The hometown's pride on Veterans Day

Thanks to Eerie Indiana for posting images (and to Bing for providing the aerial image) of the New Albany National Cemetery.

The eleventh day of the eleventh month...

Thanks to TedF for posting these images of the New Albany National Cemetery a few years back.

The cemetery was a place that was across the street from my elementary school, down the street from paternal Grandma & Grandpa's house, and less than a block from my junior high school. It's a place that means a great deal for me and where my maternal grandparents were laid to rest.

Veterans Day Memories

Veterans Day Memories

Reposting from 2006

The picture shows a Cub Scout placing flags at the gravestones in the New Albany National Cemetery, my home town. It's one of one-hundred twenty-three national cemeteries, but it's the one that's clearly closest to my heart.

It was across the street from my elementary school, diagonal from my junior high, and probably three blocks from my high school. I spent many a time walking along the walls of the cemetery or walking beside them instead of on the walls when, for a time, I would choose to express deference toward those fallen and intered there. I never remember playing through the cemetery as I remember some friends doing, and the rare cuts through the cemetery were always oddly solomn for me, even though it wasn't anything resembling a spooky cemetery. There were nice, huge, old trees here and there, but the world was just outside the low walls, and nothing every was scary there to me.

And in 1991 my grandfather, a veteran of two American wars, was intered there. It is ther first funeral that I'd been through, and it just might still be the only one I've been through. He lived to a ripe of age - seventy-two - and certainly didn't die as any result of his service time, but it was comforting for the few years after that when I still lived in New Albany to know that I could stop by and see his gravesite at any time, nestled there among the rows and rows of identical headstones marking the graves of so many veterans and their families.

Today is Veterans Day, a time to remember how much has been given to us for what our country is today. No matter your feelings for the policies of the current administration - and mine are often negative - no matter whether you believe in the conflicts into which our current military men and women are being sent, remember to honor them for their sacrifice. Without those sacrifices, our country would not be what it is today.

Take a minute to thank a veteran today. Visit him or her. Stop by a memorial - the Chris Dyer memorial. Or simply pause your assuredly hectic life for a moment and thank them silently.

To know more about the New Albany National Cemetery, see any of these links:

• Wikipedia's brief entry for it
• National Cemetery Administration's information page

Thanks, Grandpa...
Thanks, Chris...
Thanks each of you...

Pride in the hometown

Thanks to Robert 'Bobby' Powell for posting this image of the New Albany National Cemetery.

You can go home again

That's the house I grew up in.

I was back in N'Albany this past week and saw that it was for sale.

In case you were curious, my old bedroom shows up at 1:50, and no, that dark wood around the windows doesn't at all fit with their all-white house.

A lot has understandably been redone since we moved out in like twenty-five years ago, and I'm especially curious as to why they've gone with the all-white/grey-carpet look throughout the house. My initial thought is to wonder if a contractor bought the house and neutralized it for a quick sale.

The actual listing is at this link, but I will warn you that there's a dog buried in the backyard.

Taco Punk - pairah or savior?

My mom sent me a a pair of clippings from the Louisville Courier-Journal this week.

One was about Wabash hiring a new president. Good to know because I didn't even know they were looking.

The other one was of more interest, however, as it was about a Wabash alumnus - whose time in Crawfordsville overlapped mine - and has opened a Louisville restaurant named Taco Punk. The restaurant markets itself as using only locally-sourced meets (and produce where possible), paying their employees a livable wage, composting or recycling nearly 90% of their waste, and serving high quality, quick service (fast?) food - primarily tacos. The restaurant is owned and cheffed (?) by Gabe Sowder, a Wabash grad from a year after me, and a native of Jeffersonville, Indiana, next door to New Albany, where I grew up.

This past summer Taco Punk got a scathing review in the University of Louisville's student newspaper, the Louisville Cardinal. questioning the revitalization (or gentrification, I'll admit I know nothing at all about the area other than where it is) of the Butchertown/Phoenix Hill/NuLu area of Louisville. The review reads to me like angry, college newspaper writing looking to yell about yuppies and rage against the food machine, all of which just might have colored the reviewer's opinions of the food.

Or maybe not; I haven't been to Taco Punk yet - hadn't heard of it before this weekend, honestly.

Sowder wrote a reasoned and polite rebuttal to the Cardinal review on his Facebook page, and he has since put up a Kickstarter to help them expand their catering business, build an outdoor dining/performing/art area (earning a metro sewer grant for rainwater runoff management), and keep the business afloat a little longer. The Kickstarter campaign has supporters and detractors again lined up and enraged.

I don't know about the gentrification (or revitalization) or the NuLu neighborhood. I'm more in the know about the Gateway Quarter in Cincinnati proper (and I'm not terrifically in the know there).

What I do know is that a Wabash man - a contemporary of mine, a guy from right next to my home town, is trying to do something good - for the environment, for his employees, for his hometown (or the major metro area in which he grew up, anyway), for local charities (promoting donation nights), for his neighborhood, and for his customers,

I pledged $50 to support him, and I wish him well.

If you happen to have a few bucks, feel free to pledge a few his way.

Conversation chains

Coach Sullivan sent me the following image of a sign that he found posted to a telephone pole in his neighborhood last week...

The phone number down there would connect you to Silver Creek High School just a bit north of where the Coach lives.

I forwarded the image onward to Calen who commented that, while she appreciated the old-school, subtle joke, she thought the well image would have been better replaced with something like this...

...because it better suggests "the level of curves they’d like for their well cleaner…because, after all, skin shrinks when it’s been removed from its original form."

While I agree that such a thought, I actually like the use of the simple, plain well graphic. It sells the sign as being more real because it seems like what somebody who actually needs a well cleaner would put on such a sign, but not one to be topped, I went searching for a better woman cleaner image. With the search terms "female cleaner", I got a whole lot of images and was amazed at how many different stock images of this woman there were...


I don't always understand the internet or the world of stock photography.

Whither Henryville?

I don't know what to say about the destruction in Henryville, IN.

I knew a teacher at Henryville High School a couple of decades ago and grew up not twenty miles from the High School that no longer exists.

I know I wondered why Princeton cancelled all evening activities this past Friday night, but I stopped wondering after I heard the stories on Saturday morning. Moscow, OH...Henryville, IN...and lots of other cities saw destruction that I hope never to experience but know that I'm lucky to have never seen. Thirty nine people died in one of the largest early-season tornadic outbreaks in recorded history.

I wish the families and folks well.

I can happily say that my folks lost nothing more serious than an awning, but I'll be sending my donation to help out. Give if you've got a couple of bucks.

Update: Crossing Paths

A few years back, I mentioned that a couple of grads from my high school. One in particular, Charlie Wen, has been doing a few big things this past year, but I just heard about them.

Apparently Charlie was the Visual Development Supervisor for Thor this past summer. Marvel Comics's website had a big interview with him talking about how he designed the final looks for Thor, Loki, and a number of other characters.

Charlie's most recent blog post mentions other work on Akira, Suckerpunch, Captain Nemo, Captain America, and Avengers.

A different Marvel post titles Charlie as Co-Visual Development Supervisor for Marvel Studios, and it has a bunch of his work on the upcoming Avengers film.

His Thor-centric artwork even appears to have been collected in a Marvel book, The Art of Thor, which I'm going to have to hunt down somewhere to flip through.

It's kinda frickin' cool to see that Charlie is such an amazingly big deal any more. I'm gonna say that he's probably the most successful of our grads from our class. CoachSullivan, can you think of anybody else who's bigger in his or her chosen field?

It could be worse...

With about thirty-plus RIFs at PHS being announced over Spring Break (by phone, just to make things that much more personal doncha know)...

With more than one hundred RIFs system-wide to be voted upon at Monday's PCSD School Board meeting...

With pending Board-Union negotiations needing to be wrapped up hopefully by the end of the school year...

With SB 5 having just become law on Thursday evening...

I'm expecting the attitude at PHS to be nothing but chipper for the rest of the year.

Could be worse, though. At least my district didn't put this video together...

Wearing my Bellarmine Hat

Congrats to Bellarmine on winning the D2 men's basketball national title.

It was an outstanding first thirty minutes and a sloppy last ten, but it's awesome to see a local team from across the river from my hometown, where CoachSullivan works, and that's lead by a player from my hometown high school come out victorious.

Things that matter: 1973 IHSAA Champs Stein

Last year, I saw the Princeton Vikings lost a nail biter to the Northland Vikings in the boys basketball state finals.  In 1996, I saw the New Albany Bulldogs fall in two overtimes in the state championship game to Ben Davis.  I wasn't in Indianapolis for the 1980 championship defeat of New Albany by Broad Ripple, and there was no way I was able to see New Albany's lone boys basketball championship in 1973 over South Bend Adams.

But I have proof, record that it happened, because I have the stein to prove it.

Originally, I'm sure my dad had the stein to prove it, and I'm guessing he was there at the game to see the high school where he worked - where he works - where he attended - win their only boys basketball championship.  I know him well enough to know that he wouldn't have missed that game.

I saw originally because the stein is mine now.  (No clue whether I'm effectively outing myself to my family here, but I do have some things in my house that weren't exactly asked for when I left home.)  It's been my stein since I left for Wabash in 1992, and I think it was in my room, on my shelves before that even.

The flip side has the  team roster and all of the tournament scores.

We're going to forgo wondering whether a championship won in the 2000's would ever be commemorated with a drinking stein (we can't even give out glasses as prom favors) and just revel in the coolness of that mug.

The gold accents, the bulldog shield, the jackboot stomping of Clarksville, the lack of classification in the title Indiana State Champions all are just little glimpses at the awesome.

I took the stein with me to Wabash - and my high school yearbooks, too - because I was and am proud of my time at New Albany.  I dug high school.  Dug the high school radio station, dug the hometown, dug tennis road trips and home basketball games.

I know I left the hometown, but I still love visiting and love having the stein on my shelves.




Oh, and by the way, NAHS also won a girls basketball championship in 1999, but they didn't make steins.

The Hometown

Standard local news fluff story on NAHS



Nice editing and lineups here...



Have to have basketball



New Albany National Cemetery - final resting place of my maternal grandfather...the first guy to speak was my neighbor growing up



Trainspotting, here we come



N'Albany little league against Hamilton



A simulated flyover



World Hoop Day?



N'Albany's greatest jazz musician



Balloon launch with Harvest Homecoming



Harvest Homecoming entertainment



Harvest Homecoming parade



And N'Albany's most famous citizen

Happy Anniversary

Today the oldest high school radio station in the world turns 60.

Major congrats to WNAS which came on air May 28, 1949 broadcasting that year's New Albany High School graduation.

Congrats to the home of the Bulldogs and where I first found a voice on the radio dial.

Feel free to listen in via their streaming feed today.

The glories of River Falls

Dude, I miss the malls back home.

There were - still sort of are - two mirrored malls in the small town bordering The Hometown. They're major shopping complexes in the Kentuckiana area, drawing - I'm gonna make a quick estimate here - like a billion people every year to the mecca of commerce that is Eastern Boulevard.

I mean, they have Wikipedia pages, for heaven's sake.

(An aside: is it heaven's sake or heaven sakes or heaven's sakes, huh?)

I remember hitting River Falls on its opening weekend when I was a sophomore in high school.

I remember playing mini golf at the upstairs course for the first step in my bachelor party as planned by The Best Man.

I had my first two dates with The Girl there - Alice and L.A. Story - as well as one of our final dates when she cut me loose in college after seeing Jurassic Park. Still hate that film.

I remember stealing a a shopping cart on Fathers' Day eve from the Wal-Mart attached to River Falls.

I miss the aimless idling around the upstairs of River Falls, killing Friday and Saturday nights in small parts of our seemingly giant (probably eight or ten most weekends) group of friends.

Gamer, CoachSullivan, can I get a shout out for the demise of River Falls?

Crossing paths

For Thanksgiving, The Girl and I went back to The Hometown and got a chance to visit with family and friends. In the process, I found out that a couple of people from my HS graduating class are doing some interesting things. Thought I'd point 'em out just so you know I've had a couple of very minor brushes with fame...

First up is Charlie Wen. I got to know Charlie during junior high even though he was in the opposite middle school in our district from me and got to know him better once we joined up in high school in some of the same classes. Admittedly, he and I parted ways in the maths as I was kinda better than he, but he was light years ahead of me in the artistic way. By the time we were in high school, he had already had one of his works hanging in the White House because he won a Congressional art contest.

We all kind of knew that Chuck was headed for an artsy life, as he headed to art school from NAHS. I remember hearing rumblings that he was working for Disney or Pixar a while back, but then this past weekend somebody mentioned that he was the art director for God of War II. Turns out that's not quite the truth as he's only one of the art directors for that game.

He's apparently a big enough deal that he's giving lectures and being picked as the art director for the new Thundercats movie.

Amazing, man...this was the kind of flaky guy who sat behind me in US History our junior year, whose parents owned the House of Wen (the Chinese restaurant in town which turned out to be Taiwanese), who I injured on the tennis court with a sharp volley to the nether regions.

Congrats, Charlie, for doing amazingly well for yourself.

Check out more about Charlie Wen:

• Charlie's blog
• One of Charlie's workshops with photos - dig the scruff
• Thundercats story
• Charlie mistakenly attributed to the class of '02 - get it right
• An interview in Game Informer
• Another lecture story

The second path that crossed mine is that of Craig Pumphrey, he of the new G4 show Human Wrecking Balls. In this show, Craig and his brother - both Bulldogs like me - take things apart with their bare hands. In the episode that I saw, they took a car apart using flying shoulder drops, spinning kicks, and total brute force. Sure, there's some sort of science guy to come out and explain how things break, but it's all about two big dudes beating the crap out of something - a car, a hotel room, a whatever.

And I was in the same graduating class as the older brother. Gamer, CoachSullivan, and I were hanging this past weekend, and we totally saw him in the old yearbooks. None of us knew him as anything more than a guy who threw shotput on the track team and maybe was around school with us, so it's not like we were in the same circles, but I can say with absolute certainty that his path didn't match mine after high school either.

Check 'im and his brother...





The blond one, Craig, is now a cop in The Hometown.

Only the best and the brightest, man.