Opening Arguments

I’m taking a week off — back on Monday, June 8.

Jack Murrah came to Fort Wayne to explain to local leaders how the foundation he headed helped turn Chattanooga’s downtown around. He offered advice that may be a little too late (and which city leaders have heard before anyway and chosen to ignore):

Fort Wayne isn’t exactly sinking, Murrah is quick to point out. But neither is its downtown yet thriving, despite the $125 million Harrison Square project and mostly tax-funded projects, including the expansion of the Grand Wayne Center and main library. That’s precisely why the Downtown Improvement District invited him: Despite the positive changes already under way, the momentum can’t be sustained by government alone.

In Chattanooga, that realization led Lyndhurst and other foundations and banks to pledge $12 million in 1986, giving birth to the River City Co. that has attracted more than $1 billion to that city’s downtown - including the aquarium, which attracted more than 1 million visitors in its first year alone.

Downtown Improvement District President Richard Davis would like to create a similar community development corporation in Fort Wayne, but knows the private sector will have to do most of the heavy lifting from here on out if Fort Wayne is to approach Chattanooga’s results.

Some people might say downtown isn’t thriving because of all those tax-funded projects, not despite them. How much heavy lifting can the private sector be counted on for when the public sector has muscled so much through already and so many people have the feeling that “economic development” is something the Good Old Boy Network likes to play with, making up the rules as it goes along? It seems to me that public-private collaboration would work best when everybody starts on the same page, which might have the title “What can we do together to make downtown thrive?” When the public sector gets so far ahead and then asks the private sector to catch up, there is a danger that the two groups won’t even be using the same book, let alone reading from the same page.

I agree with Kevin’s closing point in the column that what is needed is “a commonly supported vision and mechanism for making decisions and spending money.” But we’re a long, long way from even knowing how to talk about a shared vision. There’s a small matter of the private sector’s lack of trust in the public sector, completely justified as far as I can tell.

And all of this flows from a premise that is at least debatable: Downtowns are good, and a community needs a vibrant one in order to thrive. I believed that for a long time, but I’ve started to have my doubts. I had a nostalgic fondness for downtown Fort Wayne that led to me to support all sorts of foolish projects I would ordinarily have questioned on fiscal responsibility/limited government grounds. I wonder how many other people are reflexively romantic downtown fans. Downtowns developed and flourished for reasons, and they started to wither and die for reasons. People don’t live the way they once did, and the hustle and bustle go where the people go.

There is a trend, it seems, of people returning to downtowns as they get tired of long commutes and traffic jams and yearn for walkable distances and a slower pace. But if enough people want it, that movement will happen organically just as the migration to the suburbs did. Those who say the trend can or should be accelerated by this government policy or that public-private venture should be questioned with a skeptical attitude. Cynical, even.

Rupert Murdoch goes way out on a limb:

NEW YORK News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch believes that in 10 to 15 years, newspapers will be read mainly on digital devices.

[. . .]

“I think it’s two or three years away before they get introduced in a big way, and then it will probably take 10 to 15 years for the public to swing over,” he added.

As little as five years ago, this would have been a gutsy prediction. Now, it’s just stating the obvious. As a medium for transmitting timely information, paper is just too limited in every way — too little space to put news you might not even want that is too slow to get to you.

He also said something too true — newspapers’ rush to get content online for free “has been damaging.” In fact, it was exceedingly stupid. Imagine if record producers said, “Here you go, dowload this album for free, and, by the way, please give us $15 for the CD version.” He predicts that free ride will be over soon — people are going to have to pay for content. We’ll see. For people to be willing to buy it, we first have to stop providing it free. Who’s going to have the guts to be first? It will probably require a cooperative arrangement involving all or most content providers, including newspapers, in which all free content is removed at once (i,e, a “vast conspiracy”). It’s a “don’t know what you got till it’s gone” thing.

Good for him:

The leader of the Indiana Senate says he’s taking gambling issues off the table during the upcoming special session so lawmakers can focus on putting together a new state budget.

Senate President Pro Tem David Long, R-Fort Wayne, said Thursday the Senate will consider only one bill — the budget. Gambling issues would be a distraction in the special legislative session, he said, and should be sent instead to a study commission for review later. Long said he would relegate any gaming bills proposed in the June special session to a committee where they would die without getting a hearing.

Of course, House Speaker Pat Bauer is lurking in the shadows, waiting for a chance to pounce. Long and the governor say they might try to deal with Indianapolis’ Capital Improvement Board funding problem. That, Bauer says, could open the door to other economic development efforts, and that could mean gambling. Well, easy solution there, don’t you think? Can’t go through a door if it ain’t opened.

At least once a year, the nerds have their moment in the spotlight:

An intense, oddly compelling spectacle of smart kids, the Scripps National Spelling Bee pitted 293 fourth through eighth graders against one another in a tense three-day competition.

Kavya Shivashankar of Olathe won it all on Laodicean, which means halfhearted in respect to religion or politics.

Actually, I think when it’s capitalized, the word refers to the early Christians of Laodicea; when it’s used in the more general adjectival sense, I think it should probably be lowercase. And I’m not sure about the word’s use in a political (as opposed to religious) sense, or at least I haven’t heard it used that way. It’s usually used to describe people in a religion (not those outside a religion) who become lukewarm about practicing that religion or proselytizing it. (Hot and cold are both good, but lukewarm sucks, so get outta here, Jesus said in his smackdown of the Laodiceans in Revelations. ((I paraphrase for the benefit of bloggers.)) ) People join a church for many reasons, but they usually go into politics only for the purpose of getting something done politically. It’s unlikely they would stay in politics if they become indifferent to it.

But I digress. This was a spelling bee, not an etymology bee. But wouldn’t it be fun if the comeptition were expanded a bit, and the kids had to answer questions about the words instead of just spelling them? “So, Kavya, can you tell us the difference between laodicean impulses and outright apostasy? How close from one to the other can we get before we have to acknowledge that the end times are near? You have 15 seconds.”

OK, quick, close your eyes and spell “Shivashankar.”

Usually I try to catch a few minutes of “Good Morning America” before coming to work — it’s about the least annoying of the morning “news” shows. The downside is that the program frequently gets caught up in breathlessly reporting some gushy nonsense about people behaving strangely. Today was one of those shows. Never mind the important stuff that might actually affect me, like GM teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, an identify-politics jurist being nominated for the Supreme Court and the National Spelling Bee winner still undetermined, the Good Morning folks spent the first six minutes babbling on about the woman who called in fake abduction reports to police before being nabbed with her 9-year-old and somebody else’s driver’s license at Disney World. The report included this fascinating bit of insight:

The ex-husband of the Philadelphia mother who faked an abduction to flee to Disney World with their daughter said 38-year-old Bonnie Sweeten “got herself in over her head a little bit.”

[. . .]

“I just think she just kind of lost it a little bit,” he said.

Gee, got in over her head. Really? “Lost it a little bit.” Ya think? I shouldn’t give ABC all the grief. The story was featured on “Bob and Tom.” It was displayed prominently in this morning’s Journal Gazette. It’s one of the top listings today at Google News, with more than 1,000 stories appearing. (I just checked, and we have the story, too, but buried in the third section, about as much prominence as it deserves.)

What makes a particular story catch fire and spread so quickly? Sometimes the human drama makes the answer obvious, but not in this case. The story was all over before it was even reported, and nothing happened. The daughter was not in any danger during the Disney World trip, and the woman will be found to have had a mental breakdown, which will probably keep her out of jail but prevent her from having to pay back the money spent on investigating her phony report.

Oh, for Pete’s sake:

President Obama’s energy adviser has suggested all the world’s roofs should be painted white as part of efforts to slow global warming.

 Professor Steven Chu, the US Energy Secretary, said the unusual proposal would mean homes in hot countries would save energy and money on air conditioning by deflecting the sun’s rays.

More pale surfaces could also slow global warming by reflecting heat into space rather than allowing it to be absorbed by dark surfaces where it is trapped by greenhouse gases and increases temperatures.

The nuts are in complete control now, so there’s probably no going back.

Now that the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign has moved its sign campaign (”You can be good without God,” “In the beginning, man created God”) to Chicago, Time magazine finds the issue worthy of comment, reporting that residents there have largely greeted the ads with “a quick, curious look and then a shrug.” The piece closes with a non-believer saying that atheists are still “in the closet,” afraid to “come out” to their families and “say they don’t believe in God” and makes this observation:

The ads are designed to show lonely atheists that they do not walk alone — and to go on disbelieving.

Despite a slight case of incoherence (try to connect the clause after the dash logically or grammatically to anything before the dash), the sentence expresses a curious sentiment: lonely atheists huddling together to find comfort. Maybe they should meet more regularly. I hear Sunday mornings work for some people.

I’m so old-fashioned that I like the occasional historical reference in news stories, even if it takes up a little of the wwwwwh nuts-and-bolts space. I thought I was going to get one when I saw the headline of this story – “Caesars Palace declares victory: Pres. Obama sleeps there again” — and read the first paragraph:

Within hours of Pres. Obama’s departure from Las Vegas for a sold-out fundraiser for Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Caesars Palace boasted that the president spent the night there.

The obvious connection is to “George Washington slept here,” a claim by inns and taverns and B&Bs so widespread that there was a successful play and movie by that name, and there are now websites letting you plan your trip based on George’s supposed stopping-off points. But, noooo — not a word about that. Could someone at USA Today get that close to a great analogy and be clueless about it? The juxtaposition of Washington arriving at ramshackle inns by horseback and Obama jetting to Vegas to stay in a 22,000 square-foot suite would have been just perfect. Or maybe the folks at the newspaper are far cleverer than I give them credit for — they left the historical reference implied, confident that their readers would be smart enough to pick up on it.

Oh, well. The point of the story was that Las Vegas has been suffering lately, and some people there put part of the blame on the president, who has said fat cats aren’t going to be able to go on Sin City excursions on the taxpayers’ dime anymore. Guess this is their way of saying, hey, do what he does, not what he says.

A 22,000 square-foot suite! Man, that’s some good pied-a-terre-ing. I’ve written here before that getting room service at a hotel is one of my favorite self-indulgences. But that usually involves a cookie-cutter little room at a Holiday Inn or Marriott with a TV bolted to the table and toilet paper so cheap that it still has wood chips floating in it. I could take everybody I know to a night in a setup like that and not have to see any of them. Wonder if there’s a Motel 6 with a presidential suite?

I’ll be darned. I’ve known some mentally ill people in my time, but I never realized there were so many of them:

You know them. I know them. And, increasingly, psychiatrists know them. People who feel they have been wronged by someone and are so bitter they can barely function other than to ruminate about their circumstances.

This behavior is so common — and so deeply destructive — that some psychiatrists are urging it be identified as a mental illness under the name post-traumatic embitterment disorder. The behavior was discussed before an enthusiastic audience last week at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Assn. in San Francisco.

Post-traumatic embitterment disorder, eh? The psychiatrist who came up with that label says it describes people who feel the world has treated them unfairly: “It’s one step more complex than anger. They’re angry plus helpless.” Geez. You’re around long enough, you’re gonna feel angry and helpless once in a while, because, guess what, you got screwed and you can’t do anything about it.

I feel a little PTED coming on right now, as a matter of fact. Gimme a pill, somebody.

I notice that I’ve failed lately to keep you abreast of exciting developments on the Saving the Planet front. I will attempt to make up for it by calling your attention to this blog, in which the author offers eight tips for being a good green citizen. Go paperless. Turn off unnecessary electricity when you’re not home. Use cloth grocery bags. And, of course, my personal favorite: Recycle!

I bought a small storage container and put it in my utility closet. I fill it up with plastic bottles, newspapers, and aluminum cans. Thanks to the people who pick up the recyclables, I don’t even have to sort them! Watch this video to learn more about the process!

That brought a reply from a former Fort Wayne resident — yes! we recycle! here, too!

We’ve always been big into recycling, although back in Fort Wayne, we had to sort out everything into separate bins. It’s so nice here being able to toss everything into one huge bin.

Is that lazy or what? We want to save poor, old Mother Earth, but, oh, the agony of having to separate the plastic from the paper!

I hate to break it to the two of them, but if you just “toss everything into one huge bin,” that’s not recycling. In my neighborhood, we call that “taking out the garbage.”

Would you call this a Hoosier-centric point of view?

Although actor Jim Nabors is best known for performing “Back Home Again in Indiana” every year at the Indianapolis 500, Nabors first sauntered into American pop culture in the 1960s playing Mayberry’s lovable mechanic, Gomer Pyle.

It’s true that in Indiana, Nabors is known for his Indy 500 singing, and within a 50- or 60-mile radius of the state capital, he might even be best known for that. But outside this state, he’s just Gomer Pyle and nothing else. Well, there is the “is he gay?” stuff, which he denied for a long time but has been silent about lately. So that puts his 500 song no higher than third on the list.

Those of us who have been trying to come up with excuses for not wanting to visit Hobart can stop searching:

An ordinance to ban overnight parking outside Wal-Mart and other local stores passed City Council on a first vote Wednesday.

The proposal was approved on a 5-2 vote and is aimed at truck drivers who in recent months have turned parking lots along U.S. 30 into de facto truck stops.

Councilman Jerry Herzog said he’s received a number of complaints from residents about the growing number of trucks and RVs that make overnight stops in the parked overnight stops in Hobart’s largest retail district.

If truckers want to turn store parking lots into “de facto truck stops” — when the stores aren’t open and the lots are being used anyway — whose business is it? Shouldn’t the stores be the ones telling the truckers to stay or go away? Naturally, the city can’t ban the trucks without banning all overnight parking. As someone who has been considering an RV or a conversion van — in case I need to pull over for a nap on my way to Jefferson Pointe — I take this personally.

Hey, here’s a great idea. Just make those truckers keep driving all night until they nod off and kill somebody. Brilliant legislating, Hobart.

The Elkhart school corporation, looking to save money like everybody else, is considering reducing the number of buses running each day:

The other option was to tighten restrictions on walk zones. That idea passed Tuesday night. It will reduce the number of buses running by having more students walk to school. Fourteen-hundred students will be affected.

Elementary kids who live within a mile of school will have to walk to school. Secondary kids who live within two miles will also have to walk.

I’m not one to pity the poor kids for having to walk (insert old fogy boilerplate: when I was a kid . . . five miles . . . uphill both ways . . . ). But I wonder if the school board is bucking the tide here, as evidenced by the reaction of many of the parents about their kids’ safety. And a high school freshman talked about being attacked near her old school: “It was terrifying, idescribable.”

It’s frowned upon today for kids to roam around unsupervised the way we did when we were young. Those same elementary students who are going to be walking a mile to school can’t be left home alone without the parents getting into trouble or, heaven forbid, left in the car while Mom steps out briefly to mail a letter. It’s true that kids can attack other kids anywhere at any time, but if it happens while they’re on their way to or from school . . . well, maybe the school board should talk long and hard with its lawyer about liability issues, that’s all.

The legend of the deadly brown recluse spider grows, courtesy of several news organizations, including The Associated Press:

A coroner says a 42-year-old Evansville man may have died from a bite from a brown recluse spider.

Vanderburgh County Coroner Annie Groves told the Evansville Courier & Press that Keith E. Reed was found dead at his home Monday with a bite on his leg consistent with that of a brown recluse. The spider bite was listed as a preliminary cause of death pending tests.

 [. . .]

A bite can cause lesions and symptoms such as nausea and vomiting, and in rare instances, can be fatal.

“Rare instances” might be overstated. Scopes.com reports on how the dangers of the spider have been exaggerated and includes a quote from a doctor specializing in the bites: “We are not aware of any verifiable deaths cayused by the bite of the North American brown recluse spider.” Not aware of any. That means none. That, too, might be a slight overstatement, but not as big as the one the “deadly spider” crowd commits.

So don’t cancel that campting trip just yet, unless we have a true Hoosier first here.

Generally, job discrimination complaints do little for those who aren’t in a protected class. In fact, those non-protected workers even come off sounding like privileged elites who don’t care about the downtrodden masses — beneficiaries as they are of a “disparate impact” that is said to prove discrimination against a minority. But here’s one kind of case that can benefit all workers (or at least screw them all equally, depending on the employer):

Brooks and Weathers walked in through different areas but their time clock cards registered the same time — 7:01 a.m.

The company alleged Brooks punched in for Weathers, a violation of company policy that calls for suspension or termination.

[. . .]

The decision by the Indiana Supreme Court upholds the initial ruling in the case made by the Michigan City Human Rights Commission, which also found race a motivating factor.

[. . .]

In its decision, the Supreme Court also cited the findings of the commission that white employees at the company engaged in “far more egregious” behavior and received “far less severe punishment.”

The only way businesses can protect against losing such a case is to have a clear set of rules that is made available to everyone and to ensure that they are enforced universally and consistently, which is, of course, what they should have been doing anyway as a matter of employment ethics. We want that uniformity of application from the law, too general, and we think of it as unfair, it’s usually because we’ve seen it used to give somebody a break who didn’t deserve it or to smack down somebody who didn’t deserve it.

Has anybody ever gotten more out of brief moments at sporting events than milk producers through the Indianapolis 500? (Possible exception: the “I’m going to Disneyland” crap at the end of Super Bowls.) This year, Hooser Ag Today even trots out an “Indianapolis Motor Speedway historian” to tell us happened that one fateful year when an Indy winner balked and didn’t drink his milk:

The importance of the milk provided by the American Dairy Association of Indiana became clear in 1993. That year, winner Emerson Fitipaldi initially refused the drink, opting for an alternative. Davidson recalled, “I’ll never forget the instant booing. And I remember how it struck me, and it struck hundreds of thousands of people the same way, because he was roundly booed. And he never got over that. Fitipaldi undoubtedly was one of the most popular drivers at the track, and it all changed in about five seconds. It was never the same after that, and really I think his career just made a major switch right at that moment.

Why, refusing that one glass of milk absolutely ruined the man. Put his career right in the toilet. It was all over in just five seconds! And it was only right. How dare he! Turning down milk! Who couldn’t have predicted how the fans would react?

My mother, bless her soul, sort of fell down on the job in that respect. When I resisted my milk, she told me it would make me big and strong. The clear implication was that not drinking the stuff would make me small and weak, but she never actually came out and said that. And she never, ever — not once — said that turning down a single glass of milk could leave my life in utter ruin. That woman’s got a lot to answer for, I tell you.

Looks like Indiana was on the cutting edge with its “no-smiles” policy for driver’s licenses:

Stopping driver’s license fraud is no laughing matter: Four states are ordering people to wipe the grins off their faces in their license photos.

“Neutral facial expressions” are required at departments of motor vehicles (DMVs) in Arkansas, Indiana, Nevada and Virginia. That means you can’t smile, or smile very much. Other states may follow.

[. . .]

Face-recognition software can fail to match two photos of the same person if facial expressions differ in each photo, says Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor Takeo Kanade.

Dull expressions “make the comparison process more accurate,” says Karen Chappell, deputy commissioner of the Virginia DMV, whose no-smile policy took effect in March.

Indiana, it’s nice to know, doesn’t completely ban mirthful expressions. “Slight smiles” are allowed; we just can’t “grin really large.” Whose job is it, I wonder, to spot that prefectly realized dull expression right in between a slight smile and a really large grin? What if I can’t find that sweet spot the next time I have to get my license renewed? Do I have to wait until I feel a slight smile emerging then rush to the BMV and try to get my picture taken before I think of something that really tickles me? Maybe each office should have the meanest clerk waiting by the camera to scowl at us in case we go too far.

Looks like Sonia Sotomayor is getting the nod for the Supreme Court. In the coming days, I’m sure, we’ll all be writing about how what a brilliant/clueless jurist she is and how blessed/screwed the country will be with her on the court. Let’s just start by noting once again the much-noted observation that:

Obama had said publicly he wanted a justice who combined intellect and empathy - the ability to understand the troubles of everyday Americans.

Let’s pay close attention to how this intellect vs. empathy stuff plays out (not to be confused with Intellect v. Empathy, the controversial case in which a deeply divided court ruled that feeling bad about stealing someone’s patented invention was not an adequate defense unless he felt really, really, really bad). Would understanding the “troubles of everyday Americans” cause her to rule incorrectly despite her intellectual understanding of the Constitution? Or would her empathy only lead her to understand the pain of the people she’s ruling against when she correctly interprets the Constitution? Exactly  how in the hell do you balance empathy and intellect when interpreting the Constitution?

And please join me in wishing a long and healthy life and continued service on the court to Anthony Kennedy. As scattered as his opinions and reasoning have been, he’s the only person standing between us and clueless and screwed.

Honest, I wasn’t going to post about this. But I just can’t get the image out of my head:

Covered with a carpet, a 750-pound woman who died Tuesday was taken from her home on a flatbed wrecker, outraging her loved ones and leading the Marion County coroner to concede that his office could have handled the situation better.

Teresa Smith’s boyfriend remains distraught over her death and the incident.

“You know how you hoist a car on a flatbed with a chain? That’s how they took her up there,” David Johnson said Thursday. He had taken care of Smith for the past four years.

Yeah, OK, the coroner’s office didn’t handle this in the most sensitive of ways, but dignity is sort of lost on the dead, you know? And somebody whose weight has gone up so much she can’t get out of bed has pretty much given up on what other people think. I must say that I’m very impressed with David Johnson, who remained her boyfriend and took care of her. I’ve been in relationships where it’s mostly about the other person, so I can say with some authority that this guy’s a saint.

A community activist in Muncie whose two firefighter brothers died in the line of duty many years ago says the mayor’s announced plans to lay off 40 firefighters because of a budget shortfall is “pretty dirty.” Call me a cynic, but I agree with him. Just consider that this isn’t an isolated case but part of a trend:

It  is not surprising in the face of reality of the economy and revenue shortfalls that all communities are facing,” said Hiatt.

Just this week, Kokomo Mayor Greg Goodnight announced plans to lay off 12 firefighters in an effort to compensate for a $2.5 million budget deficit. Manpower on that city’s fire department is 121, compared to Muncie with 110.

Cities across the country are laying off municipal workers, with New York proposing to cut 3,742, and Chicago looking at 1,100 layoffs if officials there don’t get concessions from unions, according to a Pew Charitable Trust research initiative.

When things are flush, government finds inventive way after inventive way to waste our money, adding layers of bureacracy and unneeded services and feel-good nonsense. But when times are tough, do they cut these frivolities? No, they go right to essential services, threatening cuts to police and firefighting forces. Why? To scare the public and whip up support to increase taxes instead of cut spending. Dirty? It’s downright shameless.

If you’re planning on doing a lot of driving over the weekend, count yourself lucky for living in Indiana. According to research by the National Motorists Association, only seven states rank better that ours when it comes to treatment of motorists:

These state rankings were calculated using seventeen criteria related to specific traffic laws, enforcement practices, and the treatment of traffic ticket defendants. The rankings are designed to provide guidance to travelers who do not want their vacation ruined by speed traps, arcane laws or “kangaroo” traffic courts.

The states that do better than us are Minnesota, North Dakota, Kentucky, Nebraska, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. States that treat drivers the worst: New Jersey, Ohio, Maryland, Louisiana and New York.

Bet this moron can’t even spell autism:

A Paoli man convicted of battery and criminal confinement after trying to exorcise demons from a 14-year-old boy with autism was sentenced to house arrest on Thursday.

Monroe Circuit Judge Teresa Harper sentenced Edward Uyesugi to three years in jail, with all but six months suspended. He will serve those six months under house arrest at parents’ home in Orange County.

Uyesugi must also perform 400 hours of community service.

House arrest for using religion as an excuse to beat the crap out of a kid? At least he should be required to perform his community service at a mental health clinic. There is usually a package of recommended treatments for autism, depending on the individual case. Nowhere will you find exorcism as a potential cure.

You probably like our Main Street. In fact, you might even think our Main Street is pretty hot stuff. Vehicles can move back and forth on it. Pedestrians can stroll beside it on sidewalks, even cross it! There are storefronts facing it that people can go inside. What more could we possibly ask of a Main Street? Well, it’s not accredited, for goodness sake:

Jeffersonvill Main Street Inc., a nonprofit organization focused on the revitalization of downtown Jeffersonville, Ind., has received accreditation as a National Main Street program from the National Trust’s Main Street Center.

To achieve the accreditation, Jeffersonville Main Street had to meet criteria such as public support, historic preservation ethic, an active board of directors, a comprehensive work plan, a paid professional director and reporting of economic progress, the organization said in a news release.

Bet you can’t wait to go to Jeffersonville now and see what a real Main Street, with public support and a paid director, looks like.

Well, aren’t we all just stunned and amazed. With nearly 100 million votes cast, underdog Kris Allen has won the eight season of “American Idol”! Phhht.

My musical recommendation today is Darius Rucker, still frontman for Hootie and the Blowfish but also embarked on a solo career in country music. If anybody can follow in Charlie Pride’s footsteps as the next black superstar of country, he can. Here he is doing his top 10 hit of last year, “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About it.” I was persuaded to give his country album a listen when I heard he was influenced a lot by the Bakersfield sound of Buck Ownes and Dwight Yoakum. Here they are on a rare collaboration, “Streets of Bakersfield.”

Yee-ha.