Oh, Kentucky

"They’ve been doing this for years to my ancestors and people of color and people who are poor. And if we don’t have access to this office and access to democracy, they’re denying democracy today.” … "We’re very up front to let them know that we’re being accommodating that we want them to be able to come into the Capitol to protest, to redress their government, but that protocols will be in place to maintain the security of the Capitol.” … Ryland Barton of WKYU hangs with the Poor People’s Campaign and Kentucky State Police in Frankfort.

Meanwhile, in Slaughters on Monday, the Kentucky State Police was shutting down highways and making sure a found grenade didn't blow up.

Good jobs news from Paris.

Hiring (for everything at the bowling alley) in Madisonville.

Dippin' Dots and Doc Popcorn are headed to China.

Rest in peace, Paul Gray, who died doing what he loved at the Kentucky High School Athletic Association baseball tournament last week and "was definitely more than just his camera."

Oh, Kentucky

The Trigg County Sheriff's Department hopes to give out about 200 bicycles this Christmas, reports WHOP.

Christmas parades: Owensboro, Nov. 19; Ashland, Nov. 22; Lebanon, Nov. 25; Brownsville ("great crowd") and Sebree, Nov. 26; Bardstown, Dec. 1; Maysville, Monticello and Richmond, Dec. 2; Arlington, Beaver Dam, Berea, Bowling Green, Cadiz, Clinton, Frankfort, Glasgow, Harlan, Henderson, Madisonville, Manchester, Murray, Paris, Somerset and Winchester, Dec. 3; Boyce, Owenton and Schochoh, Dec. 4; Hickman and Lexington, Dec. 6, and Augusta, Cave City, Elkton, Hopkinsville, La Center, Nicholasville and Pikeville, Dec. 10.

Kentucky for sale:

The Rankin in that 1911 map is not the Rankin of the famous 1876 Kentucky Meat Shower.

There's a darkness on the edge of Bardstown.

Oh, Kentucky

Good jobs news from Bowling Green and Paducah.

The state's first utility-grade solar-generating project is going up in Mercer County. 

My primary exit will become 116!

Today is filing deadline for state elections, and the Fark.com founder is in!

Arriving in Owensboro to head up 14 News team coverage of Former Sen. Wendell Ford's funeral at First Baptist. pic.twitter.com/5dv17l9Jnr
— Randy Moore (@Randy14News) January 27, 2015

Oh, Kentucky

A Murray State history professor is writing a book about Adolph Rupp, and I think it sounds like it might turn out to be really quite good.

Leonard Pitts Jr. goes to Booneville, and--no surprise--the result is fantastic.

And here's a great story about a Louisville woman who is the principal dancer in the New York ballet, and the best part is the stuff about her parents' decisions around helping her pursue her dreams.

Hooray for planetariums.

Good jobs news from Leitchfield and Owensboro.

A landmark Greenville store is closing, and the reaction on Facebook is lively.

And now here are 12 photographs I took with my phone out the passenger-side window of my vehicle while driving the Edward T. Breathitt Pennyrile Parkway from Madisonville to Sebree one very early Saturday in September: 

Oh, Kentucky

"Our hearts are heavy in Fredonia tonight."

“Let them pull that stuff in other places if they want, but not in Jackson County, Kentucky.”

“This is not elevating any group above another, this is just making everyone equal.”

Given to hospitality in Hoptown.

"Cash mom" in Muhlenberg County.

Onward and upward for Dippin' Dots.

Louisville Ballard and Marion County top the KHSAA basketball polls.

Cadiz and Franklin are both expanding their fiber-optic infrastructures.

President Clinton is coming back to Owensboro.

The Edward T. Breathitt Pennyrile Parkway was closed for several hours yesterday between Slaughters and Hanson, and so traffic was detoured to U.S. 41. Northbound lanes were actually reopened before I started around noon to Evansville to see my mom, but, what the heck?

That's downtown Hanson, which, according to one of my college teachers, was a hotbed of basketball in the early 1940s. Today, it's home to a great elementary school, the Western Kentucky Veterans Home, an outlet mall, a good fish restaurant and a guy from whom I once bought--via eBay, when I was living in North Carolina--an awesome Munro All-Star Hockey Game.

I felt sorry for the folks in this car, who decided to spin around and backtrack. I imagine that they didn't realize they were within three-quarters mile of the end of the detour.

Fun to think about how exciting it must've been to purchase this camper originally and all of the neat places that it might've gone.

I love seeing those giant swarms of black birds. I'm uncertain whether these are officially blackbirds, however.

Here's Sebree, which is not the seat of Webster County. This town lost one of its more recognizable citizens this past fall. Rest in peace, Mrs. Darr, owner-operator of the Friendly Market for 52 years and unabashed fan of President and Mrs. Carter (just as is my mom). 

Sebree is home also to many Mexicans. Saint Michael Catholic Church there offers Sunday mass services in both English and Spanish.

I'm fascinated by monuments like this one to Milton Ashby in the Sebree Post Office. I'd like to know more about him; for example, how's he connected to Brandi Ashby, Kentucky's 1992 "Miss Basketball" and a Lady Topper who eventually transferred to the University of Hawai'i? I did find his dad's obituary--but nothing about Postmaster Ashby specifically.

It was a stone-cold joy to discover that Bell's Drugs hadn't yet totally dismantled its prodigious Christmas window display. Bell's Drugs is on the north side of Main Street/Ky. 56 through downtown Sebree.

The Purple Opry, Cadillac Jack's Billiards and the Sebree Banner ("Webster County's Oldest Newspaper") are along the south side. 

Back out on "The Dixie B-line" (sort of, anyway--that nickname really applies to the original U.S. 41, which runs through Dixon, which is the seat of Webster County, and is now U.S. 41-A) stands the American Legion post, which is housed in the old African-American school. 

There's a significant concentration of industrial concerns between Sebree and Henderson, and this one photograph, of course, fails to do it justice. (It's hard to capture big buildings in a cell-phone-camera frame while you're driving at 60 miles an hour.) For example, there's a big aluminum smelter, a chicken processor and a power plant through there. 

I first saw this eatery just inside the Henderson County line 23 years ago, and I've failed to stop there about 50 times since. Some day, I'm excited to try their strombolis. 

I hope Sebree's late Mrs. Darr got to see President Carter when he visited up the road in Henderson in 1975 and Robards in 1980. Said the president on that second trip: "You have a special opportunity in Kentucky, in the future, for another aspect of our Nation's security; that is, energy security. We've become overly vulnerable to a heavy dependence on foreign oil. This year we will import $90 billion worth of oil from overseas. That's a lot of money, hard to understand. It amounts to $400 per man, woman, and child throughout the United States. I want to depend not on foreign oil at the end of a 12,000-mile uncertain pipeline into a doubtful area of the world, but in the future I want to depend on Kentucky coal." 

Henderson is one of Kentucky's great towns, and that's the southern edge of it. 

But exploring Henderson is for another day and another post. I bailed off old 41 and jumped on the four-lane toward Mom here. The end.

Oh, Kentucky

In Albany, they are ... Bulldogs: "As students piled into Lindle Castle Gymnasium, a sea of blue overwhelmed the seats. Every athlete involved in high school sports was on the gym floor, in uniforms, cheering on the crowd … but the rally wasn’t all about sports."

Mad props to a seventh-grade science teacher in Maysville, a retired mayor of Slaughters and Lake Cumberland State Park.

A big M&A score for Lexington mattress-maker Tempur-Pedic. Harlan's getting a TSC.

Per the gov's office: "Earlier this year, the University of Kentucky Center on Drug and Alcohol Research (CDAR), released a report showing that individuals who enroll in substance abuse programs at one of the state’s Recovery Kentucky centers are more likely to abstain from drugs and are less likely to spend time in jail." Says the report: "For every dollar spent on treatment for this sample of clients who were in recovery in 2009-2010, the avoided costs can be estimated as $2.92." And, so, reported WKDZ yesterday: "There was good news for the Trilogy Recovery Center for Women, in Hopkinsville ..."

Meanwhile, playing beat the calendar to keep a Hazard homeless shelter open through winter.

Enabling new distance-learning opportunities in Webster County.

The show goes on in Hodgenville. It's about to start in Bowling Green.

Oh, Kentucky

Snow day? Snow day. SNOW DAY!

Birmingham-bound?

The "Adair County Way."

No. 25 with a bullet.

Christmas parades, continued: Greenville, 5 p.m. Dec. 3; Schochoh, 2 p.m. Dec. 4; Slaughters, 3 p.m. Dec. 4; Lexington, 10 a.m. Dec. 10; Cave City, 5 p.m. Dec. 10; Edmonton, 1 p.m. Dec. 10; Franklin, 5 p.m. Dec. 10; Woodburn, noon Dec. 10; Tompkinsville, 5 p.m. Dec. 10, and Auburn, 2 p.m. Dec. 11. Ashland's was Nov. 22.

Merry Christmas from Van Lear.

This week's games: Pep rallies Thursday, school's out Friday in Mayfield ... "Glasgow fans across the country are cheering you on!!" ... @NKYSports: "Since 2007, Highlands is 72-2 with 4 straight State Titles, now looking for 5th" ... @trinitysports: "Trinity is aiming for its eighth undefeated season in program history with a win this week." ... @kayjay1219: "Way to go AC! Can't wait to see y'all in the #finals! Hit em hard! EVERYTIME" ... @iHigh: "For the first time ever, watch the 2011 State Football Championships LIVE online at khsaa.tv! Games begin this Friday!"

Happy 83rd, Joe B. Hall!

Oh, Kentucky

Lousiville mayor Jerry Abramson's Trigg County travels to campaign for lieutenant governor inspires The Heath Post's second restaurant review: The Cadiz Family Restaurant (picture from summer 2009) is good!

You've got to like Torie DiMartile's chances. The Fort Mitchell Beechwood student has finished runner-up two years running, both years coming up just short against Western Hills juggernaut Barbara Gooding, who got to play at home in Frankfort in the championships and who has graduated and taken her game to the next level at the Rhode Island School of Design.

The Kentucky National Guard is preparing 60 more patriots to go help build Afghanistan's agriculture economy.

Christians only, but not the only Christians--in Slaughters.

From Hoptown, a chapter from earlier in the story arc of an organization, its tradition and transition.

Middlesboro, too.

The KHSAA basketball tournaments threw the HP Kentucky Bureau for a loop this week, so we are working the weekend to belatedly relay some big news out of the commonwealth this week:

-- Congratulations, Wendell Berry! (And thank you, Courier-Journal! I don't believe I'd ever heard of Port Royal, Ky. before reading your story; it turns out the town is near New Castle)

-- Rest in peace, "Dude" Hennessey. (He was three years younger than Bill Arnsparger, who also grew up in Paris while Blanton Collier coached there.)

-- Hooray for Lexington and Russellville!