Tonight at the Carnegie: Scottish installation artist Yvonne Mullock.

From a release:

The Carnegie Center will host an exciting program on Wednesday, August 6th at 6:00 pm. Scottish outdoor installation artist and Bernheim Fellow, Yvonne Mullock, will address the change in how contemporary artists interpret their inspiration from nature. During her talk, Yvonne will use her own work and that of other contemporary artists to explore approaches to landscape. For more information about Yvonne Mullock, please visit her website at http://www.yvonnemullock.co.uk/index.htm

This program is in conjunction with the Carnegie Center's current landscape exhibition "Sidney D. Crosier: Hoosier Art Pioneer (1858-1930)." You are invited to enjoy the talk and stay after for refreshments and a chance to view the exhibition.

Please join us for this unique opportunity.

I had the pleasure of meeting Yvonne last Friday and the C-J's Diane Heilenman ran a nice piece about her in the most recent Sunday edition - Our links to nature move artist.

I, for one, am looking forward to hearing more about contemporary landscapes, pigeons in leather, and deer in camouflage from someone with a keen mind and a bit of a Scottish brogue.

'Stag Hood' photo courtesy of the artist.

If you've been a slumlord for more than 100 years, are you exempt?

My father used to sit at the breakfast table huffing down the day's third cigarette while he warned me not to smoke. My grandfather's admonition came from a hospital bed. Dad quit a few years later and is happily still around to drop the occasional missive. Grandpa never came home from the hospital.

I suppose that's a personal way of saying that McLuhan was right. The medium is the message.

In much the same way, a council whose majority still refuses to follow the law laid it down for others last night, passing the first reading of a public smoking ban, five votes to four with Price, Benedetti, Messer, and Zurschmiede voting nay. It was disappointing for some, gush-worthy for others, and surprising to just about everyone.

It should be mentioned that Tommy Kaiser took to the podium to thank the council for exempting his family from the law as tobacco retailers will play by different rules than seemingly every other business in town. Apparently, none of the death and disease statistics quoted and misquoted last evening apply to people who work in that industry. Either that, or the council has decided that their lives aren't worth saving.

Smoking ban? There are so many false claims made by both proponents and opponents that I guess you've got to grab on somewhere and hope for the best. So be it. Get rid of the exceptions and it's equitable. Keep them or add to them and the courts will (and should) decide yet another matter in our community. With enforcement being nearly impossible as the current ordinance is written, it may not matter anyway.

What really does matter is that the council's newfound zeal for public health continues into matters that stand to have a more profound effect on the city and its inhabitants. Nearly 50 percent of the houses in New Albany are rentals, operating as businesses outside the bounds of regulation.

I've never had to call 911 to report smoking related disturbances, although I suppose I could soon. The same can't be said for an unregulated rental market that takes advantage of those who can't do better and provides safe haven for those who won't. The last time I called about a property on my block, the dispatcher described the rental as "the same old place" and informed me I was the third caller that early, early morning as if I'd just won a radio contest. The problem is obvious and has been during several council iterations.

To that end, I mentioned a particularly problematic and vociferous landlord to a council member last night and was assured that her very negative business practices were well understood. They should be. If esoteric reports from oncologists are fodder for council decisions, a walk down the street shouldn't be too much to ask.

The only thing left is to determine whether or not this council has the will to stand up to the inevitable lobby of such deceitful, uncaring opportunists. A refreshingly constructive discussion of rental property regulation during Monday's work session provided evidence that they might. If they do, the smoking ban may come to be seen as a first step in reorienting ourselves toward a healthier future. If they don't, we may as well lay back down, tether ourselves to breathing machines, and wait for the coroner to pronounce our cause of death as proving the critics right one too many times.

Smoking ban gets first OK, by Dick Kaukas of the Courier-Journal

Front burner.

The New Albany City Council will consider an ordinance tonight after just one public hearing that would ban smoking in places of employment as a matter of public health. The meeting's at 7:30. There will no doubt be expressions of outrage. Television crews will probably be there.

At 6:00, there will be a council work session during which only a portion of the time will be devoted to housing inspection and code enforcement along with other issues. There will no doubt be expressions of cowardice. Television crews probably won't be there.

Here's to our health.

Morning fires keep NAFD busy

New Albany fire sends man to hospital

Fire damages New Albany home

Bad wiring caused New Albany house fire

Morning fire damages two New Albany homes

All news stories from the Tribune within the past year. Photo credit: Indian Health Service, ihs.org.

Time for a brief holiday pause.

My first Great Taste of the Midwest was a year ago, and the sequel begins on August 9th. It's hard to imagine a better craft beer festival (hundreds of regional beers) in a better place (blue city, blue state).

In point of fact, I need a break. We're driving up and back, and taking the opportunity to visit some friends and breweries in Indy, Michigan and Wisconsin along the way.

Bluegill will be here, and perhaps a guest writer or two. See you in a week.

Degeneracy redefined: McCain, Wal-Mart slime Obama.

There is a certain satisfaction to be derived from the public meltdown of your ideological enemies, whether they’re John McCain’s slew of quasi-racial and cultural epithets hurled in the general direction of Barack Obama, thus confirming the degeneracy of the Republican nominee, or the fact that Wal-Mart, a corporation deserving of confinement in the Hague and subsequent trial for crimes against human dignity, is regularly exposed as flouting the democratic principles that so many of its customers presume to espouse.

McCain will be gone soon, and over the years, we’ve enjoyed exposing Wal-Mart and the cluelessness of its shoppers, as when Bluegill trenchantly noted the presence of labor union stickers on cars in the company’s humongous parking lots.

Read. Print. Distribute. Live. Repeat.

It’s especially relevant now that the union-fearing Bentonville management is openly preaching anti-Obama politics to its employees.

Wal-Mart warning managers of labor bill

We’ve never ceased reminding readers that there is a high cost to low price, as when NAC joined Destinations Booksellers way back in 2005 in screening Robert Greenwald’s movie of the same name.

Speaking of Wal-Mart, as the movie release date draws nearer, Bentonville begins circling the wagons.

Americans being, well, Americans, suggests that huge retail chains and big boxes won’t be going away any time soon. The important thing to remember is that they be kept in their place, and that as we contemplate the ongoing renewal of downtown New Albany, we bear in mind that when in doubt, pursuing development strategies that are the polar opposite of Wal-Mart’s preferences generally will yield the best results.

Contrarianism and individuality are to Bentonville what daylight and the crucifix were to the Transylvanian count. We must remake downtown into something very, very weird.

Hypocrisy meter nudges "tilt” as council’s smoking ordinance is revealed.

Confirmation of the city council’s intention to waste time and energy on a smoking ban comes from the morning newspaper.

New Albany Council to consider smoking ban, by Dick Kaukas (Courier-Journal)

The New Albany City Council will take up a proposal next week to ban smoking in all enclosed public places in the Southern Indiana city, including bars and restaurants.

The measure would exempt private clubs that have no employees but would ban smoking in clubs that have workers, and whenever a club invites the public to an event.

In the context of New Albany history, the key sentences come a bit later in reporter Kaukas’s article.

Under the proposal, "private clubs" are defined as recreational, fraternal, patriotic, political, athletic and other organizations.

No specific clubs are listed, but Elks lodges, VFW halls and similar groups presumably would be covered.

The ordinance paperwork, which can be viewed here (it’s a very large .pdf) defines an employee both as paid and as volunteer help, the latter presumably applying to private clubs exempted from taxation by the Feds.

The document defines “bar” as a place where alcoholic beverages are served on premise, and then later notes that one aspect of a “private club” is that the serving of alcoholic beverages is incidental to its operation.

However, if I’m not mistaken, the state of Indiana makes no such distinction when it expects establishments to apply for licensing. Clubs have different licenses, but they have licenses nonetheless, and if someone is serving drinks, that person must have a permit. If that person has a permit, then he or she is bartending according to the state’s legal definition. All of this strongly implies that the council’s use of “incidental” is superfluous.

I may be wrong about the preceding, but whether volunteer or paid, club employees are in fact employees, and if you buy alcoholic beverages wholesale and sell them retail, you are in fact acting as a bar.

Why the private club pandering? Any specific club, Mr. Gahan? Is there any reason for providing such shaky exemptions? Is the political clout of VFW members more significant than that of restaurant owners? Help us understand your motives. Why the unprecedented speed on smoking when the city's greater needs languish atop your desk?

The ordinance gets better.

Enforcement would be the responsibility of the New Albany city attorney or someone designated by the city attorney.

Penalties would include fines of not more than $50 for people who smoke in prohibited areas and up to $100 for a first violation by a business owner or manager who "fails to comply" with the ordinance.

The fines would increase to not more than $200 for a second offense in a year, and not more than $500 for each additional violation in a year.

‘Nuff said on these provisions. Will a smoking ordinance be treated in the same way as enforcement of minimal standards of health and safety in the city’s proliferating rental properties, which is to say that it occurs in a breach the size of Massachusetts – a creative way of saying “hardly at all” – or will there actually be teeth?

The sops already being thrown toward "private clubs" suggest that enforcement will be selective, if it's even attempted.

Pay close attention to the council’s calendar for the coming months, and note whether this miraculous conversion to deep concern over public health ever gravitates to the places where people pay slumlords to live. History suggests it will not, because like ones before it, this council fears the rental property owner. Unlike councils before it, some members of this one view the smoking ban as a relatively painless way to appear progressive while remaining regressive when it comes to similar proposals in more difficult terrain.

To focus attention on one aspect of public health and safety to the exclusion of others, especially when the reasons for doing so have less to do with genuine concern than the ease with which legions of paid lobbyists can help to divert public attention from congenital inadequacies in other legislative areas, goes just a bit deeper than mere hypocrisy.

It’s the stuff of dilettantes.

The shoe fits. CM Gahan and a handful of others are wearing them. Stay tuned for the Great Trans fat ban of '09 ... and a renewal of the Slumlord Entitlement Act.

Source says: A solitary public hearing later, it's time to vote on a smoking ban.

According to a reliable source, New Albany's proposed smoking ban ordinance will be comprehensive, just like Louisville's, and will be voted on at Monday's meeting.

Modern times? Lemme e-mail it to you. You do have e-mail, right?

The fact that I’ve just gotten to this article after more than a month on the coffee table is sad testimony to the absence of reading time of late.

That having been said, this article from the New York Times Magazine is one of the better treatments I’ve seen lately that address the space/time deficiencies of our local branch of the Democratic Party. Granted, the author intends the analysis to apply on a national scale, but he couldn’t have done a better job of describing Floyd County demos, some of whom occupy seats on the city council and yet can’t be reached by e-mail.

Dudes … it’s 2008. That whole flat earth thing is sooo over. Here are two excerpts; follow the link for the complete article.

Idea Lab: Network Nation, by Dalton Conley (New York Times Magazine, June 22, 2008).

The chatter these days is that the Republicans are a party that has run out of ideas. The Soviet Union is long gone; welfare has been reformed; market logics have permeated almost every aspect of our lives (eBay, anyone?). The truth is that the triumph of conservative ideas may present a political problem for the ailing Republicans, but the party that’s truly lacking in new ideas is my own, the resurgent Democrats ...

... It’s not surprising that the private-sector, new-economy companies are ahead of government in adapting to the networked society, but if progressives want a victory in the world of ideas and policy — and not just a couple of good election cycles — they are going to have to stop talking F.D.R, J.F.K. and L.B.J. and start thinking eBay, Google and Wiki.

Goebbels said it best.

Or perhaps it was Goering.

No matter the source, it remains the case that the bigger and more breathtaking the lie, the more likely gullible folks are to believe it. Locally, no one fabricates them better than the 1st district’s Dan “Wizard of Westside” Coffey, who dispensed his favorite tall tale to the Tribune’s reporter in an article today about the city budget.

Coffey proposes using money owed to the city’s Economic Development Income Tax fund from the State Street parking garage tax-increment financing district, to float a bond for paying for officers.

The old “pay back the $3 million” line should be enshrined on the Urban Legends web site alongside the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. My colleague Jeff rebutted it only recently in the comments section of another blog, after which the pins could be heard dropping.

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The bond for the parking garage was initially approved by the Council so that it would be paid by both EDIT and TIF, with a majority coming from EDIT.

As stated in the notes, the bank didn't finish the top floors of its building as soon as expected. That means not as much TIF was collected as expected in the earliest years of the bond, hence the $256K shortfall mentioned.

The Council was asked to appropriate additional EDIT to cover that shortfall and the lease rental reserve. That total, according to the notes, was $580K.

The rest of the $3.6 million had already been allocated to the garage in the original bond agreement. It was neither extra nor a loan. Only the $580K was additional. The $3,696,350 mentioned was the total amount of EDIT spent on the garage including both the $3 million already pledged by the council and the additional $580K to be requested.

You'll also note that Mr. Malaysz suggested that the money ($580K) COULD be paid back. Just because he mentioned it in a Redevelopment meeting DOES NOT mean that the Council voted to set it up that way. The notes posted mean only that it was discussed as a possibility outside of a Council meeting.

When Dan Coffey brought a bogus resolution forward to pay more than $3 million from TIF to EDIT last year based on this rumor instead of actually doing his homework (he never even requested information about the garage bond), Mr. Rosenbarger offered to provide Coffey and the entire Council with the original bond documentation showing his error. Coffey, of course, refused.

Since that time, the long disproven rumor of a $3 million loan has continued to circulate, usually from anonymous sources who, like Coffey, are more interested in political turmoil than the truth.

Note also that the same anonymous gripes continue to claim on your blog, as did Coffey at the time, that our tax dollars subsidize the operation of the parking garage.

Their own notes here prove them wrong, showing that the garage actually turns a small profit each year. They'll no doubt purposely forget that and go back to griping about subsidizing garage operations soon.

In short, why doesn't TIF pay back $3 million to EDIT? Because it doesn't owe EDIT $3 million and never did.

Besides, EDIT money can be spent on anything that TIF can be used to finance. What's the point of continuing to demand the false repayment if the money can be spent on the important projects you mention anyway?

Fire hazard?

The third photo isn't that clear, but it shows junk and boxes stacked chest high throughout the ground floor of the unused building at 109 E. Market. I imagine there's an ordinance against it. Might it be enforced?

Wow.

REWIND: Biking, walking and other blatant attacks on the New Albanian way of life.

At the invitation of Mayor England, I'm preparing to board my bike and pedal to a stategy session on community biking/walking systems. There'll be more on the afternoon's discussion coming later this evening. Until then, here's a "rewind" from January, 2005, and you'll note that I was wrong. We're having a forum of sorts today, and it is being chaired by the mayor. That seems like progress to me.

Biking, walking and other blatant attacks on the New Albanian way of life

For the second consecutive temperate January day, NA Confidential will be bicycling to work. Of course, it is essential to use the side streets, as New Albany's major thoroughfares are too dangerous and lack not only bike lanes, but ridiculously often, the bare minimum of sidewalks for pedestrian use.

Fittingly (in more ways than one), today's Louisville Eccentric Observer (LEO) and staffer Rochelle Renford return to last month's report by the Surface Transportation Policy Project, "which names Metro Louisville the 23rd most dangerous place for pedestrians among 50 similar-sized regions."

Referring to sociologist Richard Florida's assertion that the presence of bicycle lanes is one amenity (of many) needed to attract the creative class, Renford bluntly adds that "in Metro Louisville, bike lanes and the ability to avoid the automobile are still just dreams, although there are downtown lofts and a very hip skate park."

Renford surveys recent efforts in Louisville to improve this abysmal ranking. Coming up in February is the Metro Louisville Bicycle Summit, where longtime public advocates like the CART organization will join with other attendees for a public forum hosted by Mayor Jerry Abramson.

A public forum? Chaired by the Mayor? Son, that's Louisville, not New Albany. Besides, it's funny enough trying to imagine any current City Council members riding a bike, much less expressing support for the same.

Here are the relevant links:

Walk This Way: A pedestrian-friendly community is a livable community, by Rochelle Renford in LEO

Louisville Metro Mayor Jerry Abramson hosts the Metro Louisville Bicycle Summit, February 7-8, 2005

CART: Coalition for the Advancement of Regional Transportation

Truly relevant issues languish yet again as a hasty council “smoke screen” diverts and divides.

Reporter Daniel Suddeath’s article in the Friday edition of the Tribune quotes city council president Jeff Gahan as raising the possibility that an anti-smoking ordinance could be ready for voting as early as the August 4 meeting.

A draft of the ordinance is being prepared, but it has to be approved by legal counsel before the details can be released. If it is OK’d, it would likely be up for a first vote at the next meeting, Gahan said.

Given the sheer length of the dirty laundry list of potential topics for the council’s consideration in 2008 (just a few of which can be viewed on the right side of this page), the unexpected warp speed with which a smoking ordinance is now being pushed isn’t just unprecedented. It’s nothing short of miraculous.

We’re talking about walking on water territory here, all the more so because neither the current sitting council nor its bilious predecessor might be described in any significant way as displaying pro-active tendencies toward any topic whatsoever beyond the re-election of its members. Furthermore, legislative urgency apparently has not been an historical hallmark of the New Albany political experience since the auspicious day two centuries ago when the Scribners rowed ashore and, tragically, didn’t have sense enough to proceed to Birdseye – the Taj Mahal of Coffeyites far and wide.

Nostalgic? Recall that the EPA had to threaten the city with the nuclear option to force us, kicking and screaming, into repairing decrepit sewers, and know also that it is pathetically likely that a second citizen courtroom initiative will be required to compel the council to properly redistrict for the first time since 1992.

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Whether inelegantly cribbed from the Internet a la Slippery Larry Kochert's 2006 tour de farce, or provided verbatim by the small army of paid lobbyists who gathered to testify at the solitary public hearing on the smoking issue, the smoking ordinance headed our way will be designed to address a specific argument: Workplace safety.

But what about safety in one’s own place of residence? Surely ordinance enforcement (or New Albany’s abject lack of it) pertains to domicile safety, and the average person spends roughly twice as much time at home than at work.

Strangely, it is difficult to attract the same number of eager experts when it comes to explicating the health and safety concerns inherent in unregulated rental properties, but on the other hand, the council has consistently shown open hostility toward the concept of a city enforcing its own laws.

In essence, it would seem that in choosing to focus its attention on the dangers of smoking in the workplace, the New Albany city council, which historically is resentful toward outsiders who dare tell it what to do in its wonderfully and delightfully dysfunctional backyard, now looks to outsiders to help it do something – anything – to distract attention from its unwillingness to enforce the laws it already has written.

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All of which made the scene even more surreal when, roughly two months ago, and after almost four years of discussion at this and other local blogs about the critical topic of code enforcement and rental property inspection, CM Gahan bizarrely confided to me during a conversation that he had become only recently aware of fervent public interest in residential safety.

Say what? I felt like the AFLAC duck after his barbershop encounter with Yogi Berra.

Are we writing, speaking and working in a vacuum?

Are the northernmot outposts of Klerner Lane really that far removed from the reality of the city’s historic residential areas?

Think about it. All the blog postings, numerous newspaper articles, and hordes of neighborhood association people and residents who’ve attended meetings to keep the idea of safe housing alive against the wishes of Gahan’s fellow neighborhood deconstructionists in the 1st and 3rd districts – meetings that Gahan not only attended, but often chaired – and only now has the subject become of sufficient urgency to show recognition?

Hence the political cowardice inherent in the council president’s sudden obsessive fixation with smoking to the exclusion of so many other line items of genuine merit, and so it is that a scant month after the first and only public hearing to date on a possible smoking ban, itself a topic ranking second only to abortion when it comes to civic rancor and interpersonal divisiveness (in truth, perhaps here in New Albany our unique brand of sewerpottyyvonnemania actually trumps both), we’re told that a smoking ordinance is almost ready for action.

It’s beyond rational comprehension, and accordingly, seeing as a solid block of council members lives according to dully repetitive precepts of irrationality, the games now will begin.

I don’t give a damn either way about a smoking ban, but what I care about is having a council that gets it, and in the run-up to the smoking ordinance, we’re about to be deluged with more evidence that it doesn’t. An indoor smoking ban positing the necessity of protecting workers from second-hand smoke makes sense only by being universal and comprehensive, permitting none of the exemptions and exceptions that shameless ward-heeling amateurs will inevitably seek to disburse like Halloween candy to their cronies.

For an idea of how this simply fact stands to play out in New Albany, otherwise known as the land that education forgot, imagine the wacky pretzel logic about to be deployed as Steve Price tries to explain how he completely understands that second-hand smoke is bad for a server in one of those restaurants he refuses to patronize, but perfectly acceptable for a bartender in an American Legion hall, ‘cuz gee, they fought for their country and all that.

The customers, not the workers. Cue the AFLAC duck again, will you?

It’s almost as nonsensical to advocate a smoking ban within New Albany proper but not have a matching one outside the city limits, in the remainder of Floyd County, where the nicotine-addicted will flock unless the county council follows suit.

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Meanwhile, if you’re like me, you can look out your window at crumbling streets in perpetual need of repair, with existing city ordinances in desperate need of enforcing, and ponder a police force so understaffed that it is barely able to keep pace with the predictable fruits of slumlord empowerment … and glance again at all the imperatives on this council’s plate listed at the right … and try somehow to explain to me that the very best this council’s leadership can do is propose to divide the populace even further by creating a new criminal element within it.

Unless, of course, a smoking ordinance is meant to be another in a long series of rules without enforcement mechanisms.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, upon learning of the council president’s weirdly belated epiphanies on code enforcement, and knowing how important code enforcement remains to the community, and lastly, that politics involve trade-offs ... I said that my own business would swallow the pain, take one for the inevitable, and accept a smoking ban, but – BUT – only for so long as it is comprehensive, because that’s the only way that it can be fair to all.

However, since Gahan has once again spit in the eye of the U.S. Constitution over redistricting, and found it expedient to spend much of his time hovering in the dark shadows of the Coffey-Price dumbumvirate, which will make grandstanding hash of any conceivably rational smoking ordinance just as surely as road kill is barbecued for a W. 7th Street re-election fete, I find my position to be steadily evolving. I've had hig hopes for the current council, and my hopes quite possibly are futile. I've had big hopes for the progressive instincts of the council president, and I still do, but his course thus far is erratic -- and I'm being charitable.

Come to think of it, what’s Mayor England’s position on a potential smoking ordinance? I believe I'll give One Southern Indiana a ring and find out.

In the meantime, I’ll be examining the efficacy of roadblocks, because the way I'm feeling right now, any sugar I can pour in the gas tank of the anti-smoking bandwagon, I will ... unless, of course, someone can explain to me why this is happening. Is Donald Sutherland available? I have the park bench.

Photo credit: www.teacupspuppies.com and AFLAC

Trogs ‘n’ blogs: Speaking of committee reports, there is one we'd like to see.

For the past few days a desultory discussion has taken place elsewhere in the local blogosphere. To distill it down to the base weirdness, an anonymous troglodyte masquerading as multiple anonymous troglodytes (well, you can’t really know, can you?) wants to know the location of the minutes kept by the recently disbanded redistricting committee.

I wasn’t part of the committee, but I’m tempted to answer that the soggy minutes had to be carted off to the landfill after five council persons took advantage of the most recent meeting to publicly urinate on the proffered results of the committee’s work, and by extension, to soil the very concept of equal representation.

The thing that continues to strike me as telling amid the accusations and recriminations of Luddite Nation is its refusal to apply the same standards of accountability to the abortive redistricting plan that was hurriedly rushed through the council’s docket in 2007, only to be swatted down like a blood-engorged horse fly in high summer heat by a Federal judge.

I’ve always called the council’s flaccidly abortive compliance effort the Schmidt Plan, primarily because it had the fingerprints of the Coup d’Geriatrique all over it, not to mention worn Formica fragments that even a forensics novice could readily link to the ex-councilman’s/woman’s kitchen table.

A handful of the council’s lesser lights duly conspired to submit the Schmidt Plan as a solution, and you can bet your sweet bippy that it was incalculably more “gerrymandered” than the plan offered by the redistricting committee, and yet our anonymous friends aren’t scandalized at all by such wholesale chicanery, preferring instead to slime the committee and to wholeheartedly endorse the work of oblivious officials whose very presence on the council may have stemmed from earlier refusals to redistrict and the electoral inequalities stemming from them.

It’s a highly selective interpretation, indeed, but then again, they’re anonymous, aren't they?

Can I see the minutes from the Schmidt kitchen cabal, please?

From Yuri Andropov, with love.

When Yuri Andropov replaced the enfeebled Leonid Brezhnev as Soviet kingpin in 1982, there was no way of knowing that the ex-KGB operative's stint at the top would last only 15 months. Andropov's severe health problems were never made public, but he was dying almost from the moment of accession. When yet another wheezing and debilitated party boss (Konstantin Chernenko) assumed the leadership position in 1984, anything remotely resembling the forthcoming roller coaster ride of the Gorbachev era was regarded as a pipe dream and dismissed out of hand.

A quarter century later, we can see that while Andropov was no cuddly liberal, his many years in the KGB and frequent travels through the Soviet Bloc provided him with a realistic – in context – perspective of affairs. Andropov's methods of "reform" within the USSR surely would have been brutally repressive; after all, he was Moscow's man on the scene during the Hungarian revolt of 1956, and yet he grasped the fundamental need to reform, something that eluded the ossified Brezhnev gerontocracy.

This isn't to imply that cosmetic reform had any real chance of success, such was the gap between the USSR's preferred method of operation and a rapidly changing world that was outpacing it in every way. It remains that if not in terms of flair and style, Andropov certainly was Gorbachev's crucial patron, without whom Gorbymania would have been stillborn.

I'm reading a political biography of Yuri Andropov, written in 1983 by a husband and wife team of exiled Soviet journalists, and purporting to help Westerners understand the milieu of Ronald Reagan's then adversary in the Kremlin. It is a fascinating account of the deadly, Byzantine maneuverings behind the scenes in a time and place that seems even more dated than it actually was … and is.

In 1982, I received my degree from Indiana University Southeast and stepped out into a world that in geopolitical terms was absolutely defined by these matters. In resolving to travel in Europe, I, too, was defined by the Cold War whether I knew it or not.

In 1985, Chernenko's final resting place in the Kremlin Wall was barely cold, and Gorbachev had been in charge for only six months, when I entered the USSR for the first time, crossing the border from Finland aboard a bus bound for Leningrad. The route took us through the Finno-Russian area known as Karelia, which I later learned was Andropov's first power base in the Soviet hierarchy.

The bus was mostly filled with young Americans like myself, but I made friends with an Aussie named Mark, who helped me celebrate by 25th birthday by bribing our way into a restaurant and negotiating an all-we-could-drink meal (with a few little bits of inedible food included) for the price of $10 cash each. That's dollars, not rubles.

Mark, who perhaps was a year younger than me, became extravagantly drunk, and while comically hung over the next day managed to trade three pairs of nylons for an evening of sex with a 40-something woman he met at an ice cream stand on Nevsky Prospekt. His original plan was for me to keep her friend similarly occupied, but I possessed neither the necessary hosiery nor any other commodity for creative bartering. Besides, she was somewhat larger than me, and looked a bit too much like Andropov for my tastes. I opted "in" for the remainder of Mark's vodka, and counted myself fortunate for opting "out" of my end of the tryst.

Two years later, I suddenly thought of the late and unlamented Andropov again, this time while visiting Budapest.

During the month of June, 1987, I aimlessly roamed through Western Hungary, staying in towns like Koszeg and Sopron, and ending with just shy of two weeks in the shabby but endearing capital city on the muddy "blue" Danube, scene of Andropov's defining ambassadorial triumph thirty years before. Those were inexpensive and exhilarating times. Including a ticket to watch the rock group Genesis at the soccer stadium and a one way train ducat for the three-day, 36-hour trip from Budapest to Moscow, expenses came out to $17 a day for the month in Hungary. Subway tickets were a dime apiece, imported bottles of Czech lager came in at four for a dollar, and meals would be had for two bucks at one of the "people's" cafeterias scattered throughout the city.

The meals were acceptable for the dirt cheap price, if fairly predictable, and while they hinted at the glories of savory, lard-laden Hungarian cuisine, the commissary fare fell a bit short of world class. As my departure day drew near, I decided to splurge at a much praised restaurant in the Buda Hills, the sort of place that ordinary Hungarians could ill afford on their paltry salaries, but I could easily manage every now and then.

On a quiet and sunny Sunday, I boarded the tram and rode almost to the end of the line, got off, and easily found the recommended eatery. As customary, the full menu was posted by the front gate, and I was studying the possibilities when there was a commotion at the entrance, which was hidden in tall shrubbery thirty feet away.

An older man dressed in regulation rumpled Communist party gray suit came staggering out. I could smell the alcohol on his breath all the way from the street. The man was mumbling in Hungarian, that most incomprehensible of languages transported by the migration of Asiatic peoples to the area a thousand years ago, but what struck me as he approached was that he looked more like the deceased Andropov than the Soviet leader did while alive, and when he finally got to me, nearly stumbling on a cobblestone in the process, he slurred something angrily in Magyar-speak and very slowly launched an attempted haymaker in my general direction.

The punch didn't come anywhere close to landing, and the force of his fist's impact with the stale evening air caused him to completely lose balance and fall to his knees, where he was briskly intercepted by the group of comrades who had come running behind him. Two of them packed the old man off into an adjacent Lada, and two others began apologizing profusely to me in attempted German. I responded in Hoosier-laced American, which caused them even more consternation ("but we like your mister Reagan," one whispered).

Their communication skills were inadequate to convey why the Andropov lookalike wanted to slug me. I reckoned that he plain didn't like Germans.

As it turned out, the first beer inside was on them, and the Chicken Paprika and sour cherry soup that followed on my forints was damned good, too. In the end, it gave me a good story to tell two years later, in August of 1989, when I sat drinking beer with Vladimir Putin (another of Andropov's KGB men) at the Radeberger beer cellar in Dresden, German Democratic Republic.

But that's a tale for another day.

New Albany Now tomorrow: The Ohio River Bridges project.

Yesterday at NAC: Excuse me while I scrape my shoe.

Tomorrow night, the discussion moves to online talk radio. Here's the promo.

Ohio River Bridges: Who's the Fool?

We have a heavy schedule of programming in the next two weeks, starting with a special Sunday night show. The esteemed co-editor of NA Confidential, bluegill, aka Jeff Gillenwater, will join us as our special guest, to discuss the Ohio River Bridges project.

For the remaining schedule, please visit the show profile to see what's on tap.

We're lining up guest callers for Sunday night and we invite your questions. The show kicks off at 8 p.m.

"Green Porno" -- it's a bug's life, after all.

Green Porno (at the Sundance Channel).

Thanks to Diana and Elizabeth.

Excuse me while I scrape my shoe.

During the most recent mayoral campaign, then candidate Doug England and I had a conversation about the Ohio River Bridges Project, 8664, and the state of transportation in our region.

It's hardly a secret that the senior editor and I are proponents of 8664 and I told him so, with gusto added when it came to the dishonest means by which One Southern Indiana was promoting both itself and the bridges. While he didn't quite go so far as to endorse 8664, our future mayor assured me that neither he nor Jeffersonville Mayor Tom Galligan "gave a damn about another downtown bridge".

Funny then, that a bridges story by Daniel Suddeath in yesterday's Tribune features a ORBP-supporting Mayor England saying, “Completing the Bridges Project is the needed and critical step to link our citizens and foster job growth throughout the metro area."

Mayor England also assured me at the time that he fully expected his actions to be monitored and that I and a host of others were expected to call him on bullshit whenever we encountered it.

Consider it done.

In response, I started to write a more lengthy exposition on transportation and the self-defeating demagoguery that typically defines the subject.

Luckily, Tyler Allen and J.C. Stites of 8664 beat me to the keyboard with an email asking yet another round of relevant questions that our mayor will now have to answer himself.

Here's the email, verbatim:

Dear Supporter,

We hope to see you at the Forecastle Festival this weekend. Please drop by our booth and pick up one of our new sustainable-green t-shirts while supplies last.

What do you think?

In our last email we confirmed that 98% of the budget cut from the Bridges Project through 2010 has come from the East End Bridge. This begs the question, what are they planning to do with the $170 Million or so currently allocated for the downtown portion of the project over the next two years?

Keep in mind that the current Bridges Project doesn't even address Hospital Curve (unchanged at 6 lanes) or Cochran Tunnel (unchanged at 4 lanes).

Do politicians Abramson and Yarmuth honestly want to build a downtown toll bridge and 23 lanes of Spaghetti on our waterfront? Or is the downtown portion of the project just a big smokescreen to stop the East End Bridge?

We welcome your thoughts or insights. Reply to this email or email us at news@8664.org.

Keep the faith,

Tyler Allen and JC Stites
http://8664.org/

I'll see the 8664 folks at Forecastle this weekend. You might see the Mayor around town sometime soon. Right after making the BS call, feel free to pass along the questions. I'm sure Tyler and J.C. won't mind.

Boner & Jethro: On the nature of council opposition to progress.

Yesterday we took a look at a few of the things happening downtown.

A quick look around downtown ... courtesy of the Urban Enterprise Association.

It was by no means an exhaustive survey, and there could have been many more citations.

Considering that we’re in an inflationary period of economic uncertainty, it’s significant that urban pioneers continue to invest in a neglected downtown. They’re not doing so in spite of eroding traditional development models.

Rather, they’re doing so precisely because these development models are eroding, and with their passing will come new opportunities to create and profit by means of other, emerging strategic outlooks.

The impressive part of it to me is that they’re continuing to invest in the face of opposition, a motley assortment of flat-earthers, mail carriers, anti-tax zealots and embittered troglodytes that seems determined to weaken or eliminate the comparatively few enticements typically made available by governmental entities to slightly reduce the risk of attempting to raise the dead.

At each and every city council meeting, and constantly within the venom-flecked pages of our city's anony-blogs, there is an attitude reflecting what must be honestly termed as defeatism. That such an attitude will seep up at any given juncture from a handful of the city's residents isn't at all surprising. The clueless squalor that one knows is often preferable to the uncertainty of change, and that’s just part of the universal human condition.

But, that such destructiveness emanates from elected council persons, typically (but not restricted to) Dan Coffey and Steve Price, is plainly reprehensible. Never have there been two better examples of persons willing to sow confusion and incite fear to prevent the betterment of the community they’ve been sworn to uphold.

Take a walk through New Albany’s emerging downtown. Does Steve Price grasp even a small part of the significance of what's happening there, or is the fact that few of his voters reside there enough to keep his attention riveted to the environs of Dewey Heights … and to the exclusion of the public good elsewhere in his long-suffering district? Perhaps the latter is to be expected from a person who has publicly stated his aversion to the prosperity of Louisville’s Frankfort Avenue corridor.

As I’ve noted previously, Price – council president Gahan’s appointee – has missed five of seven Urban Enterprise Association board meetings this year.

Given that many of the UEA’s expenditures benefit Price’s own council district, you’d think he would give a damn about it if for no other reason that political self-interest, but like Jethro Bodine on moonshine, he thumbs his nose at economic development, whether assisted by the UEA, supported by the city, or undertaken by investors who scratch their heads in confusion at Price’s pathological resistance to their readiness to spend money in Price’s backyard.

The inescapable conclusion is that irrespective of his periodic words to the contrary, Steve Price’s actions almost always have the real-world effect of reinforcing decay and urging continued poverty on his unfortunate constituents. I’d use the word “commonweal,” but I won’t. Neither Price nor his coterie would know the meaning.

Nor would they care.

We've already watched as Dan Coffey energetically seeks to limit economic development in his own district. 'Nuff said about that.

Speaking personally, the solitary drawback to building a new brewing business downtown is the knowledge that people like Coffey and Price will seek to benefit from the emerging community that we’ll be playing a role in reviving – this coming after they’ve done everything in their powers to deprive the community of this opportunity to reinvent itself for the good of all.

We’ll do it anyway, because in addition to helping play a role in downtown revival, our work will eventually bring New Albany to a better place, where fear and stupidity are looked upon as reasons not to vote for shiftless demagogues.

The city simply can’t wait for that sweet day to arrive.

A quick look around downtown ... courtesy of the Urban Enterprise Association.

Mike Ladd of the the New Albany Urban Enterprise Association (NAUEA) provides these photos of a walk around downtown New Albany yesterday. Click on the image for a larger view.

So many things are happening that it's difficult to keep track, but here are a few random notes.

I'm a member of the UEA board, and we're seeing a record number of applications for facade grants as more buildings undergo renovation. The UEA has taken a lead role in the landscaping project currently underway downtown, and is seeking other grants to continue the project, both from the Horseshoe Foundation and in conjunction with Develop New Albany.

Meanwhile, Develop New Albany has sold the White House Center for redevelopment, and the organization's "First Tuesday" networking gatherings (next up on August 5 at the Honeymoon Mansion on Main Street) have been a great success.

Don't forget that it's Wednesday, and that means the Farmers Market will be running downtown later this afternoon.

I'm told that there'll be a "before" open house this coming Sunday (the 27th; 4 - 7 p.m.) at the Fair Store, now under rehab on Market Street just across from the soon-to-be-revived Connor's Place (and less than two blocks away from NABC's new brewery and taproom project, for which I'll provide an update later this week).

If Matt and Jessica are reading ... want some beer on Sunday? I may know how to make that happen.

As with Mike's photos, this isn't intended as a comprehensive survey. What are we leaving out?