New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
Ambrose Burnside was born in Liberty, Indiana (appropriately, in Union County) near the border with Ohio. He became a Rhode Island resident only after being stationed there while serving in the antebellum US military.
One of the most interesting things about Burnside, apart from his trademark facial whiskers (originally called burnsides, then sideburns), was the woman he didn't marry.
Prior to the Civil War, Burnside was engaged to Lottie Moon. She famously jilted him at the altar. Later during the conflict Moon and her sister became notorious Confederate spies. Eventually the sisters were captured and fell into the custody of none other than Burnside, who detained them but didn't file espionage charges.
Just before the outbreak of war Burnside succeeded in designing and patenting an innovative breech-loading carbine (the Burnside carbine). This might have brought him great wealth when wartime government orders began pouring in, except he'd been compelled to surrender the patents when thrown into debt by business reversals.
As a Civil War general Burnside occasionally was productive in a subordinate's role, but was not a top-flight officer. He was self-aware and recognized his own limitations at all levels of military command. This didn't stop Abraham Lincoln from appointing Burnside to lead the Army of the Potomac, resulting in the catastrophic Battle of Fredericksburg in late 1862.
For all this, but perhaps more so by virtue of a postwar political career as a Rhode Island governor and senator, Burnside posthumously was awarded a small park and equestrian statue in downtown Providence.
I knew nothing of this when we visited the capital, although the statue looked somewhat like Burnside from a distance. The following day I went for a stroll in South Hadley, Massachusetts and found myself somewhat entranced by this simple statue on the village green.
It reads, "This monument is erected to commemorate the loyalty and patriotism of our citizen soldiers who fought for liberty and the union in the Great Rebellion of 1861 - 1865."
In fact, "great rebellion" is a far more accurate description of the war than the terms we use today, and whether one is a pacifist or hawk, "citizen soldiers" reminds us of who did the heavy lifting and made the ultimate sacrifice.
Ambrose Burnside, officer, inventor and politician. To look at his life is to see a popular, well-liked man who knew how to play his hand, and always had a second chance waiting irrespective of how badly he'd botched the previous opportunity.
The soldier at South Hadley symbolizes the men who did the actual work, died and were maimed. Many didn't return from the Civil War, and many of the ones who did came home scarred, whether by wounds or the weight of the experience.
To me, Burnside assuredly was on the "right" side, but I'm not sure there is any better justification to leave his equestrian statue stand unmolested than the one of Confederate officer John B. Castleman at Louisville's Cherokee Triangle.
"RussiaGate has been a great diversion and 'the bear ate our homework' excuse for the awfulness of the dismal, dollar-drenched Dems, the Inauthentic Opposition party."
The author provides a clear summary of "Five Things That Really Happened and One That Might Have Happened," followed by the excerpt below.
That said, the whole big RussiaGate drama and narrative – the dominant U.S. media obsession for two and a half years until its current displacement by the Democratic presidential electoral extravaganza (though Russia-Trump is scheduled for a new boost with Mueller’s forthcoming appearance before Congress) – still stinks for seven basic reasons:
First, there was no great US “democracy” for Russia to “undermine” in the first place. Domestic wealth and power structures, home-grown-oligarchy and plutocracy is what most significantly installed Trump in the White House (even if Hillary was most of the ruling-class’s preferred winner). The United States’ not-so democratic elections are “still unprotected” against the nation’s own capitalist ruling class – and against absurdly anti-democratic partisan gerrymandering (held up as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court last week) and racist voter suppression).
Second, other nations like Israel and Saudi Arabia have far more say in US politics and policy than Russia, to say the least.
Third, Superpower Uncle Sam (with more than 800 military bases spread across more than 100 “sovereign” nations) continues to regularly intervene in and otherwise impact the internal affairs of other nations (Russian included) all over the world, with more and more terrible impact than any nation ever.
Fourth, RussiaGate has been a great diversion and “the bear ate our homework” excuse for the awfulness of the dismal, dollar-drenched Dems, the Inauthentic Opposition party. It has helped (as certainly intended) the corporate and imperial establishment atop that party continue to marginalize progressive forces both within and beyond the party – forces who properly note that the Democrats lost the election because of their corporate-neoliberal politics and policies. It has helped the Dem-neoliberal establishment avoid blame for demobilizing the nation’s progressive and social-democratic majority and putting a creeping fascist in the White House.
Fifth, RussiaGate has also helped (also as certainly intended) fuel the continuation of the dangerous New Cold War.
Sixth, RussiaGate has been used to confer fake-democratic and fake-progressive legitimacy on the repressive and imperial National Security State and its vast intelligence apparatus.
Seventh, RussiaGate has distracted and diverted the nation away not only from the dreadfulness of the neoliberal Democrats but also from Trump’s most horrific crimes. The orange-tinted beast has done far worse things than welcome help (of whatever significance) from Russia and obstruct the investigation of his creepy relationship with that nation: sadistic family separations at the border; concentration camps for migrant children and families; pushing to the brink of war on Iran; Eco-cidal energy deregulation to speed the planet’s transition into a giant Greenhouse Gas Chamber (the worst sin of all); burying federal scientific findings on the coming climate collapse; assaulting and degrading women; demonizing immigrants; shutting down the asylum process for Central Americans and Mexicans; declaring fake emergencies in order to do fiscal end-runs around Congress to fund a widely hated Nativist Wall and to sell arms to help Saudi Arabia murder more Yemeni civilians; trying to kick millions off of heath insurance; denying Congress’s power to investigate and oversee the executive branch; suggesting that he won’t accept the results of the 2020 election and that he should get more than two terms in the White House; whitewashing Neo-Nazis and other white supremacists; catering to the fascist National Rifle Association and its mass-shooting terror campaign; and…the list goes on and on.
This column originally was published on July 10, 2014. Until only recently the prospects for creative redevelopment at Colonial Manor seemed permanently belly-up, but now residents living nearby have rallied to the idea of participating in the Redevelopment Commission's closed-door, fix-is-in process. Predictably this has raised the hackles of the spider-web-encrusted monastics seated there, but anything to mobilize the grassroots is good, whether or not Irving Joshua agrees (and rest assured, he doesn't). Hint: "Corridor study." Mayor Jeff Gahan is on record as dismissive of the idea, which is the single best reason to pursue it.
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ON THE AVENUES: You want some fries with your redevelopment?
“Fast food is popular because it's convenient, it's cheap, and it tastes good. But the real cost of eating fast food never appears on the menu.”
-- Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation
Once upon a time someone asked me where I live.
I said, “Well, have you heard the old adage about the clinical definition of insanity?”
“Sure,” he replied. “The definition of insanity is repeating the same mistakes over and over again and expecting different results.”
“Exactly. So, to answer your question, I live in the place where the definition of insanity is precisely the same wording as the mission statement for our city’s economic and redevelopment commissions.”
“I don’t understand at all. Can you repeat that?”
“But of course. Our elected officials repeat it twice a month.”
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A boy can dream of subversion, revolution and the unexplored, virginal territory lying just outside the box, but in reality, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Tahiti that the moribund stretch of Charlestown Road by the McDonald’s and Colonial Manor would ever be “redeveloped” in any substantially different way today than it first was developed in the early 1970s.
After all, these latest cookie-cutter chain components are interchangeable. Once a Wendy’s and KFC; now a Hardee’s and Domino’s Pizza. Once an impossibly ugly suburban-style strip center with a Kroger, now just as unattractive and sparsely occupied by a Cash Saver grocery (it’s a member of One Southern Indiana, dog), this latter occupancy hailed by England Doug and Maalox the Conqueror as one of the supreme achievements of Hizzoner’s somnolent third mayoral term.
It is left to Irving Joshua, who surely has more unmonitored power than any non-elected official in town, and consequently wields the redevelopment commission as a veritable rolled-up newspaper of outmoded notions, to step forward and connect the dots with another usual platitude, fortuitously captured by the newspaper at a meeting scheduled during the afternoon, when most working people can’t attend:
Joshua, president of the redevelopment commission, said (Hardee’s and Domino’s) are “improving the likelihood we can keep the grocery store there.”
That’s a deeply depressing measure of how far the bar has descended here in Truck Through City, where pallet-nailing is considered a high-tech job, and Chick-fil-A is the preferred place for 50th anniversary dinners, just so long as they’re procured via the handy automotive window.
At the same time, it shows just how crazily out of touch I’ve become with respect to what passes for modernity these days – thankfully, gratefully and happily so.
I try to imagine what it must be like to hear of a new burger joint coming to the neighborhood -- to immediately fall to my knees, and to break into tears of joy, fulfillment and release: “I never, ever thought I’d live to see the day when we’d have a Zaxby’s down the street. I just might eat there every single night.”
Whatever. Let’s hope you have Obamacare when your heart explodes.
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Consequently, it is with an overwhelmingly vast chasm of a psychological disconnectedness that I attempt to fathom the desperation and bleakness of lives spent contemplating the advent of a new fast-food sandwich, as seen on television, all the better for the Archer Daniels Midland Triple Fatburger to be greeted by social media with millions of “likes,” retweets and varied regurgitations of “hosanna.”
How on earth these people can root for extractive, exploitative corporations is beyond me. Maybe I’m getting old. Then again, maybe uneducated self-delusion is the new national pastime.
And yet … the recurring problem amid my rampant cynicism is that yes, I actually can see both sides of it – and I’m fully implicated in one of them.
In my own chosen world, there are regular explosions of pulse-quickening geekery, exclusionary narcissism and pure avarice when it comes to the impending release of a rare, highly-rated beer, and to be perfectly fair, I’m forced to concede that as the peculiarly American stains of materialism and consumerism go, the differences between Taco Bell envy and Westvleteren hoarding are of degree only. They’re both representative of materialism and consumerism run amok.
It makes me want to refrain from both food and drink, and retreat to the confines of my library to select real, tactile books, and begin to reacquaint myself with the world of ideas.
That’s because I’m nothing if not stubborn. Ideas matter, and yet at present, this country is a dismally stupid place. It also is mercilessly tacky. Perpetual tsunamis of crass materialism and consumerist greed define the American experience, and what’s worse, we’re not content to populate our own continent as 24-7 shopping zombies, pausing occasionally to thank Jesus for the blessed privilege of possessing our baubles.
No, we must infect the remainder of the planet, too. The evangelistic impulse is the same, whether capitalistic or religious. To me, David Novak’s rah-rah cheer for the shareholders of Yum Brands plays a bit too much like “Heil, Hitler” – and as a non-book-reading, insultingly wealthy white man, his cadence is even less symmetrical when translated into Mandarin, Brazilian Portuguese or Klingon.
We can’t even have useful innovations like universal health care, for fear that dollars invested in human happiness might detract from expenditures on the very same food rendering us in need of hospitalization in the first place, not to mention whatever is left to purchase vital plastic trinkets from overseas manufacturers.
There it is, in a nutshell, and something to ponder while you’re sinking your cavity-ridden teeth into some Papa John’s:
We celebrate rope-a-dope notions like the "American Dream," aiming to marginalize an excluded majority, while perpetually bedazzling constituents with hopes of a consumer paradise here on Earth, buttressed by religious and patriotic superstition, even as the overall playing field is kept firmly tilted toward wealth where it already reposes.
Come to think of it, that’s the Republican Party's platform.
To paraphrase the late Warren Zevon, America … New Albany … your shit’s fucked up.
I think it started at dusk on Monday evening when we finally located the New City Brewery in Easthampton, a new-age craft brewing start-up located in a decidedly old-school brick mill building the size of downtown New Albany, with lots more of them located in the immediate vicinity.
Immediately Bruce Springsteen's album The River began playing in my head, and so now it's "Independence Day," July 4.
It is with much confusion that I attempt to describe the events of July 3 and 4, 1987.
My notes insist that the tour group arrived in Leningrad on the morning of Thursday, July 2, after a largely sleepless overnight train trip (described previously). The party began again on the evening of July 2, spilling over into Friday morning, July 3.
On Friday morning, we boarded a hydrofoil to Peterhof (Petrodvorets). Hangovers were rampant, but at least it was a lovely summer day to cruise the Gulf of Finland.
One of St. Petersburg's most famous and popular visitor attractions, the palace and park at Peterhof (also known as Petrodvorets) are often referred to as "the Russian Versailles", although many visitors conclude that the comparison does a disservice to the grandeur and scope of this majestic estate.
Photos follow, below.
Upon returning from Petrodvorets, there was a tour of the Hermitage Museum at the lavish former Winter Palace of the Romanovs, and in the evening, some of us went to the Baku restaurant to celebrate Nick's birthday.
By evening on Saturday, July 4, the group had wrapped its Leningrad tour in the morning (Piskaryovskoe Memorial Cemetery and museum of the WWII siege) and flown to Riga, Latvia for the next stage of liver damage.
The timing matters, owing to one of the most famous episodes of the journey, wherein an American flag abruptly appeared atop the Leningradsky Dvorets Molodezhi Hotel in honor of July 4, U.S. independence day.
It had to have happened at night on July 3, into the morning of July 4.
Seeing as I remember nothing about the Baku meal, it will come as no surprise that details about the circumstances of this flag's novel appearance in the USSR also completely elude me.
Furthermore, I've no idea how the flag was reclaimed, because at some point thereafter it was traded to a cooperative Soviet railway attendant for a tin of caviar the size of a football.
No photos survive of this flag, unfurled atop the brutalist architecture in Leningrad, and tolerated with remarkable equanimity by hotel staff. I wonder if we bribed them?
From July 3, two views of Leningrad's old Tsarist waterfront.
And incredible Petrodvorets, the Versailles of Peter the Great.
I believe the game was to see which stones activated the water jets when trod upon.
St. Petersburg's largest and most famous bookshop, Dom Knigi ("House of the Book") occupies one of the most beautiful buildings on Nevsky Prospekt - the Singer Company Building, an innovative and richly decorated Art Nouveau masterpiece.
Even today, St. Petersburg's Piskaryovskoe Memorial Cemetery continues to speak eloquently to the experience of Leningrad under siege by the Nazis in WWII.
It was a Saturday afternoon, and so we were able to witness the Soviet custom of newlyweds visiting the cemetery to honor the sacrifice of the populace during the siege.
The most significant monument to those who died during the Siege of Leningrad, this enormous memorial cemetery on the north-eastern outskirts of the city holds the graves of around 420 000 civilian victims of the siege, the majority of whom died of cold and starvation, and 70 000 soldiers who died in the defense of the city. On Victory Day (9 May), the cemetery is a centre of activity for the relatives of those who are buried there and anyone who wishes to commemorate the thousands of victims of what is undoubtedly the greatest tragedy in St. Petersburg's history.
In 1987, it had been only a little more than 40 years, and most families had suffered losses: "Nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten."
A final memento of WWII is this preserved sign, still intact today, reading "Citizens! In case of shelling, this side of the street is most dangerous."
Dave Zirin, one of a select group of sportswriters who really matter, introduces a speech by Frederick Douglass, originally delivered in 1852.
Here’s hoping people take the time to read the entirety of Douglass’s brilliant speech. Even though his were words that spoke directly to his moment in history, they still ring with an unsettling power.
As Douglass says, “Had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
The speech itself is lengthy, eloquent and worthy. In my estimation, it is best read prior to hamburgers and fireworks.
... But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!
We drove down to Rhode Island yesterday, and this venerable library was the star attraction.
The Providence Athenaeum was founded as "The Athenaeum" in 1836 as an independent, member-supported library open to the public. Its progenitors were two earlier libraries: The Providence Library Company, founded in 1753, and the Providence Athenaeum, founded in 1831. It became "The Providence Athenaeum" by amendment to its charter in 1850.
Poe came here, but not entirely for the books.
One of the Athenæum’s most famous visitors was Edgar Allan Poe. In September of 1848, he traveled to Providence in order to meet and court the wealthy Rhode Island widow, Sarah Helen Whitman.
The Athenaeum was a convenient rendezvous site, but it turned out badly.
On December 23, 1848, Sarah Helen Whitman broke off her relationship with Edgar Allan Poe in the building. Author H.P. Lovecraft was not a member of the library, but he lived nearby on College Street; he frequented the library and wrote about it in his letters and stories.
The question that fans of the horror genre wrestle with today is how Lovecraft can be celebrated when his views were so execrable? You’ll often hear the “man of his time” argument, yet even for the early 20th century these were still extreme views, especially for someone who was raised and lived in New England and New York.
The other often-used argument is that we should be able to separate the man from the work. It is OK to appreciate Lovecraft’s stories and the impact he has had on this particular branch of literature while at the same time pushing his own views to one side?
It’s a conundrum that’s perhaps as unsolvable as any conflict in Lovecraft’s own fiction. Only one thing is certain; HP Lovecraft, and the body of work he embarked upon exactly a century ago when he wrote The Tomb, seemingly endure, though the spectre of the writer’s racism will always lurk in the background like one of the loathsome creatures of his imagination.
Stonewall shows us what fighting back looked like in an era when state power was hostile.
Fifty years ago this June, a routine part of life for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people suddenly became intolerable. Rather than scatter or submit to a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City’s West Village, LGBTQ people fought back, resisting arrest and attacking police officers.
The Stonewall riots took place in the context of a nation in upheaval, with other movements, including the anti-war and Black Power movements, increasingly embracing a spirit of militancy and radicalism. Stonewall was not, as it’s often imagined, the very first moment that LGBTQ people asserted their right to exist; organizations seeking rights for gays and lesbians had been around since at least the 1950s, and there were other, smaller riots in response to police raids on gay bars in New York City and elsewhere in previous months. But that rioting and rebellion across six nights inspired a new audacity in the fight for gay rights.
The movement kindled by the Stonewall uprising urged queer people, “Come out! Come out!” The great personal courage exhibited by LGBTQ people—some activists, many not—fueled a profound shift in culture. Along with feminism, gay liberation is to thank for broadening notions of what women and men can be, for decoupling gender and sex, for developing visions of partnership freed from the straitjacket of predetermined gender roles and of family unbound by biological and legal ties. The movement put forward more expansive ideas about desire and pleasure and, in so doing, made it more possible for everyone, queer or not, to seek love and joy in ways more true to themselves ...
Or maybe it should be renamed: "Hey, sweetheart, can I have one of those I'm a Culturally Illiterate American Cocktails?"
No, it isn't St. Patrick's Day, although it's never too late to learn something.
The Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 17 May 1974 were a series of co-ordinated bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, Ireland. Three bombs exploded in Dublin during the evening rush hour and a fourth exploded in Monaghan almost ninety minutes later. They killed 33 civilians and a full-term fetus, and injured almost 300. The bombings were the deadliest attack of the conflict known as the Troubles, and the deadliest attack in the Republic's history. Most of the victims were young women, although the ages of the dead ranged up to 80 years.
It's the equivalent of a Brit coming to America and asking for a tall glass of 9/11
I don’t always enjoy telling people they can’t have the drink they’ve asked me for, but when I do, it’s because someone ordered an Irish car bomb.
Look, I get it: It’s just a drink. But here’s the thing: Unless you crawled out from under a rock yesterday or have zero working knowledge of either 20th-century European history or the English language, you know it’s at the very least a disservice to the Irish culture you claim to be celebrating on St. Patrick’s Day, if not downright offensive.You wouldn’t order a suicide bomb on the Fourth of July, or a pulse shot during Pride, right?
So it is with the Irish car bomb: It’s an insensitive and traumatic reminder of a dark and painful period of Ireland’s national history.
The Bridge of Flowers is in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, connecting the towns of Shelburne and Buckland. The seasonal footbridge – once a trolley bridge – has a garden of flowers covering it. It is only open between April and October.
Built as a trolley bridge in 1908 but abandoned by 1927, the structure was derelict until local housewife Antoinette Burnham had the idea to convert it to the present use -- in 1929.
If Joe Biden can be VP, there's nothing stopping Mayor Pete -- except that if the Democrats nominate the sort of candidate likely to choose Mayor Pete as VP, Trump will win re-election.
Just try to imagine Jeff Gahan's probable handling of such municipal matters (his inept public housing putsch gives you a pretty good idea of his attitude) amid the veneration of local Dickeyite neoliberals, and the basic disconnect is easy to see. It's all surface sheen deflecting attention from functional vacancy.
Maybe Gahan can move to South Bend and be Pete's vice-mayor.
Black voters are wary of Mayor Pete, for good reasons.
... In announcing his candidacy, Buttigieg said, “But I would also argue that we would be well served if Washington started to look more like our best run cities and towns rather than the other way around.” The implication is that South Bend was one of the “best run” cities. Now Buttigieg has to acknowledge that he’s failed in dealing with one of the pressing municipal problems of our time, police violence.
But Buttigieg’s problems go even deeper. Buttigieg has often touted South Bend’s diversity and economic success. But the shooting of Eric Logan has exposed the fact whatever economic success South Bend enjoys has been unevenly distributed, with a glaring racial divide persisting.
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