Oh, Kentucky

No. 1! (And Nos. 7 and 73.)

There are two Kentucky companies among Brand Finance's new annual list of the top 500 brands, and Humana is the higher ranked between those.

Kentucky for sale:

MCC is getting back into the HVAC biz.

Good jobs news from Franklin, Henderson, Louisville, Sebree and maybe eastern Kentucky.

Gov Bevin chats with ex Gov and Sen Julian Carroll after thanking Senate for "phenomenal" session. ^JB pic.twitter.com/ewNgPee9Nq

— Bluegrass Politics (@BGPolitics) March 31, 2017

Least joblessness: Woodford. Most: Magoffin. Healthiest: Oldham. Least healthy: Breathitt.

Big Rivers Electric Corp. is ramping up solar in western Kentucky.

"You just wait ... a completely different landscape" to downtown Paducah is on its way.

Sam Neace in The Hazard Herald on the closing of A.B. Combs Elementary School: "Years ago, the A.B. Combs gymnasium served as a popular venue for entertainment events. 'The Macho Man' Randy Savage wrestled there several times in the early 1980s. According to the accounts of folks who attended those bouts, The Macho Man interacted with the audience in Combs… because he had no other choice. During that era in pro wrestling, fans were known to give passionate displays of disapproval for the bad guy in each match. Folks say, when The Macho Man left Combs, he knew exactly what all the little, old ladies there thought of him. Savage must have enjoyed the experience because he returned to A.B. Combs for many appearances."

Oh, Kentucky

Tim Masthay, a former Murray High Tiger, "won the game for us," Packers general manager Ted Thompson told Judy Keen of USA Today, who went on to write, "Masthay, 23, was an undrafted free agent from Kentucky who was cut by the Indianapolis Colts in 2009. The Packers signed him a year ago. Before he got the call, he had been working as a tutor for $10 an hour at Kentucky while his wife, Amanda, supported the couple with a job as a bank teller." (By the way, we were recently in Murray and swung by the old football field, and it is so terrific.)

Just say no.

Among the suggestions to some folks considering a move to central Kentucky was one town of which I'd never heard and immediately mispronounced. Fire has a lot to do with how the country reshaped itself in the 1800s.

Jeffrey Lee Puckett's compelling Loretta Lynn feature in The Courier-Journal is like a flash forward to what Rube might be saying in a feature 50 years from now: "'Me and Doo went back and stayed some when we was in Washington,' she said, calling from her ranch in Tennessee. 'We'd stay a couple, three months at a time, but I haven't lived there and I do miss old Kentucky. I really do. I want me and Crystal and my other two sisters to go spend a week or two up in that holler, just stay in the old house, cook and build pallets on the floor and just have a good time. We're planning on doing that some time.'"

And here's the story of another interesting career.