Memorial Day 2019 (1 of 4): Howard Zinn asks, "Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?"

"No politician who voted funds for war, no business contractor for the military, no general who ordered young men into battle, no FBI man who spied on anti-war activities, should be invited to public ceremonies on this sacred day. Let the dead of past wars be honored. Let those who live pledge themselves never to embark on mass slaughter again."
-- Howard Zinn

To me, the most disrespectful act that might be directed against the fallen from past wars, or the veterans still among us, is to accept self-censorship as it pertains to discussing the honest, real-world reasons why these conflicts occurred. There's no "either-or" fallacy stipulating that we all fall into line, or else be considered traitors.

Memorialize, and never stop asking questions, even when the answers are unpleasant. Some day we might learn. If we tolerate silence, then our children obviously will be next. If we tolerate war, pestilence and mayhem, then a little Zinn is good for whatever remains of our souls

Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?, by Howard Zinn

Published on June 2, 1976 in the Boston Globe and republished in The Zinn Reader with the brief introduction below.

Memorial Day will be celebrated … by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors preparing for more wars, more graves to receive more flowers on future Memorial Days. The memory of the dead deserves a different dedication. To peace, to defiance of governments.

In 1974, I was invited by Tom Winship, the editor of the Boston Globe, who had been bold enough in 1971 to print part of the top secret Pentagon Papers on the history of the Vietnam War, to write a bi-weekly column for the op-ed page of the newspaper. I did that for about a year and a half. The column below appeared June 2, 1976, in connection with that year’s Memorial Day. After it appeared, my column was cancelled.

* * * * *

Memorial Day will be celebrated as usual, by high-speed collisions of automobiles and bodies strewn on highways and the sound of ambulance sirens throughout the land.

It will also be celebrated by the display of flags, the sound of bugles and drums, by parades and speeches and unthinking applause.

It will be celebrated by giant corporations, which make guns, bombs, fighter planes, aircraft carriers and an endless assortment of military junk and which await the $100 billion in contracts to be approved soon by Congress and the President.

There was a young woman in New Hampshire who refused to allow her husband, killed in Vietnam, to be given a military burial. She rejected the hollow ceremony ordered by those who sent him and 50,000 others to their deaths. Her courage should be cherished on Memorial Day. There were the B52 pilots who refused to fly those last vicious raids of Nixon’s and Kissinger’s war. Have any of the great universities, so quick to give honorary degrees to God-knows-whom, thought to honor those men at this Commencement time, on this Memorial Day?

No politician who voted funds for war, no business contractor for the military, no general who ordered young men into battle, no FBI man who spied on anti-war activities, should be invited to public ceremonies on this sacred day. Let the dead of past wars be honored. Let those who live pledge themselves never to embark on mass slaughter again.

“The shell had his number on it. The blood ran into the ground…Where his chest ought to have been they pinned the Congressional Medal, the DSC, the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, The Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of Rumania. All the Washingtonians brought flowers .. Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies.”

Those are the concluding lines of John Dos Passos angry novel 1919. Let us honor him on Memorial Day.

And also Thoreau, who went to jail to protest the Mexican War.

And Mark Twain, who denounced our war against the Filipinos at the turn of the century.

And I.F. Stone, who virtually alone among newspaper editors exposed the fraud and brutality of the Korean War.

Let us honor Martin Luther King, who refused the enticements of the White House, and the cautions of associates, and thundered against the war in Vietnam.

Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.

On Memorial Day we should take note that, in the name of “defense,” our taxes have been used to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a helicopter assault ship called “the biggest floating lemon,” which was accepted by the Navy although it had over 2,000 major defects at the time of its trial cruise.

Meanwhile, there is such a shortage of housing that millions live in dilapidated sections of our cities and millions more are forced to pay high rents or high interest rates on their mortgages. There’s 90 billion for the B1 bomber, but people don’t have money to pay hospital bills.

We must be practical, say those whose practicality has consisted of a war every generation. We mustn’t deplete our defenses. Say those who have depleted our youth, stolen our resources. In the end, it is living people, not corpses, creative energy, not destructive rage, which are our only real defense, not just against other governments trying to kill us, but against our own, also trying to kill us.

Let us not set out, this Memorial Day, on the same old drunken ride to death.

And as an epilogue of sorts.

Berrigan, Ellsberg and Memorial Day, by Doug Noble (CounterPunch)

Memorial Day is a day noted for its parades honoring veterans by ennobling, glorifying (and thereby perpetuating) US war and militarism. The peace community in Rochester observes instead a solemn riverside service memorializing the thousands of victims of current US war and aggression, with each victim symbolized by a single rose tossed lovingly into the river’s flow.

Victims memorialized include the casualties of US sanctioned war and aggression, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Syria to Yemen to Somalia to South Sudan to Palestine. Also the many innocent victims of drone attacks, inhumane US immigration and incarceration policies, militarization of the police, and preventable gun violence. And the worldwide victims of catastrophic climate change, fed by US policies of denial and consumption. And an entire global population victimized by the threat of nuclear Armageddon triggered by senseless US provocations of Iran, North Korea, Russia, China.

There would not be enough roses to identify and honor even the tiniest sample of the the thousands of innocent victims lost to aggressive US policies. Such roses could easily choke the Genesee River in sorrow. Yet remembrance, however heartfelt, is still insufficient. After all, in his Gettysburg memorial address, Abraham Lincoln noted the futility of consecrating the war dead without rectifying the war’s cause: “It is for us the living to be dedicated to the unfinished work … so that these dead shall not have died in vain.” What, then, might move us toward peace, a peace threatened, most of all, by our own government’s unrelenting appetite for war?

I turn to the book of Daniel – that is, the book of Daniel Berrigan and Daniel Ellsberg, two icons whose monumental contribution to peace cannot be misconstrued ...

Memorial Day 2019 (1 of 4): Howard Zinn asks, "Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?"

Memorial Day 2019 (2 of 4): Charles Ives, from Decoration Day to Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2019 (3 of 4): "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream."

Memorial Day 2019 (4 of 4): History matters, especially on Memorial Day.

"Biden is the biggest threat to a progressive presidential nominee and #MeToo-ing him won’t keep him out of the White House."

Just say no.

Joe Biden Isn't the Answer, by Rebecca Traister (New York)

... Now it seems, That Guy is widely viewed as the best and safest candidate to get us out of this perilous and scary political period. But the irony is that so much of what is terrifying and dangerous about this time — the Trump administration, the ever more aggressive erosion of voting and reproductive rights, the crisis in criminal justice and yawning economic chasm between the rich and everyone else — are in fact problems that can in part be laid at the feet of Joe Biden himself, and the guys we’ve regularly been assured are Democrats’ only answer ...

I'll be cutting straight to the chase on this one, although you're encouraged to click through and read the entire essay.

Voting record. Policies. Platforms.

You know, all those realities behind the bright, shiny objects.

Choosing Battles, by Amber A’Lee Frost (The Baffler)

Joe Biden and the limits of #MeToo in campaign politics

 ... If leftists want someone to the left of Biden in the White House, they have to stop relying on dead-end culture war tactics that only appeal to a small minority of middle-class liberal voters. Joe Biden could win, and we have to be honest about the fact that he has a lot going for him. The nostalgic halo of the Obama years appeals to the people who just want things to go back to “normal,” which maybe wasn’t great, but didn’t appear to be mired in instability and weekly crises. For the vast majority of women, his 1994 Violence Against Women Act wasn’t a short-sighted and overly punitive contribution to the prison industrial complex, but a defense of women against domestic abuse. It enjoyed massive bipartisan support, particularly from women and feminist groups, who often see prison and policing as the only solutions to male-on-female violence. More importantly though, people like Joe Biden—women like Joe Biden—and that is because he is very likeable.

This isn’t even entirely a generational gap. A lot of younger liberals like him as well. To this day, progressive comedy stalwarts The Onion appear to find him adorable, despite his “kids these days” attitude towards the financial struggles of young people. But here’s what voters likely won’t find adorable:

• His attempts to cut social security and Medicare in order to work with Republicans
• His support for free trade deals like NAFTA, which savage the American working class, undercut the unions, and exploit labor abroad (read up on NAFTA if you have to, and don’t assume everyone knows the implications of trade deals)
• His big-money, union-busting corporate donors like executives from Comcast and health insurance companies
• His woefully right-wing history on health care, and latest attempts to weasel his way out of committing to Medicare for All
• His vote on the Iraq War
• His support for a bankruptcy bill that absolutely crushed working families
• He spent a significant part of his early career fighting school desegregation and busing
• His role in mass incarceration

These are the talking points that working-class voters will respond to. Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. is just another blue-blooded, dynastic elite with a career full of cruel and idiotic politics and a record of favoring the ultra-wealthy and punishing the poor. Rather than emphasizing the fact that a seventy-six-year-old man from Scranton, Pennsylvania doesn’t have the same physical boundaries as professional managerial-class millennials in New York and D.C., leftists should take a break from the feminist culture wars and go after his voting record. Biden is the biggest threat to a progressive presidential nominee and #MeToo-ing him won’t keep him out of the White House. If you don’t believe me, just look who’s in it now.

Rick Stidham and Akasha Brewing Company for New Albany Beer Week at Pints&union on Tuesday, May 28.

The first of two Pints&union gatherings for New Albany Beer Week comes on Tuesday, May 28 when owner/brewer Rick Stidham joins us along with a keg of Otterburn English Brown (for sale by the pint and half-pint) and a few other beer samples.

I've known Rick for a very long time and can't even remember when we first met. He brews wonderful beer and Akasha glides along under the radar. I think it's a criminally underrated brewery. Thanks both to Rick and his Indiana wholesaler, Starlight Distribution.

My profile of Akasha was published in Food & Dining Magazine in November of 2017, and the text appeared here in March of 2018.

---

THE BEER BEAT: "Akasha Brewing Company: Karma and craftsmanship, cruising under the radar" -- from Food & Dining Magazine.

When the latest issue of Food & Dining Magazine comes out ...

LIVE TO EAT: Read my stories about Chef Space and Tito's Handmade Vodka, and grab the latest issue of Food & Dining Magazine, out now.

... I go back to the previous edition and reprise my contributions. In this instance, it's Winter 2017 (Vol. 58; Nov-Dec-Jan), and profiles of Akasha Brewing Company and Waylon's Feed & Firewater; the latter will appear elsewhere.

---

HIP HOPS | Akasha Brewing Company: Karma and craftsmanship, cruising under the radar.

As today’s beers are being poured, let’s learn a word in Sanskrit.

AKASHA … a·ka·sha (Hinduism)(Noun) A supposed universal etheric field in which a record of past events is imprinted.

While Indian cosmology might make a fine category on Jeopardy!, the story of Akasha Brewing Company (909 East Market Street) in Louisville’s ever-evolving NuLu neighborhood is decidedly more prosaic.

Especially since Akasha wasn’t even the first choice of names.

Brewery co-owners Rick Stidham and Gerald Nawrocki originally selected the working title of Muse Brewing Company. In Greek and Roman mythology, Zeus’s nine daughters are called the Muses, each representing an artistic or scientific endeavor. A muse can be the personification of artistic inspiration, and when used as a verb, “to muse” is to engage in thoughtful contemplation.

In fact, some of us have been musing over beers for years.

Unfortunately, nowadays the denizens of Mount Olympus are guarded by a cordon of lawyers. Stidham and Nawrocki quickly learned Muse had been trademarked for beer use. Calmly, they chose to switch identities.

“It wasn’t worth fighting,” Stidham recalls. “So, we went down to Against the Grain Brewery, ordered a couple beers and started going through our list of backup names.” They agreed on Akasha: “I’d seen it in an article about quantum physics, signifying ‘everything from nothing.’ That sounded about right to us.”

Duly recast, Akasha Brewing Company opened for business in September, 2015. Eight months later, new equipment began arriving, and output reached 600 barrels in 2016.

Currently assisted in the brewhouse by Kacy Machir, who doubles as Akasha’s graphics generator, Stidham is the company’s wryly good-humored public face. He’s thoughtful and on the quiet side, but possessing ample beer savvy and a resolute confidence in his abilities.

“The beer we put out there is consistently good,” Stidham says, and this is no idle boast coming from a man whose commitment to craftsmanship was nurtured as a methodical homebrewer, one so devoted to self-improvement that he’d repeatedly brew styles he didn’t even care to drink, all the better to hone his technique.

Now two years old, Akasha’s lineup of regular beers continues to evolve. Recurring favorites include Always Sunny in Amarillo (dry-hopped American Pale Ale) and Piper Cherrywood Smoked Porter, although two other very different styles recently have risen to pre-eminence.

One of them is Gose (go-zah), an obscure German ale that delightfully exemplifies craft beer’s prevailing eclecticism, given that it’s about as unconventional as Germans allow their beers to get.

The grist is half barley, half wheat. It is only lightly hopped, low in alcohol content, purposefully tart, and spiced with coriander and salt. The style reached its zenith in Leipzig in the early twentieth century, then gradually lapsed into near extinction. By the late 1990s, revivals began popping up.

For Akasha’s version, Stidham achieves a slight tanginess by means of kettle souring, a technique recently developed as a comparatively simple way of imparting desired tartness to beer.

After mashing, the wort is flash boiled in the kettle, then recirculated through the heat exchanger to cool down. When the liquid returns to the kettle, lactobacillus bacteria is added for the requisite souring.

A bit later, the hops, salt -- Pink Himalayan, as “it gives a different, better taste,” according to Stidham -- and coriander are added, and when the boil is finished, regular ale yeast is pitched.

The other current best-seller at Akasha is Fehr’s XS, the rebirth of a lager formerly brewed in Louisville by the Frank Fehr Brewing Company (1872-1964). It’s the polar opposite of Gose.

In order to bring Fehr’s XS back from obscurity, Stidham worked closely with Jeff Faith, a Louisvillian who acquired the rights to the brand’s copyright. Faith researched its pre-Prohibition recipe, and he found in Stidham a kindred spirit with a shared zeal for authenticity.

Faith’s determination was such that he purchased a fermenter specifically for Stidham’s use at Akasha in brewing Fehr’s XS, so that a beer requiring slow, cool aging wouldn’t interrupt the brewery’s normal production schedule.

Fehr’s XS is formulated according to the pre-Prohibition custom of using six-row barley, rice, Cluster hops (for bittering) and aromatic German finishing hops. It is straw golden and light-bodied; crisp and firmly-hopped; and in the mold of a Pilsner, though uniquely flavored.

“We have plans to continue to bring Fehr's back to wider availability in Louisville and the rest of Kentucky,” notes Stidham. “We drink a good bit of it at the brewery, and I get a kick out of seeing it on tap at so many places.”

Akasha is designed to be a production brewery. While there are no cans or bottles at present, kegs travel to outside accounts via Dauntless Distributing in Kentucky and Starlight Distribution in Indiana.

However, beer lovers are invited to stop by Akasha’s dog-friendly taproom for pints and samplers, carry-out growlers and the occasional game of Monopoly. Apart from packaged snacks, no food is served at the taproom; however, this being NuLu, sustenance is always quite near.

Grind Burger Kitchen lies just across Campbell Street, and the Louisville location of Feast BBQ is roughly 20 paces from Akasha’s front door.

“We’re Feast’s de facto overflow dining room,” Stidham says, and Feast’s owner Ryan Rogers not only agrees, but adds an inspiring primer on localism.

“Rick’s right, and it speaks volumes to the symbiotic relationship we have with Akasha,” explains Rogers.

“We sell their beer on draft, which is a privilege for us because their product is so good that we want it despite their brewery selling it a dollar or so cheaper a few steps away – and they actively encourage their patrons bringing in food from the local restaurants.”

The neighborly affinity is real. Earlier this year, Stidham collaborated with Feast BBQ and Royals Hot Chicken (also owned by Rogers) to brew a beer called Royal Feast in Helles, a wonderful Bavarian-style golden lager.

When asked to chart Akasha’s future growth, Stidham is cheerfully imprecise.

“When we sell enough beer in 2018 to continue selling beer in 2019,” he laughs, “that's enough for me to be happy.”

Colonial Manor Redevelopment Visioning: "We are people who just passionately want to create stronger and better neighborhoods and help build a better community together."

"If it wasn't an election year it would have passed 9-0 ... this opportunity is gone." Anyone got a Kleenex?

As Team Gahan continues to pout, the grassroots activists behind Colonial Manor Redevelopment Visioning continue to work. The report below was filed at Facebook.

At this point, shouldn't City Hall and the Democrats be resolving to be a part of the solution, rather than staging election-year temper tantrums?

Hello, everybody!

It has been an extremely busy past month for our Colonial Manor Redevelopment Citizens Coalition. So, time for an update.

We have gathered and curated an ever-growing collection of community feedback and taken an expanded look at our marketing data. We have held conversations with the Colonial Manor owner in California and his representation locally. And, we have spent many hours identifying and initiating one-on-one conversations with locally-owned businesses and organizations that may be thinking of expanding, considering new or additional locations, or just starting up.

We have worked to match our listening data and demographics up with businesses and organizations that may be a really good match for redeveloped and renovated space. Plus, we've been working hard to build some strategic partnerships between businesses, helping some of them figure out how they could perhaps mutually support and strengthen each other in a space like that.

Last week, we brought just a few of those businesses and organizations together with an owner's representative to begin to explore some possibilities, discuss needs and vision, and take a quick survey of some potential funding sources and options for support.

NOW---we want to broaden our vision and potential partners! If you have a local retail or service business, a cafe or restaurant, or are a not-for-profit seeking to make an increased impact in serving our community---and may be interested in exploring a renewed Colonial Manor---we would love to draw you into our exciting conversation.

Our aim as volunteers is to support, encourage, and assist the owner in any way we can with building a new day for the center and, in turn, enhancing the quality of life for our local neighborhoods. Have some ideas? Want to get together with some of us and talk? Interested in volunteering? Just send us a message and let's do some dreaming and help some of our local businesses and organizations perhaps make some extraordinary things happen.

Thanks to all who have continued to be encouragers, helpers, and sources of learning for us. We aren't real estate developers. We have no ownership interests in that development. We are just a growing group of ordinary, everyday people (with other jobs!), big hearts, relentless energy, diverse skills and talents, and what we believe is a bit of a gift for listening and matching people/businesses with our neighborhoods and our community's needs.

We are people who just passionately want to create stronger and better neighborhoods and help build a better community together. Please continue to support us in any way you can as we continue the journey.

The 'Bune made me do it -- or, the late George Carlin on religion.

Last week a friend sent me links to the preceding videos. They gave me a few dozen gut laughs just when irreverent humor was needed most, and probably saved my whole day.

Then a sense of déjà vu gripped me. Sure enough, we'd all been here before -- specifically, on June 21, 2015. I've no recollection of why the week was bad, and so it goes.

---

George Carlin, or a temporary antidote to the thoroughly depressing week that was.

By Friday afternoon, I'd just about had it with the humanoids occupying this continent. Fortuitously, I caught a Facebook posting by my friend BM, pointing to a collection of video clips by the late George Carlin.

I sat on the porch with my iPhone, beer in hand, and watched the clips, one after the other. It would be an understatement for the ages to refer to the experience as cathartic.

Curmudgeons unite: I laughed until I cried. It may not work for you, but verily, I needed that.

Remembering George Carlin’s Most Important Jokes, by Johnny Sugar (Uproxx)

George Carlin would have been 78 years old (May 12), and this seems like a great time to look back on some of his best routines. He was a revolutionary comic whose sharp critiques of censorship and organized religion have influenced political and comedic thought for decades. He targeted the orthodoxy and the establishment, always with remarkable success. These Carlin routines showcase him at his best …

Just another driver "flipping" over the beauty of the East Main Street Project median.

Copied from a post at the Nextdoor web site.

The daytime view.

This is the fourth such wreck I can recall; there may have been others. I looked around on local media and could find no coverage of this one, so kudos to the citizen journalist at Nextdoor.

It is a matter of genuine curiosity for me as to why so many drivers bounce off the median eastbound at the starting point of beautification. I'd guess the drag strip speeds coming out of the stop light at Pearl, given that the city refuses to calm the section of Main Street between Pearl and 5th.

Maybe someone will ask during the CNU 27 tour on June 14. I seem to recall Speck speaking against medians.

Gahan, Rosenbarger set to go full frontal Pinocchio about their urbanism credentials when the Congress for the New Urbanism 27 meets in Louisville June 11-15.

Abbey Road on the River illustrates the value of purposeful park design.

As usual, I had a good time volunteering to help populate the SoIn tourism bureau booth at Abbey Road on the River. I was there Thursday and Friday during the day.

A glance at the map reveals Jeffersonville's savvy approach to the design of Big Four Park. Streets on four sides are easily fenced to suit ticket control and alcohol sales; it also makes food trucks and vending easy. There are restrooms and utilities on the middle, and plenty of room elsewhere for port-a-lets.

Unfortunately in New Albany we have two festival sites (Riverfront Amphitheater and Bicentennial Park), neither of which have it all quite the way Big Four Park does.

The finest musical act I heard during my brief time on site was the genuine Liverpudlian Gavin Pring (George Harry's Son) performing as George Harrison, playing deep album cuts from the concert for Bangladesh with the assistance of a crack international band.

I enjoy the feel of this festival. It wasn't always evident to me, but this year the vibe came together. Roughly half the total attendees travel to AROTR from elsewhere each year, and it reminded me of the spirit at beer fests like Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison WI.

Aaron Fairbanks at The Aggregate: "Reflecting on the Heyburn Nine Trial."

I'm delighted to see Aaron Fairbanks contributing to The Aggregate News.

Check out The Aggregate News! It's a well put together site that brings all of your local, state and national news to one place, and it's put together by some incredible young people in Southern Indiana. I'm excited to be taking part in this project, and I look forward to seeing where this thing goes. In an age where obtaining reliable information is difficult, this is a welcome addition to our local media options.

What better place for Aaron to begin than a primer on civil disobedience?

Reflecting on the Heyburn Nine Trial, by Aaron Fairbanks (The Aggregate News)

... Three of the nine protesters—Courtney Kearney, Sonja DeVries and Bob Eiden—proceeded to a public two-day trial beginning on May 16, 2019 to shine a light on the atrocities that they were fighting against that day, and they were found guilty of trespassing but were lucky enough to have a sympathetic jury exercise leniency with their sentence. Each of them left the trial on the second day with a $150 fine satisfied by previous fines paid in their Federal case. But civil disobedience isn’t always given the benefit of the doubt before the law by any means with the absence of statutory protections for those who act in civil disobedience.

The many cases of civil disobedience are cemented in our history. Susan B. Anthony was arrested in Rochester, New York in 1872 and later convicted for voting preceding the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Rosa Parks was arrested and convicted for violating a city ordinance segregating public buses as well as disorderly conduct. Then perhaps most applicable to the Heyburn Nine case was the conviction of the Friendship 9, a group of student protesters who were convicted for trespassing and disturbing the peace when they staged a sit in at a private whites-only establishment at a time when there were no statutory protections prohibiting discrimination by private entities on the basis of race ...

Gahan, Rosenbarger set to go full frontal Pinocchio about their urbanism credentials when the Congress for the New Urbanism 27 meets in Louisville June 11-15.

Jeff Speck's coming to the Congress for the New Urbanism's CNU 27 in Louisville. On Wednesday afternoon (June 12) in Louisville he'll be speaking about his new book Walkable City Rules.

On Friday (June 14) Speck returns to New Albany.

Whoa, boy.

We've long noted that Deaf Gahan, Pinocchio Rosenbarger and various other pay-to-play functionaries brutally gutted Speck's amazing Downtown Street Network Proposal, a renewal plan for the downtown street grid. They retained the two-way street reversion and quickly punted, discarding every other useful suggestion Speck made about bicycling, wasteful medians, the interstate intersections and so much else.

If any CNA 27 attendees are reading this note ("help us, we're being held hostage by idiots"), and you plan to tag along on the New Albany tour on June 14, please do me this one small favor: ask questions. Why the beg buttons? Why the reformatted Market Street median? Where are the bike lanes? What's the reason for the plethora of ignored pedestrian crossing beg-button-flashing-light "permission" stations? Why's the traffic still moving so fast? Isn't there more to walkability than bright shiny beautification projects?

We could have had transformation. Gahan, Rosenbarger and their coterie settled for dull shrapnel reflecting their fundamental cowardice. They should be ashamed of themselves, but as we've seen oft times before, there's nowhere near the level of self-awareness necessary for shame.

About The Congress

The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) is the nation’s oldest international nonprofit working to build great places and walkable, vibrant neighborhoods. CNU will host its 27th annual Congress, CNU 27.Louisville, in Louisville, KY June 12-15, 2019.

The Congress is the premier national placemaking event, convening 1500+ diverse, interdisciplinary urbanists and placemakers from all 50 states and around the globe to exchange ideas, explore urban places, work alongside residents, and learn in the field.

Congress programming is varied and accessible to urbanists and members of the public at any level of knowledge and understanding of New Urbanism.

Ten years ago, Bank Street Brewhouse's brewing equipment arrived at the former "day-old bread store."

Ten years ago (May 11, 2009) I was so excited that a rare exclamation mark was merited: "NABC's brewery arrives on site!"

Imagine the number of exclamations required had the forever fevered DNA been telling the story.

We opened the front of the house in March with draft beer from NABC's original brewery, as well as guests taps. The DME system took a while to install, which David Pierce managed with his characteristic aplomb, and brewing began circa July.

Now that Bank Street Brewhouse is closing (the last day is Saturday, May 25), a big piece of the "what's to come" equation is exactly how much this brewery is worth after a ten-year run. Of course the best answer is "it's worth what the market will bear." I've no idea what my former business partners are asking, and I've been away from brewing a bit too long to hazard a guesstimate about used equipment pricing.

I'll have to wait and see just like you. In the meantime, as a reminder, it actually wasn't my idea to adorn the BSB brewing system with faces of famous Commies. It was a surprise gift, and I was very surprised -- as well as appreciative.

Close to a half-year's reading list.

The book I cracked open last night is about as "escapist" as I ever get as it pertains to reading: Vineland, Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel about "washed-up 60s radicals." Mostly as a post-it note to myself, here's the reading list to date in 2019.

Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, non-fiction by Louis Sell

Baudolino, a novel by Umberto Eco

Dreamers, a factually-based novel by Volker Weidermann

Baseball in a River Town, local history by Justin Endres

Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece, a travelogue by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Avignon Quintet, five novels by Lawrence Durrell

• Monsieur (1974)
• Livia (1978)
• Constance (1982)
• Sebastian (1983)
• Quinx (1985)

Dreams.

In former times I had a handful of recurring dreams, perhaps better described as mild nightmares.

One of them featured my father, who died in 2001. In the dreams he'd be alive again, and at some point, without fully awakening, I'd conclude the dream was a hoax, given that the dead don't return to life. He'd then disappear, and the dream would continue. This has not happened in the case of my mother, who left us in 2017.

My theory about the "father dream" is that because I was in Europe when he died, my subconscious decided to continue asking questions. Was he really dead? What had I missed?

In another recurring dream I was playing basketball on a team, as I did in high school, and although I could glide up and down the court (this is a hilarious thought considering 100 added pounds since the glory days) nothing was going well. I was stone cold, unable to make a shot. The basketball was more like a medicine ball (remember those?), and I couldn't even hoist it to the rim.

I assumed this dream had to do with frustrations about life and work in a very general sense.

The third and most vivid dream was being a server or bartender, which I did the first 15 years of the Public House, but have not done since around 2007. In the dream I'd be completely buried "in the weeds," all alone, with dozens of customers needing something and me being unable to provide for their needs -- no ice, no food, the POS wouldn't work, the taps were dry, and so on.

Out of nowhere this "server nightmare" dream happened on Monday morning. At some point I got up to use the bathroom; then back asleep, the dream began anew, as though insidiously looped in my noggin.

What's the explanation?

Maybe because during the recently concluded political campaign, I kept putting things off, both large and small, with the rationalization that there'd be ample time once David White won. He didn't win, and now there's just as much or even more time, but I'm still having trouble mustering the resolve to attack the list.

Maybe this is why the dream occurred once more after so many years being packed neatly away in a box. It also proved to be somewhat the premonition, but that's not important.

Why We Dream (Psychology Today)

Dreams are the stories the brain tells during sleep—they’re a collection of clips, images, feelings, and memories that involuntarily occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of slumber. Humans typically have multiple dreams per night that grow longer as sleep draws to a close. It’s hypothesized that everyone dreams, but a small subsection of the population reports that they never remember experiencing dreams.

Dreams typically involve elements from waking lives—like known people or familiar locations—but they often take on a fantastical feel. While dreams are frequently interesting, and can allow people to act out certain scenarios that would never be possible in real life, they aren’t always positive—negative dreams, referred to as "nightmares," can create feelings of terror, anxiety, or utter despair, and can lead to psychological distress or sleep problems like insomnia.

The big question, however, is why humans dream. Though it’s been discussed and studied for millennia, it remains one of behavioral science's greatest unanswered questions. Researchers have offered many theories—including memory consolidation or emotional regulation—but a unified one remains, well, a pipe dream. Nevertheless, people continue mining their nighttime reveries for clues to their inner lives, for creative insight, and even for premonitions.

The Espionage Act: Indicting journalists in a war against freedom of the press.

Then Donald Trump takes power and immediately begins using the playbook refined and sharpened by his predecessor, President Obama.

This isn't a Trump thing or an Obama thing. It's a top-down government power thing, and the unsurprising province of a two-party system power-sharing arrangement.

THE ESPIONAGE AXE: DONALD TRUMP AND THE WAR AGAINST A FREE PRESS (The Intercept)

...Mark Ruffalo [reading Eugene Debs’ speech]: For in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism or religion or both to deceive and overawe the people.

Jeremy Scahill: On June 16, 1918, the prominent Socialist labor leader Eugene Debs delivered a speech in Canton, Ohio. In the speech, Debs argued against U.S. involvement in World War I and he praised activists who had been organizing against the military draft or had been convicted of sedition. At the time, Debs was one of the most prominent socialists in the United States and his speech came on the heels of the Russian Revolution and the rise of global socialist and communist movements. Eugene Debs had run for president four times as of the day of that speech. Here is actor Mark Ruffalo reading part of that speech.

MR [reading Eugene Debs’ speech]: The working class who fight all the battles, the working calls who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses had never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why. Yours but to do and die. That is their motto.

JS: Soon after that speech, Eugene Debs was arrested and he was charged under a new law in the U.S. that had passed just a year earlier. It was called The Espionage Act. Debs and his lawyers argued that his anti-war speech was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. And they lost. And Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison. The case eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court where the justices voted unanimously to uphold the conviction of Eugene Debs. “I believe in free speech, in war as well as in peace,” Debs told the jury during his trial. “If the Espionage Law stands, then the Constitution of the United States is dead.”

From his prison cell, Debs ran for a 5th time for president of the United States on the Socialist Party ticket. He got nearly a million votes, almost three and a half percent — the most ever won by a Socialist at that time. In 1921, President Warren Harding commuted Eugene Debs sentence, but he did not pardon him. Though he did invite Debs to meet him at the White House.

Congress ultimately amended parts of the Espionage Act, but the thrust of the law has remained in effect to this day. Anarchist Emma Goldman was also prosecuted under the act. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed after being convicted under the law ...

This isn't a Trump thing or an Obama thing, either one. It's a power thing, and the province of a two-party system power-sharing arrangement.

Indicting a journalist? What the new charges against Julian Assange mean for free speech, by Julian Borger (The Guardian)

By bringing new charges against the WikiLeaks founder, the Trump administration has challenged the first amendment

By indicting Julian Assange under the Espionage Act, the Trump administration has crossed a line that every other US administration has shied away from: challenging the first amendment in defence of government secrets.

The only reason the 102-year-old act does not criminalise national security journalism is because no administration has sought to put it to the test. The law bans the publication of government secrets and offers no explicit protections to the press under the amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech.

Until now, most legal observers have argued that the law would not survive scrutiny by the supreme court if it were ever used against journalists.

The Obama administration debated whether it could be used against Assange after his organisation, WikiLeaks, published military communications from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as a huge trove of diplomatic cables. But Obama’s team ultimately decided against taking that step.

Matthew Miller, who was a justice department spokesman at the time, recalled: “The justice department in the Obama administration thought it would be very dangerous to charge Assange with publication, as the Espionage Act doesn’t make any distinction between journalists and non-journalists.

“The second reason – which we never got to – was that no one was sure if it would withstand constitutional scrutiny. It probably wouldn’t,” Miller said. “That said, the supreme court has changed significantly since then, and maybe the DoJ [department of justice] has made that calculation” ...

An amazing Albanian propaganda film, circa 1984: "Where a free and happy people are living by the sweat of their brow."

If you've never viewed an old-school "New Communist Man and Woman" heavy-industry-porn propaganda film, then prepare an adult libation, get comfy and watch this. It's the very definition of "period piece." The music alone is worth the 20 minute viewing time.

For balanced background, this excellent overview from the New York Times was published in 1984, about the same time as the 40th anniversary celebration mentioned in the film.

Enver Hoxha, ruler of Albania for four decades, died in 1985.

Two years ago, Mr. Hoxha wrote: "There are some, the imperialists and their lackeys, who say that we have isolated ourselves from the 'civilized world.' These gentlemen are mistaken. Both the bitter history of our country in the past and the reality of the 'world' which they advertise have convinced us that it is by no means a 'civilized world,' but a world in which the bigger and stronger oppresses and flays the smaller and the weaker, in which money and corruption make the law, and injustice, perfidy and backstabbing triumph."

Communism in Albanian collapsed in 1991, and I visited the country in 1994. The photos of this trip are in slide format and await digitization. Until then, here's the text of the journey 25 years ago.

From the 2016 revision:

Old Albania, 1994: Beer in the Land of the Eagle (Part 1 of 3).

Old Albania, 1994: Beer in the Land of the Eagle (Part 2 of 3).

Old Albania, 1994: Beer in the Land of the Eagle (Part 3 of 3).

The New Albany branch of Cox's Hot Chicken is no more.

The transition from Big Four Burgers to Cox's Hot Chicken began in early October, 2018. The grand opening was on November 27, 2018; this means it has been only eight months from start to finish. What happened? There could be dozens of reasons. Some things just aren't meant to be.

Now, with the New Albany location of Cox's closed (the Jeffersonville branch remains open), the ball lands back in former Big Four operator Matt McMahan's court. Apparently Cox's was subleasing from Matt, so licenses and permits are in place. I've already heard one juicy rumor, but let's wait to see what pans out.

Interestingly, without time to blog earlier today, I posted the photos on Facebook. The turnstiles were spinning.

Public safety for non-automotive humans? Gahan fails, utterly.

This fellow is a candidate for city council in Cincinnati. Note his words in bold. Can you imagine a New Albanian politician -- any New Albanian politician -- stating the case this forcefully? Alas, I cannot. The needs of drivers in a narrow sense always outweigh the needs of humans from a broader perspective -- and had Jeff Gahan ever understood any of this, would there be a single sharrow painted on a New Albany street, or those idiotic pedestrian crossing lights?

Opinion: Fatalities climb as few changes are made to calm traffic, by Derek Bauman (Cincinnati.com)

The people of Cincinnati are facing a public safety crisis of immense proportions. Since 2013, crashes involving pedestrians are up nearly 50%. Thirty-six pedestrians have been killed in that time.

During 2018, in the city of Cincinnati alone, more than one person a day was struck by a car. As a candidate for Cincinnati City Council in 2017 and crisscrossing our city, I heard a consistent message from residents everywhere. We want safe streets. We want to feel comfortable walking to the neighborhood coffee shop. We want traffic to be calmed. We want road diets. We want drivers to slow down. We want to be able to ride a bike safely. We want more traffic enforcement. We want to feel safe, and our children to be safe, when walking to school.

Despite these pleas for help, not a whole lot changed. It’s been business as usual while the body count continued to climb.

LIVE TO EAT: "The secret of the Mediterranean diet?"

Of course, the other relevant aspect of the Mediterranean diet is how good it tastes. My problem is that it seems to occur to me only in summer when I know fresh local veggies are just around the corner.

The secret of the Mediterranean diet?, by Joanna Blythman (The Guardian)

Whoop-de-doo, researchers at King's College London and the University of California claim to have identified the "secret" underpinning the oft-quoted healthfulness of the Mediterranean diet. From their lab tests on mice (not just any old mice, genetically modified ones) they conclude that when olive oil and vegetables are eaten together, they form nitro fatty acids that help lower blood pressure – a risk factor for heart disease – by blocking the enzyme epoxide hydrolase.

Hmm. That whole thing about the Mediterranean diet -- where does that come from , anyway?

The longevity of Mediterranean populations, we were assured, was explained by their high consumption of fruit and vegetables (true), and low consumption of red meat and saturated fat (false).

In fact, no sentient visitor to southern Europe could fail to notice the reliance on fatty lamb, full-fat yoghurt and cheese (feta, mozzarella, manchego, pecorino), kebabs and slow-cooked red meat dishes, such as the Greek beef stifado. Even vegetables come stuffed with red meat. Yes, monounsaturated olive oil is the default oil of the Mediterranean region, but a serious amount of saturated fat is eaten too.

Modern perceptions of the Mediterranean diet stem from observation of dietary traditions in Crete, Greece, and southern Italy in the 1960s, when people were physically active, spent lots of time outdoors and ate shared communal meals of fresh, seasonal, homecooked, locally produced foods. That's not the same thing as bolting down a huge plate of pasta in a cook-in sauce, followed by a high-sugar, reduced-fat yoghurt, while watching MasterChef on the settee.

In the preceding paragraph, the underlining is mine, especially the "physically active" part. Following is the coda:

We may not know yet with great certainty what is good for us, but using our own powers of observation, it is crystal clear what is bad for us: a diet of processed, industrialised junk food.

Join me this evening in bidding adieu to Bank Street Brewhouse.

Former Bank Street Brewhouse staffers last night.

Customers and friends tonight.

I was humbled and deeply moved by the turnout Tuesday evening for a farewell to Bank Street Brewhouse organized by Chef Matt Weirich. Thanks to all in attendance for the conversation, memories and spirit. Bank Street Brewhouse was my baby, and as a business entity it was a constant struggle. I've always been a very reluctant capitalist, and BSB's unprofitability proved it.

Artistically there is no doubt BSB was a success, and this is what posterity will note. We had one hell of a five-year run for the original brewery/eatery (2009 - 2014), and there also was much positive to be said about the varied permutations that followed my departure in 2015, through Earth Friends right up to the present with Taco Steve in the kitchen.

It's abundantly clear to me that the biggest win of all at Bank Street Brewhouse was the way great people came together, both customers and staff. Everyone understands there were bad times in addition to the good, but that's how families work, acknowledging the rough patches and celebrating when it's right.   

Last week I addressed the Facebook community with the suggestion that friends and onetime Bank Street Brewhouse customers join me for a final pint this evening (Wednesday, 22 May). Consider yourself invited. I'll be there circa 6 pm - 8 pm.

Cheers, everyone!

Jeff Gahan's persistent transportation hypocrisy: Electric cars win, bicyclists lose.

If you prefer alternatives to cars, like a bicycle, then get ready to risk your life because all Jeff Gahan can do is laugh and give you another meaningless sharrow.

⚡️New Albany’s first electric car charging station -providing the power to choose cleaner energy.⚡️ Proud to provide options to our neighbors that prefer alternative energy sources.

Never forget that Jeff Speck showed Gahan exactly how New Albany might leap to the front of regional leadership when it comes to bicycling and a bicycle-friendly grid. But Gahan the suburbanite C-minus student can see only cars -- and he cannot see how two-wheeled alternatives would provide him with the same campaign finance pull as car-centric street designers.

Can you even begin to imagine the mayor on a bicycle on a street with a succession of sharrows?

I can't. Neither can he, which is why street grid stupidity like ours keeps happening.

Some Bike Infrastructure Is Worse Than None at All, by Eric Jaffe (CityLab)

It’s time to put the sharrow to rest.

Denver gave rise to the sharrow in the early 1990s, and now two researchers there offer a compelling case to put the lowly form of bike infrastructure to rest.

You’ve seen a sharrow painted on city streets: it’s that image of a cyclist below two arrows in the middle of a lane that—you guessed it—is meant to be shared by bikes and cars. The Federal Highway Administration gave sharrows its official blessing in 2009, and the symbol is now ubiquitous across urban America. It’s also arguably the least-loved nod to cycling, a low-cost way for cities to say they’re doing something about safety and street design without really doing much at all ...

ON THE AVENUES: "Pints&union, where the classic beer hits keep right on pouring."

I began writing a column about beer for Food & Dining Magazine in 2005, give or take a year. Occasionally the magazine's main man John White finds a slot for a non-beer-centric restaurant profile, and those are fun to write, too. I'll always remain appreciative to John for giving me this opportunity to write and be read.

Food & Dining Magazine is a quarterly, and when a new issue arrives it has become my habit to glance back at the previous one and reprise my contribution in full for NA Confidential readers.

The summer issue for 2019 is due in a week or two, with my next column to address the way that the business of craft beer has become business; it always was, but now more than ever there's little margin for error for mom and pop brewing shops.

For the spring issue John kindly allowed me to do something rare for me at Food & Dining Magazine, this being to write about myself and the idea for the beer program at Pints&union. It turned out really well, and Andy Hyslop's photos are especially memorable.

Roger, Joe and Calvin.

Pints&union, where the classic beer hits keep right on pouring.

Food & Dining Magazine, Spring 2019 (Volume 63)

Did you hear the one about two buddies walking into a coffee shop to talk about building a brand new “old” bar?

One of them was Joe Phillips, and the other was me. We began philosophizing about life, adult beverages, curry and third spaces. This chat was the impetus for Pints&union, a pub in downtown New Albany that opened in August of 2018.

On that fateful morning at Quills, we drained a few bracing espressos and got wired – then excited. We’d both been planning an honest, traditional, no-gimmicks public house where everybody knows your name, and it seemed like a good idea to work together toward this shared goal.

Now Joe is the owner of Pints&union, and I work for him as manager of a purposefully archaic beer program, which I’ll get to in a moment. First, meet Joe Phillips and his dream pub.

Joe is a food and drink industry lifer who began washing dishes at a pizzeria in California while still attending high school. He’s since compiled a resume that touches just about every base in the local food and drink business: Copper & Kings, Capriole Farms Goat Cheese, Butchertown Social and New Albanian Brewing Company’s Bank Street Brewhouse among others.

Pints&union is about “getting back to what really matters,” as Joe often puts it. The pub’s name has an ampersand but no spacing, representing an inclusive, sharing ethos; historically pubs have functioned as more than just watering holes. They’re living rooms, libraries, meeting halls and community centers.

Housed in a two-story wood-frame structure from the 1880s, Pints&union was rebuilt to its original 19th-century dimensions by Resch Construction. As many surviving materials as possible were reused during the course of the modernization.

The eclectic interior suggests a cross between an Irish pub and an American saloon, and this is fitting given the long record of taverns and eateries occupying the space. In 1890 when Nicholas Sauer’s saloon was the tenant, there were 80 drinking emporiums in New Albany (then populated by 21,000) — most located downtown within walking distance of each other.

The full-service bar at Pints&union features spirits overseen by bar manager Calvin Philley, whose philosophy is simple: a core of classic cocktails tweaked with repurposed ingredients and modified techniques designed to complement Pints&union’s distinctive sense of place amid New Albany’s emerging downtown scene.

Meanwhile, Joe and Chef Dalton Gahafer have designed a short but varied menu of international street food suitable for preparation in limited galley kitchen space: Scotch eggs, Chicken Tikka Masala and Currywurst alongside American diner-standard cheeseburgers and fries.

Early results have been encouraging for Joe’s new-meets-old mix of stylistic influences at Pints&union, and -- speaking personally as a burned-out former brewery owner who was unsure he even had a place in today’s beer world -- I’m grateful to Joe for the chance to offer a slate of beers that largely eschews the avant-garde. To explain this, we must steal a quick glance through the rearview mirror.

I began working part-time in a downtown New Albany liquor store in 1983 with a copy of Michael Jackson’s seminal “World Guide to Beer” in my hands and a dawning recognition that all my interests coincided in the brewhouse: history, geography and intoxication among them.

Few dining and drinking establishments in metropolitan Louisville offered beer lists. To ask for a beer list was to be surveyed with dumbfounded amazement as though you were speaking in Estonian or wearing a conehead prosthesis. Bartenders bothering to reply at all would shrug.

“We have both kinds of beer, pal: Miller High Life and Miller Lite.”

In 1992, a poster called "Brewpubs and Craft Breweries" showed a map of breweries operating in the United States – all 300 or so of them. There existed precisely one brewery each in Kentucky (Oldenberg in Ft. Mitchell), Indiana (Broad Ripple Brewpub, Indianapolis) and Tennessee (Nashville’s Bohannon's/Market Street).

As of early 2018, the brewery counts for these states were 52, 137 and 82, respectively. Combined, that’s almost as many as were brewing in the entire country in 1992, and the paradigm shift over 35 years is stunning.

Today, we’re approaching 7,000 craft breweries in America. If each one brewed six different beers yearly (a ridiculously conservative estimate), that’d be 42,000 beers available for sampling, and this doesn’t account for imported beers, which now comprise time-honored flagships from Affligem through Zwiec, as well as a recent flock of American-influenced craft beers (Brew Dog, Mikkeller, Struis and many more).

There’s naturally a looming catch to this dazzling cornucopia of choice, because establishments selling beer still have finite space and budgetary limitations. Even the most voluminous warehouse-sized package store or cavernous walk-in cooler at the multi-tap must make hard decisions about which beers to keep in stock.

Many on-premise restaurants, bars and pubs elect to constantly rotate their draft beer offerings. A customer making weekly visits to a bar with 15 tap handles might be exposed to 200 different draft beers during a single year.

Consequently, a beer enthusiast’s “What’s new?” culture has evolved, placing a premium on the next new release while ignoring the historical knowledge base that brought us to the present juncture of sheer proliferation.

My stand is clear, and the time for a “back to basics” movement is now.

I believe there exists a silent majority among American beer drinkers who find the kaleidoscopic tilt-whirl of short attention spans – this frenetic hamster wheel approach to beer appreciation – utterly bewildering.

These are beer lovers who genuinely seek to drink better beer but are overwhelmed by ever-changing blackboards at their chosen pubs. They’re hesitant to ask questions for fear of geeks on both sides of the bar laughing at them. They don’t use the Untappd app, but they know exactly where your selfie stick belongs.

My solution at Pints&union is to go back to school -- the old school. We emphasize comfort beers, teach neglected styles, and offer the greatest beer hits of the 1300s through the 1900s placed alongside a few contemporary selections destined to become classics.

The Pints&union beer list is largely fixed and unchanging. You’ll always be able to enjoy draft pints of Fuller’s London Pride, Fuller’s London Porter, Pilsner Urquell, Guinness, Falls City Classic Pilsner and Bell’s Two Hearted Ale plus choose from a bottled and canned variety of European essentials and American craft beers -- from La Chouffe to WarPigs Salmon Pants -- with Celebrator Doppelbock sharing the cooler with Central State Garden.

Pints&union reserves the right to reinvent today’s beer by boarding the way-back machine and starting all over. Find a beer you like, and have another. For me, proving this point is sweet, but savoring a warming Old Engine Oil on a cool evening is always better.

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End note: The preceding was edited to update the identity of our chef. Dalton Gahafer replaced Aaron Tuttle in early May. 

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Recent columns:

May 14: ON THE AVENUES: Where do we go from here?

May 6: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Ghosts within these stones, defiance in these bones (2018).

May 5: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Our great and noble leader soon will be going away, so let's break out the țuică and make a joyful noise.

May 3: horse-race-rehash-sadly.html">ON THE AVENUES HORSE RACE REHASH: Sadly, the Kentucky Derby no longer is decadent and depraved. It’s just another vacuous capitalist bait ‘n’ switch.