A beautiful story of hospitality in Junction City, from Bob Kleppinger of Danville's Advocate-Messenger.
Here are the services provided by the Clay County Senior Citizens Center.
Self-defense courses in Winchester will benefit a rape crisis center in Nicholasville.
The Henderson County Detention Center credits e-cigarettes for a more peaceful jail.
Hiring at Kenlake. Maybe at Danville's Wilderness Trace Solar, too.
Good jobs news from Harlan. Bad from Somerset.
The state treasurer has been making the rounds in western Kentucky with happy news of unclaimed property. Rejoiced the Lyon County judge-executive yesterday: "$688,000! LYON county citizens have $688,000 sitting in an account in Frankfort under the unclaimed property! KY State Treasurer Allison Ball was in Lyon yesterday and talked to us about Unclaimed Property. We asked they provide us a list of Lyon Countians that have unclaimed $$. We await that list. But in the meantime Krista Grigg in my office has already begun searching names and found many we personally know that have unclaimed money. We are contacting them now."
Simply fantastic detail from Andrew Adkins in Ashland's Daily Independent on a Raceland city-council meeting covering a controversial proposal to build a mobile-home park: "The council, in its typical style, allowed residents to speak seemingly at will, even prior to the scheduled public comment period. At one point, three local residents stood together at the podium and spoke on the same topic. The room was at high capacity. It was also noisy, as members of the crowd and council talked among themselves throughout most of the meeting and a loud air conditioner fan muffled the conversations."
The Holiday Inn Paducah Riverfront is open for biz.
They paved El Chico, putting up a Qdoba, etc.
The Burgin Bulldogs eye the big time.
The Bardstown-Nelson County Ministerial Association is confronting the town's homelessness problem. And the fiscal court wonders about 911 with everybody ditching their land lines.
Good jobs news from Danville. Kentucky is No. 1 among U.S. states in aluminum production capacity, and our rate of joblessness is lowest since May 2001. But "the tone of racial intolerance being struck by the Herald-Leader has no place in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and will not be tolerated by our administration."
Meanwhile, from The Courier-Journal ("part of the USA Today network"): "I will say that we’ve received more support in the last week than at any other time in our 25-year history. A lot of people in our community do feel compassion for refugees."
And the Christian Science Monitor: “I, for one, don't feel particularly comforted by the assertion that our government can vet these refugees.”
MSNBC: “To be honest with you, a lot of folks in Owsley County went to the polls and voted against gay marriage and abortion, and as a result, I’m afraid they voted away their health insurance.”
Christmas parades: Hazard and Owensboro, Nov. 21; Ashland, Nov. 24; Lexington, Dec. 1; Harlan, Dec. 4; Bowling Green, Frankfort, Grayson, Hopkinsville, Madisonville, Munfordville, Murray, Paducah, Somerset and Winchester, Dec. 5; Hickman, Dec. 8, and Benton and Elkton, Dec. 12.
Per the Lexington Herald-Leader: "Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear said Monday that Kentuckians should do 'the Christian thing' and welcome all refugees who have cleared an extensive vetting process. But Beshear leaves office in three weeks. His Republican successor, Matt Bevin, said he will oppose the resettlement of Syrian refugees 'until we can better determine the full extent of any risks to our citizens.'"
And Elizabethtown's News-Enterprise: "When community members sitting in pews in the council chamber began to call out suggestions and comments, (Radcliff mayor Mike) Weaver said they were out of order and not part of the discussion. When similar comments resumed, Weaver called for Police Chief Jeff Cross. As Weaver began to point out an individual he wanted dismissed from the room, council members intervened by immediately making a motion to adjourn."
Lebanon's Gen. John Hunt Morgan statue is for sale.
Christmas parades: Hazard and Owensboro, Nov. 21; Lexington, Dec. 1; Harlan, Dec. 4; Bowling Green, Frankfort, Grayson, Hopkinsville, Munfordville, Murray, Paducah, Somerset and Winchester, Dec. 5; Hickman, Dec. 8, and Benton and Elkton, Dec. 12.
A different sort of parade is set for Saturday from Shelby, through Marrowbone and Elkhorn City and then out of the state.
I'm just getting started on What Paul Meant, a 2006 book by Garry Wills. A friend gave it to me after his wedding in 2007, but it took me this long to get past how bothered (small) I was by the title. Anyway, here's some stuff from pages 13, 14 and 15 that I think is just rock-'em/sock-'em great:
... When Paul address the ekklesiai, the "gatherings of Jesus," he is writing to those who met in the homes of particular men or women, in the same town or in several towns. He addresses himself to the whole gathering, in each case, not to some leader or leaders. Some towns had more than one such home-gathering. There was no hierarchy among the gatherings, one having more authority over another. The housekeepers, whether male or female or both, were the informal leaders of the gatherings. Emissaries ... moved from gathering to gathering, normally in teams, often husband-and-wife teams (Rom 16.6-15), like the team of Peter and his wife, or of the Lord's brothers and their wives (1 Cor 9.5). Paul usually had several partners in his team--most of his letters are written with cosenders, and he often refers to coworkers, women as well as men.
New gatherings were hived off from pre-existing ones, sometimes by the work of emissaries like Paul's team, sometimes by the gathering's own natural reach outward toward friends or relatives or associates, either in the same town or in other ones. The proliferation of these gatherings was astonishingly rapid. They had grown out from Palestine even before Paul came to believe in Jesus. They were already present in the country where he was living (Syria). He began his work as a junior partner (with Barnabas) in an emissary team operating from a pre-existing gathering at Antioch. The story of Paul is never that of an individual, some religious genius hatching his own religion out of his own head. We find in his letters hymns that communities had formed and sung before he set them down in an epistle. He constantly appeals to traditions handed on to him, to be handed on to others. It is as a testimony to the vital explosion of belief in Jesus all across the Diaspora that Paul assumes his importance.
He takes us closer in time to Jesus than does any other person or group or body of writings. The best way to find out what Jesus meant to his early followers is to see what Paul meant to his fellow believers, many of whom had seen Jesus in his earthly lifetime or after his Resurrection, without having written their stories down for us. Paul did write. But he was writing about a shared experience, not a single and idiosyncratic one. If Paul was such a foe and underminer of Jesus, why was he accepted so soon and broadly by those who knew Jesus? The answer is that Paul was not a counterforce to Jesus but one of the early believers who together bore witness to him. The Jesus gatherings in the Diaspora proved more fertile and lasting than those in Judaea itself, not because of any one man's brilliance, energy, or deceptions, but because they were more vitally expressive of what Jesus meant. Paul was part of this explosion of belief. His letters are dispatches from that hurricane of activity.
