Eastern Cemetery: Even Tombstones Die

Stones: An Ode to Eastern Cemetery

Some are white but most are grey
From time or lack of care.
Appearance means so little
Since no one visits there.

Some were grand but none withstand
Quiet time that tiptoes by
And leaves behind this epitaph:

Even tombstones die.
* * *
Louisville's Eastern Cemetery, located on Baxter Avenue next to Cave Hill Cemetery, is a controversial burial ground plagued by legal troubles. Born in 1848 as an act of philanthropy, the cemetery was closed by the attorney general 140 years later after decades of overburials and neglect. Today, the enduring monument of Eastern Cemetery is the love and affection of those who try to maintain it.

August's Sting

It has been dry in Louisville this August. All the insects are hiding or lethargic during the day.

But this fellow visited me at my window yesterday. We shared a little of the morning together. I enjoyed his company, and love his face. I hope you do as well.

Covington ascending

In rough geographic terms, Covington, Kentucky, is to Cincinnati as Hoboken, New Jersey, is to New York City. An evening in this riverfront city, an hour and a half upriver from Lousiville, reminded me of Covington's architectural and topographical beauty. Perhaps no other building in Covington is as eye-catching as The Ascent at Roebling's Bridge, designed by Studio Daniel Libeskind:

The Ascent at Roebling’s Bridge in Covington provides a dynamic addition to the skyline of the greater Cincinnati area and is a dramatic departure from the surrounding waterfront buildings. Its curving crescent form and sloping roof line are designed to maximize views, with each unit having an unobstructed view of the Cincinnati skyline. . . . The building was completed in March 2008.

Not everyone admires The Ascent. Archidose.org confesses a little vertigo upon viewing The Ascent's "swooping form" and "its skin, its solid/void patterning and [its] mirrored glass."

Covington also boasts a rich collection of older structures, such as the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption on Madison Avenue (left) and the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge (right):

Tibetan Monk Makes Sand Mandala @ Louisville

A Prayer for World Peace

Entitled "Prayer for World Peace", designed and created by Tibetan monk Yeshi Palden who traveled from New York to Louisville to make the sand painting at Zen Garden. Completed April 13, 2008.

Cave Hill Cemetery

Cave Hill Cemetery is a beautiful place to walk, to reflect, to honor. There are many monuments of note there. Some monuments honor well-known members of the Louisville community. Some monuments are testament to the love and pain felt by those left behind.

If you are living in Louisville (or visiting), I can assure you, Cave Hill is worth a visit.

Above are a couple photos of the Tingley Fountain. You can see other photos from Cave Hill on my Flickr site.

Louisville from the Air (July 18, 2008)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/86764746@N00/sets/72157606345711678/ (Picture gallery of Louisville from the air taken July 18, 2008)

The Dinka Mona Lisa

Louisville is home to a growing Sudanese Dinka community. Here a Dinka woman arrives early for a church service in south Louisville.

Fixin' to get ready to get started

On the eve of the implosion of the Riverview Square Office Building to make way for the new Louisville arena (the site is visible on the right at the terminus of the Clark Memorial Bridge), no one could forsee that the arena financing would also implode within days.

An Afternoon at the Louisville Zoo

Afternoon in late July may not be the best time to see animals at their most active, but it is a good, lazy way to spend the day. As I've mentioned before, the zoo is a lovely place to take children, but it's also a great place to animal watch, people watch, and take a look at what nature has to offer. The Louisville Zoo offers great walking, beautiful habitats, and a few opportunities for food and drink.

Gorilla Forest provides information about gorilla habitat and information about the issues surrounding poaching, shrinking habitat, and conservation efforts.

Scotty is the name of our baby elephant. Now a year old, Scotty is enjoying new foods, playing in the water and basically acting like any excited, happy child.

The Zoo has a refurbished carousel that is both beautiful to see and (based on enthusiastic laughter of children) a joy to ride.

For more photos from the Louisville Zoo, please feel free to visit my Flickr site.

The real Gdańsk, as part of the Frugal Traveler's grand tour of Europe

Ever mindful of the real Gdańsk, whose German name (Danzig) inspired this blog, I am pleased to present a video drawn from the New York Times. The Times' Frugal Traveler feature has made Gdańsk the tenth stop on its twelve-city grand tour of Europe.

Annabelle

Within the expressive idiom of American folk music, is there a more compelling example of literary naturalism than Gillian Welch's 1996 ballad, Annabelle  (on Revival)?

In previous blog posts, on Jurisdynamics and MoneyLaw, I've come close to answering the question. Now I wish to say, emphatically, that Annabelle might well be the perfectly composed song in the Southern folk tradition:

Gillian Welch, Annabelle , Revival (1996) (live on YouTube)

We lease twenty acres and one Ginny mule
From the Alabama trust
For half of the cotton and a third of the corn
We get a handful of dust

We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why

I had a daughter, called her Annabelle
She's the apple of my eye
Tried to give her something like I never had
Didn't ever want to ever hear her cry

We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why

When I'm dead and buried
I'll take a hard life of tears
From every day I've ever known
Anna's in the churchyard she got no life at all
She only got these words on a stone

We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why

Frankfort Foray

I spent the end of the week in Frankfort, Kentucky. It's a lovely river town and home of the state's capitol. The old downtown has some great architecture, some good restaurants, and a great bookstore called Poor Richard's Books.

Poor Richard's is one of the reasons I am always willing to go to Frankfort. The bottom floor is a nice independent bookstore, where you can always find something of interest. And then there's the second floor. On the second floor, you find used books. Old books. Not so old books. Musty treasures. The lights are weak and quivering, so it's best to climb up there when the sun is shining. The second floor is an attic loft. Glorious, dust dancing in the light, and oddities of all sorts. I always feel I'm climbing up a flight of stairs and back 150 years when I go there. It seems like something out of a Dickens novel. Hot in the summer. Cold in the winter. And always treasures. Books with stories only limited by your own imagination.

Oh, I should mention that my husband, Kurt, a Kentucky historian and bibliophile, thinks Poor Richard's is one the best bookstores to locate books on Kentucky -- both new and old.

In addition to Poor Richard's, we visited the Frankfort Cemetery, visited some historical sites, and I got a few good photos. Hope you like them.

An angel from Frankfort Cemetery







The state capitol from across the river.








From the Liberty Hall Garden.

Ain’t No Reason (Things Are This Way)

There ain’t no reason things are this way
It's how they always been and they intend to stay
I can't explain why we live this way
We do it everyday.

Brett Dennen sings Ain't No Reason (Things Are This Way):

Craft Conference in Louisville

“Craft Conference ‘08: Unbridled Craft” will be held August 15 & 16 in Louisville, Kentucky, at the The Kentucky Museum of Art & Craft.

The conference will include workshops on felting, beading, woodturning, precious metals clay, metalsmithing, ceramics, bookmaking, printmaking, mosaics, puppetry, shibori, and leatherworking. Descriptions of the workshops (and registration) are available online.

I reaffirm my allegiance

Editor's note: The following letter, I Reaffirm My Allegiance, was originally published in the Washington Post on July 4, 1976:

What am I?

I am a free man — a good and decent man — a man of compassion, generosity, and understanding — a true friend, a steadfast ally, and a bitter foe.

I owe my allegiance to a government founded in the belief that among the rights of man are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Indeed, I would acknowledge no other. I can redress my government for injury; not satisfied with redress, I can elect a new one. I have watched my government function smoothly during periods of transfer of power caused by re-election, assassination, and resignation.

While other nations have a distinct race, religion, and/or geographic denominator, I live among people of my home without fear of intrusion by anyone — citizen or government designee — unless they have my personal invitation or a duly authorized search warrant.

I have a press to keep me informed — a press free to write, without inhibition, the truth as they see it. A press that needs fear no repression, no retaliation, no censorship so long as it prints the truth.

I live under a system of justice, merciful and fairly administered, where I am assumed innocent until proven guilty — a system which provides me appellate privilege while denying it to the power of the state.

I am free to go anywhere I want, earn my living in any way that suits me and, based on that freedom, I have created a standard of living unequalled in the history of man and envied the world over.

I have suffered in humility at the consequences of my mistakes — economic deprivation, social injustice, unequal opportunity and racial prejudice to name a few — but, once aware of these mistakes, I have set out to right the wrongs they created.

I have faced challenges to my way of life. I have fought and died countless times from Lexington and Concord to Vietnam. I was humbled at Valley Forge, Pearl Harbor, Corregidor and Malmedy. But these experiences gave me the character I needed to go to Yorktown, Gettysburg, Midway and Normandy. I cherish my freedom above all else — I bow to no tyrant.

I am two hundred years old today. I have never been so proud of my ancient heritage, so grateful for my present situation, and so confident of the future. Today, I reaffirm my allegiance to, faith in, and love of my country. To the proposition that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth, I do humbly pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor.

I am an American.

Louisville: This is our chance!

Vanguard Cinema hopes to open a space at the Mellwood Arts Center. This venue will be set up to screen everything from David Lynch, to animé, to Evil Dead! Add to that, they plan to have food, a full bar, and, well, EVIL DEAD!!!! (I don't know what else to say to get you there.)

They are planning "walk-in movies" night on August 15, which will include food from Christopher Seckman (North End Cafe), brews from New Albanian Brewing Company, and the Derby City Roller Girls.

If this isn't a party, I don't know what is.

I want to encourage you guys to visit the Louisville Vanguard Cinema site. With the current economic vibe, they aren't sure if this venture can fly. Visit the site and let them know how often you might visit. Better yet, become a member. $50 gets you 10 tickets, a bumper sticker, a Tuesday admission ticket, and a discount on merchandise. (Plus, if the venture doesn't materialize, they'll give you your money back.)

Louisville deserves a great theater for art films, nontraditional films (and — did I mention Evil Dead?) I miss the Vogue Theater. We need to replace her. Vanguard Theater could do that.

Great things to do with children in Louisville

Ah, summer. Lazy days. Children with no homework. No classes. Nothing to do? If you and your children are searching for something fun and/or educational to do this summer, Louisville has a myriad of wonderful kid (and adult) friendly places to visit.


J.B. Speed Museum
The Speed Museum has a wonderful permanent collection that will wow adults and teens. However, if you have children (or can borrow one), visit the museum's Art Sparks Interactive Gallery. Art Sparks has hands-on activities and exhibits to interest children and the adults who visit with them. The gallery has a section devoted to activities appropriate to children under the age of five. There are Saturday workshops, and a room filled with art supplies to allow a child's imagination run wild. Art Sparks really does ignite a child's imagination and offers an air-conditioned escape from the heat of July. Admission is $5 per person (free to museum members).

Louisville Science Center
The Louisville Science Center is a wonderful place for the whole family to learn more about everything from dinosaurs to battling bacteria. For children under the age of seven, the museum has an interactive exhibit called Kidzone.

The Louisville Zoo
Our zoo is beautiful (and I'm not biased). It has some great exhibits, including Lorikeet Landing, which allows visitors to sit in the habitat and feed the birds. These amazing birds will land on the people who enter their space (note to parents: great photo-opportunity!). The zoo also has Glacier Run Splash Park, a cool place to play in the water while seeing polar bear, seal and sea lion exhibits.

Enjoy Louisville. Enjoy the summer.

O lost!

Long grow the days, and long lie the shadows. The year's second half is upon us. With fractal precision, life's second half has likewise begun. Or so I hope and fear, all at once. In words written under the pseudonym Fiona Macleod and familiar to the readers of this forum:

• Here in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still,
• But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.

Some two dozen weeks after I originally wrote O lost!, some of the emotional urgency has indeed dissipated. Perhaps it is merely a function of light and warmth; if so, the cycle will turn by and by, and soon enough I shall again walk among the shadows. But if perchance by the light of fireflies I have lain soft and supped in languor, may the Lord not let die in my heart the memory of loneliness and bitter cold.

---

O lost!
[Originally published on Jurisdynamics, January 28, 2008]
It is the darkest hour in the deepest night of the coldest season, and through the shadows I reach for twin sources of literary inspiration linked by the most tenuous of connections. O lost!


First I look across time and the river to a Southern writer not yet forgotten, the master behind the South's greatest autobiographical protagonist, Eugene Gant:

When will they come again? When will they come again?

The laurel, the lizard, and the stone will come no more. The women weeping at the gate have gone and will not come again. And pain and pride and death will pass, and will not come again. And light and dawn will pass, and the star and the cry of a lark will pass, and will not come again. And we shall pass, and shall not come again.

What things will come again? O Spring, the cruellest and fairest of the seasons, will come again. And the strange and buried men will come again, in flower and leaf the strange and buried men will come again, for death and the dust will die. And Ben will come again, he will not die again, in flower and leaf, in wind and music far, he will come back again.

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again!

Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel (1929).

And thence I look forward to Lost, even though I linger still in the twilight between seasons three and four. Lost is filled with characters who articulate diverse brands of faith, with wildly variable degrees of sincerity and credibility, but none speaks more powerfully than Mr. Eko, whose path to the priesthood took him through a simultaneous baptism, confirmation, and ordination in a shower of heroin. Though Mr. Eko slew many men, the last three with a machete while wearing a clerical collar he had not yet earned, he was holy beyond contemplation, let alone expression.

This was Mr. Eko's final confession:

I have nothing to confess because I have not sinned. Everything I have done, I have to done in order to survive. When I was a boy, I killed a man in order to save my brother. I am proud of what I have done. I have done the best I could with the life I was given.

I have done my best. I confess nothing, except this report as true as it is heartfelt: Lost, I too walk between the twin shadows of despair and defiance.

Amazing grace, in the key of black

» Cross-posted at Jurisdynamics «

Negro Spiritual Singers, from the Works Progress Administration's Federal Music Project, entertained King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the White House, June 8, 1939.

addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart — Ephesians 5:19, RSV

The Negro spiritual is a powerful and influential art form. Through their music and their words, spirituals transformed the tragedy of slavery into an enduring expression of faith, hope, and love.

Among the many beautiful songs within this tradition, Amazing Grace stands out. And how:

Hat tip: Already Not Yet and Rick Ianniello.
Wintley Phipps says he has God on his side, at his back, and in his soul. I am in absolutely no position to question any of that. I come solely to show that Reverend Phipps also has music theory and cultural history in his favor.

Amazing Grace uses a pentatonic scale. Properly spaced, five intervals within any octave are sufficient to generate an astonishing diversity of musical idioms, including Celtic, blues, and Negro spiritual. The belief that the pentatonic scale is the native tonality of children underlies Orff Schulwerk, a method of music education perhaps best known for withholding keys from kids' xylophones.

It's easy to generate a pentatonic scale. You can climb the circle of fifths on a piano. Starting at middle C, this trip yields the note sequence C G D A E. If you have a violin handy, the strings there give you the last four steps in that sequence: G D A E. Rearranging all five notes within a single octave gives you the pentatonic sequence, C D E G A.

Or you can subtract two from seven and yield five. Remove the fourth and seventh scale degrees from the familiar "do-re-mi" diatonic scale — or F and B — and you will reach the same C D E G A sequence.

Most simply, you can follow Reverend Phipps's advice and play just the black keys: G♭ A♭ B♭ D♭ E♭. How sweet the sound.

Finally, as for the cultural history of the Negro spiritual, I am pleased to leave the explanation to The Spirituals Project, whose mission is "[t]o preserve and revitalize the music and teachings of the sacred songs called 'spirituals,' created and first sung by enslaved Africans in America in the 18th and 19th centuries":

Editor's note: This Spirituals Project video presents an excerpt from I Can Tell the World, a new documentary by Larry Bograd and Coleen Hubbard.

We hate Duke

»  Cross-posted at The Cardinal Lawyer  «

In Danzig U.S.A. and elsewhere in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, we take college sports very seriously. Partisans of the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky spare nothing in passionately supporting their teams — and in vigorously opposing their teams' rivals. If there is one opponent that unites the Cardinal Nation with Wildcat Country, it is Duke University's Blue Devils.

True to the traditional athletic preferences of Kentucky and North Carolina — two states where the cultivation of tobacco surely gives rise to their unusual predilection, unknown elsewhere in the South, for basketball over football — Louisville and UK partisans have historically trained their hatred at Duke's basketball program. But a recent decision by Judge Phillip J. Shepherd of the Franklin County (Ky.) Circuit Court gives people across the Bluegrass State reason to despise Duke football as well:

Maybe you can win for losing

A Franklin [County], Ky., Circuit Court judge sided with a devilishly clever argument and ruled in favor of Duke University yesterday in a breach of contract lawsuit brought forth by the University of Louisville.

Judge Phillip J. Shepherd agreed with Duke’s lawyers — the football team is so bad that any replacement would do.

U of L sued Duke for $450,000 — or a series with another Atlantic Coast Conference opponent — after the Blue Devils backed out of a four-game football contract with three dates remaining.

The contract called for a penalty of $150,000 per game if a date with a “team of similar stature” could not be arranged.

Duke’s lawyers argued the Blue Devils, which have a record of 6-45 over the past five seasons, were so bad that any team would be a suitable replacement.

Judge Shepherd agreed in his summary:

“At oral argument, Duke (with a candor perhaps more attributable to good legal strategy than to institutional modesty) persuasively asserted that this is a threshold that could not be any lower. Duke’s argument on this point cannot be reasonably disputed by Louisville.”

Kentucky courts interpret contract terms “according to their plain and ordinary meaning” barring any ambiguity. According to Shepherd, finding a suitable replacement literally meant any NCAA Division I team would suffice – including those in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-AA.)

After the teams played their initial game in 2002, a 40-3 U of L victory in Durham, N.C., Duke opted out of the remaining games in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Thanks in part to Duke’s cancellation, the Cards scrambled to find a 12th game for the upcoming season before signing an agreement with Memphis in February. U of L will play at Memphis on Oct. 10 and the Tigers are scheduled to play at U of L in 2010.

“We’re disappointed with the ruling,” said U of L spokesman Kenny Klein. “We will take our time to review the decision and explore our future options.”

[Other sources: (1) An earlier article in the Louisville Courier-Journal, (2) ESPN.com, and (3) Red Lion Reports.]

Strictly as a football fan, albeit one who is a Louisville Cardinals partisan, I respectfully disagree with Judge Shepherd. There is no adequate substitute for Duke football, a patsy nonpareil in college football. There simply is no other (1) Division I-A team (2) that plays such appallingly bad football (3) so consistently and persistently (4) all while maintaining its membership in a Bowl Championship Series conference.

As pleased as I am to witness a revival of the Louisville-Memphis rivalry, an old Metro Conference basketball grudge match moved to the gridiron, what I really want is a series of virtually guaranteed wins against the worst major college football team. And that team, despite its university's immense wealth and its city's sports tradition (think of the Bull Durham and the 1942 Rose Bowl), is the Duke Blue Devils.