Me to WFPL: "I think it’s a good opportunity for us in New Albany to make sure everybody on our side of the river knows we’re here."

Gabe Bullard called this morning, and this is what came of it. I appreciate the opportunity to be interviewed!

Indiana Brewer Says Bridge Closure A Chance for Hoosiers to Visit Local Businesses

Gabe Bullard September 12, 2011| Email this to a friend

A New Albany business owner says the Sherman Minton Bridge’s closure has given him a better chance to connect with Hoosier customers.

Roger Baylor is co-owner of the New Albanian Brewing Company, which has two restaurants in the city. He says he’s not worried about losing business in the short term while New Albany’s connection to Louisville is severed.

“When you’re already a destination business and you’re already a niche business and people already know what you are and what to look for, the ones who are into it will still come,” he says. “But I think it’s a good opportunity for us in New Albany to make sure everybody on our side of the river knows we’re here.”

Baylor says he’s talking with his fellow New Albany business owners to determine a long-term plan to adjust to the bridge closure.

To see the traffic plan for the bridge closure, click here.

In New Albany, accentuating the positive during the time of the closure.

Yesterday afternoon, I sent the following to the mailing list of the Merchant Mixer gatherings. After some chatting, a meeting has been set up for Tuesday morning.

---

If one succeeds, all succeed.

To downtown New Albany merchants and other interested parties on this mailing list; apologies for errors, but I thought it important to let as little time elapse as possible.

I’ve been thinking about a few things, and I’d appreciate your indulgence. These thoughts primarily pertain to downtown merchants, but hopefully, they will also be relevant to others.

Permit me to begin by stating the obvious: For an indeterminate time to come, life’s going to be very different for us owing to the disruptions of the Sherman Minton Bridge ’s indefinite closing.

We’re going to hear 1,001 expert opinions from all and sundry as to why this happened, who is to blame, and how it might be fixed with baling twine and duct tape. The reason I’m writing is not to add my own viewpoint to what will soon be a glutted selection.

Rather, it is to suggest that we have no time to complain, gripe, panic, or feel sorry for ourselves, because if we take time to wallow, we might well become road kill. It’s time to heed the advice of the World War II song:

You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between

To start, what’s happening just now with the Sherman Minton is far from a disaster, and we need to avoid suggesting it is. No one’s been injured, killed, maimed or made into a refugee. Wars, hurricanes, floods, famines, plagues -- bridges falling down -- these are genuine disasters.

The bridge being closed is a substantive jolt to community routines, a burden for commuters, and an overall pain in the butt, but I believe there are as many positives for downtown business as there are negatives. We must focus on the positives, continue selling our concepts, and keep this revitalization thing on the move.

I’m asking that you join me in refusing to acknowledge the gloom and doom scenarios.

Yes, we all fear losing customers from Louisville , and although this is a legitimate concern, think of it this way: Although it might take a bit longer, your true fans from Louisville will still come to you.

Being located in New Albany always meant that we were niche, destination businesses. Our regular Louisville customers already have been going “out of their way,” precisely because it has been worth the extra trouble. If what we’re doing truly in our businesses is truly special, and I believe it is, then many of them will continue to do so.

It’s true that some Louisvillians will use the bridge closure as an excuse to refrain from the trip to New Albany, but think of it this way: Just as many Hoosiers won’t wish to make the longer discretionary trip to Louisville, and consequently, this provides us a wonderful (and perhaps overdue) opportunity to sell ourselves to our own home market.

It’s also a chance to reaffirm the Buy Local principles so many have been espousing, seeing as there stands to be a more receptive audience on the Indiana side of the river while the Sherman Minton remains down. Our small, locally-owned Indies cannot let this educational moment slip away.

We must be prepared to adapt. For instance, I’ve consistently advocated two-way street conversions and traffic calming measures as benefiting downtown merchants by restoring the historic business district to its original people-not-cars orientation.

However, I realize that for the life of the bridge’s closure, these ideas probably will remain on the shelf. It does not contradict their usefulness, only that reality is changed -- temporarily. If detoured traffic must pass through downtown New Albany , it means more potential customers.

Now more than ever, whether as merchants or community leaders, we must be prepared to do what it takes to help ourselves. Local government will have its hands full with infrastructure changes and roadway governance. This will be no time for handouts. It’s going to be just us, and just us alone. This is the time to be unified, and to work together.

Lastly, as business owners, it is critically important that we convey this message to our employees!

First and foremost, our workers must see that we’re not backing away from this challenge. It’s “can do” time, not “woe is me.” We must provide them with as much verified, factual information as possible about the closure and the transport situation, so as to preclude rumors and the usual “I heard something from someone” misinformation.

Not only are our employees the daily, front-line face of our businesses. They also serve as topical news agents for every customer who steps inside one of our shops. If our employees do not buy into a program of determination, and are not made aware of our plan to survive, our customers are going to sense it, both immediately and to our detriment.

We’re all cock-eyed optimists now – there is no other way this can work out.

As for our customers, each one is more important than ever before. We’re already doing great work, and now it’s important that our work be even better than before. Our regular customers will navigate the waits and detours in return for a wonderful experience.

I can say this with confidence because each one of us is a regular customer, too. You’ll be seeing me, and I’ll be seeing you. That’s what localism is all about. Few of us can afford tactics beyond guerrilla marketing, so at the very least, each of us should know what the rest of us do. Information is the key. I’ve never once directed a questioner to the chain jeweler in the exurb, and I never will. I send them to JO Endris Jewelers, right down the street from Bank Street Brewhouse. It has nothing to do with personal differences of opinion! As owners and employees, we need to tout each other. It’s no longer optional.

We’ve worked too hard on New Albany ’s new beginning to let the Sherman Minton situation bring us down. We must assume it will be a very long haul, and view the coming weeks as crucial. We’ve been having periodic gatherings with too sparse attendance. Do these need to be more regular, perhaps even once a week for the duration of the closing?

Can we get together this week?

Thanks for reading. I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and get to it.

Roger

Stagger or be staggered.

After today, larger workplaces unwilling to adjust schedules to alleviate gridlock should be compelled to do so by governmental fiat. This will annoy free marketeers. So be it. This is not a disaster, but it is an emergency, and waiting for lemmings to adapt perhaps not the most hopeful strategy.

Suggestions?

Gonder: "You Can't Get There from Here. Or Can You?"

From New Albany at-large council person John Gonder's blog, and reprinted in its entirety.

You Can't Get There from Here. Or Can You?

The emergency closing of the Sherman Minton bridge needs to be addressed with adroitness. Newspaper accounts put the daily traffic flow across that span at upwards of 70,000 vehicles a day. The ability of the two remaining car bridges, the Kennedy Bridge and the Clark Memorial Bridge, are woefully inadequate to handle the sudden increase in traffic which they will face for the duration of the closing of the Sherman Minton Bridge.

Some have called for reliance on car pools,staggered shifts, and flexible work hours to meet the challenge. This wake up call underscores the foolishness of ignoring maintenance. It points out at the local level the compromised status of our infrastructure. It should represent a true national challenge, something like the "Sputnik moment" of the late fifties. It should force us to question the sense of putting all the eggs of our transportation system in the single basket of personal automobile commuting.

It should, and it could, but it probably won't. And it certainly won't by Monday morning when some kind of "geddon" will await those damned to make the trip by car to Louisville and back to meet the requirements of their jobs.

So here's a modest, perhaps counter intuitive, proposal of how we might muddle through this "cartastrophe" in the coming weeks.

Close the Clark Memorial Bridge to personal vehicles. Allow that span to carry only buses and emergency vehicles on the traffic lanes. Pedestrians and cyclists could use the sidewalks. It will do commuters little good to jump on a bus which will be stuck in barely moving traffic. There will be little incentive for car drivers to leave their cars parked if there is no expedited way of crossing the river. If buses are given free flow through designated streets and a green light at the Clark Bridge, I think those who see the buses rolling as the car bound sit mired in traffic may quickly decide that, at least during this particularly trying period, it would be wise to rely on mass transit.

It would be up to transportation experts to figure out how neophyte bus riders can be directed to their destinations once they've successfully crossed the river and de-bused at Union Station or some other central point. The first and biggest obstacle will be the bridge crossing itself.

The need to provide for easy cross-river travel of emergency vehicles is simply obvious on its face.

Once normalcy returns to daily traffic patterns it will be up to us as a community to recognize the vulnerability of our transportation non-system and proceed with a reasoned discussion of Twenty First Century alternatives. The alarm has sounded. Will there be sufficient will to meet the challenges and prepare for a better future?

Better than bloodshed.

A handful of targets our jingoistic destruction thankfully missed.

Goliath detects the underlying theme.

Wherein lies a conspiracy that's not like all the rest.

New Albany Strikes Back!!!!

New Albany done STOLE A MARCH and SHUT DOWN Sherman Minton Bridge. Diverts ALL that St Louis and Cinncinati Traffic right dad blast into Clark County and Jeffersonsville!!!

They spit, we swallow ...

Just the same, this is an excellent movie.

Fire and Ice, the Arts Council's fundraiser last night.

Norfolk Southern: Tear down this wall! Open this bridge!

Look, ma -- it's a mobility solution.

Thanks to Ted for the borrowed photos.

INDOT's Folly, Volume 1: Six wonderful weeks.

Compartmentalization does not preclude merrily contributing to the rumorama, and so here goes the first offering, as sent to me by a local official who shall remain nameless.

INDOT wanted to shut the bridge down last week for a period of 6 weeks so they could finish construction without having to worry about traffic. They received a lot of opposition locally, sooooooo they found cracks ... bridge closed indefinitely ... or about 6 weeks ...

Sherman Minton bridge down, Kerry Stemler high like a kite.

What we know, apart from the inevitable sensationalism and multi-generational rumors, is that the Sherman Minton Bridge has been closed "indefinitely" owing to cracks, and that we'll now awake to helicopters each morning as though we were living in one of those places that we routinely bomb in order to ensure a reliable supply of petrol to feed Kerry Stemler's "mobility" solution.

Standing for a couple hours at last night's Carnegie Center fundraiser, serving beer samples and watching the inveterate bridge fetishist Stemler cradle insipid white wine while grinning like a screaming skull on acid, does nothing to inspire one's resistance to conspiracy theories, but being an adult, it is possible to compartmentalize: Nothing that Mitch Daniels says can be trusted, now or two days ago, and at the same time, nothing can be done about any of it right now.

The heavy governmental hitters now will reach a conclusion, and once they reveal it, we'll work through the resulting mess and survive, while at the same time knowing that there has been little money or effort allocated by the state of Indiana to maintain such infrastructure, even as the Tolling Authority devises methods to inflict daily incremental pain, which will be more severe in the coming weeks, and all the errant conclusions derived from the Sherman Minton's structural condition, as trumpeted by the folks at 1Si, can now be used to fluff the oligarchs -- as though they needed any more fluffing.

So it goes. Stay tuned.

No2BridgeTolls.org reminds us: "Tolls still on the table."

(From No2BridgeTolls.org)

Tolls still on the table

The Ohio River Bridges Authority will be selecting a method of building the bridges in October, (Read CJ article) but tolls are still on the table unless the Federal Highway Administration intervenes. Please send a message to FHWA representatives below that you are opposed to tolls. Here's a draft message that you can edit to your particular concerns regarding tolls, but please send a message to the Federal Highway Administration representatives list below:

I stand with other members of this community who are opposed to tolls on I-65. Tolls on I-65 will have a negative impact on the local economy. Public comments are 3-1 against tolls on I-65. There are 9 resolutions from all surrounding local councils opposed to tolling I-65. Other resolutions against tolls on I-65 include two from local government associations, Southern Indiana Tourism Bureau, Jeffersonville Main Street Association, statements from Jeffersonville mayor Tom Galligan, and New Albany Mayor Doug England. Over 11,000 people signed petitions opposing tolls on I-65. Those signatures were collected over just 9 weeks.

Bob Tally, (FHWA co-chair) Indiana Division

robert.tally@dot.gov

P: (317) 226-7476

Fax: (317) 226-7341

Jose Sepulveda, Division Administrator, Kentucky Division Office

Federal Highway Administration

jose.sepulveda@dot.gov

330 West Broadway, Room 264
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601

P: (502)223-6720

Fax: (502)223-6735

Ray Lahood - Cheryl J Walker/ Special Assistant

Federal Highway Administration

Office of the Federal Highway Administrator

(202) 366-6378

Cheryl.Walker@dot.gov

(Illustration is NAC's)

On our mayoral candidates and 1Si's attempted usurpation of the local political process.

New Albany First, the city’s first-ever grassroots, local and independent business alliance, held an information session last evening at the Public House, and among the participants were mayoral candidates DM Bagshaw (Republican) and Jack Messer (Independent).

Jeff Gahan (Democrat) was not in attendance, but he has been a supporter of NA 1st from the very start. Also absent was Thomas Keister (Libertarian).

I was hoping Keister would attend, so I could jokingly ask him about his Free Rein Media, which someone masquerading as “Jimmy” recently took to task in One Southern Indiana Pop-Up Newspaper (OSIPUN, an acronym which looks almost “insipid”) for selling items designed to draw fire from Reclaim Our Redneck Backwoods Superstitious Culture Kentuckiana (RORBSCK, which lacks only a “u” to suck out loud, and surely already does).

But, as is my habit, I digress.

Significantly, all four candidates are small business owners, and even more interestingly, both Bagshaw and Messer were willing to report bits and pieces of the interview process wherein One Southern Indiana’s (1Si) political aggrandizement arm asked them questions to see who merits political endorsements, ones calculated to obtain oligarchic orgasms at the highly likely ultimate cost of sacrificing voluntary funding from every last locally elected governmental body able to grasp that taxpayers of virtually every political stripe earnestly wish for entities like 1Si to keep the politics out of whatever it is the organization does to justify its existence – itself a debatable topic.

According to both Bagshaw and Messer, one question asked of them was if elected, whether they would “use” 1Si’s services for outsourcing their economic development tasks. Both candidates indicated they responded with wariness, if not outright hostility. It is rumored that Gahan was more vociferous in objecting to 1Si’s arrogance. Having read Keister’s blogs over the years, I’d expect the same from him. None of the four seem to be buying into 1Si’s errant shtick, and for this, we should be grateful.

It makes me guardedly optimistic to know that first and foremost, our mayoral candidates understand small business issues by virtue of being small businessmen themselves.

Furthermore, not one of them is eager to be co-opted by One Southern Indiana’s creeping and unnecessary interference in the political process, and in this, each candidate lies firmly on the side not only of the general public, but an ever-increasing number of 1Si’s own operatives, who see quite clearly that the Stemlerization (that’s a synonym for politicization, folks) of 1Si impedes whatever legitimacy lies in their daily work. They can’t say it aloud, but readers would be amazed to hear the chilling off-record comments.

In fact, 1Si is so squarely on the defensive owing to its leadership’s perpetual, self-defeating political missteps that it cannot even run the risk of linking its new, vaunted Think Local Southern Indiana diversionary tactic to 1Si, which founded it. Nowhere is the 1Si brand to be seen, which of course does little except deepen the depth of deception.

All of which, to me, seems curiously toxic in nature.

Big Value, corner of 11th and Spring.

I stopped to chat with Pete Good yesterday. His Big Value shop is an institution on the corner of 11th and Spring, stretching all the way back to around the time of the Ford administration, and that sort of longevity is impressive, indeed.

Most noticeably to passers-by, Big Value sells many patriotic items -- flags, bunting, bumper stickers and the like, some of which Pete is discounting in honor of 9-11 commemorations. Of note to me is that he will not sell an American flag that isn't American-made.

Just behind Big Value, the Jon-Paul contracting firm is restoring the old, atmospheric commercial structure on the southeast corner of 11th and Oak, and also building a new (small) apartment building behind it. It is my understanding that the new owners will be looking for a business tenant.

While neighborhoods like Midtown are viewed today as residential, formerly there were small businesses -- shops, cafes and the like. There could be again, and my personal view is that there should and must be some commerce amid the homes.

ON THE AVENUES: Tickling the master's creatures.

ON THE AVENUES: Tickling the master's creatures.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Earlier this week, the local newspaper reported that Lord Cornwallis has been proven right.

The world has turned upside down, pigs are flying, toaster ovens are reciting Pynchon, and the building commissioner is onto certain code violators like the proverbial stink on genuine, locally ripened farmhouse cheese.

As Grandpa Jones would say, “That’s good!”

And as Archie Campbell would reply, “No, that’s bad!”

In truth, it may be either, or perhaps both. In New Albany, are daily affairs ever what they seem?

New Albany Building Commissioner David Brewer has ordered a rental property at 1308 E. Main St. to be vacated by Sept. 16 because of unsafe conditions.

Brewer made the announcement during a New Albany Building Commission meeting Tuesday, as he said the city will explore options, including razing the structure, which is owned by local businessman Matt McMahan.

The Irish Exit in New Albany and The Levee Bar and Grill in Jeffersonville are owned by McMahan.

The link to the newspaper article is here, assuming Internet surfers dare to risk publisher Bill Hanson’s bottom-line, auto dealerships’ pop-up fetish: Deadline set for vacating New Albany apartment.

---

In an e-mail yesterday, my blogging partner Jeff almost immediately put my own initial reaction into words.

Anybody know what McMahan did to piss off the City?

Countless other people and structures are worse, with the 8th and Culbertson building being just one example. It was declared out of code and in need of tens of thousands in repairs just to be habitable months before the corner collapsed. They bust McMahan, who has done at least some positive investing, and offer to enrich the other slum lord owner with no penalty. The McMahan house is in a historic district and they want to demolish it. The Culbertson building isn't and it's vital to the neighborhood?

These are my sentiments exactly, and while I can hear the accusations of toxicity being loaded along with black powder and grapeshot in the rhetorical muzzleloaders of those local power elites most recently ensconced in the good graces of City Hall’s current occupant, it remains that Jeff’s considerations are valid, and they embrace precisely the sort of questions the newspaper never seems to get around asking of the elites.

So, did Matt McMahan climb to the top of the splendiferous Elsby Building and moon the mayor in full view of downtown shoppers?

Did he refuse to let the deputy mayor run a tab at the Exit?

Does this explain why every time I suggest including the Exit in riverfront catering activities, it is rejected in favor of making sure the New Albany Country Club bar and grill gets the majority of slots, sans any semblance whatever of a fair bidding process?

Has the rot of favoritism become so pervasive that we’ll never be able to believe what we read?

---

Yep, Matt must have pulled a Roger, because after all, he was given a deadline, and now the city proposes to ignore it by intervening a full two weeks early, ostensibly because for the first time in recorded history, someone’s actually checking back to see what’s been done after an order was given.

That’s good … except that it might be bad, too, and in saying this, I’m not being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. I’m also neither criticizing Brewer, who runs his routes within the constraints of a leash brandished by higher-ups, nor coddling Matt, who can take care of himself.

As you know, NA Confidential has long advocated rule of law and the enforcement of ordinances as two sure means of solidifying the foundation of the city’s urban future, particularly as these pertain to the health and safety of rental property occupants. If the health of Matt’s tenants is threatened by mold, then something obviously must be done, precisely as something needed to be done throughout the city during the long reign of slumlords like the infamous Gregory brothers – and wasn’t, not once, not ever.

And, as I’m sure Matt would agree, he and I have had our differences in the past. Part of the process of our coming to terms was me confessing to being overbearing, and he admitting that if he had things to do over, he’d have done some of them differently. We’ve worked together a time or two, and it’s been fine. If Matt is given a chance and fails it, that’s regrettable, but he’s shown me that he’s willing to learn. Because of this, I believe he deserves that chance, just like anyone else.

My hunch is that Matt’s just another scapegoat, and I’d like to see evidence of other rental property owners being monitored in like fashion, because there’s a pesky 800-lb gorilla perched somewhere in the vicinity of Room 316, and it’s a massive question mark denoting skepticism and doubt: Doubt in the notion of equality, doubt in the sense of how uniformly such ordinances are enforced, doubt in the transparency in the process, and doubts as to whether there is any consistency in it.

When purely political motives can be seen to determine so many other facets of the city’s daily life, how can we be sure that Matt is truly deserving of newfound and meticulous enforcement scrutiny when others continue to boldly fly under the radar?

How can we really be sure that the inequality of cliquishness, rampant cronyism and the calculated (and secretive) backing of winners, from River View down to the Bud Light at Confederate Railroad show, are not factors at work in Matt’s case?

As we have seen, City Hall’s backroom reaction to 8th & Culbertson’s dilapidated status, including its ongoing efforts to seize the assets of the Urban Enterprise Association, stands as a non-transparent benchmark of justified skepticism.

There are 114 days left in which to answer these questions, before the next chapter begins. DM Bagshaw, Jeff Gahan, Thomas Keister and Jack Messer are the candidates running for mayor in our November election, and to each of them, I have only this to say: Will you pledge to disband “local government by unelected cliques”?

It’s the single best step the winner could take to remove past taints, and to help boost New Albany to the next level.

Why bicyclists almost never bitch about traffic calming.

The tedium of listening to motorists complain when they can't drive faster than they should might lessen if the same motorists periodically were held responsible for the persons and cyclists they hit.

---

Bike safety: Calm down; With a very few exceptions, America is no place for cyclists (from the print edition of The Economist)

DYING while cycling is three to five times more likely in America than in Denmark, Germany or the Netherlands. To understand why, consider the death of Michael Wang. He was pedalling home from work in Seattle on a sunny weekday afternoon in late July when, witnesses say, a brown SUV made a left turn, crunched into Wang and sped away.

The road where the 44-year-old father of two was hit is the busiest cycling corridor in Seattle, and it has clearly marked bicycle lanes. But the lanes are protected from motor vehicles by a line of white paint—a largely metaphorical barrier that many drivers ignore and police do not vigorously enforce. A few feet from the cycling lane traffic moves at speeds of between 30 miles per hour, the speed limit for arterials in Seattle, and 40 miles per hour, the speed at which many cars actually travel. This kind of speed kills. A pedestrian hit by a car moving at 30mph has a 45% chance of dying; at 40mph, the chance of death is 85%, according to Britain’s Department of Transport.

Had Mr Wang been commuting on a busy bike route in Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Berlin, his unprotected exposure to instruments of death—namely, any vehicle moving at 20mph or more—would be nearly nil. These cities have knitted together networks for everyday travel by bike. To start with, motor vehicles allowed near cyclists are subject to “traffic calming”. They must slow down to about 19mph, a speed that, in case of collision, kills less than 5%. Police strictly enforce these speed limits with hefty fines. Repeat offenders lose their licences.

Calmer traffic is just the beginning. In much of northern Europe, cyclists commute on lanes that are protected from cars by concrete buffers, rows of trees or parked cars. At busy crossroads, bicycle-activated traffic lights let cyclists cross first. Traffic laws discriminate in favour of people on bikes. A few American cities have taken European-style steps to make streets safer for cycling, most notably Portland, Oregon, which has used most of the above ideas. The result: more bikes and fewer deaths. Nearly 6% of commuters bike to work in Portland, the highest proportion in America. But in five out of the past ten years there have been no cycling deaths there. In the nearby Seattle area, where cycling is popular but traffic calming is not, three cyclists, have been killed in the past few weeks.

I dedicate Ry Cooder's latest to One Southern Indiana. Happy networking, dudes.

Sheepless: "Tired of asking for change from the top down, they are taking their economy into their own hands."

As a Labor Day weekend op-ed in the New York Times observed, "The 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics."

Using rope-a-dope notions like the "American Dream" to marginalize an excluded majority, while perpetually bedazzling its constituents with hopes of consumer materialism and delusions of religious/patriotic superstition, even as the overall playing field is kept tilted toward wealth where it already reposes ... well, that's one strategy. In fact, it's the whole of the Republican Party's platform.

Fortunately, there are other ideas. Thanks to A for the link.

An Economy Turned Upside Down

Folks at the bottom of the economic pyramid are not only finding ways to individually climb the path to realizing the American Dream. They are building ladders for others and organizing to flatten the pyramid, sharing a collective dream in which no one is left out and everyone is happier because of it. It is also becoming increasingly obvious that for most poor folks, the only way up is together. What would the economy look like turned upside down? As these experiments demonstrate, it might look a lot greener, more cooperative, participatory and fair.

Keith: "Tolls will have a serious effect on economic development."

Jim Keith has a fine, thoughtful letter in today's OSIN. Since I didn't get "popped-up" today, I'll include the link, although I suspect it's a ruse, and the bean counters are planning further outrages against taste and decency.

Tolls will have a serious effect on economic development

There are those who want you to believe if you are opposed to tolls on Interstate 65 bridges you are opposed to building the bridge. That is far from the truth and most people realize the necessity for getting the bridges built as soon as possible.

The Bridges Authority, a group appointed by the government, has been given the task of finding funds necessary to get the bridges built and has proposed tolls as the only way possible to get them completed.

But tolling will have a very serious affect, not only on tourism, but on workers who come from Louisville to work in Southern Indiana and, of course, those who live in Southern Indiana and work in Louisville. These workers will essentially receive a bill every month just for going to work.

My main concern is for economic development and the affect tolling would have on it. Representing the tourism industry, I can’t see any benefit to tolls. Comments I have received from the hospitality industry have included:

1. We get considerable overflow for conventions from Louisville such as the Gospel Quartet Convention, which will be in town next week. Those people have choices as to where they stay. In the future, they may choose to stay farther south from Louisville to avoid paying tolls. That’s a convention where people tend to go back and forth to the Kentucky Fairgrounds several times a day.

2. The hotels which run shuttle services to the convention center venues and airport will undoubtedly see a major dollar increase in that service they provide for their customers.

3. Employees. Many of our hospitality industries employ people who live in Louisville, thus increasing the employee’s cost or imposing an additional tax for working in Southern Indiana. All things being equal, it reduces the pool of applicants to work in Southern Indiana if they want to continue earning the same amount of money as they have before. I do not see that as an economic benefit to Southern Indiana.

We need a new bridge as transportation is vital to economic development. That we agree with. Imposing a tax that is divisive to the metropolitan area and penalizes Southern Indiana is not an economic development benefit to the community.

Please share your thoughts to anyone who will listen as we continue on what has been a four-decades-long project — the building of an additional bridge across the Ohio River. When it’s all said and done, this will be a political decision.

We’ll just see if our elected leaders have the will to build the bridge, which is a government responsibility, without addition of toll, fee or burden to the residents of our community.

— James P. Keith, Executive Director, Clark-Floyd Counties Convention-Tourism Bureau

As briefly as possible.

Anniversaries provide writers with an invitation to compete with each other for profundity. I’ve taken the bait myself, and plead abject guilt wherever it is applicable. However, I will not indulge as we near the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, other than noting the occasion in this paragraph, and reprinting the Guardian link below.

Numerous other scribes far more talented will unleash their skills, and many already have. Some of them might even be worth reading. All I’ll say is that history is meaningless without the perspective of a longer view, and this standpoint of judgment will be impossible to fathom until long after we're dead. The Civil War began 150 years ago, and we've yet to reach conclusions on its legacy. This is the way of the world, whether we like it, or not.

9/11: A 'babble of idiots'? History has been the judge of that ... The Guardian's comment editor at the time of 9/11 on a savage response to those who foresaw the reality of a war on terror

"Amen" is not a word I use very often, but in this case ...

The following essay from This I believe is by Jeff Nixa of South Bend, Indiana, as heard on "The Bob Edwards Show" (September 2, 2011). Ted recommended it on Twitter, and it's a good one, indeed.

A Good Neighborhood

That’s when I realized that all those warnings really weren’t about crime, real estate values, or schools. They were code words white folks like me use to signal “low income people of color”—a perfectly concealed racist weapon, hidden deep in the anxious beliefs of my own friends and colleagues.

I believe sometimes the truth does set people free. So we bought the house on Cottage Grove.

View the new exhibitions at the Gamborg Gallery.

Regular readers know that from time to time, I reintroduce my friend Allan Gamborg, Danish by birth, and a longtime resident of Moscow. Allan has enjoyed much success in his "second" (third? fifth?) career as a purveyor and advocate of Soviet-era art and artists. You can use the handy Blogger search feature with "Gamborg," and see previous postings.

The format's usually the same, and it's always worth a few minutes to peruse the art. You need not be a Commie to enjoy the links to Allan's on-line galleries.

As in the past, permit me to thank Allan for his boundless hospitality and to share his latest posting.

---

Dear Friends,
We have a series of new exhibitions on the Gamborg Gallery on the web:

THEMES

Olympic Sports

A series of artwork showing the Olympic games in Soviet Art.

Anti Smoking Campaign
A series of Soviet posters and artwork propaganding against smoking.

ARTISTS

Boris Derzhavin (born 1921)
Boris Aleksandrovich Derzhavin studied at the Moscow textile insitute in the early years after the war, and later he became a teacher of graphics on the 1950-1960s at the same institute. Both his oils and his gouaches show that he was not educated in the classical socialist realism of the time, but with more freedom of expression.

Nina Shirokova (Born 1934)
Nina Ivanovna Shirokova was born in Tarusa, in a family of a carpenter and a teacher. She was always fond of drawing, and from her early years she took private classes in drawing. From 1956-62 she studied at the Moscow Textile Institute (MTI), which she favoured particularly because of the controversial non-conformist teacher Eliy Bilyutin.She specialised in textile design. Amongst her professors were Pochitalov (painting), Aleksandr Ivanov (graphics), and Aleksandr Dubinchik (drawing). Before and during her studies, she took private classes in painting from VKhuTeMas artist Konstantin Lekomtsev, where she also made friends with his wife, famous Moscow artist Natalia Gippius. During the 1960s she held different positions in relation to industrial and interior design, for example her design of the ideal Soviet one-room flat in 1963 and the interior of Aeroflot planes in 1964. In the later 1960s she did a series of scarfs and textiles at the Schyolkovo textile manufacture. During the 60s and 70s she regularly visited the studio of Eliy Bilyutin, who was famous in the period for his teaching of non-socialist realism methods of drawing and painting (formalism). Her personal works of that period are strongly inspired by Bilyutin and by the style of the non-conformists. Thematically, she paints landscapes in bright and powerful colours, still-lives, as well as nudes and portraits. She is a highly skilled and inspired draughtsman, with a simple and bold line. Her favourite media are pencil, gouache, tempera and watercolour. Nina Ivanovna’s works are a bright example of the artistic freedom that many former students of the Moscow Textile Institute were able to take advantage of. They were not educated according to, and consequently not artistically limited by, the dogmas of the Socialist Realism. Her personal works were very rarely shown publicly in the 1960s-2000, particularly the works painted in her Bilyutin period. Nina Ivanovna now lives in Moscow.

Galina Ivanova (1937-2009)
Galina Ivanovna Ivanova was born in Moscow in 1937. In 1959 she graduated from the Moscow Pedagogical Institute named after V.P. Potemkin. She participated in her first exhibition in 1961, and in 1967 she joined the Artist Union, the graphics section. During the 1960s and 1970s she travelled extensively in the Soviet Union, depiction the old cultural centres of Russia, and the ancient churches. During the 1970s, she printed a large series of images of the old Moscow, around the Patriarch's Ponds and the Garden Ring. Her favourite media were lithography and watercolour. In particular her lithographs are very recognisable, in her personal soft and pastel-like style.

Vera Orekhova (1907-2007) -
Vera Andreevna Orekhova studied at the Famous Moscow VKHTUMAS art institute in the late 1920s, amongst here teachers were Gerasimov, Rodionov and Konchalovsky. Her favourite media are watercolour and lithography, and she is famous for her images of Moscow in the 1940s-1970s, and of her wonderful still-lives, inspired by the French impressionist and post-impressionist school.

David Borovsky (1926-2004)
David Borovsky was a prominent graphic artist, active in Leningrad. From 1945-1952 he studied at Repin State Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture of the USSR Academy of Fine Arts under K. Rudakov. His graduation work was the series of illustrations Maxim Gorky. He began exhibiting in 1952 and participated in major art exhibitions in the USSR. Borovsky illustrated books for Goslitizdat, Detgiz and Iskusstvo publishing houses. His most known works in book illustration are: Compositions by I. Turgenev (1954-55), Mountain Nest by Mamin-Sibiriak (1955), Who Lives Well in Russia? by N. Nekrasov (1960), etc. Borovsky created the series of color lithographs: Leningrad Choreography School (1955), V.I. Lenin (1957) and works in book illustration, a series of colour monotypes (1961-1963). He produced a famous series of lithographs depicting the workers of the electricity industry.

Dilyara Varlshina (Born 1937)
Dilyara Khalilovna is a well-known Moscow graphic artist, specilalising in linocuts and lithography. She finished the Moscow Polygraphic institute in 1971, and in 1977 she joined the Artists' Union, the graphics section. In the early years after graduation she worked in the theatre doing stage designs and costumes, and later she started working with Moscow publishing houses as a book illustrator. The favourite theme is sports, and many of her prints depict cycling, voleyball, fencing, and gymnastics.

BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS

Master and Margarita, illustrations by Mihai Brunea
A series of illustrations to the famous novel Master and Margerita by Bulgakov. The main character wakes up after a heavy night of drinking and finds himself in the company of Voland the devil, who moonlights as a foreign consultant. The book was issued in Kisnyov, Moldova in the 1980s.

From Morning to Evening (С утра до вечера) – Illustrations by Evgeniya Endrikson
A series of original illustrations to the book "From Morning to Evening" (С утра до вечера) from 1945 by Evgeniya Endrikson. The book was printed right after the war, with lack of paper and printing facilities, so the illustrations should comply with those requirements, i.e. it should be black and white, and with simple detail.

Summer In the Kolkhoz (Лето в колхозе) – Illustrations by Evgeniya Endrikson
A series of original illustrations to the book " Summer In the Kolkhoz " (Летом в колхозе) from the early 1950s by Evgeniya Endrikson.

The Childrens’ Bus (Детский автобус) - illustrations by Marina Uspenskaya
A series of original illustrations by Marina Uspenskaya for the book " Детский автобус " (The Childrens’ Bus), by Zinaida Aleksandrova. Published by Detgiz in 1957, in 310.000 copies. Price was 2 roubles.

Enjoy the shows !

REWIND: Will work for something real.

For Labor Day, a thoughtful piece about economic development from YES! Magazine's David Korten, reprinted in its entirety under a Creative Commons license.

10 Common Sense Principles for a New Economy
It’s time we the people declare our independence from the money-favoring Wall Street economy.

by David Korten

I find hope in the fact that millions of people the world over are seeing through the moral and practical fallacies underlying the Wall Street economy and-—by contributing to the creation of a New Economy--are taking charge of their economic lives.

Here are ten common sense principles to frame the New Economy that we the people must now bring forth:

1. The proper purpose of an economy is to secure just, sustainable, and joyful livelihoods for all. This may come as something of a shock to Wall Street financiers who profit from financial bubbles, securities fraud, low wages, unemployment, foreign sweatshops, tax evasion, public subsidies, and monopoly pricing.

2. GDP is a measure of the economic cost of producing a given level of human well-being and happiness. In the economy, as in any well-run business, the goal should be to minimize cost, not maximize it.

3. A rational reallocation of real resources can reduce the human burden on the Earth’s biosphere and simultaneously improve the health and happiness of all. The Wall Street economy wastes enormous resources on things that actually reduce the quality of our lives— war, automobile dependence, suburban sprawl, energy-inefficient buildings, financial speculation, advertising, incarceration for minor, victimless crimes. The most important step toward bringing ourselves into balance with the biosphere is to eliminate the things that are bad for our health and happiness.

4. Markets allocate efficiently only within a framework of appropriate rules to maintain competition, cost internalization, balanced trade, domestic investment, and equality. These are essential conditions for efficient market function. Without rules, a market economy quickly morphs into a system of corporate monopolies engaged in suppressing wages, exporting jobs, collecting public subsidies, poisoning air, land, and water, expropriating resources, corrupting democracy, and a host of other activities that represent an egregiously inefficient and unjust distribution of resources.

5. A proper money system roots the power to create and allocate money in people and communities in order to facilitate the creation of livelihoods and ecologically balanced community wealth. Money properly serves life, not the reverse. Wall Street uses money to consolidate its power to expropriate the real wealth of the rest of the society. Main Street uses money to connect underutilized resources with unmet needs. Public policy properly favors Main Street.

6. Money, which is easily created with a simple accounting entry, should never be the deciding constraint in making public resource allocation decisions. This is particularly obvious in the case of economic recessions or depressions, which occur when money fails to flow to where it is needed to put people to work producing essential goods and services. If money is the only lack, then make the accounting entry and get on with it.

7. Speculation, the inflation of financial bubbles, risk externalization, the extraction of usury, and the use of creative accounting to create money from nothing, unrelated to the creation of anything of real value, serve no valid social purpose. The Wall Street corporations that engage in these activities are not in the business of contributing to the creation of real community wealth. They are in the business of expropriating it, a polite term for theft. They should be regulated or taxed out of existence.

8. Greed is not a virtue; sharing is not a sin. If your primary business purpose is not to serve the community, you have no business being in business.

9. The only legitimate reason for government to issue a corporate charter extending special privileges favoring a particular enterprise is to serve a clearly defined public purpose. That purpose should be clearly stated in the corporate charter and be subject to periodic review.

10. Public policy properly favors local investors and businesses dedicated to creating community wealth over investors and businesses that come only to extract it. The former are most likely to be investors and businesses with strong roots in the communities in which they do business. We properly favor them.

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David Korten is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, president of the People-Centered Development Forum, and a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). His books include Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World.

(Originally posted by Bluegill on Sept. 6, 2010)

Erika unleashed: "Eye" before "eeee!" except after "see."

At least Erika has a sense of humor.

To celebrate America's purported Labor Day (most for the rest of the planet observes the concept on May 1, but I digress) by suggesting the little people of New Albany hoist tiny, thimble-sized cans of Coors is brilliantly ironic, and likely will zoom over the heads of both her regular readers.

The Dark Side of Coors Light, in Know Your Right Wingers by Annika Carlson.

... As then-president of Adolph Coors Co. Jeff Coors said in a Los Angeles Times article agreeing to union demands is like “inviting the Russians in to take over America.” Until 1986, prospective Coors employees were sometimes required to take lie detector tests, answering questions about their sexual orientation, communist leanings, and how often they changed their underwear.

Gads, is Erika trying to tell us that Hillary Clinton drinks Silver Bullet?

I always knew the Bridges Politburo had no intention of conducting an economic impact study.

As Matt pointed out on Twitter, publishing this story on a holiday weekend doesn't seem to be the optimal way for the C-J to assure readership. Speaking for myself, I keep remembering the promise that the Bridges Politburo would not neglect the economic impact of tolls on Hoosier small business. The Green Mouse reiterates: Posterity simply is not going to be very kind when it comes to gauging the performance of this body.

Study of Ohio River bridges' impact stalled; Work would include gauging tolls' effect, by Marcus Green (Courier-Journal).

Authority officials are at a loss now to say if the final study will consider the potential impact of tolls on the region’s economy.

New Albany First upcoming events include information session, entrepreneurship seminar and a special guest.

(Submitted)

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I wanted to fill you in on a few upcoming events that New Albany First will be hosting.

This Thursday, September 8th from 6p - 8p, we'll be hosting a public information session at the New Albanian Brewing Company on Grant Line Road in the Prost room. Many of you have attended one or more of these already and we certainly welcome to you to stop by and meet each other and potential members.

On Thursday, September 22nd we'll be having the first of our local entrepreneurship seminars again to be held at NABC Grant Line Road from 7p - 8:30p. NA First members Gary Humphrey of River City Winery and Roger Baylor from NABC along with Allen Howie of Idealogy will be discussing the issues facing opening a restaurant in New Albany with Allen talking about branding and marketing. One of the main goals of any independent business alliance is the encouragement of new locally-owned independent businesses in our area. This is one way we hope to fulfill that goal and with more seminars already in the works, we feel this is a great way to do that.

Finally, on October 28th/29th, we're very pleased to welcome Jeff Milchen to New Albany. Jeff is the co-founder of the American Indpendent Business Alliance (AMIBA) which is based in Bozeman, Montana. Jeff will be giving a keynote presentation on Friday night, Oct. 28th (time to be determined) and then a workshop the next morning. Both of these events are being hosted by the River City Winery. Jeff is an internationally known advocate for independent businesses and is highly sought after, so we're really happy he's going to come to New Albany to talk with us. More details on this to come.

Thanks to all of you for believing in this project and for your support.

Andy Terrell
Director, New Albany First

Bob Edwards at the Carnegie Center on Saturday, September 24.

The following was submitted by Laura Wilkins, Director of Marketing & Outreach at the Carnegie Center. To make this day even better, the band Cabin is playing at the Riverfront Amphitheater in the evening, and NABC will be selling progressive pints in lieu of the usual Dudweiser.

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Join us as we welcome award-winning radio personality Bob Edwards at the Carnegie Center for a live interview and book signing on Sat. Sept. 24, 6 - 7:30 pm.

The Carnegie Center is pleased to welcome radio personality Bob Edwards, best known for his tenure as the host of Morning Edition on National Public Radio, for a live interview and book signing on Saturday, September 24, from 6:00 - 7:30 pm. In his new book A Voice in the Box: My Life in Radio, Louisville native Edwards recounts his career as one of the most important figures in modern broadcasting, describing his journey on the radio waves through his exit from NPR in 2004, the launch of The Bob Edwards Show on XM Satellite Radio and his induction into the Radio Hall of Fame.

Edwards got his start in radio in New Albany in 1968 at WHEL, located on the second floor of a building at the corner of Pearl and Main Streets. Of his time at WHEL Edwards writes, “The Louisville stations were loath to hire beginners, so I had to go across the river. It was like working at a little paper where you learned to set type, sell ads, do obituaries, cover fires. That’s what working at a small radio station is like. You have to spin records, fix the plumbing, try to sell ads. It’s a good place to learn. The audience is small so you can be bad.”

Edwards will share similar anecdotes about his time in New Albany during the program. Edwards will be interviewed by Roger Whaley, Director of Technology for the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corporation (retired) and the first radio instructor at Floyd Central High School. The interview will be interspersed with audio clips from Edwards’ career.

A question and answer session for audience members will follow the interview, and a book signing with Edwards will conclude the evening. Copies of A Voice in the Box will be available for sale at the Carnegie Center by Destinations Booksellers before and after the event.

The cost of the program is $10 per person and free to Carnegie Center members. Click HERE for information on becoming a Carnegie Center member. Proceeds from Edwards' program will benefit the New Albany Public Art Project: Bicentennial Series. This event is sponsored by The Filson Historical Society and the Carnegie Center, Inc.

Seating is limited, and reservations are required and must be made by September 20. Please call 812-944-7336 to make your reservations, or you may click HERE to email your reservation to Delesha Thomas (please include your name, telephone number, and whether or not you are a Carnegie Center member). Reservations are confirmed only after payment in full.Thank you and we hope to see you Sept. 24!

Live together or die alone.

Saturday, October 1 is going to be a fun day in New Albany.

For one, there'll be a renewal of the Harvest Homecoming parade party institution (in a local election year, no less) at the Confidential domicile. 2011 will be the seventh edition, and for complete information, merely change the date in last year's preview to October 1, and read:

Let's protest tolls, heckle 1Si, and drink beer at NAC's Harvest Homecoming Parade Gala at 1117 ESSNA.

October 1 also is the day NABC has chosen to release ThunderFoot 22-oz bomber bottles for carry-out purchase by the general public. ThunderFoot bombers will be available all day on the 1st (only!) at both NABC locations, and if there's any left over, Southern Indiana commercial accounts get the next stab, then our friends at Cavalier Distributing Inc.

But there's even more. After the NAC bash and parade has concluded, there'll be a pig roast (all ages, with burgers and hot dogs, too) and an NABC cash beer bar at Something Different II on 3rd Street by the floodwall. A percentage of the proceeds from beer sales will go to 1st District Councilman Dan Coffey's annual Christmas Party for children in his neighborhood.

Plan on a moveable feast: 1117 East Spring Street Neighborhood Association for the parade, a stroll to Something Different for food and drink, and then an afternoon/night cap at Bank Street Brewhouse and carry-out ThunderFoot. Verily, Gregg Seidl might graft the events of the day onto his walking accounts of nefarious (or ironic) New Albany.

Nash: "Strategic planning has never been a strong point in this community."

Matt Nash's column appears weekly in One Southern Indiana Newspaper (or OSIN, as we've referred to it since the merger), but he also publishes it at his blog site on Friday, and linking to the piece there pleases me. I'm in no mood currently to provide OSIN with traffic via NAC-generated links, at least for so long as pop-up ads continue to plague readers of the newspaper's web site.

As for Matt's column, it's another winner.

When it comes to unchecked development and sprawl's pavement producing proclivities, we as Americans all know how to generate it, but like Matt, we assume that there can be no reversal once the ugliness becomes reality.

Perhaps it's time to ask: Why not?

It reminds me of the debate about Communism back in 1990, in the sense of knowing how it was implemented, but having no blueprint for undoing it. And yet, it was undone. How do we undo past planning disasters, even as we prevent Floyd County government from pursuing more of the very same mistakes?

My Friday Column: Smart Growth Would be Progress, by Matt Nash

After the land is developed and the grass is no longer there, it will never come back again. It will forever be a strip mall or a box store or an empty building that sits and gathers trash. Of course I am sure that drainage will no longer be a problem, since we always trust our developers to manage the extra runoff water so well.

Hey, bartender, how old is that bean soup in the freezer bags?

The lawyers can correct me on this one, but my reading of Indiana's ridiculously huge collection of statutes pertaining to beverage alcohol -- regrettably, soon I'll no longer be able to compare it to a phone book because phone books are becoming as obsolete as Indiana's approach to beverage alcohol regulation -- uncovers only two sections pertaining to food on licensed premises.

This matters only because last night, New Albany's city council voted 8-1 in favor on the first reading of an ordinance to expand the boundaries of the city's riverfront development area westward. Think of it as the Holiday Inn Express Law, and note that I'm in favor of doing it, and furthermore believe the scope of the state's enabling legislation should be expanded to require inexpensive three-way permits be issued to any acreage adjacent to a church, without exception.

In short, riverfront development areas constitute exemptions to the quota, and make possible inexpensive three-way permits. In the run-up to last evening's vote, there was much discussion about booze versus food, and the desirability of restaurants as opposed to bars. Council member and mayoral candidate Jack Messer voted against the expansion, citing public safety concerns relating to the fearsome possibility that dive bars will proliferate.

But as the Indiana State Police already has proven with its incessant poaching over the past few years, the availability of food at targeted establishments makes no difference whatsoever.

In fact, all licensed establishments are compelled by law to offer food. As I suggested earlier this week, past judgments by visiting ATC officers have included the advice that an unopened package of weenies in a freezer compartment is sufficient to meet the requirement. Whether this is right, wrong or indifferent, it's still a matter for the ATC to enforce, and not local cops. I doubt the constitutional veracity of any city council effort to add food requirements to those already in existence, although I'd cherish the sight of council members with clipboards poking their noses into kitchens.

I cannot find any reference to food sales percentages, which I believe formerly were part of the system when it came to Sunday opening hours, and later were discarded when regulations were made slightly more reasonable (Hoosier fundamentalism precludes universal reasonableness owing to something Moses once said). There remains an obligation for some licensees to report food/alcohol percentages on the annual renewal application, although my understanding is this applies to the existence of separation in barrooms and family rooms, i.e., how under-21-year-olds and over-21-year-olds co-exist (or do not) in proximity.

However, I'm a publican, not an attorney, and surely I'm missing an esoteric something or three here, so please correct me if you find it. Following are the two ATC regs I found mentioning food:

IC 7.1-3-20-9
Restaurants; general requirements
Sec. 9. Restaurants: General Requirements.
In order to be considered a "restaurant" within the meaning of this title and to be eligible to receive an appropriate restaurant permit under this title, an establishment shall meet the following requirements: (a) It shall be provided with special space and accommodations where, in consideration of payment, food, without lodging, is habitually furnished to travelers; and, (b) It shall have accommodations at which at least twenty-five (25) persons may be served at one (1) time.
(Formerly: Acts 1973, P.L.55, SEC.1.)


905 IAC 1-20-1
Minimum menu requirements
Authority: IC 7.1-2-3-7; IC 7.1-3-24-1
Affected: IC 7.1-3-20-9
Sec. 1. Under the qualification requiring that a retail permittee to sell alcoholic beverages by the drink for consumption on the premises must be the proprietor of a restaurant located, and being operated, on the premises described in the application of the permittee; and under the definition of a "restaurant" as "any establishment provided with special space and accommodations where, in consideration of payment, food without lodging is habitually furnished to travelers,"–and "wherein at least twenty-five (25) persons may be served at one time;" the Commission will, hereafter, require that the retail permittee be prepared to serve a food menu to consist of not less than the following:

Hot soups.
Hot sandwiches.
Coffee and milk.
Soft drinks.


Hereafter, retail permittees will be equipped and prepared to serve the foregoing foods or more in a sanitary manner as required by law.

(Alcohol and Tobacco Commission; Reg 36; filed Jun 27, 1947, 3:00 pm: Rules and Regs. 1948, p. 58; readopted filed Oct 4, 2001, 3:15 p.m.: 25 IR 941; readopted filed Sep 18, 2007, 3:42 p.m.: 20071010-IR-905070191RFA)

ON THE AVENUES: Deity building, American-style.

ON THE AVENUES: Deity building, American-style.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

To begin, I recommend “Washington: A Life,” Ron Chernow’s recent biography of George Washington, but with appropriate cautionary notes, prime among them being that these many years later, there exists no sure, non-speculative way to know what was in the mind of a man who was Colonial America’s most impenetrable sphinx.

Whenever Chernow is able to augment scant primary testimony with contributing evidence from record provided by outsiders, the results are good. He is especially skilled at evoking the time of Washington’s childhood and early adulthood in colonial Virginia; in these instances, Chernow corrals an impressive array of surviving accounts, and weaves it masterfully.

Unfortunately, as the narrative progresses, the author frequently opts for pure guesswork, which amounts to the usual litany of phrases like, “He must have felt,” “Perhaps it was the case” or “Maybe there came a twinge of regret.”

Chernow cannot resist them, and in honor of our eternally prurient bedazzlement with sex, most of this amateur psychology comes in periodic analyses of Washington’s purported dalliances with Sally Fairfax, wife of a fellow planter further up the social chain of the Virginia planter’s aristocracy than Washington himself.

Was the Father of Our Country in love with Fairfax, both before, during and after his marriage to the immensely wealthy widow Martha Custis? Can we read between the lines of frequent classicist references in his letters? Was the relationship consummated?

(As a side note, perhaps no other prominent male Colonial figure profited as early and as often from his richer and better placed relatives marrying properly, and then dying prematurely. Washington inherited early and often.)

As for love and carnal happiness, there remains not a scintilla of evidence to suggest wayward, greased naked play between Washington and Fairfax, occurring in the fetid grove out back of the slave quarters at any of his four or more plantation properties.

Nor do we know whether they met illicitly in a rough-hewn cabin located somewhere in the middle of the tens of thousands of acres Washington connived to be awarded as compensation for his service in the French and Indian War -- not that Washington would have left used condoms for “Smoking Gun” to find.

That’s because Chernow persuasively describes a man with an unusually defined sense of self, possessed with propriety from a very early age, constantly obsessed with how he appeared to the eyes of others, and performing the nuanced role of Geo. Washington at all times. While we cannot know about Fairfax, it is clear that Washington anticipating the personal “brand building” of later times.

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It certainly helped to be “Geo. Washington the Mythic Deity” when debt was high and pocket change fleeting, as was the case throughout his adult life, reflecting the land-rich, cash poor existence of the founding baronial planters. Periodically, Washington was obliged to pause from nation-building to hector his tenants and collect rents, but even this tenure as Slumlord Papa, borne of the aforementioned calculated grab of prime acreage in “new” western territories, did not help the household ledger to balance.

Washington and family customarily lived large, simultaneously complaining and indulging incessant impositions from guests. With most pre-war finished goods imported very expensively from England, therein is found a significant (and grubby) portion of the rationale for independence.

Later, while serving as the country’s first president, Washington launched what we would refer to now as a “buy local” campaign to reduce America’s dependence on imported goods. How would he view our addiction to China and Saudi Arabia today?

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In terms of military accomplishment, Washington had a lopsided losing record, with more defeats in battle than victories.

This lifelong devotee of the theater achieved martial success not as a tactical genius, but as a thespian, portraying himself as the calm rallying point amid the storm, one underfunded by an inept, willfully impotent political structure that he freely criticized for effect, his stature remaining constant as each year’s Continental army came and went after their bare-bones, one-year enlistments expired, and overall, always just barely staying alive – living to stall and sometimes fight another day, and waiting stolidly for the Brits, who never committed themselves entirely to the cause of keeping the Colonies, to grow weary of their losses.

It worked … when the French came aboard.

All the while, Washington carefully hoarded all letters and dispatches in huge trunks for the purpose of burnishing posterity’s judgment of his performance. However, what succeeded in uniform was less beneficial in civilian’s clothes, and at this juncture, with a new nation imploring its idol to serve, matters become more factual, and also muddied.

Chernow’s persistent characterization of the early Federalists versus Republicans struggle as a fundamentally unfair fight, pitting the lofty and irreproachable ideals of Washington and Alexander Hamilton against the shrill, self-serving machinations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, grows tiresome as the pages turn.

Granted, America’s political honeymoon of intellectual content over supercharged hyperbole barely lasted through Washington’s first administration (he was twice unanimously elected by the pre-suffrage Electoral College), but the author’s propensity to depict Washington’s saintliness wounded by the evil, conniving Jefferson veers ever close to sheer hagiography.

More balanced accounts surely exist, and readers are asked to recommend such choices.

In the end, tottering on the edge of an insolvency compounded by his many years of military and political absence, and unable to square the circle of slavery either theoretically or at Mt. Vernon, Washington endeavored to enjoy a truncated two-year retirement before dying at the age of 67.

Had his doctors (and Washington himself) not extracted multiple pints of blood in search of an elusive cure, he might have survived a bit longer. As it stands, his departure from humanity’s mortal coil merely set into motion the process of deification that continues more than 200 years later with founding father pop psychology, in which Chernow’s biography snugly finds a place.

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As an addendum, it appears likely that Washington, who fancied himself the thinking’s man’s planter and agriculturist, managed to grasp early on that slavery was a losing proposition economically, and perhaps to a lesser extent, also was unacceptable in the sense of human rights as informed by the inescapably and hypocritically Christian atmosphere of the age.

While humane by the standards of his contemporaries, Washington generally internalized his views and did nothing more about slavery until just before his death, when a revised will stipulated the freeing of his slaves – that is, only those owned by Washington himself, as opposed to “dower” slaves legally attached to his wife’s estate.

I am familiar with the exculpatory apologetics: Those folks simply could not be expected to think outside the constraints of their milieu, etc, etc.

And yet, when it comes to deities, I prefer mine to be a tad more prescient. By knowing and not acting, Washington falls short, although two centuries of worship constitute a hard habit to break.

This one goes out to our friends at kitchen tables everywhere.