A survey of America's mayors finds that many "aren’t eager to challenge the status quo."

"If they don’t adjust their priorities to match the urgency of the crises they’ve identified, mayors might have no one to blame for stalled progress but themselves."

I attended yesterday's DNA-sponsored merchant meeting, the first such gathering of 2020.

The meeting lasted an hour, during which there was no mention whatever of the impending (2021) Sherman Minton Bridge repair-mandated adjustments -- lane and ramp closures and the like -- that stand to have a disruptive impact on downtown specifically, and in more general terms the city as a whole.

Does Team Gahan have a secret plan for the 11th Hour?

If not, or even if so, shouldn't this be something we're planning for? Or is participatory "infrastructure" of this sort simply not a priority in Nawbany?

U.S. Mayors Say Infrastructure Is a Priority. But What Kind?

The Menino Survey of Mayors identifies priorities like infrastructure, traffic safety, and climate change. But many mayors aren’t eager to challenge the status quo.

... Generally, pedestrian and cyclist safety was prioritized by many mayors—a reflection, perhaps, of the limited progress most U.S. cities are making on their efforts to reduce traffic-related injuries. New research shows that even as being a car passenger is getting safer, being a pedestrian is becoming more dangerous. Still, “majorities of mayors rate travel in their city as safe for all of the groups we asked about,” and only 22 percent of mayors ranked “pedestrian friendliness” as a top infrastructure priority, while 66 percent listed “roads.” Democratic mayors did full-throatedly commit to sacrificing car lanes and parking spaces to bike lanes, with 92 percent on board compared to Republicans’ 34 percent—a partisan divide that’s ballooned 30 points since the survey’s 2015 edition.

Vision Zero, the global movement to dramatically reduce pedestrian fatalities, may be a hot topic in transportation circles but it’s not exactly a national priority in America’s city halls: It’s tied for seventh place (with “lighting”) on a list of what’s been most important for pedestrian safety improvements. Based on CityLab research showing that Vision Zero efforts aren’t paying off fast enough in some of the U.S.’s largest participants, perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising. As for other traffic safety measures, most mayors think their cities are doing enough. Despite global efforts to drop vehicle speeds inside cities, nearly three-quarters of mayors surveyed thought their speed limits were set at the “right level,” while only 15 percent thought they were set too high.

Hello to Hello Louisville, which is good because Kevin Gibson is part of it.

Hello Louisville is a new place to read about the Louisville scene, except that it's an old place, at least according to the web site's description.

In late 2017, we started a project of highlighting Louisville, Kentucky in the way we saw it and began posting these short stories on our social channels. What began as a passion project, geared toward the local modernist, has now evolved into something more. We wanted to create a place where people in Louisville could come and find information on local eateries, breweries, farmers markets, new restaurants, old restaurants, trendy places, dog friendly places, and so much more—without the hassle of all the negative stories one may have to sift through. Don’t get us wrong, the bad is just as important as the good, but we’re here to focus on the good.

What matters to me is that Kevin Gibson is back into the mix. I'll be reading.

Hello ... from Hello Louisville (and me), by Kevin Gibson (Hello Louisville)

I started writing about the Louisville and Southern Indiana area in 1987. Yep, more than three decades as a writer, covering everything from local sports — my first assignment was a Bullitt North High School football game — to government, business, music, the arts, food and drink. Thirty-three years. (I know, I don’t look that old, do I? But I digress.)

Anyway, anyone who knows me probably knows how disappointed I was last summer when Insider Louisville abruptly shut down operations. We were literally told in a Monday morning meeting that we had to be out of our offices by end of day on Wednesday. Insider Louisville had become part of my identity in a way. I realized only when it disappeared that’s not something one recovers from quickly.

Now there’s Hello Louisville. Part of the mission here is to fill some of the void left by Insider simply by seeking out and sharing some of the best things in the city, from new restaurants and breweries, to cool events, people, new business news and anything else we think people will want to know about.

VIDEO: Longboard's Taco & Tiki has closed, but Ian Hall has good news, too.

Ian Hall made the announcement via video this morning on Facebook. Trust me, I know what it feels like to lose one, so best wishes to Ian, Nikki and the Brand Hospitality restaurant group. Overall Brand's brand remains strong at The Exchange Pub + Kitchen and Brooklyn and The Butcher.

There is no word yet as to the next configuration of the soon-to-be vacant space on the corner of Market and Pearl.

You'll notice that in the video Ian is seated in the space many readers will recall as Feast BBQ's original location in New Albany, adjacent to The Exchange on Main Street. The building changed hands after Feast BBQ closed in 2018, and now the top-to-bottom remodeling is complete.

It will be known as the Tavern Hall at The Exchange and function as a dining room and special events space. Kitchen space at The Exchange also has been expanded.

LIVE TO EAT: Longboard's Taco & Tiki will open this Friday, July 27.

From the folks who brought you Exchange and Brookyn, Longboard’s Taco & Tiki is coming to downtown New Albany in 2018.

Let's start a list.

OPENING IN 2020
Board and You Bistro & Wine Bar (TBD; 430 Pearl, where the Cidery was to have been)
Monnik Beer Company (TBD; former Bank Street Brewhouse on Bank)
Recbar 812 (February 3; former La Rosita's on Pearl)
Tavern Hall at The Exchange (event space in the former Feast BBQ)

CLOSING IN 2020
Longboard's Taco & Tiki

Here is last year's summary.

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New Albany's restaurant and bar openings and closings for 2019.

December 30, 2019

Following is our crowd-sourced list of restaurant/bar openings and closings in New Albany for 2019: Indies only; no chains, and just businesses within city limits.

Here's a special category: Floyd County Brewing, which expanded into the Biergarten after launching Grain Haus in 2018. They're still all common ownership, but deserving of note for organization of available space.

Did we miss anyone? There are two reasons why Our Lady of Perpetual Hops isn't on this list: (1) it doesn't have a kitchen, and (b) I'm still not sure whether it's city, fringe area or county. The beers are good, though.

OPENING IN 2019 ... 8 + 3 (see below) = 11
Boomtown Kitchen
Chicago City Pizza
Fistful of Tacos
Get It on a Bun at Booty’s
La Catrina
Tacolicious To Go
The Earl
The Standard Plate & Pour

CLOSING IN 2019 ... 6 + 3 (see below) = 9
Bank Street Brewhouse/Taco Steve
Cox’s Hot Chicken
Hull & High Water
Mandarin Cafe
Red Men Club
Sinaloa

BOTH OPENING AND CLOSING IN 2019 ... 3
Bliss Artisan
El Rico Taco
Mirin

Learn about Käthe Kollwitz.

Outbreak.

On Sunday I posted a link to an essay in which the author, an American living in Germany, related (among other things) her visit to an art exhibit in Cologne.

Loneliness.

A bank in a mall was a weird place to find the largest collection of prints by the German artist, socialist, and pacifist Käthe Kollwitz, since her work is famously concerned with the agonies and struggles of the working class. In the old boardroom of the bank, Kollwitz’s work hung, some of it so blazing with grief and feeling it was hard, actually, to take.

Käthe Kollwitz is an artist we all should know.

SUMMARY OF KÄTHE KOLLWITZ

Fiercely committed to portraying the plights of workers and peasants, Käthe Kollwitz rendered the grief and harrowing experiences of both historical and contemporary wars in the first decades of the 20th century. Bucking usual artistic trends, Kollwitz adopted printmaking as her primary medium, and drawing from her own socialist and anti-war sentiments, she harnessed the graphic and expressive powers of the medium to present to the public an unvarnished look at the root causes and long-lasting effects of war. While her interest in printmaking and sometimes her subject matter coincided with the Expressionist painters in Germany, she remained independent from them, charting her own path in the burgeoning world of modern art.

In following the example of Goya's print series, The Disasters of War, Kollwitz's depictions of rebellion, poverty, and loss refuse the melodrama of war and sacrifice and instead concentrate on specific personal experiences that can be understood by many. In addition to her powerful visual legacy that still reverberates among graphic protest artists, her role as a recognized, leading female artist of the time ensures her place in the annals of 20th-century modern art.

I'm in New Agony, but this video documents "A Train Ride to the Czech Republic."

It kills me to watch videos like this. There are so many of my favorite things, rolled into one: train travel, Germany, beer with dumplings, the Czech Republic ... it yields a melancholy ache.

A train journey through the Elbe Sandstone Mountains between Germany and the Czech Republic. Peculiar rock formations and the river Elbe shape this beautiful region. Since the mid 19th century, a railway line has been meandering through its valleys.

In 2014, a new rail connection was completed: the National Park line connects the Czech Republic to Germany. It runs from Děčín to Rumburk via Bad-Schandau, Sebnitz, and Dolní Poustevna. The train conductors are all bilingual and happy to answer passengers’ questions about the area and its people. This film takes viewers from Dresden to Dìèín. It makes a detour on the National Park line through the rocky landscapes of Bohemian Switzerland. See the enchanted valleys that inspired romantic-era painters, and discover Edmundsklamm gorge on the German-Czech border, and its protected wildlife. The documentary also digs deep into the history of brown coal, which once brought the region industry and prosperity.

ASK THE BORED: Is consistency among BOW's mandates when it debates street closings?

It's possible the Board of Public Works and Safety might actually be trying to regain a sense of consistency.

Time will tell.

What we know from the minutes of January 14 is that the Regions Antique Automobile Club came to BOW well ahead of time to ask for a street closing (Market from Bank to State) for four hours on a Thursday evening (August 20).

Mrs. Cotner Bailey raised the valid point that it would inconvenience businesses and residents. Mrs. Jarboe noted that her equally sensible suggestion to move the event to the amphitheater was rejected by the club. Then Mr. Nash stated the board needs to have a conversation about street closure requests and event permits coming in so far ahead of time.

You'd think the board would appreciate advance notice, but still, these are reasonable considerations overall.

How, then, to explain the board's perennial enthusiasm for the NA Blues, Brews and Barbecue Fest, which a mere four months ago blocked the entirety of Market between Pearl and State for two and a half days, inconvenienced businesses and residents so an on-street KOA campground could be erected atop the city's new median, and would be much more efficiently staged if it were to be relocated ... to the amphitheater?

There is no explanation, at least not yet. If the board's brush-off of the Antique Automobile Club means it finally intends to have these conversations and grasp the need for consistency, that's very good and I for one support it.

If not, it's just more of the same hypocrisy -- primarily from BOW's superannuated figurehead.

The following was published here last September.

---

Beginning tonight -- Thursday evening at 6:00 p.m. -- both traffic lanes on Market Street between State and Pearl will be closed until Sunday morning. Sidewalks will not be blocked.

The reason for the closure is to allow public space for professional BBQ teams to cook their meats for the weekend NA Blues, Brews and Barbecue Fest. You are encouraged to attend this event.

Speaking personally, if we're to be genuinely walkable as a city, then disruptions like this are of little or no consequence.

However, reality on the ground dictates this reminder that there's a parking garage at the corner of State and Market, and parking by the levee at the foot of Pearl -- and quite a few curbside parking spaces everywhere, even on a busy weekends, just a short distance from the event and the affected businesses on both sides of the closed segment of Market Street.

It should be seasonable the next few evenings. If you're driving, park somewhere and have a nice walk, then a bite and a drink. Don't have too much of the latter if you're driving.

And ponder the question of why we purpose-built Bicentennial Park to be problematic and barely usable for events, and naturally insist on constantly using it for such events even when the Riverfront Amphitheater would be far more appropriate.

Loneliness.

Free association rocks.

To me, one hallmark of a well-turned essay is the writer's ability to introduce several themes, then bring them together convincingly for the killer closing punch.

This essay is well-turned. It is not "about" trains and public transportation, which is the passage I've chosen to highlight. However, the dining car reference is a pillar supporting the conclusion.

Take ten minutes and read this essay. Think about it: "Thoreau, no stranger to solitude, posed a helpful question, in Walden: 'what sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?' The answer, these days, is profit maximization."

Why do we tolerate this aberrant condition?

The Visitor: Wizards of Loneliness, by Lucy Schiller (CounterPunch)

... Though breadless, I am not an ingrate or sadsack, particularly when I get out of the house, get moving, get on the S-Bahn. Taking the train here in Germany is a perpetual reminder of how inferior any such system is in the United States. For some time in Iowa, I would take the Amtrak from Fort Madison, a town in what someone once termed to me the “teat of Iowa,” to New Mexico, where my family lives. One of the joys of that experience was the dining car, in which the staff, with deliciously impenetrable logic, assemble groups of strangers at the tables. Amtrak, attempting deference to a new, millennial audience (but mostly cost-cutting), is now phasing the dining car out. Millennials, a Washington Post article went on the subject, are “known to be always on the run, glued to their phones and not particularly keen on breaking bread with strangers at a communal table.” I met some unsettling characters at the communal table, true, but I remember, too, an elderly lady with a wicked laugh, and a man I saw two separate times, on two separate train journeys, with whom I was randomly seated both times. He was returning from taking care of a close friend with multiple sclerosis and was a retired train engineer. We stared out of the panoramic window over our steaming baked potatoes and he talked at length of engine repair.

There’s a current in American letters these days, particularly among millennial writers, of writing in a high literary style about solitude, about loneliness. I’ve attempted it, though it’s never amounted to much and I frustrate myself quickly with how little there is to say. The treatment of loneliness in contemporary literature often feels like how it felt to live in the Spinster’s Cottage—a little obvious, boring, and cramped. Which is not to say the subject itself is unworthy. Much has been written about loneliness and solitude, and the relationship between the two, that has not been boring. (“It might be lonelier without the loneliness,” wrote Emily Dickinson, recognizing that the feeling provides its own company, of a kind.) Vivian Gornick, Banana Yoshimoto, Mark Fisher spring to mind. Some of their lonelinesses are more painful. I do not recommend reading Mark Fisher, who took his own life in 2017, if you’re looking for a salve:

We need to abandon the belief in the autonomous individual that has been at the heart, not only of neoliberalism, but of the whole liberal tradition. In a successful attempt to break with social democratic and socialist collectivism, neoliberalism invested massive ideological effort into reflating this conception of the individual, with its supporting dramaturgy of choice and responsibility.

"This desperate need to keep score has ruined things that should have been groundbreaking and thrilling."

Lots of thoughts will be provoked reading this. I recommend you do just that. Thanks to the Bookseller for the link.

Volume 2, Issue 93: King of You, by Will Leitch

"Who said it's easy? Language is losing."

... There are new people in charge of the church youth league basketball this year, and they’ve come up with a radical new way of keeping parents in check, and even of watching a sporting event entirely. The first game of the season was last week, and all the parents sat down on the pull-out bleachers as our kids warmed up beforehand. They dribbled and ran lay-up lines and tossed up half-court shots (my son’s favorite pregame activity), and then came the introductions and the prayer and the opening whistle.

As my son William dribbled the ball up the court, I instinctively looked to the scoreboard, to see how long each quarter was, to see whether his team’s score was the home team or the visiting team. And I realized … I couldn’t see the scoreboard. The new league organizers had angled the clock and scoreboard toward the court and away from the seating area, so that only the players, the coaches and the referees could see it. Fans in the stands could not see the clock, the quarter or, most important, the score. We were watching the game … and that’s all we were watching ...

But it's not about youth sports.

Twitter was initially conceived merely as a real-time communication device, a way for friends to find each other at crowded events like South by Southwest, an alert system for where you were and what you were up to. I mean, Twitter itself is an absolutely amazing service: I can communicate with hundreds of thousands of people, anywhere on the planet, in a matter of seconds. That’s incredible! But the problem is that they put numbers on there, follower counts, likes, retweets, ratios, and once they did that, it turned a revolutionary communication device into just another dick-measuring contest like everything else. It is always baffling to me how much time and energy otherwise intelligent, thoughtful people will put into making sure they get as many likes and retweets as possible, and how despairing they get if they fail to do so. I feel obliged to point out that you do not, in fact, get paid for this: It’s not as if you get a nickel a retweet or something. You only get an empty endorphin rush that just makes you want another one. When you take a step back from it, basically Twitter has convinced thousands of people who get paid for creating things to hand over their most immediate thoughts—and so much of their emotional capital—for free. It’s bizarre. And it’s increasingly self-destructive.

Editor, Heal Thyself: The NewsBune's management gets all touchy with me, and it's hilariously revealing.

Newspapermen and women can be relied upon to down a few shots of Old Self Righteous, and then remind the remainder of us on the "outside" about the absolutely vital and valiant role their publications play in holding influential interests accountable to the people, whether these are governments, oligarchs or any other human contrivance that finds secrecy helpful in perpetuating connivance and preserving power.

But if you're looking for some really cheap laughs, lay off the hootch and ask the newspaper itself to be accountable to its own purported mission of accountability. You'll notice the walls against scrutiny going up faster than you can say "Look, is that investigative journalism's corpse floating over there in Silver Creek?"

To me, it's not at all an unreasonable question to ask: How many reporter salaries are made possible by municipal advertising purchases?

I raised this and a few other points in a letter to the News and Tribune, and someone -- the editor, the publisher, or maybe the guy delivering sandwiches from Jimmy Johns -- couldn't help but append a visibly annoyed answer, seeking to attack me as a hypocrite while predictably refusing to address my concerns.

This is displacement and evasion, and rhetorical weakness of this degree probably isn't deserving of comment, but because I'm transparent, here goes: I no longer own a business, but when I did, I'd have had absolutely no issue whatever with releasing our financial records, because there wasn't anything in them to hide. In fact, we always thought it would be quite informative for folks to see just how much money we weren't making in the food and drink business.

Of course the newspaper's situation is far different. We claimed only to be serving food and drink. The newspaper depicts itself in heroic terms, willing at the drop of a hat to stress its own critical importance as a quasi-ombudsman (supposedly) comforting the afflicted and affilcting the comfortable.

Neither will that dog hunt, nor is the escape clause to avoid self-accountability convincing: "Wait, we're a private, for-profit, non-locally-owned business, and you'll receive no answers from us."

Phooey.

Given the amount of ads run by New Albany and Jeffersonville alone, both from classified placements that cities are compelled to make (the rates for which ALL newspapers continue to raise extortionately) and the discretionary self-glorification memes preferred by Jeff Gahan and Mike Moore (read: political ads in all except the fudged invoice descriptions), this money is a potential conflict of interest, plain and simple.

Deflect all you wish, Susan, Bill and the gang. The light's pointed at you, not me.

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Reader expected records editorial

Mike Moore kicked off the year in a blatant fit of sheer greed, and it wasn’t very pretty.

The Jeffersonville mayor’s inelegantly stage-managed bid for a 30 percent raise was so egregious that even our local chain newspaper took note, and rightly mounted the soapbox in protest.

Naturally, later this year at the annual shill ceremony concocted by its corporate master, the News and Tribune will win an award for best coverage of municipal events occurring just outside the office door, before adjourning to attend mocktail party for Alabama pensioners.

Just as predictably, in New Albany our City Hall expended six full months in a coordinated effort to rebuff “sunshine law” public information requests before being called on the carpet and fined by a judge.

Nope, not a peep from the principled editorial team at the News and Tribune.

It’s worth repeating that one of the information requests spurned by New Albany’s spigot-smothering city functionaries sought clarity about the amount of money spent each year by City Hall via its contract with ProMedia for purely discretionary advertisements, often thinly-veiled mayoral campaign ads, with this money flowing to places exactly like the News and Tribune.

Not one of the three links in this chain of taxpayer cash — city, contractor or newspaper — will tell us the answer to a simple question: Exactly how much money is involved?

Where’s the transparency in this situation, exalted newspaper editorialists?

Thankfully one of these links, city government, is subject to Indiana state law pertaining to the necessity of honoring information requests, and yet instead of obeying the law, it threw a tantrum and delayed compliance until after the election, and only when forced to do so by the judiciary.

If the newspaper won’t call out this sort of behavior, who will?

— ROGER A. BAYLOR

New Albany

EDITOR’S NOTE: There is no statute of limitations on encouraging office holders to be transparent in their dealings, including allowing access to public records. New Albany erred and was compelled by a judge to provide the requested records. We are encouraged that city officials — finally — did the right thing and urge them to comply with records requests more expediently in the future. Their misstep will no doubt be fodder for future editorials dealing with transparency in government.

We aren’t aware of any business, though — including yours, Mr. Baylor — that opens its financial records to the public. We do not discriminate against people or entities — including cities and politicians — who want to advertise with us.

The other side of Cokie Roberts, beloved regurgitator of the status quo.

I understand why the late Cokie Roberts was valued by her readers and listeners on the basis of being a woman in a man's game who broke through the glass ceiling. However, as with so many other aspects of our existence, there comes a time when actual content matters, and not merely the outer appearances. It's important to have another, deeper point of view. Read it, then decide for yourself.

Nostradamus of the Obvious, by Mark Dery (The Baffler)

On Cokie Roberts

WHEN SHE DIED THIS PAST SEPTEMBER at seventy-five, Cokie Roberts, political commentator for NPR and ABC News and well-connected member of D.C.’s “little village,” as it’s known to Washington’s inner circle, was lauded as a pioneering female journalist who gate-crashed the boys’ clubs of broadcast news and political punditry. Her friend and fellow NPR reporter Nina Totenberg remembered her as “always polite” yet “willing to ask the impolitic question if necessary”—“impolitic” questions being the equivalent, in NPR’s ASMR-inducing atmosphere of timorous “civility,” of the caning of Charles Sumner.

To be sure, she was a tart-tongued observer of the misbehaving schoolboys in Congress, armed with the sort of inside-baseball knowledge of Capitol Hill you’d expect from someone whose parents both served in the House of Representatives. (Her father, Hale Boggs, a Democrat from New Orleans, made it to majority leader; when he was presumed dead in office, Roberts’s mother, Lindy Boggs, ran for his seat, won it, and held onto it for nine terms, from 1973 to 1991.) But she was also a Nostradamus of the Obvious, a mouthpiece for conventional wisdom who channeled the worldview of the D.C. elite for drive-time audiences. As such, she provides an invaluable civics lesson. Putting the class loyalties of the strenuously non-partisan pundit on full display, Roberts showed us how the commentariat heads off challenges to the status quo: by policing the boundaries, in public discourse, of what’s reasonable and what’s beyond the pale.

When Totenberg eulogized her colleague, multimillionaire, A-lister at Sally Quinn’s dinner parties, and fond friend of Bush Senior, as “always the voice of people with less power,” listeners familiar with Roberts’s reliably smug, often snide dismissal of any candidate or policy proposal a millimeter to the left of D.C. orthodoxy rolled their eyes so hard they could barely dislodge them. Roberts “never met a liberal to whom she could not condescend,” asserts Eric Alterman in What Liberal Media?, a critique of the conservative canard that the media tilts left.

For a “founding mother” of “liberal” NPR, Roberts had an incurable addiction to uncritically swallowing and regurgitating conservative bunkum ...

GREEN MOUSE presents NAWBANY WEEK IN REVIEW for 17 January 2020.

William Blake never lived in Nawbany, but he grasps our degraded civic condition better than most residents.

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way … As a man is, so he sees.”

Welcome to a new weekly feature at NA Confidential. Roger remains on sabbatical from heavy polemical lifting, but it takes no time at all to collect a few headlines, eh?

So it was that the Green Mouse was chatting with a neighbor as together they ducked and covered to avoid the sawdust borne of the latest wave of lumbering downtown.

"The neighborhood from spring to Ekin, 15th to Vincennes is under attack by hooded, face-masked asshats," remarked the neighbor as a very large man on a very small children's bicycle oozed past.

"Cops say they can't do anything if the asshats are probing and pulling doors, at least without seeing or catching them in the act, but hell, I have video of drug deals next door -- then Todd says no, can't smell it on the video. WTF? Something's got to change in Nawagony!"

"Nawagony" -- now THAT'S a keeper.

Did you know that in days of old, there was no crime in the Soviet Union? Well, maybe there was a little bit, but when the official propaganda channels kept saying everyone had been successfully converted into New Communist Men and Women, how could they be capable of petty capitalist transgressions?

Same goes here in New Gahania. We just concluded an election campaign during which neighborhood crime scarcely was mentioned by the Gahans, Phippses and Nashes of the town, and acknowledging such issues now would suggest they were being ... um, evasive.

Who are you going to believe, them or your own video?

Amid sighs and lamentations, the Green Mouse yearns for that elusive day when folks spend time and money on grassroots fixes for what genuinely ails us, rather than meaningless appearances. Too much Disney, too little reality. The reason NAC can't support this bridge lighting chimera is that it not only absorbs tight money which might go toward mitigating car-centrism, but also diverts short attention spans away from much needed "small bet" reforms, to be yet again ignored by reason of magical fantasy thinking. The fundamental issue remains moving people in some way other than one-person-per-car.

Can we talk about THAT?

New Albany leaders making (expletive deleted) in bridge lighting (NewsBune)

Meanwhile, NAC's idea of usefulness is getting existing street lights consistently lit BEFORE trying to string them across the Ohio River. There are three burned-out lights on Market between State and Pearl, opposite the side of the street where the city just spent a million bucks on luxury appendages. They've been out for months.

Can we afford a mere three bulbs for the orphaned south side of the street? it would help pedestrians see the trip hazards before they fall -- as the Green Mouse evidently was doing as he snapped the first photo.

Frankly, we're amazed. How did a reputable business slip into Colonial Manor without a single City Hall functionary claiming credit for it -- and WITHOUT the city owning the building, which previously had been stated as an absolute prerequisite?

Is free enterprise even legal?

Will the fire inspector shut them down until the fruit baskets are delivered with requisite bulging envelopes?

We're SO confused.

RC race track to open in New Albany shopping center, by Taylor Durden (WAVE 3)

Hoosier RC Hobbyplex opens Saturday at 10 a.m.

Rumor has it the River Heritage Conservancy came away from its recent meeting with Team Gahan utterly convinced it had wandered by mistake into a second grade classroom, as opposed to a municipal brain trust. We're just afraid of insulting second graders.

The Minds Behind Louisville’s Riverfront Revival, by (WFPL)

The conservancy has already purchased about half the land needed for the park. To date, funding support has come from the Paul Ogle Foundation, the Blue Sky Foundation, the Town of Clarksville and other local and national organizations.

Join us again next time as we review the week that was.

A new downtown New Albany gallery is a collaboration.

The first joint exhibit begins tomorrow; visit the Facebook events page.

Local gallery owners collaborate to form Bourne-Schweitzer Gallery, by Brooke McAfee ('Bune Picayune)

NEW ALBANY — A new collaboration is bringing several changes to New Albany's downtown art scene.

Julie Schweitzer, local artist and owner of ArtSeed in New Albany, is partnering with the James Bourne Gallery, located downtown at 137 E. Main St., to form the Bourne-Schweitzer Gallery. They plan to show Southern Indiana artists and new contemporary artists, she said. The first exhibit under the new partnership opens Friday and runs until Feb. 28, and it features the work of Shawna Khalily, a Louisville artist and printmaker who uses intricate woodcuts she carves herself ...

ON THE AVENUES: I won’t belong to any Dry January that would have me as a member.

What shall we use
To fill the empty spaces
Where we used to talk?
How shall I fill
The final places?
How should I complete the wall?
-- Roger Waters

Earlier this week I donned headphones and listened to Pink Floyd’s album The Wall for the first time in ages. It didn’t occur to me that it had been almost exactly 40 years since the record's release. The Wall came out in late 1979, and by summer of 1980 it was everywhere, unavoidable and inescapable.

Here's a confession: Pot never really was my go-to substance, but admittedly some of my friends and I smoked a good bit of it listening to The Wall, and I've never regretted a single toke.

Seeing as my default setting, then as now, is to resist simpler (simplistic?) pleasures, it wasn’t enough for me to enjoy the music this week. I felt compelled to catch up on my reading, and into the unremitting rabbit hole of internet archives I dove.

The Wall isn’t the only instance of a massively popular rock band sternly meditating on the torturous aftershocks of stardom, but it’s the most commercially successful example. That’s because Waters, for all his vitriolic rhetoric likening rock shows to combat, wasn’t really a punk. He was a populist. It didn’t matter that he hated actual people: He still sought, perhaps unconsciously, their acceptance, because like all insecure rock stars, the only thing Waters feared more than Pink Floyd being huge was Pink Floyd not being huge.

Vitriolic rhetoric?

Now there’s something I can unequivocally endorse.

In chemistry, a vitriol is a sulfate. The word derives from the Latin vitriolum, or “glassy.” Apparently this is because “the crystals of several metallic surfaces resemble pieces of colored glass.”

At some point after the fall of Rome, vitriol came to be used to describe sulfuric acid, which has caustic, bitter, corrosive and pungent characteristics. Then in the late 1700s someone thought to transfer the word to the realm of human thoughts and feelings, hence vitriol, used to indicate harsh, bitter, caustic and corrosive criticism or comments.

I love this word, vitriol. The synonyms read like a who’s who of the reactions inspired in me by the sheer insipidity of life in New Gahania.

• nastiness
• sarcasm
• venom
• disdain
• hatefulness
• hostility
• malevolence
• maliciousness
• virulence
• acrimoniousness

In my interior world, these terms are to the practice of principled polemics what certain spices …

• Cumin
• Coriander
• Mustard seeds
• Ginger
• Garam masala
• Turmeric
• Cinnamon
• Cardamom
• Spicy red chile pepper

… are to Indian cuisine.

Curry meets contempt, and souls are unburdened.

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As months of the year go, January doesn’t get any respect. In fact quite a lot of vitriol is aimed in January’s general direction; in addition to being cold, dark and seasonally depressed, all those tax materials aren’t going to organize themselves, and January is when you resolve to wait until the second week of April to get started.

Trust me on this. Every damn year, try as I might.

But as if January weren’t already dire enough, some folks now insist on prefacing it with a tremendously gloomy adjective, redolent of defeatism and despair: Dry, as in Dry January.

It’s bad enough that bizarre pretend-substances like Michelob Ultra, “hard” seltzer and peanut butter “whiskey” pass through human lips, much less that after eleven months solid of all you people swallowing them -- c'mon, it’s not really drinking, is it? -- you're compelled to invent social media strategies to, um, "get healthy," though only for a very short time.

What’s left without booze, milk? It's a horrifying thought. If ever there was a valid rationale for “drying out,” the proper liquid of exclusion would be milk. It’s liquid snot, nasty and not tasty in any way.

Milk is an aesthetic and culinary outrage on a par with Chick-fil-A and Taco Hell.

Milk is a conspiracy foisted on us by the multinational diary lobby.

Milk has no reason to exist for adult consumption apart from the utility of making it into cheese or ice cream.

Once I had a dream in which I was drinking milk and commenting about how perfectly it paired with fish and chips, and this nightmarishness hounded me for months.

Booze is the preferred antidote to this and most other conditions, although make my Russian black, not white. But how on earth does a guy self-medicate during Dry January?

My most malevolent assessments of Dry January are reserved for the planet’s killjoy health fascists, and there’s nothing like the condition of their preferred “dryness” to escalate the vitriol. This makes me appreciate Alain Ducasse even more.

French chef Alain Ducasse, an outspoken opponent of Dry January, has launched an initiative to entice patrons of his restaurants to drink more during the first month of the year, not less.

“I like swimming against the tide,” he told AFP on Tuesday, announcing plans to proffer top bottles of Burgundy and Bordeaux at knockdown prices to encourage diners to order wine by the bottle rather than by the glass.

“I’m obsessed with selling wine,” Ducasse said, adding that he was horrified to see customers in New York order iced tea with their lunch instead of wine.

Ducasse is right. I dislike iced tea almost as much as milk.

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Listen, just think of me as the harmless reincarnation of comedian Don Rickles. It's nothing whatever personal with regard to anyone who currently is dry in January, or any other time. It's not that I object to health and well-being. I’ve been known to grudgingly contemplate largely unattainable ideals like these, and even put them into practice on widely scattered occasions.

However, like so many other facets of modern life, I’d appreciate greater attention to a daily foundation of quiet achievement and genuine merit rather than a Facebook-driven reliance on asinine hashtags, memes and hysteria.

Esther Mobley is the wine critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. For her, “responsible drinking” is an everyday consideration, one not confined to a particular month or period.

Those of us who write professionally about booze seldom address the issue of problematic drinking, probably to our detriment. I’m unmoved by arguments against Dry January that focus on the negative impacts they’d have on the wine industry: It’s not my job to defend any industry, and wineries ought to have to win customers’ business in sober-curious times as well as indulgent eras. In fact, it’s in the booze industry’s long-term interest that its customers become introspective about their health.

The reason I’m not doing Dry January, however, is because I consider it a more meaningful achievement to practice responsible drinking year-round.

That's my stand, but pay no attention to me. I've become comfortably numb, with or without the milk (or the cream liqueur) of human kindness.

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Recent columns:

January 9: ON THE AVENUES: Elusive sounds of silence.

January 2: ON THE AVENUES: On patience, grieving, puzzles and a necessary sabbatical.

December 26: ON THE AVENUES: Four more years? Heaven help us all, but there are five reasons to be optimistic.

December 21: ON THE AVENUES HOLIDAY SPECIAL: Truth, lies, music, and a trick of the Christmas tale (2019 Remix).

"I argue that Fischer’s vision for Louisville is lackluster at best and lacks the compassion he claims we have."

After Fischer met Bob Marley.

"We can’t eat bourbon, Sir" is about as scathing as it gets. It remains fascinating to observe big brother Fischer and little brother Jeff Gahan, with the latter gazing at his idol with goo goo eyes. It's revealing and revolting in equal measure.

The basic problem, as identified so presciently by Gertrude Stein a whole century ago, is when it comes to either of them, there's no there there.

GUEST COMMENTARY: Can Greg Fischer Really Deliver For Louisville As ‘America’s Mayor’? by Cassia Herron (LEO Weekly)

 ... In his interview with The Courier Journal’s Darcy Costello, Fischer painted a picture of a dreamy 2020, which centers on him being “America’s mayor” as the chair of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

This role will allow him, he says, to lobby on behalf of the country’s cities, attract more attention to Louisville (which equals more investment) and receive support from his peers — like that which helped him with the national search to hire police Chief Steve Conrad. Fischer said he’d encourage his fellow mayors to be more vision-oriented as they continue providing basic services and managing normal operations of the city.

Sounds good, but can Fischer really deliver?

I argue that Fischer’s vision for Louisville is lackluster at best and lacks the compassion he claims we have. We can’t eat bourbon, Sir, and for those homeowners and residents in the California neighborhood with black residue on their homes from the production of our sacred drink, bourbonism hasn’t been so good to them.

Planting trees as resistance and empowerment? In Nawbany, we just make stumps.

Wait, am I reading this correctly?

"Trees as an instrument of civil disobedience, empowerment, and emancipation, advancing democracy, human rights, and environmental justice."

In Kenya, maybe. In New Albany, we can rely on our ruling elites to display zero comprehension about trees apart from chopping then down at an unprecedented rate even as the urban heat island effect escalates.

Consequently, we look to Africa. Thanks to W for this link.

Planting Trees as Resistance and Empowerment: The Remarkable Illustrated Story of Wangari Maathai, the First African Woman to Win the Nobel Peace Prize, by Maria Popova (Brain Pickings)

“A tree is a little bit of the future.”

Walt Whitman saw in trees the wisest of teachers and Hermann Hesse found in them a joyous antidote to the sorrow of our own ephemerality. “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way,” William Blake wrote in his most beautiful letter. “As a man is, so he sees.”

Many tree-rings after Blake and Whitman and Hesse, another visionary turned to trees as an instrument of civil disobedience, empowerment, and emancipation, advancing democracy, human rights, and environmental justice.

Born near a holy fig tree in the central highlands of Kenya twenty years after the country became a British colony, Wangari Maathai (April 1, 1940–September 25, 2011) went on to become the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded for her triumph of promoting “ecologically viable social, economic and cultural development” by founding the Green Belt Movement responsible for planting 30 million trees and empowering women to partake in social change — an act of courage and resistance for which she was beaten and imprisoned multiple times, but which ultimately helped defeat Kenya’s corrupt, authoritarian president and blazed a new path to ecological resilience ...

Brand Sussex, Karl Marx and why pitchforks matter.

Harry and Meghan are seceding from the monarchy -- well, except for Harry's inheritance. It's a useful reminder that inherited wealth and not "inventing a better mousetrap" is where the One Percent got all that money in the first place.

Seen in this harsh light, amok capitalism and hidebound feudalism have quite a lot more in common than might be evident. This said, I wish Brand Sussex much luck; someday they may even appear on the cover of Extol Magazine.

But there's really no reason whatever why any of us should give a damn. 

Harry, Meghan and Marx at The Economist

Brand Sussex represents the biggest threat to the monarchy so far

 ... The Sussexes are doing something new. They are embracing capitalism in its rawest, most modern form: global rather than national, virtual rather than solid, driven, by its ineluctable logic, constantly to produce new fads and fashions.

This type of capitalism is the inverse of feudalism. In a feudal society you are bound to your followers by mutual bonds of obligation. In 21st-century capitalism you accumulate followers in order to monetise them. In a feudal society you are bound to plots of land: Harry is the Duke of Sussex while his elder brother is the Duke of Cambridge. In a 21st-century-capitalist society you are propelled around the globe in pursuit of the latest marketing opportunity. It is only fitting that the principal agent of the current debacle, Meghan Markle, is the product of an entertainment business that has done more than any other industry to fulfil Marx’s prediction that “all that is sacred” would be “profaned” and “all that is solid” would “melt into air”.

snip

The daylight that Walter Bagehot said should not be let in upon the magic of monarchy is as nothing to the glare of 21st-century capitalism.

Eric Hoffer, the Longshoreman Philosopher.

Eric Hoffer (1898-1983) was an "American writer on social and political philosophy," dubbed the Longshoreman Philosopher. In fact, even after his writings were published, Hoffer continued to work and retired as a longshoreman at the age of 65.

Hoffer was an interesting person and an independent thinker; even if I'm not in agreement with everything he wrote, his thoughts inspire discussion.

Hoffer always reminded me of a working man's H. L. Mencken, or Mencken if Mencken were a longshoreman and not a newspaperman: "An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head."

This article explores Hoffer's enigmatic nature. Where did he really come from?

Eric Hoffer, Genius—And Enigma, by Tom Bethell (Hoover Institution)

... Hoffer’s place in American politics and intellectual thought is an enigmatic one. Much of his writing was in the form of aphorisms: short, pithy remarks that touched on eternal truths. But he was also capable of the sustained thought and expression that went into The True Believer and some of his other books and newspaper columns. Hoffer was interested in probing the depths of human behavior and discovering the motivations behind the twentieth century’s wars and revolutions. Wary of public praise, he resembled the prophets of the Old Testament, free to make people of high and low estate uncomfortable with his insights.

All empires end messily, including America's.

As in all such matters, we begin by noting that individuals serving in the military don't choose the rationale for their deployment. This is done by political figures for various reasons, few of them involving integrity. So it has been, and so it shall remain, at least until "we the people" have the gumption to think about it.

Donald Trump’s rant against Iran is the howl of a dying empire, by Simon Jenkins (The Guardian)

As the president slurred ritualised abuse of Iran and pleas to Nato, we saw the US’s days as world hegemon dribbling away

 ... All empires outstay their declared purpose, let alone their welcome. All end messily – the operative word is all – be they Roman, Napoleonic, British or Soviet. All are vanquished not by superior power, but by self-delusion and geography. The British empire had neither the right nor the need to invade far-flung parts of Asia and Africa. It was defeated by them. The US has claimed the right to intervene in theatres as diverse as South America, the far east, east Africa and a portfolio of Muslim states. Justification varies from retaliation and deterrence to “self-defence” and the instilling of democracy.

The US’s intentions have often been noble, but good intentions camouflage power projection. When your drones can kill anyone anywhere, the temptation is insuperable. If you think you can police the world from a bunker in Nevada, why not try?

Trump’s instinct was once that of a classic American isolationist. As he reiterated to Congress last February, “Great nations do not fight endless wars … the hour has come to at least try for peace.” He was announcing withdrawal from Syria and more tentatively from Afghanistan. Yet he is still there. The US is fighting six wars – also in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. None has any conceivable relevance to its own security.

Imperialism sticks to politics like glue. Even as common sense screams withdrawal, staying offers the populist an opportunity for glory.

snip

Twenty years of western interventions in the Muslim world have rested on two falsehoods. One is that terrorism poses an existential threat to western democracies, grotesquely underrating their inherent stability. The other is that intervention can remedy such a threat, can enforce obedience and even democracy on victim states ... the issue now is not whether we can any longer plant the flowers of democracy in fields we have drenched in blood. It is how to get the hell out. The sight of Trump ranting against Iran and inflicting on it yet further sanctions was like the final scene of a tragic opera. He seemed a man trapped.

Two American presidents played a significant role in the demise of British imperialism. Franklin D Roosevelt told Winston Churchill that the US’s involvement in the second world war was strictly on condition that Britain dissolved its empire. The US would not defend it. John Foster Dulles, who was later US secretary of state, said in 1945 that his was “the first colony to have won independence” from Britain, and it expected others to follow. This advice was fiercely echoed in 1956 by Dwight D Eisenhower, appalled at Britain’s invasion of Suez.

Iraqi politicians this week joined the anti-imperial cause by demanding that American forces be withdrawn from their soil. All Trump could do was refuse, despite having previously pledged to do just that. Even in its hour of insecurity, 17 years of American occupation had left Iraq just desperate for it to end. It knows it must live at peace with its powerful neighbour, Iran, and this requires it to be no longer to be a tool of American presidential machismo. Likewise Afghanistan must find its own accommodation with the Taliban and with its neighbour, Pakistan ...

The situation is not entirely normal in Northern Ireland.

Sligo, Irish Republic ... 1985.

"Parliament Buildings, often referred to as Stormont because of its location in the Stormont Estate area of Belfast, is the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the devolved legislature for the region."

Forced remarriage: Northern Ireland gets a government again, at The Economist

Both big parties fear the alternative even more than they dislike each other

NORTHERN IRELAND’S devolved government has been reborn. After many months of hard-fought negotiations, the biggest unionist and republican parties agreed on January 10th to go back into government together, creating a new element of hope in the often unforgiving politics of Belfast. Under heavy pressure from both the government in London and their own voters, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein have agreed to revive the Belfast assembly, Stormont, which has been inactive for three full years.

I suspect that insofar as Americans think at all about the outside world, which is seldom, "divisions" pop into the conversation only with considerations of North and South Korea, and maybe vague recollections of East and West Germany.

Islands can be divided, too, as with the existence of two governments on Cyprus, one Greek (internationally recognized) and the other Turkish. Somehow I haven't heard this topic arise at the pub lately.

Or, in Ireland, where Irish independence a century ago came at the cost of losing Ulster, one of four traditional Irish provinces as well as the one dominated by Protestants rather than Catholics, and which has remained under British control.

I'm not sure that many Americans, even Irish-Americans, are fully aware of the potential for unexpected consequences from Brexit, one of which is the British effectively reneging on decades of promises of eternal support for the Protestants in Ulster.

The most alarming development, from the DUP’s point of view, is that Northern Ireland’s union with Britain looks increasingly insecure. Mr Johnson’s withdrawal bill, which returned to Parliament on January 7th, draws a dotted line between the province and the rest of the country by providing for different customs arrangements in the two areas. The latest poll in Northern Ireland showed a tiny majority in favour of the reunification of Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to the province, mandates a referendum on reunification when it is clear that a majority in the province wants one.

Social, economic and political conditions are weird everywhere, not only here in the USA. Is this why the planet is burning, or is the causation the other way around?

Kruse control? It's still theocratic bondage, so oppose Indiana SB 131.

The column's title is "Proposed Indiana Senate bill would force religion on schools."

It's from January of 2019, not 2020, but when it comes to chuckleheaded theocrat Dennis Kruse, every legislative session is the right time to meld church with state.

Another legislative cycle in Indiana, another brazen attempt at forcing Christianity into the public education system. No surprise there.

Indiana Senate Bill 373 was authored by state Sens. Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, and Jeff Raatz, R-Richmond. Its provisions aim to bring a little more Christianity into Indiana’s public and charter schools.

The bill would allow school corporations to “require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science.”

The use of the term “creation science” signifies something important. The bill does not simply aim to make students aware that different religions tell various stories about the creation of life. It aims to teach about creationism as if it is science.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation has issued an alert, because now it's a different year, with another legislative cycle ... and the very same repetitive shenanigans from Kruse, who I would refer to as a Tinpot Ayatollah if I thought he was capable of understanding either word.

Where does Hoosierland get these these bad actors, anyway?

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URGENT: Please resist “In God We Trust” in schools bill!

The Indiana Legislature is fast-tracking a bill that would require public schools in the state to display “In God We Trust” in every classroom and library. We need your help to ensure that young, impressionable students aren’t subject to religious proselytization.

SB 131 is part of the nationwide legislative push, Project Blitz. Project Blitz seeks to inject state legislatures with a whole host of religious bills, imposing the theocratic version of a powerful few on We The People. It is an unvarnished attack on American secularism and civil liberties — those things we cherish most about our democracy, and now must tirelessly defend.

While politicians claim that these laws are intended to showcase the national motto or inspire patriotism, it is clear that their true purpose is to peddle religiosity to a captive audience. These laws are about advancing the Big Lie that the United States was “founded on God” or Christianity, dismantling the wall of separation between religion and government. The motto “In God We Trust” is inaccurate, exclusionary and aimed at brainwashing American schoolchildren into believing that our nation is a theocracy.

Please use our automated system to contact members of the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development and ask that they stop this bill in its tracks.

TAKE ACTION