Windows? We Don't Need No Stinking Windows

Right out of the gate, let me say that the store pictured above is an improvement over the abandoned filling station which used to occupy this prime spot on New Albany's State Street.

It is the addition a of general retail store closest to New Albany's downtown in a long time. Unfortunately, the orientation of the store seems to suggest it wants nothing to do with downtown. It seems to be marooned on an island, adrift from the big box stores farther out the road, and longing to join its larger brothers. It shows its hind quarters to downtown. To pedestrians it offers a not-so-friendly view of sheet metal which says, "this is a transactional place only, not part of a larger community revival. It doesn't want to be. Now get your cheap stuff and go." Come to think of it, it's really still a filling station.

New Albany's planners were most likely handed cookie-cutter plans  for this store which meet all the minimum requirements for the siting of a retail establishment. Many other communities have opened their doors to this retailer. In fact, New Albany has another location of the same store on Vincennes Street, where the old Daisy Line Car Barn stood abandoned for years. From an economic development perspective, some points are now on the scoreboard with this new store. And, with its proximity to Riverview Towers, public housing on Bono Road, and other less affluent neighborhoods, the store does serve a purpose.

It is better than an abandoned filling station. And yet, New Albany has missed an opportunity to raise the bar just a bit. We have missed the chance to broaden the footprint of downtown New Albany. We have quite visibly underscored the notion that when you want something in this town you get in your car to get it.

The corner of Oak and State Streets, charitably speaking, could use some work. While it is just a short walk from the heart of downtown, a downtown whose progress toward vitality most recognize, it is miles away in terms of being included in that revival. It is part of the frayed edge of downtown leading to blocks of a street that is not prosperous and seems to not to have prospects of reaching that distant objective. (this, notwithstanding claims by several who have claimed State Street is the most valuable land inch for inch within the Metro area--Really?) The corner is largely disheveled and houses businesses which magnify the sense of vacancy seen, in fact, on one corner.

That corner, with its proximity to the city center, should be held to a higher standard and it should be developed with an eye toward integrating into a  downtown with a larger footprint. It should serve as a bookend to the downtown (I started to use the more common term in mall building of an "anchor", as in anchor store, but in this case the literal meaning of anchor seems closer to the mark). And when development infills the space between the city center and the corner of Oak and State, a new bookend could be placed farther out the street.

But now the new store presents a bit of a wrinkle in that plan. Assuming something is finally resolved with the owner of the heavy equipment/truck business in the old Lang garage, and the corner is developed integrally with downtown, the renewed block would have a void. But unfortunately, the void will not be able to be developed because it's already filled with tangible nothingness.

New Albany sits at a crossroads, thanks to the opportunities presented by a revivified downtown and  a building trend of support for local businesses, in both goods and services. We have a chance to get this right. We must revisit building standards and undertake the difficult work of making those standards fit the needs of what is possible in New Albany today. We can ask for better than what has appeared on State Street. We can do better.

 

If Only

I can't or won't explain how I ran across this photo. The official caption is "The Unveiling of the Official Portrait of the 43rd President."

If only...

This Side of the Line

In recognition of Memorial Day I'm in search of one of the greatest war movies I've ever seen, Terrence Malick's, "The Thin Red Line". While I haven't seen the movie in at least ten years, I recall it offering an ambivalent exploration of heroism and the horror of war.

As the young son of a World War II veteran, I recall a tinge of disappointment in my father as he related that his five years in the Army Air Corps, and a year or more in the South Pacific, had not yielded any dead Japs. Many years later, I now think of how truly fortunate he was to have been spared that terrible duty.

Beware the Modern Scrivener's Tools

Following is an excerpt from the minutes of the April 19, 2012 City Council meeting. It is a direct copy of the official minutes. While my words will not be chiseled aside those of Lincoln, Roosevelt or Churchill, the excerpt may stand as a cautionary note on the danger of relying on spell-check as the only editing tool.

Mr. Gonder stated that the ordinance is a compilation of ordinances that were being enforced around the state and some of the other examples were president of the Chambers of Commerce and the largest employer of the city, and the fact of the matter is that he specifically included the Post Master which is certainly not a high-flatulent position but one that deals with a wide variety of individuals from all walks of life. He stated that he is offended that anyone would even suggest that anything he is supporting is racially biased because that is not who he is.

italics added

Density Good for Cities

Here's a link to an interesting article which points out one way New Albany can regain prosperity. It's a simple solution and, like Dorothy's ruby slippers,one we've had all along.

Granted New Albany's not Asheville, but plenty of people live here and have decided to stay here. Downtown New Albany's density has already been diluted to with a history of poor judgment and a proliferation of surface parking lots. So maybe we need to focus on near-density or walking-distance density.

Many of our houses near the heart of the city are ill-maintained, and so they are an impediment to realizing the potential we have for increasing prosperous density. But that's another topic for another day.

Down Fulda Way

One day in early February of this year I had driven to Tell City on business. Since I had finished earlier than expected, and perhaps due to the first tell-tale signs of Spring evident on that sunny day, I decided to come back to New Albany in a more circuitous route than normal.

I have an iphone which has a compass feature and a gps on it. "Pshaw", I said, "I don't need any help getting back to N.A. And besides, I might stumble across a new prospect for work." So before leaving the rather familiar setting of Tell City I loaded up my thermos with coffee and headed away from the river. Generally speaking, that should be north.

While I was finding little in the way of prospective business opportunities, I was dialed into the classic rock station on satellite radio on what must have been a momentous day in the history of Canned Heat, because an unusually long version of their magnum opus "On the Road Again" was followed immediately by their other magnum opus "Goin Up the Country". The sun was bright, the coffee was still hot and the road ahead seemed interesting and headed in the right direction.

Since I had just about given up the ruse of looking for business, although one never knows around which corner prosperity lies for a salesman, I was not paying particular attention to my precise latitude and longitude. I recall seeing a sign for Fulda, but I can't say for sure that I was in that town or had just seen a sign directing people toward it.

At any rate somewhere near, or near to someplace that could be directionally related to Fulda, I met Caleb. I think his last name was Blauch or Block. At first I was pretty sure he was "on" something. His two tone Studebaker Hawk swerved around a corner throwing dust in my general direction causing me to spill my coffee in an awkward and uncomfortable spot. I reacted by hitting the brakes too hard, I slipped off the gravel/asphalt road onto the shoulder and uncomfortably close to last year's corn field. My car, with American ingenuity engineered in, has a self-defense mechanism that causes the engine to stall out when sudden impacts occur, apparently such an impact occurred when I left the road.

As I was sitting in the immobile car, I was pleasantly surprised by the near-absolute quiet of the countryside. It was so peaceful, and, presumably deserted, the near miss not withstanding, that I thought I might be able to take off my soaked pants and put on my gym shorts from the bag in the back seat. I was in fact reaching around to get the gym bag when I heard a voice with an ever-so-slight German accent say, "far out man, are you OK? You drive like Steve McQueen."

Reluctantly, I got out of the car and only then, in the full sunlight, did I see the full need to change into something a bit more comfortable and a bit less soggy than the coffee-soaked khakis I was wearing. I must have presented a humorous sight to Caleb, as he was giggling uncontrollably at my situation. He offered to share with me a cigarette. "Do you want an Old Gold or A Rolled Gold?" Apparently he'd already made his choice. I declined either, but said I'd like to know what he was doing driving so fast on this road. "You know, it could have been more serious than it was, the way you came tearing down the road like you did." "Hey man, I don't ever want to hurt anyone, but have you heard that new one by Donovan, man? I was just groovin to "The Epistle to Dippy". Man, that is so out there, and I was trying to make up some more words for it. 'Cause I'm in a band and Donovan's so cool, he's hot, and he's one of our favorites."

I asked if he could stand by in case I need help getting back up on the road. That's when Caleb noticed that I had lost the air in my tire, and, in fact, the tire was at an odd angle. "Hey, man, I'm really sorry about this. I just live over there." He pointed in some indeterminate direction that seemed to suggest that he dwelled among the many trees beyond the corn field. He said he lived in a commune, although I truly believe he used the words, "intentional collective". Nonetheless, in this intentional collective was a guy named Ezekiel who Caleb promised had both a tractor to pull the car out of the mud and the skill to fix the bent wheel. I wasn't going anywhere, so I might as well go with Caleb in search of Ezekiel.

The Studebaker was a surprisingly nice ride. And the Dylanesque harmonica neck brace Caleb had been wearing as he tried to flesh out "The Epistle to Dippy" lay on the seat between us and seemed to be the missing piece as to why his attention had wandered at the fateful curve.

As we crossed the wood-decked bridge the unusual sight of the commune opened before my eyes. A full two blocks on both sides of a street were filled with store fronts. It looked like a back lot at a movie studio. The place was not exactly bustling, but people seemed to be shuffling from building to building engaged in commerce and the general tasks of city life. I've been to New Harmony many times. I know quaint. And I think I know genuine. This place was both quaint and genuine. The stores seemed familiar, but not. Then I saw the car lot, "Yoder's Wheels For You". I'm not a real car buff, but I think I didn't see anything newer than about 1965. There were probably fifteen or twenty cars under strings of multi-colored pointy flags and a, for lack of a better word, hippie sitting in the bed of about a 1950 something pickup truck strumming a guitar. Two unclothed pre-schoolers played under the shade of a tree; they were blowing bubbles and a dog was gleefully chasing after the bubbles. A cat sat atop a Rambler convertible, interested but uninvolved.

My eyes must have betrayed my puzzlement.

Caleb simply said, "We're Amish."

As we walked into his living room, his wife, Gert, seemed to have stepped out of the photo gallery in the Woodstock album. "Hello, I'm Gert. You've wet your pants." Caleb to the rescue with a retelling of the incident on the road. In his version the near-collision seemed a bit more my fault than his. But, hey Gert makes wonderful granola, and the yogurt and honey was outstanding, so imprecise assignment of the blame is OK with me.

As Ezekiel worked his magic on the bent wheel, Caleb explained that theirs is a break-away sect from the mainline Amish. While the original Amish ride in buggies, and will not use electricity from a power plant and in other ways have stopped the clock at about the turn of the Nineteenth Century, the intentional community into which I had stumbled stopped the clock in 1967, uses electricity to power only those appliances available in 1967 or earlier, and rides in cars that made in '67 or earlier.

This updating of the Amish way had been suggested as a means of keeping the younger ones involved in the faith. So during a long summer of discontent a few yers ago, the painful birthing of the "new order" began. Some had suggested that the any temporal brake be disengaged, that the Amish simply join the modern world. A not-so-fast mentality won the day, and 1967 was chosen as a compromise between the group who wanted pre-World War II and those who wanted the Eighties. "Everything still seemed possible in '67", Caleb explained.

All of the stores in town are resale shops. A party of elders within the commune have contacts within Goodwill stores, Salvation Army thrift stores, and a wide network of similar resellers. The record store carries Moby Grape, but you won't find Moby. As with the orthodox Amish, most of the food is produced within the community itself, so there's no necessity to search out time-capsule Twinkies or the like.

Caleb said they haven't had much trouble finding the material goods to keep their clocks set on 1967. But, he knows the young ones will always rebel. "It just comes with the territory, man. There's probably one of those kids out there right now that'll want to jump up to 1975 one of these days. That would blow my mind, but that's just life, man. It's a trip."

While the commune members, unlike their orthodox kin don't eschew photography, they insist that all pictures be taken with cameras extant in 1967 or earler. I didn't have my Brownie camera me, and I can never remember whether it takes 120 or 126 film anyway. So I'll just have to look over the pictures in my memory until I can get back out that way.

The Vagina Idealogues

As I stand near the river's edge, matches and gasoline in hand, it hits me that we have reached a point in political discourse very much like a fork in the road. Down one way lies capitulation. Down the other, gunfire, battle, no turning back. Both sides are in the fray. All in? Or just auditing the class?

People will often say, "there's no difference between the two political parties." On many issues that's true. Both swim, like spawning salmon, up the stream of unholy political effluence. Both seek favor from those with favor to bestow; those with their hands on Capitalism's master switch; those with the money, the dough, the sine qua non of our political system.

Yet one of our political parties seeks to do what most decent people used to shy away from. One political party operates from the scorched-earth play book. One political party stands astride the fork in the road and, like the Black Knight in Monty Python's "Holy Grail", dares anyone to pass who has not met the measure of its occlusive edicts.

Once there was a man named Lincoln. He stood for immutable principles. He believed in government "of the people, by the people, for the people." He believed in a nation which would rise to meet the expectations of its "better angels." He was a Republican. I am a Democrat. I have felt nothing like reverence for our country more than those evenings when I have stood before the Great Emancipator's statue and read his immortal words, "with malice toward none...". Yet today, his party, the Republican Party, has evidently thrown its lot in with those who wish to take this nation down a dangerous, intolerant, theocratic road.

Today the cudgel is women's' rights; specifically their health care rights, their rights to control their participation in the birth process. In states across the land, Republican after Republican have raised high their hands in salute to the efforts of their fellow party operatives in curtailing women's' health care choices.

In the last couple of days, a state legislator in Arizona put forth inane legislation which would require women using birth-control pills to enunciate the reason why they are using birth control pills. Apparently in this human's vision of Arizona, and presumably the United States of America, it's acceptable for the government to determine which female citizens have a legal right to birth-control pills. In this human's view, those who do not want the pills to control pregnancy have a right to the pills. Those who do wish to control pregnancy do not. Wouldn't Lincoln be proud of his progeny?

Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Mississippi and other states have, in response to Republican playbooks, (perhaps written by the Koch Brothers?) laid down the gauntlet for women across the land: cede control of your bodies to the State, or become an enemy OF the State.

Is this the United States of America as we have known it to be? Who are these radical Republicans? The most famous mouthpiece of the radical Republican Party is Rush Limbaugh. This sociopathic huckster has peed in the punch bowl of political discourse for nearly three decades. Is it not time for someone of the adult persuasion within the Republican Party to muzzle this incendiary boob? Need we rehash his "slut" and "prostitute" brayings?

In most of my writings on this blog I have stressed the difference between RADICAL Republicans and those who simply, through ancestry, identify themselves, and vote, Republican. I have in mind a picture of a sweet woman who was a dear friend of my Mother. She was, and presumably is, a Republican--I accept such membership in the Party of Lincoln. But, I can no longer give a pass to those who actively participate in the hateful, divisive, anti-American activities of the RADICAL Republican Party.

The leaders of this movement are engaged in a campaign to destroy the cohesion of our the nation. Decent members of the G.O.P. owe it to their nation and to their own sense of humanity to disavow membership in this party of intolerance and hate so long as it dances to the tune of the current agenda-setters of that party.
Recall that once your party answered the clarion call of OUR "better angels". Today it has become a shill for corporate masters and peddlers of intolerance.

From time to time we all lose our way.

E Pluribus Unum.