It has been 334 days since I asked Bob Caesar to show us the Bicentennial accounts. Crickets chirp.

Why has Bob Caesar stonewalled this simple request from a citizen? The following expanded explanation appeared on November 2, 2015.

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I'd sugarcoat it if I could, but it isn't possible. If you live in the 2nd council district, you're simply doomed for the next four years in terms of council representation.

Incumbent Bob Caesar vows to do anything possible to rectify street design deficiencies so long as nothing is done to rectify street design deficiencies.

Challenger Irv Stumler agrees, and ups the ante by promising to demolish any unsightly object, because appearances are all that matter.

In short, two well-off elderly white men, vying to see which of them imposes the same vision of anchors-in-place propriety on a fluid situation, with neither of them grasping anything that has occurred since about 1974, as experienced by the rest of us out here in the real world.

And then there's the legacy of our city's Bicentennial celebration two years ago.

Way back on January 7, 2014, we asked:

On the Bicentennial's Crutchfield seat cushions: How many were sold? Was the loan paid back?

All we really wanted to know is how well those hired-gun Bicentennial books had sold, how many of the 5,000 (!) remained to be sold, and whether Redevelopment's loan was ever paid back. At the time, we were fairly gripped with mercenary gala nostalgia just thinking about it.

A pile of these books surely still exist, unsold and destined to be dispersed at every glad-handing political photo opportunity between now and the Tricentennial, as at the dedication of Underground Station in the fall of 2015.

Look under the mayor's arm.

Dig it: Your life savings invested in a local independent business amid the economic development director's incessant protests that nothing can be done by the city to help you, and then when zero hour arrives, they hand you a Bicentennial book and scatter, never to be seen again until the day you drive past the Bob Evans and see all those city vehicles parked there.

But enough of chagrin.

Let's get back to Tiberius Severus Octavian Elagabalus Septimius Augustus Claudius Hadrian, the Protector of Pearl, Deliverer of all Downtown Datedness, Master of the Mercantile, and Guardian of the Gates.

Earlier this year (probably April) I used a portion of non-agenda speaking time at a city council meeting to ask Bob Caesar publicly about the Bicentennial finances in general, and the book in particular.

My question came almost two years after Vic Megenity urged the council to audit the Bicentennial commission, a request swept under the rug as head gravely nodded and the Gahan administration  shifted into full retribution mode, subjecting Megenity to the usual Coffey-led ritualistic scourging for daring to differ openly with The DemoDixieDisneycratic Machine.

In fact, my council meeting question to Caesar came at about the same time that the Sanctioned Monument to the Glorious Usual Heroes of the Bicentennial Park Cash Unlimited Uprising was being installed, this being the plaque omitting Megenity's name -- they may not read books, but it doesn't mean they don't know their knee-jerk Orwell behavioral tics.

In April, Caesar said he'd get the information for me.

In early June, I realized Caesar had never done so, so I e-mailed him.

Monday, June 08, 2015:
Do you recall a few weeks back, when I spoke a city council and expressed interest in learning about the state of the Bicentennial finances? Consider this my follow-up. So many things are happening that I let it slip, but I was (and remain) serious about seeing these numbers.

The following day, Caesar replied.

Tuesday, June 09, 2015:
None of the financials are on line. They are upstairs under a lot of stuff. I can tell you all bills are paid, and paid on time. All reporting to the state is done. And we did not use all of the city money. There was about 5 to 10K that stayed in the city funds.

Baylor: But surely they are available for perusal? Does it explain the ultimate disposition of the books? And, with whom would I speak with to get a copy? Thanks for your prompt attention.

Caesar: Give me a little time and Ill get them.

Roughly 118 days passed, and I tried again in an e-mail on October 5, 2015.

I was reminded that it's been a few months. Do you have this (book) information yet?

Caesar did not respond, but I saw him at Harvest Homecoming just a few days later and asked whether he received the e-mail. He nodded assent. I told him there was no particular hurry, but I'd love to see the figures. He said okay.

Another three weeks have passed, and the election's tomorrow.

I think you know why I haven't seen the financials yet, and won't be viewing them until Wednesday at the earliest.

But Jeff Gahan says he doesn't agree with anyone who believes his team isn't transparent -- and make no mistake, Caesar is on Gahan's team.

So, Bob ... these many months later ... think there's any chance we might be able to view the Bicentennial finances, and learn how many of those books remain unsold?

At some point before the Tricentennial?

Thanks.

"A billion dollar sports enterprise where the athletes aren't paid a penny."

The video is from 2015, but since the story is repeated each year, the relevance has no shelf life. Last year 'round this time, I was stunned to learn that ...

John Calipari is far more refreshingly transparent than Jeff Gahan.

In 2016, there's a new book for papa to read: Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA, by Joe Nocera and Ben Strauss.

Does the NCAA exploit student-athletes? by Nick Romeo (Boston Globe)

... Nocera and Strauss quote a wide range of economists and attorneys who agree that the NCAA functions as an economic cartel by colluding to artificially suppress wages for workers. The phrase “student-athlete” was a legal fiction concocted in the 1950s to avoid paying worker’s compensation to the widow of a football player who died on the field. In 2014, football players at Northwestern went on strike, noting that they regularly worked more than 50 hours per week on sports. One economic analysis suggests that a free-market competition between schools to recruit men’s football and basketball players would result in natural wages between $100,000 and $300,000 per year.

Nocera is a heroic figure -- and there'll be lots of reading time these next few weeks.

From John Oliver's 2015 video.

My anti-Trump credentials stretch back to 1987, when Ross Douthat was eight years old.

Photo credit.

First the "conservative affirmative action" columnist Ross Douthat got in trouble joking about Donald Trump's assassination, which got Allen West all shook up. Then Douthat pinned the blame for Trump on Barack Obama ...

“What it hasn’t inspired is much in the way of self-examination, or a recognition of the way that Obama-era trends in liberal politics have helped feed the Trump phenomenon.”

... which Sean McElwee refutes vigorously in Salon:

Ross Douthat’s pathetic Trump evasion: The NYT columnist attempts to pin the blame on Obama — and fails spectacularly

 ... Trump is the ugly creation of the Republican party’s race-baiting political coup. As a man Douthat admires quite a bit once said, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” Obama’s only responsibility for creating Trump was being a Black man who had the audacity to become President of the United States.

Now Douthat has moved past all that, and advocates convention chicanery by the grandees.

The Party Still Decides, by Ross Douthat (New York Times)

What Trump has demonstrated is that in our present cultural environment, and in the Republican Party’s present state of bankruptcy, the first lines of defense against a demagogue no longer hold. Because he’s loud and rich and famous, because he’s run his campaign like a reality TV show, because he’s horribly compelling and, yes, sometimes even right, Trump has come this far without many endorsements or institutional support, without much in the way of a normal organization, clearing hurdle after hurdle where people expected him to fall.

But the party’s convention rules, in all their anachronistic, undemocratic and highly-negotiable intricacy, are also a line of defense, also a hurdle, also a place where a man unfit for office can be turned aside.

Donald Trump's book The Art of the Deal was published in 1987. That's amazing. It means I've been disgusted by Trump for nearly 30 years. What took the rest of you so long?

Even you, Ross?

Team Gahan's walkability gap (4 of many): "We’re all apparently okay with dead pedestrians as collateral damage for ensuring cars can travel quickly."

I walk a lot.

Without a shred of self-aggrandizement, I probably walk more miles in a week than Team Gahan put together. When you walk, you see things good and bad that aren't apparent at higher travel speeds.

What I've seen lately is an escalating rate of speed on our one-way arterial streets. Apart from two brief occasions, I haven't measured speed with the radar gun I bought last year, but after a while, it isn't necessary. With experience, one can become a good guesser.

It's getting bad.

The other day I clocked cars and trucks on Spring Street, where the speed "limit" is 30 (and occasionally 25) mph. Out of 20 cars, 14 were clocked between 35 and 40 mph, and the usual trolls are primed and ready: "But Roger, the cops give 10 mph leeway. No one will ticket at 38 mph."

I understand that, although here's the flip side: I couldn't see what eight of those drivers looked like, because their heads were pointed straight down, toward their crotches.

Maybe a quick glance at the chart reprinted above from PED Atlanta will offer a wee bit of insight as to why the additional rate of speed matters in a populated area, not to mention the habit of driving too fast while not looking at the road.

Why should Team Gahan care that you're driving fast and reckless on city streets? It's because someone's going to be hurt. My friend Bob's daughter already was, two Harvest Homecomings ago. Jeff Gahan has done absolutely nothing to address or correct the situation in the year and a half elapsing since then.

I don't know why it must be explained to them again and again, but it does. They take such price in nothingness. If they'd get up off their slothful asses and go for a walk, perhaps it might finally sink in.

ON PEDESTRIAN FATALITIES: LET’S JUST ADMIT THAT WE’RE OKAY WITH THIS, by David (Lost Caws)

 ... I know that life itself is dangerous and that we can’t avoid every instance of something tragic like this. But we’ve built a transportation system that significantly increases the likelihood of this kind of thing happening.

We design roads to allow cars to move as quickly as possible, and we funnel them all onto our major roadways at roughly the same two rush hour times five days a week. The speed limit on most downtown Minneapolis streets is 30 miles per hour, and roads are often designed in ways that allow cars to move much faster. This is despite the fact that getting hit at that 30 MPH will kill 50% of the victims and this is in a place where there are thousands of people walking around each day.

It’s a terribly fragile system. The emphasis on throughput during ideal conditions gives us utterly unrealistic expectations that it should always go so smoothly, even in dense urban areas where auto travel should be slow and difficult. And when those conditions aren’t present, it gets messy quickly. Tragedies like the one during Tuesday’s storm are not accidents. They are the byproduct of a system focused almost exclusively on one mode of travel. We can crow all we want about individual responsibility–whether by blaming the victim for not anticipating a car taking an illegal turn in bad conditions or by prosecuting the driver for what might constitute vehicular manslaughter–but in the end this is much bigger than this incident.

The system is working the way it was designed, and the way it was designed means that pedestrians get killed sometimes. And while that would probably be true in any version of a modern transportation system, let’s not kid ourselves that this is the absolute only way we could do things. We could make streets narrower to slow cars down. We could make more areas pedestrian only, closing them off to vehicles so that walkers can know they are safe without needing to be hyperaware of possible danger. We could limit turns on red lights more. We could punish drivers who hit or kill those on foot with stronger penalties and more jail time (or any jail time at all). There’s plenty we could do, if we wanted to.

But we don’t. I wish we’d just admit that we’re all apparently okay with dead pedestrians as collateral damage for ensuring cars can travel quickly. At least that would be honest.

Down-low forestry: "Plant some trees to save a town from flooding? Not a bad idea."

I'll just leave this here.

On occasion, when one of us criticizes another round of downtown chop-down forestry, we're assured that the trees are diseased, and that more will be replanted. I don't doubt they are. Is it enough, with a canopy so damaged by weather and negligence?

Yes, there's a tree board. Periodically a power-that-be mentions it. Is it too much to ask for this body to share with the public the precise nature of the master tree-plant-plan?

And, while we're on the topic, perhaps the stormwater utility can explain how it ties these together, trees and flooding prevention. Invariably, stormwater management is presented to us as engineering alone, much as the health care industry talks about drugs to cure conditions that might have been avoided through better personal health practices.

Surely Team Gahan can determine a way to monetize future campaigns via trees.

Plant some trees to save a town from flooding? Not a bad idea, by Nick Cohen (The Guardian)

... People in Keswick are more forthcoming and will tell you that, six years and one major flood later, nothing has been planted apart from a few trees on the lower slopes of Skiddaw. Last week, the Environment Agency showed that the state-sponsored neglect that afflicts the Lake District afflicts the rest of Britain too. The agency’s geographers argued that new woodlands could slow the rush of rainwater across much of the country. Forestry was not a cure-all, but an essential part of a wider response to climate change. Nothing will be done, of course. As the agency said: “There were insufficient funds to attempt the scale of works proposed in this report.”

At Destinations Booksellers: Kwang Suh and his 4 Measures for the Unification of the Korean Peninsula.

Kwang Suh "is on a mission to educate as many people as possible on the four steps necessary to reunite North and South Korea."

But first -- cooking school!!!

Gotta have those priorities straight, boys.

Now, where were we?

It's another quality presentation coming to Destinations Booksellers, and having just finished reading chapter 19 in the book Stalin's Curse ("Looking at Asia from the Kremlin"), dealing with the causes of the Korean War, I'm planning on attending and looking forward to learning.

You've been forewarned.

Author Kwang Suh's mission: Reuniting Korea; retired professor to hold book signing Tuesday, by Chris Morris (What Happens in Clark County Stays in Clark County)

“I want people to know all over the world that after 70 years, North and South Korea are still separated,” he said. “It’s so ridiculous. People with the same language, same culture, same people ... families separated.”

Suh has written a book titled, “4 Measures for the Unification of the Korean Peninsula.” He will have a book signing from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 15, at Destinations Booksellers, 604 E. Spring St., New Albany.

Family guys: Team Gahan's handpicked educator does that pot v. kettle thang.

Agility, equality and a mission. This race should be bizarrely entertaining, and if we can't have anything else of merit in local politics, a few laughs are deeply appreciated. Let's give Adam credit where credit is due, and commence to raiding the liquor cabinet.

Does anyone know whether candidate Bonifer is a rental property owner? If I'm not mistaken, he was at one time. Not that it matters. Just curious.

By the way, he's having a kick-off party tomorrow. I didn't correct spelling errors. Wonder if the booze is being TIF-fed?

See underlined passage for pot/kettle analogy.

Join Steven Bonifer, candidate for State Representative District #72, for a camapign kick-off reception.

If you've had it with those like Ed Clere who only care about the special interests, come join Steve Bonifer for a reception kicking-off his campaign. Here are the details:

Steven Bonifer for State Representative Reception
Monday, March 14th, 2016
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
New Albany Exchange
118 W. Main Street
New Albany, Indiana 47150

By coming together, we can make our community stronger. We can focus on passing legislation that makes our economy more agile, our schools better and treat everyone equally. I hope you'll join Steve Bonifer next Monday, March 14th as we start our mission.

The city of New Albany may soon try to destroy a 3,000 to 6,000 year old Native American site to build a dog park.

He'll put David Duggins right on it; after all, cultural desecration's just another form of economic development, isn't it?

The Mississippian site of which Anthony Nava speaks in his Fb post is the Cannon Acres Soccer Fields at 1933 Budd Road; specifically, he refers to the soon-to-be-built adjacent dog park, for which finding a visible proponent outside the dreary confines of Jeff Gahan's down-low bunker has been next to impossible.

If you have questions, please send them to me at the usual portals. I'll pass them along.

ATTN: NATIVE PEOPLE ...

The city of New Albany may soon try to destroy a 3,000 to 6,000 year old native site. I will need people to stand up and protest the city to stop the dog park that will destroy this site. so give me your feed back.

This problem has been going on for 8+ years. I've tried talking to the city of New Albany, but with no luck, because when new people are elected the city does not inform the new administration of the site. This is a soccer field located on the way to the casino, and if you're from this area you know there are many sites along the river that have burials and old camps.

This site has been reviewed by the Indiana department of archaeology, and the reports I have show there was a find but no burials.

The city wants to bulldoze a 3,000 to 6,000 year old Mississippian ceremonial platform that is not visible from the ground, though it can be seen clearly from the air (this is due to years of farming). I would like to show a presence and tell the city that it is wrong to destroy this site due to the historic value.

I feel this site along with others holds a larger story about our ancestors from the area and may be the next Angel Mounds site for this area, owing to a site less than a mile away that hold over 400 burials that is not well known to the public. If you have questions please message me. I will not disclose more than I've said here because of looters and grave robbers; sorry, but we need to protect those who can't be, including our dead.

The Reagans and AIDS: “If there is a hell both Ronny and Nancy are Roasting."

Never, ever forget this.

The first lady who looked away: Nancy and the Reagans' troubling Aids legacy, by Maria L La Ganga (The Guardian)

As the nation mourns the former first lady’s death, those on the frontline of the 1980s Aids crisis remember something else: a couple who turned a blind eye

Between Nancy Reagan’s death and her funeral on Friday 11 March, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence reached out in their own wimpled way to share their pain, their anger and, occasionally, their sympathy.

The activists, in trademark Catholic drag, spent the Aids crisis fighting on behalf of infected friends and lovers – and for dying men they would never know. As much of the nation mourned the former first lady’s passing this week, their email anguish underscored the Reagan administration’s darker legacy.

Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004, was president for nearly five years before he said the word “Aids” in public, nearly seven years before he gave a speech on a health crisis that would go on to kill more than 650,000 Americans and stigmatize even more.

In recent months, published reports have revealed an administration that laughed at the scourge and its victims and a first lady who turned her back on Rock Hudson, a close friend, when he reached out to the White House for help as he was dying from an Aids-related illness.

“If there is a hell both Ronny and Nancy are Roasting,” wrote one Sister.

Previously at NAC:

World AIDS Day, Randy Shilts, his book and why it matters.

Team Gahan's walkability gap (3 of 3): "A Playbook on the Politics of Better Streets." WE NEED IT.

Previously at NAC:

Get your copy now: "Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution."

Sadik-Khan makes two points that Team Gahan probably won't ever grasp: Transportation is multi-modal by definition, and restoring streets as a means of transit by all users need not be expensive.

But this is precisely why any future effort aimed at walkability in New Albany is dead to the mayor if it can be done inexpensively.

How can Jeff Gahan fund his election campaigns via efficiency of expenditure?

You need grease. Lots and lots of grease.

A Playbook on the Politics of Better Streets, by Richard Florida (City Lab)

In conversation with former New York City transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

 ... In her new book Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution—written with her longtime colleague and chief media strategist Seth Solomonow—Sadik-Khan tells the story of how she made it happen, offering a roadmap for making cities and neighborhoods safer, more sustainable, and more connected. And she argues this can be done without spending huge sums of money. By emphasizing fast, easy-to-implement, “do-it-yourself” solutions, Sadik-Khan makes the case that being smart and creative—not having access to a hefty budget—matters most.

The crux of it:

Biking is transportation. Walking is transportation. Buses are transportation. Where bikes are perceived as a nuisance it’s often just a symptom of outdated street designs, which ultimately serve no one well. All these modes can play well together if they’re not forced to fight over the scraps of road left over after room is carved out for cars. Reclaiming road space for bikes, pedestrians, and buses isn’t a mere amenity, it’s an infrastructure and economic investment whose effects are felt far beyond the lane. So if you want better streets for everyone, you can start by building a bike lane.

Team Gahan's walkability gap (2 of 3): "Is your city pedestrian unfriendly"? YEP.

A classic example of the idiocy described below is pictured above.

We have allowed the national chains Rally's, White Castle and Walgreen's to construct a suburban maze in the middle of a densely populated urban area, with multiple curb cuts, each building set back from the street.

But the part that continues to amaze me is that in each instance, if you're crossing either Vincennes or Spring using push button signals that may or may not work -- the terrors of vehicular traffic here is another story entirely, as we seem determined not to calm traffic or place trucks where they should be -- you cannot proceed directly to the business's door using the layout built for your feet.

That's because it was designed for cars, NOT your feet.

Rather, one either must traverse corner landscaping, which works for me only because I'm not in a wheelchair, or use the entry lanes alongside oblivious autos. In short, these three businesses are built and situated adjacent to sidewalks in an area of prime potential walkability, and simultaneously are cut off from use as a walker.

Director of Mayhem John Rosenbarger was on duty when these were approved. Anyone interested in holding his or her breath until he explains why atrocities like this occurred?

I didn't think so, seeing as the human instinct is to live, even if butchers like Rosenbarger and Warren Nash continue to deposit their paychecks for ... what?

IS YOUR CITY PEDESTRIAN-UNFRIENDLY?, by Sarah Kobos (Strong Towns)

As more and more people say they want to live in walkable neighborhoods, it’s fun to watch the old-school, suburban developers squirm. Unwilling to change what they do, they instead attempt to market their car-centric products as “pedestrian friendly.” Generally, this occurs at planning commission meetings, where words like “walkability” and “pedestrian amenities” are tossed around like claims in a presidential debate. It sounds great when they say it, but there’s no substance behind the jargon.

Here are just a few of my favorite pedestrian unfriendly amenities.

• THE SIDEWALK TO NOWHERE
• HIGH-SPEED DRIVEWAYS
• MULTIPLE CURB CUTS
• DEEP SETBACKS
• WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SAN DIEGO… AND WHERE THE !@#%*#! IS THE FRONT DOOR?
• ENORMOUS PARKING LOTS
• TITANIC SCALE
• BLANK WALLS
• ELEVATION DROPS
• WALLS

Then this. I see examples of each of these in New Albany every single day,as noted above. What is Team Gahan and his Bored of Works doing apart from coordinating the political finance largess from paving bids?

BUT WE CAN’T JUST BLAME THE DEVELOPERS

It’s not just old-school developers who design barriers into the pedestrian experience. Every day, people who don’t drive experience discrimination in the form of bad street design, sidewalk obstacles and blithe disregard for their needs.

A few common examples…

WHOOPS! WE FORGOT!
The most common form of pedestrian unfriendliness is the ubiquitous street without a sidewalk.

THE SIDEWALK STORAGE AREA
Many street crews obviously see the sidewalk as a convenient place to store construction materials, park cars, and locate temporary signage, even if it means that a person in a wheelchair has absolutely no way to cross the barrier.

UTILITIES!
Imagine the outrage if utilities were placed in the middle of traffic lanes, forcing cars to bob and weave their way down the street. This casual disregard for the needs of people who use sidewalks is an impressive symbol of how we prioritize auto travel over all other modes.

THE OBLIQUE RAMP
Why pay for two ramps when just one completely unsafe ramp will do?

NO RAMP AT ALL
It’s like CrossFit for disabled people.

LACK OF STREET TREES
If you live in the south, trees make a dramatic difference to people who walk.

I could go on, but you get the idea. We’ve spent the better part of 70 years building our cities for cars, not people, and it shows. It’s time to make walkability a priority, not just a feel-good buzzword.
Awareness is the first step. The more we can help our neighbors and elected officials recognize obstacles to walkability, the sooner we can make our cities better and healthier places for everyone.

Let’s get this conversation started! Share your examples of affronts to walkability on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using the hashtag #PedestrianUnfriendly.

Team Gahan's walkability gap (1 of 3): "If you want to make a walkable city, you need to do the little things well." WE DON'T.

Previously at NAC:

Dear Jeff: "When Drivers Hit Pedestrians, Where Do We Lay the Moral Blame?"

Team Gahan seems unable (read: unwilling) to do little things well, and consequently, the mayor's minions are failing to lead New Albany toward walkability.

Of course, publicly stated aims and goals would provide a better checklist. Seen any of these lately?

I didn't think so.

Tim Kovach writes here about Cleveland, but many of his comments bear relevance to New Albany's perennial degradation. Shouldn't it be easier in a small city than in a larger one? Not if presumed "leaders' have no moral compass.

If you want to make a walkable city, you need to do the little things well, by Tim Kovach

 ... It’s a scene that haunts me to this day. While the driver was found not to be at fault, this was a visceral reminder of the stark imbalance between drivers and pedestrians. If a teenager makes one bad decision, he may never make another ...

 ... The City Planning Commission seems committed to moving towards form-based zoning, at least in limited areas, in an attempt to make our city more walkable and pedestrian friendly (but) the City seems preoccupied with big, shiny, expensive projects, rather than the types of small changes that can immediately improve peoples’ lives.

If you know me or have read things that I’ve written here in the past, you probably realize that I’m a proponent of incremental progress. It’s great to push for the Big Things that can help shift paradigms, but we shouldn’t ignore the types of small, tangible changes that help people at the margins. It’s just as important to do the little things well.

Kovach goes on to highlight three "small details that can go a long way towards improving pedestrians’ quality of life." I've edited them, and my answers/comments are in red.

1.) Do all intersections include crosswalks and pedestrian signals?

No, not in downtown New Albany. The most egregious examples can be found on Main Street.

 

On the advent of Underground Station, rank political poseurs and a dangerous street without crosswalks or stop signs.

As Team Gahan snoozes, the intersection of West 1st and Main is an accident waiting to happen.

One of the simplest and most important things a city can do is to ensure that every intersection is equipped with crosswalks and pedestrian signals. This simple addition of some painted lines and signals carves out a small part of the street where pedestrians have a legally enforceable right to space.

And ...

2.) Are all pedestrian signals set to actuate at all times (i.e. not pedestrian actuated)?

Maybe, maybe not, though it's hard to tell when so many of the push buttons are broken so often. One thing is certain: If the button is broken, there'll be no signal. I've witnessed it again and again.

Once again, this seems like a small thing. It makes a pedestrian’s life a lot easier if she knows that regardless of when she gets to the intersection during the cycle, the walk signal is going to trigger when it’s supposed to.

Finally ...

3.) Has the city installed “leading pedestrian interval” signals, which allow pedestrians to start ahead of vehicular traffic?

No, though Louisville just now has introduced a few of these.

 ... Realistically, I just want the City to ensure that every pedestrian signal is synced to the traffic light. That is, the walk sign should activate as soon as the light turns green for cars, and the signal should not switch from flashing don’t walk to sold don’t walk until that traffic light turns yellow. At the very least, pedestrians should be afforded the same legal rights as the cars, right?

His conclusion:

All too often, we spend money on things that look nice or seem nice in theory, even as we overlook the little things that can make a tangible difference. I understand that elected officials don’t get to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony when you sync a pedestrian signal to the traffic light, but these seemingly small things matter. Until officials commit to tackling these easy-to-fix problems, the focus on the Big projects will seem like little more than PR.

The monthly merchant group meeting is 8:30 a.m., Tuesday, March 15 at Wick's.

The e-mails from DNA's Teresa Baxter have been circulated.

Our next (merchant) meeting will be on March 15th at 8:30 am at Wick's Pizza on State Street. Last month we had 22 people attend. This is a great group and is growing every month. Let your voice be heard by attending these meetings. Let's all work together.

There is a special item on this month's agenda. 

At our next meeting Yvonne has invited Mickey Thompson with the street department to come and answer your questions. Yvonne is collecting the questions so please send to Yvonne's email by Friday March 11th. This way all our questions can be answered during the time he is with us.

The agenda will be send out the Friday prior to our next meeting.

Thanks for everything you do to make Downtown New Albany a great place, to work, live & play.

If you have questions, comment here or at Fb,or send them to me, and I will forward them.

These monthly downtown merchant meetings have been taking place for five years, maybe longer. As noted previously:

"Everyone is invited and as always, we do our best to hold our meetings to no more than one hour.

"These meetings have proven very beneficial and well attended. If you have not attended, please consider doing so ... it's a great way to 'stay in the loop,' meet your neighbors and be informed.

"We always meet on the 3rd Tuesday morning of every month at 8:30 at a different location.

"Please note on your calendars our 3rd Tuesday meetings at 8:30 am."

City Hall web site tests new emergency Gahan alert system.

The mayor doesn't miss a trick when it comes to constructing his cult of personality.

Too much boring information on the city's web site? Well, Gahan's here to help by cherry-picking the important bits and posting them adjacent to a photo of himself at newalbanycityhall.com, where today we learn how emergency preparedness passes first through the mayor, not unlike a kidney stone, and then reaches YOU.

The posting was followed by a test of the new emergency Gahan alert system.

Dude -- got any of those for cats?

The City of New Albany recently launched an emergency notification system that allows residents to sign up and receive timely emergency alerts directly to their cell phone, home phone, e-mail, or whichever device is most convenient. This system will allow us to provide residents with critical information during an emergency, such as a severe weather event or a boil water advisory.

A diary entry about video documentaries and the personal process of recovery.

Photo credit: The Red Egg, by Oskar Kokoschka.

Starting just before Christmas of 2015, I commenced an obsession with YouTube documentaries. First came a wave of videos about Eastern European history during the Communist era. Then I shifted into more current events in and around Estonia, where we have a holiday booked later this year.

Reading a biography of poet/crackpot Ezra Pound shifted my gaze to documentaries about writers, first Englishmen (Larkin, Burgess, Amis), then expatriated Americans in Europe (Hemingway and Fitzgerald), but also a few Americans remaining in America (Philip Roth, John Steinbeck).

In turn, this recently yielded to visual artists, primarily painters: Kokoschka and Schiele from Austria; Englishmen Sickert, Bomberg and Nash; Magritte and de Lempicka in Paris (1928). For the first time, maybe ever, modern trends in painting that began with impression are beginning to make sense to me. There's hope yet.

Admittedly, apart from a film about the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, these various immersions are occurring within the familiar outline of the "Western" canon. There have been far too few about women. I'll need to do something about this, and will. It's a start, nothing more.

Previously I likened being at loose ends after 25 years in business as feeling as though I'd awakened from a coma. Now it's becoming even clearer, in the sense that dormant personal interests submerged beneath the weight of My Life in Beer are bubbling to the surface again. They never went away. There simply was too much drama and distractions to indulge them properly.

It's like picking up where I left off in 1990, and being back in school; not the required courses, but the electives. I get out of bed each morning enthused by the opportunity to learn. It's priceless.

Yes, I'm damned lucky to have this time to think. Not everyone gets the chance, and I recognize my good fortune in having it.

Introspection is one of those hackneyed double-edged swords, because it leads you to good places as well as bad. The following essay, published at my beer blog earlier in the week, is an example of what I think will be arriving more often as post-business time passes. It's time for me to write the history of that 25-year span.

If I'm up to it. After all, I'm a posterity kind of guy.

THE POTABLE CURMUDGEON: Can I get a “do-over” on Naughty Girl?

... Previous generations of humanity, living and dying prior to the advent of mass communications, missed the sheer thrill of screwing up, watching one’s screw-up instantly become grist for a potentially global audience, and then be reminded of it at regular intervals forever after.

He's absolutely right. It should be named the Eliza Harris Bridge.

In the overall scheme of things, we live in a region that values dull uniformity, and isn't afraid to wield it like a deadly weapon. We're positively evangelical about rote mediocrity.

This explains why certain of our legislators have again chosen to walk the rutted path of deadening predictability and advocate naming the new east end bridge for Lewis and Clark. The state recently electing Matt Bevin as governor chose Abraham Lincoln as the name for the downtown bridge, pointing to another facet of life hereabouts, namely an immunity to irony.

But it gets even worse. With living white males having narrowed the naming competition to dead white males, Indiana's fascist governor is said to prefer Ronald Reagan. I'd rather cut out the middle (dead white) man and cast Steve Stemler and Ron Grooms in a remake of Bedtime for Bonzo, to be filmed at One Southern Indiana.

Keep a pail nearby as you read the recurring, sad litany.

Lewis and Clark bridge naming resolution dies in Senate committee, by Elizabeth Beilman (Clark County Jail TV Guide)

Public safety concern hold-up in naming process

INDIANAPOLIS — The official name of the east-end bridge is still uncertain, since a resolution to name it after explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark died in Senate committee.

My friend LP has sensibly suggested an alternative. He proposes we name the east end bridge the Eliza Harris Bridge, so as to "celebrate the literal freedom crossing that the Kentucky/Indiana border and Ohio River represents."

Eliza Harris: Famous Escaped Slave

Eliza Harris was the name informally given to a slave sheltered by Levi Coffin after a precarious escape on treacherous ice floes with her baby. The event was retold to Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was inspired by the brave slave and based her character, Eliza Harris, upon the slave in her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Levi Coffin and his wife thereafter referred to the unknown slave as Eliza Harris.

Or, LP adds, perhaps the Harris-Coffin Bridge; after all, while white and male, the abolitionist Coffin afforded shelter to the escaped slave. It's real history that genuinely matters, and Eliza Harris has the tremendous advantage of NOT being yet another dead white male.

I replied to LP that given the limitations of our creativity-challenged area "leadership" cadre, it's almost impossible to even imagine pitching this idea to Grooms or Stemler. Just try. LP did, and produced this imagined dialogue about the Harris-Coffin Bridge.

Grooms: Coffin was an abortionist? Why would we celebrate that?!?
LP: No, an ABOLITIONIST.
Stemler: Oh, yeah. A tree doctor.

[I leave room]

For once ... just for once ... could we think outside the claustrophobic confines of our cultural box?

Why does America hate roundabouts, when they're the antidote to “fascist, robotic traffic lights"?

As the current Republican presidential primary attests, perhaps it's because we prefer fascistic robots.

Why Does America Hate Roundabouts?,by John Metcalfe (City Lab)

Maps and data visualizations show the U.S. trailing much of the world when it comes to traffic circles.

Some argue the primitive roots of the roundabout actually grew in the U.S. “It’s widely accepted that William Phelps Eno was the bright spark who first devised the idea of a one-way rotary system in 1903, for Columbus Circle, New York City, USA,” asserts the U.K. Roundabout Appreciation Society, an organization rabidly opposed to “fascist, robotic traffic lights.” So why has the country fallen so far behind in deployment, given roundabouts’ elegant simplicity and proven safety benefits?

There are a lot of possible answers, says Lee Rodegerdts, an international roundabout expert (yes, they exist) at the Portland transportation-engineering and planning group Kittelson & Associates.

“My guess is that the possible benefit of roundabouts wasn’t widely known, and we had a long history of using traffic signals,” he says. “It took some bold people—both on the elected-official side and on the transportation-professional side—to get the first ones installed, and they deserve a lot of credit for sticking their necks out there. This boldness had to be repeated a lot around the U.S. during the [first] decade or two, given the skepticism of: ‘Well, that might work there, but it won’t work here.’”

ON THE AVENUES: A funny thing happened on the way to a city council nightcap.

ON THE AVENUES: A funny thing happened on the way to a city council nightcap.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

At Monday evening’s city council meeting, something genuinely rare occurred. I’d previously witnessed it only when the topic at hand was inconsequential, one of insufficient gravity to demand one and a half hours of public speaking time.

Before I get to it, an overview.

At stake was the “Ordinance Adopting Chapter 160: Rental Property Code,” and even before the meeting was gaveled to order, the proposed legislation already had induced labor pains of a profound dimension.

Not only did our chronically reticent Mayor Jeff Gahan shed his diffidence to issue a statement strongly urging the ordinance’s passage, but local realtor Pat Harrison entirely refrained from self-immolation. Discarding her torn and frayed “Gestapo!” card, she testified on behalf of the measure, and urged all citizens in attendance to join her.

Dozens of Harrison’s fellow rental property owners who were packing the meeting room greeted this unexpected declaration of Kumbaya with hard-bitten shrugs. You could almost read their minds: “Well, looks like Gahan tricked Pat into swallowing the Kool-Aid. She’s dead to us now. Who is John Galt?”

He owns a duplex, right?

Harrison kept her front-row seat for the remainder of the meeting, listening as a succession of rental property owners savagely denounced the ordinance, both in terms of its specific contents and from their traditional standpoint that yet again, City Hall was refusing to build consensus, and attempting instead to “railroad” them into compliance.

They may have had something there.

---

Strangely, some elements of what followed did not precisely adhere to the time-honored cadence, as stipulating that area residents attend council meetings only when mad-as-hell-outraged, better to simmer ominously while heckling cowered office-holders with implied threats of electoral jihad, and fighting to the bitter end.

Not that such sideshows didn’t break out. Of course they did. However, there were significant departures from the script.

For one thing, the electoral comeuppance artillery more accurately resembled a brace of damp July 4 sparklers. Even Tibetan monks in far-off Llasa immediately grasped that the introduction of the rental property ordinance was timed to take place following the 2015 elections, not before.

Council persons would have four long years for short attention spans to take their toll in forgetfulness.

Furthermore, as required by council protocol to state their addresses, a disproportionate number of property owners in attendance were revealed to live beyond New Albany’s city limits, in locales ranging from Sellersburg to Shepherdsville. Ironically, many of the property owners cannot vote here – and many of their tenants won’t.

As the parade to the lectern dragged on, it became apparent that most (not all) property owners present were willing to accept the section of the ordinance establishing a property registration regimen, financed with a modest fee.

It is impossible to say whether this acceptance constituted a conscious bargaining chip, but it was evident that however minimal, collective agreement might be possible on at least one point.

But was half a loaf Gahan’s strategy from the start? People close to the central characters in this story will tell you that while Gahan’s true beliefs can seldom be fathomed, ordinance sponsor Greg Phipps supports it top to bottom.

Was the true believer Phipps intended as the feint, the lightning rod, and the diversion, with his amoral mayoral benefactor all the while channeling cartoonish his inner Machiavellian by assembling the whole nattily attired City Hall gang (good grief, even Duggins was wearing a suit) just for show, all the while content to play for registration alone?

In the end, that’s what Phipps got, a rental registration rump alone, but with an added “something” that Gahan may or may not have been aiming toward, because more than one council member hinted at broad support for the notion of at long last adequately funding the city’s existing enforcement mechanism (read: David Brewer) … and if rental registration is accompanied by serious funding to enforce the ordinances already on the books, what’s the point of bringing back the most recent rental package from the committee’s chopping block?

Do you hear that? It sounds like a toilet flushing.

---

It came time for Gahan to speak, and bears repeating that such was the urgency of the occasion – Gahan’s morning emission referred to the rental ordinance as a "must" – that yet again, for perhaps the 99th time out of 101 council meetings since 2012, the mayor failed to attend and make his own argument, face to face with dissenting property owners.

As always, the mayor’s platitudes were mouthed by his surrogate, Mike Hall, who likely wrote them in the first place. This revealing episode concluded, finally the council's own discussion began.

After a passionate four-year fling with Gahan, Dan Coffey has returned to a practiced demagogue’s numbing predictability, playing directly to the crowd’s prejudices, biting heads off live pigeons and vowing that yes, praise God, “Free Bird” would be played whether the pointy-headed liberals wanted to hear it or not.

Coffey’s fellow “independent” is Scott Blair, and if the oddity of this couple doesn’t send you to the liquor cabinet, nothing will. Both now compete among the two major parties for scraps of influence, and of the two, Coffey is best placed to snatch them from the banker’s smooth, perfumed hands.

Blair already is showing signs of desperation; each time he publicly uses words like “cost-benefit ratio,” “spread sheets” and “free toaster oven with each new checking account,” what he’s really asking is, “Why don’t any of you love me?”

Of course, Coffey the snarling junkyard dog reads the abacus more clearly than the MBA Blair, because the council’s new math reads like this: Four DemoDixieDisneycrats, three spanking new Republicans and two Free Agents – and Coffey’s decision to opt out from the Party of Them Gays owed to pure calculation, not pique.

You see, Coffey’s erstwhile paymaster, Jeff Gahan, now is utterly deprived of painless, easy victory during those sporadic occasions when a council vote cannot be evaded by decisions taken by his handpicked boards of Works and Redevelopment.

Coffey knows there’ll come a time when that reliable council swing vote is once again needed. His price will be higher than before, but Gahan will pay it, for the simple reason that he’d rather deal with a Copperhead than a Loan Officer – and bizarrely, this comes very close to making sense.

---

On Monday night, with council discussion concluded, there was an atmosphere of uncertainty. Phipps had performed well, addressing objections to the ordinance and providing the mayor with more political cover than he ever receives in return.

He vowed to bring the entire 22-page document to vote, with no further tabling or committee involvement, and yet had barely finished the sentence before divining a very important fact.

Phipps didn’t have five votes. He may have had as few as two. Now what?

At this precise moment, Phipps asked aloud what might be done to move matters forward, and he was answered by hyper-prepared, at-large newcomer Al Knable, who matter-of-factly stated that while he supported the registration portion, he could not vote for the remainder of the rental ordinance without it first going back to committee for revision.

As though released from bondage, others chimed in, and suddenly, the rare event I referred to at the top of this page unfolded.

Council members actually spoke to each other with civility, even Coffey.

They spoke openly, and talked about separating the ordinance’s sections, reconstituting it, resubmitting it, and voting.

They discussed approving rental property registration, then coming back to the inspection and enforcement sections.

They voted, and registration was approved unanimously on the first two readings. Surely it will receive final approval at the next meeting.

After this, most attendees quickly vacated the room. They left having witnessed a rare compromise, and while proponent and opponent alike may not have been delighted, they also were not homicidal. Given the council’s perennial shenanigans, that’s something encouraging.

Phipps’ question and Knable’s answer might well have been the start of a new council dynamic. Currently there are two natural leaders on this council: Knable and Coffey, and Coffey has traded his vitality for the hope of a future lottery win.

I expect Knable to pursue bipartisan conciliation for as long as Gahan’s rampant ego will allow, and in turn, I see Gahan observing the stock dictum of holding friends close, but enemies even closer.

As for where this prolonged, delicate gavotte takes us, no one can know for sure. All I can say is for the first time in many a moon, I returned home from a council meeting relatively relaxed, and fell asleep quickly, without so much as gin to silence my brain.

These are strange times, indeed – and maybe even hopeful ones.

---

March 3: ON THE AVENUES: Since 1960, outside looking in.

February 29: ON THE AVENUES REPRISE: Die hard the Hunter, or the political "impossibility" of rental property registration in New Albany (2015).

February 25: ON THE AVENUES: Gravity Head again, because times change, and possessive pronouns change with them.

February 18: ON THE AVENUES: Mourning in America, circa 1984.

Today's must read: "Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why."

Thomas Frank has listened to Donald Trump's speeches, and personally, he finds the candidate "disgusting," while adding a crucial caveat: Trump has disgusted him for more than 20 years.

This echoes my own comments, in that there was no need for Trump to run for president in order to be loathsome. I, too, have been disgusted by Trump, and for decades, not since last summer.

However, personal disgust isn't the point, either of Frank's essay or Trump's message. The author isn't the first to note that there are things Trump and Bernie Sanders have in common (see Pierce, Charles P.), and these things have to do with trade, the economy and normal, working people. What we're seeing this year is the inevitable result of ignoring the 800-lb gorilla.

This isn't to diminish the repugnance of so many of Trump's set pieces, merely to confirm that a valid point is a valid point, irrespective of who makes it. I skip to the conclusion, but you should read the whole essay.

Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why, by Thomas Frank (The Guardian)

Trump’s words articulate the populist backlash against liberalism that has been building slowly for decades and may very well occupy the White House itself, whereupon the entire world will be required to take seriously its demented ideas.

Yet still we cannot bring ourselves to look the thing in the eyes. We cannot admit that we liberals bear some of the blame for its emergence, for the frustration of the working-class millions, for their blighted cities and their downward spiraling lives. So much easier to scold them for their twisted racist souls, to close our eyes to the obvious reality of which Trumpism is just a crude and ugly expression: that neoliberalism has well and truly failed.

Tale of a month's Elm Street street mattresses.

The photo above was taken on March 9. The ones below, in mid-February -- and those mattresses had been there a while.

I'm beginning to believe that the word "DRIVE" has deeper significance, perhaps an urban variant of "DUMP"?

And why mattresses and not electronics?

Ah, but off in the distance, see the emerging shiny symbol of all things Gahanesque and possible ... it's the job site for Break Wind Lofts at Duggins Flats. Once built, there'll be no more street mattresses, but there'll be a chicken in every pot and a Democratic Party chairman on every redevelopment board (rinse, repeat).

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Hagiography.

Welcome to another installment of SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS, a regular Wednesday feature at NA Confidential.

But why new words? Why not the old, familiar, comforting words?

It's because a healthy vocabulary isn't about trying to show rental property owners you're smarter than them. To the contrary, it's about selecting the right word and using it correctly, whatever one's pay grade or station in life.

Even municipal corporate attorneys are eligible for this enlightening expansion of personal horizons, and really, for those of us watching as the mayor ingloriously fails in his first-ever effort to influence a political outcome through his innate powers of syntax-mangling persuasion, all we really have is time on our hands -- moments enough for us to learn something.

This week, we examine a noun often deployed here: Hagiography, as previously defined here:

Hagiography, Gahan-style: "We blacktopped a lot of the alleys this year."

But reinforcement is a good thing, don't you think? The British Dictionary definition strikes me as more complete, so we'll use it.

hagiography

/ˌhæɡɪˈɒɡrəfɪ/

noun (pl) -phies

1. the writing of the lives of the saints
2. biography of the saints
3. any biography that idealizes or idolizes its subject

Derived Forms
hagiographic (ˌhæɡɪəˈɡræfɪk), hagiographical, adjective

The American pronunciation is slightly more clear.

hagiography
[hag-ee-og-ruh-fee, hey-jee-]

I prefer sticking with the hard "g" sound, although as you can see, the soft variant is allowable.

The origin of hagiography

1805-15; hagio- + -graphy

Word Origin and History for hagiography

"Writing of saints' lives," 1821, from Greek hagios "holy" (see hagiology ) + -graphy. Related: Hagiographic (1819); hagiographical (1580s); hagiographer (1650s).

I know; it's all Greek to them, isn't it? Here are three sample sentences.

NA Confidential is a refreshing counterweight to massed volumes of Gahan hagiography, as intended by the mayor's Disneyesque subalterns as proof of his unerring political instincts.

Most of the tributes to Peyton Manning are little more than hagiography.

Warren seeks a hagiographer, but a writer with blinders of this magnitude simply cannot be located hereabouts.

Steve Coomes on Brooklyn and The Butcher: "A steakhouse sans the stereotypical pretension."

Photo credit: Brooklyn and The Butcher on Fb.

It's great ink for Ian and Nikki Hall, with Brooklyn and The Butcher as the lead story by Steve Coomes in this morning's Insider Louisville. Moreover, it's validation for the growth of New Albany's downtown food and drink purveyors.

Both Brooklyn and The Butcher and Gospel Bird came out of the box fully formed, which is a testament to professionalism -- and it's professionalism that will ensure their longevity and the strength of our dining scene.

Congrats to the Halls and their staff.

First look: Brooklyn & The Butcher — a steakhouse sans the stereotypical pretension

 ... The steakhouse, created and operated by BRAND Hospitality Group owners Ian and Nikki Hall (also owners of The Exchange), bills itself as a place for “small plates and big steaks,” a fitting tagline given their desire for a steakhouse sans the stereotypical pretension. You’ll find serious steak here, but not cuts delivered with speeches about dry-aged this or that or wine lists dominated by budget-busting cabernets and cognac. Even better is no one comes out with a cart laden with raw lobsters, steaks and vegetables. I’m hard pressed to think of more awkward tableside marketing than that.

All about Sojourn New Albany's Empowerment Seminar, coming on Saturday, March 19.

I'm tempted to be mischievous and comment that church services are always free (notwithstanding the collection plate, which after all is somewhat optional), but I won't.

Sojourn's Jonah Sage alerted me to this seminar, which strikes me as ideal neighborhood outreach. It includes advice on renter's rights, resume and interviews, scholarships and financial aid, and emergency preparedness.

Empowerment Seminar

Sojourn New Albany

Saturday, March 19

9 a.m. - 12 p.m.

All services are free!

Get your copy now: "Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution."

"If you can change the street, you can change the world."

Someone tell the mayor, but yell really loudly; he's a few stories underground in the down-low bunker. The book is Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution, by Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow.

Janette Sadik-Khan's homepage includes views of before/after street transformations.

Simply painting a part of the street to make it into a plaza or bus lane not only made the street safer, but it also lessened congestion and increased foot traffic, which improved the bottom line of businesses.

I reiterate my previous call: If Gahan has no intention of doing it, I'm ready to start painting streets.

Streetfight Offers Vision to Reshape Cities (Destinations Booksellers)

Janette Sadik-Khan is one of the world’s foremost authorities on transportation and urban transformation. She served as New York’s transportation commissioner from 2007 to 2013 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, overseeing historic changes to New York City’s streets – closing Broadway to cars in Times Square, building nearly four hundred miles of bike landes, and creating more than sixty plazas citywide. She, along with colleague Seth Solomonow, provide case studies of how cities and/or activists can make city streets safer and more accommodating to multiple uses.

If you’re a fan of protected bike lanes and road diets, here’s a manual of successful procedures taken from real life.

Jane Jacobs, 1958: "Downtown is for People."

Photo credit

It's an essay by Jane Jacobs written in 1958, and worth revisiting at regular intervals. First, for those just tuning in

Jacobs is credited, along with Lewis Mumford, with inspiring the New Urbanist movement. She has been characterized as a major influence on decentralist and radical centrist thought.

Jacobs wrote a seminal book.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a 1961 book by writer and activist Jane Jacobs. The book is a critique of 1950s urban planning policy, which it holds responsible for the decline of many city neighborhoods in the United States. Going against the modernist planning dogma of the era, it proposes a newfound appreciation for organic urban vibrancy in the United States.

Here's the magazine article preceding the book.

Downtown is for People (Fortune Classic, 1958), by Nin-Hai Tseng (Fortune)

... There are, certainly, ample reasons for redoing downtown–falling retail sales, tax bases in jeopardy, stagnant real-estate values, impossible traffic and parking conditions, failing mass transit, encirclement by slums. But with no intent to minimize these serious matters, it is more to the point to consider what makes a city center magnetic, what can inject the gaiety, the wonder, the cheerful hurly-burly that make people want to come into the city and to linger there. For magnetism is the crux of the problem. All downtown’s values are its byproducts. To create in it an atmosphere of urbanity and exuberance is not a frivolous aim.

Floyd County Council approves $150-300-eleventy million hospital privatization windfall. No wonder there are so many county government candidates.

"In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.”
― Czesław Miłosz

First, something we'd been told was inevitable -- which naturally should make us suspicious. Chris Morris (Picayune de la Jeffersonvillia) has the scoop, with expanded story to come:

Floyd council agrees to Baptist Health's $150M offer for Floyd Memorial Hospital

NEW ALBANY — The Floyd County Council on Tuesday evening unanimously voted for a nonbinding agreement to sell Floyd Memorial Hospital to Baptist Health Systems for $150 million.

Louisville-based Baptist's offer is $75 million at the sale's completion and another $75 million to be paid out over 10 years.

In fact, some folks already were suspicious, even if the newspaper's seldom-deployed editorial board was not: OUR OPINION: The time is right to sell Floyd Memorial Hospital.

The view from Clark County? It's all copacetic. Anyway, it's Morris again.

Floyd Memorial Hospital cuts list to three suitors; Some officials upset over lack of information

 ... However, longtime commissioner Chuck Freiberger said before he votes on a sale, he wants more details. He said he has received "very little information" and said there has been no transparency through the entire process.

"There was a task force formed without my knowledge and they have been meeting for about a year. I am told they are taking bids ... I think that is a problem," he said. "The public should be told. It's been kept hush, hush from the public."

Mark Seabrook represented the commissioners on the task force and Steve Bush sat in when Seabrook was absent. Bush said there was very little they were able to disclose due to the nature of the negotiations. He said members had to sign a confidentiality form.

I'm guessing it's too late for a referendum, but 2016 is a Floyd County election cycle. There is a huge amount of money involved, and yet every politician and hospital administrator close to the negotiations accepted terms of non-transparency.

There hasn't been much sunshine in this instance. As Bluegill previously noted on Fb:

The whole thing sounds like one of Dr. Eichenberger's blog posts. We must sell because it can't possibly make it as a public institution and we must sell now because it's in such good financial standing. Oh, and we voluntarily signed confidentiality agreements so the fact that we can't talk about it is not our fault. This is a guy who strenuously argued that whether or not people can access health services should not be considered in measuring health system quality. 

(Remember NA Health? The archives remain.)

My point, predictably offered in vain, is this: If we must wait for the outcome of the presidential election to appoint a Supreme Court justice, under the GOP's rationale that the voters need to decide, as opposed to the incumbents, then doesn't Floyd County's GOP-dominated government owe it to the citizenry to wait until after the forthcoming election before deciding what’s to become of Floyd Memorial Hospital?

Let the candidates state their preference, and let the voters choose. It's only fair, right?

$150 million says that ain't happening.

"Chef Gina Brown offers all-ages friendly cooking class."

It flummoxes me that while the former New Albany newspaper devotes an enormous amount of energy promoting a one-time cooking class to be held in Jeffersonville in May, Chef Gina's cooking classes keep right on going here in New Albany, under the newspaper's nose.

Gina's also taking the lead in helping organize a Fresh Stop Market in New Albany; the next meeting is on March 17.

This evening, Gina is providing a healthy cooking demonstration at Floyd Memorial Hospital.

Sweet home Alabama -- whatever. There's lots to cover right here, isn't there?

Chef Gina Brown offers all-ages friendly cooking class, by Caitlin Bowling (Insider Louisville)

Chef Gina Brown’s goal is to get people back in the kitchen.

It has nothing to do with societal roles and everything to do with making fresh food accessible. Busy schedules make unhealthy pre-made meals look tempting, said Brown, whose Every Day Fresh cooking classes aim to teach novice and experienced cooks simple recipes they can make at home.

The classes are around three hours long, which includes learning how to make the food and then eating it. Each attendee also receives a print-out of recipes used in the class.

Pre-scheduled classes cover topics like pasta-making, Mediterranean cooking and homemade Asian dumplings, potstickers and pierogies. This month in celebration of Pi Day on March 14, Brown also is offering a special pie-making course.

People also can request a class if they want to learn something specific that isn’t currently on her schedule, said Brown, an adjunct professor at Sullivan University and certified ServSafe instructor and proctor.

This past Sunday, Brown taught a pasta-making course to 10 people in the former coffee shop space at the back of Destination’s Booksellers, located at 604 E. Spring St. in New Albany. The bookstore acts as her base of operations. It also is the home of Taco Steve, a street taco eatery that moved in at the end of last year.

Peyton Manning: "That dopey grin that’s sold countless pizzas."

Hagiography? But Manning isn't an old hag -- he's a football player!

Oh, dear.

This looks like a case for SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS, coming on Wednesday. In the meantime, I found a fellow cynic. I'm always happy when this happens.

Peyton Manning retires – and ends the world's most exhausting hagiography, by Dave Schilling (The Guardian)

... The Sheriff is gone, but is he really gone? Sundays will still be littered with his adverts for Nationwide, Papa Johns, and surely Budweiser at some point. He’ll pop up on Saturday Night Live once or twice, donning a funny wig or tripping on a banana peel at an inopportune moment. Phil Simms will call a rookie quarterback “a young Peyton” or compare Brock Osweiler’s mediocre game management to his predecessor’s.