Nestled

Mom is now impatient to be better, healed, cured, back into a more independent life. Instead of asking to be shot, she is asking why I don’t help her get over this thing. So this is good, Carola and I are taking it with a grin, although at 4am it is not that funny. It makes me think of how my life will be when and if I get to that advanced age. I don’t even want to think about it. Just like that horse doing x-country trials, I’ll take the obstacles as they come.

Theresa is heading for China to get a little sister for Marina and a second child for Michael and her. I am thinking that I would never do such a thing at his age, he is in his early fifties; the same age as I was when we came to Louisville. That was 17 years ago and now I am thinking of the interim. But back on the subject of T&M; they are average 50 years old and taking on a second baby who is two years old and a baby with some questions as to her health and early childhood development. Yet they seem to be answering some Karmic call and knowing Theresa, everything will be just fine. It is the Michael I can’t figure out and I’m not even going to attempt same.

Back to the Louisville interval; now that I’ve opened the door to it perhaps I should go into the room and look around. There has been a decided improvement in the city over this period of time. For someone from here, it must seem more like a Renaissance than new and improved because the city was a metropolitan center since the Civil War. It went into steep decline after the 1937 flood and then in the years surrounding 1980; when we got here in 1992 it was stirring like a Phoenix getting ready to rise from the ashes. There is still a brain trust that is not in place, the kind of brain trust that put Nashville, Indianapolis, Atlanta, and Cincinnati on the map.

We heard a historical summary of Louisville at a Rotary Club meeting a few years ago and it made a lot of sense. At the end of the Civil War this became the gateway city to the South. The devastation of the South from that war, especially General Sherman, left the infrastructure in ruins and the production capacity zeroed out. Louisville was the northern terminus of the L&N railroad, the UPS of its day. Many, if not most, of the goods and materials that went south went through here. There was prosperous Louisville and then there was Kentucky with Kentucky being the poor relative. There was a plethora of manufacturers and producers here as well as brokers, suppliers, and agents. The river boats came from the northeast via Cincinnati and from the Midwest via Saint Louis MO, Cairo IL, and Paducah KY with all of the cargo either passing through here to be put on the railroad or processed here and then put on the railroad.

Then in the 1960’s and until the 1980’s the economic infrastructure of the community underwent a change. There was a step function change caused by economy of scale that led to the “cashing in” by the heirs to outside interests; leaving behind a class of rich shareholders without corporate responsibility. The need to cultivate a relationship with those who were employed went away and the heirs separated themselves from the community, which was no longer necessary for the continuity of their businesses. Even today there is a whole stratum of people living here who are funded by trust funds and are not at all engaged in the nitty-gritty of community development. They don’t need to be so they’re not. And the absentee owners do little or nil to encourage the development of human resource; they either take what they find or relocate from other locations to here.

The 1980’s saw a rapid decline of manufacturers in the community as production went to other locations operated by the new owners of the corporations. There were, and still are some big names here, like Ford and GE but the multitude of small manufacturers went away. Then UPS decided to use the central location of Louisville as its North American air hub and things started changing again. A different business climate came to pass; logistics. This and a good interstate highway system re-established Louisville as a commercial center. When we came on the scene in 1992, this transformation was still picking up steam, now it is in flight; or at least it was until the current economic crisis occurred in October 2008. The consensus is that this is a set back and not an end. Commercial development is slowed but will resume when the time is right.

In addition to UPS and the core manufacturing provided by Ford and GE, there is the medical industry which is huge here. They are supported, sustained by two fine Universities and cooperation among the three big economic drivers and the U’s is good. It replaces the support that the entreprenurial owners of yesteryear gave to the business community.

The trust fund babies are still haunting the community because they have a lot of money and power. There are infrastructure issues that are stymied by vested interests; the I265 bridge over the Ohio River is the most obvious. Any threat to their bucolic lifestyle is met with legal battles that prolong the process and serve no purpose other than to harass the project. There will be an I265 bridge, period but it will cost dearly just because this selfish group is standing in the way.

We made a good choice in coming here. I’ve been involved in the community, albeit in a minor way but more so than most. I’ve bemoaned my lack of imagination, lack of recognition, lack of self-marketing enough for the reader to know that I am what is holding me back. Well me and the fact that I am here only since 1992 and seen as a small business person without repute. My credentials are not known nor appreciated and my one attempt at becomming the paid director of a community organization was not successful. Yet we live the good life; currently shackled but relatively happy.