining in frequency to the present day – most of the old men were drinking traditional manly beers like Pabst, Sterling and Miller High Life. At some point shortly thereafter, I became aware that almost all of them had switched to Lite, Bud Light and even Old Milwaukee Light. Price seemingly wasn’t the issue; if anything, they’d traded up and were paying more to cover the cost of Miller’s television ads.
After long consideration, I concluded that a lifetime of Sterling and City finally had gotten to them, and when they realized that light beer was socially acceptable to their peers, under the rationalization that it was less filling, thus enabling them to drink even more beer than before, they fled their traditional brands as fast as their terminally damaged taste buds would carry them. Better the nothingness of wet air than something terminally foul, and you could hear the sighs of relief in air-conditioned lounges and softball fields all across the nation.
The advent of light beer, the castrato of the world of beer, had the same effect on me, at least initially. Less flavor in a beer really was desirable when compared with the odiousness of full flavor at the time, and in the absence of any other standard of comparison that might define full flavor in a positive fashion.
In an odd sort of way, and one that might have been avoided if other stylistic choices were readily available as they are today, light beer became a step-ladder for me. I was able to drink enough of it, and sufficiently often, to finally develop a taste for the generic entity of "beer flavor," which I would define as those qualities helping to differentiate between beer, cola and orange juice, and which light beers do possess, albeit it in a substantially diluted form.
The olfactory convenience of light beer bought me some time, and in sheer bulk it helped to satisfy some of the frantically hormonal cravings of my college days. It wasn’t drinking, it was swallowing; it was affordable, and this suited me at the time.
It didn’t suit me for long. Light beer may have been a utilitarian means to an end, and a temporary release (not unlike masturbation), but to me it never was an end itself, even when I was drinking it. When I reached the magical, mystical age of 21, the legally mandated pressures of adolescence were suddenly gone (although the self-imposed cultural ones remained), and finally I could examine the wares at Cut Rate Liquors in Jeffersonville at my leisure.
There were many imported beers, a few of which were British ales, and many more international lagers. Money was a problem, so sampling these beers meant splurging, but at least they were different, and they hinted at broader horizons.
Fortunately for me, two good friends intervened at this juncture and were able to provide personal testimony for two of the mysterious beers on Cut Rate’s import shelf, and the impact of tasting these two previously unknown beverages would have a profound effect on my way of thinking about beer.
Larry went away to college and returned with Guinness Extra Stout, and Dave did the same, introducing me to Pilsner Urquell, then sold in four-pack cartons for a lofty $3.99 plus sales tax.
I was intrigued. I’d had Molson, Labatts and Beck’s, but what was the spicy flavor in the Pilsner Urquell, that piquant bitterness cutting through creamy grain flavor, and something that I didn’t remember experiencing before? Dave wasn’t sure, but he thought it was the hops. Whatever it was, I liked it, and the Guinness, black like coffee, dry and heavy, macho in some way that I was not able to put into words, was unlike any "dark" beer I’d ever had.
You mean there were different sorts of dark beers, too? Dark beers were not new to me, although I hadn’t the first idea why they were dark, or how they were made, or how they differed from the massive blackness of Guinness that cut a swath through my soul.
arly on, in ’78 or thereabouts, there had been a dark beer from a long-defunct Chicago brewery called Peter Hand (it also made an extra light beer of some sort), and it was followed onto Cut Rate’s shelves by Augsburger Dark. Occasionally we had purchased Lowenbrau Dark, having accepted without question Miller’s advertising strategy of "tonight, let it be Lowenbrau," and saving the Americanized version of a German dunkel for special times.
There had been other sightings of dark, but none like Guinness. Don Da Leon’s, a deli and imported foods store located in the Quadrangle in Jeff, was far ahead of its time (I had a bottle of Kirin there in 1978) and put Schlitz Dark on draft some time around 1981, but even before that, Mario’s Pizza on Charlestown Road in New Albany had a dark beer, the brand now forgotten, on draft.
Just after having Guinness for the first time, I saw Stroh’s Bock and tried it. What was bock? It was what was left over at the bottom of the vats after spring cleaning each year, or so I was told, with serene and authoritative confidence, by an old man at Steinert’s who said he wouldn’t touch the dark stuff for fear of its 20% alcohol content. Later, when I learned that the tales of spring scrubbing and heightened potency were utter nonsense, I was embarrassed for having been so stupid.
At first, we mixed the Guinness with lager beers; on more than one occasion, we took a six-pack into the K & H Café in Lanesville and made black and tans with draft Budweiser. The Gods saw fit not to punish me for this transgression, and soon I graduated to straight Guinness … and I’ve been there ever since. As Mark Francis once noted, the perfect Black and Tan isn’t halves of stout and pale ale mixed in a glass, it’s a pint of each, mixed in your stomach.
Unfortunately, there were many years of practice and refinement yet to come, because merely being introduced to good beers like Guinness and Pilsner Urquell did not automatically transport me to a state of pure bliss and enlightenment. Progress was painstaking and incremental, with old, tested temptations and new, unexplored domains vying for hegemony over my mind, my palate and my wallet.
By 1983, I was working part-time at the old Scoreboard Liquors in New Albany and seeking to stock one door of the walk-in cooler with imports (remember, micros were still several years away), and I continued to do this right up until 1992, when I went into the business at Rich O’s.
Beginning around 1984, I would no longer drink light, low-calorie beer. In 1985, I traveled to Europe for the first time, and this was followed by journeys in 1987, 1989 and 1991, and others since. After each trip, it was harder than the one before to go back to my old haunts and to drink cans of Strohs or draft Budweiser, but I must confess that I did go back and do precisely that, at least until 1992. Even the inception of the FOSSILS homebrewing club in 1990 did not entirely divert my attention away from the swill that had ruled my youth, although I can truthfully say that Budweiser has not touched my lips for almost
six years.
I don’t know why it took so long for these obvious lessons to take root. For ten years, between my first Guinness and my last can of atrocious Budweiser aboard an Amtrak train bound to Chicago for a job interview and a visit to the Goose Island brewpub, around four lengthy trips to Europe and submersion in the continent’s still vibrant beer culture, and right up through the first year and a half of FOSSILS, swill remained a part of my life. I can say that swill’s hold over me steadily diminished during this time, but this does little to absolve me.
However, I can spot a few trends that help to understand my actions, and by extension, provide some insight into the motivations of the unenlightened majority of the population, for whom the arguments I’m setting forth here are no more relevant than the theological abstractions of the medieval academics who transformed Augustine’s earnestness into dogma to undergird the Inquisition.
You can’t know what you’re missing if you haven’t been exposed to it, and when you have, familiar habits and conveniences don’t change easily.
It takes an act of calculated volition to escape the subtle noose of conformity that American consumer culture imperceptibly tightens with every ubiquitous ploy in its considerable arsenal, with every billboard, television advertisement and sponsorship agreement that assaults our senses in a typical day.
To begin escaping it, you have to be willing to question beliefs that seem all the more sacrosanct owing to the almost religious conviction with which they are advanced.
You must try to cease thinking in terms of packaging and presentation, and begin thinking in terms of essences and ultimates, to abandon the orthodoxy that more for less is always better, and to recognize that enlightenment is far preferable to ignorance even when broader understanding brings with it "unpatriotic" and "antisocial" perceptions and connotations on the part of your peers.
This last part is the hardest part. It comes when you’ve been able to do these things, and by doing so, you find yourself utterly and irrevocably at odds with the culture of your upbringing. The past and the people who populated it retain a pull on you, but you know that you can never go back to it. It, and they, will have to come to you – or be damned.
It is unlikely that Augustine drank beer. If he did, it wasn’t beer as we know it today, but human nature is a constant that pulses throughout the long, intervening centuries. He lived in an age when certainties were being methodically stripped away as the Roman empire disintegrated into chaos, and numerous other forces competed to occupy the resulting vacuum. In the midst of societal disarray, he looked at himself and saw obvious parallels with his past, with his own aimlessness, lewdness, and overall lack of thought and misdirection, and although his memories of earlier times were in many respects remarkably balanced, seemingly to the point of nostalgia in some instances, they symbolized a life and a mode of thinking that were no longer options for him. They comprised a life he could no longer live.
His mature Christian beliefs were a framework for self-interpretation, as well as providing the foundation for his advocacy of Christian belief as the balm for troubled days in the present, and as a means of transcending the old ways collapsing all around his world.
For my money, the sociology of human beings making alcoholic beverages and drinking them, both privately and publicly, is the most complex, intimate and fascinating of all such systems that seek to explain our behavior in the context of interaction with others. All the elements are there: Religiosity, education, science, individual and group psychology … on and on, with all aspects of the human experience, the bodies and the blood, capable of being poured into a glass and consumed.
The power and intensity of the metaphor is enhanced by knowledge, and this alters your relationship with the people who are taking part, and with the elixir in the glass.
Of course, one tinkers with these fragile relationships at his own peril; once released, the genie might be reluctant to crawl meekly back into the bottle, and so it has been with me. It takes a certain hardness of heart to realize that your beliefs are beyond compromise, even if the result is a schism with the past.
I’ve come a long way toward achieving my goal of being a better beer drinker than all the rest of them – not in terms of volume, but in terms of understanding. If celebrating this accomplishment means sharing with them the detestable liquid that started us all down this path, and partaking of the liquid they still venerate, as though nothing has changed in twenty years of incessant, clamorous change, then I’ll have to regrettably pass, and urge them to come to me on my terms … or not at all.
Tour de France, or Tour de Trappiste?
Last year at this time, five friends and I were bicycling into Liege, Belgium to watch the start of the Tour de France.
Throughout last year’s Tour, the dominant motif was the number six, as in Lance Armstrong’s unprecedented sixth victory.
Six also was the magic number for our bicycling group, as we had resolved to ride a 500-mile circle around Belgium while visiting all six of the country’s Trappist monasteries that brew beer.
Sampling was not optional.
When we rode into Liege, two monastery breweries had already been visited, and four remained. After Liege came the “mountain stages,” i.e., the Ardennes – not exactly the Alps or Pyrenees, but bigger hills than we’d planned on attacking.
But we made it through, ending a week later at Westvletern in West Flanders, and with a Belgian television film crew following our progress as we completed the trek and quaffed the victorious ales.
Tour de France, or Tour de Trappiste?
Why not both?
In 2005, Lance has returned for what I hope is a seventh and final victory lap before retirement. My respect for his bicycling achievements is immense. It is well documented what he’s overcome to accomplish his athletic feats; it's simply an incredible thing to be alive much less excel in his customary manner.
I’ll be following the progress of this year's Tour de France … and remembering last year's Tour de Trappiste.
Orval or Chimay, anyone, with a Croque Monsieur and Frites?
Throughout last year’s Tour, the dominant motif was the number six, as in Lance Armstrong’s unprecedented sixth victory.
Six also was the magic number for our bicycling group, as we had resolved to ride a 500-mile circle around Belgium while visiting all six of the country’s Trappist monasteries that brew beer.
Sampling was not optional.
When we rode into Liege, two monastery breweries had already been visited, and four remained. After Liege came the “mountain stages,” i.e., the Ardennes – not exactly the Alps or Pyrenees, but bigger hills than we’d planned on attacking.
But we made it through, ending a week later at Westvletern in West Flanders, and with a Belgian television film crew following our progress as we completed the trek and quaffed the victorious ales.
Tour de France, or Tour de Trappiste?
Why not both?
In 2005, Lance has returned for what I hope is a seventh and final victory lap before retirement. My respect for his bicycling achievements is immense. It is well documented what he’s overcome to accomplish his athletic feats; it's simply an incredible thing to be alive much less excel in his customary manner.
I’ll be following the progress of this year's Tour de France … and remembering last year's Tour de Trappiste.
Orval or Chimay, anyone, with a Croque Monsieur and Frites?
Friday, July 01, 2005
Mass exodus to Birdseye; little people evacuate New Albany in search of cleanliness, lower educational standards.
Councilman Cappuccino’s provisional city government totters on the brink of dissolution today as dozens of New Albany’s littlest “little people” continue to flee the city in wee droves.
Miniature convoys of little cars, little RVs and little motorcycles, most piled high with little suitcases and little boxes, have barely been noticed streaming in the general direction of tiny Birdseye, where the doomsday Brambleberry sect’s leader, Councilman Cappuccino, vows to establish an exceedingly small government in exile.
CM Cappuccino, spotted yesterday at Big Lots buying Guatemalan tinned bologna, past-date bottles of KC Masterpiece and crates of orange Kool-Aid, blames pointy-headed book learners and ever changing cultural standards for his present political plight.
“I know all about funding the Gap,” snapped CM Cappuccino, “because that’s where my kids want to go and shop, and I tell ‘em look, Wal-Mart’s fashion line is just as good.”
According to the “little people” themselves, the imminent threat of increased prosperity and higher property values as New Albany’s revitalization proceeds are their primary reasons for seeking asylum in bucolic Birdseye.
Others point to the Village People’s 70’s-era hit song “YMCA” as a prophetic and almost Biblical warning -- albeit without divine sanction -- against allowing the Scribner Place project to go through.
“We are the little people,” sputtered one refugee yesterday as he relieved himself behind a blade of grass along the highway median, “and we will be heard!”
Miniature convoys of little cars, little RVs and little motorcycles, most piled high with little suitcases and little boxes, have barely been noticed streaming in the general direction of tiny Birdseye, where the doomsday Brambleberry sect’s leader, Councilman Cappuccino, vows to establish an exceedingly small government in exile.
CM Cappuccino, spotted yesterday at Big Lots buying Guatemalan tinned bologna, past-date bottles of KC Masterpiece and crates of orange Kool-Aid, blames pointy-headed book learners and ever changing cultural standards for his present political plight.
“I know all about funding the Gap,” snapped CM Cappuccino, “because that’s where my kids want to go and shop, and I tell ‘em look, Wal-Mart’s fashion line is just as good.”
According to the “little people” themselves, the imminent threat of increased prosperity and higher property values as New Albany’s revitalization proceeds are their primary reasons for seeking asylum in bucolic Birdseye.
Others point to the Village People’s 70’s-era hit song “YMCA” as a prophetic and almost Biblical warning -- albeit without divine sanction -- against allowing the Scribner Place project to go through.
“We are the little people,” sputtered one refugee yesterday as he relieved himself behind a blade of grass along the highway median, “and we will be heard!”
Thursday, June 30, 2005
The case for re-opening Locust Street.
Frequent reader and New Albany resident Jerry Steuerwald contributed the following comment, which argues in favor of the city of New Albany re-opening Locust Street to traffic.
This consideration was the main agenda item at Wednesday's Board of Public Works and Safety meeting. The board postponed a final decision until its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, July 12.
In essence, the school system's position is that as the campuses of New Albany High School and Hazelwood Middle School have been augmented and enlarged, the potential threat to the safety of students from intemperate drivers on a reopened Locust Street has grown to the point that the street must remain shut.
At the most recent Public Works hearing, several speakers proposed compromise solutions to help regulate traffic during the more crowded afternoon hours when school lets out.
Viewpoints, anyone?
See also Residents sound off on Locust Street reopening, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor. Jerry's column also was posted in today's Volunteer Hoosier.
Liberate Locust Street
By J.R. Steuerwald.
During the past few years, since Locust Street has been closed due to construction at Hazelwood Middle School, residents residing around Locust Street have seen traffic on our residential streets escalate.
Locust Street was designed by city planners to handle traffic wishing to travel between Vincennes and Silver Streets. Locust Street consists of two schools, two parking areas, tennis courts and the football stadium, none of which are occupied continually throughout the day.
Residents living around Locust Street live at and use their properties 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They should be able to have safe access to their homes and be able to allow their children to play on their property without having to be concerned about increased traffic flow and excessive speeds from drivers using their streets in the attempt to connect between Vincennes and Silver Streets.
Representatives of the school system at the June 29th Board of Public Works and Safety meeting for the City of New Albany would have you believe that their insistence on closing Locust Street is for the “sake of the children” and their safety.
I personally couldn’t agree more, but whose children are we talking about anyway? Many of the kids they claim to be interested in protecting come from the very same streets whose residents (131 of whom signed a petition) seek to have Locust Street re-opened.
The issue of whether or not Locust Street should be re-opened is more complex than our school children’s safety. No one on either side wants anybody put in an unsafe position, whether they reside on Locust Street or any other street in the area. No! This issue is bigger than that. Both the school system and the surrounding neighborhoods can peacefully co-exist if the traffic is managed during peak school hours.
I’ve lived in larger cities that change the traffic flow of major streets daily depending on the traffic needs. Locust Street doesn’t need to be closed to city residents who pay taxes to support New Albany schools, just because our city’s “leaders” can’t find a reasonable solution to this problem —manage the traffic during peak school hours and open the street to city residents!
I wait with anticipation to see how the Board of Public Works and Safety decides on July 12.
This consideration was the main agenda item at Wednesday's Board of Public Works and Safety meeting. The board postponed a final decision until its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, July 12.
In essence, the school system's position is that as the campuses of New Albany High School and Hazelwood Middle School have been augmented and enlarged, the potential threat to the safety of students from intemperate drivers on a reopened Locust Street has grown to the point that the street must remain shut.
At the most recent Public Works hearing, several speakers proposed compromise solutions to help regulate traffic during the more crowded afternoon hours when school lets out.
Viewpoints, anyone?
See also Residents sound off on Locust Street reopening, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor. Jerry's column also was posted in today's Volunteer Hoosier.
Liberate Locust Street
By J.R. Steuerwald.
During the past few years, since Locust Street has been closed due to construction at Hazelwood Middle School, residents residing around Locust Street have seen traffic on our residential streets escalate.
Locust Street was designed by city planners to handle traffic wishing to travel between Vincennes and Silver Streets. Locust Street consists of two schools, two parking areas, tennis courts and the football stadium, none of which are occupied continually throughout the day.
Residents living around Locust Street live at and use their properties 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They should be able to have safe access to their homes and be able to allow their children to play on their property without having to be concerned about increased traffic flow and excessive speeds from drivers using their streets in the attempt to connect between Vincennes and Silver Streets.
Representatives of the school system at the June 29th Board of Public Works and Safety meeting for the City of New Albany would have you believe that their insistence on closing Locust Street is for the “sake of the children” and their safety.
I personally couldn’t agree more, but whose children are we talking about anyway? Many of the kids they claim to be interested in protecting come from the very same streets whose residents (131 of whom signed a petition) seek to have Locust Street re-opened.
The issue of whether or not Locust Street should be re-opened is more complex than our school children’s safety. No one on either side wants anybody put in an unsafe position, whether they reside on Locust Street or any other street in the area. No! This issue is bigger than that. Both the school system and the surrounding neighborhoods can peacefully co-exist if the traffic is managed during peak school hours.
I’ve lived in larger cities that change the traffic flow of major streets daily depending on the traffic needs. Locust Street doesn’t need to be closed to city residents who pay taxes to support New Albany schools, just because our city’s “leaders” can’t find a reasonable solution to this problem —manage the traffic during peak school hours and open the street to city residents!
I wait with anticipation to see how the Board of Public Works and Safety decides on July 12.
3rd District's Price AWOL as Board of Public Works & Safety and ESSNA come together at the Calumet Club.
In testimony before the Board of Public Works and Safety, which gathered Wednesday in a special evening session at the Calumet Club, numerous citizens spoke to the board, and the following was established beyond reasonable doubt:
They foul the streets and alleys with refuse.
They let their pets run rampant.
They drive too fast/recklessly/loudly/badly.
They don’t control their teenagers.
They refuse to maintain their property properly.
They sell, use and advocate drugs.
They are slumlords and just don’t care.
Perhaps Pogo was right, after all.
So, Tony, Steve and Chas -- you thought it would be easy serving on the Board of Public Works and Safety?
It was known well in advance that the most pressing issue on the agenda would be the future status of a section of Locust Street by New Albany High School and Hazelwood Middle School.
This part of Locust has remained closed during long years of seemingly endless school construction, and residents of Depauw Avenue and surrounding streets have grown correspondingly weary of heavy traffic through their neighborhoods.
The New Albany-Floyd County Schools insisted that having been given approval to extend their campuses in, around and over Locust, a resumption of traffic would pose a safety threat to the students, primarily during the afternoon when classes let out.
Faced with a crowd eager for a decision, and a Gordian street problem fairly begging for some variety of compromise, the three-member board chose the most rational solution – tabling the measure until July 12, and hopefully allowing time for the tripartite crystal ball to conjure a suggestion or three.
As is customary during the board’s regular Tuesday morning meetings, a wide range of issues were raised and discussed, with the city’s department heads present to take notes and be consulted about those questions falling within their jurisdiction.
A sampling:
Q. When will a bridge on Jolissant and a guardrail on Old Ford be prepared?
A. After it is determined whether the drivers who damaged them have insurance. If not, work proceeds and the driver(s) will be sued.
Q. Is it fair to issue citations for blocking the street sweeper when the streets aren’t being cleaned according to the regular schedule owing to equipment shortages?
A. The law is the law, irrespective.
Q. Should you get a busy signal when calling 9-1-1?
A. No, absolutely not. Police Chief Harl will investigate.
Q. Will the road up Spring Street hill be reopened?
A. Yes, if we can find the money necessary to make repairs the right way.
In addition to the department heads, four of the city’s nine city council representatives attended the public works meeting: Councilmen Blevins, Messer, Kochert and Schmidt.
Councilman Schmidt, who is a regular visitor to works board meetings, seized the occasion of reporting tall weeds at a site in his district to publicly “clear up something I’ve been blamed for,” which was erroneous information “in the paper and so forth” to the effect that he alone stood in the way of he council finalizing ordinance enforcement.
“The Mayor said ‘hold it,’ not us,” said Schmidt, who attributed the delay to waiting for financial signals from the state, then firmly added “I’m not the problem,” although he declined to identify the source of the report to which he referred, leaving most listeners confused but respectful.
3rd District Councilman Steve Price was unavailable for comment, having concluded that the first special night public works board meeting in recent memory, if ever, did not merit his attention and attendance in spite of it being held in his own district and hosted by the East Spring Street Neighborhood Association, one of the city’s most active proponents of community betterment .
Anyone noticing a pattern here?
Perhaps the absent Councilman Price can provide New Albany Confidential with a concert review of the Bob Dylan/Willie Nelson show, held tonight at Louisville Slugger Field, which CM Price also might wish to contemplate as municipal infrastructure investment carried forward by future-thinking visionaries despite the potential threats of nuclear holocaust, shark attack and gangsta rap.
They foul the streets and alleys with refuse.
They let their pets run rampant.
They drive too fast/recklessly/loudly/badly.
They don’t control their teenagers.
They refuse to maintain their property properly.
They sell, use and advocate drugs.
They are slumlords and just don’t care.
Perhaps Pogo was right, after all.
So, Tony, Steve and Chas -- you thought it would be easy serving on the Board of Public Works and Safety?
It was known well in advance that the most pressing issue on the agenda would be the future status of a section of Locust Street by New Albany High School and Hazelwood Middle School.
This part of Locust has remained closed during long years of seemingly endless school construction, and residents of Depauw Avenue and surrounding streets have grown correspondingly weary of heavy traffic through their neighborhoods.
The New Albany-Floyd County Schools insisted that having been given approval to extend their campuses in, around and over Locust, a resumption of traffic would pose a safety threat to the students, primarily during the afternoon when classes let out.
Faced with a crowd eager for a decision, and a Gordian street problem fairly begging for some variety of compromise, the three-member board chose the most rational solution – tabling the measure until July 12, and hopefully allowing time for the tripartite crystal ball to conjure a suggestion or three.
As is customary during the board’s regular Tuesday morning meetings, a wide range of issues were raised and discussed, with the city’s department heads present to take notes and be consulted about those questions falling within their jurisdiction.
A sampling:
Q. When will a bridge on Jolissant and a guardrail on Old Ford be prepared?
A. After it is determined whether the drivers who damaged them have insurance. If not, work proceeds and the driver(s) will be sued.
Q. Is it fair to issue citations for blocking the street sweeper when the streets aren’t being cleaned according to the regular schedule owing to equipment shortages?
A. The law is the law, irrespective.
Q. Should you get a busy signal when calling 9-1-1?
A. No, absolutely not. Police Chief Harl will investigate.
Q. Will the road up Spring Street hill be reopened?
A. Yes, if we can find the money necessary to make repairs the right way.
In addition to the department heads, four of the city’s nine city council representatives attended the public works meeting: Councilmen Blevins, Messer, Kochert and Schmidt.
Councilman Schmidt, who is a regular visitor to works board meetings, seized the occasion of reporting tall weeds at a site in his district to publicly “clear up something I’ve been blamed for,” which was erroneous information “in the paper and so forth” to the effect that he alone stood in the way of he council finalizing ordinance enforcement.
“The Mayor said ‘hold it,’ not us,” said Schmidt, who attributed the delay to waiting for financial signals from the state, then firmly added “I’m not the problem,” although he declined to identify the source of the report to which he referred, leaving most listeners confused but respectful.
3rd District Councilman Steve Price was unavailable for comment, having concluded that the first special night public works board meeting in recent memory, if ever, did not merit his attention and attendance in spite of it being held in his own district and hosted by the East Spring Street Neighborhood Association, one of the city’s most active proponents of community betterment .
Anyone noticing a pattern here?
Perhaps the absent Councilman Price can provide New Albany Confidential with a concert review of the Bob Dylan/Willie Nelson show, held tonight at Louisville Slugger Field, which CM Price also might wish to contemplate as municipal infrastructure investment carried forward by future-thinking visionaries despite the potential threats of nuclear holocaust, shark attack and gangsta rap.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
