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8.28.2020

“Will I ever get to meet the other kids in my class?” — Emilia, my first-grader

FIVE.

1. Amy Sherald, who depicted Michelle Obama for the National Portrait Gallery, did a painting of Breonna Taylor for the cover of the new Vanity Fair. The issue’s guest editor, Ta-Nehisi Coates, conducted a series of interviews with Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, and the piece is presented in her own words. “The funeral home calls me when they get her body. The police never let me see her. They aren’t talking to me. It’s after midnight when I get the call. And they say I can come see her. Everybody is with me. My whole family — my four sisters, my dad, my daughter Juniyah, my sister’s boyfriend, my boyfriend, the kids, a couple of close friends. Nobody wants to be left out. And when we see her body, it’s just tears and screams. I walk out the home because everybody is just crying. And I am just so pissed off that she is lying there.”

2. Several weeks ago, I mentioned how former U of L player Donovan Mitchell had “Say Her Name,” the Breonna Taylor rallying cry, on the back of his Utah Jazz jersey when the NBA’s resurrected season resumed. My colleague, managing editor Mary Chellis Nelson, crunched some numbers: “At least 285 players have chosen to use one of the 29 NBA-approved social-justice messages on the backs of their jerseys. Sixty-seven players selected ‘Equality’ (the most popular) or its translation in their native language. Four — Lance Thomas (Brooklyn Nets), Harry Giles III (Sacramento Kings), Jonathan Williams (Washington Wizards) and Mitchell — chose ‘Say Her Name.’” This week, an NBA players’ strike in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, postponed playoff games. Mitchell said, “When does it stop? When do we feel comfortable? When do we feel safe?”

3. As of this writing, the Louisville Story Program is just $141 away from its Kickstarter goal of $11,990, which will go toward publishing The Fights We Fought Have Brought Us Here, with personal essays by ten writers from Central High School.

4. Haiku Review:
 
The First Saturday in September
 
A Derby champ crowned.
Roses, with no fans around.
Does it make a sound?

5. And now some Burgoo, aka an emptying of the roadkill stew that is our monthly inbox.
 
Car vending machine! / Fund for the Arts president and CEO Christen Boone will leave her position next June. / CBD for you and me! / The Responsible Bar and Restaurant Coalition of Louisville has formed. / I keep forgetting that Louisville City FC is playing matches. / The Community Foundation’s Trisha Finnegan has been selected for a national fellowship focused on racial equity. / The Leadership Louisville Center graduated its 41st class. / “DO NOT forward this to anyone!” / What day is it? / The zoo euthanized a 23-year-old giraffe named Malaika, who had musculoskeletal problems. / The Kentucky Science Center is offering scholarships for its Camp NTI. / Bernheim is creating an adventure playground called a “Playcosystem.” / The Ali Center launched a virtual racial-justice program called “I Am America.” / “Prepping for Christmas in August? Why not?!” / Froggy’s Popcorn donates 25 cents of every bag sold to animal-advocacy groups and shelters. / What month is it? / Spalding landed a $1.28-million grant to help social work master’s students with disadvantaged backgrounds. / The biggest Derby favorite in 28 years. TwinSpires handicapper Ed DeRosa said, “Tiz the Law is virtually bombproof, and only bad luck is going to stand in the way of him and a Derby victory.” Bombproof? Can we pick a different word? / MMJ’s album Z is 15 years old this fall. / “Virtual 5K”. / Farm+House Louisville is a virtual farmers’ market offering delivery and pick-up orders. / In October, Ronald McDonald House Charities of Kentuckiana will auction off five bottles of Pappy, packaged as a flight. / Remember school buses? / Imagine if COVID-19 testing were as efficient as the Chick-fil-A drive-thru on Shelbyville Road. / Bet JCPS students could’ve predicted that other students would hack into their virtual classes. / Olmsted Parks Conservancy and Louisville Parks and Recreation want the public’s input on a conceptual plan to improve natural trails in the Olmsted Parks. / The non-Kentucky Derby Festival “A Tribute to the Great Steamboat Race” will be Sept. 2, with the Belle of Louisville vs. the Mary M. Miller instead of the traditional Belle of Cincinnati. / “#WomenStrongerTogether,” a show of paintings by Debra Lott and work by other artists, through Oct. 17 at Pyro Gallery. / What is time? / And 2020 in a nutshell: “Virtual press conference releasing results of Kentucky cockfighting investigation.”

Support for Louisville Magazine comes from the Eye Care Institute. And now, a test:
Can you read this? Wait, you can? Whoa. You must have super vision or something.
Having trouble reading that? Maybe get your eyes checked.

OH!

A little something from the LouMag archive.

Our Derby issue last year included a story by historian Emily Bingham titled “A Race About Race,” documenting the collision of the 1969 Run for the Roses, sitting president/Derby attendant Richard Nixon and U of L’s Black Student Union. During Derby Week, members of the BSU occupied the office of university president Woodrow Strickler, advocating, Bingham wrote, “to increase Black Louisvillians’ involvement at U of L and make the college’s offerings more relevant to African-American students.” One BSU circular focused on a need to “unlearn the white mind.” That evening, Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, predicted that “amnesty” for the students who were in Strickler’s office would only “encourage future explosions.” The next day, 20 “armed riot officers…arrested 22 demonstrators.”
            On Derby Day, protesters gathered outside the main gate at Churchill Downs, with one demonstrator holding a sign that read, “No. 1 pig Nixon set stage for others to brutalize Black people.” Bingham wrote that “the ritual sporting event — and a national TV audience in the millions — made the Derby a natural target for protest.
            “Two years earlier, in April 1967, Louisvillians fighting racial discrimination and segregation in residential housing boycotted downtown businesses. After the city’s Board of Aldermen failed to pass an open-housing ordinance, an organizer quoted in the C-J predicted ‘open hell’ for the Kentucky Derby that year. Festival officials scratched the annual Pegasus Parade for fear of violent unrest as Martin Luther King Jr. planned to attend a protest that would block traffic to the racetrack. Then Ku Klux Klan members appeared at Churchill Downs offering to help ‘keep order.’ According to the Louisville Times, a Klan leader said, ‘They either bar Negroes from Churchill Downs Saturday or find some other way to control them.’ Tension rose to such a pitch that King stayed away and the open-housing group canceled the demonstration. In 1968, a doping scandal disqualified winner Dancer’s Image. By ’69, Churchill Downs had a lot riding on a smooth Derby Day.”

TOO...

The Crescent Hill Craft House announced its permanent closure because of lost revenue due to the pandemic. (A second location of Parlour, the Jeffersonville pizzeria owned by the same restaurant group as Craft House, will take over the space.) Emilia, my first-grader, delivered this eulogy: “What?! Oh no! I really loved how they made mac ’n’ cheese and pretzel bread. And do you remember that one time when we brought gummy worms for after dinner but we didn’t eat them at the Craft House because we decided to walk to Comfy Cow and eat them on our ice cream? That was SO yummy.”

Josh Moss
editor, Louisville Magazine
jmoss@loumag.com

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