FIVE. OH! TOO…

FIVE.

1. In late spring, Cassia Herron, Ricky L. Jones and I facilitated a discussion at the Louisville Magazine office with five of the city’s Black leaders: Jecorey Arthur, Charles Booker, Quintez Brown, Hannah Drake and Brianna Harlan. They talked about Louisville’s racist past and present, the protests, Breonna Taylor, where we go from here, and so much more. But one thing Harlan said that morning in June has haunted me ever since. Toward the end of the two-and-a-half-hour gathering, she talked about being named Brianna in the city where, on March 13, Louisville police shot and killed Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, in her own home.

Harlan said: “Breonna Taylor is the same age — she was the same age. We were born in the same year. We both grew up in the West End. It’s so close that when I hear my name now, sometimes I think that I’m dying, and I have to remind myself that I’m not, that no one’s talking about me. But they kind of are.”

Over the summer, I was walking home after two loops around the Crescent Hill Reservoir, thinking about what the contents should be in our final issue of 2020. On the walk I listened to Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Longform podcast talking about his experience guest-editing the September issue of Vanity Fair. Titled “The Great Fire,” it features a cover painting of Breonna Taylor by Amy Sherald, who painted Michelle Obama for the National Portrait Gallery. Coates discussed some of the reaction to the cover, saying, “I saw one of the things was, ‘Well, if Breonna hadn’t have been killed would she be on the cover of Vanity Fair?’ The answer’s no. The answer’s absolutely not.” He went on: “Is there gonna be a non-famous Black woman who’s not a celebrity on the cover?” I knew what he meant, and I knew he was right.

I mentioned all of this at the office the next day and said, “What if we featured ‘non-famous’ 26-year-old Black women?”

“What if we featured 26 of them?” managing editor Mary Chellis Nelson said.

My first call was to Nikayla Edmondson, a former Louisville Magazine intern who still contributes to our pages, and who happens to be a 26-year-old Black woman. “Breonna Taylor could have been me or any of my friends,” she told me on the phone. She reached out to her friend Adrienne Hamilton, and together they got 26 Louisville women in their mid-20s. My next call was to Cassia, who recruited 10 Black women of varying ages (including an 18-year-old) to conduct the interviews. Nikayla also found photographer Charlee Black, who happens to be a 26-year-old Black woman, and she came down from Indianapolis on a day in October and one in November to get each woman’s portrait.

At the end of the first photo shoot, an almost nine-hour day, Nikayla and Charlee were looking at some of the images. “There was so much of every emotion in this office today,” Nikayla said.

We’re going to start sharing this cover project next week, and I’m so excited for you to see it and hear what these women have to say.

2. Here’s an excerpt that stuck with me from the interview with Anastasia Klein-Johnson, one of the 26 women.

“(Breonna Taylor) shook my world. I couldn’t focus at work. Hearing about the case made me upset. The people who surrounded me, they were complacent, Black or white. That definitely was unruly for me because I started losing connections with people that I thought I knew. It made me uncomfortable — in a good way, because it’s something to grow off of. It loosened the soil for us to blossom on newer grounds. Louisville, we’re known for this. Now it’s out loud. We all see it. It has to be changed. And I’m so happy that we got to be that source. I’m proud to be from here just because of that.”

3. The issue also includes more than two dozen people — urban designers, real estate developers, researchers and more — talking about what Louisville could look like in the future. It reminded me of a piece from 2012, with predictions about Louisville in 2020 regarding business, education, entertainment, food, health, social services, sports, transportation and urban design. Last week, I shared the thoughts from Pat Forde (sports) and Kevin Connelly (social services). Here are some of the 2012 predictions from Tori Murden McClure (education) and Joe Reagan (business).

McClure was, and still is, president of Spalding University

“Teachers should be paid more and receive something like combat pay for teaching in more challenging schools. Experience matters. Ask the best teachers you know how many years it took them to learn their craft. Teaching is not a ‘plug and play’ profession. There is a direct correlation between the success of the student and the experience of the teacher.”

“SAT scores track without anomaly by income — the higher the income, the higher the SAT score. We need to honor effort and improvement and not just pat ourselves on the back for being born smart and wealthy.”

“Freedom is an illusion if it cannot stand up to the cold light of truth.”

Reagan, founder and CEO of One Stone Development Co., was president and CEO of Greater Louisville Inc.

“We’ve had a great demographic increase in the aging population, but the nursing home of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s is pretty much the nursing home we have today. That must change.”

“By 2020, downtown will have a lot more retail — a mix of national brands and local shops — especially along the South Fourth Street corridor from Broadway to Fourth Street Live. There will be more development on Main Street, too, much of it focused on the bourbon industry.”

“By 2020 we’ll be at ‘full’ employment, meaning we’ll be at the ‘natural’ unemployment level. And I think that number (will have) changed at least for this next decade. There are economists who are talking about full employment being at 7 or 8 percent unemployment; it used to be at 4 or 5 percent.”

4. Haiku Review

2020 stress.
Keyboard Santa, “Let It Go.”
Ice skates carve away.

Last night, Bri and I took the kids to Paristown Pointe’s Fête De Noël outdoor Christmas market and ice rink (open through Jan. 3). Emilia, who’s in first grade and had never skated before, stepped off the ice after an hour and asked, “How long do you have to skate before you can go to the Olympics?”

5. Yeah, I also watched the trailer and think I’m following: So Mario “A.C. Slater” Lopez is playing Colonel Harlan Sanders in whatever the hell a “mini-movie” is, and Jessica is in love with him but is supposed to be marrying a, as Slater would say, “preppy” in sockless slip-ons, and Harlan is “a chef” (or, as Preppy says, “the cook”) with a secret recipe for fried chicken, or is the “secret recipe” something sexual (and prolly called the “double down”)?, and I only bring THAT up because this is Lifetime and Preppy’s def sleeping with Jessica’s mom, and — WHAAAAAAAT?!?!?! A DEAD BODY ON THE STAIRS?!?!?!?!