Listen to this: "Five Things: Dawn Howard On Ireland, Grief, And Political Transformation."

Hey, wait -- I know Dawn Howard. Now, go listen to the program, where she somehow made it through the entire 42 minutes without mentioning craft beer.

Five Things: Dawn Howard On Ireland, Grief, And Political Transformation, by Tara Anderson (WFPL)

(podcast) Episode 42: Dawn Howard on Political Transformations and Facing Fears

This week’s guest on Five Things is an accountant who’s finally figured out how to use her skills to support the things she believes in.

Let me explain — Dawn Howard has experienced a political transformation over the past few years. She describes herself as a former Republican who is now “super-left,” as she says, and she says that change started when she broke her ankle while living in Ireland. (Listen to the episode to learn how that makes sense together.)

She recently quit her job as a corporate tax professional to open her own consulting firm, and that led her to becoming a paid staffer for a political campaign: she’s now the finance director for Dan Canon’s Congressional run in Indiana’s 9th District.

Dawn is a friend of mine, and that’s why I knew she’d be great in this context — she’s unusually open about her challenges in life, and she talks about serious things in a really smart, funny way. I’m so glad to share her story here. Listen in the player above.

On why she chose accounting as a profession:
“I noticed that for some reason, accounting came to me way easier than it seemed to anybody else in the class. It still does — all the debits and the credits and all that stuff, it just clicks immediately, and it’s the easiest, most logical thing in the world to me. And so at that point, I was very much like, it’s not about what you want to do, it’s not about passion, I’m not going to be an astronaut, I’m not going to be an actress, I’m not going to save the world. This is a thing that’s going to get me a job, so I’m going to be an accounting major.”

On moving to Ireland by herself to work:
“I learned a ton about myself there. I was by myself for the first time there. I did a lot of walking on the beach by myself there, thinking about lots of stuff, most notably it’s where I became the liberal that I am today.”

On speaking about her own struggles with mental illness without stigma:
“I’d been for a very long time a person that was all talk and very little action in this area. Telling people that, you know, there’s no shame in getting therapy, go get therapy. There’s no shame in taking meds, go take meds. Mental illness is like any other illness, and we should treat it that way — all the while not going to therapy, not taking any meds, thinking that if I was less lazy, if I would exercise, if I would have my life together a little more, that everything would be better. But eventually, I finally stuck in with a therapist for a while, got a diagnosis, went through all the processes of the trial-and-error of the meds. And there is no one answer, but it is an answer."

Jeff Gahan, too: "Conservatives blame the poor because the alternative is to blame capitalism."

Forget capitalism and religion. Kool-Aid-ism is the dominant ideology of our age, and it can be consumed by almost anyone -- and is, in startling volumes, regularly.

Where do you begin? With your premises, of course.

Why Conservatives Blame Poverty on the Poor, by Sarah Jones (New Republic)

A new essay by National Review's Kevin Williamson exposes the ideological blind spots of responsibility politics.

Scapegoat, prophet, moron, rogue—the poor white is a shapeshifter. He changes forms as the needs of his beholders change. When liberals need to blame a class for Donald Trump’s presidency, the poor white will do; never mind that two-thirds of all Trump supporters made $50,000 or more a year. When conservatives need to cast liberals as aloof elitists they appoint themselves the poor white’s defenders—until their ideology is threatened, and then it is time to take out the trash.

Because:

Black welfare recipients aren’t the problem; Mexicans aren’t the problem; immigration isn’t the problem. But low wages, a shrinking safety net, subprime mortgages, unattainable health care, impoverished local schools, among all the other locks that trap the poor in place, can and should be pinned to the very system conservatives want to defend. Williamson fixates on the willful stupidity of the poor because he must. If he didn’t, he’d have to indict his own ideology.

More about Hoosier Action, and a reminder: We Are New Albany.

Don't forget: there's an on-line petition to sign.

Meet WE ARE NEW ALBANY, and tell Jeff Gahan: No demolition of public housing without a plan to replace!

In Spring 2017, New Albany, Indiana Mayor Jeff Gahan announced his intention to demolish more than half of the town's public housing stock. Apart from vague promises of housing vouchers, residents have been told almost nothing about the plan or what will become of them. Sign the petition: No demolition without a plan to replace!

Learn more about Hoosier Action in this interview from July.

Organizing in the Heartland: Indiana Group Builds Working-Class Momentum, by Sarah Jaffe (Truthout)

Today we bring you a conversation with Jesse Alexander Myerson, an organizer with Hoosier Action who hosts an Indiana-based podcast called From the Heartland about people who are organizing in the interior of the country and in places where leftists aren't normally thought of as being.

Just a snippet.

Telling these stories is an important part of this kind of organizing, but you can also end up with people thinking that just telling a sad story is going to be enough to move their senator and then wondering why that doesn't work. I would love for you to talk a little bit more about the way this storytelling does and doesn't fit into your organizing strategy.

It is definitely integral. As you imply, it is not sufficient unto itself, but basically, the essence of the organizing we are doing is relational. The idea is that any organizing that takes place absent the building and deepening of relationships between people is going to be basically facile. It is one thing if you can get 12 people in a room to talk to us and it is another thing if you get 400 and that 400 really only comes when people have deepened their relationships with one another.

A lot of this organizing is based on having long one-on-one discussions with people, what their lives are like, what they are interested in, what they are concerned about, what they are afraid of, what they are angry about, what they are hopeful for and growing relationships that way. That is both on the doors and ideally in follow-ups after people get knocked or called. Those stories are important in the actual day-to-day organizing, talking to people and letting them know who you are and finding out who they are. As a kind of public expression, really what we hope to do is to mobilize people with that, but ultimately that mobilization should turn into becoming a dues-paying member, coming to monthly member meetings, joining a team and taking on work. That can be going and knocking on doors, it can be doing data entry, it can be helping to promote issues or taking on a shift at the farmers market or at a county fair, flyering or taking petitions, but ideally it is not a high temperature sort of organizing such as you and I saw at Occupy Wall Street where it is lots of marches, lots of heat, lots of intensity.

Really, that emotional heat is being channeled into really well-functioning systems that people can take on discrete amounts of work that make sense with their working lives and their family lives, but that they can see serving to proliferate the organization.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Hapax. Nonce. Googlewhack.

Back in 2007, a blogger for the Oxford University Press greeted the release of a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which omitted many "archaic" words from prior to the year 1700.

One-Hit Wonders: From Hapax to Googlewhacks, by Ben Zimmer (OUP)

 ... Some of those pre-1700 contributions wouldn’t otherwise make the cut, since they never worked their way into general usage. In fact, some words aren’t attested anywhere else in the voluminous quotation files of the OED or in Oxford’s two-billion-word corpus of contemporary English. In lexicographical circles, this type of literary one-off is called a nonce word — or, using a Greek expression that’s much more fun to say, a hapax legomenon.

Zimmer considered the then-pursuit of Googlewhacking.

Nowadays it’s much harder to find a uniquely occurring example of a word, since we have enormous online corpora at our fingertips thanks to Google and other search engines. And of course, as soon as you find an online hapax, it’s no longer a hapax as soon as you discuss it online! It’s a bit easier to find a combination of two words that appear only once on a webpage indexed by Google. This type of singular collocation has been dubbed a Googlewhack, and the hunt for them is known as Googlewhacking. It was much simpler to find Googlewhacks back in 2002 when the pastime was developed, but now most of the queries no longer yield unique search results. (I won’t mention any successful ones here lest I spoil their whackability.)

One gets the impression that with the passage of time -- and with humans having too much time on their hands -- Googlewhacking lost steam. Google the word Googlewhacking, and you'll see what I mean in terms of chronological results. At least one comedian/performer has adapted; this piece is from 2013.

Comedy gold – Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure, by Bruce Dessau (The Guardian)

The self-mocking anecdotalist pinballs around the planet on an absurd, 91,000-mile trek fuelled only by goodhearted positivity

... In Googlewhack Adventure, he darts around the world meeting people whose websites are googlewhacks – meaning they are the only sites that ping up when two random words are searched for, ie "termagant holbein" or "rarebit nutter". The bearded anecdotalist is a cross between Phileas Fogg and Luke Rhinehart's Dice Man as he pinballs around the planet, meeting creationists in California and vintage car enthusiasts in Wales, constantly approaching strangers ("I'm sure my mum told me not to do that sort of thing"). Remarkable coincidences and surprising connections help him on his way: "It's like I've summoned the Googlewhack genie."

Consequently, it appears the Golden Oldies in this digression are the hapax and the nonce -- to be consumed with a Pilsner, or perhaps a nice, solid Ordinary Bitter.

How Do You Decode a Hapax? (Also, What’s a Hapax?), by Maya Nandakumar (Atlas Obscura)

It’s a word that only appears once in a work, author’s oeuvre, or an entire language’s written record.

 ... A linguistic phenomenon similar to hapaxes is the nonce word. Authors can, in effect, produce hapaxes by creating words. Shakespeare is famous for his frequent usage of such terms. In the Taming of the Shrew, a play about matrimony and courtship, the main character Katherina, describes herself as being “bedazzled” by the sun. This word was coined by the bard for this scene, but has now received commercial fame courtesy of a rhinestoning device.

Metro Louisville's pitch to Amazon promises “a quality of life second to none for every Amazonian.”

Dude.

Amazonian

Am·a·zo·ni·an

1. of, like, or characteristic of an Amazon
2. [oftena-] of an amazon; tall, strong, aggressive, etc.: said of a woman
3. of the Amazon River or the country around it

Promising (at least to me, given my proclivities), but maybe GLI, Wendy and the gang should have found a few liberal arts majors to work on the prose -- or pros, as opposed to amateurs.

Exclusive: Greater Louisville’s Amazon proposal, a great pitch, or a foul ball? (LEO Weekly)

We knew it would not be long before the local application for Amazon’s second headquarters was leaked, and it so happens that LEO got a peek at it — first.

The bid detailed on a six-part website, a collaboration of government and business leaders in Louisville, Kentucky and Southern Indiana, touts the region’s obvious, best selling point — location, location, location. It also employs expected hyperbole — “unprecedented collaboration with university and public administration partnerships, as well as strong incentives and easy transit.” Ha! “Easy transit …” And then there is the boast of “a quality of life second to none for every Amazonian.”

In what seemed like defeatist, meta, self-reflection, the introduction says picking Louisville involves “swinging for the fences” because we “may not be the obvious choice for Amazon, but we are the bold choice.” The phrasing and, as it turns out, much of the intro video, parrots Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ annual shareholder letter. Using his words is smart, perhaps, but once he gets the joke, will Bezos be willing to risk a $5 billion mistake… er, investment by coming here? ...

... Certainly, in the coming days and weeks, arguments will be had about the proposal’s content. We thought it would be instructive to take a critical look at how the proposal was presented — Did Louisville use its millisecond elevator pitch effectively, or has the door shut on us before we had a chance? So we asked someone from a local advertising agency for their thoughts (he asked to remain anonymous) ...

Previously:

Amazon's bid: More required reading that Wendy Dant Chesser and One Southern Indiana will add to their bonfire of the vacuities.

R.I.P. Eamonn Campbell, Irish musical legend, 1946-2017.

Photo credit.

Long-term readers will recall my love affair with Irish music in general terms, and specifically, The Dubliners.

Luke Kelly truly was a troubadour of the downtrodden.

As an entity and institution, The Dubliners lasted a half-century, finally disbanding in 2012 after the banjoist and last original band member Barney McKenna died. Lineups changed, and the entertainment value never wavered, but in musical and cultural contexts, the salad days were 1962 - 1984.

Campbell came along at precisely the midpoint of the band's existence, stuck around until the end of the line, then went right back out on the road with a spin-of called The Dublin Legends.

Apparently it was Campbell's idea to have The Dubliners perform "The Irish Rover" with The Pogues in 1987. For this alone, he belongs in the Irish Music Hall of Fame, if there is such a thing.

Following is as loving a remembrance as any of us would hope to have written in his or her memory.

For the uninitiated, the Gaelic word “craic” (crack) means the quality of life, the warmness of conviviality, discourse and entertainment – often, though by no means exclusively, as applicable to pub culture.

In the 50-year history of The Dubliners, there were eleven band members, not counting fill-ins here and there. Five of them as yet are living, and the youngest of them is 73. Time waits for no one, but it was one hell of a ride.

Eamonn Campbell: Merchant of craic, genius guitar player, loved by all..., by Barbara McCarthy (The Irish Independent)

We raise a glass to Eamonn Campbell, 1946-2017

Eamonn Campbell died last week and it's bloody sad. It's not just sad because he was a genius guitar player, distinguished record producer and arranger, merchant of craic, and generous guy loved by everyone - literally, it was also because he could connect with people.

"If you met Eamonn, you'd never forget him," his friends reminisced.

In these depressing culturally bereft times, where people favour headphones to conversations, avoid eye contact and try desperately not to engage with each other, Eamonn was a big shock of white-haired charisma and quintessential Irishness who will never be replaced.

"We are heartbroken," said his band, The Dublin Legends (consisting of Sean Cannon, Gerry O'Connor and Paul Watchorn) in a statement.

The Wolfe Tones claimed there was "no better guitar player anywhere". The Pogues called him a "lovely man" - while footballer Paul McGrath wrote "there will be a good session in heaven tonight". Dutch and German newspapers reported his death at the tender age of 70. The list goes on.

Every old man's pub I went into after news of his death hit, I heard punters retell stories of encounters with him as The Dubliners played in his honour in the background.

"I have a few anecdotes for you," one fella winked at me, "but I'm not telling you."

"He was larger than life and he joined a band of characters who were all larger than life - so he fit right in. Those fellas brought joy to Irish people during dark times," Nicky Black, who drinks in Grogan's on South William Street, recalled.

Then Tommy Smith, a co-owner of Grogan's, came out from behind the bar to hold both my hands declaring: "Ah no they don't make people like that any more. Eamonn and Luke, Barney and Ronnie. They used to come in here at various stages in the 45 years I've been here," he reminisced.

"They were great times. They brought the besotted fans over from Europe."

Those drab "luxury" condos and apartments? "Policymakers, pretty much across the board, don't value design."

I'm just trying to figure out why The Breakwater Lofts at Duggins Flats gets an exemption from the street spam ordinance.

Those 'Luxury' Condos Look A Little Drab (WBUR)

In cities like Seattle, Boston, Denver and Charlotte, new "luxury" condos and apartment buildings are going up to meet demand for new housing. But many of these buildings look like simple, plain boxes.

Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks with architecture critic and author Sarah Williams Goldhagen (@SarahWGoldhagen) about what makes these buildings "poor," "boring" architecture, and how monotonous architecture actually negatively affects us.

On why there are so many of these kinds of buildings being built

"There are a lot of different reasons for it. If you separate it out into supply and demand, one is that that's what's being built, so that's what's cheap to build, because the wheels are greased for that kind of architecture. Buy in bulk. That's what the market has been giving and so it's easy to give that. The second reason is that there's a general point of view, both among real estate developers, who are building these buildings, and among clients who are buying these buildings, that good design ... is an unaffordable luxury. And we know two things now: one, it's not unaffordable. It costs just as much to build a well-designed building as a poorly designed building. And neither is it a luxury because the research is clearly showing that people actually respond very poorly to those bad buildings.

Jeff Gahan one-ups Mike Moore on a commemorative wall -- and the plural shall become singular.

Part One: Nocturnal stumblebutt.

Part Two: Don't worry -- Bob will guide it through Redevelopment.

Part Three: Develop New Albany will take it from here.

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Here's what the Wall of Champions (plural) looks like in Jeffersonville; it's by the Big Four Bridge.

Chris Moyles interviews Liam and Noel Gallagher.

Liam's first solo album is out now, and Noel's third arrives in a few weeks. Chris Moyles has spoken with the brothers Gallagher (separately, of course), and Oasis fans will appreciate the dual snapshots.

Happily, there is a point of convergence between these famously fractious siblings: all of their kids like their respective fathers' new albums. In short, Oasis is still quite dead -- but Liam's album is surprisingly solid, and I look forward to the arrival of Noel's.

I'm such a fanboy.

Previously:

Flight documentaries: Oasis: Supersonic depicts a time (and music) that won't be repeated.

On this blogging day in 2007: Luddite testimonials and DNA's mayoral forum.

There were two posts on October 23, 2007. The first refers to the infamous and now entirely forgotten era of the Trog Blog Wars.

---

Okay, so I changed my mind ...sue me already.

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The second posits the inconceivable (DNA being neutral about politics prior to its annexation by Deaf Gahan) grafted onto the "look how far we've ... er ... never mind." Stay tuned for 2019, when Deaf will dodge many of these same questions.

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Reminder: "Develop New Albany to Host Mayoral Candidates Forum" on Wednesday night.

(From Develop New Albany)

Develop New Albany, the City’s non-profit, Main Street organization is hosting a Mayoral Candidates Forum to be held on Wednesday, October 24th from 7:00 - 9:00 pm at the Strassweg Auditorium at the New Albany-Floyd County Public Library.

The forum will consist of two 45-minute question-and-answer sessions with a 10-15-minute break in between. Mr. Randy Hubbard, Republican mayoral candidate, has agreed to participate in the first session and Mr. England, Democratic mayoral candidate, has agreed to participate in the second session which is anticipated to begin at 8:15 p.m. Neither candidate is invited to attend the session in which the opposing candidate is featured.

The sessions will be moderated by Greg Sekula, Develop New Albany Vice-President, and a series of questions will be asked by the moderator that relate to the issues of downtown and neighborhood revitalization. The public is invited and encouraged to attend.

The following topical issues are likely to be covered in the forum in no particular order:

1) Your vision for Downtown New Albany;

2) Strategies for furthering economic development in Downtown New Albany and surrounding older business districts such as the Vincennes and State Street corridors;

3) Addressing problems associated with rental housing conditions including absentee property ownership, illegally subdivided structures, and your position on a City-initiated rental housing inspection program;

4) Strategies for promoting and increasing homeownership and re-investment in older urban neighborhoods;

5) Relationships between the City and local neighborhood associations and non-profit groups;

6) Historic preservation, including the role of the Historic Preservation Commission, historic district designation, and design guidelines;

7) One-way vs. two-way street circulation patterns in the Downtown;

8) Enforcement of violations of City ordinances;

9) Aging infrastructure;

10) Upkeep of downtown streets and public spaces;

11) Ohio River Greenway project;

12) City-County Building space issues;

13) Relationship between the office of Mayor and City Council;

14) The role of public transportation in downtown revitalization and regional economic development;

15) Strategies for the City and school system to work together to strengthen inner-city schools and what impact that would have on downtown neighborhoods; and

16) Strategies for combating neighborhood crime, particularly drug activity.

For more information contact Develop New Albany at 812/941-0018 or e-mail here.

Liberalism, radicalism, our ineffectual Democrats, Gahan's public housing Kool-Aid and Hoosier Action -- not necessarily in that order.

Loudest damn crickets I can recall.

It's probably not impossible for liberals to morph into radicals, though it surely can't happen until liberals are ready to sacrifice an element of material comfort for the sake of whatever revolution we're talking about. Being a radical means you might win, and you might lose; either way, something changes.

Is Donald Trump Turning Liberals Into Radicals?, by Sarah Leonard (New York Times)

On Nov. 9, 2016, millions of Americans woke up with a crushing sense that something was terribly wrong with their country.

Donald Trump’s election inspired such moral revulsion and political outrage that by that afternoon, parts of the American electorate had taken to calling themselves “the resistance,” evoking the guerrillas who took to the hills and fought the Nazis during World War II. Just a day before, many of these same people were enthusiastically casting their ballots for a centrist Democrat; suddenly they were self-styled revolutionaries.

The day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration saw enormous protests across the country that incorporated a panoply of groups and interests. For those of us on the left, the millions of protesters in pink hats and the dads toting funny signs was a promising sight: Could this be the moment that liberals were converted into radicals?

This point cannot be stressed and repeated often enough: "Inequality’s staggering growth shows no signs of stopping."

Mr. Trump — like right-wing populists across Europe — rode into power on waves of discontent with unaccountable globalization and growing inequality that have increased even under liberal and social-democratic parties. As the French economist Thomas Piketty demonstrated in “Capital in the 21st Century,” inequality’s staggering growth shows no signs of stopping. And it’s pulling democracy apart at the seams; no one but the rich feels represented.

The failure of the Democratic Party to reverse this over the past 40 years can’t be overstated, which is precisely why the resistance cannot just be about getting Democrats elected.

Especially here in New Gahania, where the words "Democrat" and "resistance" are diametrically opposed concepts. Want to know why I chose not to block Kool-Aid?

Because if I did, there'd be no more Floyd County Democratic Party infomercials.

Local Democrats apparently are unaware of staggering inequality, because if they were, more than a handful of the better informed among them would be holding Dear Leader's personality cult to the fire, because for an allegedly Democratic mayor to be waging war against affordable housing and the community's less fortunate isn't tremendously democratic, is it?

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Agoraphobia with a peniaphobic chaser, or the drunkenness of a sociopath's power.

Returning to Leonard's essay, we are referred to a phenomenon of interest in this context.

THE ELECTION HAS GALVANIZED activists of all kinds. After Hillary Clinton’s poor performance with working-class white voters, many on the left have realized that this constituency deserves more of its attention. I spoke recently to Kate Hess Pace, who founded Hoosier Action in her home state of Indiana, a membership organization for working-class Indianans who, with the decline of unions, have few ways of influencing politics. The group has brought members to Washington to lobby their senators on health care, among other actions. Ms. Pace says that most of the people she talks to in Indiana don’t hate Democrats or Republicans, but “outsiders,” people in Washington who have caused their state’s decline.

Some new members of the resistance may have people they can turn to easily for guidance: their kids. The radical movements calling attention to inequality and racism well before Mr. Trump’s election — from Occupy to the movement for black lives to a growing interest in socialism to the Dreamers protests — have been driven by millennials. And these movements are eager to grow.

Indeed, we've already been introduced.

Meet WE ARE NEW ALBANY, and tell Jeff Gahan: No demolition of public housing without a plan to replace!

I’ll keep asking local Democrats about their cognitive dissonance. They’ll keep not answering. The Jeffrey's got the Kool-Aid, all right -- but I think the raging hypocrisy will begin nagging at those Democrats with a conscience. They're there.

They just need to regain control of Gahan's sinking ship.

THE BEER BEAT: "One hundred years ago, Britain nationalized hundreds of its pubs — and invented a better drinking culture."

Photo credit.

Simply stated, speaking as one who is fascinated by World War I and British pub culture and the notion of prohibition, this is a worthy digression to which I'll be returning.

In the interim, it's a pleasure to be introduced to the writing of Phil Mellows, and for more on the topic: The Carlisle Experiment – limiting alcohol in wartime, by Roger Kershaw (The National Archives UK)

Absolutely compelling stuff, this.

Nationalize the Pubs, by Phil Mellows (Jacobin)

A hundred years ago, at the height of World War I, the British government faced a dilemma. As the slaughter on the Somme reached its climax, a vast munitions factory had been built on the border between England and Scotland, on an area covering more than fourteen square miles. Some 12,000 workers, plus thousands more builders and a military guard, were drafted into the area.

Most were billeted in townships near Gretna on the Scottish side of the border, but only a short train journey from Carlisle, a city in northern England. With little else to amuse themselves, Carlisle’s pubs became a home for the workers and their unusually generous pay packets, every evening swelling a native population of just 50,000. At Boustead’s, a watering hole near Carlisle station, they would line up 500 whiskies along the bar, ready for the first after-work customers off the train.

By the summer of 1916, convictions for drunkenness in the town had soared six-fold. But, of course, it wasn’t disorder that primarily concerned the authorities. When future prime minister David Lloyd George, then munitions minister, declared that “We are fighting Germany, Austria and drink, and as far as I can see, the greatest of these three deadly foes is drink,” he was referencing the widespread view that the effects of alcohol were threatening production.

Outright prohibition was on the agenda for a time, something which was to come to pass in America only four years later with a constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcohol. But by the outbreak of the First World War the temperance movement in Britain had passed its high-water mark. In 1908, the House of Lords threw out a licensing bill which had proposed closing 30,000 of the 96,000 pubs in England and Wales.

But war had sharpened the drink question once more — and something had to be done. Against this backdrop, the Carlisle Experiment, as it became known, was born ...

"There’s a long way to go before walking is safe and convenient for all Americans."

From Copenhagen to New Albany. 

We paint streets for automobile tires, not human feet.

Mayor Jeff Gahan understands nothing about an "inclusive, nationwide movement to walk." A few of his minions, maybe, but Gahan -- nope.

Want proof?

Pathetic.

An inclusive, nationwide movement to walk, by Jay Walljasper (Congress for the New Urbanism)

Younger and older Americans are not the only ones at risk. The summit focused on challenges faced by pedestrians in racially and economically disadvantaged communities, as well as rural areas.

 ... But Summit goers were reminded there’s a long way to go before walking is safe and convenient for all Americans—a point highlighted at the opening reception by St. Paul deputy mayor Kristin Beckmann, who announced that a 7-year-old girl and a 91-year-old man had been struck down by hit-and-run drivers in the previous 24 hours. The girl suffered a broken leg and the man a concussion in a city ranked relatively high for walkability, according to Walkscore.

Pedestrian death and injuries are rising across the country at an alarming rate, as part of an overall spike in traffic crashes, noted many speakers at the conference. Speeding and drunk driving (which frequently involves speeding) are the chief culprits. The influential National Transportation Safety Board recently targeted speeding as an overlooked and deadly problem in America.

Younger and older Americans are not the only ones at risk. The summit focused particular attention on challenges people on foot face in racially and economically disadvantaged communities, as well as rural areas.

Unwelcoming streets that deter walkers can become impassable roadblocks to the 54 million Americans who live with disabilities. “I walk when I drive my wheelchair,” said Maryland activist Juliette Rizzio. “So I proudly stand with you to promote inclusion. Walkability. Rollability. Possibility!”

Tyler Norris, CEO of the Well Being Trust, remembered civil rights activist Shavon Arline-Bradley asking a pointed question at the first Walking Summit in 2013: “Is everybody welcome to walk?”

Rutgers University researcher Charles Brown offered an answer at the closing session of this year’s Summit’s. “I see the support, the commitment here to equity,” which he described as an understanding that communities suffering historic disinvestment need help to catch up. “This is the beginning of a movement.”

Renewing friendships in Haarlem. Being thankful. Promising to be back soon.

Marilyn, Inge and Diana.

Previously: Out there in the fields, or a visit to De Plukker Hop Farm Brewery outside Poperinge.

Most of you know that Harlem (New York) derives its name from Haarlem (Netherlands). In fact, Peter Stuyvesant's original Dutch settlement from 1658 was called Nieuw Haarlem -- and "nieuw" means exactly what you think it does.

I've never been to New Harlem. My first visit to Oude Haarlem came in 1987, in the form of a day trip from nearby Amsterdam.

Haarlem in 1987. It looked about the same as now.

Eight years later, I made the acquaintance of a Londoner named Gerald, who is universally known as Boris. He was a friend of a friend, the well-documented phenomenon called Six Degrees of Big Kim.

We all attended a party in Copenhagen hosted by Little Kim. I vaguely recall walking off a hangover the following morning with Big Kim and Boris, prior to hopping a train back to Belgium.

Subsequently I was introduced to Boris' old pal Dewi, a Welshman. Some years before our acquaintance, they'd invested in a house in Bound's Green, an area in north London. In 1998, my cousin Don and I crashed there for a few days.

Dewi has continued to occupy the Bound's Green property at varying intervals, but by the late nineties, Boris had gotten a job with a Dutch company, and he moved to Haarlem. There he bought a flat, learned the language and became a de facto Dutchman, albeit it without formal citizenship.

(Cue a discussion of Brexit)

Soon thereafter Boris met an affable expatriate Californian named Bill, who had come to the Netherlands to work as a cook in a Mexican restaurant. It seems that the "melting pot" isn't an exclusively American concept. Bill met Inge and they began dating. All of them became regulars at a wonderful Haarlem pub called the Cafe Briljant (2002-2017), owned by Rob.

Boris also knew the people who had started the Jopen brewery, and were contract-brewing as they pursued the goal of a brewing facility in central Haarlem.

Concurrently, the era of Roger's and Kevin Richards' Merry Band of Beercyclists had dawned. Thus we came to Haarlem in 2004, where Boris met my friends and we met his, among them Bill and Inge; by this time, they were married. Jopen was consumed, and Rob's bar often visited.

Including 2004, I was to visit Haarlem five times during the next five years. By 2007, Diana and I were close enough to Bill and Inge that we stayed in their lovely house for a few days. It's a place that Bill, a jack-of-all-trades, almost single-handedly remodeled. 

The last group bicycling trip to date came in September of 2008. Six of us (among them the late Kevin Richards) started and ended our journey in Haarlem. Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport is just a few miles away, and a shop in Haarlem agreed to rent the needed bikes.

We rode the train to Poperinge, attended the hop fest, and then biked most of the way back to Haarlem. Before splitting off for further adventures, there was a brief window in which to meet briefly with our friends. It was especially wonderful to see Inge, who was about eight months pregnant with her and Bill's first child.

I returned home, and life promptly got in the way. Bank Street Brewhouse opened in March, 2009, and the demands of trying to get the restaurant and brewery up to snuff intervened. All I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. We live and we learn, etc.

From 2010 through 2012, with neither the money nor the time, Diana and I weren't able to travel at all outside the country. Finally we made it to England in 2013 to visit her relatives, then back to the continent in 2014, though nowhere near Haarlem.

I've often referred to this period of my business career as trench warfare, and while this is too glib by half, it does convey something of the idea of how stressful and frustrating the BSB project proved to be. By 2014, I was beginning to see the handwriting on the stall, and the as yet ongoing business divorce stalemate began in early 2015.

In June of 2016, to the day of Muhammad Ali's funeral, I happened upon Inge via the serendipity of Facebook. While Bill, Boris and Dewi weren't the social media types, I was "friends" with Inge and Rob, although not to the extent of paying close enough attention.

Inge posted photos of daughter Marilyn, and seeing them delighted me. It slowly dawned on me that six years had passed since I'd so much as e-mailed any of my friends in Haarlem. There was consternation aplenty in what passes for my soul. How could I have been such a negligent schmuck to allow so much time to pass?

I quickly fired off a comment on Inge's Fb post, vowing to come see everyone in 2017, when I knew we'd be coming across the pond for the triennial hop festival in Poperinge. Inge replied affirmatively, and asked me to message her privately.

This is how I learned that Bill had died suddenly five months earlier, in January of 2016. Four months later, my beercycling co-conspirator Kevin was gone, too. It was obvious that our long-overdue return to Haarlem in 2017 was going to be both therapeutic and elegiac. 

And so it was.

On September 20, 2017 mother and daughter arrived by bicycle to Haarlem's Grote Markt, the market square lying outside the doors of the pleasingly esoteric Hotel Amadeus. Diana and I were waiting.

It was a letter-perfect autumn day, and so we had an outdoor drink across the way at the Grand Cafe Brinkmann, where it soon became obvious that Marilyn is a dynamo. She'd been raised speaking Dutch with Inge and English with Bill.

Afterwards came a short walk to the Jopenkerk, Jopen's long gestating brewery-in-a-church, which had been little more than a fenced-in construction zone in 2008. Now the Jopenkerk and the public space around it are people magnets.

Time slipped past. For dinner, we adjourned to Taste of India and a delicious spread of madras and curry. Dewi was in town, but he'd joined Boris at the Cafe Briljant for a tasting of rare Scotches from Rob's cellar stock. We'd see the three of them soon enough.

The lost years melted away, and it was wonderful to reconnect.

Next: Haarlem is awesome. How did I forget this fact for so many years? Next time I threaten to open a brewery, will you be a pal and sedate me, okay?

Gahan's family values sit-com: "That's totally RAD," whispers the interim director amid popping corks. Meanwhile, Irving Joshua reads from his script.

In terms of comprehensive looks, that was one fast assessment. We can only hope the conclusion isn't premature.

Firm to assess housing conditions in New Albany, by Elizabeth Beilman (Dreaming of Terre Haute)

Reports part of plan for big changes in public housing

NEW ALBANY — The New Albany Housing Authority board is hiring a firm to complete extensive condition assessments of its housing stock, a necessary step in its plan to demolish or rehabilitate many of its 1,000 units.

Maryland-based firm EMG Corp. will spend up to six months inspecting six complexes to determine what kind of conditions they are in — from air quality to structural conditions to energy consumption.

"It is a comprehensive look at everything," interim Executive Director David Duggins said.

Previously:

Dad's always been totally humorless about this sort of thing.

You see the damnedest sights from the levee on a Friday at lunch.

Dad's always been totally humorless about this sort of thing.

You see the damnedest sights from the levee on a Friday at lunch.

You see the damnedest sights from the levee on a Friday at lunch.

I went up on the levee around lunchtime today to take some file photos of downtown. It was a gorgeous day for snapping photos, and you never know when you'll need an insert like this -- after all, very soon this view will be changing radically.

The Reisz project begins soon.

Or this.

Dude: that's one big hog of a limo bus.

As it pulled up behind Floyd County Brewing Company, I expected to see either a calisthenics fetishist convention (for the YMCA) or a bachelor party (for the brewery) debark.

Nothing happened. No one got on or off, and later the bus moved around the block to the YMCA's east side.

Hmm. That looks like Xtreme Transportation's XT17 to me. Check out the swanky interior. All things considered, it could cost as much as a couple grand for a day's rental.

A small group of 40-something men eventually boarded. Only one of them looked familiar to me, though all I could make out was a beard. I know I've seen him before.

Maybe they were doctors or lawyers. Who knows? But what struck me is the choice of the YMCA as meeting place. How many times have you seen a limo bus at the Y? How weird is that?

There was something else, too. After ten minutes or so, there was a second group of arrivals boarding the bus.

As I'm sure Lt. Colombo would ask, "Now, if they're the girlfriends or wives with those guys on the bus, why didn't they all get on the bus at the same time, together?"

Surely there are a number of explanations, although when I mentioned it to the Green Mouse, he told me it's a relatively simple matter to hire models for outings, although it's less clear why you'd need them.

I've never been a high roller, and the whole thing baffles me. When I tried googling "full service modeling louisville," New View and Cosmo were at the very top of the search results.

On second thought, I'm sure it was nothing; just another of those inexplicable slices of bizarre in New Gahania.

Never mind. As you were.

But what a lovely day for taking pictures.

Campaign 101 Workshop at IU Southeast on Saturday, November 18.

(Update: note the revised e-mail registration address above, meddy@leadershipsi.org)

My Leadership Southern Indiana 2017 classmate Chris Loop has taken the lead (pun intended) in assembling this non-partisan workshop for aspiring candidates.

Please spread the word about this great event. This is a FREE informational workshop for anyone who is thinking of running for office and needs some guidance on where to start.

If you're contemplating a run for office -- and especially if you'll be competing as an independent candidate, seeing as we have no party structure for assistance -- this FREE workshop could be very useful.

Amazon's bid: More required reading that Wendy Dant Chesser and One Southern Indiana will add to their bonfire of the vacuities.

Wendy is positively giddy -- and liberal arts degree holders should be scared.

Here’s what we know about Louisville’s Amazon bid, by Caitlin Bowling (Insider Louisville)

While other cities are publicly touting potential sites and incentives for Amazon’s secondary headquarters or crafting gimmicks to attract attention, the city of Louisville has remained relatively mum when it comes to its bid.

Louisville’s economic development arm Louisville Forward is spearheading the effort, but it has culled information from various other entities inside and outside of Jefferson County to help strengthen its proposal ...

... Wendy Dant Chesser, president and CEO of chamber of commerce One Southern Indiana, said the experience was fun because of the collaborative spirit surrounding it.

“If we can work together and be successful, we can all benefit from it,” she said. “We put in a package what I think is indicative of what the region has to offer. Now will it be enough? We will have to wait to hear from Amazon.”

It's always fun when you're playing with house (taxpayer) money. Now for that pesky fine print. I'm guessing there aren't copies of this article in the break room at 1Si.

Amazon’s Uneven Playing Field, by Olivia LaVecchia (Motherboard)

Amazon is looking for a big subsidy to build its new headquarters—the latest move in the company’s long history of using the government to get favors its rivals can’t.

In the hierarchy of the corporate world today, Amazon is near the top. It's one of the top five most valuable companies traded on the major exchanges, and founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is now the second-richest person in the world.

People tend to think that Amazon has gotten there simply by out-competing everyone else. But there's another part of the story of Amazon's rise. From the very beginning, a core part of Amazon's strategy has been taking advantage of public benefits not available to its competitors.

Now, bidding is set to close Thursday on the latest play in this strategy: Amazon's decision to launch a public auction for the location of its second North American headquarters. In that auction, Amazon is angling for such a substantial public handout that, as Amazon itself puts it in its Request for Proposals, the "magnitude may require special incentive legislation." Since Amazon opened bidding, more than 100 cities across the U.S. and Canada have publicly announced their interest in the Amazon sweepstakes, and have given over conference rooms and staff time to work on the bid, launched PR stunts, and started hashtags. Experts say that the end result of all of this hype could be a multi-billion dollar giveaway from taxpayers to Amazon.

Sexual assault and harassment: "It’s time for this to get inconvenient for men—for, perhaps, you."

"I am explicitly requesting that every male friend of mine read this, because it is perfect."

Done. I urge my male friends to do the same.

Why Would This Time Be Any Different?, by Lindsey Adler (Deadspin)

... Here’s what I find most aggravating: The men I know get to pick and choose when the subject of sexual harassment and abuse inconveniences them. They don’t want to talk about it too much, brushing it off as, “Yeah, I know it’s bad.” I’m a liberal man, I abhor sexual assault. Which, thanks! I would like, though, for the men in my life to actually sit with the conversation at hand and stop thinking about how it affects them and whether they’re on trial. I would like for them—even, perhaps especially, the good ones—to allow their worldview to be disrupted, and to think about the ways they’ve affected the women in their lives.

I know men—many men; nearly all the men who talk about it—who profess to abhor and do abhor sexual assault and harassment and yet struggle to really engage with the issue because no one in their right minds wants to sully the way they see their friends or themselves. Sure, there are some bad men, a lot of bad men; we as women and we as men know that. And still, when I have tried and urged the men in my life to really take a look at how absolutely insidious this issue is and what role they may have played or be playing in it, their walls have gone up. It’s a thought they find unsafe, a perspective they don’t want to have. I’m not like that.

At this point, I say, “Tough shit, dudes.”