LEO Weekly March 16, 2022 by leoweekly

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EDITOR’S NOTE

DOES KENTUCKY HAVE A REAL SHOT AT MEDICAL MARIJUANA?

By Scott Recker | leo@leoweekly.com IT DOESN’T take a policy wonk or even a jaded journalist to understand that the Republican supermajority that holds all of the cards in the Kentucky legislature is intent on playing their heavy hand toward regressive, grandstanding bills to attack issues like LGBTQ rights, abortion and schools. The old-school Republican hardliners and the new-age terrifying fringe right-wingers are, like always, looking to tear down existing structures — and make up problems where there aren’t any — just to enhance their tactics of fear, appease their base, then rinse and repeat. The one surprising outcome from this year’s session so far is that a real, yet narrow, path has seemed to emerge for medical marijuana, although not exactly a super progressive one. Rep. Jason Nemes, a Republican from Louisville, who has been championing Kentucky medical marijuana legislation for the past few years, recently achieved his biggest breakthrough yet — support from a powerful Senator who once opposed his bill. For the 2022 General Assembly, Nemes ﬁled House Bill 136, a restrictive, 138-page piece of legislation that would allow medical marijuana only for certain conditions, including cancer, chronic pain, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, nausea or vomiting and

post traumatic stress disorder. He introduced a similar bill during the 2020 session. It passed the House, but was never considered in the Senate, with several members of the chamber’s leadership skeptical of it. Sen. Whitney Westerfield, a Republican from Hopkinsville, who is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was against Nemes’ medical marijuana bill that year — during the 2020 session, Westerfield told the Courier Journal, “I know it won’t get a hearing until I’m OK with it, and for sure I’ve still got questions right now.” Last week, Westerfield tweeted out a statement saying that he will now support this year’s HB136, after several conversations with Nemes. “I continue to have concerns about the risk of increased access to marijuana, particularly among youth and young adults for whom it remains

a recreational and gateway drug,” Westerﬁeld wrote. “However, I’ve heard too many stories, in my district and out, from those long suffering and their loved ones left behind, that marijuana brought comfort and relief when nothing else worked.” Nemes told LEO that during the last year and a half, he and Westerﬁeld have met several times — including every other week this past summer — to read the bill together, address concerns and do research. “He decided, after a lot of study and meeting with his constituents and reading the bill, literally line by line with me, he supports the bill and that’s a massively important development for the bill’s chances to pass the Senate,” Nemes said. As I type this, the bill is still sitting in the House, where it is expected to pass, but the Senate will be the challenge. And it’s

borderline laughable that this is so heavily contested, with 37 states currently providing some form of medical marijuana access, while 18 also allow legal access to recreational. There are other, much better — and proﬁtable — bills surrounding marijuana sitting in the General Assembly, but they are sponsored by Democrats, meaning they probably don’t have a shot in hell. House Bill 136 wouldn’t end all of Kentucky’s issues surrounding marijuana — most pressingly that people continue to get arrested and sit in jail for the same drug that is legally dispensed for fun one state over. Moving forward, we could also use the tax money from complete legalization. But, for now, HB 136, is probably Kentucky’s best chance for people in pain to have a safe and effective avenue to something they need. As Nemes told LEO: “I’ve said a number of times, if my child’s doctor said that medical marijuana would be helpful to them, I know what my wife and I would do: We would do what thousands of Kentuckians are already doing. And that is break the law.” •

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

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TITLE IX GUY

JUDGE SHELLEY SANTRY BRINGS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PREVENTION ADVOCACY TO THE BENCH By James Wilkerson | leo@leoweekly.com

WHILE the end of winter in Kentuckiana brings the promise of warm weather staples like Thunder Over Louisville and the Kentucky Derby, the onset of spring in the political world means primary elections are right around the corner. Until recently, Judge Shelley Santry was making her rounds on the campaign trail. It was hard to miss her hot pink election banners posted throughout the city. The signs would come down in early February however, as Santry was informed, she would be running unopposed in the upcoming election cycle, thus sealing her next eight years as a Jefferson County Family Court judge. Despite being unopposed, Judge Santry stays committed to fervently serving her community. After working at Legal Aid for nine years, in 2001 Santry began her work as a prosecutor, handling sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse cases for the Jefferson County Attorney’s ofﬁce. Then in 2010, she would be offered the director position at the Ackerson Law Clinic through the UofL Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. It was a position Santry jumped at. “I began my career as a teacher in Boston Public Schools, so I felt at home as a professor teaching law by experiential learning,” recalls Santry. During her time in the clinic, Santry taught approximately 250 law students using a curriculum of practical learning. “We represented low-income survivors of domestic violence from the beginning of their cases in family court, focusing on the protective order piece, and then offering a ‘holistic’ service for additional issues,” says Santry of her class. Despite two unsuccessful judicial campaigns in 2008 and 2018, Santry remained

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

undaunted on her path to the bench. “I feel that the ultimate way that you can help people is to be a judge who is fair, compassionate and respectful,” says Santry. She would finally get the opportunity to put those principles to practice as Gov. Andy Beshear would appoint her as a family court judge in April of 2021. With her professional history, Judge Santry is certainly an expert on the nationwide increase of domestic violence incidents that the pandemic era has brought. The National Commission on COVID19 and Criminal Justice estimated that domestic violence incidents in the United States increased 8.1% on average following stay at home orders. On a global scale, the United Nations estimates a 20% increase in domestic violence incidents across its 193 member states during the COVID-19 mandatory quarantines. Judge Santry highlights several reasons for these increases saying, “domestic violence is often motivated by many stressors like unemployment, loss of lives and frustration.” “The pandemic delivered these stressors in abundance and did not help households,” she continues. Of course, these statistics only document the cases that we know about. Many pandemic-era domestic violence incidents have gone unreported. In Louisville, Judge Santry points to survivors Judge Shelley Santry. not being aware the legal system was still operating during the pandemic as a reason for low domestic violence reporting numbers. In fact, this was a situation the judge took intentional steps locally to correct. “As police officers are the first people on the scene, some of the committees I serve on made a conscious effort to educate our

James J. Wilkerson.

officers to tell survivors that you can still take out an EPO, the courthouse is open, and the family courts never closed,” says Santry. While Santry said the reporting numbers of child abuse decreased during the pandemic, one of the main avenues for reports to be made, schools, did not operate in the same capacity. “One of the best reporters of child abuse are our teachers,” says Santry. “And when the kids were not in school, teachers didn’t have the opportunity to talk to their students on the playground about why they were so sad. As such, we saw those reporting numbers go significantly down,” she continues. Be it domestic violence or child abuse, if the incidents aren’t being reported, it becomes even more difficult for victims to find relief. Despite the term “endemic” being tossed around recently, the effects of the pandemic on domestic violence and child abuse cases are still seen today. Santry points to the reduction in the work force, specifically a shortage of sheriffs, as a pandemic byproduct affecting domestic violence cases in Louisville. “A few weeks ago, I had a docket

of 72 cases but was only able to hear about 15 of them because the rest were unserved,” she states. And even though the days of mass quarantine are behind us, Santry states that domestic violence numbers remain high. Despite this, she still tries to instill a sense of hope for survivors. “It is important for folks to know that they’re not alone and there are plenty of people that care about your situation,” she says. Judge Santry is certainly one of them. James J. Wilkerson, J.D., is the director of Staff Diversity and Equity and the Deputy Title IX Coordinator at IU Southeast. •

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

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BY BANNING DELTA 8, THE ‘LEGAL WEED,’ KENTUCKY COULD SMOTHER ITS HEMP INDUSTRY By Virginia Lee | leo@leoweekly.com

THE FIRST TIME I ever heard about Delta 8 was coming off a line in a kitchen, when a co-worker handed me a vape pen and offered me a drag or two. When he told me it wasn’t “weed,” I was suspicious. I was aware of Delta 9, everyone knows it’s THC that gets you high, so, of course, it would be illegal here in the good ol’ Commonwealth of Kentucky. So what is this Delta 8 I’m hearing about all of a sudden, and how are they able to market it as “legal weed” and sell it if it isn’t synthetic? A month later I took a job as a sales associate for Steel & Leaf LLC and found out that yes, it is legal weed-ish. What happens is manufacturers isolate other aspects of the THC molecule and derive them from CBD instead of cannabis, which, thanks to the 2018 Hemp Act, has made clear that hemp/CBD are a different plant and classiﬁcation than cannabis. While Kentucky is known for being a farm enterprise state, certain acts by lawmakers come along and work against our interests. Bills such as the Senate Bill 170 would make any “intoxicating” hempderived THC distillates illegal for purchase, for production or formulation. The national hemp industry is here, in the CBD market, in the derivatives, and if this bill passes into law, it would limit the incentive to grow hemp in the Commonwealth. To understand the difference between cannabinoids is to understand that the THC molecule is like a jigsaw puzzle of tons of deltas, cannabinoids, isomers and molecular components that together complete a picture that looks like THC and work together to make you feel it inside and out. When you smoke cannabis as well as when you take a recommended amount of full spectrum CBD oil, you are smoking and ingesting Delta 8 as well. It’s there, naturally occurring and you may have never known that because why would you need to? Whether you’re taking it for neurological, gastrointestinal, cancer inhibiting reasons or because you may have anxiety, stress and/or depression; it works. It helps! What’s even crazier to me is that despite the name, Delta 8 being a recent concept to our cannabis and hemp markets, it has been known and extensively researched since the 1940s. This isn’t new, just new to consumers. What’s more is that

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

Delta 8 products bought from a Louisville store. | PHOTO BY KATHRYN HARRINGTON.

Delta 8, Delta 9, Delta 10, THC-O and HHC are well-documented and researched cannabinoids that have been looked into by U.S. government research in hopes to inhibit cancer cells and neurological disorders previously. It was the crackdown of cannabis in the ‘70s and the move to classify it as a Schedule I controlled substance that halted and buried the years of research that has existed. It wasn’t until states started legalizing cannabis that the research we knew of was able to truly be explored. Ultimately, in a lot of ways, Delta 8 is new but the idea and record of Delta 8 is older than the law to criminalize it. The Commonwealth of Kentucky has a vibrant history in the hemp farming industry. Once upon a time, many of our farms were growing hemp, and we have a unique opportunity due to the optimal growing conditions that hemp can grow very well here. In fact, the 2018 Hemp Act gave us a blazing green light to begin incentivizing farmers to grow hemp and we as a Commonwealth have made great strides to offer protection for hemp farming. There’s a huge problem though, one I wasn’t totally aware of until I got deeper in the ﬁeld of CBD and THC derivatives. The state seems to lack the understanding and laws protecting

individual farmers who want to produce, process and market THC derivatives and CBD flower. Despite consistent gains across the country in the world of CBD floral farming and hemp derivatives, Kentucky has not budged on efforts to legalize hemp flower, production and marketing. Little by little, it has been undoing any hope we have as producers of hemp from tapping into where the hemp industry is currently seeing the most revenue and where I as a retailer of hempderived THC am seeing the industry continue to grow. We could, and by all intents and purposes should, be leading the country in CBD research, discoveries, formulation and processing. Instead we are bordering on being locked out of the nearly $650 million floral and derivative market and may lose hope in hemp thriving in the Commonwealth entirely. Even Ryan Quarles of the Kentucky Department of Agriculture is warning potential hemp farmers to proceed with caution and that the market is unstable, but it isn’t at all. The market is strong, but mostly in an area we refuse to participate in, the floral market. The hemp industry is producing less fiber, grain and seed than recent years and squarely moving forward in formula-

tion of THC derivatives, so why can’t we? Why would our legislature actively hinder our growth with bills like SB170 and take what little hemp we are still producing to be processed and formulated in products we would have no access to and cut us off from the industry at large? To be clear, this fight for hemp is a separate one from the fight to legalize cannabis, and both deserve serious deliberation and research respectively. It is entirely possible to legalize cannabis while letting hemp derivatives continue to be grown, processed and manufactured in Kentucky and it would only stand to benefit us holistically either way. There is nothing to lose in continuing to allow THC derivatives to be produced and a whole lot to gain. If you haven’t tried Delta 8 or any hemp derivatives, I highly recommend you see what the fuss is about, check it out and tell your representatives you do not want to lose this opportunity for the health and economic benefits of cannabinoids and hemp in our Commonwealth. Virginia Lee is the assistant store manager of Steel & Leaf LLC, a Louisville-based hemp dispensary. •

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WRITE SOME SHIT

WHEN IT COMES TO THE MURDER OF BREONNA TAYLOR, THERE IS NO GLASS HALF FULL By Hannah Drake | leo@leoweekly.com MARCH 13, 2022, marked the second anniversary of the death of Breonna Taylor — a 26-year-old Black woman murdered in her home by the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD). Many people have reached out to me for my thoughts on what I believe we have gained in the wake of Breonna Taylor’s death and the subsequent protests in Louisville during 2020. It is an interesting way to frame the question, “What have we gained?” This question is often asked by people who do not look like me. People were never concerned about the police forcefully entering their homes, people who do not worry every time a police officer drives behind them. People who aren’t concerned that a minor traffic stop could have life or death consequences. People who exist in a different Louisville than I or someone like Breonna ever did. The question makes me think of Professor Blyden Jackson’s statement in “Life Behind A Veil:” “Through a veil, I could perceive the forbidden city, the Louisville where white folks lived. It was the Louisville of the downtown hotels, the lower floors of the big movie houses, the high schools I read about in the daily newspapers, the restricted haunts I sometimes passed, like white restaurants and country clubs, the other side of windows in the banks, and of course the inner sanctums of offices where I could go only as a client or a menial custodian. On my side of the veil, everything was Black: the homes, the people, the churches, the schools, the Negro park with the Negro park police… I knew that were two Louisvilles and, in America, two Americas. I knew also which America was mine.” After the tragic death of Breonna Taylor and the war-like tactics in response to the protests, Louisville has made it abundantly clear which Louisville is mine. Louisville has reminded me that it is yet another city in the long line of cities where the lives of Black women are expendable. This city has reminded me that Black women will be asked to labor to transform this city with little to no reward. Daily, I am reminded that leaders will ask for our labor, disregarding the laborious undertaking that Black women shoulder trying to right a city that still refuses to face the historical and current ramifications of racism. How many times must Black women fix it — often

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

at the expense of ourselves. When I wrote “Breonna Taylor: Say Her Name,” I said, “I have to march for you not to kill me. And now you are asking me to teach you how not to kill me.” And now, in 2022, you are asking me what we have gained? I will never forget that Breonna’s mother, Tamika Palmer, said, “For her, every day is March 13.” Every. Single. Day. So how do I look at her and tell her what we have gained? Truthfully, I believe the better, perhaps more meaningful question, is to ask Black people, particularly Black women, what have we lost? What…have…we … lost? There are things that are gone in this city that I do not believe we will ever get back. Something in this city has broken. Any sense of security I may have felt, as minimal as it may have been, is gone. I was once asked how often do I think about Breonna Taylor? I think about her all the time. My own daughter is named Brianna. She is 26. I look at her sometimes and think about the dread I would feel if her life was snatched away from me and no one was held accountable. Every time I ride downtown, I remember being teargassed. The images ﬂash in my mind of police in full riot gear, armored trucks pumping out teargas as innocent people sat in the street with signs that declared, “Justice for Breonna.” How do we even begin to process the collateral damage from the murder of Breonna Taylor? I remember the pain, almost tangible, that hung heavy over the crowd gathered in the West End as one of their beloved community members, David McAtee, lay dead outside of his place of business for hours, killed by the National Guard. I remember going away trying to drum up the enthusiasm to celebrate my birthday only to get the news that Tyler Gerth, a local photojournalist, was killed in Injustice Square Park. I was stunned to go on Facebook and read the news that activist Travis Nagdy, who we all knew would be a force to be reckoned with in this city, was killed. I still feel the ripples of 2020. The impact of what happened on March 13, 2020, drew a faultline through this city. So, when will it be enough? There will be no time in my existence that I will ever look at the death of Breonna

“Police Reform Flowchart” created by Brett Hamil

Taylor and the aftermath and say, ‘Look how far we have come, look at how much we have accomplished.’ I see what was left in the wake of these so-called reforms. 2020 impacted my life in so many ways that I am just beginning to unpack two years later. The emotional toll has been tremendous. Why must the road to reform be paved with our bodies, bones and blood? Why must we ﬁght through rage before we ever get to redemption? At what point will America do the right thing simply because it is long overdue to do the right

thing? How long do you think feeding us minuscule morsels of justice will satiate our palates? Do you think we feel any safer? Do you think we believe that Ofﬁcer Friendly exists for people that look like us? Do you think we no longer feel a tightness in our chest when the police pull behind us on the road? Do you think we aren’t concerned anymore about a minor trafﬁc stop having life or death consequences? Do you think this city has been reformed for the better since 2020? Do you think we won’t be here again because of some reforms? As journalist

VIEWS

presence before crossing the threshold into a Ernest Owens wonderfully demonstrated by sharing the Police Reform Flowchart, residence. So, they could open the resicreated by Brett Hamil, we are in a deadly dence without knocking, but they were then cycle that we refuse to break. required to announce their presence before After the world watched George Floyd be crossing the threshold.” That is the problem with reforms. There murdered on social media as Ofﬁcer Derek is no true reform when police can ignore or Chauvin placed his knee on Floyd’s neck circumvent them. When you reform someuntil he cried out for his deceased mother, Minneapolis passed police reforms. Perhaps thing, you make changes in order to improve some even thought what already exists. they would never However, when you So while we did pass be in that situation transform something, again. And less than you change something Breonna’s Law in two years later, Amir into something else. Louisville banning Locke was murdered A part of justice for in his Minneapolis no-knock warrants, Breonna and George home by the police. and Amir and countI cannot help but less others isn’t more So while we did empty reforms. It is pass Breonna’s Law turn my eyes to Amir transformation. It is in Louisville banning not even reimaginno-knock warrants, Locke, killed in a ing policing. It is I cannot help but home, similarly to transforming an entire turn my eyes to Amir system that was Locke, killed in a Breonna Taylor, by birthed out of slavery. home, similarly to How do I get people Breonna Taylor, by offıcers within the to understand it is not ofﬁcers within the Minneapolis Police a few bad apples? The Minneapolis Police Department while he roots are corrupt. Department while he tree’s was trying to sleep. I The soil has been watched the converwas trying to sleep. I tainted with the blood sation online after of innocent people watched the conver- throughout history. Locke’s murder and people were conYou do not reform sation online after fused, thinking that this. You must work no-knock warrants Locke’s murder and to create something had been banned after entirely new. And that people were confused, isn’t done by coverthe murder of George Floyd. In fact, with ing up bad systems thinking that “reform,” the police with passive reforms just got a workaround. no-knock warrants to placate the people The Saint Paul Police demanding justice. had been banned Department applied This isn’t solely about for a “knock and system reform. It is so after the murder announce” warrant, much deeper than that. and the Minneapolis This is about personal of George Floyd. In police department soul transformation. fact, with “reform,” This is about indiinsisted on a no-knock warrant, according inner work. The the police just got a vidual to the St. Paul Police system and the reforms Department. Accordare only as good as the workaround. ing to Rachel Moran, people. associate professor at the University of St. There is no silver lining when I look Thomas School of Law, “In November 2020, at the murder of Breonna Taylor and the Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey announced aftermath. So, when I am asked, “What a new policy regulating MPD’s use of nohave we gained?” — please know for me, knock warrants, which has been referred to no matter what reforms come after a young as a ‘ban’ (including by Frey’s campaign), Black woman has been murdered in her and did not actually affect the knock require- home by the police while she was trying to ment at all. What Mayor Frey’s November sleep, it will never be a glass half full type 2020 policy did was require Minneapolis of situation. • police in most situations to announce their

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Meet the adventurous and adorable Sugar Bear! Sugar Bear is a four-year-old Mountain Cur mix who weighs 58 pounds and came to the Kentucky Humane Society from an overcrowded shelter. Upon arriving at KHS, we immediately noticed that Sugar Bear's coat had seen better days and the poor pup was extremely itchy. We began him on medication for his skin and sent him into a foster home for a few weeks to heal. We learned a lot about Sugar while he was in foster care! For starters, he is not a good fit for a home with kitty friends as he finds that chasing them is a major adrenaline rush that he cannot turn down. Sugar has met other dogs while at KHS and while he can be reactive to them while on a leash or through a barrier such as a window, he actually does enjoy other dogs when he is able to SUGAR BEAR meet him. We would like Sugar to meet any potential dog buddies before going home to ensure everyone gets along well. Being a young guy, he has plenty of energy and does best when he's given something to do. He likes chewing on toys and bones, going for hikes, playing fetch- basically anything that will keep his young brain active and busy. Sugar would also do best in a home with kids ten years and up. Are you looking for a best friend to see the world with? A friend who will love you even on your worst days? That's our Sugar Bear! Come meet him and see for yourself! Sugar Bear is neutered, micro-chipped and up-to-date on all vaccinations. Visit Sugar Bear at the Kentucky Humane Society’s Main Campus, 241 Steedly Drive, or learn more at https://www.kyhumane.org/adopt/dogs.

Meet our sweet, soft and gorgeous lady Bucky! Bucky is a fifteen-year-old Domestic Longhair tabby who weighs just 6 pounds and came to the Kentucky Humane Society when her owner passed away. Now this Golden Girl is ready to enjoy her remaining years on someone's lap! One of the first things you'll notice about Bucky, apart from how pretty she is, is that she is blind. This does not hold her back and she is able to map out her environment within a few days of settling in. In her previous home she lived with dogs, cats, kids and even a bird! She would love a home with some low energy companions, as she does get startled when she's caught off guard, but she doesn't mind sharing her space with other creatures. Bucky is a low energy cat who doesn't need much to be happy. Give her a lap to sit in, pet her and tell her how pretty she is. That's really all Bucky is looking for! Could you be the one to give this senior a wonderful retirement home? If so, please come meet her! Bucky is spayed, micro-chipped and up-to-date on all vaccinations. Visit Bucky today at the Kentucky Humane Society’s Main Campus, 241 Steedly Drive, or learn more at https://www.kyhumane.org/ adopt/cats.

BUCKY

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

NEWS & ANALYSIS

LMPD TRAINING MATERIALS PORTRAYED POLICE AS AVENGERS WHO CARRY OUT GOD’S WRATH By Josh Wood | jwood@leoweekly.com

THE WORST, BEST & MOST ABSURD THORN: FRANKFORT’S WAR ON THE POOR Kentucky’s lawmakers are really showing off their callousness, nay, straight out hatred, toward the poor this year. After floor rants about how nobody wants to work these days, the General Assembly approved a bill slashing unemployment benefits. Then, they voted to kill Kentucky’s state of emergency, which will cause Kentucky to lose out on $50 million a month in federal SNAP benefits. Because they’re too preoccupied with the one big man in the Governor’s Office instead of the millions of little ones they represent. ROSE: THAT’S ONE WAY TO BE REMEMBERED Yvonne Miles was a character. You can tell from the obituary she wrote herself, which was published on the Courier Journal’s website on March 10. “Well, it finally happened, I died,” she wrote, “At 68 years of age, I stopped harassing people on 9-March, 2022.” She also wrote that she chose to be cremated so she could “have the smokin’ hot body” she always wanted. Yvonne, we didn’t know you in life but we now realize we really missed out.

LMPD during the Breonna Taylor protests in 2020. | PHOTO BY KATHRYN HARRINGTON.

A SLIDESHOW used by LMPD in a 2017 firearms training used a controversial Bible verse to imply that police officers are avengers tasked with carrying out God’s wrath on wrongdoers. In the 2017 presentation, used in one of two weapons qualifications that LMPD officers are required to take part in every year, the words of Romans 13:4 appeared superimposed over a “thin blue line” flag — a black and white version of the U.S. flag that features a solitary blue stripe and is associated with supporting the police. The verse that appears on the image of the flag reads: “For he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger

THORNS & ROSES

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” The blue line on the ﬂag highlights the words “an avenger who carries out God’s wrath.” To Andrew Whitehead, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the co-author of “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States,” the messaging conveyed by using the verse in the training has potentially dangerous consequences. “It just seems really dangerous to kind of inculcate this idea that they are agents of God and God’s wrath. As citizens, that’s worrisome with what we’ve seen in the past with policing,” he said. “If there are police ofﬁcers that see themselves as agents of God’s wrath, will they

be more likely to turn to violence in a situation rather than not? I think those are questions that should be asked by them and hopefully other citizens.” F. Bruce Williams, senior pastor at Bates Memorial Baptist Church in Smoketown, found the use of the verse by LMPD disturbing and described it as an example of “weaponizing scripture.” “Given the long, nightmarish history that Black people have not only with LMPD but with police departments in general, that’s a very scary prospect to have a Bible verse like that and to describe the police force as the wrath of God to carry out justice on evil doers,” he said. “For me, it’s more evidence of what’s kind of in the DNA of America. And that is a history of weaponizing scriptures to

ROSE: A WORTHY HONOR For the past two years, Southern Living Magazine’s Southerner of the Year has been a famous musician. And while Dolly Parton (2020’s winner) deserves all the accolades, the magazine’s pick this year was special: Citizens of Mayfield, Kentucky, who survived devastating tornadoes this past December and who have been helping to repair the town. ROSE: SO… YOU’RE SAYING THERE’S A CHANCE? If Kentucky legalizes medical marijuana, it will be up there with the 1876 Meat Shower in terms of surprise phenomenon. And yet, this year’s bill is looking more and more possible. A key Kentucky senator, Whitney Westerfield, endorsed Rep. Jason Nemes’ bill, after opposing his efforts previously. And during a recent House committee vote another Republican, Rep. Joe Fischer, made an about-face, voting to move the bill forward. Of course, Nemes had to make his bill extremely strict in order to appease his colleagues who are stuck in the past, but this softening of hearts has us feeling hopeful.

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A slide used in a 2017 LMPD firearms training presentation includes the words of Romans 13:4 on a “thin blue line” flag.

justify violence sometimes and damnable ends.” The larger Romans 13 chapter of the New Testament has frequently been the subject of debate and differing interpretations. At times over the course of history, the chapter has been used to defend authoritarianism. Also critical of the materials was Aaron Griffith, a history professor who focuses on religion at Washington’s Whitworth University and the author of the book “God’s Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America.” “I think the assumption here is that officers can feel justified in using their firearms. That it is not only something that professionally they might be required to do, but that in fact, this is their Godordained, divinely-supported role,” he said. “And of course, the problem with that is it becomes a way to uncritically justify the use of force.” Griffith, who has previously written about the invocation of Romans 13 as it relates to police, added: “Whoever did this is glossing over how complex this verse is, how complex that passage of scripture is and how contested the role of the police and the state itself — and the state’s ability to use violent force — has been within Christian tradition for centuries.” An LMPD spokesperson declined to comment. The slide with the Bible verse

appeared at the end of a 39-slide presentation used in the mandatory Spring 2017 firearms qualification. LMPD officers are required to undergo qualification on their service weapons twice per year, once in the spring and once in the fall. The other slides in the presentation deal with things like firing range safety, procedures for firing handguns in lowlight situations and recent changes to LMPD policy. The presentation was included among some 2,292 pages of trainingrelated documents released by LMPD in 2020 when it made the Public Integrity Unit investigation into the shooting of Breonna Taylor public. Slideshows for firearms qualifications for Fall 2018 and Fall 2019, which were also included in the document cache, did not include the Bible verse. The Spring 2017 presentation has also been filed as an exhibit in a federal lawsuit against LMPD officers by Taylor’s neighbors, whose apartment was struck by bullets fired by former LMPD detective Brett Hankison during the botched raid on Taylor’s apartment. LEO learned of the presence of the Bible verse in the training slides during a conversation with Jeff Sexton, the lawyer for the neighbors. Last year, LEO reported on an LMPD recruit basic training course that aimed to have students be able to “identify aspects of Hispanic/Latino culture that may pose hazards to law enforcement.”

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Other slides in the presentation dealt with things like firing in low-light conditions and firing range safety.

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Over the course of history, people motes the separation of church and state. defending those in power have latched “There was something alarming about onto interpretations of Romans 13 that an official allusion to a verse that talks say God ordained government. In the about ‘revengers,’ ‘bearing swords’ U.S., it was used by monarchy loyaland ‘executing wrath,’ when the job of ists in the late 18th the Harper Police century to oppose the Department is to Over the course American Revoluprotect and serve, tion. Later, in the run not mete out bibliof history, people up to the civil war, it cal punishments or defending those in was used to defend divine anger,” the slavery in the South. From power have latched Freedom Religion Founda“This is invoked when you have an onto interpretations tion wrote in a press release at the time, authoritative body of Romans 13 that referencing a differ— a government ent translation of the or an agent of the say God ordained verse. government — who In an email to wants to put down government. In the LEO, ACLU of dissent,” said John U.S., it was used by Kentucky legal direcFea, a professor of American history at tor Corey Shapiro monarchy loyalists Pennsylvania’s Messaid his organization siah University who “strongly disapin the late 18th has written about proves” of LMPD’s century to oppose the use of the Bible verse historical uses of Romans 13. materials. American Revolution. in training “The inclusion of Most recently, in the religious refer2018 then-U.S. attorence disrespects the diverse religious ney general Jeff Sessions used Romans views of the population. LMPD should 13 to defend the Trump administration’s reflect the rich religious diversity here practice of separating migrant families at in Louisville, and not make officers the southern border and pursuing charges with a different faith feel excluded,” he against those who illegally cross the said. “More importantly, public agencies frontier. “I would cite you the Apostle Paul and should not be promoting or choosing one his clear and wise command in Romans religious message over another. The First 13, to obey the laws of the government Amendment prevents LMPD from having because God has ordained the governan official religion, and yet this training ment for his purposes,” said Sessions in material inappropriately suggests that a 2018 speech as he defended the Trump this particular Bible excerpt reflects the administration’s border policy. official views on which LMPD officers In 2016, a police department in a small are trained.” • Kansas town removed decals reading “Romans 13:4” from patrol vehicles after complaints by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit that pro-

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Kacy Jackson. | PHOTOS BY CAROLYN BROWN.

Brick, Mortar, Masterpiece

Louisville Artist

Kacy Jackson Is Turning Louisville Vibrant, One Wall At A Time

By Carolyn Brown | cbrown@leoweekly.com LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

A KNOWING FACE stares out over the city, surrounded and backlit by vivid, impossible-to-miss color, analyzing the people who live and work around it with a watchful gaze. The Louisville skyline rises behind it, glinting in the sunlight and framing it between its lofty heights. Those knowing eyes sit beneath the iconic unibrow of Frida Kahlo, painted on a mural watching over Market Street from a perch on the side of Guacamole Modern Mexican, with black and blue butterﬂies circling her trademark ﬂoral headpiece. But that description also belongs to the man who brought the famous Mexican artist to life, who worked on top of two scissor lifts for a week straight to paint her, braving snow and sleet, who has decorated Louisville with more than 50 other murals and counting, someone for whom the entire city is a canvas-to-be lying in wait, the man who was chosen to create this year’s Kentucky Derby Festival poster. That man is Kacy Jackson.

City Of Murals

Jackson, a 30-year-old, Louisville-born muralist, has painted so many walls and canvases he’s lost count of the exact total. There’s a high likelihood that you’ve seen one of Jackson’s murals in and around the city. They’re everywhere, indoors and out: the rainbow lion at Melwood Art Center, the beaming face of inaugural poet Amanda Gorman

The 2022 Kentucky Derby Festival Poster created by Kacy Jackson.

on Barrett Avenue, Muhammad Ali holding up three fingers on Preston Street in Smoketown. Jackson — who primarily works locally, but also has murals as far away as Tampa, Miami and Phoenix, among other cities — has had a passion for art his entire life. “There’s 24 hours in a day; make some use of your time. If this is what you want to do, just do it,” he told LEO. It’s advice that Jackson hands out and follows himself. A few years ago, he shipped out a painting to “The Ellen Show” in Los Angeles, hoping Ellen DeGeneres would give him some career-boosting publicity. He flew out to California to ensure it arrived at the studio as planned. His plans were derailed when the painting he had made of Ellen arrived at the wrong location and later fell off of a truck onto a five-lane interstate. Heavily damaged from being run over on the highway, the painting was recovered from the asphalt, and Jackson hand-delivered the artwork to Ellen himself. To Jackson, the experience showed that if he could do that, he could do anything. “That’s how serious I was about the dream; that’s how passionate I was about the art,” said Jackson. “As an artist, I did something crazy. I gotta make the master moves in order to be recognized. To this day, with that same ambition, same dedication and passion, that’s where I’m at now. I don’t care how long it takes me to do a mural, I’m gonna do it, but it never takes me long because I’m so passionate about it. I’ll only work from sunup to sundown on a mural every day, just

to get it done.” Arguably his most famous mural is one that multiple clients have cited as their initial draw to Jackson and his work: “The Unified Race,” a powerful, rainbow-hued mural of two running horses that covers a side of the multi-story NuLu Marketplace building. Jackson completed the work in April 2021. It represents, his website says, “a reflection of everyone coming together in the race of life during the most challenging times and will serve as a visual remedy and breath of fresh air.” It’s a reference to the pandemic, of course, but Jackson is lucky: because he mostly works outdoors or from his own house and is a “one-man army,” the pandemic passed him by relatively smoothly. (“What pandemic?” he joked.) Although he saw so many businesses, especially restaurants, bear the brunt of closures and staffing shortages, being able to continue working during the pandemic led to one of the biggest commissions of his career: the Derby Festival’s 2022 poster. Jennifer Morgan, the Kentucky Derby Festival’s merchandising manager, worked closely with Jackson throughout the poster design process. Morgan acts more or less as a talent scout for artists. (She’s developed a knack for it over the years; Jackson’s poster was the 25th she’s overseen.) She looks for artists who are getting attention in the community and who are in the public eye; typically, she has her potential choices for a poster artist narrowed down by August of the preceding year. She’s also responsible for making sure that the final Festival poster design can translate across all types LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

of merch, including t-shirts, glassware and postcards. With that, Jackson’s work, which is bright, colorful and often geometric, was a logical choice. As she put it: “If you live in Louisville and you don’t know who Kacy is, you should just hold on and you’ll know in a minute.” Morgan describes Jackson as humble and quiet, a “very appreciative person” who is “all business” and doesn’t open up easily, unlike other artists. Still, she said, Jackson is accommodating and responsive to feedback but also “very quick to do what he wants to do.” Funnily enough, Jackson and the Kentucky Derby Festival went back and forth on the ﬁnal design of this year’s poster. Every other poster design before this one, Morgan said, has always been “pegasus, pegasus, pegasus,” or at least “pegasus and other elements.” The ﬁrst version Jackson submitted followed that more typical pattern, but it didn’t feel right. Morgan asked Jackson what the Derby Festival actually meant to him. He replied that it’s about the diversity and different cultures of Louisville coming together to celebrate something special. With that in mind, he gave them a new poster: a skyline of the city, with the pegasus taking the place of the “e” in “Festival.” The new design was full of his trademark rainbow hues and geometric shapes, but the Festival’s name and the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge were lit in gold. As the city shines brightest during Derby season, so should the artwork showing it off to the world. “I think he nailed it,” said Morgan. “That’s what the Festival represents.”

‘A Walking Business Card’

Even if you’ve already seen one of Jackson’s murals, there’s a chance you’ve also seen the man himself at work. On a cold February day, Jackson met me at Feast BBQ, across the street from his mural at Guacamole. He was easy to spot against the drab brick-cement-and-tar landscape around the restaurant: the yellow aerosol-paint-covered jacket, sky blue hoodie and blue paint-covered pants immediately gave away a dedicated artist. “I’m a walking business card,” he told me. “This look has gotten me commissions.” He walked me through the look: the spray paint on his sleeves came from testing out new cans of paint. It makes more sense to spray a new can onto clothing than onto a wall, he said, because having to fix wet paint, even by painting over it, can mess up a mural. Still, he’s even got a new Ralph Lauren jacket that he’s looking to “mess up” — well, “not really mess up, but definitely add some color to it.” Jackson pointed out something special about wearing a yellow jacket: it reminded him of Muhammad Ali, a frequent subject in Jackson’s murals, who both famously said, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” and whose Jacksondesigned mural at Ali’s alma mater, Central High School, features a yellow jacket, the school’s mascot. Ali’s impact on Louisville — and the world — was, of course, beyond measure. “That’s the way I’m kind of moving out here as an artist,” Jackson said. “I want to make sure people feel some way when they see the art.”

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

Kacy Jackson paints a mural, “La Catrina,” at Gustavo’s Mexican Grill on Hurstbourne Road on March 2.

It was actually Muhammad Ali who gave Jackson the biggest turning point in his career before the Derby Festival — albeit posthumously. In June 2016, national and international media — New York Magazine, SportsCenter, a member of the White House Press Photographers Association and even a Norwegian news outlet, amongst others — captured him painting Muhammad Ali outside the Yum! Center as Ali’s memorial continued inside. Jackson says he was the only person outside the Yum! Center not hawking Ali-themed merchandise that day, and the manager of the Yum! Center even came out to shake his hand and compliment his work. The ﬂurry of interviews he did gave him the drive to work toward more press, more interviews, more accomplishments. In 2020, the Biden campaign spotlit one of his Ali murals — albeit not Jackson himself — in their “America the Beautiful” video.

recating way; he knows when to be proud of his art. He once referred to himself (jokingly) as a modern-day Picasso. Still, he understands the role that murals play for an individual business and in the community. He doesn’t do donations as often as he used to, but he doesn’t turn commissions down either; when a client reaches out but can’t pay much (or anything), he won’t instantly turn them away, but he’ll “stretch out the timeline,” putting paid work ﬁrst. Such is the reality of being a working artist, but he knows what his work means to the people who commission him — and to the city as a whole. “Murals, not only are they beautiful, but they also take the value of the building up,” he said. “You put a great piece of art on there — like, say, for instance, if Michelangelo or Picasso painted something on the building, that building is not just a regular building. It’s not just brick and mortar no more; it’s brick and mortar and a painting — a masterpiece.”

Hometown Hero

From The Beginning

In some ways, it makes sense that a muralist would be the one whose work represents Louisville’s biggest event, given how much Louisville loves larger-than-life art in the ﬁrst place — the statue of David, the oversized Louisville Slugger, “The Thinker” — not to mention the black and white multi-story Hometown Heroes posters you see all over town. Many of the posters have faded from years of sun exposure, and the poster series itself ended in 2017 anyway — the same year Jackson ofﬁcially founded his brand and business, The Art of Kacy. His work carries a sense of newness, an energy and vibrancy — which, of course, is exactly what the city’s needed over the last two years. Jackson is humble about his work, but not in a self-dep-

Jackson’s artistic career technically began when he was 5 years old, but not with art lessons — with, instead, homework assignments, crayons and doodles born of boredom. His mom and dad didn’t live together, so Jackson and his two brothers bounced between their parents’ houses in Shawnee and Park Hill. He graduated from Southern High School in Okolona, where an exposure to a wide variety of cultures was both enriching and educational; he taught himself Spanish, partly by osmosis from being around CubanAmericans and partly from “trial and error” and “dissecting the lyrics” of Latin music. To this day, although he admits he’s not a ﬂuent speaker, he can still read and understand Spanish as well as English.

Jackson says that one of his biggest skills, despite a lack of formal mural-making training, is his ability to observe, to absorb, to soak up knowledge like a sponge. That, too, began in his childhood. Jackson attributes his love of art and his career success in part to watching his parents pursue their passions for art in their own ways. His dad, Kevin “Too Too” Jackson, passed away in 2009. When Jackson was growing up, his father was a dialysis patient who spent hours coloring in coloring books, bringing the outlines to life, due to his limited mobility. Jackson draws a connection now between watching his dad do that and his own eventual career. The difference, though, Jackson says, is that he was lucky enough to parlay his own work into a much larger scale, one that brings him both “money and a legacy.” When he told me about that, he mused on the ﬁckle relationship between fame and talent. His mom, Jeannette Williams, has been an entrepreneur since Jackson was a child; she imparted her business skills onto Kacy as much as she gave him her passion for art. She ran a nail salon and did cleaning work, which Jackson helped with when he was 12 years old; he told LEO, “I seen her be her own boss and thought, you know what? I want to do this.” To Jackson, who describes himself as an artist and a businessman, honing his entrepreneurship has always been as important to him as mastering the craft of his work. Lots of artists often get short-changed because they undervalue themselves, whereas “the businessman knows how much the

foam board painting of a coworker’s son eating a hamburger. (The price: $100.) There was another long-lasting perk to one of Jackson’s jobs: he met his now-wife in 2011 while working inventory at Walmart. She, then a single mother with three children, worked at the in-store Subway. When he stopped by for a meal one day, she ﬂirted with him. He was surprised by her forwardness, but it paid off: they got married just eight months later. Jackson says he fell in love with her kids, who, compared to himself as a child, were “angels,” and he jokes that stepping into the role of a father gave him “the perfect opportunity to be a hero.” Jackson and his wife will celebrate their tenth anniversary this year, and their teenagers will be 13, 15 and 16 after their spring birthdays. The whole family took a trip to New York City recently; one of Jackson’s Louisville clients has an ofﬁce inside the World Trade Center and invited him to meet there when he was in the city. Jackson said he enjoyed the trip, but he wouldn’t relocate to New York: “I feel like I wouldn’t live there unless I had to live there. It’s a place just to visit.” That goes for any other big city, too: “To appreciate the big city, you have to really live in a small city, ‘cause then when you live there, it’s not big anymore, it’s just [a] regular old city.” So what keeps him in Louisville? “It’s just home, you know,” he said. “It’s just best to live here in Louisville. It’s home, it’s fun, it’s growing. We are doing bigger and better things every day.”

Jackson works on “La Catrina.”

artist is worth, but the artist doesn’t know. So the artist might think, ‘Okay, I’ll just do this for a dollar, ‘cause I love it.’” He has done commissions for less than their financial value, but only because he knew that the bigger benefit — developing his portfolio — would help his business grow. Williams’s work gave Jackson some financial support for his (limited) time at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied fashion design. He switched over to graphic design due to the time constraints of holding down a part-time job as a fashion design student. That, in part, is why he chose to spend only about a year in the four-year-program: the realities of being an 18-yearold artist were too harsh, and he felt it wasn’t worth it to go into $89,000 dollars of debt for skills he could learn on YouTube. He left college in 2011 and came back to Louisville shortly after. During and after college, a myriad of survival jobs in Chicago and Louisville kept him buoyed, but not thriving. Between when he left college and his current career started, he had stints at Jewel-Osco, Abel Construction, Walmart, Malone Staffing and call centers, plus some time working as a tattoo artist. All of his jobs gave Jackson skills he still uses; even now, he calls them less “survival jobs” than “training for my business.” Working at call centers gave him the ability to be comfortable speaking to strangers and to do the clerical work he uses in his business — doing taxes, filling out invoices and the like — and one of the call centers got him what he calls his first paid commission as a “real” artist, a

Another Day, Another Mural

A few weeks later, it was a bright, sunny, 75-degree day, and Jackson was working outside of another Mexican restaurant: Gustavo’s on Hurstbourne, which replaced what used to be Macaroni Grill. It was too warm for his regular painting jacket, but his outfit was still serving as his business card, albeit more literally; he had on a pale tan shirt that read “The Art of Kacy” in light-colored letters, right above his website URL. He also sported a matching hat, paint-stained white jeans, plus earbuds and a gas mask. He was working on a striking mural, “La Catrina,” which he had to finish up by sunset. I was there to take photos — and only to do so, as it turned out my initial hopes to interview him were foiled by the significant muffling caused by his gas mask. Still, I was immediately taken by how bold it was, how full of detail. Like the Frida Kahlo mural, it bears the striking face of a woman, but surrounded by the swirling lines and patterns of traditional Mexican art rather than flowers or butterflies. Jackson didn’t finish by sunset; it took two more days than he’d intended because the restaurant had to remove some trees that were blocking his way, but no problem: he never rushes his work. In fact, he can even “see” it before it starts. As a photographer can “see” a good shot without a camera, Jackson can see a mural where there isn’t one. We were sitting outside of Akasha Brewing Company, where picnic tables were flecked with occasional drops of paint, when I asked him about that LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

Kacy Jackson poses for a portrait outside Guacamole Modern Mexican on Feb. 18.

ability. He pointed to the wall of a nearby building, a blank white two-story canvas-in-waiting. “The whole time I’m doing this [interview], I’m thinking, that building right there looks pretty good; I could use that little section right there on the bottom to do something,” he said. The wall on the side of Guacamole opposite the Frida Kahlo mural is blank at the moment, too, but Jackson knows what he’d put there, if the owners agreed to it: a pattern of Dia de los Muertos sugar skulls or flowers to match Frida Kahlo’s headpiece, or perhaps alebrije wings to match the ones inside the restaurant, the kind that people line up to take Instagram photos in front of. He of all people knows how much Instagram is a boon for artists; his account, @theartofkacy, currently has 2,000 followers and counting, including big Louisville institutions like 21c Hotel and The Speed Art Museum. As he told LEO in early 2020, “I always look for something that’s going to be engaging. Well, engaging for the community and also real impactful. But I always also think about, how would this look on Instagram as well, because at the end of the day, that’s what it kind of boils down to. Your portfolio nowadays is your Instagram account.” When Jackson first started out, much of the work he had to do was literal door-knocking. Murals can’t be bought at a gallery, so clients have to seek him out and commission his works — or else they’re graffiti. But as the Kacy Jackson brand has become more established, advertising himself has become significantly easier. “90% of my business [now] is people reaching out to me,” he said. “In the earlier stages, it was more like 30%. The other 70% was me reaching out to people, giving donations, and just trying to build a name for myself.” He compared it to McDonald’s, which has become so ubiquitous and has already done so much advertising that new publicity isn’t really necessary anymore; everyone

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

already knows what McDonald’s is. But it’s not always the same for an up-and-coming artist. “After a time, you got to continue to push,” he said, “because if you don’t continue to push, then people kind of forget about you.” Not that Jackson is really at any risk of being forgotten, though. The Derby Festival might be one of his biggest clients, one he foresees will continue to lead to even more commissions, but any artist would want a client portfolio like his, which includes The Muhammad Ali Center, Zoo Miami and some upcoming big names he asked me not to name yet. Clients and compatriots of Jackson’s offered praise for him, or happy recognition at the very least. Representatives from Fund for the Arts, Revelry Gallery, and Mellwood Art Center were all eager to praise Jackson’s talent over email. Rick Moir, one of the co-owners of Guacamole Modern Mexican, was making cocktails for a media preview when I asked him about what it had been like to work with Jackson on the Frida Kahlo mural. Jackson, he said, was a “very, very talented individual” who was “super reliable, showed up, told us exactly what he was gonna do.” “The partners here are pretty creative people,” Moir continued. “We usually have the idea in our head, and he was able to really bring it to life. There’s been so many people that commented that he was out there working, myself included. I pulled up one day, it was snowing, sleeting, he’s on a lift up there, just going to town.” Jackson told Moir he was nervous about making the mural atop a new, unfinished roof, but he was still confident that the final result would turn out well. Moir said that Jackson told him, “‘It’s gonna turn out exactly how you want it.’ Sure enough, it turned out more than we wanted.” Dozens of people, Moir said, have shown up to the

restaurant solely to take photos of the mural, sometimes with drones — and those photos tend to include the skyline. He attributed a boost in foot traffic to the mural. Stacey Yates, Louisville Tourism vice president of marketing communications, told LEO “We love Kacy’s work.” She said that murals could contribute to two of the top ten most important factors to why visitors choose Louisville as a destination — “cultural attractions” and “overall ambiance and atmosphere.” Beyond that, her office knows that murals “are like billboards for tourism when visitors post them on their social media accounts. Every little bit of marketing helps in that way.” Jackson finished the Guacamole commission in one week in December, working from sunrise to sunset, months before the restaurant was ready for the public. It was a big commission, to be sure — one that would precede even bigger and better opportunities. That, ultimately, is what being the Derby Festival’s 2022 poster artist means to him: an unbeatable opportunity to showcase the best of Louisville and himself. “I’m building my legacy, and I’m really building my brand. More important than the bourbon and the horse racing is me actually creating a piece that I say, ‘Hey, this is what [the Derby Festival] is about; this is what the city offers.’ And I want to have a foot in all those conversations. That’s what it’s all about.” •

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STAFF PICKS THURSDAY, MARCH 17-19

St. Patrick’s Day Parties

TURNING GREEN MaryMary will keep the party moving, starting at 5 p.m. St. Patrick’s Day Celebration (March 17) | The Raven | 3900 Shelbyville Road | Search Facebook | $10 |9 a.m.-9 p.m. The Raven is one of Louisville’s Irish bars, so of course it’s got a lot planned for St. Paddy’s Day. The festivities start at 9 a.m. with its kegs and eggs special. At 11 a.m., the ﬁrst of the holiday’s musical acts, Mark & Roy, takes the stage, with Guilderoy Byrne coming on at 2 p.m. and Celtic Fae closing out the night with a set from 6 to 9 p.m.

Saint Patrick’s Biergarten (March 19) | German-American Club | 1840 Lincoln Ave. | Search Facebook | Free | 6-10 p.m. Celebrate the most Irish of saints with a very German event, sponsored by the GermanAmerican Club. Free German food and beer, plus live music. 2nd Annual St. Patty’s Day Dance Party (March 19) | 300 Spring | 300 Spring St., Jeffersonville, Indiana | Search Facebook | $10 | Starts at 7 p.m. Dance the night away at this St. Patrick’s Day party. Buy your ticket before the 17th to receive a voucher for a free green beer and a party favor. (Pay for your ticket via PayPal, CashApp, or Venmo; see the event page on Facebook for details.) —LEO

SATURDAY, MARCH 19

Louisville Tequila Fest

Galaxie | 732 E. Market St. | Search Facebook | $15 | 3 p.m. The weather is changing, and that calls for tequila, tacos and live music in the street, all of which is happening at Galaxie’s first annual Tequila Fest. Entry gets you five DRINKS sampling tickets at this trade show and a “welcome margarita.” Additional sampling tickets available for $2 each. Music will be played by Kinni Moon & Ground Control, Sweet Lady, and Nick Teale. And if you have a stomach made out of cast iron, and like to live dangerously, i.e. mixing hard liquor with old-school stew, also swing down to the Burgoo Bowl Kickoff right down the street (see adjacent staff pick). —Scott Recker

Tent Party (March 17) | The Irish Rover | 2319 Frankfort Ave. | $10 | 11 a.m.-9 p.m. The Irish Rover is hosting its ﬁrst St. Patrick’s Day tent party in three years, featuring music from Rashers, Cathy Wilde & Mark Rosenthal, McClanahan Irish Dancers and Cloigheann. St. Patrick’s Day Bash (March 17) | TEN20 Craft Brewery | 1020 E. Washington St. | Search Facebook | No cover | 3-10 p.m. Green beer and a new Irish Red Ale will bring even more color to the holiday at TEN20. There’ll also be a special themed menu, courtesy of Happy Belly Bistro. St. Patrick’s Day Celebration (March 17) | Jackdaw Coffee & Bourbon Bar | 120 S. Floyd St | Search Facebook | No cover | 4-9 p.m. Yellow Cellophane takes the stage at Jackdaw’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration. There will also be green beer and happy hour specials all day long. Jackdaw Coffee & Bourbon Bar is located in the new Cambria Hotel in downtown Louisville.

SATURDAY, MARCH 19

Bring your most creative recipe (but leave the wild game meat at home) at this proCOME EAT am burgoo cook-off that will see restaurants and home chefs compete for bragging rights. If you’re interesting in signing up to compete, email info@atgbrewery.com with the subject line Burgoo Cook-Off Participant. If chosen, you’ll have to bring three to five gallons of burgoo. The rest of us just have to bring an empty stomach and an open mind. And if you have a stomach made out of cast iron, and like to live dangerously, i.e. mixing hard liquor with old-school stew, also swing down to the Louisville Tequila Fest right down the street (see adjacent staff pick). —Scott Recker

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with the dogs. There will be green cocktails and prize giveaways at Club K9’s Paddy’s Day festivities. The 5th Annual Lucky’s St. Patrick’s Day Crawl (March 19) | Check in at O’Shea’s Irish Pub | 956 Baxter Ave | Search Facebook | $20-$25 | 4-10 p.m. Drinks, jello shots, professional photographers, eight different crawl venues, and an after party — this is a party that will take the “Saint” out of “Saint Patrick’s Day.” Try your luck at winning the $1,000 prize in the costume contest (winners will be determined by Facebook votes in the weeks after the event.)

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

Burgoo Bowl Cook-O�f

Against The Grain Brewery | 401 E. Main St. | atgbrewery.com | $10-$15 | 3 p.m.

CODE

SANFORD BIGGERS

THE SPEED ART MUSEUM PRESENTS

Codeswitch is the first survey of quilt-based works—inspired, in part, by the rich creative legacies of African American quilters—produced by the American interdisciplinary artist Sanford Biggers. The works, part of Biggers’s Codex series, consist of mixed-media paintings and sculptures done directly on or made from antique American quilts. Members see it all for free! Advanced ticket purchase strongly encouraged. Visit speedmuseum.org

Sanford Biggers: Codeswitch was co-organized by Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought, New Orleans, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, and curated by Andrea Andersson (Founding Director and Chief Curator, Rivers Institute) and Sergio Bessa (former Director of Curatorial Programs, Bronx Museum). The exhibition and catalog are made possible by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund: Culpeper Arts & Culture Program, Henry Luce Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Marianne Boesky Gallery, Massimo De Carlo, David Castillo Gallery, Monique Meloche Gallery, Baldwin Gallery, and Yale University Press.

Leading sponsors: Brooke Brown Barzun & Matthew Barzun Stephen Reily and Emily Bingham Contributing sponsors: Hardscuﬄe, Inc. Jeﬀrey and Susan Callen Colin and Woo Speed McNaughton Lopa and Rishabh Mehrotra

Exhibition season sponsored by: Cary Brown and Steven E. Epstein Paul and Deborah Chellgren Arthur J. and Mary Celeste Lerman Charitable Foundation Debra and Ronald Murphy

Image: Sanford Biggers American, b. 1970 Quilt 35 (Vex), 2014 Antique quilt fragments,treated acrylic, and tar on antique quilt.

Exhibition opening sponsor:

Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson

2035 S. 3rd Street Louisville, KY 40208

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

STAFF PICKS

THURSDAY, MARCH 24

SATURDAY, MARCH 26

Art Sanctuary | 1433 S. Shelby St. | louisvillevisualart.org | $75 | 5-7 p.m.

Mercury Ballroom | 611 S. Fourth St. | Search LiveNation | $18 | 8 p.m.

2022 Louisville Visual Art Honors

The LVA Honors, commemorating local visual artists and art professionals, is VISUAL back live. This year’s ceremony is presenting the Legacy Award to sculptor William M. Duffy. His latest public project are the stone benches along the Ohio River, part of the “On the Banks of Freedom” memorial. The Emerging Artist Award is going to Shohei Katayama. An artist who works in multiple media, including installations, line drawings and sculpture, he graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with an MFA in 2019. Janet Britt is receiving the Visual Art Educator Award. LVA Honors award by Lindsay E. Frost. Wood. After also two decades at the St. Francis School in Goshen, Britt came to LVA to teach its art programs and has been there the past 12 years. The Benefactor Award will be given to artist Clare Hirn. She changed the art landscape in Louisville last year when she donated $1 million to help fund the Curatorial and Art Purchasing Program to get more art in public spaces. —Jo Anne Triplett

Midnight Memories: One Direction Night Get ready to stay “Up All Night” and jump around until you see the sun at ONE the “One Thing” that’ll make your weekend “Perfect”: a 1D-themed club party, where “You & I” can see just how fast the “Night Changes” when everybody gets to dance all night to the “Best Song Ever” (well, all of them, actually.) Yes, 1D may not be reuniting anytime soon, but that won’t “Drag Me Down”: this party will give us plenty of chances to make “Midnight Memories.” — Carolyn Brown

SATURDAY, MARCH 26

NULU Bock & Wurst Fest

600 and 700 blocks of East Market Street | nulu.org/Nulu-Bock-f | Free | Noon–6 p.m. Truly the G.O.A.T. of all festivals, this free outdoor event will feature multiple goat races, bock beers, live music and the best of the wurst — that is, sausage. The orgaGOATS nizers recommend goat-themed costuming and apparel. — Carolyn Brown

THURSDAY, MARCH 24-26

Music Without Borders

Various Locations | www.louisvilleorchestra.org | $20 | 7:30 p.m. The sound of Spain. Classical guitarist Stephen Mattingly appears with the Louisville Orchestra in three concerts in the Music Without Borders series, performing JoaMUSIC quin Rodrigo’s hauntingly beautiful “Concierto de Aranjuez.” Rodrigo penned the piece in 1939, an ex-pat living in Paris after the Spanish Civil War, and on the eve of World War II — an homage to his home country, set perhaps in a vibrant garden in the small city of Aranjuez, near Madrid. You’ve heard the themes, maybe without realizing. The Adagio second movement is referenced in Chick Corea’s “Spain,” and Miles Davis’ “Sketches of Spain,” because… it sounds like Spain. The orchestra also performs works by Bizet and Ginastera. Kalena Bovell conducts. — Bill Doolittle

PHOTO BY FRANCIS DUMSTORF

SUNDAY, MARCH 27

Third Annual Oscar’s Party at the Merryweather The MerryWeather | 1101 Lydia St. | Search Facebook | Free | 5 p.m.

Welcome to the Third Annual Oscar’s event presented by The MerryWeather. Come for a night of fun and glamour RED CARPET while The Merryweather pays homage to the silver screen and it’s night of grand display. There will be winner-takesall predicitons, movie-themed drinks, free red carpet polaroids and, of course, Oscars on the big screen for the audience to watch.—LEO

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

STAFF PICKS

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30

THROUGH APRIL 15

Old Forester’s Paristown Hall | 724 Brent St. | kentuckyperformingarts.org | $27.50-$55 | 7 p.m.

Mary Anderson Center Gallery | 101 St. Anthony Drive, Mt. St. Francis, Indiana | mountsaintfrancis.org | Free but donations encouraged

Mitski is returning to Louisville for a show at the Paristown Hall. It’s been over two years since her last album of MUSIC anthemic pop, and if you were missing her work and shows, now is your chance. As an artist, she’s contemplated how long she will be playing music so definitely try not to miss your chance to see this show. —Erica Rucker

Going on a personal spiritual journey is as private as it gets. Yet the reART sults are usually public. That’s the case with artist Joe McGee, whose spiritual artwork has been a mainstay of his 40-year career. “I was immediately drawn to Thomas Merton (why, he was a Catholic just like me),” he said, “and his writings on faith, especially his journals that he wrote and kept for himself during his 27 years as a cloistered monk at Gethsemani. So, there is a place of those like me who search but cannot find. Is that not faith?” The exhibition, featuring nearly 20 paintings, is the first show in the newly renovated Mary Anderson Center. —Jo Anne Triplett

Mitski

THROUGH APRIL 8

‘Edward R. White, Returning Home: A Life’s Retrospective’ Portland Museum | 2308 Portland Ave. | portlandky.org | Free

Edward “Nardie” White knows Portland. As a third-generation resident of the Louisville neighborhood, he worked at ART the Portland Boys and Girls Club and was a co-founder ‘Portland Now’ by Edward R. White. Plastic, plaster, of the River City Drum Corp. His day job, before retirement, was found objects, rope and as a professional photographer. But behind the scenes, White mosaic. was a multi-media sculptor and ceramicist. The Portland Museum is celebrating his life’s art with an exhibition of over 100 pieces made by White in the last 30 years. His large-scale sculpture, “Portland Now,” is premiering in the show. —Jo Anne Triplett

‘In Search Of Faith’ By Joe McGee

‘St. Francis of Assisi’ by Joe McGee. Gouache on paper.

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

MUSIC

LISTEN LOCAL:

MUSIC REVIEWS By Syd Bishop | leo@leoweekly.com

TRAPKINGKAI

LIFE OF A WALLFLOWER

The title, Life of a Wallflower, is all too apt for emcee Trapkingkai. The beats and rhymes are grimy and raw, with raps that parallel that heat. There are times where the emcee and his guests are a little (a very little) pushed down in the mix, like you’re at a party and Trap is rapping straight into your ear over all the background music. The lyrics often address hip-hop standards: drugs, women and the culture. At first blush, hearing Trap wax poetic on the type of women that catch his interest or his preferred high implies a confidence that may not be here. There is a loneliness to the music, an escapism to understandable vices that run through the backbone of this all-too-short EP. Opener “Basquiat” speaks to the idea of being an artistic outsider, burned out to avoid fading away. Let’s hope that this only the next step in Trap’s journey, and not a portend of times to come, because there is much promise in the future of his art. > Search Spotify

April 4th - 10th, 2022

$2 tacos. Everyday.

www.tacoweeklouisville.com

ISOLATION TANK ENSEMBLE LIVE AT LA LA LAND

For several years now, the Isolation Tank Ensemble has quietly honed their brand of prog-rock to a fine point. Somehow Live at La La Land is inexplicably their debut release, a visceral and thought-provoking session that showcases a band that is all killer, no filler. Of course, that’s a trite and inelegant way of admiring the band’s technical precision, although no less accurate; no matter what is going on, the band is tight, committed and confident. The result is a compositional dynamic that equally privileges pummeling grooves, jazz fusion and tender, atmosphere-building moments that provide shadow and light to the louder, more off-kilter moments, of which there are many. For example, “Revenge of the Sea Slugs” is, largely, a lithe banger, albeit one that features an unexpected polka outro. These are lean compositions that give room for each of the constituent players to shine, whether that’s in giving space for a beautiful string section or a fiery, John McLaughlin-esque guitar lead. > Search Bandcamp

91.9 WFPK PRESENTS

THE GLEAMING CORRIDOR FILTERED

FRIDAY, APRIL 1

THE K ENTUCKY CENTER TICKETS AT KENTUCKYPERFORMINGARTS.ORG .COM

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

Listening to Filtered, the newest from The Gleaming Corridor, is like imagining the full ensemble of Tortoise transported “Tron”-style into an 8-bit Nintendo. The music here is, of course, instrumental and features some unmistakable post-rock vibes, albeit as (ahem) ﬁltered through chiptunes. As such, there is an almost Cluster-vibe to tracks like “Reorganized,” which serves as a palate cleanser after the meaty opener “Filtered.” On “Cloister,” the project continues that ﬁxation on electro-infused beats in a way that recalls early-aughts Trans Am at their most prog-rock heights. Closer “Isograph,” is a six and a half minute meditation on groove and glacial composition, as smaller elements shift slowly to build momentum across the track. This is an especially pensive EP, although one tinged with hope and optimism by virtue of arpeggiating, major-key synth work. > Search Bandcamp

MUSIC

SONIC BREAKDOWN CPHR DVN ‘MERKABA’ FROM MA’AT PACKS A GUN (2020)

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By Tyrel Kessinger | leo@leoweekly.com DURING the darker days of the pandemic hope was hard to come by for most of us and it was no different for CPHR DVN, aka Sultra Mathematiks (Nancy Smith) and producer Wize (Jeremy Brown). Still, the two decided they would take control of their own passage through this traumatic time and instead concentrate on ﬁnding the light. In the wake of this journey, they created “Merkaba,” a song that Mathematiks says was designed to “show another perspective on how to cope with things like a pandemic.” “Merkaba,” a Hebrew word that means “chariot,” is the energy sphere in which everything exists. CPHR DVN’s Wize and Sultra Mathematiks talk “Merkaba” While that’s certainly a lot to unpack in a short interview, Wize Mathematiks’ glitchy, honey-smoked vocals. does his best to distill the theory. It’s as smooth as smooth can get and the duo “It’s about activating our body and using this vehicle of light to transmute dark into calls it the most chill song on the album. light,” Wize said. “Legend states that that Both agree that this was made possible by the ‘Merkaba’ itself has been used by myschanneling their “higher selves.” tics to travel through space and time. We are “Musically, the inspiration was to tap using the Merkaba to travel musically. Dark into the ether and pull sonic inspiration from times can be a catalyst to awakening and we spirit while at the same time acknowledge wanted to touch on this through song. The the struggles of living through these times,’’ song itself is sort of a guided meditation Wize says. “The instrumentation plays with that can be used to active your ‘Merkaba’ the tug and pull of spiritual and physical and travel through dimensions. This idea of worlds attempting to coexist. I think for me, dark into light has been a persistent trend in writing this song was a form of meditationour music since the beginning. We feel that and healing. I feel that we need more of this our lane in this art form is to provide that type of music. I hope listeners can take away sense of optimism in a world focused on a sense of empowerment to integrate and negativity.” transmute dark into light. One thing is for sure: both Mathematiks “The song to me is multidimensional,” and Wize believe wholeheartedly in the Mathematiks echoes. “In a 3D perspective, transformational power of music and its it talks about two people during a world ability to evolve into something more than crisis and how they deal with it and each just a song. other. They create their ‘Merkaba,’ their “Hip hop music has always been on the sacred space, to make it through. From a 5D cutting edge of our culture,” Mathematiks perspective, it’s about co-creating a world said. “It is one of the reasons that we have that is high vibrational. It’s about ascension felt so connected to the art and its ability and becoming light bodies.” to communicate complex ideas in such a While “Merkaba” might be meant to be beautiful and poetic way. We can feel the uplifting, the backbone of the song is an shift and are inspired to keep pushing the ethereally-haunted-sounding beat with a envelope. Stay tuned, because we are just mid-tempo groove that ticks along through getting started!” • an air of dreamy sounds, highlighted by

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MUSIC

LOCAL EMO BAND DRYING OUT IS FAR FROM WASHED UP By Carolyn Brown | cbrown@leoweekly.com

The band Drying Out will be playing at Mag Bar this Saturday night. | PHOTO BY MAT SCHLADEN

YOUR new favorite emo boys are rooted right here in Louisville. Drying Out is an emo band whose members include vocalist/guitarist Aaron Cottner, drummer Justin Cottner and bassist Tony Delise. (A fourth member, guitarist/ vocalist Alex Hoagland, is dialing back his involvement in Drying Out due to the time constraints of also being in a two-person band, Feral Vices, with Justin.) The Cottner brothers recently sat down with LEO at a distinctly non-emo location — the Northeast Regional Library — to talk about their work and preview some tracks. Even amongst other emo bands, Drying Out has a distinctive sound, thanks to Aaron’s harsh, grating vocal style. (“I call it scream-singing!” he said proudly.) That description isn’t meant as an insult, by the way — his voice gives a very ﬁtting rawness to lyrics about things like grief, isolation and suicidal ideation. In “Washington Street,” which also happens to be this reporter’s favorite Drying Out song, the narrator sings calmly about the loneliness of a dead relationship in a new town: “I digress, it’s been weighing on me

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

since I left / My thoughts are whole and they swell in my chest / I may have grown in a new place I’m having trouble calling home / I’ve made friends but nights with you have never felt more alone.” Not long after, the ferocity amps up — “this loneliness is so fucking crippling” — and it’s powerful, even before the later mid-verse transition into scream-singing in the line, “Eviscerate my arms so you can see the open bleeding heart that I keep giving out to anyone.” It’s easy to imagine a crowd scream-singing along to it, as they did on their last tour; Justin describes the experience as “insane” and “surreal.” In fact, it’s his own song — he wrote those lyrics about his time living in San Francisco, fruitlessly trying to salvage a stale relationship. That said, it’s a little difﬁcult to fully proﬁle a band when they only have three songs out at the moment: “Washington Street,” “Sinking,” and “Your Spirit Surrounds Me,” although the band will play a few other as-yet-unreleased tracks on their upcoming tour. For one of them, “Blood Orange,” sort of a companion piece to “Your Spirit Sur-

rounds Me,” the band is planning a full — and, ironically, very colorful — merch line when it releases later this spring. The song has been in the works for a while, though: LEO received an initial demo of the song back in November 2021, but Aaron first wrote it in November 2020, not long after the band got back from Sound Acres Recording Studio in New Jersey. Aaron has ADHD, which he says plays a role in his music production process: after coming home from his day job at Quills in NuLu (where Justin also works), he’ll often go straight into his office and sit down for hours, just working on music, in “really long manic sessions.” (He wrote “Blood Orange” in 12 hours.) Still, he acknowledges, a work-life (im) balance like that isn’t really sustainable, but he’s got his eye on making a music product that is. His ultimate goal for the band is to defy the misconception that music like that can’t make it in the mainstream music world — as he pointed out, Turnstile recently had their “Nirvana MTV” moment when they appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Their success, he said, “fills me with the

biggest ﬁre under my ass.” “If I didn’t have so many people support me, I wouldn’t make things at all, but I’ve also had my fair share of people say that the type of music that I want to create is not commercial, is not sellable, is not enough that you can support yourself off of it,” he said, but “getting that much mainstream live TV recognition for a genre of music that people have outcasted for so long made — that’s my goal. I want to create or do something with the band that people look back on and see as an inﬂuential moment, whether it’s an album we made, whether it’s a show we played, whether it’s a place we went.” Cottner’s other goal, he said, is “to just uplift all the homies around.” “I have so many friends that deserve so much better than what they have now, that are so talented. I want to do things, and I want to take my homies with me and just create a bunch of cool stuff that has a lasting impression in some way.” Drying Out will play at Mag Bar this Saturday. Tickets are $10; doors open at 7 p.m; the show starts at 8 p.m. •

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FOOD & DRINK

RECOMMENDED

HYDERABAD HOUSE BRINGS THE BIRYANI By Robin Garr | louisvilleHotBytes.com BIRYANI — India’s mouth-watering rice dish — stands tall against other national ricebased competitors such as Spain’s paella, Italy’s risotto, Nigeria’s jollof rice, Indonesia’s nasi goreng, Louisiana’s jambalaya or Persia’s pilaf. What is biryani, anyway? It’s a hearty rice dish layered with lamb, chicken, ﬁsh or vegetables, scented with saffron and aromatic Indian spices, sauced with a thick gravy, and roasted in a covered pot until the ﬂavors join in a resounding gustatory chorus. Biryani topped the takeout charts across India last year, The Times of India reported. One online-ordering app tallied 60 million plates of biryani delivered in a single year, topping the nation’s food popularity charts. So where can we sample this tantalizing treat? Just about every Indian restaurant offers a variation, but if you want to make your taste buds sing, I recommend a visit to Hyderabad House, a year-old Indian spot in a short strip of shops in Middletown. “Experience the taste of authentic Indian food that will pamper your taste buds like

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

never before,” Hyderabad House boasts on its Facebook page. You can get lots of traditional Indian treats there, of course, but biryani is the clear specialty, with 35 variations listed on an entire menu page and more on its special weekend menus. About one-third of them are vegetarian, with the rest divided among chicken, goat, lamb and seafood variations. They come in three sizes: Regular, a family pack big enough for four, and biryani in a bucket the size of the Colonel’s biggest bucket — I am not kidding about this — but much more tasty. Prices range from $13 to $18 for the regular size, which will easily feed two, to $44 to $58 for the family packs and buckets, which are made to-go only. The rest of the menu is worthy, too. It features about 100 Indian regional specialties priced between $10 and $18. There’s a selection of nine pulavs, akin to pilafs, which are made only Fridays through Sundays. They’re priced in the same range as the biryanis, and I want to go back and try one soon. It took a while to absorb the menu,

Biryani, India’s trademark rice dish, is a weekend special at Hyderabad House, and it draws crowds with its oversize portions and memorable flavors. | PHOTOS BY ROBIN GARR.

Coconut milk and curry flavors bring a delicious whack of aromatics to this bright-yellow, turmeric-shaded lentil daal.

FOOD & DRINK

Garlic naan was soft and tender, with a little butter and a lot of garlic. No complaints about that!

which contains a lot of less familiar Indian names. (Bring your smartphone, or rely on the help of the friendly servers.) The name of creamy coconut daal curry ($13) was enough to get it onto our table in an attractive teardrop-shape white bowl. Yellow lentils bathed in a simmering brightyellow, curry-scented soup studded with a few bright cubes of tomato. The mild lentil flavor blended with coconut and turmeric scents with haunting back notes of mysterious, delicious Indian flavors. Ordered mild, it presented a gentle heat imparted by a single small charred chile pepper. It was served with a bowl of perfectly prepared basmati rice: very long grains, fluffy and separate. Hyderabad House knows its rice. They’re good with bread, too: Garlic naan ($4) was soft and tender and very garlicky, with puffy bubbles and a few sweet char marks, painted lightly with ghee and a bit of chopped parsley on top. I studied the three dozen biryanis with growing bewilderment and eventually enlisted the server’s advice to end up with eggplant-stuffed gutti vaka biryani ($15). Dishes come just in three levels of heat: mild, medium and hot. I bravely asked for hot, but in retrospect, since there was no hotter option, that may mean hot-for-Indianpalates. The server apparently took pity on me and brought me medium anyway, a decision that he did not mention until I saw it on the tab. It was a good call. The medium heat was plenty palate-scorching. Another step up might have been... problematic. I must have seen a dozen biryanis of various forms being rushed to tables. It really is the specialty here, especially on

weekends. They all look similar: A mountain of tricolored basmati — plain white, turmeric yellow and saffron orange — piled on a square white porcelain plate, with a few small purple eggplants peeking out the top, with several more layered inside, and a fiery hot-sweet sauce poured over. Strips of raw red onion and lots of chopped cilantro were strewn on top, with a single lime wedge in the corner. The eggplants had been roasted until their skins turned crisp with char marks and the insides were tender, smooth and creamy — cooked to soak up the thick, fiery sauce that appeared to be made of more roasted eggplant flesh. A tart reddish-brown sauce, maybe tamarind-based, dotted with chile oil, came alongside and I used it freely, along with another side dish of yogurt-based raita. Both the dishes boasted alluring, endorphin-boosting flavors and aromas that are hard to define but easy to like: aromatic and distinct, not floral but complex. You can sense waves of flavor washing over your tastebuds before moving on to make way for another wave of an entirely different flavor, and on and on. This is Indian food at its best, and that’s what keeps bringing me back. An abundant meal for two came to $33.92, plus an $8 tip. •

Thank you to all our highlands Industry Family. We will be staying open from 10-midnight every Tuesday. $2.00 Domestic Drafts and Bottles • $3.00 Wells $6.00 Food specials

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April 4th - 10th, 2022

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

BUILDING GLASS HOUSES: ARTIST CHÉ RHODES REFLECTS ON HIS CAREER AS A GLASS ARTIST AND EDUCATOR By Elizabeth Kramer | leo@leoweekly.com This story was made possible by grant funds from the Great Meadows Foundation. THE ROAR and swoosh of fires blazing in furnaces reverberate and artist Corey Pemberton raises his voice enough so a small group of visiting youth can hear. “He’s the master,” Pemberton says, pointing to the man nearby with a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “Better Together” and a shaved head. In the cavernous glass studio on Main Street, Pemberton, a Virginia-born artist visiting from his Los Angeles home, and fellow artist SaraBeth Post, visiting from Pittsburgh, are working with Ché Rhodes. Since 2005, Rhodes has been the UofL Hite Art Institute professor and glass artist overseeing the glass program housed at the university’s Cressman Center for Visual Arts. “We both look up to Ché very much,” Pemberton says. This Thursday evening, they are giving six students from the Smoketown neighborhood’s Steam Exchange Community Arts Center lessons in making glass works using the fire and heat of furnaces and a range of tools. This trio of artists are showing these teens the steps in making glass and giving them hand-on experience, an endeavor headed up by Rhodes. Since arriving to establish UofL’s glass program, Rhodes’ reputation as an artist and teacher has been solid. But these days, his work has gained a resounding pulse, starting at home with a pair of exhibits at KMAC Museum and extending beyond Louisville with the acquisition of his work into the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the announcement last week of a national award for his work as an educator in the craft field. Among KMAC Museum’s exhibits are a group show titled “Crafting the Vernacular,” including works by Pemberton and Post, a UofL alumnus, which Rhodes co-curated with Curatorial Director Joey Yates, and a solo installation of Rhode’s work called “Moments of Longitude.” The exhibit is the subject of The Urban Glass Art Quarterly’s current edition’s cover story. “Crafting the Vernacular,” on view through April 3, with its work by six glass artists who identify as Black, doesn’t have pieces that focus on the racial violence of

Rhodes’ Installation, “Moments of Longitude.”| Photo provided by the artist.

the past several years. Instead, Rhodes and Yates, working with participating artists, chose works expressing personal concepts such as those that spring from the artists’ childhoods, common experiences and frequent reﬂections. There’s Post’s “Bobalobs,” resembling the hair accessory that holds a ponytail. In her piece, two faceted, glass balls are united by a colorful braided hair weave. Pemberton’s works include two trios of glass vessels resembling Zulu baskets with vivid patterns that evoke texture. In making these works, the artist explored his African heritage. Not all works are made of glass. Pemberton’s paintings are here as well as mixed media works by other artists. Rhodes’ “Moments of Longitude” presents an environment populated by diverse forms of glass globes — some on posts or encased in glass, others elevated near the ceiling and attached to either ropes or chains

that hang to the ground. They create an unearthly sensation as they also evoke ideas of the ocean and harbors or even drifting underwater. Rhodes, who is from Cincinnati, says he once considered studying marine biology after childhood years spent visiting his grandparents in New York City, attending a high school in Rhode Island and once studying a semester at sea. During a February panel discussion at KMAC, Rhodes says the work came out of a challenge he gave to himself to create more personal work. He wanted to address outlooks on death, the space between life and death, as well as what is noble and not noble. KMAC Museum’s Yates had been talking with Rhodes about working on an exhibit for many years. Then, just before the pandemic, they began to talk more seriously about what an exhibit might look like. “Crafting the

Vernacular” and “Moments of Longitude” took shape as the two began to work with the participating artists, many of them also involved in Crafting the Future, an organization Pemberton helped found (he is now the director). Crafting the Future works to diversify the art, craft and design ﬁeld by connecting BIPOC artists through providing students with scholarships, and in the past two years, has organized one-day Better Together events that gather these artists and include demonstrations, workshops and exhibits. Through his relationships with his former students, like Post, and fellow artists, including those in Crafting the Future, and university colleagues, he has gained signiﬁcant respect. Post cites how Rhodes has helped Crafting the Future work on big collaborative projects it tackles during Better Together LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

events. “He’s kind of the ringleader for that and is able to come up with a vision or plan that we can all work on together,” Post says. While a UofL student, Post says she saw Rhodes as a guide for her and others — helping decipher ways to find solutions to dilemmas and not coddle them. She grows a bit solemn when she speaks about how Rhodes has been her mentor going back to her student days there, a time when she describes herself as “a messy person.” He also helped her more than she expected. “I had some really major personal things happen while I was in school,” Post says. “Ché was the first person that I called whenever things were happening in my life. That’s just because I knew that he was good at understanding and would be able to help me figure out the next steps.” The story doesn’t surprise Rhode’s colleague and UofL Hite Institute of Art and Design Chair and artist Mary Carothers. “I’ve heard students literally say that Ché has saved their life or changed their life in a way that has made them a better person and provided them future direction,” she says. Looking back on his own youth, Rhodes now likens himself to someone who was misdirected and in need of guidance. He

says his pathway to a career as an artist was “mostly default.” Growing up in Cincinnati and during his high school years at an elite Rhode Island boarding school he dabbled in music and art. But he also, generated mayhem with what he described as his “subversive attitude” at a high school institution that had a culture with a lot of unhappy boys, he recalls. Instead of graduating, he was kicked out for low grades, but later was able to attend his last year of high school at Cincinnati’s School for Creative and Performing Arts. Then Rhodes enrolled at Centre College, part of an eleventh-hour decision, and chose art as a major because he knew he always enjoyed those classes. There he met Stephen Powell, the well-known artist and professor who died in 2019. Apart from his parents, Rhodes says no one has had more inﬂuence over his life “in every single way.” Rhodes recalls Powell as exceedingly generous, modest and humorously self-assured at times. “I always say, I would deﬁnitely be dead or possibly incarcerated if I had never encountered him,” Rhodes says. Powell’s death hit Rhodes hard. And so do many of society’s problems, which he often seriously contemplates. Now at 48 years old, he says he has become increas-

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Artist Ché Rhodes credits art with giving him a positive direction | PHOTO BY ANDREW KUNG.

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | XXX

Detail of the blue vessels in “Labor” by Che Rhod

ingly cynical. While he doesn’t see art as an absolute answer, he believes the humanities are what make us human. So, Rhodes adjusts his work to encourage behavior that would somehow be substantively beneficial or test one’s moral fiber. Case in point: his piece “Labor” in “Crafting the Vernacular.” For this work, Rhodes created dozens of blue glass bottles for display on a computercontrolled conveyor belt activated by a nearby button on a pedestal. When the button is pushed, the belt moves to send a bottle toppling into a chute. It breaks when it hits the bottom. The indifferent mentality to breaking glass vessels (and the labor linked to creating them) that are part of “Labor,” Rhodes says, act as metaphors for how we treat labor that have made products throughout much of history. This reflects items created under slavery to those under contemporary unfair labor practices. It also reflects on how we treat items and the environment in general. Several unknown individuals have pushed the button. But knowing people would be tempted do this and want to make amends, Rhodes set up a system. Two people he saw push the button have used it. Those people each made a $60 donation to Crafting the Future for student scholarships at prestigious arts and crafts institutions, such North Carolina’s Penland School of Craft. (Rhodes, Pemberton and Post studied there, and Rhodes has been a trustee since 2008.) “You know, they went on the website, thinking, well, I’ll pay $60 — and it’ll be OK,” Rhodes says. However, he still takes issue with breaking the glass, defining it as one that negates the moral, social and

environmental costs that went into creating the blue glass vessel. Like his work with “Labor,” Rhodes often tries to not give into his cynical nature. He thinks about how to set things right and what role his art can play. This was his mindset long before the pandemic and 2020’s racial violence. This was his mindset when he requested to meet with Mayor Greg Fischer in the early years of his first term after Rhodes was asked to create the sculpture for the Keepers of the Dream Freedom Award. The award, given by the city since 1988, goes to citizens who best exemplify the ideals and vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Before agreeing, Rhodes, a Portland neighborhood resident since moving to Louisville more than 15 years ago, wanted to discuss a few issues of concern with the mayor, the Louisville Metro Police Department among them. Rhodes, whose father was a Cincinnati police officer, says he has observed the main problems being, under-policing as much as it is over-policing in areas. When Rhodes and Fischer met, Rhodes says the conversation never progressed to a subject past policing. Over nearly a decade of creating the award, he met with the mayor’s office a few other times to continue the conversation, he says. At one point, Rhodes was referred to the chief of police, he says, but the city addressed very few issues discussed. When a representative of the mayor’s office wrote him last year about creating the 2022 prize, Rhodes, reflected on the events of 2020 and the city’s lack of progress in addressing issues he had first raised a decade ago. He declined to continue making the

Detail of the broken glass from the “Labor” piece ny Che Rhodes’ in Crafting the Vernacu

prize. Meanwhile, Rhodes has plenty on his plate in addition to his responsibilities as a university professor. In January, the Smithsonian American Art Museum announced it is acquiring of one of Rhodes’ works which also will show in an exhibit titled “This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World,” opening May 13 in the museum’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. To top it off, last week Rhodes received notice he has been chosen to receive the James Renwick Alliance for Craft’s Distinguished Craft Educator’s Award in an event just after the exhibit’s opening. The award is a sweet success as Rhodes’ mentor Powell received it in 2012. But even with the accolades, he doesn’t seem affected. “I don’t need to be appreciated,” he says. Still, he is grateful, especially

considering he didn’t know he “was on anyone’s radar.” Meanwhile, another unexpected gift recently arrived in Rhodes’ life — a new student. This semester in the UofL glass studio Rhodes runs, he began teaching his late mentor and great friend’s 20-year-old son Oliver Powell the art that bonded the student’s father and Rhodes. “It is really,” Rhodes says with a pause “kind of the most amazing, meaningful thi I could ever imagine.” Elizabeth Kramer is on Twitter @ arts_bureau and on Facebook at Elizabeth Kramer – Arts Writer. •

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

KENTUCKY SHAKESPEARE GETS TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN WITH HENRY VI By Ben Gierhart | leo@leoweekly.com

Shaquille Towns as Earl of Westmoreland in Henry V| Photo by Jon Cherry

ANY BONAFIDE theater company devoted to the works of Shakespeare has a certain production hat trick on its bucket list — and Kentucky Shakespeare has already done it. Shakespeare’s Henriad — a tetralogy consisting of “Richard II,” “Henry IV, Part 1,” “Henry IV, Part 2” and “Henry V” — has been part of Kentucky Shakespeare’s long game since they last produced “Richard II” in 2017 as the beginning of their “Game of Kings” series. A sequel cycle of plays — what many a Shakespeare nerd considers a continuation of the Henriad — that includes parts one through three of “Henry VI” and concludes with “Richard III” is in the daunt-

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

less company’s sights now. Amy Attaway, Kentucky Shakespeare’s associate artistic director, is helming a production that condenses the seldom produced “Henry VI” plays into a unique and breezy 90-minute distillation entitled “Henry VI: The Wars of the Roses” that will serve as a bridge between the company’s earlier Henriad efforts and “Richard III,” which will be part of the mainstage season in the summer. The internal process for this undertaking began when Attaway and Producing Artistic Director Matt Wallace took on the organization’s leadership roles in 2014 as a dialogue on how to prove their artistic chops but more

importantly, on how to ﬁnd a way to renew the community’s sense of ownership of and familiarity with Kentucky Shakespeare. In producing the Henriad, audiences would be obliged to come back for a loosely connected story across seasons as well as to see characters played by the same actors, almost as if catching up with old friends. “When we got to ‘Henry V,’ especially after having the COVID year where we didn’t produce live, it felt like such a victory… carrying through the same actors… it felt like such an achievement, like we had made it to the top of the mountain,” said Attaway, “But then thinking about what to

do next… people don’t know “Henry VI” as well, and the plays themselves, individually, are not as strong as ‘Henry V’ and ‘Richard III.’” This is why, when sister organization Tennessee Shakespeare Company announced a tour of a condensed version of “Henry VI,” Attaway jumped at the chance to see it: “I was sort of like, ‘OK. if I see it, and it’s good, and I feel like the storytelling really is accomplished in 90 minutes, and we can raise a little bit of money to get this thing off the ground, and we can ﬁnd a time in the calendar where we can do it that’s not going to conﬂict with anything else we’re

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

doing, then we’ll do it.’” The stars aligned, and sufﬁce it to say, Attaway thought the play was good. With Tennessee Shakespeare’s permission, Attaway and her team have made some slight changes to accommodate various production needs that facilitate a smooth transition for Kentucky Shakespeare audience members from “Henry V” to this summer’s “Richard III,” but otherwise, this is the play Attaway saw. And there are quite a few things Attaway is excited for audiences to experience. “These three plays introduce some of Shakespeare’s strongest women. And they almost all carry over into “Richard III,” hinted Attaway. “I’m [also] really excited about how fast-paced and unexpected this version is. It moves so fast, and the characters change so quickly, and it’s going to be a really exciting workout for these eight actors.” The average audience member may be surprised to see the word “fast-paced” used to discuss a Shakespeare play. Mollie Murk, one of the eight actors put to the test in this production and who is playing the formidable Joan of Arc — among other roles — can attest to these points: “[Joan of Arc] is one of very few Shakespearian roles for women that has no real tie to any particular male character.

Neill Robertson in Richard II, 2017. | PHOTO BY BILL BRYMER.

She gets to command the army… She is a very brave and very physically activated character.” Murk is speaking here to the fact that for most women in theater, stage combat training does not get to happen naturally very often: “There are a lot of male actors that I know that have no fighting experience, but because they’re playing male characters, they get to fight all the time. And they’ll eventually get to grow and become really good fighters just by being in Shakespearian plays.” What might often be an unfulfilled interest for Murk, here is instead a rare glimpse of female mentorship and just a smart director utilizing her actor’s talents. The Henriad deals with the transitory nature of power, the humanity in political machinations and the weight of leadership, but beyond all of that, Shakespeare always speaks to something eternal. His work is relevant in entirely new ways each time it’s produced, and audiences absolutely must not deprive themselves of the opportunity to see “Henry VI: The Wars of the Roses” when it opens in the coming weeks. “Henry VI: The Wars of the Roses” runs March 30-April 16 at Kentucky Shakespeare’s new space at 616 Myrtle St. For more information, visit kyshakespeare.com. •

The Liminal Playhouse presents

How to Transcend a Happy Marriage by Sarah Ruhl

Directed by Tony Prince

Featuring: Susan Linville Gerry Rose Heather Green Scott Davis Megan Adair Neil Brewer Spencer Korcz Nick Schaffner Scenic Design by Karl Anderson Lighting Design by Lindsay Krupski Costume Coordination by Tony Prince Sound Design by Richard McGrew March 24 — April 3, 2022 The Henry Clay Theatre 604 S. 3rd St., Louisville, KY “…whimsical and spiritual… …provocative and poetic…” Tickets: — AM New York TheLiminalPlayhouse.org 502-553-8056 LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE LOSS OF THE HUMANA FESTIVAL AND THE FUTURE OF ACTORS THEATRE By Allie Fireel | leo@leoweekly.com

LAST WEEK, Louisville’s theater community took another blow. After a pared down, all-digital festival in 2021, Actors Theatre of Louisville has announced there will be no Humana Festival of New American Plays in 2022. While the future of the festival is possibly undecided, the announcement is being treated by many as the end of the internationally acclaimed, nearly half-century-old festival. When the 2020 Festival was canceled, there seemed to be a universal wail of despair from the theater community, but Louisville in 2022 is not so united. While many are deeply upset, they don’t always agree with what they are upset about. Some speculate the cancellation is the fault of Artistic Director Robert Barry Fleming, whose tenure at Actors started six months before the pandemic and had already

LEOWEEKLY.COM // MARCH 16, 2022

included a massive layoff in February 2020 that left many long-time employees jobless. Often this theory is paired with a criticism of the way Actors and Fleming have pivoted to deal with the pandemic, including a focus on digital content that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Others impart that the problems at Actors have been around much longer than Fleming, suggesting ﬁnancial mismanagement and racial disparity have been unsolved problems for Actors, which reach further back than the pandemic. Well, surprising to absolutely no one, I have opinions. So here are my thoughts I have about Actors Theatre, ﬁnance, racism and the possible demise of The Humana Festival of New American Plays.

•

People are often arguing over false dichotomies. Have various people at Actors worked hard for progressive social change since long before the current administration took over? Yes. Has Actors Theatre since its inception continued the American theater’s foundational systemic racism that keeps out BiPOC audiences, artists and leadership? It sure has. Both things can be true.

•

No organization the size of Actors Theatre is a monolith. People, efforts and ideas struggle to be expressed. No single person, even an artistic director, is solely responsible for steering the ship. There isn’t actually an “old” Actors Theatre or a “new” one.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT •

•

Nonproﬁts are run by liberals and conservatives. Often the “boots on the ground” employees are underpaid and the board members at the top are millionaires. Guess who has the tendency to be liberal and guess who has the tendency to be conservative? In that same vein, guess who has historically had a stronger cumulative effect on their organizations, and made the most important decisions regarding budget and hiring artistic staff?

ences to stay away. It means telling people to come sit still and be quiet for two hours. It’s price points that everyday people living in 2022 can’t always afford. Maybe it’s lack of child care, maybe it’s the time of day that theater is usually shown. And other stuff we haven’t even thought of. •

Blame is being placed on new leadership at Actors for fiscal problems that are probably decades old, all the Did the Humana Festival create while expecting new leadership to decades worth of brave and innovakeep running the organization with tive theater? Yes. Theater that I the same-sized budgets. Don’t forget don’t mind saying, I fucking loved, some of the stuff the new leadership and hope to see more of. is doing won’t work. Innovation only comes from experimentation. Was the Humana Festival racist? Experimentation always comes with There are a lot of complex reasons some failed experiments. And judgwhy many ing these experiments people would based on 2.5 years By and large the say “yes.” of operation would old ways of running be shortsighted and Those are conversations that unfair even if 80% of theaters are not need to be had, that time hadn’t been but personduring COVID. leading to fıscally ally, I’d like healthy organizato cut down I don’t love to the bare everything that Actors tions. But what does bones; The has tried. I will miss festival was “the old way” mean? Humana, and the paid for by phrase “transmedia, Well — a lot. money taken hybrid company” from a large makes my skin crawl. health care corporation. I strongly But some of the experiments are great. I suspect that the corporation in queswant even more radio plays and podcasts. tion — like all the other health care Give me more spoken word. Christmas corporations — have policies that Carol IS a ghost story and I’m glad we’re lead to the deaths of a disproporadmitting that. tionately large number of people in Personally, I believe that even if current the Black communities. In which leadership’s experiments all fail, Actors case: Yeah. The Humana Festival Theatre will recover. We almost lost Shakewas racist. This is a really bitter pill speare in the Park back in the early teens, to swallow for Actors Theatre of and at one point wasn’t the orchestra shut Louisville community shareholddown for two whole years? And it came ers, i.e. those of us who have been back. in the audience, onstage and behind We need to be patient and give leadership the scenes for more than 45 years of time to do what they are trying to do, and Humana Festivals. And who have explore new ways to reach communities that been disproportionately white since have been underserved by American theater the festival’s birth. since before American theater was even a thing. • By and large the old ways of running theaters are not leading to fiscally healthy organizations. But what does “the old way” mean? Well — a lot. It means content. It means financial models. It means conditions causing BiPOC audi-

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Drive to the station, say Come down with Nonsensical Checked a box, maybe Accent ____ Wizards’ wear Giant bird of Arabian myth Blow a fuse Starbucks size Slurpee relative Party mix ingredient Big game show prize Scatter

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54 “Mission: Impossible” theme composer Schifrin 55 Convention center event 60 Some HDTVs 61 1979 Commodores hit with the lyric “Good times never felt so good” 64 Singer Celine 65 One of two in “Hamilton” 66 Aggressively mainstream, in slang 67 Unit of prevention 68 ____ legend 69 Revise, as text 70 Org. with Divisions I-III 71 Suspense novelist Hoag 72 Pandora native in “Avatar” 78 Side of a block 79 Word after high or weak 80 Classic skit comedy show 82 Sole ingredient in some cookies? 83 Rock with colorful bands 85 Sum total 86 “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” vampire 88 Like a bad outcome for all 89 Great deal 91 Causing quite a stink 92 Opposite of morn 96 Frank 97 “Hold on …” 99 Hotel room restriction

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DOWN 1 “Because freedom can’t protect itself” org. 2 Animated figure 3 Evil creatures in 7-Down 4 Defiant retort 5 Large orchestral gong 6 Mahershala of “Moonlight” 7 Frodo’s film franchise, familiarly 8 Blues great Waters 9 One with a nesting instinct 10 Inflame 11 Shape 12 Something made in a hurry 13 A in French class 14 One getting down, so to speak 15 Cheery “Ciao!” 16 Two-time opponent of Dwight 17 Map lines 18 Guilt-producing meeting, perhaps 24 Maxim 29 Nobel-winning author Gordimer 31 Park supervisor? 33 Refine 35 Economic stat. 36 Male swans 37 Like one Freudian fixation 38 Bouncy toys 40 Thrift-store fashion, informally 45 Blue 46 Order member 47 Hindu, for one 48 Justice beginning in 2006 49 New Testament miracle recipient 51 “Uh-oh” sounds 52 ____ fresca 53 Its etymology may derive from the diminutive of “borough” in Italian

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ACROSS 1 Research subject for which Bohr won a Physics Nobel 5 Grimm account 9 Musical medley 15 Like cranberries 19 Protagonist of Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad” 20 Big-time 21 Tarot deck grouping 22 Trash day reminder, maybe 23 Side hustle for a hairstylist? 25 Rodent-catching feline 26 Maker of Regenerist products 27 Oust 28 French auto pioneer Louis 30 Dan Conner and Danny Tanner, e.g. 32 [Blown kiss] 34 Side hustle for a veterinarian? 36 Manage OK 39 Dangerous crowd 41 Try to lighten up, perhaps? 42 New York Cosmos star of the ’70s 43 Metal precioso 44 Polite rejection 46 National gemstone of Mexico 50 Side hustle for a therapist? 56 “A Confederacy of Dunces” author 57 Shed, with “off” 58 Many a Sharon Olds poem 59 Leaf-to-branch angles 62 It may be glossed over 63 Turned 65 Its fleece is hypoallergenic 66 Part of a gig 67 Side hustle for an anesthesiologist? 73 Leon who wrote “Battle Cry” 74 Avid bird-watcher, say 75 URL divider 76 “Mr. Mayor” airer 77 First stroke of the day 78 Holy ones: Abbr. 81 Spanish city north of León 84 Encrusted 87 Side hustle for a carpenter? 90 Netted 93 Give an address 94 Home in the mud 95 Christmas purchase 96 Like Athena

T O M O R A O C K N S E M O P E R O A G G L O U S L U T P R I S B C A K E N S N T I R E T Y

No. 1219

V O T E D

BY DANIEL OKULITCH AND DOUG PETERSON | EDITED BY WILL SHORTZ

I N A N E

JOB SHARING

98 Moving ____ 100 Record label for Otis Redding and Big Star 101 Side hustle for a marriage counselor? 106 Small sweater? 108 Cold-weather jacket 109 Person with lots to show 111 Kind of license 115 Museum that awards the Turner Prize 116 “Oh yeah? Watch me!” 118 Side hustle for a drill instructor? 120 Tech tutorials site 121 Sub groups? 122 Set of showbiz awards, in brief 123 Hightail it 124 Actress and inventor Lamarr 125 Where the tradition of shaking hands as a greeting originated 126 Clinches, with “up” 127 Show off at the gym

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The New York Times Magazine Crossword

PHOTO BY RACHEL ROBINSON

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SAVAGE LOVE

CLASSIFIED LISTINGS LEGAL

By Dan Savage | mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage

AGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

Q: I have a problem. (How’s that for an opener?) I’m a 60-something cis woman with a 30-something cis man lover. The problem is my vagina is extremely tight. Also, sometimes I bleed a little bit after PIV and then urinating burns, but only brieﬂy. We are only able to hook-up about every other week, so frequency isn’t going to “stretch me out.” I had previously been diagnosed with vaginal atrophy, which for many women can result in pain during PIV intercourse. We’ve been using Uberlube with silicone, which has helped but it still gets painful. Any suggestions? I’ve been on an estradiol vaginal insert for three months, which helps my overall dryness but not PIV so much, although he has said I feel softer inside. I could really use some help because as much as I love having sex with him, I’m going to have to pause PIV altogether due to my discomfort. I also will say that before him it had been 17 years since I’d had sex. I ﬁnd this embarrassing to admit, but it may be information that will help you answer my questions.

Age-Gap Enhancing Intense Sexual Treats P.S. He propositioned me. I was initially mortiﬁed but I have since overcome my ageist bias against relationships with large age gaps. Oh, and last night I experienced the “luxurious” sensation of having my anus licked for the ﬁrst time! A: “Vaginal atrophy is very common in women and people with vaginas, and it can make not just PIV but any type of penetration painful,” said Dr. Lori Brotto, a clinical psychologist, author, and sex researcher at the University of British Columbia. “And while Uberlube is a fantastic

external lubricant that makes sex more comfortable, it does nothing to moisturize the vagina.” Dr. Brotto says your hunch—that more frequent penetration might help—is correct, but you don’t have to wait for your lover to return to experience it. “There are well-known advantages to regular vaginal dilation for people who have not had penetration in a long time,” said Dr. Brotto. “So, I would recommend that in between the times AGEIST has sex with her partner, she uses a dilator—or uses a dildo—to engage in solo vaginal penetration. She should do it at least once per week, with copious amounts of lubricant, and use it while fantasizing or enjoying erotica, to stimulate her mind’s arousal.” You don’t have to simulate fucking with a dilator or a dildo (and a dilator in this case is just a dildo by another name); instead, gently insert the lubed-up dilator, remember to breathe, and then—once it’s all the way in—read some erotica or watch some porn. And then, if you’re feeling it, masturbate to climax. And then, when you’re with your lover, do the same but with his dick. Get his P in your V without it being about his pleasure. It’s about yours. When you do feel ready to let him fuck you, don’t feel obligated to endure it until he finishes. Only let him fuck you for as long as it feels comfortable and/or good for you, and then pivot to something else you both enjoy if he hasn’t finished. Dr. Brotto also suggested that you talk to your gynecologist about switching to a different vaginal estrogen delivery system—there are tablets, creams, and rings in addition to the inserts you’re using—while at the same time adjusting your dose. “She also might also consider seeing a pelvic floor physiotherapist in case

some of the discomfort is arising from pelvic floor tightness,” said Dr. Brotto. “Pelvic floor physiotherapists have very effective exercises to deal with vaginal pain. Additionally, some positions can create more pain in an already painful vagina, so AGEIST and her lover should try different positions. And since the length and girth of a partner’s penis can also be a contributing factor, some couples use OhNut (www. ohnut.co), which are a series of rings that can be placed at the base of the shaft of the penis to reduce the length.” It’s also important that you’re feeling aroused—not feeling dread—when your lover is on his way over. Knowing you can look forward to what works for you and makes you feel good, and knowing that he doesn’t expect you to grin and bear what doesn’t (even if that means taking PIV off the menu for now), will not only be the best way to make sure you feel relaxed and aroused, but it’s also the quickest way to get PIV back on the menu. Good luck. Follow Dr. Lorri Brotto on Twitter @DrLoriBrotto. And you can see Dr. Brotto in the new Netflix docuseries, The Principles of Pleasure, which premieres on March 22. (The first episode focuses on the erogenous parts of a woman’s anatomy, AGEIST, and Dr. Brotto suggests you watch it with your partner!) P.S. No need to put “luxurious” in scare quotes when you’re talking about anilingus! questions@savagelove.net Listen to Dan on the Savage Lovecast. Follow Dan on Twitter @ FakeDanSavage. Columns, podcasts, books, merch and more at www.savage.love!

NOTICE OF PUBLIC AUCTION TO OWNERS OF THE WITHIN DESCRIBED ESTATE AND ALL INTERESTED PARTIES: FLAGSHIP COMMUNITIES / BARRINGTON POINTE. Will expose at sale to the highest Bidder on MARCH 17, 2022 @ 10am. Location of the sale will be 1321 Glengarry Drive Fairdale, KY 40118. Mobile home only, 2015 Tru MH Ali. VIN: CW030086TN. Located at 1537 Glengarry Drive Fairdale, KY 40118.

Lexington, Kentucky March 11, 2022. On October 1, 2021, QRS, Inc. informed Dr. Muhammed Asim Shoaib that protected health information of his patients may have been compromised during a cyberattack that occurred in August 2021. Letters were mailed to patients on October 22, 2021. Names, Social security numbers, dates of birth, patient numbers, portal usernames, and treatment or diagnosis information was affected. Impacted individuals should remain vigilant to protect against potential fraud and/or identity theft by reviewing their account statements and monitoring credit reports and notify their financial institution if they identify suspicious activity. Individuals can also enroll in credit monitoring and identity restoration services through Experian. Individuals can call 855-675-3080 from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday for additional information or to enroll in services.

This is a Formal Written notice to inform the owners of the following vehicles will be sold on or after March 28, 2022 This is your final notice to claim the vehicle and or all property in said vehicle. Edmond Wood your 1997 Lincoln Town Car with the license plate number 955LPM and the VIN: 1LNLM81W7VY726266. Megan Hancock your 1999 Toyota Corolla with the plate number 190YPG and the VIN: 1NXBR12E7XZ147217. Lindsey Gatlin your 2006 Chrysler PT with the plate CT0299 and the VIN: 3A4FY58BX6T375051. Shawn Whitman your 1999 Pontiac Grand with the plate VML399 and the VIN: 1G2NE52E9XM812756. THIS IS YOUR FINAL NOTICE.

Cellco Partnership and its controlled affiliates doing business as Verizon Wireless (Verizon Wireless) proposes to build a 34- foot Utility Pole at the approx. vicinity of 439 S 17 th Street, Louisville, Jefferson County, KY, 40203. Public comments regarding potential effects from this site on historic properties may be submitted within 30 days from the date of this publication to: Trileaf Corp, Madyson, m.croyle@trileaf.com, [1515 Des Peres Road, Suite 200, St. Louis, MO 63131, 314-997-6111].

Cellco Partnership and its controlled affiliates doing business as Verizon Wireless (Verizon Wireless) proposes to build a 38- foot Utility Pole at the approx. vicinity of 2503 West Madison Street, Louisville, Jefferson County, KY, 40211. Public comments regarding potential effects from this site on historic properties may be submitted within 30 days from the date of this publication to: Trileaf Corp, Madyson, m.croyle@trileaf.com, [1515 Des Peres Road, Suite 200, St. Louis, MO 63131, 314-997-6111].

Cellco Partnership and its controlled affiliates doing business as Verizon Wireless (Verizon Wireless) proposes to build a 34-foot telecommunications structure at the approx. vicinity of 1193 E Broadway, Louisville, Jefferson County, KY 40204. Public comments regarding potential effects from this site on historic properties may be submitted within 30 days from the date of this publication to: Trileaf Corporation, Lacee Mitchell, l.mitchell@trileaf.com, 1515 Des Peres Road, Suite 200, St. Louis, MO 63131, 314-997-6111.

Cellco Partnership and its controlled affiliates doing business as Verizon Wireless (Verizon Wireless) proposes to build a 35- foot public light communications structure at the approx. vicinity of 1919 H Winston Avenue, Louisville, Jefferson County, KY 40205. Public comments regarding potential effects from this site on historic properties may be submitted within 30 days from the date of this publication to: Trileaf Corp, Hannah, h.powell@trileaf.com, 1515 Des Peres Road, Suite 200, St. Louis, MO 63131, 314-997-6111.

Notice is hereby given by Nate’s Automotive 400 E. Breckinridge St, Louisville, KY 40203 502-408-7743. Owner has 14 days to respond to obtain title to following: 1993 Ford 1FTHE24Y3PHB62281. Owned by Bobbie Colbert 429 No. 42nd, Lou,KY 40212.

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