Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Sunday, October 2, 2022
Louisville coffeehouse workers tell owner they want the right to their union, not just their pronouns
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| The evident progressive values of this coffeeshop stopped when a possible union was in the offing, as the statement below by the workers pro-unionization movement asserts. |
When they make their purchases, signs by the counter tell customers each employee's name - and their pronouns.
Heine Brothers shops have satisfied the political leanings as well as taste buds of left-of-center Boomers, X-ers and Millennials since opening in 1994 in Louisville's eclectic Highlands district. And any nearby BLM rally, jazz festival, or Reiki practitioner is sure to be promoted by fliers inside one or more of the 17 Heine Brothers shops in greater Louisville.
Heine Brothers owners are glad to open their shops as gathering places, discussion spots,.jpg)
Mays then instructed workers to ask all customers in the store to leave immediately.
Heine Brothers workers involved in a unionization group called HB Workers Union said the stunningly swift closure at Douglass Loop wasn't by chance. They said that shop's employees were among the prime movers in that union drive, which was being made in conjunction with the Service Employees International Union.
Mays told public radio station WFPL the company's reasons for closing that store were not anti-union. He said that while every other Heine Brothers location outside of downtown had drive-through service, the design of the Douglass Loop store -- a tight triangle based on an early 1900s street car turnaround -- precluded drive-through.
An online statement by HB Workers Union members, however, called that explanation for the sudden closing, "outrageous and highly suspicious, considering this location has some of the most outspoken and visible union supporters who have been leading our organizing campaign.”
Douglass Loop Heine worker Gami Ray told online news source Spectrum News 1, "Our store was the first store to show up completely to the [union organizing] meetings; as well as the first store to complete our petition signings. We’ve been the most vocal about it online.”
Pro-union activists also have cited this statement in April 2022 by a Heine Brothers spokesperson on Louisville television station WHAS as indicating that stopping a union was a concern of the business, and consequently a prime motive for the Douglass Loop closure:
“While we respect our employees’ right to organize, we believe that, as a locally owned and operated company, Heine Brothers is well positioned to address the ideas and concerns of our employees without the involvement of a union."
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| Strategic battles at Heine Brothers' Douglass Loop coffeehouse once were a game, but now are a human rights struggle. |
In the historically pro-union city of Louisville, the national trend of coffeehouse baristas unionizing is alive: a Starbucks in Louisville's eastern suburbia has unionized. Moreover, the recently formed Old Louisville Coffee Co-op in that historic central city neighborhood is worker owned.
The Douglass Loop former Heine Brothers location will soon get a new tenant; a craft brewery will move in, and will sell Heine Brothers coffee.
Workers at Heine Brothers throughout the Louisville area will continue their unionization drive, which began in early 2022 after workers got no action from their request that the owners reinstate a customer mask mandate they felt was needed to protect their heath from Covid.
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| Inside and out, a conspicuous inactivity at Douglass Loop. Is that meant as a chilling message to union activist baristas? |
Organizers said increasing wages to livable levels from the basic $9.25 Heine Brothers pays is a central purpose of the effort to unionize. They also said the immediacy of the Douglass Loop closing underscored the need for a union, as being unionized would have required advance notification which would give workers time to negotiate better closing terms and look for new jobs.
A statement posted by the Heine Brothers owners inside the window of the closed Douglass Loop store, however, said that store's manager and employees had all been offered positions at other Heine Brothers locations. (Mays told media that offer also includes stipends to help with the transition, or severance benefits.)
On the window's outside a printout of an HB Workers Union twitter statement was recently posted. While noting that the Heine Brothers company projects a progressive image via Fair Trade coffee and the embracing of gender fluidity, the statement asked: "What's progressive about abandoning the workers who have run your store for years? What's progressive about abandoning the workers who learned the names of your regular customers?... We, the Heine Brothers organizing committee will not be intimidated or silenced by threats of store closures or other anti-union activity. Organizing is a right."
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Brian Arbenz lives in Louisville, where he supports struggles for just wages and benefits.
Wednesday, September 7, 2022
Saving democracy without succumbing to panic -- controlling those e-mail pleas that it's all up to me
The most important election of our time is coming -- again.
At stake is -- everything, just like in 2020, and the midterms of 2018, and so on back in the timeline of our 365-day-a-year election cycles.
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| The iPad has become an anxiety device. |
The outcome of these midterms also will show whether Republican jitteriness over the end of Roe v. Wade proves justified or just a bump in the road on their strategy of igniting their far right base by taking extremist positions.
So, yes, we should all be involved and stay informed -- even if that means lying awake a few nights until November.
But do I, a resident of Louisville, Ky., need to be made to feel personally responsible for who wins in Wisconsin, a state I've only been to one time?
"BREAKING POLL -- Barnes is up on Johnson in Wisc!" an email headline imposed on me as I was quietly scrolling the other night. I didn't know who either Barnes or Johnson were, but five minutes later, I certainly did.
Democrat Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes had expanded his lead to 7 points on Republican U.S. Senate incumbent Ron Johnson, according to a Marquette University Law School poll.
Other equally impassioned emails tell me Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock is statistically tied with Republican Herschel Walker, the former football star who has written that he has Dissociative Identity Disorder. Walker was described in a 2001 police report as "volatile" and having "violent tendencies," and he has fathered three out-of-wedlock children, along with one with his then-wife, who told police Walker once held a gun to her head and threatened to pull the trigger. The candidate has not denied that allegation.
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| Unqualified, unstable and dishonest -- the perfect GOP credentials of Herschel Walker |
Walker is being treated for his mental illness by a theologically but not medically trained counselor who believes in demonic possession and touts methods debunked as pseudo-therapy.
The patient insists his DID is under control, but he has recently falsely claimed he had been a member of Georgia law enforcement, and said he graduated from the college he actually left after his junior year.
It gets worse: Walker, a critic of black men who are absentee fathers, also at first said he had just one out of wedlock child, but later was found to have three. When asked about this, he insisted he somehow had not failed to disclose their existence.
And this person is tied with Senator Raphael Warnock, a recognized scholar, theologian, and family man who has stood in the shoes of Martin Luther King Jr. by serving as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church.
MSNBC explains exactly who has McConnell fretting over "candidate quality."
Back to the nightly e-mails, Georgia democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who is one of my favorite Americans today, isn't behind right wing incumbent Brian Kemp. No, no, let us say she is within the polling margin of striking distance and solidifying her hold on key voter groups, which is something like the kind of chin-up e-mail headlines I see on her race.
I love what Abrams is doing for voter access and fervently hope she wins, but when I see all these emails at once, it's like the internet is holding me personally responsible for Georgia's outcome as well as Wisconsin's -- oh, and Pennsylvania's, where populist liberal John Fetterman has an 8-point lead over TV doctor/huckster Mehmet Oz in a race to replace retiring Republican Pat Toomey. Still, lots of negativity by pro-Oz groups are ripping at Fetterman on many fronts, so I'll have to check nightly to see how that lead holds up.
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| As the U.S. leans Blue, the GOP leader feels blue. |
So I'm going to give another round of support to my candidates (note: as a federal employee, I need to make clear I am not urging anyone to give money) and shift those nightly grabber alarmist e-mails into the - as misnamed as this term is - junk bin.
I still love the progressives Raphael, Stacey, and John, but I'll enjoy a proper amount of sleep not having to drop off to fears that our democracy depends on precisely how many voters in places three states away from my home fall for a football star who can't seem to keep it straight how many children he has.
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Brian Arbenz lives in Louisville, Ky. USA, just a few blocks from - would you believe it, Mitch McConnell's house.
Thursday, March 24, 2022
Beer, girlfriends, guppies, and baby clothes -- in space?
The International Space Station has been good for humankind, as has space exploration overall. They've returned benefits far greater than the costs. But NASA and the other nations supporting the ISS might not be getting their money's worth on the closed captioning of online live space walk coverage. So, while watching this EVA on March 23, 2022, Houston, we've had a chuckle.
Thursday, June 3, 2021
From Glory to Grief: the early deaths of so many 1970s Indiana high school basketball stars
When you're a Hoosier, you forget all your cares by walking into a gym for a basketball game.
In high schools of all sizes, from Indiana's inner cities to its rural hamlets, the talents of players and the passion of fans of the game called "Hoosier Hysteria" erase from the mind such matters as the inclement weather, Monday's math test, past due bills, crime, and politics. And, certainly, life's tragedies - that's the last thing you think of at a basketball game.
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| JOY BEFORE TEARS: Terre Haute South fans hoist Mike Joyner after a 1977 tourney win. By year's end, he was dead in an aviation disaster. |
And yet -- when I have done online searches to find what became of some of those revered athletes I recall watching on television or in person at the Final 4 and elsewhere during the '70s and hence, I have often been stunned and saddened to find that their fates were that last thing you think of when watching the game that means life, youth and fun.
In events mostly involving vehicles, or sometimes illnesses, so many of my favorite Hoosier hardcourt luminaries had their lives cut short, often dying while still in their 20s. Their deaths were generally from unforeseeable accidents -- being in the wrong car or airplane at the wrong time. Check a YouTube on an Indiana basketball player from my high school and college years in the '70s and you just may see RIP in the comments, along with tear emoticons.
Here is the list of known deaths of standout players from the 1970s and early '80s who starred at Indiana's Final 4 or otherwise attained Hoosier high school basketball prominence:
Stacey Toran, a likeable, quiet Los Angeles Raiders defensive back who in 1980 had hit the 57-foot shot shown above in leading Indianapolis Broad Ripple High School to the state title game, died at 27 on August 5, 1989 when his car flipped over near his home in Marina Del Rey, Calif. He he was returning from a team open house at a high school in Oxnard which followed a pre-season practice with the NFL team.
Toran was engaged to be married when he died and described by Raiders teammates as pleasant and positive during the practice and open house. Still, he was well over the legal alcohol limit when his car crashed, but police said there were no skid marks or other indications of speeding.
A court level view of the great shot, which Stacey then describes.
Jack Moore, a 5-foot-8 guard whose outsized skills surprised opponents at the 1978 Final 4 as he led Muncie Central to a state championship, died in a private plane crash on March 3, 1984, two years after graduating from the University of Nebraska.
Moore and a business partner, stockbroker Gary Johnson of North Platte, Neb. were flying back from Indiana, where they had watched Moore's former high school team play. Johnson was piloting the plane, which ran into unexpected storms and fog over central Nebraska, then crashed on a ranch.
Moore had been revered at Nebraska and in Muncie as a smooth, agile court tactician and easygoing public role model. He quickly fell in love with his adopted home state, encouraging high school teammate Jerry Shoecraft, his best friend since childhood, to enroll at Nebraska and also play for the Cornhuskers.
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| Kevin Thompson at Terre Haute South |
A doctor diagnosed him with cancer, turning Thompson's planned battle for a starting spot with the Sycamores into a battle for his life. He died in January 1982, never having played a game at Indiana State, and leaving a wife, Tammy.
"He was a courageous young man who fought a good fight," Indiana State coach Bill Hodges said.
The day after Kevin Thompson died, Hodges resigned the coach position. He had gone through a difficult post-Larry Bird losing season in 1979-80, a divorce, then the death of a promising forward, but more so a young person Hodges had befriended during recruitment efforts from just across town.
"I grew to know him so well, and it tore me apart," Hodges said.
Tony Winburn of Jeffersonville High School was -- like Jack Moore -- 5-8 and won fans with an energetic, overachieving style of play. Also like the Muncie star, Winburn died in a plane crash in his 20s. Marion Anthony "Tony" Winburn was one of 29 people, including the entire University of Evansville basketball team, killed Dec. 13, 1977 when their propeller charter plane crashed just after takeoff on a planned trip to Tennessee for a game. The crash also killed head coach Bobby Watson and acclaimed Evansville sportscaster Marv Bates.
Winburn was a star on the 1972 Jeffersonville Final 4 team, which lost in double overtime to that night's state title winner. In 1973 his Jeff squad had been ranked No. 1 during the season, but was stunned in the state tourney's first round by arch rival New Albany, a team which had struggled mid-season but went on to win one of the most surprising state championships ever. They stole the title glory Jeffersonville fans believed would be theirs.
A New Albany substitute who helped turn that team's fortunes around was Steve Miller, a 6-8 sophomore forward who helped point his squad to the 1973 Final Four, but did not play there. Expense restrictions limited state tourney rosters. Miller was a starter his last two seasons at New Albany, and joined former rival Tony Winburn as a 6-9 forward on the ill-fated Evansville Purple Aces team. Miller was married four months before he died.
Terre Haute South Vigo High School's Mike Joyner, who was a senior on South's 1977 Final Four team, died in the crash that December after playing four games in his freshman season at Evansville. The Purple Aces' last game, three days before their deaths, was at Indiana State University in Mike's hometown, giving him some family time, including seeing his newborn sister Peggy for the second and final time. Mike also gave his mother Martha Joyner his Christmas gift wish list, which included sweaters and an electric blanket, she told the Terre Haute Tribune-Star in 2014.
As though Evansville fans hadn't had enough pain from the Dec. 13, 1977 crash wiping out their beloved Purple Aces team, a coincidental accident two weeks later killed the sole team member who had avoided doom by what seemed like the divine fortune to have a serious pre-season practice ankle injury that bumped him from the roster, keeping him off the plane.
Freshman David Furr, 18, who during his ankle's healing was working as a statistician at home games, then after the plane crash planned to join a new Evansville squad to be rebuilt the next year from catastrophe, was driving on Dec. 27 with his 16-year-old brother near their hometown in Illinois when their vehicle was hit by another driver, killing the brothers.
As is detailed on the website bird in flight dot com, which includes stories of aviation deaths it says contain a hint of predestination, the car carrying David Furr and his brother Byron Furr was hit by a pick up truck near Newton, Ill. while David was home from the bereaved campus on holiday break. The brothers were returning from a high school basketball game in Olney, Ill.
The Furrs' deaths added one more community to the list of stricken hometowns of Purple Aces players. Thirty years after the plane crash, a story in the News and Tribune in Jeffersonville included remembrances by Tony Winburn's mother Edna Winburn of half-mast flags throughout the city of Jeffersonville and constant expressions of condolences to her.
"A lot of people around here were very hurt and concerned about Tony," Edna Winburn told the newspaper. "And people still bring it up to me now, but not as much as in the past.
"He enjoyed going to school and playing his sports," she said of her son, who would have earned a business degree from the University of Evansville in the spring of 1978. "He was just a very congenial guy, never gave me any trouble. I'll never get over wishing he was still here."
Steve Miller's widow Vicky Peay, who has since remarried, said in that 2007 story: "The people around here could not have been better," adding that their kindness after the tragedy enabled her to become skilled at helping people after painful losses. "You can take something like this and become a bitter person. Or your can use it for good and help others."
Tommy Baker, in the video excerpt below from the 1974 Final 4 at Bloomington, is described as "in trouble" until a Jeffersonville teammate maneuvers in his direction to receive a pass from the then 6-foot-tall freshman. That brief interlude from early in Baker's great career for the Jeff Red Devils ominously foretells the path his life would take.
That un-glorious exit ended great hopes for IU stardom that began when -- as a Louisville newspaper sports columnist recalled it -- the high school senior Baker opened the curtains at his family's home in Claysburg, a historically black section of Jeffersonville, and gushed over seeing the legendary coach Knight getting out of his car on a recruiting visit.
There was much else that indicated Tommy Baker was a good match for Knight's program. The three-year starting guard at Jeffersonville was skilled at the motion offense, passing and pressure defense, the three legs of Knight's system which brought about an undefeated NCAA title in 1976. That was the same season that high school junior Tommy Baker led a talented Red Devil team that lost in the afternoon semis of the Final 4 by three points to that night's state champion Marion. In Baker's freshman and senior seasons, Jeffersonville also had state titles within their grasp, but suffered close tournament loses.
Back in Jeffersonville, Baker was arrested and imprisoned multiple times for selling cocaine, but critics of our nation's imprisonment-centered justice methods contend that Baker and the millions of other nonviolent offenders who have been sent to violent prisons are the real victims.
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| Much of Tommy Baker's problem, in one graph. |
One poster on an IU fan site, who as a Jeffersonville High student followed Tommy Baker by a few years, sadly announced Baker's death on the site in 2010, saying, "I didn't know him well, but he was a good kid and a hard worker. Well liked. Very humble young man."
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| John Hollinden in the high school class of 1976 |
Two productive seasons later, the popular and easygoing Hollinden signed to play professionally in a European league, but the night before his scheduled departure in 1981, another episode of dread familiar to Evansvillians struck. John was driving for pleasure outside the city when his car crashed, leaving him permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The giant niceness for which this giant was known endured; John began working with two charities helping the poor, became a motivational speaker, and joined a choral music group.
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Even after leg infections, then amputations of both legs in 1991, Hollinden remained a model of good spirits, his former high school coach John Wessel said.
"I went to see him in the hospital after that operation, and he had more grit and determination than the law allows," Wessel told the Evansville Courier. Nonetheless, John Hollinden died in 1992 of cardiac arrest brought on by infections. He was 34.
So many gone, so suddenly
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
Unusual things you won't see anywhere else
Welcome to the only blog post with all these sights!
Please -- don't neglect your bowels, nor drink alcoholic liquors (they're the worst kind!)
Thursday, April 15, 2021
Coincidences between the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and -- wait for it -- James Garfield
To help retire that well worn list of JFK-Abraham Lincoln “history repeats itself” mystical eerie unexplainable similarities (like a school book warehouse being the same thing as a tobacco barn), I present:
John F. Kennedy-James Garfield assassination similarities!
This list of unexplainable coincidences is dedicated to the reality that by turning over enough rocks and framing selected details just right, we can “prove” anything we wish to.
Here they are:
Kennedy and Garfield’s successors, Lyndon Johnson and Chester Arthur, both had 13 letters in their names.
Johnson got Kennedy’s proposed Civil Rights bill passed by Congress, a first step in long needed progress.
Arthur got Garfield’s proposed Civil Service bill passed by Congress, a first step in long needed progress.
Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald pleaded for a favor (upgrading his dishonorable discharge from the Marines) by writing the Secretary of the Navy, and was angered that he got no response. He then wrote to the FBI threatening violence against high U.S. officials.
Garfield’s assassin Charles Guiteau pleaded for a favor (appointment as consul to France) by writing the White House and was angered that he got no response. He then wrote to the Secretary of the Army threatening to kill the president.
The assassination of Kennedy prompted a technology invented by Alexander Graham Bell to fail when Washington, D.C. phones widely went out from overuse when news of the shooting broke.
The assassination of Garfield prompted a technology invented by Alexander Graham Bell to fail when a metal detector Bell brought to the president’s doctors to locate the bullet could not find it.
Oswald and Guiteau both had mothers of French descent.
Both assassins had battered their wives. Both had trouble holding jobs down.
Oswald and Guiteau had moved to New York City in their youths.
Both also moved to what they thought would be utopian socialist places (Oswald the USSR; Guiteau the Oneida Biblical community in New York State). Both left disillusioned.
Kennedy and Garfield both won, for their respective times, the closest popular vote victories by anyone elected president. Garfield beat Winfield Scott Hancock by 10,000 votes; Kennedy beat Richard Nixon by 100,000 votes.
Presidents Kennedy and Garfield opposed racial discrimination, both appointing record numbers of Blacks to federal positions.
Kennedy and Garfield both had two children die young. Both had two children go on to become lawyers.
Kennedy and Garfield fought in wars 20 years before their deaths, both being hailed as heroes in those wars.
The Camelot president’s grandchildren can read a comic strip about a cat called Garfield.
President Garfield’s grandchildren could read a comic strip called Prince Valiant, about a place called Camelot.
Kennedy’s widow went on to marry a Greek who had accumulated wealth.
Garfield’s widow went on to marry a geek who had accumulated welts -- no, actually James Garfield’s wife died before he even became president. But then Abraham Lincoln never had a secretary named Kennedy, which underscores how a little fibbing is part of this art! But all else on this list is true.
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Brian Arbenz lives in Louisville, Ky. USA.
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