The world’s most Louahvul newsletter goes out every Friday. Subscribe at louisville.com/newsletter.
10.2.2020, No. 24
“I seem to wander endlessly” — Bonnie “Prince” Billy, aka Louisville’s own Will Oldham, and Bill Callahan, who just released a gorgeous cover of the Cat Stevens song “Blackness of the Night”
FIVE.
1. The lede to this C-J story by Andy Wolfson, Darcy Costello and Tessa Duvall: “The Louisville judge who signed a search warrant for Breonna Taylor’s home that ultimately led to her death said Thursday she is concerned that the detective may have lied to obtain the warrant.”
Speaking of the C-J, I devoured the paper Wednesday (as I’ve done most days in 2020), with stories about:
– an anonymous grand juror calling for a judge to release recordings (about 20 hours of which were made available as I finished this newsletter), in the wake of AG Daniel Cameron’s investigation into Taylor’s death
– a neighbor who watched through her peephole the night Taylor was killed
– new interim police chief Yvette Gentry, who said, “This is my hand out to you to say you don’t have to break anything to get to me”
And here’s a slow clap for C-J photographer Pat McDonogh, whose yearlong project documenting the W.E.B. DuBois Academy, an all-boys middle school with Black students as the majority, was cut short by the pandemic, though the body of work doesn’t seem to have suffered from the abrupt end.
👏…👏 …👏👏…👏👏👏…👏 👏👏👏👏👏👏
I’ve said it before: Our city is better when our daily newspaper is publishing such great work so often. Subscribe. The introductory rate for digital is like a buck a month.
2. Tomorrow is a month out from Nov. 3, Election Day. (Although mail-in voting has begun and early in-person voting begins Oct. 13 at four locations.) One piece of data I haven’t stopped thinking about since June, when Amy McGrath narrowly defeated Charles Booker in the Democratic primary to take on Mitch McConnell for U.S. Senate: Almost 29 percent of registered Kentucky voters cast their ballot in the primary, which would’ve been a record if not for the 32.2 percent who voted in 2008. One-third is the record?
3. Senior editor Dylon Jones: When Louisville Magazine contributing writer Tatiana Ryckman penned her new novel, The Ancestry of Objects — about a recently laid off, isolated, dangerously depressed woman who falls into an affair with a married man — she didn’t have COVID-19 quarantine in mind. “That coincidence wasn’t planned,” she wrote in a recent email. “The world just fell apart that way.” The pandemic dashed Ryckman’s plans for a book tour, but like all of us, she has adapted in an interesting way: on Oct. 8, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., you can call her for an intimate, one-on-one reading at (214) 945-4309. The brisk novel is an unwavering study of fractured identity, loneliness and sexuality. Like the work of Louisville native Garth Greenwell, it is simultaneously erotic and emotional, elevating and affirming the near pornographic into something of unquestionable artistic value. You won’t want to put down the book — or your phone.
4. Game two of the NBA Finals is tonight. The Lakers have two former UK Wildcats, Anthony Davis and Louisville native Rajon Rondo, and the Heat also have two, Bam Adebayo (who’s dealing with an injury) and Tyler Herro.
Earlier this week, I was reading a story that chronicled the recent back and forth between U of L coach Chris Mack and Kentucky coach John Calipari about the complicated-by-COVID Dec. 26 rivalry game at the Yum! Center, with a frustrated Mack taking this dig at Calipari: “Whatever is most convenient for Coach Cal, we’ll do it.”
As with all local hoops matters, I texted My Buddy Eric Who Has A Vintage Cardinal Mascot Tattooed On His Ass™.
Me: “What do you make of UK having four players in the NBA Finals?”
Eric: “Luck.”
Me: “And what do you make of UK being 11-2 against U of L under Cal, and 2-0 since Mack took over in 2018?”
Eric: “Wtf man. Why you gotta bring that up? Times are changing.”
(Twenty seconds pass.)
Eric: “But luck as well.”
5.
This is the cover of the resurrected Black Scene, a magazine published in Louisville from 1973 to 1976. The new Black Scene Millennium mission, by editor (and Louisville Magazine contributor) Michael L. Jones, is to “use journalism, historical research and art to document Louisville’s African-American community.” The first issue, focused on Black women, will be available next Friday at the Roots 101 African-American Museum on West Main, one copy free per household.
The Eye Care Institute supports this newsletter, and has since I started writing it six months ago. A huge thank you to them.
And now, the “Five. Oh! Too…” version of an eye exam:
Can you read this? Wait, you can? Whoa. You must have super vision or something.
Can’t read it? Maybe get your eyes checked.
OH!
A little something from the LouMag archive.
In a March 2019 piece, Sarah Kelley wrote about Leo Lesser, who, in 1972, was a civil-rights activist planning to run for mayor. That December, Martin Luther King Sr., four years after his son’s assassination, took the pulpit at Southern Star Baptist Church on Algonquin Parkway. He said, “There are some white people in Louisville who in their hearts know that it is right, know that the time is right, for a Black man to be mayor of Louisville, but they don’t have the moral courage to act and speak out.”
Lesser came in third in the Democratic primary, with physician Harvey Sloane nabbing the nomination and ultimately going on to serve two terms. Kelley wrote, “In the face of disappointment, Lesser and a handful of his closest supporters were determined to continue advancing his platform” — fair housing policies, more employment opportunities, integrated classrooms, criminal-justice reform. “The method would be print media — specifically, a news and culture magazine shedding light on life in Louisville’s African-American communities.” Black Scene published its first issue on Aug. 30, 1973.
One of the other men involved was civil-rights attorney Robert Delahanty, who had helped with Lesser’s mayoral campaign. Delahanty’s widow, Dolores, told Kelley that Robert “was a very unusual white guy for the times.” In 1967, he defended Lesser and several others jailed for contempt of court after violating a judge’s restraining order prohibiting nighttime marches. The following year, he was a defense attorney for the “Black Six,” a case in which six African-Americans were accused of conspiring to blow up oil refineries along the Ohio River. After two years of court hearings and massive public demonstrations, a judge dismissed the case due to lack of evidence.
Dolores told Kelley about how her son discovered a stack of Black Scene magazines while cleaning out an old metal filing cabinet in the basement of her Iroquois Parkway home. The Delahantys’ granddaughter, Katy, had the idea to revive it. “It was a treasure trove that just unexpectedly resurfaced,” she said.
Read past newsletters here.