Robin Garr, Georgia Mallett, Chris Mattingly, Tracy Heightchew, David Williams, Aria Baci, Dan Canon, Grace Fridy and Naomi Fields, T.E. Lyons, Rob Brezny
Marc Murphy
Chief Executive Officer
Chris Keating
Vice President of Digital Services
Stacy Volhein
Digital Operations Coordinator Elizabeth Knapp
Guillermo Rodriguez
NOTICE TO THE CREDITORS OF RED BINDERS KENTUCKY, INC., A KENTUCKY CORPORATION PURSUANT TO SECTION 14-070 OF THE KENTUCKY BUSINESS CORPORATION ACT
Please be advised that on November 26, 2024, Red Binders Kentucky, Inc., a Kentucky corporation (the “Corporation”), whose principal office in the State of Kentucky was last located at 4300 Poplar Level Road, P.O. Box 35489, Louisville, KY 40232, commenced the voluntary winding up and dissolution of its business by the filing of Articles of Dissolution with the Secretary of State of the State of Kentucky.
If you consider yourself to be a creditor of, or claimant against the Corporation, your claim must be received by Jim O’Halloran at 4426 Plumwood Dr., West Des Moines, IA 50265. You must specify the basis for your claim, the amount of your claim, and to whom payment is to be made. If the claim is based on written documentation, a copy of such documentation must be attached. A CLAIM AGAINST THE CORPORATION WILL BE BARRED UNLESS AN ACTION
Crown Castle is proposing to install a 46-foot pole telecommunications structure at the following site: 7105 Briscoe Lane, Louisville, Jefferson County, KY 40228; Lat: 38-8-27.9, Long: -85-37-50.7. The structure is not expected to be lighted. Any interested party that believes the proposed action may have a significant impact on the environment may file a Request for Environmental Review (Request) to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Such Request may only raise environmental concerns. Information regarding the project may be found under file number A1304111 on the FCC website www.fcc.gov/asr/applications. The Request must be filed with the FCC within 30 days of the notice being posted on the FCC website. The FCC requires that all Requests be filed electronically at www.fcc.gov/asr/environmentalrequest. The Request must also be served upon Crown Castle by mailing a copy to 2000 Corporate Drive, Canonsburg, PA 15317 ATTN: Regulatory Department.
MARC MURPHY
UNIFIED AROUND HEALTHCARE, IT’S TIME AMERICANS MAKE DEMANDS
Americans should ask for everything they are due
BY ERICA RUCKER
Erica Rucker is LEO Weekly’s editor-in-chief. In addition to her work at LEO, she is a haphazard writer, photographer, tarot card reader, and fair-to-middling purveyor of motherhood. Her earliest memories are of telling stories to her family and promising that the next would be shorter than the first. They never were.
Remember when “some” of us were kids and there was a television show called, “Romper Room?” The teacher would look through a “looking glass” and name the children she saw. If she said your name, you would squirm joyously in your seat thinking she really saw you. What a happy discomfort because then, maybe she really saw you. She didn’t.
Right now, America is holding its own Romper Room mirror, and looking deep into the heart of corporate America. Corporate America, is squirming without that childish joy, instead feeling a nervous discomfort at being seen. We do see them.
More than the fear that their CEOs might meet the same fate as United Healthcare’s Brian Thompson, they are squirming under the disinfecting light of exposure. And, much like roaches exposed to bright light, they began to scatter, frantic to find shelter back in the darkness in which they were so very comfortable — where they could fatten themselves on the backs of the rest of us.
Americans are calling the names of the corporations, exposing the ways in which not only healthcare corps but others have profited off the blood and sweat of the American body, and finally, demanding that big changes happen.
Don’t make small demands. Make them grand.
While many Americans admit to feeling somewhat indifferent to the death of Thompson, what they have been sensitized to — in a flash — is the way his life and death reflects against their own. Thompson died a multi-millionaire, on his way to report the billions of dollars that United Healthcare profited from the denials of claims. Many of those denials were directly responsible for the injuries and deaths of thousands. Americans are sharing stories of harm from having claims rejected.
Americans saw the nation’s law forces muster an obscene amount of resources to search for, and find a person they claim is the killer of Thompson. Again, Thompson’s privilege, wealth, and class reflected brightly against the life of regular Americans. People saw how money made mountains move for Thompson, but for most regular families, awaiting news on killers of their loved ones, no mountains have been moved. They will wait forever. Americans are also watching in real time as the news media, both conservative and liberal, feign confusion, yet flail around in weird gymnastics to scold Americans for seeing the inequity, and speaking about that instead
of Thompson. How dare Americans ignore this beacon of capitalism’s demise, and note the deaths of their relatives as well as their own lack of access to care by his company and others?
Corporate media, particularly the television and print conglomerates, have shown their true colors and suddenly, being right-leaning or left-leaning means a whole lot less. These outlets are owned by a similar corporate beast.
Fair and balanced ain’t so fair or balanced, and performative liberal media is showing they need to keep those corporate dollars just like their friends at Fox. Even Kentucky’s own Scott Jennings is doing the dance with the rest of corporate media.
Americans finally have a laser beam tuned directly into the “haves” realizing that most of us are the “have-nots.”
It is this awakening that has shifted the conversations about what we are allowing to happen in this country. We see that the culprit is all around us, having worn the colors of both parties, and lied directly to the American people for a long time. We get sicker, poorer, and farther away from the idea of an American Dream while the people we elect, the people we elevate with our labor, grow richer, live longer, and more luxurious lives by stealing, and scheming our collective dollars right from our pockets. Insurance plans, in particular, are contracts that are repeatedly broken by the insurance companies. The money we pay into these systems gives us a very unequal return.
In the immediate, Americans are calling for the bare minimum — relief from the weight of healthcare costs, and possibly a universal care system like every other developed country in the world.
The “how will we pay for it” refrain will be
loud, but looking at the trillions we’re spending with insurance, we’re already paying for it. All we need to do is to shift that money from corporate oligarchs back into the care of our nation.
We’ll also hear, but “the wait times” lie. My friends in countries with socialized medicine don’t experience unreasonable wait times. In fact, they often go to see the doctor with more regularity than we do because it is convenient, and inexpensive. The prices they are charged allow them to pay their medical bill at the counter in the hospital — on the same day without leveraging their savings or their homes to do so.
While I marvel at their access to care, they are shocked that we don’t have it. When I explain, their faces contort in the same puzzlement that almost every American is experiencing right now as the healthcare debate has garnered the spotlight.
When my family went to Japan and Korea this fall (both nations with socialized medicine), my husband and I walked into a bookstore in Seoul, got eye exams, progressive lenses, frames for prices that most Americans only see online. We got excellent service, weren’t asked about insurance, and paid less than half of what we pay with insurance in America. On top of that, we visited two pharmacies in Japan and had pharmacists assigned to tell us how to safely use the medicines we were purchasing. All of these things happen in a health/care system that works for its society, but we don’t have health/care, we have illness management.
Americans know, maybe for the first time as a unit, that something in corporate America better shift, and it seems that people are ready for whatever fight it takes to make America better for living, and less expensive when we are sick or dying.
ONE PRISONER
BY DAN CANON
“That is the island of Imrali. There is nothing but a prison on that island. They only are having one prisoner there. You know we don’t have terrorism here? They caught the only terrorist and put him there. All by himself. Now everyone is safe.”
That’s the story we got from our tour guide in Turkey. One need not be trained in ferreting out propagandistic bullshit to recognize that something about it doesn’t ring true. Tour groups don’t attract a lot of critical thinkers, or at least not many who are so impolite as to not keep our mouths shut when we hear something outlandish. So perhaps it was social graces that kept me from cross-examining our poor guide. Or perhaps it just wasn’t shocking enough to ask about.
Curiosity eventually got the better of me, so I looked it up. There was in fact a lone prisoner on the island of Imrali. He still lives, though not
in total isolation. His name is Abdullah Öcalan. Whether or not he is a terrorist is, uhm, debatable in the way that the legacy of Che Guevara, Yasser Arafat, or even Ataturk is debatable. Öcalan was at one time a leader of Kurdish militants, and became what we might call an anarchist, in the sense that he believes that the state is inherently oppressive and should be abolished. He was tried and convicted of treason in 1999. The reader’s attention span and my own capacity to retain information prevent further discussion of Öcalan’s life and times, but if you’re looking for more reading on a truly fascinating character, it’s out there. Öcalan was sentenced to death, but when
Turkey abolished the death penalty in 2002, the sentence was commuted to solitary confinement. Very solitary. So solitary, in fact, that he was the only prisoner on the island of Imrali for ten years. In 2009, Öcalan’s captors moved other prisoners to Imrali, initially allowing them to spend ten hours a week together. They also gave Öcalan a TV. These changes apparently resulted from pressure by the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
For most of our history, that sort of treatment wouldn’t have been tolerated in the U.S., either (at least not out in the open). Longterm isolation of prisoners, though technically allowed since the 1790s, was a tactic rarely used before the late twentieth century, mostly because the courts and the general public perceived it for what it was: an inconceivably inhumane practice. As far back as 1890, the Supreme Court overturned a prisoner’s death sentence because his long-term solitary confinement was considered unconstitutionally cruel.
Solitary as we know it continued to be widely condemned until around the 1970s, when the drug wars, and a resulting wave of prisoner litigation, gave the courts opportunity to visit the issue over and over. At first, courts continued to decry solitary confinement, if not in very strong terms. As late as 1978, the Supreme Court held that even short-term solitary confinement “serve[d] no rehabilitative purpose.”
But something extraordinary happened in the wake of the mass incarceration crisis following the drug wars: prison officials simply ignored public outcry—and the courts. There were so many prisoners to manage, so many bodies to warehouse, that putting even a substantial number of people in solitary for months at a time didn’t catch attention like it used to. The problem was just too big to control, even from the hallowed halls of the high court. When violent revolts (inevitable in the overcrowded prisons of the post-Nixon era) became a bigger story than prisoner treatment, public sympathy for incarcerated people waned. Incarcerated people could be held in total isolation for months, even years, without engendering the ire of the public. Prison administrators didn’t much care what the courts had to say about it; they just kept on putting people in boxes and daring anyone to stop them. And so over time, the courts bowed to systemic pressures and upheld even the most monstrous examples of solitary confinement.
Today, it is a common practice of many facilities to keep people locked up alone for twenty-three hours a day, often with no human contact, no reading material, no natural light, and barely any amenities. We take this kind of punishment, considered outrageous 200 years ago, as a standard, even necessary, side effect of the carceral state, justified by even
the slightest perceived infraction. Incarcerated people have been put in solitary for failing to make their beds properly, for mouthing off to guards, and, as seen in at least one New York case, for eating the wrong parts of an apple. Judges and juries don’t decide to put someone in solitary; that decision is usually left to the discretion of ordinary prison guards. Solitary affects everyone, from the tall to the small— misdemeanor offenders can get it just as often as people convicted of felonies—and in any institution. As we have come to discover more and more over the years, the effects of solitary on any person’s psyche are profound. Even a month without human contact can result in serious long-term harm, and it is not unusual for incarcerated people to spend years—even decades—in near-total isolation.
In contrast, Öcalan was probably never completely cut off from humankind. During his first ten years on Imrali, there were around 1,000 Turkish military personnel on the island. He was at least in regular communication with his lawyers, and was able to make regular public statements through them. Öcalan also lucked out by being in an EU member state, and not just because of the commutation of his death sentence. Here, there is no “Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,” or anything like it, that might investigate and interview incarcerated people about their living conditions. Post 2009, his access to the outside world seems exponentially better than Americans in “Special Housing Units.” And a TV? That’s positively posh.
Still, 10 years of solitary? That’s enough to make the average human brain into oatmeal. And yet, a mere decade of torture is no big deal by American standards. Thomas Silverstein did 36 years of solitary in federal prison. Albert Woodfox, one of the “Angola Three,” spent an unthinkable 43 years in a Louisiana isolation cell. And Kalief Browder — a child — spent more than a year in solitary in an adult jail despite never having been convicted of any crime. Remember, these are American citizens we’re talking about. We don’t really know what the ceiling is for foreign “combatants” kept in storage containers by the U.S., here or overseas. Dozens of prisoners whose names you’ll never hear will die on our watch every year having done far more than a decade of solitary. Öcalan got off comparatively easy. Hell, had he been convicted in America, where we’ve managed to retain the death penalty more than 20 years after Turkey abolished it, he might be dead already.
In sum, I am more or less unbothered by Abdullah Öcalan’s extensive isolation. I am somewhat bothered, however, by the fact that I am unbothered by it. What might it say about American’s criminal legal system — or those of us who participate in it — when we can compare it to ten years of solitary confinement on a Turkish island prison and say “eh, that doesn’t sound so bad?”
Dan Canon
Photo: Dan Canon
LOUISVILLE’S SHORTCOMINGS IN WELCOMING ADOLESCENTS INTO PUBLIC SPACES
BY GRACE FRIDY AND NAOMI FIELDS (JOURNALISM AND COMMUNICATIONS STUDENTS
AT DUPONT MANUAL HIGH SCHOOL)
Teens across Louisville do not know where they are welcome. From football games to movie nights with friends, constant barriers make it difficult for high schoolers to engage in social activities. High school students are often social, seeking different ways to connect with peers during their free time. These barriers prevent the development of necessary social and emotional awareness.
Football games are one of the few recreational activities students can rely on every Friday night. Attendance restrictions throughout the district this year have created a less than dependable social scene for many high schoolers. Until recently, high schools including Ballard and Male have not required parental figures to be present at games. After a year in JCPS, marked by 19,000 referrals for fighting, schools are tightening up rules.
According to a Male High School PTSA Facebook post, students from other schools must now have an accompanying parent to
get into home football games. These adult accompanied restrictions are a common theme across the city, as Mall St. Matthews and Oxmoor Mall adopted a similar policy in 2015. At St. Matthews, and its attached movie theater, those 17 and under must have an adult with them after 4 pm on Fridays and Saturdays.
Local malls and high schools have good reasons for limiting adolescent opportunities, as fights and other intrusions have caused general mayhem. In 2015, around 1-2,000 teens shut down Mall St. Matthews, after police responded to reports of fights, harassment, and other disturbances. Despite these issues, it is still important that teenagers are able to form strong bonds with their peers. Without locations like the mall, football games, movie theaters, and skate parks that are facing increased restrictions, young people will miss out on building connections associated with higher levels of emotional support. In fact, research
by The National Academy of Sciences shows teenagers with more active social networks lead healthier lives.
“Football games are pretty relevant to my social life... I usually attend most to all of the home games and some of the bigger, more important away games such as Saint X, Ballard and Male,” Marcell Malone, a Manual student said. Malone’s appreciation of football games reflects the importance of football attendance to Louisvillians, as some high school rivalries in the city date back to 1893. This includes the annual Manual vs Male football game, which usually attracts over 10,000 people from all over town to watch the rivalry game. With new restrictions, teenagers whose parents work late or are not always able to have an adult with them could miss out on attending.
Continuing access to local events for teenagers is an easy way to promote necessary social engagement, and it is likely that it wouldn’t lead to a drastic increase in
violence or adolescent caused disturbances.
For example, the Campbell Collaboration, a non-profit policy research center, has found that adolescent curfews are “ineffective at reducing crime” and other disturbances. Considering that policies limiting teenager’s engagement in their communities are growing, it is important that local schools and businesses decide if these rules are truly making positive change.
It is imperative that teens feel welcome and socially prepared for their future through community engagement in our city. Restricting teenagers from accessing local spaces will not help interpersonal interaction but hinder it. In order to create a positive youth culture in Louisville, schools, businesses and other community spaces must open their arms to the next generation.
EAT, DRINK AND SEE IN THIS WEEK’S STAFF PICKS
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11–22
Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins
Bingham Theater | 316 W. Main St. | actorstheatre.org | Times & ticket prices vary
Join Hershel of Ostropol in this lively adaptation of the classic children’s book as he faces off against the mischievous Hanukkah-hating goblins. With clever tricks, lively puppetry, and original music, this holiday tale is perfect for families and young audiences.
Kitties to cuddle and paints to paint. Enjoy this winter, cat-themed painting event with free drink refills. Happy Hour pricing for cocktails.
—Erica Rucker
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 13–24
The Brown-Forman Nutcracker Whitney Hall | 501 W. Main St. | louisvilleballet.org | Times & ticket prices vary
Experience the magic of the holidays with this beloved Louisville Ballet classic, where Marie and her Nutcracker Prince journey to the enchanting land of the Sugar Plum Fairy. With stunning sets, dazzling costumes, and world-class artistry, this is a holiday tradition for the whole family.
—Sydney Catinna
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 18
Empire Strikes Back: A Burlesque Parody Actors Theatre of Louisville | 316 West Main Street | theempirestripsback.com/louisville | $89+ | 10 p.m.
Experience a cheeky, intergalactic twist on the Star Wars saga with this burlesque parody that’s as hilarious as it is daring. Featuring talented performers, this event is a must-see for fans of the galaxy far, far away.
—Caleb Stultz
SATURDAY, DEC. 21–22
The Flea Off Market’s Holiday Bazaar Mellwood Arts Center | 1860 Mellwood Ave. | thefleaoffmarket.org | Free
Shop local at this festive holiday bazaar featuring unique gifts, art, and holiday goodies from local makers. Held at the Mellwood Arts Center, it’s the perfect spot for last-minute shopping while exploring the center’s galleries and shops.
—Sydney Catinna
SATURDAY, DEC. 21
Shopping with Krampus Raven’s Roost | 419 E. Market St., New Albany | Search Facebook | Free | 12 – 4 p.m.
Krampus will darken your holiday shopping with a few sneers for the children and photo ops for the brave folks who dare. Enjoy this witchy holiday event.
—Erica Rucker
SUNDAY, DEC. 22
Christmas with C.S. Lewis
Bomhard Theater | 501 W. Main St. | tickets. kentuckyperformingarts.org | $76+ | 2 p.m.
Step back into the world of C.S. Lewis as he shares insights about his life and his works in this captivating one-man show. A perfect holiday outing for fans of The Chronicles of Narnia and classic literature.
Drink and listen to Jazz. Bring your old friends or meet some new ones.
—Erica Rucker
FRIDAY, DEC. 27 – 29
23rd Animation Show of Shows
Speed Cinema | 2035 S. 3rd St. | Search Facebook | $12/$8 for members | Times Vary
14 Animated films in the comfort of the Speed Cinema. Films from Croatia, Germany, the U.S., Canada, the Netherlands, Mexico, the UK, and Switzerland.
—Erica Rucker
FRIDAY, DEC. 27
Dead of Night and the Dark Market Art Sanctuary | 1433 S. Shelby St. | Search Facebook | $9.40 | 9 p.m.
Join Art Sanctuary for an after-Christmas goth party and market. For all the ghoulies who’d rather choke than celebrate Christmas and those who just need a bitter of fear in their Christmas cheer, this is the evening for you.
—Erica Rucker
TUESDAY, DEC. 31
Skyline Soiree: A NYE Celebration at Swizzle Swizzle Dinner And Drinks | 140 N. 4th St. | Search Facebook | $120 – $150 | 7 p.m.
It’s a new years celebration in the skyline restaurant atop the Galt House. The night begins with a 4-course dinner and an after-dinner party with a DJ, dessert bar and champagne toast to ring in the new year.
—Erica Rucker
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 4
Caravan Comedy Contest Finals
The Caravan Comedy Club | 1250 Bardstown Road | redpintix.com | $20+ | 9:30 p.m.
Witness the funniest rising comedians battle it out for the top spot in this high-stakes comedy showdown. Enjoy an evening full of laughter as these talented performers deliver their best punchlines to win over the judges and the audience.
—Caleb Stultz
One man was missing and presumed dead. His friend was also missing, whereabouts unknown. When the friend was finally found, his story riveted Depression-era Louisville for months. But today it’s long forgotten. It’s not mentioned in any history of Louisville. It’s as if it never happened. That may be in part because we don’t really know what happened. We will probably never know.
On the evening of Monday, February 17, 1936, William Detchen, 23, a drugstore clerk, disappeared from work, and was never seen again. Within a few days, his employer, a gay man, pharmacist George B. Aufenkamp, 32, also vanished. Two weeks later, he was arrested in Miami, Florida, brought back to Louisville, and charged with murder. The charges didn’t stick because no body was found. Because homosexuality was considered a mental illness at the time, Aufenkamp was institutionalized at Central State Hospital. He was discharged twelve years later and died in 1959.
That’s all we know for sure. The rest is what most courts consider hearsay. We only had a single source to rely on, Aufenkamp himself, but his story kept changing. The Courier-Journal did an admirable job of reporting, but errors crept in. We may only know part of the story, and that’s all we can know. Everyone involved is dead.
That Monday was sufficiently unexciting. At about 6 a.m., William Detchen left the residence of his friend Florence White on Third near Main to go to work. He was driving an automobile owned by his employer, druggist George B. Aufenkamp, Jr. Detchen was a clerk at Aufenkamp’s new store on the northwest corner of Market and Campbell
THE ODD CASE OF
BY DAVID WILLIAMS
(the building’s still there). He told White he’d be back by 11 a.m. He always kept his word.
Around 7:45 a.m., R. H. Young, who lived with his wife and son in an apartment above the store, heard moans and groans from the rear room below. Shortly after that, he heard Aufenkamp walk in and say, “Bill, Bill, what is the matter?” Detchen, who sounded like he was in great pain, mumbled something. Aufenkamp went to the front, locked the door, and turned off the lights.
of a prosperous local grocer. A self-privileged brat who played fast and loose with the law, he had a nasty temper. In 1928, he’d been arrested in New York City for robbery and assault. Three years later he pled guilty to selling mortgaged jewelry. By 1935, he was advertising himself as a pharmacist, and even opened his own store, but he didn’t have a license. Even so, somehow he managed to buy a lot of pharmaceuticals legally. The industry was rather lax.
Aufenkamp’s family knew their son was
“After he was back in Louisville, police scoured the banks of the Salt River looking for the body. A double-breasted gray coat showed up, but Detchen’s father couldn’t identify it. At one point Aufenkamp himself was taken to the Salt River bridge to point out where he’d thrown the body. It was never found.”
some time together at a tourist cabin on River Road. But by the time of his disappearance, the affair had cooled. Detchen confided in one friend that he’d become scared of Aufenkamp. And he wanted to get married: to a woman.
Over the next several days, police scoured the city looking for both men. Unable to get into the drugstore, they busted down the door, and searched the premises. They even pumped an outhouse in the back (numerous properties in Louisville still had them). But, by then, Aufenkamp was hundreds of miles away. He’d jumped on a bus to Atlanta, then hitchhiked to Miami, where he found work at another drugstore.
In a coincidence that not even the talkies could make believable, a woman from Louisville was vacationing there when she spotted him. She’d been carrying around news clippings about the case. She showed them to Miami police and they arrested him. When Louisville police were alerted, they boarded a train to pick him up. It took them three days to get there.
Aufenkamp changed his story several times before finally coming up with the one that seems most plausible. Even so, there’s some doubt.
A bit later, the moans stopped. Someone came to the front door but couldn’t get in. Aufenkamp shouted, “We’re closed up,” and they left.
Aufenkamp’s father, George B., Sr., showed up a bit after that. He later claimed he saw Detchen leave the store at about 8:30 a.m. That might be true, but he wasn’t alive. Over the next few days, some friends spotted Aufenkamp downtown, but police couldn’t find him. Then, he too disappeared.
The dapper Aufenkamp was the scion
two-sided. He was perhaps bipolar. His father said he never thought his namesake would harm anyone, but he could sometimes work up a rage. His son had cost him thousands of dollars over the years.
Little is known of the handsome Detchen beyond his height, and a small photo published in the Courier-Journal. It’s not even certain he was gay. He may have been bisexual. He and Aufenkamp probably met sometime in 1935, and had a whirlwind romance. That summer they spent
According to Aufenkamp, Detchen had been suffering from a severe cold and was taking medicine for it. When he came to the pharmacy that evening, he decided to lay down in the back. The building had a rat problem, so Aufenkamp had purchased potassium cyanide from a downtown store, and brought it back to be mixed with sugar and sprinkled on bread. He carelessly left it on the prescription counter with an ear medicine.
Aufenkamp had taught Detchen how to
make capsules in case of an emergency if he wasn’t there: probably another illegality. Detchen wasn’t a registered pharmacist. He said Detchen mistakenly poured the cyanide into a capsule while Aufenkamp was up front, swallowed it, and laid down. Later, Aufenkamp realized what had happened but it was too late. Detchen died soon after. Aufenkamp panicked. He later claimed he’d found a “bum” and paid him $10 to get rid of the body. He said the man took and dumped Detchen in the Ohio River. But that wasn’t true. Aufenkamp disposed of the body himself, probably with a little assistance from his father.
Late that night, Aufenkamp (and his father?) stuffed Detchen’s body into the back seat of his blue sedan and took off. Puttering down Dixie Highway, which was then just a two-lane country road, he got to the banks of the Salt River near West Point and dumped the body from a bridge
doctor in Lexington was imprisoned for it. Psychiatrists of the day presumed that homosexuality was a mental illness because of the number of gay men who came to them for help. But, as Evelyn Hooker pointed out two decades later, if a homosexual was mentally stable, and leading a regular life, he wasn’t likely to consult a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists were ignoring a huge section of the homosexual population.
near Oak while clad only in satin shorts. In October a judge promised to drop all charges provided he left town. He moved to New York City.
In late 1959, Aufenkamp fell ill and returned to Louisville. He died on November 27 and is buried with his parents in Calvary Cemetery.
into the icy waters, then took off for Miami.
After he was back in Louisville, police scoured the banks of the Salt River looking for the body. A double-breasted gray coat showed up, but Detchen’s father couldn’t identify it. At one point Aufenkamp himself was taken to the Salt River bridge to point out where he’d thrown the body. It was never found.
Aufenkamp’s scandalous case dragged on in the courts and the papers the whole summer of 1936. He faced three charges: murder, obstruction of justice, and forgery. In June two psychiatrists concluded he was legally sane but “abnormal and dangerous.” But the only evidence of Detchen’s death was Aufenkamp’s own words. The court was forced to drop the murder charge but decided to pursue a charge of lunacy instead.
At the time, “homosexual insanity” was considered a genuine condition. Around the same time of Aufenkamp’s arrest, a
The case against Aufenkamp came to an end on October 7, 1936. Two psychiatrists told the court he suffered from an abnormal and diseased mind and that he’d stop at nothing to satisfy his perverted desires. A criminal court jury committed him to Central State Hospital for the remainder of his life.
Twelve years later, in late 1948, Aufenkamp, now 44, appealed for release. By then doctors had certified he was no longer insane. Prosecutors still wanted to try him for murder but, without a body, there was nothing they could do. On December 10, he was freed and he returned to Louisville.
There his story might have ended, but Aufenkamp was nothing if not sexually robust. On July 10, 1951, he and another man were arrested at a downtown hotel. Detectives had followed them and heard Aufenkamp make an immoral proposal to the other man. He was sentenced to fifty days in jail and fined $100. Soon after he was arrested again on a loitering charge after he was seen talking to a soldier in the doorway of his father’s house on Sixth
There remains some doubt about Aufenkamp’s story. He had a manic temper. Detchen wanted out of the relationship. Enraged, did Aufenkamp give him a tainted capsule and tell him to take a nap?
It seems odd Detchen wouldn’t have noticed a bottle labeled cyanide, and known not to fill a capsule with it. Aufenkamp’s father didn’t think his son was capable of killing, but parental love is sometimes blind. Murder isn’t out of the question, but without a skeleton to examine, Detchen’s death will remain a mystery.
David Williams is the founder of the Williams-Nichols Collection, one of the largest LGBTQ archives and libraries in the country. It’s housed at the Department of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Louisville. His full report on this case is available for perusal there.
Photos (l to r): George B. Aufenkamp, Jr. AP Wirephoto, date unknown Louisville Courier-Journal, Mar. 1, 1936, p. 2, and William Detchen about the time of his disappearance.
Everyone is a
It’s an experience any woman is familiar with.
The work of trying to squeeze into a too-small pair of jeans in an even smaller dressing room. Harsh lighting, an almost offensive number of mirrors casting your reflection back from every angle. Dressing rooms are either abandoned to the point of disarray or guarded by a too-eager sales associate.
BABE
“I want to offer women the opportunity to feel comfortable dressing up or wearing loud prints and dressing more fashion-forward than they have been allowed to in the past.”
would joke about boyfriends and girlfriends calling each other “babe.” It was something catchy that she would say to her friends. Everyone is a babe.
Not to mention, the defeat and frustration when you can’t find anything that fits.
It’s enough to make anyone give up on in-person shopping completely, especially women who might not neatly fit into any of the standard U.S. sizes.
That’s where BABE Boutique comes in.
Tucked away on a corner of Payne Street in the heart of historic Clifton is one of Louisville’s newest local gems — a mid and plus-sized women’s clothing store owned by Lambsey Reeves. A clothing business that’s building community by offering clothing and
she said.
Reeves would often get a resounding, and sometimes emotional, yes.
With a need like this, it makes you begin to question why standard sizes are, indeed, the standard.
Before BABE’s presence at Logan Street Market, Reeves hosted pop-up shops which led to an engaged Instagram following.
”I would run into people who asked me when is BABE coming back?” she said. “I was like, ‘wow this is a huge demand.’”
The cozy dimly lit brick-and-mortar loca-
Body positivity is important at BABE. One of their core values is offering a space where women can try on clothing in a safe and stress-free environment. It is a value that Reeves lives by through her business and one that she has pushed for all her life.
“My grandma was a runway model, and she was always psycho about my weight,” Reeves said. “Women are always inundated with negativity and feelings of we are not good enough, so we have no option.”
Reeves remembers when the body positivity movement took off and credits that for the reason more big box stores now carry plus-size clothing compared to when she was growing up in the ‘80s.
“I think everyone deserves to be treated well and have something cool and nice that will
“I came across a necklace that said ‘babe’ on it, and then I wrote out a logo. It’s just like you’re a babe, everyone is a babe.”
Reeves said it can also stand as an acronym for boutique and beauty experience. She plans to start offering makeup lessons and applications in the store’s front room soon.
Looking ahead, Reeves envisions BABE. as a place of empowerment for women in Louisville, but she also hopes that her store can serve as a testament to the need for greater representation in the fashion industry. All women need more stores like BABE. not only in Louisville but across the country.
“The average [American] woman wears mid and plus-sized clothing so this is a huge market that the city and country should be serving. Mid and plus-sized women want to
A new local boutique is redefining the in-person
a comfortable space for women. A place with room to allow women to be themselves and not go through obstacles with finding the right clothing.
However, BABE didn’t start with mid and plus-sized clothing. What started as a Logan Street Market stall with standard offerings has become something deeper for her.
“As I would sit there every day, I would notice all these mid and plus-sized women walking by,” Reeves said. “They would look and just walk by, and they were thinking ‘oh there’s nothing in there for me.’”
It’s no secret that across the country, plussized clothing is harder to come by. Even larger retail chains that do offer plus-sizes don’t carry them in-house, turning online shopping from an option into a necessity.
Reeves, who identifies as mid-sized, understands the feeling of not being able to find everyday clothing that’s comfortable for her body type.
Driven by her strong desire to empower women, Lambey was called to create the type of inclusive space she herself longed for. The kind where women with mid and plus sized bodies can feel comfortable and supported.
“I talked to women who would pass by, and I would ask them if plus-sized clothing would be something that they were interested in,”
tion of BABE has only been open for two months, however, Reeves says that she’s built a blossoming community in that short amount of time.
“The response to this store has been incredible,” Reeves said. “Women are thanking me all the time for existing.
“I’ve had women cry simply because this is something that they are not accustomed to.” Reeves said it has been very rewarding to make others feel good about what they can wear.
The style of clothing at BABE is not well-defined, yet it is easy to find essential clothing, and jazzier options as well. BABE offers sizes ranging from L to 5X. Along with clothing, you can also find tea sets and accessories. Intoxicating candles set the mood as you pick out what is truly comfortable for you in the store. Reeves has been promoting the store through her Instagram where you can see her wearing some of the clothing. She believes it is important to see the clothing on someone and might help customers who are considering a visit to BABE.
“I want to offer cute, classy, and trendy clothing options” Reeves expressed. “I think I will probably get into more office and professional wear because I know people are interested in that.
make you feel comfortable, your body is not your entire identity but you should be able to dress how you want to dress.”
Reeves believes that since opening BABE, her self-esteem has improved. She no longer worries about society’s expectations around a woman’s size and hopes that others experience that same sense of freedom when shopping in her boutique.
“Working here and following plus-sized influencers, I no longer have body image issues. I’m 38 years old so it’s pretty remarkable to see this working. If I can be a part of helping other women somewhere on a subconscious level not hate themselves, or think ‘I’m not good enough’ then I feel like it’s a contribution and not just a shop owner.”
What’s in a name?
Why did Reeves choose the name, BABE? She said it came after she and her friends
BY CHRIS MATTINGLY
wear what everyone else is wearing. We just want it in our size. That should not be an issue but our society has made it an issue.”
Reeves says that one of her future goals for the store is to start having her clothing line branded under the BABE label to give Louisville women more options for all occasions. Including the Kentucky Derby!
“I just found an incredible line of Derby dresses that go up to a size 5X,” Reeves said excitedly. She plans to collaborate with local hat makers to turn the store into a one-stop shop for mid and plus-sized gals looking for the perfect race day wardrobe.
As far as the future goes for BABE Boutique, Reeves has many goals. She’ll be bringing events like the Sofar Sounds Concert series to the store at the end of February. Intending to connect musicians and audiences, Sofar, is a perfect partnership.
Reeves, ambitious and determined, is currently exploring the idea of opening a second BABE location which she hopes will be in downtown New Albany. She plans to hire more staff to dedicate her own time to designing the upcoming clothing label along with the rest of the behind-the-scenes work of running a small business.
At BABE Boutique, everyone is a babe. No matter their size.
What’s Next for Louisville’s Urban Core with the Loss of Three Major Corporations?
Innovation is the key to
the survival of the important urban environment
BY ERICA RUCKER
Humana, LG&E, and Fifth Third have said they are leaving the downtown core. Courier-Journal’s Joe Gerth called it “another death knell for downtown,” and scoffed at Mayor Greenberg’s suggestion that it’s an opportunity.
If an opportunity is to be made of the changing urban core, what might that be?
With the departure of these major corporations to smaller buildings and not directly inside Louisville’s urban core, questions about “What’s Next?” for the downtown area have arisen. Some feel that more corporations should move in to take the places of Humana, LG&E, and Fifth Third Bank.
Others have called for a decentralized downtown model, which takes the traditional cultural core of a city and disperses it out of the urban center. In many models, this unfortunately results in suburban sprawl, fractured city governments, and dying city cores.
But what do urban planners and developers think?
Answering this definitively would likely be tougher than German mathematician David Hilbert’s unsolvable equations. The fact is developers and urban planners (sometimes the same person) have as many ideas as governments, businesses, and the other citizens of the city.
In exploring the new paradigm for downtown, it seemed fair to reach out to the University of Louisville Urban and Public Affairs Department for input from the expertise of some of the top thinkers in urban planning and community development. This piece will only scratch the surface of the conversations to be had. Expect followup.
Dr. John “Hans” Gilderbloom serves in the Graduate Planning, Public Administration,
Sustainability, and Urban Affairs program at UofL. For him, a decentralized downtown isn’t optional. He believes strongly in a centralized and well-functioning urban core. One of the ways that he sees that happening is through some very basic corrections in how the Louisville downtown moves.
“I think the problem with the downtown is that they need to make some corrections. And when Pete Buttigieg ran for president from up in Indiana, we’d been in contact about transforming downtowns from speedy, reckless accidental prone one-way streets to multilane, one-way streets to two-lane, two-way streets.
“And, we thought, that was a really good idea. I’ve written before for LEO and for the Courier-Journal — articles talking about the benefits of two-way streets, which finally Fischer [former Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer] agreed to when David James ran in Old Louisville that they would transform Brook and First Street into two-way. They did that, and it was highly successful.”
For Gilderbloom, the maze of one-way streets in downtown Louisville works antithetical to making it a more vibrant area. This change in Brook and First gave him some hope that Louisville was moving in the right direction.
“That was like 15 years ago. We thought there’d be a movement. The good news is they are transforming Muhammad Ali [Blvd.] and certain other strategic streets to slow, calm,
and cool. The idea is that pedestrians would like to walk more and feel safer. And you see a lot more baby carriages out there, skateboarders, people walking around”
The downtown Gilderbloom envisions is one that is found in many larger cities. Cities like Nashville where there is booming business and cultural activity.
“I am proudly from San Francisco, and our family’s been involved in San Francisco ever since it burned down in 1906. My grandfather was bravely carrying buckets of water, but said, ‘You know, there’s a better way to save the buildings, and that is to fix the maze of water pipes throughout the city.’ He had come over here as a plumber, so he’d done that.”
These seemingly simple solutions increase accessibility and flow.
“I don’t think we should give up on the downtown, but I do think I’ve seen this movement where converting the empty places into housing and trying to get people, more people, to live down there. Well, the difficulty of downtown right now with housing is parking,” GIlderbloom said.
“You’ve gotta get parking there, which is, again, people recognize that the parking is itself a challenge.
“For example in Cincinnati where they are coming back, and it’s notable in terms of how they’ve done it, is there’s few, very few empty spaces there in terms of parking just on the surface parking. And it’s an eyesore. But it is doable.”
Developer Gill Holland sees the use of downtown’s empty spaces with a creative eye. Holland is responsible for several development projects around Louisville, most notably the development that changed East Market St. into Nulu, starting with the Green Building.
Holland was out of town when LEO reached out for comment but shared some thoughts via email.
“It would be cool if some big company just gave KyCAD or Fund for the Arts a building. The building would then be a nonprofit so there would be no property tax — just would need to have enough to cover LG&E, MSD, maintenance, and insurance. And, business gets the tax deduction for the donation.”
Like Gilderbloom, he doesn’t feel that many of these buildings would be easily convertible to living situations. For him, that’s based on HVAC, ceiling heights, and plumbing logistics.
“If we did inverse property tax so the folks who own the parking lots would pay way MORE based on the lesser value of what is on their property, and someone who invested a bunch, built big buildings, converting the lot to a higher use, would pay LESS property tax, that could be a good idea.
“Even the parking lot folks could then build a 5-story parking garage if they wanted, and that then frees up downtown space for more living space buildings.”
Aside from the streets being one-way and parking creating an untenable situation. Downtown Louisville has another larger and more complex-to-solve issue, and that is its western half surrounded by “44 toxic chemical companies that are just smoking it out and reducing your lifespan,” according to Gilderbloom. He cites these plants as one of the major reasons why Louisville was bypassed for Nashville when Amazon was looking for a large hub.
“We are currently ranked among mid-size cities as one of the top polluters, actually number two,” said Gilderbloom.
“I’ve been studying this stuff, the urban dynamics, since I was an undergraduate, where I worked with these two great planners, Harvey Molotch and Richard Applebaum, who wrote about what makes a city dynamic, and what makes it work, what makes it affordable, what makes it pleasant, what makes it
civil, what makes it beautiful.”
Molotch, a sociologist, is famous for his work in creating the field of environmental sociology, as well as his book, “Urban Fortunes,” which examined the city as a “growth machine.” He proposed that the city was not a series of empty pieces of land waiting for humans to interact with them but was already associated with specific human interests — commercial, sentimental, and psychological. He felt that real estate interests of people who own properties that gain value when growth takes place were important in shaping cities. He labeled these people the “local growth machine” and suggested that cities needed to be studied (and compared) by examining the organizational structure, lobbying, manipulation, and structuring done by these “growth machine” people. He suggested that the shape of a city including the distribution of its population is due to social actions including opportunistic interests, and not interpersonal or geographic necessities.
This thinking has become standard in how urban planners and developers approach advising a city about how to revive its urban core. Applebaum, like Molotch, approaches the ideas of cities from that of sociology. He, however, focused on the city and economic justice including housing, homelessness, and labor. His work falls firmly in the world of activist-academic.
Gilderbloom’s work with both thinkers created a lasting impact on his approach to cities. His prescription for downtown has simple two first steps: Fix the streets and fix the pollution.
As conversations loom on what to do about Louisville’s downtown, the Humana building is embroiled in a lawsuit with the firm of famed architect Michael Graves who designed the former tower that housed Humana’s headquarters.
Humana alleges that inspections in 2019 found faulty construction and evidence that it had been hidden behind drywall and that other corners were cut in significant design and structural areas of the building.
With the tower tied up in litigation, it is unclear when or if it will be used for a new purpose.
Gilderbloom would hate to see it torn down.
Some have suggested retrofitting the Humana tower or other buildings for housing but with the lawsuit and issues with the tower that doesn’t seem to be the course of action.
Gilderbloom does believe that housing in downtown can be addressed and that it shouldn’t be another “luxury” housing development.
A project that he has consulted on with Underhill Associates involves a conversion of the former Louisville Urban Government Center and Old Baptist Hospital in the Paristown Pointe neighborhood. There was some scandal, according to Gilderbloom, in that the city sold the property for cheap to be razed and used for luxury housing.
“But, imagine 300,000 square feet of
housing, 300,000 square feet, which could create 200 – 300 housing units, and that could help the elderly.
There’s a market for that. And, of course, students going to Bellarmine and downtown.”
The luxury market, which is accustomed to living with a view, would likely be remiss to find the area as desirable because of the lack of a view.
“The view and the location, and so on is not one that people who wanna buy a luxury house like, or who are used to along the river are going to reject.”
A final note
The loss of large businesses in the downtown core is more than an economic shift for businesses, there is a shift in the culture and not just in Louisville, in no small part, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers learned to work at home and when the restrictions of the pandemic were lifted, these same workers refused to return to fluorescent-lit offices and a lack of free movement.
In Louisville, we are looking at three major towers being vacated. In cities like New York, this is closer to 30 empty buildings.
According to a January 2024 CBS news report, the effects of empty office spaces could ricochet through the economy because of the way these buildings are financed, at least in places like New York City. The risk of real estate firms not being able to make their rent and potentially defaulting on loans could increase the risk for banks (and taxpayers) who often have to bear the cost of failed industry. See the recession of 2008 and the auto industry collapse.
But that risk doesn’t translate to the way people are working now. In short, it’s not the fault of the worker. It’s time for the industries to adapt.
According to CBS, “By some estimates, the price of office buildings has tanked by as much as 40% since the pandemic. At Columbia Business School, real estate professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh has modeled out the impact of hybrid work on pricing. He calls it a “train wreck in slow motion.”
In the article Van Nieuweburgh also said that reimagining these spaces can and should be “ambitious” with the use of both private and public monies.
“We no longer have to live where we work,” Van Nieuwerburg said in the piece. “And that’s a very transformational idea. And I believe society is only at the beginning of realizing the full potential of that idea.”
In Louisville, we are also standing on that same precipice. What do we do if business isn’t at the core of our cities? How do we maintain a strong urban center that serves our city in a way that keeps the cultural integrity intact?
It seems that the answer is both simple and complex and best summed up in a single phrase, one that has aided humans throughout our time on the planet. Innovate. We need to innovate to survive and the same can be said for our cities. Innovation is the way that we will create the paradigm of living in our new post-COVID, post-office, world.
From Black Mirrors to Midjourney
Piercing through the cacophony of opinions about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its use in the production of art, three Louisvillebased artists present their perspectives. Mary Carothers, Tiffany Calvert, and Josh Azzarella share their processes, their concerns, and their hopes for the use of AI in artmaking.
It Started With An Invite
The daughter of a 6th-grade science teacher and an architect, artist Mary Carothers was encouraged in her childhood to pay attention to the world around her, think for herself, and be creative. After an undergraduate program at Pratt Institute and a graduate program at the Rhode Island School of Design, she began working as an interdisciplinary artist with a particular interest in sculptural and photographic forms. She has been teaching at the Hite Institute of Art + Design at University of Louisville for 26 years and says, plainly yet passionately: “I love teaching!”
Her current practice examines “the trends of the picturesque through historic and contemporary times to present an alternative
By Aria Baci
engagement with landscape representation.”
Carothers recounts that during the 18th century, privileged travelers would turn their backs on nature scenes, and hold a small black mirror called a Claude glass over their shoulders to view softened, idealized scenes behind them. The device reflected scenery that resembled the landscape paintings of Claude Lorrain, a French painter renowned for his sunset-colored depictions of ancient Roman ruins. She says this created “an effect like many do today when making a cellphone selfie with a stylized filter.”
Carothers created her own version of a Claude glass, with which she produces “paradoxical photographs.” The rectangular photographs are captured with a cellphone camera by facing a landscape and positioning the device either in her hand or on a tripod. She then applies filters to intentionally romanticize the image. These photographs are then
Three Louisville-based artists share their perspectives on art and artificial intelligence
used to create “circular idealized content as a collaboration with Artificial Intelligence generators.”
When her friend Jerome Miller invited her to beta test the AI software for Midjourney, she was more skeptical than enthusiastic, “but I played along, prompting the program to deliver the most impossible challenges I could muster.” Most of her initial prompts were related to the concept of infinity, which often produced illustrations reminiscent of science fiction book covers and film posters.
“Working around Valentine’s Day I also prompted Midjourney to imagine Fyodor Dostoevsky vomiting Sweethearts candy and was sternly warned that my privileges would be revoked if I continued to use words such as vomit.”
Cautious Optimism About Possible Futures
“AI simultaneously fascinates and terrifies me,” Carothers said, citing the advances in medical science and improved access to education, yet acknowledges that she soon
starts imagining “a dystopian world where robots replace nurses and shortcuts in education ultimately lead us to short-circuit.”
Carothers thinks that Midjourney is unethical.
“I question structural inequality and the many artists’ images that are stolen unbeknownst to them. At the same time, I am also aware that AI can democratize.”
One of her former students now works for the city of Hazard and uses AI generators to propose design solutions that can help revitalize the city. “Less than a year ago, she would not have been able to make the same headway. Hazard has quickly become an increasingly progressive city that hosted the first DEIB conference in Appalachia.” Carothers attributes some of this success to AI.
Her series “Beyond the Frame” prompts AI generators using only her own photographs with no text. She submitted two images at a time and asked the AI to blend the contents. Her intention was to allow her personal work to commingle with the imagery scraped by commercial AI platforms to create an
Left: Self as Wolf, 2023, by Mary Carothers. Right: Self as Wolf — AI Version.
idealized image. “I imagined myself standing at the mouth of a cave inhabited by a hungry monster that gobbled up my artwork and coughed up something new from the depths of its lair. I found this approach far more fascinating than text prompting.”
She now has a collection of AI-generated images that she pairs with non-AI images and says she is looking forward to the continued exchange between old and new technologies, such as “reclaiming my images by using historic printing processes after being blended in AI.” She plans to continue the “Beyond the Frame” series. “I’ve really only just begun!”
Curating A Personal Data Set
Tiffany Calvert is a Louisville-based painter and Associate Professor at the Hite Institute. She has a particular interest in still life paintings from the Netherlands from the late 16th to the early 18th centuries.
The Dutch interest in objects and their symbolic meaning informed her own painting when, in the late 2010s, she started repainting images of still lifes and then painting abstractly on top of them. “I only did that a few times before I realized,‘this is silly. That takes forever.” So she began to make reproductions of paintings and paint on top of them. This was her way of engaging with some of the most representational paintings in Western art history as if they were abstraction: “to literally paint abstractly into them and try to confuse the two things.”
A problem developed when she enlarged images and could see the remnants of the reproduction. Anyone who has looked closely at a vintage book or magazine will recognize Ben-Day dots, the small dots of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black used to reproduce color in ink on paper. “When you blow it up, you can see them, so that got me thinking about reproduction and digital media. And I started glitching those images.”
During this exploratory time, Calvert had a conversation with a digital media artist who challenged her to try AI. At first, she was unsure if she knew enough coding to be able to play with AI, but the artist introduced her to beta software. “This was before DALL-E came out to the world,” she says. When she realized she had already been manipulating images, only with a different method, she was inspired to create her own data set for the AI, “which was as many still life paintings as I could gather and ask it to try to learn how to make a new one.” Those were her first steps into her current body of work. She has now been using that software for four years.
Many platforms claim that a user can input one to 15 images and the AI will learn, but what actually happens is that the AI has already been trained in an algorithm, and users are simply adding a style on top of it — not entirely unlike what Calvert had been doing manually. “When I was putting in over a thousand images, I had more influence over the data set.” So the next logical step for her was to work with a computer engineer to develop her own machine-learning algorithm without anyone else’s data in it, only hers, and to see what she could do.
A Uniquely 21st Century Approach to Painting
Describing both her process and her finished paintings, Calvert says, “As much as I can abstract them and mutate them, the general public will still recognize the still life-ness of them,” Calvert says. “I’ve always wanted my work to draw someone in and then repulse them, that it be sort of beautiful and enticing and attractive and then its wrongness would come second. That’s what painting has always done.”
Artists have continually looked to paintings like Édouard Manet’s “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe,” the picnicking painting with a female nude and a half-dressed female bather among two fully-dressed men. Generations of painters have returned to this painting to remake it, Calvert says, “recognizing the abstraction inherent in the original … then abstracting it further.” Painters understand this idea, and then intentionally “mess with space, mess with color, mess with painting,
mess with abstraction.”
Calvert’s still life paintings are “quite distorted, and kind of mutant or gothic,” which she hopes will point out the ugly side of AI. “Obviously, the biological content is also in my work. These are organic forms that look mutated.” Her use of AI to produce these abstractions is deliberate and it will be continual: “I want more people to try using AI because to have a critical eye on it, you need lots of artists’ perspectives.”
The Question of Ethics
“I’m hugely concerned with the ethics of AI,” Calvert says. “But not in the way you would think.” Many artists, from comic book creators to editorial illustrators, are concerned that AI platforms like Leonardo.Ai and Midjourney scrape data from their work without any consideration for their copyrights.
Commercial AI platforms have been unapologetic about their use of the intellectual property of multitudinous creatives for their own data sets, which they claim are proprietary, and do not disclose. This practice is not only unethical but also illegal. “They design packets of millions of images and that’s what they train their machine algorithm on, and then they don’t reveal to the public where that imagery came from.” But copyright issues do not bother Calvert much. “I like the idea of my images going back into the feed. I don’t really mind that.”
Her concern is that the general public might not completely understand what is in the data sets that companies are not sharing. If entire social groups and their histories are not included, the data sets that teach AI will begin engaging a new kind of natural selection. She says “the data sets overall skew overwhelmingly toward Western white culture. If you’re going to use those data sets to, for example, solve medical problems, then you are skewed towards solving that medical problem for a white Western genetic makeup.”
The possibility that AI might privilege the health and survival of the dominant culture, to the detriment to others, is a bigger concern to Calvert than intrusion on intellectual property rights because, she says, “I think there’s much bigger implications.”
AI as an Unreliable Narrator
Calvert’s husband Josh Azzarella is also a digital media artist. A recent recipient of the Artist Professional Development Grant from the Great Meadows Foundation, he works especially within the medium of photography. The introduction of AI into his image-making has already presented him with new complexities.
“Photography, since its inception, has
often been perceived as a reliable index of reality,” he says. “However … photography has always been subject to interpretation, bias, manipulation, and alteration.” The same can be said about the rapid expansion of AI image generation. Azzarella wants to examine the ways AI might change the criteria of authenticity that have long been associated with photography.
His piece Untitled #310 was conceived during “a confluence of personal circumstances and response to societal unrest.” Azzarella is immunocompromised, so physical participation in the Breonna Taylor protests in Louisville during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic was not possible for him. Nevertheless, he did want to contribute to the discourse around institutional anti-Blackness, police violence, and social justice. The result was his interpretation of gunshot detection technology, a response to “not only the events that unfolded in Louisville but also a resonant commentary on the pervasive gun violence in the U.S.”
Unlike conventional security cameras that passively record their surroundings, Untitled #310 is coded to listen, interpret, and make decisions based on pre-specified auditory stimuli. The AI is trained to recognize the sound of a gunshot, and when it is identified, the AI communicates with a camera to capture an image of the sky directly above it—all within 0.25 seconds. “This positions the AI not as the unflinching eye of a surveillance camera,” Azzarella says, “but as an active agent in the act of recording and indexing.”
The AI was trained on a Google AudioSet of more than two million sounds across more than 500 acoustic categories. The AI runs on a computer processor Raspberry Pi 3B+ with Azzarella’s own custom audio processor and a single microphone, all powered by a rechargeable battery pack maintained by a second battery pack with a solar cell. The electronic components of his piece are housed in a weatherproof case.
While the images produced by Untitled #310 are poetic snapshots of the skies above violent scenes, they raise questions about how AI and technology can amplify human error. AI does more than create imagery—it also crafts narratives. “Because AI is driven by algorithmic selections,” Azzarella says it is “poised to curate our personal memory, emphasizing certain events while potentially overshadowing others.” This selective narration of the human social sphere could eventually alter “the way collective experiences are remembered and understood.”
Art reflects the customs and values of the culture that creates it. Technology reflects not only our aesthetic preferences, but also our belief systems. The incorporation of emergent technology within traditions of visual art has the ability to reinforce existing power structures or dismantle them. If the artists who use AI understand this idea, and then— as Calvert says, “mess with it”—the possibilities are as constricting or as liberating as our prompts.
Calvert’s #414, oil on water based latex print on canvas, 55x68 inches, 2023. Photo by Mindy Best
BOWLING GREEN AND BEYOND: THE DADDY SISTERS ARE A BAND YOU SHOULD KNOW
WORDS AND PHOTOS BY GEORGIA MALLETT
Inside Bowling Green rockstar Chick Falcon’s house, a collection of vintage keyboards, stacked amps, guitars played by rock legends and 80s arcade games line the walls surrounding a drum set. This is where the magic of The Daddy Sisters happens.
Chick Falcon and the band are a staple piece of the Bowling Green music scene and have been around for almost five years. The band went through many drummers before Jack Quinn but he was the one that clicked.
“I’ve never been as connected with a musician or a bandmate like Jack in my life ever,” said Falcon. The duo have been expanding their presence to Louisville after signing with sonaBLAST! Records last year.
Falcon’s journey in the music scene began during her time as a student at Western Kentucky University. She would attend house shows in Bowling Green, immersing herself in the vibrant local music scene. It was during this time that she was introduced to trans-identities. After learning more about the gender spectrum from her college peers, Falcon began to reflect on her own gender expression.
“I identified as gender fluid. I was basically learning about my own gender,” she explained. “I’ve always kind of suppressed it, but after learning more, I just said, ‘let’s do it.’”
The Daddy Sisters band became an outlet for Falcon to express her gender identity. As the lead singer and guitar player, Falcon could
use her music to explore her gender expression and share her experiences with others.
The band’s lively blend of rock and punk features empowering lyrics with themes of self-acceptance and pride. Falcon’s powerful and emotive voice not only embeds confidence in the songs but also brings out the music’s humorous and playful elements.
While making the new album, Falcon said it was kind of daunting.
“You want to make the best record possible,” said Falcon. When we were recording the first song, I initially sang it how I always did live and it wasn’t the representation I wanted. It sounded too masculine. I wasn’t feeling that. I wanted to sound more feminine.”
Falcon’s transition includes vocal therapy which affects her singing in the band. She has been training with a professional to move her voice into a more feminine range.
“Queer people and trans-femmes will come up and say ‘hey, it’s awesome to representation in this field. I feel really special that I’m able to be in a popular band and also be someone who’s pansexual and trans,” said Falcon.
Along with being in the band, Falcon has a passion for refurbishing vintage video games, musical instruments and musical equipment and cooking with her girlfriend, Nina.
Said Falcon, “In 2021 it was so many different changes like, my old drummer quit. My ex-girlfriend broke up with me. And my car
But now, I’ve got my dream car. I’m in love and I got my dream drummer. [It’s] incredible.”
The Daddy Sisters first album “The Beast With Two Backs” will be released on June 28. Their new single, “Be A Girl” is out now on sonaBlaAST! Records
crashed.
Left Page Clockwise: The Daddy Sisters pose for a portrait on the hood of Falcon’s prized-possession, her 1984 Nissan 300ZX.
Jack Quinn and Chick Falcon discuss creative direction over the song “Yas Queen” during the first recording session of The Daddy Sisters first album on Feb. 11, 2022. The recording over the song took over five hours. The duo rerecorded several times focusing mainly on the bass drum and the rhythm guitar being the highlight of the beat. Falcon was inspired by bands like The Strokes and The White Stripes that influenced the sound of the Daddy Sisters.
Chick Falcon warms up her voice while getting ready to record vocals and guitar for The Daddy Sisters new album at La La Land Studio for SonaBLAST! Records on May 9, 2023.
Falcon’s Lisa Frank notebook is filled with the lyrics for her songs. She uses it as a reference while recording her song Bitchin’ Tiara.
Right Page Left: The Daddy Sisters perform at Revolution 91.7’s Mayhem Festival at Western Kentucky University’s South Lawn on April 29, 2022.
Chick Falcon performs at Revolution 91.7’s Mayhem Festival at Western Kentucky University on April 14, 2023.
FOOD & DRINK
KIWAMI BRINGS THE ULTIMATE RAMEN
BY ROBIN GARR
Louisville seems to be having a ramen renaissance right now, and I am here for it.
Yes. we’ve had access to genuine ramen that didn’t come from a cheap supermarket packet for a while. Of course you can still get your ramen fix at full-service Japanese and other Asian restaurants. And we’re not even talking about all the tasty Vietnamese pho and Thai yum, which are delicious soups-as-a-meal too but entirely different.
But there’s no substitute for those memorable places where the chefs treat ramen as a calling, a spiritual experience that must be done properly and consumed with respect but quickly, before the broth cools.
“Spicy, steaming, slurpy ramen might
be everyone’s favorite Japanese food,” Yuri Kageyama wrote in an Associated Press World News report. “In Tokyo, long lines circle around blocks, and waiting an hour for your ramen is normal. What awaits might be just a dive, but a hot bowl of ramen rarely fails to hit the spot.”
That’s ramen. It does hit the spot, and as Marie Kondo might say, it sparks joy. Ramen is about joy, and we’re starting to see a little burst of ramen houses popping up all over.
under way, and if you’d like to help, they’re inviting friends to support the cause by purchasing digital gift cards.
And now there’s Kiwami Ramen, recently arrived in the Highlands space that housed Wild Ginger and, before that, Cafe Metro. Kiwami means “ultimate” or “extreme” in Japanese, and after inhaling a couple of outstanding ramens and compelling apps, I’ll go along with that.
We went by for lunch on a Saturday, figuring we’d enjoy a quiet scene. Does the Highlands even wake up that early on the weekend?
Ha! Yes, the Highlands does. The large, L-shaped venue was just about full. With its high ceilings and hard surfaces, it was one of
the loudest lunches I’ve had lately.
Kiwami is a new entry in a tiny but growing chain under Master Chef Tani-san, who, its website assures us, “is bringing the essence of genuine Japanese soul food to the neighborhood community.”
With shops in Tucson, Arizona, and Laredo, Texas, and another coming soon in McAllen, Texas, the Louisville branch earns the unexpected status of being Kiwami’s only location not on the U.S.-Mexico border. Go figure.
We started with a bowl of edamame ($5.95) and chose the spicy option ($1). I’m glad I did. Edamame makes a pleasant bar snack, but this spicy version adds serious fire – a dollop of chili crisp, I believe – that makes it really hard to resist.
A half-dozen potsticker-style gyoza ($9.45 for either pork- or veggie-stuffed) made another tempting appetizer. Wrapped in pale-green kale-pastry wrappers and grilled crispy brown on one side, they were sizzling hot and filled with cooked and mashed puree of mixed veggies, with a sweet-hot dipping sauce on the side.
Then came the ramen. Most of Kiwami’s offerings are built on long-simmered pork shio or shiro broth, a traditional Japanese style that’s light in color, in contrast with soy-dark shoyu ramen.
Kiwami shiro ($15.95), a signature dish, came out steaming hot, almost filling a large black bowl. It lofted up an intriguing, appetizing scent that was hard to describe. Meaty and umami come to mind, and something earthy that reminded us of black truffle. A mass of ramen noodles was piled like an island in a brothy ocean, only its top poking up. Around this perched half of a soft-boiled shoyu egg, a row of thin-sliced grilled chashu pork, kikurage mushroom slivers, bamboo shoots and ground pork, Thin-sliced scallion threads made a pretty garnish.
The only meatless ramen option, vegetable ramen ($14.95), looked surprising at first: Fresh and very fine mixed lettuces had been piled on top, making the dish look like a big dinner salad with a lemon wedge tucked on the side. It was the real thing, though: Stir the lettuce into the rich, lightly salty veggie broth so it wilts down, and you find plenty of avocado and a few broccoli florets nestled in soft, flavorful kale noodles. It felt healthy, and it was very good. Our meal for two was flawless, and service was quick and friendly. Our tab came to $47.30, plus a 22 percent tip entered on the card reader.
If you think edamame are just a bar snack that keeps your hands and palate mindlessly busy, you haven’t tried
Joining Ramen House, in place since 2019 adjacent to Baxter Avenue Theaters. Hokkaido Ramen is new in Colonial Gardens. Renshoku Ramen was building a sterling reputation in Old Louisville until it was forced to close last after a car smashed into a tree out front, starting a fire that killed the driver and badly damaged Renshoku’s building. Repairs are
The menu, printed on a shiny black two-sided card, offers nine ramen options priced from $12.95 to $16.95, plus a variety of optional extra toppings. Nine bowls, including poke bowls, curries, and other goodies, range in price from $9.95 to $21.95. You may also choose from a dozen Japanese appetizers from $5.95 to $15.95.
Noise Level: A happy near-capacity crowd elevated the sound level to a conversationcrushing roar, with average levels at 78.4 dB and peaks to a near-painful 92.2 dB.
Accessibility: The restaurant and restrooms appear accessible to unassisted wheelchair users, with the exception of seats at the bar.
Clockwise from Left: Kiwami shiro ramen, a specialty, is a classic Japanese style made with long-simmered lightcolor broth in place of the standard dark soy-based version.
The veggie-stuffed version of Gyoza – Japanese potstickers – come loaded with goodies and wrapped in pale-green kale pastry.
Kiwami’s spicy version.
Robin Garr
DIRECTOR ALLISON ANDERS COMES HOME
BY TRACY HEIGHTCHEW
Hailing from Ashland, KY, director Allison Anders has built a career weaving stories of women and their relationships to each other and to the places where they live. She experienced a lot of abuse and upheaval growing up, and those experiences, along with her unconventional and rich life among artists and musicians has informed a lot of her artistic creations. She makes heartfelt films full of authentic observations about how women move through space, along with a sensitivity to spoken language and the emotional truth of music. Her second film, “Gas, Food, Lodging,” released in 1993, was a pillar of the early 90s New Hollywood movement, and set a standard for personal, independent filmmaking. The story of a single mom raising teenage daughters in a small New Mexico town paralleled Anders’ own life, and she used her experience growing up in a small town Kentucky to flesh out the trapped atmosphere the teenage characters resent.
“Mi Vida Loca” Screening and Discussion with Director Allison Anders
Thursday, July 11
$12 / $8 for Speed or Women in Film KY members
Speed Cinema, 2035 S. Third St. www.speedmuseum.org/cinema
While “Gas, Food, Lodging” is her best known and most celebrated film among rarified cinefiles, “Mi Vida Loca” (1994) may be her most admired work among diverse audiences around the world. A slice of life film focused on young Chicanas growing up in Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood in the early 90s, this perspective-shifting fable features a mix of non-professional and professional actors, many of whom were Anders’ neighbors. The film utilizes a multitude of voice-overs to tell a variety of stories from the neighborhood, using the tale of best friends Sad Girl and Mousie and the father of their children, Ernesto, as a springboard into the friendships and rivalries among these female gang members. In the thirty years since this film’s release, admiration for “Mi Vida Loca” has grown, which, considering that the only way to stream the film is via Youtube uploads, is proof that marketing alone does not make an audience. The film’s authenticity is key to its success. Allison Anders was very aware of her status as a white woman in a Latino neighborhood and deliberately set out to
not make a preachy, colonizing movie. Everything in the film, from the dialogue and music to the locations and clothes, was consulted about and approved by the people who lived in the neighborhood, with money spent in the neighborhood. The unusual mix of romanticism and realism gives the film a chance to grow as the viewer ages too, and what appealed to me about the film when I was 16 is different from what appeals today. The love triangle between Mousie, Sad Girl, and Ernesto is less interesting today than the career plans of Giggles, newly released from prison and determined not to depend on men to get through life, especially when
told opposite Whisper’s story as she develops her drug trade.
Contemporary reviews of “Mi Vida Loca” were very bothered by what they described as a lack of cohesion in the film, and many reviews reveal a longing for a thorough storyline. This reviewer thinks they may have missed the point of the experiment on display, which is an impressionistic look at everyday life with its small and large episodes, told by the people who live the story. It’s a beautiful movie that sets a pre-gentrified Echo Park and its Chicana culture in amber.
I am proud to say that I will be joining Allison onstage after this screening for a discussion about the impact of “Mi Vida Loca” thirty years later. She is always a delight to listen to, and her insights into filmmaking are refreshingly candid, straightforward, and entertaining. I look forward to hearing her reflections all these years later.
12th Annual Harry Dean Stanton Fest
July 12-14
Lexington, KY
www.harrydeanstantonfest.org
Ms. Anders will be in her home state to attend the 12th Annual Harry Dean Stanton
Fest, Lexington’s celebration of the incomparable beloved Kentucky character actor. This year the festival is focused on Stanton’s lifelong love of music with a line-up of films that are about musicianship or have a heavy focus on soundtrack. Anders will be joined onstage by Houston post-punk band MyDolls following a screening of “Paris, Texas.” Director Wim Wenders gave Anders her start as a PA on this film, which also showcased Mydolls onstage. Later that night, Mydolls will also be playing along with The Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson at the Green Lantern Bar. Other highlights from this year’s HDS Fest include a graveside screening of “Repo Man” in Blue Grass Memorial Gardens, and free screenings of “Cool Hand Luke,” “Paris, Texas,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Cisco Pike,” and “The Rose,” all playing at the Lexington Public Library’s Farish Theater. The festival closes with a Kentucky Theatre screening of Paolo Sorrentino’s “This Must Be the Place,” featuring a post-film discussion with musician/actor Will Oldham.
“Mi Vida Loca” Allison Anders
Courtesy of Speed Cinema
LOVE in the Time of WILD LIGHTS
Two Chinese performers combine acrobatics and romance at the Louisville Zoo
BY ARIA BACI
The Wild Lights Lantern Festival has returned to the Louisville Zoo for its fifth year. Along with more than 60 displays depicting animal life, ecosystems, and Chinese mythology that sit along the 1.4-mile path, live performances by Chinese folk dancers and acrobats happen on the MetaZoo stage from Thursday through Sunday.
Two of the performers, Liu Xiang and Peng Xinle, crossed an ocean to be together. As if a nighttime performance in a zoological garden illuminated by larger-than-life lanterns was not quite magical enough, their globe-spanning romance is a part of the diverse cast, and they took a moment between performances to share their story.
“I’m from Sichuan and he’s from Hebei Province [in the north],” said Liu. “We got to know each other during a dinner that many performers were at. For safety concerns, he offered to accompany me home afterward, and I was a bit touched by his kindness. Then the story began.”
The couple’s story led them across continents and to Louisville.
“I’ve been performing for eight years and embarked on my journey learning folk dance since high school,” Liu said.
“I started learning and practicing at a very early age, like, when I was six. So it’s been almost 16 years,” said Peng.
The couple performs different yet related roles in Wild Lights. Liu explains that her art is bian lian, which can be translated literally from Mandarin to “face-changing,” an ancient Chinese dramatic art that is an integral part of the Sichuan Opera. In Sichuan Opera, performers wear vividly colored costumes and masks, usually representing characters within a story. Performers change their masks from one face to another with a movement of a fan or a movement of the head or hands that is faster than the audience can perceive — something like a mid-narrative sleight of hand costume change.
Peng performs what he calls a “space walk,”
in which he grabs hold of a straight pole and uses his strength and balance to move. He also collaborates with other cast members to perform acrobatics ranging from hat juggling to hoops.
Liu and Peng say that they cherish the opportunity to perform together, and also that they can share their everyday lives together. They were excited about traveling to the U.S. well before they arrived, partially because their performance in Wild Lights at the Louisville Zoo would be part of their first visit to the U.S. After performing for only a month, they have been amazed by the consistent enthusiasm of their audience. “We want to express our appreciation,” the couple says.
They hope to continue attracting people to the Louisville Zoo and attend the Wild Lights show.
Wild Lights runs from March 23 through May 19. Check times and ticket pricing at louisvillezoo. org/wildlights2024/.
Liu Xiang and Peng Xingle. Kyle Shepherd
Wild lights at Louisville Zoo.
Erica Rucker
KENTUCKY NOVELISTS DELIVERING THE GOODS…
BY T.E. LYONS
…and then some. Are you ready to accept some extremes? Here are two significant contributors to the Ohio Valley’s literary scene today. These women writers are stretching well beyond reality with their respective new novels. An intention found in both seems to be overwhelming the reader — not with epics, but within modestly scoped entertainments. These are genre works that might break through — but they’re certainly not aimed at a literary mainstream.
Gwenda Bond’s published output, and her active participation in literary initiatives and nonprofits (e.g., cofounding the Lexington Writer’s Room), have bounced around in very entrancing style. Her brand new novel “The Frame-Up” (Del Rey; 352 pgs., $18) bounces around all by itself: the cavalcade of short chapters is full to bursting. Everything from dialogue exchanges tensed by power plays, to fascinating facts about world-class painting and its remora-like underworld of forgeries. This is an art-heist thriller with a modicum of supernatural/paranormal elements—written with characterization and prose such as found in the more literate of modern genre romances.
There are inner and outer circles of outlaw heroes, villains, and — because this is a caper — the marks, who may turn out to be not such obvious dupes by the time all of the plot twists play out. And flirtations are threatening to catch fire in more than one direction. Naturally the potential mates are not all “on the same team.”
The author gives us complex “family-building” (consider it a parallel to fantasy writers’ world-building) that sets up a deft-butgradual playout of a theme about rebuilding long-sullied relationships. That, plus clever use of the art appreciation/marketing/security matters, are the most admirably accomplished facets of this rough gem. Bond will be in conversation with Erin Keane at Carmichael’s (2720 Frankfort; www.carmichaelsbookstore.com) Monday, February 19 at 7 p.m.
You don’t need to check an events calendar to find Jenny Keifer — she’s owner of Butcher Cabin Books (990 Barret; www.horrorbookstore.com). And now she has her debut novel to place on her store shelves.
“This Wretched Valley” (Quirk Books; 304 pgs., $18.99) has some time skips, mostly owing to framing devices — but the heart of this tale is a tightly focused roller coaster that more-or-less continually accelerates, driving
the central characters toward and then into a mysterious hell.
Does this not seem like the stuff of hundreds of pages — especially when the main setting is not terribly far off a rural Kentucky highway? Much of Kiefer’s achievement is in how she fashions a mundane wayside that can also be the portal of cosmic catastrophes. It’s a concept capable of bewildering, and of bringing both awe and fright, when handled by visionaries (say, William Blake). But also consider how it’s handled by hands unknown, as in the real-life Dyatlov Pass Incident).
After the non-spoiler introduction that there are no known survivors of a
quasi-academic expedition to find undiscovered landscape features, deliberate expository chapters assemble the souls who’ll be taking their tents and ropes and cell phones into the wild. Soon the ambitious semi-pro climber is reaching new heights — but repercussions of insufficient planning and (maybe) pure happenstance leave her and her supportive companion dangling a paltry few feet from safety. From there, it isn’t long before someone has a concussion — and yet they’re not the only one unsure of what they’re seeing or hearing, or whom they can trust.
Many exquisitely squirm-inducing turns follow. Note, though, that there’s also a steady (occasionally gushing) stream of gory moments. This unrelenting tale is singleminded — but hardly simple-minded.
On Left: Author of ‘The Frame Up,’ Gwenda Bond Photo: Kevin Nance
On right: Author of ’ This Wretched Valley,’ Jenny Kiefer Photo: Mary Slinger
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week of December 18
ROB BREZSNY
ARIES (March 21-April 19): If you worked eight hours per day, seven days a week, it would take you 300 years to count to the number one billion. I don’t recommend you try that. I also discourage you from pursuing any other trivial tasks that have zero power to advance your long-term dreams. In a similar spirit, I will ask you to phase out minor longings that distract you from your major longings. Please, Aries, I also beg you to shed frivolous obsessions that waste energy you should instead devote to passionate fascinations. The counsel I’m offering here is always applicable, of course, but you especially need to heed it in the coming months.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In 1951, minister and author Norman Vincent Peale was working on a new book. As he wrote, he would regularly read passages to his wife, Ruth. She liked it a lot, but he was far less confident in its worth. After a while, he got so discouraged he threw the manuscript in the trash. Unbeknownst to him, Ruth retrieved it and stealthily showed it to her husband’s publisher, who loved it. The book went on to sell five million copies. Its title? The Power of Positive Thinking. I hope that in 2025, you will benefit from at least one equivalent to Ruth in your life, Taurus. Two or three would be even better. You need big boosters and fervent supporters. If you don’t have any, go round them up.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I love how colorfully the creek next to my house expresses itself. As high tide approaches, it flows south. When low tide is on its way, it flows north. The variety of its colors is infinite, with every shade and blend of green, grey, blue, and brown. It’s never the same shape. Its curves and width are constantly shifting. Among the birds that enhance its beauty are mallards, sandpipers, herons, grebes, egrets, and cormorants. This magnificent body of water has been a fascinating and delightful teacher for me. One of my wishes for you in 2025, Gemini, is that you will commune regularly with equally inspiring phenomena. I also predict you will do just that. Extra beauty should be on your agenda!
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Just 81 billionaires have commandeered half of the world’s wealth. Even worse, those greedy hoarders are usually taxed the least. That’s hard to believe! How is it even possible that such a travesty has come to pass? I also wonder if many of us non-billionaires have milder versions of these proclivities. Are there a few parts of me that get most of the goodies that my life provides, while other parts of me get scant attention and nourishment? The answer is yes. For example, the part
of me that loves to be a creative artist receives much of my enthusiasm, while the part of me that enjoys socializing gets little juice. How about you, Cancerian? I suggest you explore this theme in the coming weeks and months. Take steps to achieve greater parity between the parts of you that get all they need and the parts of you that don’t.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorizes that most of us have limits to our social connections. Typically, our closest circle includes five loved ones. We may also have 15 good friends, 50 fond allies, 150 meaningful contacts, and 1500 people we know. If you are interested in expanding any of these spheres, Leo, the coming months will be an excellent time to do so. In addition, or as an alternative, you might also choose to focus on deepening the relationships you have with existing companions and confederates.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century. It was written by a Virgo, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her story about the enslavement of African Americans in the US was not only popular. It awakened many people to the intimate horrors of the calamity—and ultimately played a key role in energizing the abolitionist movement. I believe you are potentially capable of achieving your own version of that dual success in the coming months. You could generate accomplishments that are personally gratifying even as they perform a good service for the world.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): According to my reading of the astrological omens, you will be teased with an abundance of invitations to grow in 2025. You will be encouraged to add to your current skills and expertise. You will be nudged to expand your understanding of what exactly you are doing here on planet Earth. That’s not all, Libra! You will be pushed to dissolve shrunken expectations, transcend limitations, and learn many new lessons. Here’s my question: Will you respond with full heart and open mind to all these possibilities? Or will you sometimes neglect and avoid them? I dare you to embrace every challenge that interests you.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scorpioborn Rudolf Karel was a 20th-century Czech composer who created 17 major works, including symphonies and operas. His work was interrupted when Nazi Germany invaded and occupied his homeland. He joined the Czech resistance, but was eventually arrested and confined to Pankrác Prison. There he managed to compose a fairy-tale opera, Three Hairs of the
Wise Old Man. No musical instruments were available in jail, of course, so he worked entirely in his imagination and wrote down the score using toilet paper and charcoal. I firmly believe you will not be incarcerated like Karel in the coming months, Scorpio. But you may have to be extra resourceful and resilient as you find ways to carry out your best work. I have faith that you can do it!
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): What is the perfect gift I could offer you this holiday season? I have decided on a large square black box with nothing inside. There would be a gold ribbon around it bearing the words, “The Fruitful Treasure of Pregnant Emptiness.” With this mysterious blessing, I would be fondly urging you to purge your soul of expectations and assumptions as you cruise into 2025. I would be giving you the message, “May you nurture a freewheeling voracity for novel adventures and fresh experiences.”
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): One of my paramount wishes for you in 2025 is this: You will deepen your devotion to taking good care of yourself. You will study and learn more about the sweet secrets to keeping yourself in prime mental and physical health. I’m not suggesting you have been remiss about this sacred work in the past. But I am saying that this will be a favorable time to boost your knowledge to new heights about what precisely keeps your body and emotions in top shape. The creative repertoire of self-care that you cultivate in the coming months will serve you well for the rest of your long life.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): To fulfill your life mission, to do what you came here to earth to do, you must carry out many tasks. One of the most important is to offer your love with hearty ingenuity. What are the best ways to do that? Where should you direct your generous care and compassion? And which recipients of your blessings are likely to reciprocate in ways that are meaningful to you? While Jupiter is cruising through Gemini, as it is now and until June 2025, life will send you rich and useful answers to these questions. Be alert!
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Mysteries of the past will be extra responsive to your investigations in 2025. Persistent riddles from your life’s earlier years may be solvable. I encourage you to be aggressive in collecting previously inaccessible legacies. Track down missing heirlooms and family secrets. Just assume that ancestors and dead relatives have more to offer you than ever before. If you have been curious about your genealogy, the coming months will be a good time to explore it. I wish you happy hunting as you search for the blessings of yesteryear—and figure out how use them in the present. gifts with those who are worthy of them—and maybe even a few who aren’t entirely worthy.
Homework: What can you make or do in 2025 that you have never made or done before? Start dreaming.
CROP TOP
BY DAN SAVAGE
Hey Dan: My boobs began to get bigger — apropos of nothing — in my early thirties. A lot bigger. No weight gain, they just started growing and didn’t stop. I hated it. I’m very active, and they were heavy and miserable and got in the way. So, I had a breast reduction and had never been happier. It was freedom… for three years. Then my breasts started growing again. I’m five years out from the reduction and it’s only getting worse. I hate it. I cannot abide it. I want to fix the problem.
Repeated breast reductions aren’t an option. It’s an expensive major surgery with a long recovery time, and if there’s breast tissue remaining there’s no reason to expect it won’t just grow back again. Top surgery isn’t my favorite solution — I would much rather have the small, perfect tits I had post-reduction — but my realistic options are huge tits or top surgery. I have chosen top surgery. I feel great about the prospect; it’s taken two years of dedicated work to get to the point where I have a surgeon and a surgery date and everything’s in line. The hiccup is my husband — my wonderful, feminist, kind, supportive husband — who is baffled and distressed by my choice.
This is very reasonable! He’s straight and he’s worried he won’t be physically attracted to me anymore. He says it’s different than needing a double mastectomy for something like breast cancer, as it’s an elective surgery. He’s supportive of my happiness and would never tell me not to do it, but as we get closer to the surgery date, I can see that the prospect is weighing on him. Do you have any advice for him? Or me? Or us both? —Soon-To-Be Boobless In Seattle
Your body, your choice.
That’s the only thing I can say in response to your question — that’s the only thing I’m allowed to say in response to your question — and luckily enough for me, STTBIS, that’s exactly what I believe. You get to make your own decisions about what you do with your body. Period. Full stop. Five stars. No notes. But I also believe — and I’m gonna risk saying — that for those of us in long-term, committed, romantic and sexual partnerships, STBBIS, the choices we make for and about our bodies impact the people we care about and can have consequences for our relationships. If I were to get breast implants, say, or some other radical-to-semi-radical elective body modification that it was absolutely within my rights to get —getting my tongue split or my face tattooed or my penis bisected — my husband and my boyfriend would definitely have feelings about that choice. And while they couldn’t stop me from making whatever choice I felt was right for my body
in the end, STTBIS, the impact those choices might have on my relationship(s) would factor into my decision-making process.
So, if I wanted breast implants and my husband and/or boyfriend told me he’d be less attracted to me if I got them, that would argue against me getting the boobs of my dreams, STTBIS, because being wanted by my boyfriend and my husband is important to me too.
Still and again: your body, your boobs, your choice. And your reasons for getting your breasts removed — physical comfort, active lifestyle, not wanting to undergo breast reduction surgery every five years for the rest of your life — are sound. But your husband’s body is his body, STTBIS, and he’s telling you his body might not respond to yours in the same way if you get your breasts removed. And this issue isn’t just how your body is going to look after you get your breasts removed, STTBIS, but what your body is going to say: “I knew you wouldn’t like this, you tried to tell me this choice would negatively impact our sexual connection, but I did it anyway.”
A couple of other points…
You use the term “top surgery” to refer to the procedure you want — an elective double mastectomy removing all breast tissue — and that term is usually associated with the kind of masculinizing procedures trans men and non-binary AFAB folks need to affirm their gender identities. Is this about feeling comfortable in your female body or are you expressing a desire to inhabit a more androgynous/non-binary body? You may be using the term “top surgery” because it sounds kinder and gentler than “double mastectomy,” STTBIS, but when you say, “top surgery,” your husband may hear, “first step toward gender transition.” If your gender identity isn’t in flux, STTBIS, hearing that from you — emphatically — may relieve some of your husband’s stress about his sexual attraction to you. I assume he already knows your reasoning (this is about addressing a physical burden that’s made you miserable), but he may need to hear — he may need to hear again and again — that your sexual connection matters to you and that this isn’t the first step toward a masculine gender presentation or identity that won’t work for him.
And finally, STTBIS, have you considered breast implants? While they’re not without their risks, they may be worth it. At the same time you have your breast tissue removed — which can, indeed, grow back after breast reduction surgery — you could get breast implants that resemble or recreate the “small, perfect breasts” you once had,
i.e., the breasts you both loved.
Hey Dan: My little sister lives in the Bay Area and she has been dating a man who works in tech and lives in the Bay Area. My sister has been dating him for nearly four years. He’s from India and his parents strongly believe in arranged marriage. This guy led his Indian ex-girlfriend on for seven years! My sister is white, and he kept her secret from his parents for three years. Every ultimatum she gives him, the deadline comes, and he asks for more time. He’s delaying a potential engagement/proposal and keeps changing his mind about if he wants to marry my sister or if his parents will want him to marry her. I fucking hate this guy. I want her to DTMFA. My sister is bold, funny, beautiful, intelligent, independent, vibrant and successful. Her boyfriend is evasive, cheap, completely unremarkable and a momma’s boy. What can I say to convince my sister to move on? Any advice or thoughts?
—Seething In SF
There are no magic words.
There’s nothing I can tell you to say that you probably haven’t already said, SIS, and no spin I can put on things you’ve probably already said that will convince your sister to do what she knows she needs to do. You’ve done your duty as a sibling — you’ve pointed out the red flags, you’ve highlighted shitty patterns, you’ve hyped your sister up — and now all you can do is wait for the inevitable to happen. The wait could be longer than you’d like, SIS, or it could be shorter than you expect. Either way, when this shitty relationship finally ends — which it almost certainly will — show up at your sister’s door with a few pints of ice cream, a couple of boxes of wine, and a nice selection of pot gummies.
P.S. Resist the overwhelming temptation to say, “I told you so,” to your sister when it ends. She knows you told her so, SIS, no need to rub it in. And trust me: hearing someone say, “You told me so,” is so much better — it’s so much more satisfying — than saying, “I told you so,” ever could be.
Hey Dan: I was a sex worker for over a decade. Lately though, I have thought about a client from my past who always stuck with me and I’m now wondering what I should do. We had the most incredible night. It was absolutely mind-blowing sex, as I felt like finally someone perfectly matched my energy and technical ability. That kind of chemistry is rare, but he was married and getting divorced, and the one requirement his wife had of him was that he couldn’t see me again. Knowing we can’t be together, what should I do? I fantasize about
him, I think about contacting him, and I wish I could see him again. How do I forget about him? Or should I reach out? Lately it’s all I can think about, even though I have many other opportunities for partners. He’s a fan of yours, so there’s a good chance he’ll read this.
—Chemistry Like I’ve Never Gotten Since
Seeing as you just reached out to this former client in my column — assuming this former client of yours is still a reader of mine — telling you not to reach out to him would be equal parts pointless and hypocritical. By running your letter, CLINGS, I have enabled this act of reaching out. I own my complicity. Anyway, CLINGS, even if your former client sees this, he’s under no obligation to respond. My hunch is that this man — someone you shared one amazing night of transactional sex with many years ago — has either reconciled with his wife (if not, her feelings about who he sees wouldn’t matter) or had other reasons he didn’t want to see you again after the divorce that he didn’t share with you. If you didn’t hear from him after their divorce (assuming it happened), CLINGS, it’s possible the chemistry wasn’t as intense for him as it was for you (which happens) or the sex was amazing for him because it was transactional (also happens) or he has hangups about your line of work (also happens). If he’s the kind of guy who looks down on the sex workers he hires, CLINGS, you wouldn’t wanna be with him. Chemistry or no chemistry, you wouldn’t be safe with him, emotionally or physically. Intense chemistry is hard to forget, CLINGS, and I understand why you would wanna reach out to this man years later — there’s this Dutch boy I spent a single night with decades ago that I still think about — but sometimes an amazing connection runs its course in a single night. The belief that one perfect night could or should become one perfect lifetime is a logical fallacy that prevents us from fully appreciating good memories, which are all we ultimately have. An obsession with what could’ve been — you with your client, me with my Dutch boy — can prevent us from appreciating what actually was.
So, give it a couple of weeks. If you don’t hear from your old client, CLINGS, you’ll know it’s time to jump on one or two of those new opportunities.
Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love!
Or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/askdan!
DRIVE AROUND THE BLOCK
BY JOHN LIEB
Puzzles Edited by Joel Fagliano
John Lieb is a high school mathematics teacher and football and baseball coach living in Boston. He is also the co-director of Boswords, a series of in-person and online crossword-puzzle tournaments. This is his first Sunday for The Times. He is particularly proud of his fresh clues for crossword staples, such as at 122-Across, 3-Down and 111-Down.
5 Source of distress for a bull 8 George Eliot’s ‘‘____ Marner’’
13 Actress Barton of ‘‘The O.C.’’ 19 Home of Oberlin College 20 Economist who wrote about an ‘‘invisible hand’’ 22 Clear, in a way
*Blemish on a vehicle 25 Untroubled 26 Small talks 27 ‘‘____, me?’’
28 Things compared between Wordle solvers 29 Norman Vincent ____, ‘‘The Power of Positive Thinking’’ author
Joker
Defeated
*With 101-Across, extra level of intricacy
*Like a weakly hit ground ball
Lotion letters
45 ‘‘The Corsican Brothers’’ author, 1844
47 Airer of annual ‘‘A Christmas Story’’ marathons
49 Plaines, Ill.
51 Manage
52 Americana symbol
54 Decorate at a bakery
57 Grumpy friend
59 Flashes
60 Once, old-style 61 Clinch
62 East Lansing sch.
63 ‘‘Now!’’
64 Info provider at a crossroads
68 Off, in mob slang
69 Bests in a staring contest, say
71 Not doing much
72 Accept, as an excuse
73 Rapper ____ Spice
85 Ride the pine
87 Address a gray area?
33 Arrange, as hair
34 Jettison
36 Special ____
Clamorous 42 Youth sports level 43 Understand, so to speak
74 ____ Nationalgalerie, modern art museum in Berlin
75 Diving bird
76 Always, in verse
77 Diamonds, informally
78 Power line?
83 Actor Elgort of ‘‘West Side Story’’ Across 1 Smack
88 Either of two wisecracking film critics in ‘‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’’
89 Dirt-y words?
91 Co-star of 1952’s ‘‘Moulin Rouge,’’ familiarly
95 Big name in travel mugs
96 Summer on the Seine
97 *Holding that’s hard to convert to cash
101 *See 32-Across
102 Purveyor of lifeguard gear
104 X exchanges, for short 105 metabolism
107 Settled down for the night
109 Seer’s sphere
110 Midwestern city where Pete Buttigieg was mayor
Uselessly
115 *1984 Sade hit 117 ‘‘You pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down?’’
118 Businessperson bringing in beaucoup bucks
119 It goes with the flow
120 Worked the land 121 Like Sanskrit
122 Digits rarely given out in a bar: Abbr.
123 Exam on which Elle Woods got a 179 in ‘‘Legally Blonde’’
Bartlett cousin
‘‘Not gonna fly’’
Voice heard by millions world-
Play down
Russian country house
Things to strive for
Lilac or lavender 8 One of 15 boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics: Abbr. 9 ‘‘That’s already crossed my desk’’ 10 John of ‘‘Footloose’’ 11 Record label for Buffalo Springfield
12 ‘‘Put a sock in it!’’
for the Camaro and Firebird
37 Took control
39 Mr. Bigglesworth, to Dr. Evil
40 Winter morning phenomena
44 Thompson of ‘‘The Marvels’’
46 Trickle
47 Cold comfort?
48 Leader of the Pink Ladies in ‘‘Grease’’
50 ‘‘I was wrong big deal!’’
53 Government investigation
54 Positive votes
55 ‘‘____ the day!’’
56 Comfort
58 One leaving you in stitches
64 Livestock feed
65 ‘‘Your accusation is unfounded!’’
66 *Quickly moves past in conversation
67 Tots, in Tijuana
70 Villainous look
79 ‘‘Cinderella’’ setting
80 Toe the line
81 Form of memorization
82 Brouhaha
84 0 to 100, maybe
86 Mao ____-tung
87 Courtroom figs.
90 Straightened, as feathers
92 Alternative to iOS
93 Machine waiting to enter the middle of this grid, as suggested by the answers to the starred clues
