The Bluegrass and Beyond has a new address

http://tomeblen.bloginky.com/

Click on the link above to go to the new address.  My blog has moved to a new server at kentucky.com, which will give me greater flexibility, especially in posting photos, slide shows and videos.  So, please reset your bookmark.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  I appreciate your reading my blog, and if you have any questions or suggestions, email me by clicking on the link to the right.

Al Smith won’t be resting on this laurel, either

Every few months, it seems, some organization is honoring the veteran Kentucky journalist Al Smith.

On Saturday, he’s receiving a big award: The Society of Professional Journalists, at its annual convention in Atlanta, will name Smith a Fellow of the Society, the organization’s highest honor.

Smith will receive the award along with the late Tim Russert, the political journalist and moderator of Meet the Press, who died in June, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who has reported for CNN, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The New York Times and NPR.

Smith has been a well-known face and voice in Kentucky for more than three decades, thanks to his role as the founding host of KET’s Comment on Kentucky.

Smith also has had many other roles: a small-town newspaper editor and publisher in both Eastern and Western Kentucky, head of the Appalachian Regional Commission under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, a founder of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky and a tireless advocate for better education.

I’ve known Smith since one of his daughters and I were students at Western Kentucky University in the 1970s, and I’ve always been amazed by his energy and passion.

Smith, 81, attributes some of it to the new lease on life he got in the early 1960s, when he overcame alcoholism and married his wife, Martha Helen.

The rest of it, he said, may be the result of a manic personality. “I talk too much,” he said. “I like to stir things up and make them happen.”

What I find remarkable about Smith is that many of his contributions — the things he is often honored for these days — were made after he sold his small group of newspapers and “retired.”

Of course, Smith has never retired, even though many of his contemporaries left public life years ago. He is always working on a project, leading a crusade or agitating behind the scenes.

For the past several months, he has hunkered down at his second home in Florida, trying to distill his memoirs into something shorter than War and Peace.

In his spare time, he is helping the Recovery Kentucky task force build 10 alcohol and drug recovery centers around the state. He is chairman of the national advisory board for the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community issues. And he is trying to raise money for the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence.

“I’ve got a joke I tell people,” Smith said. “I say, if it’s something that meddles in other people’s business and doesn’t pay and I can be chairman of it, then that’s my line of work.”

I was thinking about Smith and others like him over the Labor Day weekend, a time when we should reflect on work and its meaning. Then, on Sunday, my pastor preached from Ecclesiastes; he said our life’s work should emphasize being more, rather than having more. He also said we should strive to make a lasting contribution to society, and not just earn a living.

The first baby boomers are now reaching retirement age and deciding how to spend their last couple of decades. Will they putter around the house and polish their golf games? Or will they use their spare time and accumulated expertise to help solve some of the world’s problems?

I asked Smith about this, and he was quick to say that he didn’t presume to tell other people what to do.

“An older person needs to be as active as he can, but everybody’s different,” he said. “You’ve got 60-year-olds who act 80, and 80-year-olds who act 60.”

Smith said he spent time in recent years reflecting on the importance of family and community. He thinks every one, especially those who have spent their life accumulating wealth and knowledge, should give something back to their community.

“Everybody ought to do some kind of volunteer work, that’s for sure,” he said.

He said he wasted his opportunities as a college student and dropped out, and he has spent the past 40 years working to improve higher education for others.

As a lifelong journalist, he feels compelled to help figure out how to help journalism survive now that the century-old, advertising-based business model of media companies no longer works in this digital age.

Smith said that as a young man, he disappointed many people close to him, including an activist grandmother, because he didn’t live up to his potential. Since then, he has tried to find role models in people he admires, and to follow their example.

“All of us who are older need to be in this struggle to make sure the values we have followed in our life and work survive,” he said. “I think everybody ought to give something back to the community. It certainly has made a lot of difference in my life.”

Besides, Smith said: “I don’t know how to play golf.”

Great bicycle ideas from near and far

Last Saturday, New York City closed Park Avenue from the Brooklyn Bridge to Grand Central Station to motorized traffic for the day and invited cyclists, pedestrians, skateboarders and inline skaters into the street. It was quite a social event.  Click here to see a New York Times audio slide show of what happened.

Jay McChord, a member of Lexington’s Urban County Council, has suggested doing something similar with a street or highway in Lexington one Saturday a month during nice weather.  It sounds like a great idea to me.  It could make for a great family-friendly, community-building day of fun.

Click here to read this story in Sunday’s Washington Post about what other cities around the world are doing to promote bicycle commuting and lessen the burden of high gasoline prices on their citizens.  Be sure to watch the video of Tokyo’s cool, high-tech bicycle parking system.

Sharing the road is a two-way street

If you never ride a bicycle, please stop reading this column.

That’s right; move on to the next story.

I want to speak to my fellow cyclists, privately.

We all know that rural Central Kentucky is a cyclist’s paradise — the gently rolling landscape, the vast web of small, lightly traveled roads and the gorgeous scenery.

In the past few years, thanks to the Newberry administration and the Urban County Council, Lexington has made a lot of progress toward becoming a more bicycle-friendly city.

Each week, it seems, I see new bike lanes on roads that need them. Several bike paths and trails are planned. It’s a good thing: Each time gasoline prices spike, I see more people riding bicycles to work, to run errands and to get themselves in shape.

So what’s the biggest thing holding back cyclists in Lexington? We are. Not all of us, of course, but more of us than we would like to admit.

I ride my bicycle about 2,000 miles a year in Central Kentucky, and I drive several thousand more miles.

Sure, I occasionally encounter rude motorists when I’m cycling. I have had drivers cut me off, pass too close, pull out in front of me, honk, holler and glare. I was even hit once by a lit cigar stub thrown from a passing truck’s window.

Some people in oversized pickups seem to think they have a constitutional right to drive 50 mph on a country road too narrow for a center stripe. Other drivers think the roads belong to them, and cyclists should stick to trails and sidewalks — even though riding a bike on the sidewalk is often dangerous, and sometimes illegal.

Last weekend in Bourbon County, a woman in a red Honda passed our single-file cycling group going up a blind hill on a double-yellow line. Then she stopped in the middle of the road to chat with a buddy going the other way, forcing us to ride slowly between them. Then she passed us again on another blind hill. What a fool.

Honestly, though, I see more dangerous cyclists than dangerous drivers.

Admit it — you do, too.

Sad to say, some of them are my Lycra-clad brethren, who should know better. They ride in packs across the road, rather than two abreast, as the law requires, or single file, which is safer. Others blow through stop signs and act as if stoplights are for other people.

Most of the offenders I see, though, are people who don’t take bicycling seriously. Or they seem to be new at it. They ride on sidewalks. They ride on the wrong side of the street. They weave through traffic and run stop signs and lights.

Some of them don’t wear helmets. Others wear headphones or earbuds. I guess that’s so they won’t be bothered by those big, noisy trucks whose drivers might not be able to see them.

Many cyclists I know have never been shy about yelling at dangerous drivers.

But shouldn’t we do the same when we see dangerous cyclists?

For those who don’t know any better, tactful correction might help them learn. If they just don’t care, maybe they need to know that others do. And, of course, nothing is more effective than modeling good cycling behavior yourself.

If you care about everyone sharing the road more safely, be willing to speak up and be a good example. Better yet, get involved in local bicycle safety and education programs.

There’s a list of organizations and efforts on the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government’s Web site.

In May, certified instructors organized several bike safety clinics around town. The University of Kentucky is offering bicycle education classes for students, faculty and staff this fall.

City officials have applied for a grant to offer a more extensive “share the road” program next spring, said Kenzie Gleason, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian coordinator. I hope they get it.

Sharing the road more safely will make Lexington a better city for everyone, but cyclists must take the lead.

It could be a matter of life and death. Maybe even yours.

CORRECTION: I overstated the case when I said it’s illegal to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk in Lexington. It’s only illegal in the downtown business district. You can ride a bicycle on a sidewalk elsewhere in Fayette County, but it should be done with great care, especially if pedestrians are around. Here’s the exact law:

Sec. 18-155.  Riding on sidewalks.

(a)   No person shall ride a bicycle upon a sidewalk within the business district, except for members of the division of police and the sheriff’s office. The business district shall be from the corner of Jefferson and West Vine Street east along; West Vine Street to Ransom Street, north along Ransom to East Main Street, then west on East Main Street to DeWeese Street, then north on DeWeese Street to East Short Street, then west on East Short Street to Walnut Street, then north on Walnut Street to Barr Street, then west on Barr Street and Church Street to North Broadway, then south on North Broadway to West Short Street, then west on West Short Street to Spring Street, then south on Spring Street to West Main Street, then west on West Main Street to Jefferson Street.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Click here for bicycling resources in metro Lexington.

Click here for information about Kentucky’s bicycle laws and rules of the road and safety advice.

Click here for information about the Kentucky Bicycle and Bikeway Commission.

Click here for information about safe cycling in Louisville.

Click here for information about the Bluegrass Cycling Club

Click here for information about the Louisville Bicycle Club

Click here for information about Ashland Cycling Enthusiasts.

Click here for information about Central Kentucky Cyclists in Campbellsville.

Click here for information about Central Kentucky Wheelmen in Elizabethtown.

Click here for information about the Bowling Green League of Bicyclists.

Click here for information about Pennyrile Area Cyclists in Hopkins County.

Click here for information about the Chain Reaction Cycling Club in Paducah.

Clay Lancaster of Lexington — and Brooklyn, NY

The late Clay Lancaster, the Lexington-born architectural historian, is well known in Kentucky for his books about antebellum architecture in the state. During the middle years of the 20th Century, he mapped, surveyed and photographed the pre-Civil War structures that remained in Fayette County.

But he had another life and career that many Kentuckians aren’t aware of — in New York City. This piece in Sunday’s New York Times tells some of the story.

Russellville’s voice is on WRUS-AM 610

For half a century, the first voice many people in Russellville have heard each morning belongs to Don Neagle.

He rises five days at week at 3 a.m. and soon arrives at the studio of WRUS-AM. He scans the Internet for news, checks the weather forecast and begins broadcasting as the rest of Logan County is getting up to start the day.

WRUS celebrated its 55th year on the air Thursday. On Monday, people will gather at an old downtown theater for a reception honoring Neagle’s 50th year with the station.

“Without being overly pompous about it, I don’t know what the community would be like if we hadn’t had this all these years,” said Neagle, 70. “We find their lost dogs. We tell them what the school lunch is going to be. We tell them who’s gone to jail and who’s been indicted. We tell them who’s done wonderful things, and who’s done not-so-great things.”

Don Neagle of WRUS. Photo by Tim Webb

As a child growing up in Green County, Neagle said, “I was always intrigued by the announcers who did the commercials and the radio news reporters. I thought that would be so cool.”

The summer he was 16, Neagle started hanging around the Greensburg satellite studio of Campbellsville’s WLCK. After high school, he worked at radio stations in Campbellsville, Harrodsburg, Glasgow and Bowling Green. He attended Western Kentucky University for a year before dropping out because of illness.

Somebody then told Neagle that WRUS was looking for an announcer. He started work Sept. 1, 1958. Neagle said he had opportunities to leave over the years, but Russellville always felt like home to him and his wife, Vivian. They have four children and seven grandchildren, three of whom they’re now rearing.

“He has become the most trusted person in that county,” said Al Smith, who also went to Russellville in 1958 to edit the local newspaper. Smith went on to own a group of newspapers and spend more than three decades as host of KET’s Comment on Kentucky.

Like Smith, Neagle is a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame.

“He’s a very warm and friendly and good-humored man — a college dropout who’s probably the best-read person in Logan County,” Smith said of Neagle. “He’s a reporter’s reporter, and a guy who can talk to anybody.”

Six years ago, Neagle and his partners, father and son Bill and Chris McGinnis, bought WRUS from a large company. They wanted to keep the station local and public service-oriented.

In the process, they’ve also made it more profitable, even as big media corporations struggle for revenue.

Since the 1980s, deregulation has reshaped radio markets in cities and big towns across America. Relaxed ownership rules led to consolidation and cost-cutting. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 freed broadcasters of their obligation to provide public-service programming.

Now, the four largest radio companies own stations with half the nation’s listeners; the top 10 companies have two-thirds of the listeners.

But “mom-and-pop” radio is alive and well in small towns such as Russellville, Whitesburg, Cadiz and Grayson.

“Local radio is now doing a lot better financially than big-city radio,” said Francis Nash, general manager of WGOH-AM and WUGO-FM in Grayson and author of Towers Over Kentucky, a history of broadcasting in the state.

“We’ve never tried to be bigger than we are,” Nash said of his stations. “We just try to serve the people.”

That service — local news and information and knowledge of the community — has kept people listening to Don Neagle all these years, even when he reports news they would rather not hear.

“They may not be happy that you reported their son got in trouble or their husband got in trouble, but they will cut you slack if they think you’ve been fair and you treat everybody the same,” Neagle said. “The people we talk about are people we see at church, and in line at the grocery store and at the coffee shop.”

Neagle’s morning radio show is a combination of news, weather and whatever he and his listeners find interesting to talk about. Topics range from politics to medicine, gardening to religion. “I don’t think I’ve done a whole show on Greek drama, but I’ve probably done everything else,” he said.

A book lover, Neagle frequently interviews authors. He co-hosts a weekly history show with retired Kentucky Supreme Court Justice William Fuqua.

The most popular part of Neagle’s morning lineup is Feedback, a call-in show.

“It’s so local and so community-oriented, and everybody’s got a voice,” Neagle said. “Anybody who wants to come on the air, we’ll put them on if they’ve got a charity, or they’re promoting the United Way or something going on with the schools.”

To national media conglomerates, WRUS might look like a relic. To syndicated talk radio stars, Neagle might seem like a dinosaur.

But it’s worth noting that, nationally, the radio audience peaked in 1989 and has fallen 20 percent since then.

Things are much different in towns like Russellville, where there are stations still committed to public-service journalism and personalities like Neagle who know the community.

“I’m not smart enough to know what other stations ought to do,” Neagle said, “But this one and me, we’ve sort of evolved together. And it works really well for us and our people.”

Is Kentucky a Southern state?

If you want to start an endless debate in Kentucky, that question is a good place to start.

On Saturday at 4 p.m., I’ll be participating in a panel discussion on the question organized by James Klotter, Kentucky’s state historian and a history professor at Georgetown College.

I’m preparing my remarks Friday, so help me out and comment below. Is Kentucky Southern?  Midwestern?  A mixture?  What do you think, and why?

The panel discussion will be at the Lexington Public Library’s Central Library Theater downtown. It is part of the Library’s Forever Free: Lincoln’s Journey to Emancipation exhibit. Other related activities Saturday include:

• Lincoln’s Lexington Walking Tour – 12:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. Meet in front of the Central Library.

• Children’s Activity: Civil War Cyphers and Codes  – 2 p.m. in the Library’s children’s department.

• Civil War Living History: Soldiers and Cannons and Horses, oh my! Phoenix Park – 12 p.m. to  7 p.m.

• A Word from President Lincoln with Jim Sayre – 3 p.m. at the Central Library Theater.

• Saxton’s Cornet Band – 5:30 p.m. in Phoenix Park.

Finding Robert Penn Warren in Bowling Green

I was in Bowling Green the other day with a little time to spare, so I decided to spend an hour with one of my favorite authors, Robert Penn Warren.

Well, not exactly.

Warren died in 1989 at the age of 84 after one of America’s most distinguished literary careers. The Kentucky native was the nation’s first Poet Laureate and won three Pulitzer Prizes, including the 1947 award for his novel All the King’s Men. It is the classic tale of populist politician Willie Stark, who becomes corrupted by power. Sean Penn starred in the most recent movie adaptation in 2006.

All the King’s Men is one of my favorite books. I met Warren once, in 1980, when he and two fellow writers returned to Vanderbilt University in Nashville for a symposium marking the 50th anniversary of their Southern Agrarian manifesto, I’ll Take My Stand.

Warren’s birthplace in the Todd County town of Guthrie has been restored as a museum, although the 300-year-old barn in Fairfield, Conn., where he lived and wrote for 38 years, was demolished in 2003 to make way for a McMansion.

The best place now to connect with Warren is the Kentucky Library and Museum at Western Kentucky University. You enter through the side door, walk up some steps and ask at the desk. There, you’ll be directed to a small room with two noisy dehumidifiers that contains some of Warren’s most prized posessions.

After Warren’s death, his widow, the writer Eleanor Clark, left his library and most of his personal effects to WKU, which in 1987 had created the Center for Robert Penn Warren Studies.  Warren spent little of his adult life in Kentucky, but the state always remained close to his heart.

The room contains Warren’s well-worn chair and wooden desk, which holds his manual typewriter and reading glasses. And his hand-exerciser, a likely diversion. I’m sure even a literary lion got writer’s block now and then.

Several rows of shelves hold his large collection of books — some inscribed by the authors, who were friends; others containing his penciled notes. And there are his own copies of his own books.

What I found most interesting were albums of letters and family photos. Alone in the room, quiet except for the rattling dehumidifiers, I sat at a large table and thumbed through them.

In some ways, they weren’t like your photo albums or mine. Several pictures of Warren were stamped “The New York Times” on the back. And there were photos that included famous faces, such as a 1967 snapshot from Egypt, with Warren and William Styron, the author of Sophie’s Choice, riding camels and acting like tourists at the pyramids.

But there were many more photos that were striking because they were so typical. There were dozens of snapshots of Warren, Clark and their children, Rosanna, now a poet, and Gabriel, now a sculptor. They were photos of childhood milestones, family celebrations, picnics and good times in the back yard.

Somehow, it’s satisfying to see that one of America’s greatest authors, one of the best minds Kentucky has ever produced, looked happiest when he was playing with his children.

Mourning rituals planned for CentrePointe block

How do you mourn the loss of a historic building or a favorite nightspot?

That’s what artist Bruce Burris wanted to know last month when he sent out a call for mourners.

Burris asked how people would like to mourn the ­demolition of 14 old ­buildings on the downtown Lexington block being cleared to make way for the CentrePointe development.

Sound a little goofy? That’s what I thought, too.

However, Burris got 18 proposals from people who wanted to mourn the buildings, which included Morton’s Row, built in 1826 and one of Lexington’s oldest commercial structures, and the century-old building that housed The Dame, a popular music club.

One of Burris’ ongoing art projects is called Greengrief. Its mission is to provide “compensation to mourners for grieving, praying, singing and for giving thoughtful consideration and sincere apologies to our Earth for the environmental and cultural devastation wrought by us humans to it in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.”

Usually, Burris said, Greengrief doesn’t focus on real estate development, or even large sites of destruction, such as strip mines. It looks at small places where human activity has hurt the environment — such as Wolf Run Creek along Southland Drive. “Little projects that hardly no one notices,” he explained.

CentrePointe wasn’t a typical Greengrief project, but after hearing a lot of people upset about it, Burris said, “What the heck?”

He chose three mourners from the 18 applicants, each of whom will receive $100 from his pocket to help fund their projects. They’re now seeking the necessary city permits for their events, which are all planned for Sept. 12 and 13.

“The three of them are very different. And not anything like what I ­expected, either,” said Burris, who operates the Latitude Artist Community on Saunier ­Alley, which works with adult ­artists who have disabilities. “I really couldn’t decide, so I just went for three.”

Jenny O’Neill, an English teacher at Tates Creek High School, decided to apply right before the Aug. 1 deadline. She’s writing a historical novel set in Lexington in 1833, when the oldest of the recently demolished buildings were in use. She also was touched by the destruction of The Dame, because her three children — ages 30, 28 and 22 — all loved to go to shows there.

“I was so angry about the way this thing (CentrePointe) has come down,” she said. “But anger is one of the stages of grief. And I’m in grief. We were so insensitive to our history, and our young people.”

Her idea is to have a ­public funeral at 10:45 a.m. Sept. 13 in Phoenix Park. She will ask those who come to write about what they’ll miss most about the block the way it was. “I’m giving people a way to grieve in a public way for what they’ve lost,” she said.

O’Neill plans to ask those who attend to then walk three times around the block — the first time expressing their grief, the second time in silence “in respect for what has died,” and the third time with music. She hopes to recruit some musicians who will begin by playing a dirge, then end with New Orleans-style jazz. “That’s the time for moving on,” she said.

Lyndsey Fryman, 26, of Paris, has a much different plan, scheduled for noon on Sept. 12.

“Dressed in Victorian-era mourning clothing, I will create a dollhouse-size replica of the buildings during that time,” she wrote in her ­proposal. “I will walk around the block while creating ­paper flowers on stems and other mementos that will be left as I pass the replica … . The arrangement will hopefully evoke symbolic attachments to the process of mourning (being a form of memory), and a spiritual ­rebirth of those things gone.”

Fryman said she comes from a military family, so has lived many places. “I have a great appreciation for this history and the architecture that has been lost,” she said. “It was part of history, a part of Lexington.”

Brittany Clark, 23, who works for a marketing ­company, hopes to re-create one last ’80s party like the ones she enjoyed at The Dame. She hopes to begin this one at 1 a.m. Sept. 13 in Cheapside Park.

Clark says she went to the Dame once a week for more than a year. “It was a very big part of my life,” she said. “It was a dive bar. It wasn’t the same genre of people you run into at other bars. You ran into people from all different groups. I was more comfortable there than anywhere else.”

She also is angry about the way CentrePointe was sprung on the public. “I felt like everything was done in the worst possible way,” she said. “No one took any time to listen to anyone. I wanted to let people know how I felt about it.”

It should be an interesting weekend.

Frankfort home seeks ghosts for seasonal work

Have you always wanted to be an actor, but figured you didn’t stand a ghost of a chance?

Well, here’s your opportunity.

The Liberty Hall Historic Site in Frankfort is seeking actors to portray some of Frankfort’s notable ghosts as part of its 14th annual Ghosts of Frankfort production on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.

Auditions will Tuesday, Sept. 16, and Thursday, Sept. 18, at Liberty Hall, 218 Wilkinson St., from 4:30 p.m. until 7 p.m. No appointment necessary — like a ghost, you just appear. Prospective actors will be asked to do a cold reading, and they should have familiarized themselves with Liberty Hall’s history.

For more information, call Jennifer L. Koach at (502) 227-2560 or go to the Web site.

Here are the parts available:

Hannah Stepney – 30-50 year old African American woman

Margaretta Brown - 25-35 year old woman

Brown Girls (Margaretta, Mary Yoder, Eliza) - 15-20 year old women

Mary Yoder - 25-35 year old woman

Mary Mason Scott - 20-30 year old woman

Gray Lady – 40-50 year old woman

Euphemia Brown - 5-8 year old girl

Miles Stepney - 30-50 year old African American man

John Brown - 40-50 year old man (preferably “robust”)

Aaron Burr - 45-55 year old man

Orlando Brown (adult) - 35-45 year old man

Mason Brown (adult) – 35-45 year old man

Yoder Brown - 17-22 year old man

Doctor Humphreys - 30-50 year old man

Doctor Brown - 40-50 year old man

Brown Boys (Mason and Orlando) - 5-8 year old boys