October 2023 | Kentucky Monthly Magazine

36 ‘Enough to Make Angels

Weep’ The Battle of Perryville, fought in the blistering heat and extreme drought, tested the will of thousands of soldiers—including the writer’s ancestor

41 Kentucky Book Festival

The Kentucky Humanities presents the 42nd edition of the event at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington

Richard Hunt of Roebling Point Books & Coffee; photo by Rebecca Redding

Test your knowledge of our beloved Commonwealth. To find out how you fared, see the bottom of Vested Interest.

1. On the first weekend of October, the St. James Court Art Show draws more than 600 artists to Louisville. Most of the homes in the Old Louisville neighborhood were built when?

A. In the years following the Civil War

B. After the Great Flood of 1937

C. Following the Southern Exposition of 1883-87

2. What is Kentucky’s oldest festival?

A. Mount Sterling Court Days, which will be held this year from Oct. 14-16

B. The Tobacco and Heritage Festival in Russellville, Oct. 7

C. The Yosemite Yodeling Hootenanny on the fifth Friday of October

3. Ashland-born actress Leigh French starred as Goldie O’Keefe in “Share a Little Tea with Goldie,” a regular segment on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late 1960s. She also played roles with which two characters from the Andy Griffith Show?

A. Andy and Barney

B. Otis Campbell and Ernest T. Bass

C. Gomer and Goober

4. How did Crystal Gayle differ from her seven older siblings?

A. She was the only one born in a hospital

B. She was the only one not born in Kentucky

C. She’s the only one with blue eyes

5. Who sang background vocals on Loretta Lynn’s first No. 1 country hit, “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)?”

A. Patsy Cline and Kitty Wells

B. The Jordanaires

C. London Parris and The Apostles

6. Which country music singer/ songwriter was valedictorian of his graduating class at Johnson Central High School?

A. David Prince (The Laid Back Country Picker)

B. Tyler Childers

C. Chris Stapleton

7. Who was the last Democrat to carry Monroe County in a presidential election?

A. Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s

B. Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964

C. George B. McClellan in 1864

8. Under which pen name did Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer of Todd County write the longestrunning newspaper column, appearing in 270 newspapers in a dozen countries until her death in 1951?

A. Ann Landers

B. Dorothy Dix

C. Erma Bombeck

9. Matthew Lyon, the namesake of Lyon County, served in the U.S. House of Representatives from both the 14th and 15th states. Lyon was elected once from a jail cell on a charge of violating which law?

A. Confiscation

B. Sedition

C. Polygamy

10. West Kentucky is also known as “The Purchase” because Generals Isaac Shelby and Andrew Jackson purchased the land from which group of Native Americans?

A. Chickasaw

B. Choctaw

C. Shawnee

Celebrating the best of our Commonwealth

© 2023, Vested Interest Publications

Volume Twenty-Six, Issue 8, October 2023

Stephen M. Vest

Publisher + Editor-in-Chief

Editorial

Patricia Ranft Associate Editor

Rebecca Redding Creative Director

Deborah Kohl Kremer Assistant Editor

Ted Sloan Contributing Editor

Cait A. Smith Copy Editor

Lucy Saunderson Intern

Senior Kentributors

Jackie Hollenkamp Bentley, Jack Brammer, Bill Ellis, Steve Flairty, Gary Garth, Jessie Hendrix-Inman, Mick Jeffries, Kim Kobersmith, Brigitte Prather, Walt Reichert, Tracey Teo, Janine Washle and Gary P. West

Business and Circulation

Barbara Kay Vest Business Manager

Jocelyn Roper Circulation Specialist

Advertising

Lindsey Collins Senior Account Executive and Coordinator

Kelley Burchell Account Executive

Teresa Revlett Account Executive

For advertising information, call 888.329.0053 or 502.227.0053

KENTUCKY MONTHLY (ISSN 1542-0507) is published 10 times per year (monthly with combined December/ January and June/July issues) for $25 per year by Vested Interest Publications, Inc., 100 Consumer Lane, Frankfort, KY 40601. Periodicals Postage Paid at Frankfort, KY and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to KENTUCKY MONTHLY, P.O. Box 559, Frankfort, KY 40602-0559.

Vested Interest Publications: Stephen M. Vest, president; Patricia Ranft, vice president; Barbara Kay Vest, secretary/treasurer. Board of directors: James W. Adams Jr., Dr. Gene Burch, Gregory N. Carnes, Barbara and Pete Chiericozzi, Kellee Dicks, Maj. Jack E. Dixon, Bruce and Peggy Dungan, Mary and Michael Embry, Judy M. Harris, Greg and Carrie Hawkins, Jan and John Higginbotham, Frank Martin, Bill Noel, Michelle Jenson McDonnell, Walter B. Norris, Kasia Pater, Dr. Mary Jo Ratliff, Barry A. Royalty, Randy and Rebecca Sandell, Kendall Carr Shelton and Ted M. Sloan.

Kentucky Monthly invites queries but accepts no responsibility for unsolicited material; submissions will not be returned.

Readers Write

A Peeve or Two

Regarding Bill Ellis’ May article about pet peeves (page 58), the use of “amount” instead of “number” in constructions such as “any amount of people” is one of mine. I don’t know whether more people are saying it or whether I’m just noticing it more. Something I note, but don’t get peeved about is the word “none” followed by a plural verb. I understand that “none” is an abbreviation of “not one,” so it is singular.

James Watson, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Boones’ Final Kentucky Home

I read with interest in the May issue Steve Vest’s column (page 64) dealing with the return of Daniel and Rebecca Boone’s remains from Missouri to Kentucky for burial here. The article mentioned several places the Boones resided in Kentucky but regrettably failed to

mention their last home in Kentucky was here in Nicholas County. It was in a log cabin that still exists in a place not far from its location when they resided here. It can be seen by the public on property owned by Wendt’s Wildlife Adventure.

I felt this mention of the Boones’ last home in Kentucky was worthy of attention.

Joseph H. “Jock” Conley, Carlisle

Pronunciations

Where did Bill Ellis learn to spell “Loo-a-vul?” I spell it “Loo-uh-vool.” Patricia and I enjoyed his “The Days of Summer” in the June/July issue (page 56).

George DeChurch, Louisville

Editor’s Note: Readers, how do you phonetically spell Louisville?

Content Request

I just picked up Kentucky Monthly at a bookstore in Cincinnati.

After reading several of the magazines, I notice that all the news is about Lexington, Louisville and other cities in the vicinity. My problem with all Kentucky magazines is that no articles ever are published on Rowan County, Fleming County, Elliott County, Pike County, etc.

I was born in Fleming County 86 years ago. Now, I live in Goshen, Ohio. I want to read about “my neck of the woods,” not all about liquor and horse racing. Kentucky has much more history than that.

Daisy Harris Fannin, Fleming County

Kudos to Brammer

I enjoyed reading Jack Brammer’s story on Barbara Kingsolver (August issue, page 25), and I think he captured a snapshot of her life quite accurately!

Tom Darrell (Kingsolver’s co-valedictorian” at Nicholas County High), Fuquay-Varina, North

The Kentucky Gift Guide Drink Local

MAG ON THE MOVE

Even when you’re far away, you can take the spirit of your Kentucky home with you. And when you do, we want to see it!

Norway

Holy Land

While on a tour of several Scandinavian countries, Gyan and Poonam Gupta of Lexington visited the Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway. The park displays Gustav Vigeland’s life work, comprising more than 200 sculptures.

Jamaica

Larry Poe and Barbara Boone of Maysville journeyed to the Holy Land, where they visited the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, built on the site believed to be the location of Jesus’ birth.

While on a Caribbean cruise, these travelers took in the sun and azure waters of Montego Bay. Pictured are Lanie Browning, Christa Browning, Patricia Cobb, Janie Calloway, Jake Watts and “John Brady” Brock—all of Harlan—Fallon Slone of Hindman and Nikki Huenefeld of Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati.

Barbara and Pete Chiericozzi enjoyed the “hospitality, fine wine and superb food” of the Château Hôtel Grand Barrail in SaintEmilion, France. Former residents of Salvisa, the Chiericozzis now live in Tega Cay, South Carolina, but continue to support many Mercer County organizations.

Email a high-resolution photo, along with a caption, to editor@kentuckymonthly.com .

SUBMIT A PHOTO

Bright to Appear at Book Fest

Many Kentuckians and lawyers nationwide have long viewed Stephen Bright as iconic. The Boyle County native stepped onto the political stage in Kentucky in the spring of 1970 as the newly elected student body president at the University of Kentucky. Students across the country were protesting the widening war in Southeast Asia and the killing of student protesters at Kent State University by the National Guard. UK students joined in the protest.

One memorable scene was of Bright, wearing a white buttoned-down shirt and necktie, leading a motley crew of hippies in a protest march down Rose Street. It may have been the first time Bright made the front page.

As a means of dispersing the crowd of protesters, Gov. Louie B. Nunn imposed a curfew. When the curfew arrived, state troopers in full riot gear started arresting protesters who seemed to have been selected in advance as everyone else dispersed.

Bright had joined UK President Otis Singletary in exhorting the crowd to honor the curfew. Then, inexplicably, Bright was charged with being on campus after curfew. He was charged in state court but also under the new Student Code, which I had been instrumental in drafting as the student member of the Faculty Senate.

Bright asked me to represent him in his trial before the Student Judicial Board in proceedings to expel him from UK. I was a rising third-year law student busy in my new role as editor-in-chief of the Law Journal. But Bright persuaded me that if he were represented by a “movement lawyer,” he would lose; whereas Bright viewed me as part of the campus “establishment.” I undertook the assignment.

In a move that surprised me, UK brought in Commonwealth Attorney Larry Roberts, the felony prosecutor in Fayette County, to handle the prosecution before the Student Judicial Board. Seated next to Roberts was Bob Lawson, one of the most respected members of the law school faculty.

The trial was conducted in the Board of Trustees room atop Patterson Tower with a standing-room-only crowd. It was front-page news in The Louisville Courier-Journal for several days.

Our defense was Bright’s First Amendment rights.

It was the first time I was immersed in First Amendment case law, which significantly impacted my decision to begin my legal career as a media lawyer.

The Judicial Board acquitted Steve of all but one charge. Then, the Appeals Board reversed that conviction as violative of the First Amendment. So, Bright completed his senior year and then enrolled in law school at UK.

Bright worked for Legal Services in Appalachia, then as the public defender in Washington before joining the Southern Center for Human Rights, where his practice concentrated on death penalty cases and death row appeals. He excelled, including successfully arguing four cases before the United States Supreme Court.

Now teaching at Yale and Georgetown law schools, Bright has written a book (with co-author James Kwak) about what the book calls “the criminal legal system” (studiously, not the criminal “justice” system).

The book’s title—The Fear of Too Much Justice—quotes a dissenting opinion by liberal lion Justice William Brennan criticizing the reasoning in the majority opinion that feared holding for the defendant in that case would open the floodgates for more arguments by more criminal defendants.

Bright will be interviewed at the Kentucky Book Festival by CNN’s Poppy Harlow, a former Yale student. The Oct. 21 festival is at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, and the interview is scheduled for 11 a.m.

The book is a well-researched, well-written tour de force critique of America’s criminal legal system. As Bright’s friend John Grisham wrote on a blurb for the book’s jacket, “Only Steve Bright could write such a clear and poignant indictment of criminal injustice in America.”

— Sheryl G. Snyder

1 Gina Cheri Haspel (1956), former director of the Central Intelligence Agency from Ashland

2 Mitch English (1969), morning talk show host and comedian from Covington

3 Kevin Richardson (1971), Lexington-born singer best known for his stint with the Backstreet Boys

5 Adrian “Odie” Smith (1936), Graves County basketball player who played for the gold-medal U.S. men’s team in the 1960 Olympics

5 Ann-Blair Thornton (1989), Miss Kentucky 2011 from Bowling Green

5 Kevin Olusola (1988), singer-songwriter, beatboxer from Owensboro

9 Joe Survant (1942), past Kentucky poet laureate and professor of English at Western Kentucky University

12 Josh Hutcherson (1992), Union-born actor best known for his roles in The Hunger Games

13 Pat Day (1953), retired Hall of Fame and four-time Eclipse Award-winning jockey

16 Nate Morris (1980), noted Lexington-based entrepreneur

23 Dwight Yoakam (1956), Pikeville-born country music singer and actor

26 Mallory Ervin (1985), Miss Kentucky 2009 from Morganfield

27 Mary T. Meagher Plant (1965), Louisville-born gold medalwinning Olympic swimmer and former world record holder in the butterfly

28 Annie Potts (1952), Franklin native best known for her role at Meemawon Young Sheldon

28 Telma Hopkins (1948), Louisville-born singer/actress

30 Steve Kazee (1975), Broadway singer/actor from Ashland

Stephen Bright

Photo Biennial

The Louisville Photo Biennial, now in its 24th year, has returned for 2023, with images exhibited at 52 venues.

Not limited to Louisville, photography aficionados can view images at locations in Frankfort, Lexington, Danville, Shelbyville and Southern Indiana.

The Louisville Photo Biennial continues through Nov. 12.

For more information, along with the event program, visit LouisvillePhotoBiennial.com.

Touch of Glass

Art Center of the Bluegrass has announced an expansion project to celebrate its 20th anniversary: GLASS National Art Museum will open Nov. 3. GLASS will offer a sparkling new reason for artists and cultural travelers to visit Danville. As its name suggests, the museum will showcase the creativity of contemporary artists working in the compelling glass medium— most notably providing a permanent home for the collection of the late American glass artist Stephen Rolfe Powell

Key supporters helped the city of Danville purchase the 12,600-square-foot building next door to the original space; they’ll lease it to the Art Center for the next 100 years— breathing new life into a former community building. “With the addition of GLASS National Art Museum, we aspire to become a national leader in the glass art field over the next 20 years,” said Niki Kinkade, executive director.

New Spalding MFA Options

Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing is launching two new options for writing at home and abroad: a virtual residency option for the school’s creative writing students and an updated approach to alumni-focused travel.

Set to launch in June 2024, the virtual residency option springs from the school’s experience navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020 and ’21, the school switched from in-person residencies on Spalding’s Louisville campus to virtual residencies for its MFA, MA in Writing and certificate students. Curriculum sessions were held live, in real time, on Zoom.

What began as a necessity proved to have surprising benefits.

“While those virtual residencies happened by necessity, they turned out to be highly effective pedagogically and in terms of maintaining a sense of community, as well as providing accessibility for our students,” says Kathleen Driskell, chair of the Naslund-Mann School.

The school’s graduate writing programs are designed on the low-residency model, bringing students and faculty together for a residency week at the beginning of each semester. The intensive week constitutes a three-credit-hour graduate-level course built on workshops, lectures, readings and discussions. Afterward, students return home, and the semester continues with a 12-credithour independent study, with students working one-on-one with a faculty mentor.

— Katy Yocom

Stephen Rolfe Powell

by Laura Younkin

Listening to Her Muse

Brit Taylor, a singer from Hindman, is as country as country can be, and she’s proud. When she was home recently to sing at a Fourth of July celebration, she said fans drove their ATVs right up to the edge of the stage. That was just fine with her.

“I claim hillbilly. I’m proud of hillbilly,” Taylor said.

Taylor graduated from Knott County Central High School in May 2007 and moved to Nashville later that month. She loves her hometown, but she wanted a career in music. “It was the obvious next step,” she said. “I never thought of doing anything else.”

Taylor was making a decent living in Nashville. She played in a band and even landed a songwriting job, but her world turned into a country music playlist in 2017. “In a matter of three months, my husband left, my car broke down, my dog died, and a few weeks later one of my best friends quit the band,” she said. Taylor quit the band soon afterward. “I quit everything,” she said, including her songwriting job. She started a cleaning business to make ends meet, and that eventually did well. But her heart was always in the music.

“I needed to get away from opinions and advice,” Taylor said. She felt overwhelming pressure to pursue commercial success, and she felt being advised to homogenize her sound was not helping her. She said she became careful about who she listened to for advice and even what music she listened to.

In 2020, Taylor dropped her debut album, Real Me, which she self-funded and released. It did well, and people took notice, including important people. Her current release, Kentucky Blue, was co-produced by two heavy hitters—Kentucky musician Sturgill Simpson and producer Dave Ferguson

It was a life-changing experience for Taylor. “I don’t know if I would have stayed in town if I hadn’t met Dave,” she said. Simpson encouraged her to find her own voice and sing songs that mattered to her. He also advised her

to be protective of her creativity.

Taylor’s dedication to listening to her own muse has paid off. She received praise from influential music writer Ann Powers, who referred to Taylor’s work as “[a] beautiful mix of classic country but vintage singer/ songwriter and some bluegrass thrown in.”

Taylor tapped into her love of authentic country music. She has a deep, abiding love for Patty Loveless’ work, and that comes across in Kentucky Blue, which was released in February. Taylor said Loveless and Ricky Skaggs top his list of musical influences. “I’m not picking them because they’re from Kentucky. I can’t help it; they’re the best,” she said. “It doesn’t get any better than Patty Loveless, Loretta Lynn, Ricky Skaggs and Dwight Yoakam.”

Taylor credits the Mountain Arts Center in Prestonsburg for having a positive impact on her life. Being a part of the Kentucky Opry and a Junior Pro there taught her about bluegrass music, country music and the art of performing. She said the Kentucky Opry’s late founder, Billie Jean Osborne, deserves credit for improving the lives of hundreds of young musicians.

Taylor said her grandfather loves music and used to ask her to drive him to concerts. Together, they saw Ralph Stanley, and that moment is imprinted on her memory. Her grandfather is still an influence in her life. In fact, a stray puppy that wandered onto his farm is now Taylor’s dog, Blue

It’s clear that Taylor is more than proud of her Kentucky roots and that they shaped the person she has become. “If I were born anywhere else, my life would have taken a very different path,” she said.

Taylor said listening to Simpson, blocking out all the noise, and figuring out what she wanted to do were essential to getting where she is today. “I followed my heart,” she said. “It’s scary. When you follow your heart, there’s no one to blame. It’s terrifying.

“But it worked.”

A getaway to Kentucky offers all kinds of opportunities to escape the world.

PLAN YOUR HENDERSON COUNTY RETREAT

Nature Escapes, Hearty Fare & Historic Charm

An artsy river town on the Ohio River with a scenic riverwalk, Henderson, Kentucky, is a warm and welcoming destination for boutique shopping, local dining and making artful memories. Downtown boasts colorful, larger than-life murals, historic architecture and an impressive collection of bronze Audubon bird sculptures by Kentucky sculptor Raymond Graf. Take it all in on our self-guided Historic Henderson Downtown Walking Tour!

Consider yourself a foodie? Henderson is a culinary destination with farm-to-fork flavors downtown and down backroads. Dine at Farmer & Frenchman Winery and Cafe and stay onsite in one of three luxury cabins. Restaurant hop around downtown Henderson to local hot spots like Rookies and Hometown Roots. With five unique local BBQ joints smoking up decades of family recipes, BBQ fans will thrive. Craft beer lovers will find that

Henderson Brewing Co. offers unique beers, including the Great American Beer Festival silver medal winner, Bridgeview ESB. For outdoor adventures, John James Audubon State Park feels like something out of a fairy tale. The Audubon Museum, nestled in the heart of miles of trails and acres of forest, houses one of the world’s largest collections of John James Audubon originals and artifacts. Nature enthusiasts will enjoy 11 trails that vary in difficulty, a 69-site campground and six cozy cabins overlooking the lake.

hendersonky.org

HISTORIC ENTRANCE TO CAVE COUNTRY

Find Your Next Adventure in Park City

Venture to a designated Kentucky Trail Town in the heart of Kentucky Cave Country. Minutes from Mammoth Cave National Park and Diamond Caverns, Park City offers all sorts of outdoor fun. Book a cave tour of the world’s longest cave system. Mammoth Cave National Park is also popular for hiking, biking, horseback riding and paddling. Explore Bell’s Tavern Park to see the historic tavern ruins. Then, explore Mammoth Cave Railroad Bike & Hike Trail from the park’s trailhead. Extend your adventure with a stay at Grand Victorian Inn. I-65 exit 48, Say Yes to Adventure! Follow us on Facebook and Instagram @parkcitytourism. visitparkcityky.com

GET AWAY TO SHEPHERDSVILLE, KY

Explore Bullitt County for Tasting

Tours and Outdoor Fun!

Start planning your Shepherdsville adventure. Journey along Bullitt County’s Wine, Whiskey & Ale Trail for the ultimate sipping experience. The trail includes stops at the world-famous James B. Beam American Outpost, as well as four award-winning wineries, Four Roses Warehouse & Bottling and Gallant Fox Brewing Co. Explore more than 16,000 acres at Bernheim Arboretum & Research Forest — and be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the resident Forest Giants. Heritage Hills is a must for golfers, and if you’re bringing the kids, race the nation’s longest go-kart track at Kart Country.

travelbullitt.org

SOUTHERN CORNBREAD SALAD

SERVES 10-12

6 cornbread muffins crumbled (you can use The Southern Lady Cooks recipe, a cornbread mix or your own recipe)

1 small onion, chopped (can use green onions or purple onions)

1 large green bell pepper, chopped

1 15.5-ounce can dark red kidney beans, drained and rinsed (can use pinto beans or any kind you prefer)

6-8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled (can use ham or just about any cooked meat)

1 cup fresh corn kernels, cooked (can use frozen or canned)

1 small cucumber, peeled and chopped (can add pickles)

3 large tomatoes, chopped

1 cup shredded cheese (I use sharp cheddar)

2/3 cup mayonnaise or Miracle Whip

1/3 cup ranch dressing

½ teaspoon black pepper

½ teaspoon salt

Pinch cayenne pepper (optional)

1. Layer the first nine ingredients in a large salad bowl. Combine the mayonnaise and ranch dressing with the salt and pepper. Mix into the salad.

2. Place salad in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight before serving. Makes 10 cups.

NOTE: You can add olives, boiled eggs and any spices you like. You can just use ranch dressing, mayo or any combination of salad dressings. This is a wonderful dish to take to gatherings or picnics.

SOUTHERN GOODNESS

Fried chicken, peach cobbler and cornbread are just a few of the delights that come to mind when thinking of Southern cooking. Cornbread dates to pre-colonial days, with its origins in Native American cuisine. Over the centuries, the simple batter bread has been creatively adapted to produce a wide variety of flavorful dishes, including those presented here courtesy of The Southern Lady Cooks recipe blog.

SOUTHERN HOT WATER CORNBREAD

2 cups self-rising cornmeal

1 teaspoon salt

Boiling hot water

Oil for frying

1. Mix together cornmeal and salt in a bowl. Add boiling hot water until the batter just sticks together.

2. Scoop and mold into balls. (I do this with my hands and make balls about the size of a walnut.) Drop into hot oil and fry until golden brown.

Focusing on Southern dishes and old-fashioned cooking, The Southern Lady Cooks was started more than 15 years ago by Judy Yeager as a way to share family recipes and stay busy after retirement. Her expertise and simple dishes were a hit! Now, the blog is a family affair, with Judy’s twin daughters, Leigh Walkup and Anne Walkup , running the full-time business. Based in Georgetown, the site reaches millions of home cooks each month. Check out thesouthernladycooks.com for more of the family’s delicious recipes, and experience down-home nostalgia and laid-back lifestyle tips with Leigh and Anne’s digital magazine, Front Porch Life , frontporchlifemagazine.com

IRON SKILLET

PUMPKIN CORNBREAD

SERVES 10-12

2 cups self-rising cornmeal

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

SWEET BANANA NUT CORNBREAD

YIELDS ONE LOAF

1½ cups regular yellow cornmeal

½ cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ cup white granulated sugar

2 tablespoons melted butter

1 cup milk

½ cup honey

2 eggs

2 small bananas, mashed

½ cup pecans, finely chopped

Cooking spray

1. Whisk together the cornmeal, flour, salt, baking powder and sugar. Add melted butter, milk, honey and eggs in that order. Stir with a spoon as you combine.

2. Stir in mashed bananas and pecans.

3. Spray a 9- by 5-inch bread pan with cooking spray. Pour batter into pan and bake in a preheated 400-degree oven for 35-40 minutes until well browned on top and center is done. Let rest 10 minutes before removing from pan.

¼ cup brown sugar

1 cup canned pumpkin, (not the pumpkin pie mix)

2 eggs

1½ cups buttermilk

Cooking spray

¼ cup butter

1. Whisk together cornmeal, flour, cinnamon, ginger, salt, cloves, nutmeg and sugar until well combined.

2. Add pumpkin, eggs and buttermilk. Stir well with a spoon.

3. Spray a 10-inch iron skillet with cooking spray. Add the butter and place the skillet into a preheated 425-degree oven until butter melts.

4. Add the batter to the skillet and bake at 425 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

NOTE: This recipe can be made as muffins using the same oven temperature and about 20 minutes of cooking time.

Explore infinite possibilities.

Experience high school differently. The Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science offers bright and highly motivated high school juniors and seniors in Kentucky a chance to start college while finishing high school at Western Kentucky University. This two-year residential STEM program allows students to participate in college coursework full-time, pursue faculty-mentored research, study abroad, and thrive in a supportive community. With scholarships covering tuition, housing, and meals, students at Gatton can explore their interests in STEM.

Explore your infinite possibilities and apply online at www.wku.edu/academy. The application deadline for Kentucky sophomores is February 1, 2024.

Cruise to Alaska

MAY 24-31, 2024

I’m not a writer.

I’m a teacher with a graduate degree in early childhood education from the University of Louisville. This degree served me well as a mother of four and grandmother of two.

Twenty-five years ago, I was a mother of three with a lovely home and a loving husband who did not love his job. He liked his job, but the people he worked with were passionate about the subject. He was passionate about Kentucky—the people, the places and the state. So when he said, “Let’s start a magazine about Kentucky,” what could I say? If you love what you do, you will never work a day. I don’t think that is precisely true about Steve and Kentucky Monthly. We have had some difficult days. I remember a 25-hour day getting the magazine ready to print. I was handed a box of “stuff” to drive to Lebanon Junction. There, Publisher’s Press would turn the data from a dozen computer disks into the issue. My, how things have changed.

I remember helping make a list of stories we should write. I thought, “What will we write about after that list is finished?” Twenty-five years later, many stories are still waiting to be written: another place, another person, another new business.

For our first three issues, we printed 50,000 copies. A semi-tractor trailer delivered the magazines to our house and filled the garage with 833 or more boxes. We had 40 subscribers. The other 49,960 copies would be loaded into the cars of our team and delivered across the state. We went to schools, libraries, visitor centers and

bookstores. We sometimes inserted the magazine in the local newspaper of whichever town we featured that month. We were creative. We were energetic. Our goal was to have a paid circulation of 30,000.

I dreamed of the day a brown UPS truck would deliver just a few boxes of the magazine to have on hand for the next speaking event or to send as a replacement for a copy lost in the mail. It took a while to get there, but we did.

We haven’t gotten rich by any means. But that was never my husband’s goal. The goal was to produce a quality magazine about our unique state and its people. However, we have done some fantastic things. We have had dinner with the Clooneys (Rosemary, George [who secretly loves me] and Nick), Diane Sawyer, the Judds, Wendell Berry, Miss Kentucky and Miss America (several of them). We have met famous people such as Kevin Bacon (one degree of separation), Garrison Keillor, Ned Beatty and Mary Ellen Walton (Judy Norton).

We have attended openings of restaurants, venues and distilleries, complete with excellent food and drink. And don’t forget the parting gifts! Can you say bourbon? We have stayed in boutique hotels and even sailed on The Rose Sail Inn B&B, a sailboat in the British Virgin Islands with the best Dutch sailor around. We have done things that money cannot buy. Kentuckians are varied and diverse, and we have had a fantastic time learning about and meeting them. There is so much more to do.

Do any of these look familiar? Here’s a few of our favorite October covers from the past.

explore Stanford

Experience Downtown Stanford has become a hub for intimate shopping experiences in a small-town setting. Browse in the charming boutiques, visit a soap shop that offers much more than soap, and treat yourself to a scoop of homemade ice cream.

Kentucky Soaps and Such • 606.365.0808 • kentuckysoapsandsuch.com

Dine at the Bluebird In 2012, Jess and Angela Correll partnered with Marksbury Farm to open The Bluebird. Today, it’s a regional favorite that offers fresh, local ingredients in its Southern-inspired fare. Or try Mama DeVechio’s stone-fired pizza, a traditional Italian pizzaria with a modern twist.

Bluebird Cafe • bluebirdnatural.net

Visit the William Whitley House Pioneer William Whitley built the oldest brick house and first circular racetrack west of the Alleghenies between 1787 and 1794. Visitors can get a glimpse into the lifestyle of 18th century Kentuckians and picnic on the scenic property.

William Whitley House • 606.355.2881 • stateparks.com/william_whitley_ house_state_historic_site_in_kentucky.html

Stay Overnight Each unique Wilderness Road Guest House has been restored to preserve the integrity of the era in which it was built, while providing the best in modern comforts. Some of the houses are named after Kentucky pioneers such as Daniel Boone and Benjamin Logan

Wilderness Road Guest Houses • 606.879.0555 • wildernessroadguest.com

Take a Seasonal Tour Some mysterious events in the early days of the town cannot easily be explained. On the Stanford History and Mysteries Tour, visitors take a stroll through downtown and travel back in time to relive the thrilling history of the community. The dates are Oct. 13, 14, 20 and 21.

Stanford History and Mysteries Tour • angelacorrell.com/event/stanfordhistory-and-mysteries-tour

The Wilderness Road Hospitality is waiting to help plan your visit to Stanford. Scan the code to learn more.

Kentucky Monthly continues our 25th Anniversary festivities in Stanford. This open-house event features food sampling, music and Wilderness Trail Distillery bourbon tasting.

The Stanford Inn at Wilderness Road

207 West Main Street

Stanford, KY

October 20, 4–6 PM

SAVE THE DATE

Meet us in Louisville on November 16!

We’re celebrating all year! Stay tuned for more 25th Anniversary news, including meetups and suggestions for activities in all our host cities. We will feature them in every issue of the magazine and online at www.kentuckymonthly.com

Building Bridges

A legacy of generosity flows through the communities touched by Richard Hunt’s Roebling Point Books & Coffee

BY TINA NEYER

In the parking lot behind Roebling Books & Coffee in Covington, 40 cyclists gather on a hot August evening in tribute to Gloria San Miguel, an avid cyclist, mother and manager at Roebling, who died in a bicycle accident on Aug. 20, 2022. The ride commemorates Gloria’s spirit and is part of the greater story of a bookstore.

Richard Hunt, the owner of Roebling Books & Coffee and a cyclist, sees the responsibility of the store going beyond selling books and coffee—finding ways to support the

communities it serves. “Richard leads by example,” says Jason Reser of the Cincinnati Off-Road Alliance. “His choice to commute on two wheels isn’t just a personal preference. Hunt’s commitment bridges future generations and aspirations.”

With local cities, nonprofits and state officials, a concept of safe lanes for cyclists and pedestrians is emerging in cities along the Ohio River. In supporting the Cincinnati Off-Road Alliance, Hunt shows his commitment to the community in which he resides, works and cycles.

A native of the North Royalton suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, Hunt

worked in New York publishing for 15 years before he sought a quieter location to raise his family. In 1997, he joined F&W Publications in Cincinnati as vice president of sales and marketing. For the next 10 years, Hunt created and ran several independent publishing companies while solidifying his place in the Greater Cincinnati literary scene. His love of outdoor sports such as cycling and hiking led him to create AdventureKEEN, a publishing firm focused on all things outdoors. In Covington, he found a home for the business…and so much more.

Opposite page, Richard Hunt at the Dayton, Ky., location of Roebling Books & Coffee.

From a Bridge Builder’s Office to a Bookstore

Amid shelves filled with biographies and memoirs, a window in Roebling Books & Coffee’s original location in Covington looks out on the south tower of the Roebling Suspension Bridge with its ornate top finials. Hunt muses that could be the window John A. Roebling looked through to manage construction of his innovative bridge from 1856-1867. Since that time, the building has served many functions, including the Kenton County Legal Aid office, until 2008, when Hunt moved AdventureKEEN into the space.

The nature of publishing requires sustained concentration. Most of the staff opted for quiet upstairs offices with sturdy bookshelves meant for

heavy law journals. As the publishing company grew, Hunt renovated the old building. His experience in bookstore start-ups lent itself to a vision of repurposed Blockbuster video shelves in what he called “godawful colors” to populate the first floor to showcase KEEN titles. Neighbors took notice as the building at the corner of East Third and Greenup began to buzz with activity.

“I extrapolated the role books had on my life and wanted to provide the same for others; therefore, building upon the notion of a book as personal extension of self, learning, establishing a place and role in the world to give to others,” Hunt says of his love for books that lead him to open the bookstore in 2010. Cozy rooms were created for community gatherings or pulling a book from a shelf and sipping coffee.

Today, the Covington location bustles with coffee drinkers, activists, businesspeople, tourists curious about the iconic bridge, and those in hunt of the perfect read. AdventureKEEN and other imprints that Hunt has acquired inhabit offices on the second floor, but the maze of rooms on the first floor is the heartbeat of the Licking Riverside neighborhood.

Branching Out

A vacant gas station in Newport came to life in 2021, when the building’s new owners and Hunt agreed that it would be a great place for a second bookstore location. Only a mile and a half separate the two locales. Hunt believed that, across the divide of the Licking River, a bridge could connect the literary world with a community thirsting for words. A former service

Bridging books, beans and being.

bay is filled with tall shelves—some moveable for large gatherings such as open-mic nights and author readings. State Rep. Rachel Roberts, a resident of Newport, says, “It’s like a dream come true to have a coffee shop and independent bookseller just steps from my front door.”

When tornadoes devastated Western Kentucky in December 2021, Roberts issued a call for supplies. Her porch quickly filled to overflowing with donations. “I contacted Hunt and asked if Roebling in Newport could be a drop-off point,” she says. “He and the staff could not have been more generous. Every hour or so, I picked up donations from their sheltered entry, filling truckloads of supplies and caravanning to the areas of need. We did the same when floods hit Eastern Kentucky [in the summer of 2022].”

A different story unfolded when Roebling Books opened its Dayton, Kentucky, location in April. Julia Keister, the owner of Lil’s Bagels, went to Hunt asking for a job when rent increases forced the popular eatery to close in Covington. Neighbors for many years, Lil’s and Roebling Books reimagined their relationship. “Joining forces with Roebling has been an amazing experience. Roebling and Lil’s always felt like one family, so being able to truly live and grow together has felt like a dream come true,” Keister says. “People often think that

the collaboration meant that Lil’s [Kitchen] was simply behind the new food program that you see at Dayton and Newport, but the intertwining is actually way deeper.

“People from the Lil’s crew are now booksellers, baristas, event specialists, retail buyers and a little bit of everything in between. While it can be a challenge for any two groups to merge—and there definitely have been some bumps—I believe our joint ‘community-first’ mission is what has made the experience so meaningful and powerful and will continue to do so going for ward.”

Links to the Dayton community start with The Lodge KY, a rental space for recording musicians, artists and photographers across the street from Roebling Books. Musicians and artists now have access to food, drink, and stacks of rare and used books just a few steps away. Scott Beseler, owner of The Lodge KY, has long awaited a community partner in proximity. “Since the first day Roebling opened on our block, there has been a noticeable increase in foot traffic and new faces,” he says. “They are a catalyst of positivity, and I am so happy to have them as neighbors.

“Tentacles in the community are born out of this place.”

The books of Gurney Norman, Pauletta Hansel, Richard Taylor, bell hooks, Robert Gipe, Silas House, and numerous other Kentucky writers grace the shelves of Roebling Books.

The Covington and Newport locations carry titles of other notable Kentuckians such as Robert Penn Warren and Wendell Berry-signed first editions.

Like other regional authors, Ron Ellis, author of Cogan’s Woods and Yonder: Tales From an Outdoor Life, found Roebling to be more than just a bookstore. On any given day, he meets with other creatives there with an eye toward launching others in their pursuits. He is a founding member of Gugel Alley Writers, the brainchild of two other local writers. Ellis points out that Roebling connects to Cincinnati through the Books by the Banks book festival, The Mercantile Library and The Literary Club of Cincinnati.

Author Ann Hagedorn, whose latest narrative nonfiction book is Sleeper Agent: The Atomic Spy in America Who Got Away, sees Roebling Books & Coffee as “a true gift, partly because it exudes such a fabulous aura of homelike warmth mixed with adventure. It’s a delightful store, where piles of books cover every table and bookshelves stir the fine art of browsing, while the wondrous owner and well-read staff members entice readers and champion authors. I’m honored that they stock my books and respect my work as an author. What an inspiration it is to know that Roebling Books & Coffee always awaits my next book!”

Sheila Williams, a novelist and

Dayton

301 6 th Avenue 859.308.7086

librettist, began work on an opera called Fierce by conducting sessions with students from Music Resource Center Cincinnati and WordPlay Cincy. Shannon Eggleston, executive director of the Union, Kentuckybased I.Imagine Photography nonprofit that provides photographybased education to students, gathered a team of young women to photograph a few of Williams’ sessions. Eggleston and Williams attribute their association with

Roebling as the connection that brought them together.

The artistic publications of Larkspur Press from Owenton have a prominent place at Roebling Books in a gesture of support of other publishers. Hunt believes that “Kentucky has a remarkable literary history, which continues on through today’s authors and artists, so it’s been reaffirming to gain the opportunity to showcase that legacy on Roebling’s shelves.”

What the Future Holds

“Having just turned 65, I’m about as far from retiring now as when I started at Bantam Books in 1982,” Hunt says. And it shows, as Roebling takes part in community events—be it the Victorian Christmas Tour & Tea in Newport or an art and music street fair in Dayton. Hunt advocates for free speech and the freedom to read as an employer, taxpayer and supporter of other indie businesses. Neighborhood revitalization groups, countless small businesses and organizations such as Kentuckians for The Commonwealth have a place at Roebling

In the short term, Hunt is working on a Go with Glo Memorial Park outside the Covington bookstore location to honor Gloria San Miguel and to raise awareness for safer streets for cyclists and pedestrians. The vision of thriving bookstores also is top of mind. Hunt plans to have employees take ownership of Roebling sometime in the next five to 10 years.

A legacy of generosity flows through the communities touched by Roebling Books & Coffee along the Ohio River. Roebling truly bridges beans, books and beings, as it proclaims on its website. Q

In honor and remembrance of Gloria San Miguel, Roebling Books will make donations to The Covington Farmer’s Market. If you would like to contribute, visit one of their locations or send donations via Venmo @RoPo-BoCo.

Books & Coffee.

Q&A with Richard Hunt

Richard Hunt’s 40-plus years in the publishing industry began when he received the first Oscar Dystel Fellowship at New York University in 1982. Since then, he has become an authority on the changing world of book publishing. Tina Neyer spoke with him about that world and his viewpoint on artificial intelligence.

Tina Neyer: What has been the conventional wisdom about the book industry from your vantage point?

Richard Hunt: Initially, as I was thinking about whether I should go with the Dystel Fellowship or pursue a creative writing degree, I tried to imagine the long tail of each, and, at least for me, publishing easily won out.

At least based on authors I was reading who had a significant oeuvre and good reviews, writing 20 books across their careers, [they] seemed like all-stars. Whereas an editor usually has 6-10 books in various forms moving through to publication in a year’s time—a 30-year career could be 300 books.

Depending on how you want to approach/scale/juggle it, publishing is akin to the Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.”

I love the path that I’ve been lucky to follow, the books I’ve been able to read, the authors and booksellers I’ve met. It’s not a business driven by a mad rush for overnight profits. While maintaining profitability is an ever-rising task, it doesn’t have the wild swings of the stock market or the plunder of deep-sea divers. It’s a personable, thoughtful, even revelatory arc from word one to book on shelf.

TN: Today, artificial intelligence is impacting the publishing world. What is your point of view regarding this new additive to the mix?

RH: AI is the latest challenger to enter the publishing boxing ring. Technology, if we can invoke that word for Gutenberg’s printing press made in the 1400s, has always been a beguiling sparring partner as the up-and-comers battle the aging, reigning champion. What makes it impossible to project the looming impact is that all our guesses are based on the past, i.e., our experience. We’ve never experienced anything like this in the past. During my 40-plus years, I’ve seen a lot of change in publishing: word processing, voice-to-text, cover/page design available in off-the-shelf programs, email, ebooks, audiobooks. The only thing for certain is that it’s pointless to bash or denigrate AI’s potential. It’s going to make a significant change…it’ll become part of the process. Publishers, for all our idiosyncratic ways, learn quickly to adopt labor-saving methods.

A foundation for assessing the AI beast is this: “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck.” Good editors are smart. They can sense when reading something that it wasn’t crafted by a human.

AI has a weird overlap with that point of view, because from what I’ve learned, it can be applied just about

anywhere in the chain. Sure, it could be tapped by an author or a copywriter, etc. But what we’re always looking for in our books is expert advice and a distinct authorial voice. That’s the opposite of what you’re going to get with AI, which is described as the process of scanning all available citations then mushing them all together, like an editorial word cloud. Readers embrace that singular, authoritative voice of insight and inspiration. At least at this moment, what AI gives is regurgitated output with a little bit of everything but nothing with distinction. As a final note, the asterisk is that AI will keep improving upon itself as the processing smooths out. But before we let that notion intimidate us, people in publishing also keep improving as they learn more and gain experience.

We can’t just wave off AI. That would be the failure of hubris. We have to wrestle with it daily to pin it down, eradicate it like kudzu before it overtakes everything. In time, perhaps we’ll find real value in it. Readers and publishers don’t want counterfeits. We all yearn for a genuine piece of writing that comes from one author’s heart and soul.

TN: As a large regional publisher, are you optimistic about printed books, their role in the world today and in the future?

RH: [I’ve had the opportunity] to see it all, from a New York City mass-market powerhouse that then grew

by acquisition and sales to the largest publishing company in the world [Bertelsmann, which owns Penguin Random House domestically] to F&W Publications in Cincinnati, which was one of the smartest publishers I’ve ever seen by finding a core category for enthusiasts—be it writing, painting, crafts, graphic design, etc.—then encompassing that reader with magazines, books and book clubs.

At AdventureKEEN, we combine the best of those two publishing points of view. By thinking about outdoor enthusiasts where they live— birdwatchers, hikers, campers, foragers, kids, grown-ups, cyclists, naturalists, etc.—we offer guidebooks to explore and enjoy the region readers live in or will be traveling to. They trust us when doing a bucket-list trip to hike the Grand Canyon or paddle Carolina whitewater. It gives us great joy to hear from readers of 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Cincinnati or Five-Star Trails: Louisville or Hiking the Red River Gorge that they never knew they had such wonderful places close to home. Birds by the backyard feeders. A guide to the stars in the night sky. And to do this for cities and citizens across the country—that’s what we love to do. Our catalog includes thousands of titles, and we do around 50 new, or new edition, titles every year—that’s a big challenge, and, maybe one day, AI might help us do it. We’ll see. But for now, we listen to our authors and their editors to design and deliver books that captivate readers with new adventures…right there in their state, city or neighborhood park.

photos by Rebecca Redding

BY DEBORAH KOHL KREMER

HER NEW KENTUCKY HOME

Author J.R. Ward hit her stride blending horror and romance before shifting gears as a “love letter” to her adopted home

New York Times best-selling author J.R. Ward of Louisville has many stories in her head—most involving hot, chiseled, sexy vampires. She said she sees these people in her mind’s eye, and it is her job to get their stories down on paper.

With 20 million J.R. Ward-penned books in print in 26 countries, that is a lot of paper.

Ward is the author of 61 books, including The Black Dagger Brotherhood series of paranormal romance novels that focus on a society of vampire warriors.

The native New Englander had an accomplished career before she started writing books.

As a child, Ward liked to tell stories, and after graduating from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, with a double major in art history and history, with a medieval concentration in both, she was encouraged by her mother to publish her work.

“I thought that was ridiculous, so I decided to go to law school,” Ward said.

Her career took her to hospital administration. While she worked in her professional position, she continued writing.

“I wrote as a hobby,” Ward said. “I don’t golf; I don’t drink; and other than running and working out, I don’t really have any other interests.”

Ward’s then-boyfriend, now-husband, Neville Blakemore, found some of her writing and thought it would make a good book. “One of his ex-girlfriends worked for a literary agent in New York, so he got me an intro. They read some of my stuff and agreed to represent me,” she said, “which is still extraordinary to me and proof that you should never burn bridges.”

When the couple married and moved from Boston to Blakemore’s hometown of Louisville, Ward changed careers and began writing romance novels. After four books that didn’t sell well, Ward was dismissed from her contract. “I received the news in the parking lot of Whole Foods on Shelbyville Road,” she said. “I remember exactly where I was when the phone call came.”

She had given up her law career, moved to what she felt was an almost-foreign land of Kentucky, and

didn’t know what to do next. Her agent at the time recommended that she stop trying to write like other authors and find a way to write in her own style.

A huge fan of Stephen King books and anything spooky or scary, Ward struggled to marry that genre with romance. In a Louisville bookstore, she saw books in the romance section about paranormal characters, and she realized that a vampire can be a hero.

“And once that clicked in my head, I was off to the races,” Ward said. “I knew exactly what I wanted to write, and I was very lucky that The Black Dagger Brotherhood showed up in my head.”

Right when she needed them, the characters who populate her books appeared. In describing her writing style, Ward said the stories are presented in short clips, similar to movies, as though she is witnessing their lives firsthand. Then, she puts these bites into chronological order and decides which point of view is the best way to let the book unfold.

But it is not only steamy, sensual, erotic vampires

who show up in Ward’s head. Some hunky, rich horse breeders and distillers showed up, too—a result of Ward having lived in the Bluegrass State for a few decades. Thus began her three-book series called The Bourbon Kings.

“It was my love letter to my adopted home,” Ward said of the series that weaves the story of a fictional family who lives in a fictional river city. The affluent and dysfunctional family members carry a great deal of baggage while maintaining their place in society.

Ward has woven into her work a few Easter eggs—or hidden surprises—that Kentucky readers will recognize, such as River Road, Blue Dog Bakery, Joella’s, and a street called Dorn Avenue, a tip of the hat to Louisville’s Zorn Avenue. The family members are fans of the local fictional university’s basketball team, the Eagles, who wear red.

In The Bourbon Kings series, the basketball coach attends a giant pre-horse race brunch at the family estate, which Ward admitted is based on the pre-Kentucky Oaks brunch she and Neville host each year.

Above, the author photographed in her home in Louisville; opposite page, one of Ward’s fur babies, Naamah, joined the shoot.

This year’s brunch included more than 700 people, all decked out in their Derby finest. “The ladies all come in their beautiful hats and clothes, and the gentlemen all come in pastels,” she said. “But there is a purpose behind it.”

As supporters of nonprofits in Louisville and statewide, Blakemore and Ward invite representatives of those organizations as well as people with significant resources.

Ward said this enables both groups to interact in an elegant but relaxed atmosphere that is cordial and warm, which results in community connections.

After the brunch, Blakemore and guests head over to Churchill Downs for a day at the races while Ward quickly changes back to work mode. “I get out of my dress, hat, and jewelry and get into a pair of PJ bottoms and a Hanes T-shirt, and I’m putting chairs away and taking things down,” she said. “In our family, we believe that everyone rolls their sleeves up, so I work right along with everyone who is packing up the party.”

Work is central to Ward’s core. She rarely, if ever, takes a day off from writing. Although she has achieved many milestones along the way, she doesn’t pay attention to them because it distracts her from her work, and, she explained, “Work is the basis for everything.”

With the rigor of publishing three books a year, Ward compared her work ethic to a horse wearing blinders so that it sees only what is in front of it.

“I have to keep my brain on a certain track of focus in order to write,” she said. “Once you are on that track, it is about controlling your brain and keeping it locked in.”

Ward never could have predicted the twists and turns her life has taken thus far, both throughout her career and where she put down roots. With ties to Massachusetts and upstate New York, she certainly never thought she would live away from home. When she fell in love with a Kentuckian in the early 2000s, Ward directed him to her mother.

“I said if [my mother] wasn’t moving to Kentucky, then I wasn’t moving to Kentucky,” Ward said. “But she said, ‘All right, let’s go.’ And now she lives here, too.”

Ward has embraced Kentucky, and, although she doesn’t drink, she is enthralled by the Commonwealth’s love of and loyalty to bourbon. She is not a fan of Kentucky’s storms that occasionally create the need for a tornado watch, but she does love the giant, beautiful trees and that the sun sets later here than it does up East.

None of that compares to her love of the University of Louisville Cardinals men’s basketball team. As a season ticket holder, she’s at every home game and admits she’s screaming at the TV while watching away games. She described herself as a “batshit crazy” fan and laughed when recounting that sometimes Blakemore won’t watch with her because she gets so worked up.

However, writing stays Ward’s central focus. New books will continue as new people and stories show up in her head, which she admitted is out of the ordinary but just happens.

She said that you can count on her to tell a story that ends up well, no matter how much life hurts or feels as if it is going nowhere—and that miracles happen. “The good guys still come out on top, and happily-ever-afters are still out there for all of us,” she said. Q

Find J.R. Ward at the Kentucky Book Festival this month! See page 41 to learn more about the annual event held in Lexington.

PHOTOS BY REBECCA REDDING

A Century of Elegance

BY JACKIE HOLLENKAMP BENTLEY

It’s October 1923. The Brown Hotel’s brick and mortar have barely set on the 16-story Georgian-Revival architectural beauty at Fourth Street and Broadway in downtown Louisville. The chandeliers sparkle in all their glory as they oversee party after party to celebrate the hotel’s grand opening.

During one of several grandopening dinners and galas,

toastmaster Judge Robert Worth Bingham pays homage to the hotel’s creator, J. Graham Brown

“Success is never an accident but comes from courage, character, judgment and hard work,” Bingham toasts.

Maybe a bit of a temper could be added into the mix. Legend has it that, after Brown was refused entry to the nearby Seelbach Hotel due to a disheveled appearance, he

immediately decided to build his own hotel. Just 10 months and $4 million later, Louisville welcomed another luxury hotel, one built in record time.

The hotel boasted 600 rooms when it opened, each having its own bathroom—a rarity at the time.

In The Brown Hotel and Louisville’s Magic Corner, author Kay Gill gushed over the hotel’s luxury and opulence.

“Everything that architectural

Celebrating 100 years since its opening, The Brown Hotel attracted the crème de la crème of 20th century celebrities

Opposite page, historical artifacts of The Brown Hotel, including a photo of founder J. Graham Brown.

science could furnish has been employed in building the hotel… Every modern appliance known to both America and the Old World in the way of service and comfort to mankind has been installed.”

Former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George was the first to sign the hotel’s guest book. Over the next 100 years, hundreds of celebrities, politicians, royals and people of note would fill the pages. Famous singer Lily Pons, who allowed her pet lion cub to roam freely in her suite, was among them, as were the Duke of Windsor and Queen Marie of Romania.

Throughout the decades, guests may have caught a glimpse, received an autograph or even had a conversation with Liberace, Joan Crawford, Bing Crosby, Elizabeth Taylor, Tony Bennett, Wayne Newton and, in later decades, Muhammad Ali, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Jerry Seinfeld, B.B. King, Dwight Yoakam, Taylor Swift and Prince, who played piano all night in the lobby.

The Brown has been used as a backdrop for countless photo shoots and movies. Cameron Crowe brought the entire cast and crew to The Brown in 2004 for the making of Elizabethtown starring Orlando Bloom,

Kirsten Dunst, Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon.

“People tend to like to book here because we have a longstanding reputation of being discreet and not appearing overwhelmed by those situations, and they know that we have a lot of experience dealing with celebrities,” said Marc Salmon, the hotel historian and human resources director.

The history of the hotel, including the origin of its signature dish, the Hot Brown (see sidebar the next page), is required learning for hotel staff.

“We spend a lot of time in our orientation and in every meeting that we have. You have to tell the history of the hotel; you have to tell the history of the Hot Brown. You have to tell what’s special about the Kentucky Derby,” said Salmon, a 21-year staff member. “So, we spend a lot of time drilling and training on our history. It’s my job to impart that to the staff.”

survived the stock market crash of 1929.

In the 1930s, the Great Depression took a toll on the hotel’s books. J. Graham Brown defaulted on the hotel’s loan. He managed to refinance to keep its doors open but not without asking his employees to work without pay for a time. (He paid them a bonus when the money finally came in.) The Great Flood of 1937 flowed through the first floors of the hotel. (A bell captain caught a fish off the grand staircase, and boats were said to row by in the lobby.) But it was also a place of refuge for those flooded out of their homes. Salmon said Mr. Brown let them stay for free.

When World War II hit, The Brown Hotel played host to many soldiers going to and from Fort Knox. It often was at full capacity with many soldiers and citizens enjoying the hotel’s menu at The English Grill and entertainment in the Crystal Ballroom and the Bluegrass Room.

As with any history as storied as The Brown’s, there have been some dark times through the decades. It opened during Prohibition, and it

Then, there was the suburban exodus of the 1950s and ’60s. Downtown Louisville was no longer the place to see and be seen. Add to that the death in 1969 of J. Graham Brown, who had never married and

never taken a business partner or even a vacation. The hotel’s slow decline ended with its closing in 1971. For the next decade, the building was the home of Jefferson County’s Board of Education and The Brown School.

By the early 1980s, the grand hotel sat empty. A group of local businessmen formed The BroadwayBrown Partnership and purchased the property to bring it back to its former glory. By the end of 1983, The Brown Hotel once again offered its legendary hospitality and Hot Browns to guests and travelers. Newly renovated rooms were expanded and modernized. As a result, the number of rooms dropped from 600 to 294.

In 1993, Ian Lloyd-Jones, owner of The Camberley Collection, purchased the hotel, now on the National Register of Historic Places. An avid art and antique collector, Lloyd-Jones adorned the halls and walls of the hotel with oil paintings and grand décor, including two large vases still standing in the lobby.

Ownership transferred again in 2006 to its current owners, Galveston, Texas-based 1859 Historic Hotels Ltd.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. The Brown Hotel remained open with limited rooms available— primarily to accommodate pilots and crew from airlines based at Louisville

The Brown Hotel is noted for its lavish décor, gracious hospitality and the iconic dish that originated there—the Hot Brown. The open-faced turkey, ham, tomato and bacon sandwich with creamy Mornay sauce and melted cheese was first served at The Brown in 1926, when Chef Fred K. Schmidt wanted to present something other than ham and eggs to the diners.

Former Head Waiter Fred Caldwell was quoted about the dish in Kay Gill ’s The Brown Hotel and Louisville’s Magic Corner : “[The] lunchtime favorite was always The Hot Brown. Maybe 200 people would be eating lunch, and 190 of them would be eating Hot Brown sandwiches.”

Marc Salmon , hotel historian and human resources director, said the Hot Brown is still made the same way, with one person solely in charge of making the sauce to keep it consistent.

“We’re roasting turkeys every night,” he said. “It is served at a lot of different places, but people come here for the authentic one.”

YIELDS TWO OPEN-FACED SANDWICHES

2 ounces whole butter

2 ounces all-purpose flour

8 ounces heavy cream

8 ounces whole milk

½ cup Pecorino Romano cheese, plus 1 tablespoon for garnish Pinch of ground nutmeg  Salt and pepper, to taste

14 ounces thickly sliced roasted turkey breast

4 slices Texas toast (with crusts trimmed)

4 slices crispy bacon

2 Roma tomatoes, sliced in half  Paprika  Parsley

1. In a 2-quart saucepan, melt butter and slowly whisk in flour until the ingredients combine and form a thick paste (roux). Continue to cook the roux for two minutes over medium-low heat, stirring frequently.

2. Whisk heavy cream and whole milk into the roux and cook over medium heat until the cream begins to simmer, about 23 minutes. Remove sauce from heat and slowly whisk in Pecorino Romano cheese until the Mornay sauce is smooth. Add nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste.

3. For each Hot Brown, place two slices of toast with crusts removed in an oven-safe dish. Cut one slice in half corner to corner to make two triangles, and leave the other slice in a square shape. Cover with half of the turkey.

4. Take the two halves of Roma tomato and two toast points and set them alongside the base of the turkey and toast. Next, pour half of the Mornay sauce to completely cover the dish. Sprinkle with additional Pecorino Romano cheese. Repeat with second sandwich.

5. Place the dishes in oven. Suggested bake time is 20 minutes at 350 degrees. When the cheese begins to brown and bubble, remove from oven, cross two pieces of crispy bacon on top, sprinkle with paprika and parsley, and serve immediately.

A rooftop garden view; opposite page, a stalwart statue of J. Graham Brown keeps watch outside his signature hotel.

Recipe and photo courtesy of The Brown Hotel, Louisville

celebrating 100 years

October 25, 1923

Anniversary Gala

To commemorate its upcoming centennial anniversary, The Brown Hotel will host a Roaring Twentiesthemed gala dinner in it opulent crystal ballroom on Oct. 25. The event will feature a night of entertainment, including era-themed music; passed mini Hot Brown bites and a special anniversary welcome cocktail; commemorative speeches with a Korbel-sponsored toast; a four-course seated dinner featuring a customized, chef-curated menu, wine and dessert table; a hotel history photo presentation; an anniversary-themed photography backdrop; and more.

Guests are encouraged to wear their best 1920s-inspired attire. A prize will be awarded at the end of the evening to the best dressed guest.

Celebrate with The Brown:

The Brown Hotel Anniversary Gala

335 West Broadway, Louisville 502.583.1234

brownhotel.com/about-the-brown/ 100-years-of-the-brown-hotel

"

This is the house that J. Graham built."

Among the elegance and tradition of The Brown Hotel, guests can find pieces of the past 100 years around every corner, including vintage menus, movie posters, awards and historical photos. The distinctive “B” representing the hotel’s name can be seen throughout its décor. Can you spot one?

If these walls could talk...

Below, from left, two windows original to the hotel can be viewed from the rooftop garden; a historical U.S. mailbox remains in use today; Marc Salmon, the hotel historian and human resources director, points out photos from yesteryear displayed in the lobby. Bottom, from left, a wine list for the 1935 Kentucky Derby hangs on a wall near the bar; original safe deposit boxes for guests are tucked away behind the hotel counter; small phone booth areas can be found throughout the hotel hallways. Flip to the contents page to see another one that caught our eye.

Muhammad Ali International Airport.

“We took advantage of the pandemic to do a very noisy project, and we redid all of our showers,” Salmon said. “They all have modern showers with glass doors and incredible tile. When we reopened in

1983, all of our rooms had bathtubs, and nobody wanted bathtubs and shower curtains anymore. It’s a project we could have never done at regular occupancy because it was so incredibly noisy.”

Today, The Brown Hotel continues

to welcome guests at the corner of Fourth Street and Broadway. The English Grill serves diners in impeccable style. Celebrities still are spotted in the lobby, and the original chandeliers in the Crystal Ballroom retain their magical sparkle. Q

‘Enough to Make Angels Weep’

The Battle of Perryville, fought in the blistering heat and extreme drought, tested the will of thousands of soldiers—including the writer’s ancestor

TEXT + PHOTOS BY

SEAN PATRICK HILL

Istand with my daughter on the lip of a hill, overlooking a hollow where a mock battle is taking place in Boyle County. The men before us are Confederate soldier reenactors, and they are slowly gaining ground against Union troops. Officers at the edge of the skirmish are astride horses, occasionally shouting orders. The air is filled with the crack of rifles and stifled by smoke. It is midOctober, and the open fields have gone dry under a clear sky. The sun burns down on the men in the hollow and the crowd gathered along the ridge. A young boy on his father’s shoulders asks if the men will pretend to fall when they are shot. I wonder the same, but that’s not what happens.

We stand close to a woman wearing a 19th century corset, hoop skirt and bonnet. She cheers the Southern soldiers and, much like a sports announcer, details the movements of the regiments. The Confederates begin to gain the hill, atop which sits a Union cannon battalion that periodically punctuates

the rifle fire with bursts of gunpowder, which echo through the Chaplin Hills. In 1862, the cannonade was supported by a regiment of Wisconsin men and by volunteers from Indiana.

I have brought my 13-year-old daughter here because we are descended from one of those Indiana soldiers who defended that very hill—my third great-grandfather.

The weekend of our visit in early autumn 2022 marked the 160th anniversary of what is generally known as the Battle of Perryville, one of only a few Civil War battles fought in Kentucky, and one that, historically, has been little regarded. Bull Run, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg—each of these names comes easily to mind. Perryville was, however, one of the most important battles in the War Between the States, and it determined the fate of Kentucky, which, of course, remained neutral during the war.

The battle, fought on Oct. 8, 1862, pitched Gen. Braxton Bragg, who led the Army of Mississippi, against Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell and his Army of the Ohio. The battle was a culmination of what was known as the Confederate Heartland Offensive or, more generally, as the Kentucky Campaign. Kentucky’s strategic value was immense. It gave access to the Ohio River and to the railroads in the region, all of which could be used for military supply routes. President Abraham Lincoln knew full well the importance of keeping Kentucky under Union control.

In late August, Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, with some 21,000 Confederate troops, arrived in Lexington. Bragg began moving north from Nashville toward Louisville. Buell, when he discovered the Confederate movements, made haste for Louisville to block the two armies from joining. When he reached Louisville, Buell managed to recruit thousands of new soldiers; my greatgreat-great-grandfather was among them.

Henry T. Henson was born in March 1845, a descendant of the original settlers of Orange County, Indiana. Henson was a farmer who enlisted in Company I of the 38th Indiana Infantry on Sept. 18, 1861. He fought and was wounded at the Battle of Perryville. He went on to fight a few months later at Stones River in Tennessee on New Year’s Eve, where he was wounded again, after which he served in the Invalid Corps for the remainder of the war. He mustered out as a corporal on July 15, 1865.

What astounds me most is that Henson would have been only 17 when he fought at Perryville. What the roar of the cannons, the sight of mangled bodies—not to mention his own wound—would have done to him I’ll never know. Once home, he married and fathered 10 children. He died at the age of 80, when my

grandfather, my mother’s father, would have been eight or nine years old. I wonder if my grandfather heard stories of the war when he was young. •

Kenneth W. Noe’s book The Howling Storm details the ferocious drought of 1862 and how it demoralized the soldiers, even disabling them.

Parched crops failed, and there was little food for troops on either side to forage during the interminable marches. River levels were low, and, in places, the waterways had run dry. Supply lines along rivers faltered, and men at the front wanted for necessities and stores. Temperatures soared. The men were exhausted, and some died from heatstroke. They drank when they could, Noe writes, “from puddles or wagon ruts.” Wherever they walked, stifling clouds of dust rose to choke them.

Soldiers

blinding smoke from the artillery, and the stifling heat. Opposite page, the annual Battle of Perryville Reenactment and the gravesite of the author’s ancestor, who fought in Kentucky’s most famous Civil War battle at the tender age of 17.

On Oct. 1, Buell moved his army— Hoosiers included—out of Louisville south toward Bardstown in the 86-degree heat. They numbered some 55,000 soldiers. Men fainted along the road. They tossed their equipment into ditches and drank from stagnant ponds, sometimes trying to filter the water through handkerchiefs. What rain fell was inconsequential, each time less than a quarter inch.

When the Confederates arrived in Perryville, the Chaplin River was mostly dry. There was some stagnant water in the bed, but in the hills beyond town, the armies could find both cover and an occasional spring. Three roads met at Perryville—Buell’s Union forces were approaching on each. On one ridge, Peters Hill, Confederates took up a line, behind which were the aforementioned springs. They were guarding the water with their lives.

The Union troops were exhausted.

in the Battle of Perryville fought amid the roar of cannon fire, the

One corporal in the 81st Indiana wrote, “Our marching was very severe on us, we suffered a great deal for water. The enemy drank up all the streams and wells on each side of the road. Some of the men went three and four miles to get water. We were thankful for any kind of water we could get, although some of it was not fit for animals to drink.”

The day of the battle, the temperature swelled to 90 degrees. The air was choked with dust. As Noe writes, it was reported that desperate soldiers “shoved the dead aside to drink from the bloody pools in the bed of Doctor’s Creek.” The wounded suffered yet more. Buell had left medical supplies in Louisville to save time, so hospitals were fashioned out of sheds and barns, but there was virtually no water for doctors to wash their hands. Gangrene, sepsis and typhoid spread.

Today, you can walk the main road in Perryville, past the houses along the Chaplin River, and imagine the dying men in those rooms. • • •

The battlefield is preserved as the Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site. It commemorates, among other things, the more than 7,600 men who were killed, wounded or went missing in its single day of battle. Its 1,200 acres are virtually unchanged from the day of the fight. Save for the abundant birdsong, it is

IF YOU GO

immensely quiet. The wind worries over the grasses and wildflowers growing there, pricking at the occasional fence line.

I spoke with Bryan Bush, the park manager, and told him I came to the battle reenactment to follow the history of my ancestor. Bush went to his office and returned

battlefield was enough to make angels weep.”

During the reenactment, I’d asked a park officer if I might go near the cannonade. I could see from the main viewing area that it was cordoned off by yellow tape. I told him I only wanted to photograph the men around the cannons. He assured me I could, though he warned my daughter and I that we might not want to be too close when the cannons began firing. He was right.

with a copy of Henry T. Henson’s military card that Bush had downloaded from a government database. Henson was discharged as a corporal. Bush told me that the promotion of my ancestor was an honor.

I drove up the road to the position of Simonson’s Battery, where Henson fought. It is marked by a cannon set beside a small stand of maples. On the signboard there, I get a sense of what my third greatgrandfather experienced in quotes of men from his regiment. Col. Benjamin F. Scribner wrote, “The wonder is that any of us were saved, for we were under a murderous crossfire for hours.” Henry Fales Perry, a private who was wounded in the shoulder, wrote, “The spectacle presented by the

I was left with a feeling of astonishment. I admired this man, my greatgrandmother’s grandfather, not because he fought for his country, or for a cause, but simply because he survived. He was a boy, and what he saw must have not only terrified him but left him with no delusions about what men are capable of. He may have felt excitement and anticipation, but, more likely, he felt fear, panic.

That a nearby farmer buried many Confederate soldiers was an act of mercy. Men, many of them young, suffered on both sides. Many returned home deeply wounded. And some, like Henry Henson, went on to more battles as winter came on and the snow began to fall.

A monument to the fallen Confederate soldiers and another to the dead Union soldiers are located on the park grounds. Being a descendant of one of the men who survived, married and ensured my birth, I feel the weight of that marble. Q

The Battle of Perryville Commemoration is scheduled for Oct. 7–8, with tours, lectures and cannon and rifle demonstrations. The Battle Reenactment takes place Oct. 14 from 9 a.m.–5 p.m. For more information on the Perryville Battlefield and upcoming events, call 859.332.8631 or visit perryvillebattlefield.org.

Celebrating Spalding Writers at the 2023 Kentucky Book Festival

Frank X Walker, A Is for Affrilachia / Silas House, Lark Ascending / Erin Keane, Runaway

Crystal Wilkinson, Perfect Black / Chris Helvey, Last Train to Miami

Kathleen Driskell, The Vine Temple / Patricia L. Hudson, Traces

spalding.edu/mfa

Kentucky high school sophomores: our post-secondary, residential program provides two-years of university courses at no cost to you; giving you the opportunity of a lifetime to change the world.

WWW.MOREHEADSTATE.EDU/CRAFT-ACADEMY MSU is an affirmative action, equal opportunity, educational institution.

PROUD PARTNER & 2023 HOST OF THE KENTUCKY BOOK FESTIVAL!

Dear Authors, Readers, Fans and Friends of Books,

Kentucky Humanities is proud to welcome you to the 42nd edition of the Kentucky Book Festival, where every lover of literature can find a book to enjoy and to shake the hand that wrote it. The keyword for this festival is community, for we would have no humanity without community and no community without humanity.

We hope you enjoy browsing the author’s gallery, attending a few of the main stage events and writer’s room sessions, and visiting the children’s tent with fun activities for the next generation of readers. Thanks to our sponsors, for a second year, hundreds of children 12 and under can receive vouchers for a free book of their choice. This festival would not have been possible without the generous help of numerous organizations and individuals. We’re grateful to our partners at Joseph-Beth Booksellers for hosting and assisting in planning the event. Our volunteers’ dedication and enthusiasm are greatly appreciated. We hope that everyone who attends the event leaves enriched by engaging books and treasured friendships.

Katerina Stoykova

OCTOBER 21

10 AM –5 PM

SIGNING TIMES MAY VARY

Joseph-Beth Booksellers

161 Lexington Green Circle Lexington, KY 40503

Authors will sign books at various locations within Joseph-Beth Booksellers

Most authors will be seated downstairs on the lower level with access via escalator and elevator. Maps will be provided day-of.

Table of Contents

AND THE TEAM OF THE KENTUCKY BOOK FESTIVAL

is offering free inspection & cleaning of your jewelry

Sat, October 21, 2023 Kentucky Book Festival plus 10% off your purchase (some restrictions apply)

Thank you to the staff & volunteers who make this event possible! We appreciate your time and support in making the 2023 Kentucky Book Festival a success.

KENTUCKY HUMANITIES BOARD OF DIRECTORS

CHAIR

Brian Clardy, Ph.D. Murray

VICE CHAIR

Jennifer Cramer, Ph.D. Lexington

SECRETARY - TREASURER

Clarence E. Glover Louisville

Chelsea Brislin, Ph.D. Lexington

Selena Sanderfer Doss, Ph.D. Bowling Green

Ben Fitzpatrick, Ph.D. Morehead

Catha Hannah Louisville

Sara Hemingway Owensboro

Lois Mateus Harrodsburg

Keith McCutchen, D.M.A. Frankfort

Thomas Owen, Ph.D. Louisville

Jordan Parker Lexington

Libby Parkinson Louisville

Penelope Peavler Louisville

Lou Anna Red Corn, JD Lexington

Andrew Reed Pikeville

Judy Rhoads, Ed.D. Owensboro

Ron Sheffer, JD Louisville

Hope Wilden, CPFA Lexington

Bobbie Ann Wrinkle Paducah

Wayne G. Yates Princeton

KENTUCKY HUMANITIES STAFF

Bill Goodman Executive Director

Kathleen Pool Associate Director

Marianne Stoess Assistant Director

Katerina Stoykova Kentucky Book Festival Director

Zoe Kaylor Kentucky Chautauqua  & Speakers Bureau  Coordinator

Derek Beaven Program & Administrative Assistant

Julie Klier Events Producer

Karen Spivey Graphic Designer

Luke Newey Kentucky Book Festival Administrative Assistant

Kentucky Humanities is an independent, nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C. Kentucky Humanities is supported by the National Endowment and by private contributions. In addition to producing the Kentucky Book Festival, Kentucky Humanities sponsors PRIME TIME Family Reading Time®, offers Kentucky Chautauqua® and Speakers Bureau programs, hosts Smithsonian traveling exhibits throughout the state, publishes Kentucky Humanities magazine, and awards grants for humanities programs. Views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the NEH or Kentucky Humanities board and staff. Learn more at kyhumanities.org.

OCTOBER 19 • 7 PM

Books & Brews Trivia

An opportunity to socialize and to test your literary trivia! Free and open to the public.

GOODWOOD LEXINGTON

200 LEXINGTON GREEN CIRCLE

LEXINGTON, KY 40503

OCTOBER 21 Festival Day 10 AM to 5 PM

150 authors will be in attendance, meeting readers and signing books. Patrons can enjoy a full slate of main stage events alongside educational workshops and craft talks, as well as a packed schedule of children’s events.

EVENTS

OCTOBER 18 • 12-2 PM

The Literary Luncheon:

A Conversation with Silas House

This is a ticketed event. Register online. The Literary Luncheon: Kentucky Poet Laureate Silas House will be in conversation with writer Patricia Hudson, poet LeTonia Jones and musician Senora May. This event is catered by Ouita Michel and Holly Hill Events.

FASIG-TIPTON

2400 NEWTOWN PIKE

LEXINGTON, KY 40511

Books & Books & Brews Brews

Test Your Literary Trivia

October 19 October 19 7pm 7pm

The program includes special appearances by #1 New York Times bestselling author J.R. Ward, nonfiction writer Stephen Bright with CNN’s Poppy Harlow, as well as a highlight of the book A is for Affrilachia, where author Frank X Walker and illustrator upfromsumdirt will be in conversation with Crystal Wilkinson.

JOSEPH-BETH BOOKSELLERS

161 LEXINGTON GREEN CIRCLE

LEXINGTON, KY 40503

N Children’s

Nancy Allen Dear Vampire

Growing up in Kentucky halfway between Troublesome Creek and Hell-for-Certain and near a town named Hazard, Nancy Allen learned to take the non-risky route of looking before leaping. Dear Vampire invites you into the world of real vampires. Their extraordinary behavior proves that fact is truly stranger than fiction.

Jeff Alt

Time Traveling Through Yellowstone National Park: The Adventures of Bubba Jones

Jeff Alt is a celebrated author and avid outdoor enthusiast. In the fifth book of this award-winning National Park series, Tommy Bubba Jones and his sister, Jenny Hug-aBug, uncover amazing facts about Yellowstone National Park while on a mission to solve a park mystery.

P. Anastasia

POE Prophecies: The Raven

Kentucky author and voice talent P. Anastasia has written two children’s books and 10 novels. The Raven is the story of Aidan Grey, a 12-yearold student at P.O.E. Academy, where the curriculum includes the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Debbie Dadey Ghosts Don’t Eat Potato Chips

A former first grade teacher and school librarian, Debbie Dadey is the author and co-author of 182 traditionally published books. Ghosts Don’t Eat Potato Chips is a graphic novel about Eddie and Howie’s adventures investigating the mystery of disappearing potato chips.

Dr. James Kirby Easterling

The Amazing Adventures of Chester the Wiener Dog

Dr. James Easterling is currently Assistant Professor/Director of the Global Supply Chain Management program at Eastern Kentucky University. This book is about a little abandoned wiener dog puppy named “Chester,” who eventually finds his furever family and a warm, safe, and nurturing home.

Tama Fortner God, I Feel Sad

Tama Fortner is an ECPA awardwinning and bestselling author with more than 50 titles to her credit. God, I Feel Sad teaches kids ages 4 to 8 how to identify the feeling of sadness, see signs of sadness in others, and recognize things that can make them feel sad.

Events and authors are subject to change.

LaTrell Halcomb Brownie Boy

LaTrell Halcomb is determined to teach young scholars that anything is possible as long as they continue to strive to achieve their dreams. In Brownie Boy, Mike can’t wait to get home and eat his favorite dessert.

Will Hillenbrand The Voice in the Hollow

Will Hillenbrand is a celebrated author and illustrator whose published works include over 70 books for young readers. The Voice in the Hollow tells the story of a young mouse whose shortcut home turns into a fantastical journey.

Jason Lady Time Problems

Jason is a United States Army brat who grew up on military bases from Germany to Fort Knox, KY. Rachel, the main character in Time Problems, is dreading middle school. She thinks an endless summer would solve her problems. Inspired by her stuffed animals, Rachel draws characters to make her dream come true.

Visit kybookfestival.org , for information including the latest updates.

Megan Lynch

Bone Carnival

Megan Lynch is the author of young adult and middle grade novels and lives in Nashville, TN. Bone Carnival is a spooky novel about the mystical summer adventures of a 12-year-old troublemaker in Rome, Italy.

Marta Miranda-Straub

Lullaby for Maddie

Marta Miranda-Straub is an AfroCaribbean Latinx woman born in Cuba. Lullaby for Maddie, a book for young readers, tells the birth story of a sassy little mermaid named Madelyn who begrudgingly joins the humans and grows to find warmth and love in the arms of her Cuban family.

Kay

Saffari

We All Count

Kay Saffari is a college Spanish and ESL instructor, medical interpreter, and writer. We All Count is a counting book, but it teaches young children that everyone has value.

Emmie Seals

Ella Lyon Time to Fly

George

Former Kentucky Poet Laureate and inductee to the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame, George Ella adds a new picture book to her list of accomplishments. Time to Fly tracks Baby Bird’s passage from fear and doubt alone in the nest to flying about, along with the rest.

Alexandra V. Mendez

What the Jaguar Told Her

Alexandra V. Mendez is a writer, teacher, and scholar who grew up bilingual in Decatur, GA, with family roots in Mexico and Mississippi. What the Jaguar Told Her explores in sumptuous detail the themes of identity, friendship, crushes, loss, and looking for answers to life’s toughest questions.

Susan Mills Alex, the Awesome and Artsy Allosaurus

Susan Mills is the founder of a nonprofit organization called My Autism Tribe, based in Lexington, KY. The organization supports families and educates communities about autism. Her books are conversation starters that can help families and educators embrace differences and celebrate diversity.

Wes Molebash

Travis Daventhorpe for the Win!

From debut author Wes Molebash comes this video-game-inspired sci-fi adventure series. Join Travis as he dodges bullies, forges friendships, and perfects his science fair project...all while trying to fulfill his magical destiny.

Shawn Pryor

Fighting for Freedom Along the Underground Railroad: An Interactive Look at History (You Choose: Seeking History)

YOU are fighting for freedom from enslavement for yourself and others during the mid-1800s. Will you escape to freedom? And will you help others escape as part of the Underground Railroad’s network of freedom fighters? Step back in time to face the challenges and decisions that real people faced to escape slavery.

Babble to My Bark

Emmie Seals is passionate about literacy and spreading the joy of books far and wide. Inspired by adoption, Babble to My Bark gives the perspective of the furry family member welcoming a child. No matter how a family comes together, it makes no difference to man’s best friend.

Jennifer Sommer

Her Eyes Were on the Stars: Nancy Grace

Roman, “Mother of Hubble” Space Telescope

Jennifer Sommer is the 2014 winner of the Karen and Philip Cushman Late Bloomer Award for a work in progress. Her Eyes Were on the Stars is a picture book biography that introduces young readers to a female scientist in the field of astronomy.

Meredith Steiner Just. Like. You.

Meredith Steiner is an activist and advocate, committed to a more just, more joyful world. Just. Like. You. is a rhyming story in celebration of diversity that introduces readers to all the different members of a classroom, and what makes each of them uniquely who they are.

Bring Community Home

Every day brings an opportunity to connect, learn and grow. From cooking demos to exercise classes, book clubs and informative workshops, AARP has so many virtual options at your fingertips.

Click to connect at aarp.org/nearyou

Mick Sullivan

I See Lincoln’s Underpants: The Surprising Times Underwear (and the People Wearing Them) Made History

Mick Sullivan is the creator and producer of The Past and the Curious: A History Podcast for Kids and Families. In addition to “Short Shorts and the Underwear Hall of Fame,” in I See Lincoln’s Underpants kids can read 16 biographical chapters highlighting interesting moments of famous people’s lives.

Jayne Moore Waldrop + Michael McBride

A Journey in Color: The Art of Ellis Wilson

Jayne Moore Waldrop is a writer and attorney who loves telling stories about her native western Kentucky. Michael McBride is a Tennessee-based artist and a professor at Tennessee State University. A Journey in Color: The Art of Ellis Wilson tells the story of a young man’s determined path to become a classically trained artist.

Frank X Walker + upfromsumdirt A Is for Affrilachia

Frank X Walker, the first African American writer to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate, is an artist, writer, and educator who has published 11 collections of poetry. Upfromsumdirt is an award-winning artist and an author of several poetry collections. This inspired children’s alphabet book is an exuberant celebration of people, physical spaces, and historical events.

Marie Weller + Paula Vertikoff

Cranium Critters: Einstein Acts When Squirrels Distract

Marie Weller and Paula Vertikoff are an elementary school counselor and principal, respectively, who are dedicated to social emotional wellness for children and the adults who care about them. Cranium Critters is an engaging and educational children’s picture book that introduces young readers to the concept of executive functions in the brain.

N young adult

Justin Arnold

Wicked Little Things

Justin Arnold is a storyteller, occasional comedian, and junk food connoisseur. Wicked Little Things is the story of the recently outed 16-year-old Dane Craven, who is forced to return to his unbearably small hometown of Jasper Hollow.

Lydia P. Brownlow Vermilion Sunrise

Lydia P. Brownlow grew up in Louisville, KY Fortunately, her parents didn’t make her choose between being a literature kid or a science kid, so she became both. Vermilion Sunrise is a young adult sci-fi novel about the first human colony in another solar system.

Cinda Williams Chima Children of Ragnarok

Ohio-born author Cinda Williams Chima is a New York Times bestselling author of the Seven Realms, Heir Chronicles, and Shattered Realms teen fantasy series. Her newest duology, The Runestone Saga (Balzer + Bray), launched in fall of 2022 with Children of Ragnarok . It marries Norse mythology and magic with Viking adventure, swordplay, romance, and cut-throat politics.

Helene Dunbar

The Promise of Lost Things

Over the years, Helene Dunbar has worked as a drama critic, journalist, and marketing manager, and has written articles on diverse topics. In The Promise of Lost Things, the spirits of the dead roam the streets, and there’s no such thing as resting in peace.

Heather Henson Wrecked

Heather Henson is an awardwinning author of several books for young readers. Her most recent YA novel, Wrecked, is a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest set in rural Kentucky, which Publisher’s Weekly called an “explosive thriller.”

M Hendrix

The Chaperone

M Hendrix holds a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Cincinnati, where she was a Taft Fellow. The Chaperone tells the story of a young woman’s fight against the oppressive world she knows, risking everything to set out on a dangerous journey.

Kaitlyn Hill Not Here to Stay Friends

Kaitlyn Hill lives with her real-life romance hero in Lexington, KY. Not Here to Stay Friends is a friends-tolovers spin on The Bachelor and follows two childhood besties who reunite to spend the summer in L.A. after five years apart.

Mariama J. Lockington

Forever Is Now

Mariama J. Lockington is an adoptee, author, and educator. Forever Is Now adult novel-in-verse about mental health, love, family, Black joy, and finding your voice and power in an unforgiving world.

Teresa Richards

Flippin’ Skaters

Teresa Richards’ novels have received Editors Pick, Best Book, and Top Pick distinctions from Evernight Teen, LASR, and Night Owl Reviews. Her newest novel, Flippin’ Skaters, won a first chapter contest award at the SCBWI Midsouth Fall Conference prior to publication.

Carissa Turpin

Doomsday Dani

Carissa Turpin currently resides in Louisville, KY, where she teaches fifth- and seventh-grade language arts. Doomsday Dani about a 12-year-old preparing for Y2K or, in her view, the end of the world.

Julian R. Vaca

The Memory Index

Julian R. Vaca is a first-generation Mexican American and a firstgeneration college graduate. The story in The Memory Index is set in an alternative 1987, where a disease ravages human memories. There is no cure, only artificial recall. The lucky ones, ”the recollectors,” need the treatment only once a day.

SNO WY OWL FOU NDATION, INC.

David Bell Try Not to Breathe

David Bell is the New York Times bestselling author of 16 novels for adults and young adults. Try Not to Breathe is a story about an ex-cop who sets out to find her missing sister and discovers the shocking truth about her family.

Frank Bill Back to the Dirt: A Novel

Frank Bill is the New York Times bestselling author of The Ravaged. He lives and writes in southern Indiana. Back to the Dirt: A Novel is a story about the struggles of a Vietnam vet to keep his job and relationships.

Gwenda Bond Mr. & Mrs. Witch

Gwenda Bond is the New York Times bestselling author and a co-founder of the nonprofit Lexington Writer’s Room. In Mr. & Mrs. Witch, a couple discovers at the altar the surprising secret identities they’ve kept from each other.

Tracey Buchanan Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace

Tracey Buchanan crashed into the literary world when she was six and won her first writing award. Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace is a story about the power of forgiveness and why it’s worth it to let others into your life, even when it hurts.

Jennifer Coburn Cradles of the Reich

Jennifer lives in San Diego with her husband and is the author of Cradles of the Reich, a historical novel about three very different

women living at a Nazi Lebensborn breeding home at the start of World War ll.

Georgia Day Of Sand and Bone

Georgia Day holds a B.A. in Literary Studies from the University of Texas at Dallas and has dreamed of being a writer her entire life. Of Sand and Bone is a story about breaking with traditions in favor of forging a new path.

Phyllis R. Dixon Intermission

Phyllis R. Dixon is a native of Milwaukee, WI, and has worked for the U.S. Treasury Department as a National Bank Examiner and owned a bookstore. Intermission is the story of four former girl group members, who reluctantly consider reuniting for a 20th anniversary tour, despite vows never to speak again.

Monic Ductan Daughters of Muscadine: Stories

Monic Ductan lives in Cookeville, TN, where she teaches literature and creative writing at Tennessee Tech University. The stories in Daughters of Muscadine feature people whose voices have been suppressed and erased for too long: Black women, rural women, Appalachian women, and working-class women.

Cynthia Ellingsen A Play for Revenge

Cynthia Ellingsen is an Amazon Charts and Apple Books bestselling author. In A Play for Revenge, a single mother must solve the mystery of the town theater to learn why it was shut down and stop the forces trying to keep it closed.

Jonathan Fredrick Bad Men Will Come

Jonathan Fredrick is the author of the Cain City Novels, which were inspired, in part, by his hometown of Huntington, WV. Bad Men Will Come is a mystery thriller about pursuing a treasure and the fine line between desire and greed.

Kristen Gentry Mama Said

Kristen Gentry is an associate professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at SUNY Geneseo. Set amid the tail end of the crack epidemic and the rise of the opioid crisis, Mama Said evokes Black family life in all its complexity.

David Grise

Bogustan: An Adventure in Diplomatic Misunderstanding

David Grise is a retired federal prosecutor who specialized in whitecollar crime and corruption cases. Bogustan is a story about newly minted diplomat Rudy Hancock, who has been given the task of convincing corrupt officials in Bogustan to allow their small country to become a dumping ground for America’s nuclear waste.

Chris Helvey Last Train to Miami

A founding member of the Bluegrass Writers Coalition, Chris Helvey is also the editor-in-chief and publisher of Trajectory Journal Last Train to Miami is a mystery thriller about Moe Horwitz, a mafia hit man in the 1960s.

Mimi Herman

The Kudzu Queen

Mimi Herman’s writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Crab Orchard Review and other journals. Based on historical facts, The Kudzu Queen unravels a tangle of sexuality, power, race, and kudzu through an irresistibly delightful (and mostly honest) narrator.

Janet Holloway

Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do

Janet Holloway is the founder of Women Leading Kentucky, a nonprofit organization that provides educational and leadership opportunities for women. Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do is a collection of short stories focused on the author’s Appalachian pioneering, bootlegging granny Billie.

Silas House Lark Ascending

Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels and one book of creative nonfiction. Lark Ascending follows Lark and his impromptu family of fellow refugees as they struggle to find a haven in a near-future world of widespread ecological, political, and civil dangers.

Patricia L. Hudson Traces: A Novel

Patricia L. Hudson is a freelance writer and former contributing editor for Americana magazine. Traces is a retelling of Daniel Boone’s saga through the eyes of his wife, Rebecca, and her two oldest daughters, Susannah and Jemima.

Lynne Hugo The Language of Kin

Lynne Hugo and her husband live in southwest Ohio with their yellow Lab. The Language of Kin explores the various ways humans

communicate and fail to communicate, and what we ultimately come to understand and forgive in ourselves and each other.

R.J. Jacobs This Is How We End Things

R.J. Jacobs has practiced as a psychologist since 2003. A foreboding new dark academia thriller of deception and suspense, This Is How We End Things follows the unraveling of a close group of students as they contend with what it means to lie, and be lied to.

Wendy Jett Girl

Wendy Jett is a longtime fitness instructor, découpage nerd, and improv junkie who loves to write. Girl is a mixed-genre family story, told through the innocent perspective of a young daughter, granddaughter, sister, and friend. Stories and poems propel the narrative both in action and in emotion.

Tif Marcelo When Jasmine Blooms

Tif Marcelo is a veteran United States Army nurse and holds a BS in nursing and an MS in public administration. Inspired by the classic Little Women, When Jasmine Blooms is a timeless tale of motherhood about one woman’s grief, hope, and second chance with the daughter she lost.

Bobbie Ann Mason Dear Ann

Bobbie Ann Mason is the author of numerous books, including Clear Springs, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In Dear Ann, she captures the excitement of youth and the nostalgia of age and relates how the consideration of the road not taken can illuminate, and perhaps overtake our present.

The Bluegrass Files: Broken Glass

After a long career as a professional musician and educator, having written several instructional texts along the way, Frank Messina turned his attention to writing fiction in 2016. The Bluegrass Files: Broken Glass invites you into the world of Sonia Vitale and the ladies of Bluegrass Confidential Investigations.

John Winn Miller The Hunt for the Peggy C: A World War II Maritime Thriller

John Winn Miller is an awardwinning investigative reporter, foreign correspondent, editor, newspaper publisher, screenwriter, movie producer, and novelist. The Hunt for the Peggy C is about an American fugitive who struggles to rescue a Jewish family on his rusty cargo ship.

Shelley Read Go as a River

Shelley Read was a senior lecturer at Western Colorado University for nearly three decades, where she taught literature and environmental studies. Go as a River is a story of a young woman who follows her heart.

Sherry Robinson Echo Her Lovely Bones

Sherry Robinson is an awardwinning American fiction author of three novels. The women in Echo Her Lovely Bones echo the resilience of generations of women and affirm the importance of women finding their own voices.

Christopher Rowe The Navigating Fox

Christopher Rowe has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, World

FJ Messina

YOUR HISTORY. YOUR FILSON.

Collecting, Preserving, and Sharing the history and culture of Kentucky and the Ohio Valley since 1884.

Our Mission

To collect, preserve, and share the significant history and culture of Kentucky and the Ohio Valley.

Our Values

The Filson is committed to the work of Preservation, Access, and Education. It pursues ever greater Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Its operations are characterized by Excellence, Service, and Integrity.

Our Vision

To be a nationally preeminent historical society that inspires its communities to build a stronger present and future through learning from their past.

PRAISESONG FOR THE KITCHEN GHOSTS

BY CRYSTAL WILKINSON

A lyrical, culinary journey that explores the hidden legacy of Black Appalachians with 40+ treasured family recipes

1310 S. 3rd St. | Louisville, KY | (502) 635-5083 | filsonhistorical.org

Monday-Friday, 9:00-4:30 | Free tours at 2:00 p.m.

Now Accepting Bold Dreamers

You know it. You can feel it. It’s that moment when you know you are ready. Ready to move ahead. Ready to take that step. Ready to turn all your promise and potential into reality.

It’s your moment.

At the University of Kentucky, we know it, too. We are a community that welcomes dreamers and doers. There’s a sense of momentum here. We believe – we know – we can change lives and transform communities.

After all, we are doing it – every day. You can, too.

Here, you can join a community of scholars and students who will support and challenge you as you pursue your passions. With more than 200 academic programs, you won’t be limited in where you can go and what you can do.

And you will it do it in a wildly powerful community – what we call the Big Blue Nation. We will support you for who you are, while challenging you to push yourself just a bit further.

Because we know it, too.

It’s your moment.

Fantasy, Neukom Institute, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. The Navigating Fox is a fantastical fable of knowledgeable creatures, in the vein of Brian Jacques’ Redwall series but for adults.

Julia Seales

A Most Agreeable Murder

Julia Seales is a writer and screenwriter based in Los Angeles. In A Most Agreeable Murder, when a wealthy bachelor drops dead at a ball, a young lady takes on the decidedly improper role of detective in this actionpacked debut comedy of manners and murder.

Jessica Strawser

The Next Thing You Know

Jessica Strawser is the author of five book-club favorite novels. The Next Thing You Know is an emotional, resonant story about the power of human connection, love when you least expect it, hope against the odds, and what it really takes to live life with no regrets.

Lauren Thoman

I’ll Stop the World

Lauren Thoman lives outside of Nashville, TN, with her husband, two children, and a rotating number of dogs and fish. I’ll Stop the World is a mystery thriller, where the ending and the beginning become one in a coming-of-age story about the power of friendship, fate, and inexplicable second chances.

Margaret Verble Stealing

Margaret Verble is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a member of a large Cherokee family. Stealing is a gripping, gutpunch of a novel about a Cherokee child removed from her

family and sent to a Christian boarding school in the 1950s.

Jessica Ward St. Ambrose School for Girls

Jessica Ward is a pseudonym for the #1 New York Times bestselling author who writes as J.R. Ward and has over 20 million books in print. She enjoys spending time in the Adirondacks and lives in the South with her family and her dogs.

Andrew Welsh-Huggins The End of the Road

Andrew Welsh-Huggins’ short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, and other publications. The End of the Road is a stand-alone crime novel about a young woman’s quest for vengeance after her boyfriend is shot and left for dead.

David Wesley Williams Everybody Knows

A longtime newspaper reporter and editor, David Wesley Williams, lives in Memphis, TN, with his wife, Barb, and their two retired racing greyhounds. The story of Everybody Knows introduces a raft of characters, including musicians, an escaped felon, a tyrannical governor atop his state’s old electric chair, various and likable sidekicks and mistresses, and even a writer.

M. Dean Wright Welcome, Caller

M. Dean Wright is a queer, trans author who writes stories for underrepresented voices like his own. Welcome, Caller explores the intricacies of queer neurodivergent love and how navigating these experiences can impact life, relationships, and the road to self-acceptance.

N poetry

Willie Carver Jr.

Gay Poems for Red States

Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. holds degrees in French and English from Morehead State University, where he focused his studies on advocacy for students. In Gay Poems for Red States, Carver counters the injustice of a persistent anti-LGBTQ+ movement by asserting that a life full of beauty and pride is possible for everyone.

Tony Crunk

Coal Man’s Son

Tony Crunk’s first collection of poetry, Living in the Resurrection, was the 1994 selection in the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Coal Man’s Son is a gothic coal-camp mad/sacred fever-dream that re-mythologizes the origins of both God and Man, and what came between them.

Linda Bryant Davis Between Two Worlds

Linda Bryant Davis is a retired journalist who co-hosts Kentucky Writers Roundtable, a weekly talk show on RadioLex 93.9. In Between Two Worlds, we meet a family in which the parents drink too much, children fear their Bible-toting grandma is secretly a child-eating dinosaur, and a sister goes “existential.”

Kathleen Driskell

The Vine Temple: Poems

Past chair of the AWP Board (201922), Kathleen Driskell is professor of Creative Writing and Chair of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University, home of the nationally distinguished low-residency MFA in Writing Program. The poems in The Vine Temple meditate on light and darkness in the natural world.

Carolyn Grace

Grenadine and Other Love Affairs

Carolyn Grace graduated from Berea College with an undergraduate degree in English composition and a minor in music performance. Grenadine and Other Love Affairs, her first book of poetry, delves into the quest to make sense of oneself and the world, and to excavate ever deeper layers of meaning.

Jonathan Greene Going Through It

Jonathan Greene was born in New York City in 1943. After living in San Francisco twice and graduating from Bard College, he moved to Kentucky in 1966, where members of his family had been living since 1846. Going Through It from Broadstone Books, his 40th book publication, celebrates his 80th birthday.

LeTonia Jones Black Girl at the Intersection

LeTonia Jones is a lifelong Kentuckian who has used the alchemy of arts and activism for over 25 years. The poems in Black Girl at the Intersection speak from the intersection of social justice and personal heartbreak.

Libby Falk Jones

For Your Good Health, Drink Flowers: New and Collected Poems

Libby Falk Jones is a member of the Bluegrass Writers Studio and Berea Writers Circle. She currently co-directs Coming of Age, a writing program for Kentucky women over 55. This collection includes poems appearing in Jones’ two previous chapbooks as well as poems published in a variety of journals and anthologies

over the past three decades.

Maurice Manning Snakedoctor

A former Guggenheim fellow, Maurice Manning teaches at Transylvania University. Snakedoctor is a rooted in Kentucky culture, history, and geography. His fourth book, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, was selected by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets.

Norman Minnick

The Lost Etheridge: Uncollected Poems of Etheridge Knight

Norman Minnick is the author of several collections of poetry and the editor of The Lost Etheridge: Uncollected Poems of Etheridge Knight. This book features over 300 poems by the award-winning Black Arts Movement poet, Etheridge Knight.

Lisa Parker The Parting Glass

Lisa Parker is a native Virginian, a poet, musician, and photographer. Her first book, This Gone Place, won the 2010 ASA Weatherford Award and her second book, The Parting Glass, won the 2021 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize.

Roberta Schultz Asking Price

Roberta Schultz, author of four chapbooks and one full-length collection, is a songwriter, teacher, and poet from Wilder, KY. In Asking Price, questions are key to examining humanity’s relationship with the planet on which we live.

Jessica D. Thompson Daybreak and Deep

For over a decade, Jessica D. Thompson served as a crisis office volunteer as well as a hospital and legal advocate for a battered women’s shelter. Daybreak and Deep is a rich and graceful assembly of requiems, for family and home places, and for a spouse. Thompson honors then abandons the innocence of childhood and the prescribed gender roles imbued with religion and tradition.

upfromsumdirt The Second Stop Is Jupiter

Upfromsumdirt, aka Ron Davis, is an autodidactic poet and awardwinning visual artist based in Lexington, KY. The Second Stop Is Jupiter is a deep engagement with the cultural narrative, populated with Black hero figures who will fuel the imagination.

Jeff Worley

The Poet Laureate of Aurora Avenue:

Selected Poems

Jeff Worley, Kentucky Poet Laureate for 2019-2020, is the author of seven books of poetry. The Poet Laureate of Aurora Avenue is a collection of poems culled from the author’s previous six books, several of which are out of print.

Crystal Wilkinson Perfect Black

Kentucky Poet Laureate for 20212022 and 2022 NAACP Image Award Winner Crystal Wilkinson has released Perfect Black. This captivating collection of poetry and prose, beautifully blending her rural roots with a passion for language and storytelling is interwoven with striking illustrations from her longtime partner, Ronald W. Davis.

N nonfiction

Karen Abney Lonnie & Twyla Money: 50 Years of Kentucky Appalachian Folk Art

An accomplished painter, fiber artist, and photographer, Karen Abney has exhibited at several galleries across the region. Lonnie & Twyla Money is the story of two iconic Kentucky artists who have been making folk art pieces for nearly 50 years and have helped to shape this unique Appalachian art form.

Robert R. Adams

Reflections of a Scared Soldier Boy in Vietnam: God, Redlegs, and Blueboys

Robert R. Adams devotes his free time to reading history and veteran affairs. This work details the constant emotional and psychological struggles of a scared young combat soldier, as his experiences transformed him from a boy into manhood through the forced maturity of war.

Valerie Askren

Five-Star Trails: Louisville and Southern Indiana: 40 Spectacular Hikes in the Derby City Region

After spending more than 20 years as a university researcher and professor, Valerie Askren traded academia for the hardwood forests of Kentucky. Inside Five-Star Trails, you’ll find descriptions of 40 five-star hiking trails for all levels and interests, along with insight into the history, flora, and fauna of the routes.

Michael T. Benson

Daniel Coit Gilman and the Birth of the American Research University

Michael T. Benson is president and professor of history at Coastal Carolina University. This book focuses on the enduring legacy of Daniel Coit Gilman, the father of the modern research university.

John

Boel

Cast Away: Five Generations of Family Fish Stories

As he approaches the 100th Emmy Award of his journalism career, John Boel has devoted much of his life to the craft of storytelling. Cast Away is his memoir, containing five generations of fish stories. Funny ones. Sad ones. Ones that got away. Times we got it right.

Stephen Bright + James Kwak

The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts

Stephen Bright teaches at the law schools at Yale and Georgetown Universities. He spent over 40 years representing people facing the death penalty. James Kwak is immediate past chair of the Southern Center for Human Rights. The Fear of Too Much Justice is an examination of injustices occurring in criminal courts today and a practical look at how they can be corrected.

Bryan Bush Louisville’s Gambling Barons

Bryan Bush has been a Civil War re-enactor for 20 years, portraying an artillerist. Louisville’s Gambling Barons returns the reader to the golden age of gambling that Louisville experienced between 1860 and 1885, thanks to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers by steamboat and foot.

Sherman Cahal, Adam Paris + Michael Maes Abandoned Kentucky

Sherman Cahal is a photographer and historian specializing in documenting Appalachian architecture and culture. Adam Paris is an architectural photographer and historian. Michael Maes is an artist and photographer and has been documenting abandoned homes for almost two decades. The images in Abandoned Kentucky offer us a window into our past and stir a sense of wonder about those who have gone before us and the lives they lived.

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers is the Ruth N. Halls Associate Professor of History and gender studies at Indiana University Bloomington. This book tells the story of Julia Ann Chinn (ca. 1796-1833), the enslaved mixed-race wife of Richard Mentor Johnson, U.S. Vice President under Martin Van Buren.

Jennifer Chesak

The Psilocybin Handbook for Women: How Magic Mushrooms, Psychedelic Therapy, and Microdosing Can Benefit Your Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Health

Jennifer Chesak is an awardwinning freelance science and medical journalist, editor, and factchecker based in Nashville, TN. The Psilocybin Handbook for Women is a resource for everyone, although it features information specific to those assigned female at birth, because psychedelics may have different effects and applications across the sexes.

John Cimprich

Navigating Liberty: Black Refugees and Antislavery Reformers in the Civil War South

After earning three history degrees, John Cimprich taught primarily at Thomas More College (now University) and retired as professor emeritus. Navigating

Liberty comprehensively examines the interaction between escaped slaves and antislavery Northerners in federally occupied areas of the South during the Civil War.

Byron Crawford

The Back Page: Byron Crawford’s Kentucky Living Columns

In this collection of essays, veteran television and newspaper journalist Byron Crawford shares stories about Kentucky’s rural people and places, ranging from the humorous to the poignant to the profound. Collected in a keepsake edition, Crawford’s Kentucky Living columns will delight readers for years to come.

Kevin Lane Dearinger

Eleanor Robson Belmont: A Theatrical Life

Kevin Lane Dearinger is a retired Broadway actor-singer and English teacher. Mrs. Belmont was an actor for 13 glorious years, but those years were crucial preparation for her long life as a social reformer and arts activist.

Normandi Ellis

The Ancient Tradition of Angels: The Power and Influence of Sacred Messengers

Normandi Ellis is an award-winning writer, workshop facilitator, and director of metaphysical studies at Chesterfield Spiritualist College. In this in-depth study into the mystery and purpose of angels, she looks at the angelic dimensions of spiritual traditions around the world from the ancient past to the present day.

Martha Greenwald Who We Lost: A Portable COVID Memorial

Martha Greenwald is the editor of the anthology Who We Lost: A Portable COVID Memorial and Founding Director/Curator of The WhoWeLost Project. Her first collection of poetry, Other Prohibited Items, was the winner of the Mississippi Review Poetry Series. She is the winner of the 2020 Yeats Prize.

Kosair Charities is now Kosair for Kids.

While an adjustment to our name, it is no detour from our century-old commitment to kids.

Kosair for Kids will continue to enhance the health and well-being of children by delivering financial support for healthcare, research, education, social services, and child advocacy.

And by doing so we will create joy... one child, one family, one day at a time.

To make a donation, scan the QR code or visit: kosair.org

Sarah L. Hall

+ Meg Wilson

Sown in the Stars: Planting by the Signs

Sarah L. Hall is associate professor of agriculture and natural resources at Berea College. Meg Wilson, a Berea College alum, is a graduate student in art and art history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Sown in the Stars brings together the collective knowledge of farmers in Central and Eastern Kentucky about the custom of planting by the signs.

Emily Hilliard

Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia

Emily Hilliard is a folklorist and writer based in Berea, KY. Making Our Future argues that folklore is a unifying concept that puts diverse cultural forms in conversation, as well as a framework that helps us reckon with the past, understand the present, and collectively shape the future.

Avalyn Hunter

Dream Derby: The Myth and Legend of Black Gold

Avalyn Hunter is a nationally recognized authority on Thoroughbred pedigrees and racing history. In this book, the author explores the personalities and histories that surrounded Black Gold. Hunter’s work looks behind every stall and tack room door and celebrates the hard work that goes into a great horse and its rivals.

Forgotten Southern Writer

Barbara Pendleton Jones is a retired psychologist living in Virginia. This volume, researched and written by Tula’s great-niece, relates with empathy and insight the remarkable story of Tula’s life. It also collects, for the first time, all of her extant stories.

Erin Keane

Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me

Erin Keane is the author of the memoir Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me, one of NPR’s best books of 2022. Keane received her MFA in poetry from Spalding University in Louisville. She is the author of three collections of poems and an award-winning journalist.

Jennifer S. Kelly

Barbara Pendleton Jones

Tula Pendleton: The Life and Work of a

The

Foxes

of Belair: Gallant Fox, Omaha, and the Quest for the Triple Crown

Jennifer S. Kelly is a writer and journalist whose work has appeared in TwinSpires, Paulick Report, America’s Best Racing, and The Racing Biz. This book examines the racing legacies of Gallant Fox and Omaha and how William Woodward’s service to racing during the 20th century changed the landscape of the American Thoroughbred industry.

Don Lane + Sarah Jane Herbener

The Lane Way: Family, Faith, and Fifty Years in Basketball

Don Lane served for 26 years as head coach of the Transylvania University men’s basketball team. Sarah Jane Herbener helps people

preserve their life stories through her personal history service. In The Lane Way, co-written with Herbener, Coach Lane tells readers entertaining and moving stories about his life in coaching.

Linda Elisabeth LaPinta

Kentucky Quilts and Quiltmakers: Three Centuries of Creativity, Community, and Commerce

Linda Elisabeth LaPinta is the author of four previous books and hundreds of articles and book reviews. In Kentucky Quilts and Quiltmakers, the author provides a panoramic view of Kentucky quiltmaking from colonial America to the new millennium and the dynamic quilting industry of today.

Patrick Lee Lucas

Athens on the Frontier: Grecian-Style Architecture in the Splendid Valley of the West, 1820-1860

Patrick Lee Lucas is an associate professor in the College of Design and serves as a Provost Faculty Fellow at the University of Kentucky. Athens on the Frontier examines the material culture of Grecianstyle buildings in antebellum America to help recover 19th-century regional identities.

Keven McQueen

Creepy Kentucky

Keven McQueen is the author of 22 books covering American history, the supernatural, biography, historical true crime, and what he calls real-life surrealism. Enjoy stories of body snatchers, ghosts, bizarre demises, people who uncannily predicted their own deaths, strangely preserved bodies, and more.

Bill Meegan Remembering the Forgotten Merton

Bill Meegan is retired from full-time clinical practice and teaching in the graduate programs at the University of Kentucky and The Lexington Theological Seminary. Remembering the Forgotten Merton is the first book about Thomas Merton’s brother and illustrates that there is more than one way to live a meaningful and holy life.

Matthew Mitchell Winning Tools

Matthew Mitchell is a three-time SEC Coach of the Year and the winningest head coach in the history of the University of Kentucky’s basketball program. In a clear, straightforward style, Mitchell reveals the tools that made him and his teams successful: honesty, hard work, and discipline.

Katherine C. Mooney

James P. Moss My Recovery Companion

Dr. James P. Moss has served as a guest lecturer on surgery at Harvard University’s Medical Grand Rounds and as a guest faculty member at Yale University. My Recovery Companion is an alphabetical, easy-to-reference handbook to use in moments of struggle, or when confronted by challenging life and addiction issues.

Paul E. Patton + Jeffrey S. Suchanek

The Coal Miner Who Became Governor

Paul E. Patton served as the 59th governor of Kentucky, from 1995 to 2003. Born in Fallsburg, KY, he had a humble upbringing that held few clues about his future as one of the most prominent politicians in the history of the state. In The Coal Miner Who Became Governor, Patton, along with Jeffrey S. Suchanek, details his personal, professional, and political life in Kentucky, starting with his career in the coal industry.

Jeremy Popkin

Zelda Popkin: The Life and Times of an American Jewish Woman Writer

Bill Luxon

Exiled: The Climax and Surrender of Jimmy Stokley

Written by Bill Luxon, a founding member of the rock group Exile, this book details the cast of characters in the band’s rise up the charts, plus Stokley’s heart-wrenching fall from the fame he desperately desired and so richly deserved.

Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey

Katherine C. Mooney is James P. Jones Associate Professor of History at Florida State University. In Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey, Mooney uncovers the history of Murphy’s troubled life, his death in 1896 at age 35, and his legacy.

Jeremy Popkin, a longtime history professor at the University of Kentucky, turns his research and writing skills to the story of his grandmother, Zelda Popkin, a journalist, public relations specialist, and novelist who took part in and wrote about the big issues of her time, including women’s rights, the Holocaust, and the creation of the Jewish state of Israel.

1st story

READ ALOUD

Begin with “Who’s Who with Mr. McBoom” easy peasy and fun!

2nd

Kids love this book about messy sneezes.

3rd

Oakley will make the kids laugh and spark lots of discussion about meeting new friends.

4th

Respecting authority keeps kids safe, and they will love the funny illustrations.

5th

The kids will cheer for the determination of Fred the frog!

I found the Baxter’s Corner series to be a great teaching tool for my young readers from preschool all the way up to 3rd grade. The kids love interacting with the puppets, and the dedicated corner in our library allows students to revisit all the books and characters throughout the year. The thoughtfully designed lessons make my job so much easier.

Stephanie Logsdon, NBCT Reading Interventionist Shelbyville, KY June 2022

PRESCOOLERS PROGRAM

• Entertaining and educational

• Values-driven curriculum

• Powerful conversational tool

• Easy to follow

• Use the suggested sequence or modify to meet the child’s needs

www.BaxtersCorner.com

502 386.1473

Mebs@MebsPage.com

BOOK DIVISION

6th

Early conversations about standing up to bullies is powerful, and this is a story everyone can relate to.

7th

Ally learns that being different is okay, and so will the kids who listen to this story.

8th

This book is a fun way to learn about differences and talk about acceptance.

9th

®

Complete the series with a book about cooperation. It’s a great way to celebrate fun!

The Common Wealth of Kentucky Project

For 25 years, Beth Pride worked in education as a teacher, administrator, and consultant. Since beginning a career as an artist in 2008, Kentucky contemporary impressionist painter Kelly Brewer has developed a national and international following. In The Common Wealth of Kentucky Project, art and storytelling reveal the wealth of this land, the people who live here, and the common connections we, as humans, have with one another.

Stephen Reily Promise, Witness, Remembrance

Stephen Reily served as Director of the Speed Art Museum from 2017-2021. This book documents not just the 32 works featured in the exhibition (most never published before) but also the process by which the Speed used this opportunity to memorialize the life of Breonna Taylor.

James Harrod, Founder of Harrodsburg Kentucky

Bobbi Dawn Rightmyer is a lifelong native of Harrodsburg, KY, and she writes books of narrative historical nonfiction. In 1774, James Harrod founded the oldest permanent English settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains. Harrod was a soldier and pioneer who was instrumental in exploration of the area.

“This

Michael T. Benson, D.Phil. Author President, Coastal Carolina University

“ This book should be read by anyone interested in the history of education and the evolution of American society.”

– Jonathan Cole, Ph.D., Provost and Dean of Faculties Emeritus, Columbia University

A publication by the Speed Art Museum

In partnership with The University Press of Kentucky

painting and exhibition embody the idea of art for justice and demonstrate the potential power of art to heal.”

Darren Walker President, Ford Foundation

“[An] urgent call to action. . . . [and] an invaluable resource for advocates of criminal justice reform.”

—Publishers Weekly

Beth Pride + Kelly Brewer

Bobbi Dawn Rightmyer

Robyn Ryle Throw Like a Girl, Cheer Like a Boy: The Evolution of Gender, Identity, and Race in Sports

Robyn Ryle is the author of two award-winning nonfiction books. Throw Like a Girl, Cheer Like a Boy brings to attention the ways in which sports can contribute to inequalities while also demonstrating how sports can help create a more just world for everyone.

Penney Sanders

The Last Journey: A Road Map for Ending-of-Days

A graduate of Transylvania University, Penney Sanders received a master’s degree from the University of Louisville and a

Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in Canada. This book is a road map for the journey we all will make sooner or later.

Stuart W. Sanders

Anatomy of a Duel: Secession, Civil War, and the Evolution of Kentucky Violence

Stuart W. Sanders is former executive director of the Perryville Battlefield Preservation Association. Anatomy of a Duel examines why white male Kentuckians engaged in the “honor culture” of duels and provides fascinating narratives that trace the lives of duelists and opponents.

Doris Dearen Settles

Kentucky in the War of 1812: The Governor, the Farmers and the Pig

While not a single battle of the

War of 1812 was fought on Kentucky soil, Kentuckians were involved from the beginning to the end. Multi-genre author Doris Dearen Settles explains how Kentuckians won the war of 1812, and why it is far more significant than textbooks record.

Christopher Stallard Waste into Taste: Turning Scraps into Delicious Dishes

Christopher Stallard is the head chef and owner of Michael Grant Gastronomy in Louisville, KY. In Waste into Taste, Stallard presents an inspiring collection of practical techniques and delicious recipes—some new, some honed throughout his distinguished culinary career—for utilizing scraps of various foods to eliminate waste and lower grocery costs.

Celebrating Spalding Writers at the 2023 Kentucky Book Festival

Frank X Walker, A Is for Affrilachia / Silas House, Lark Ascending / Erin Keane, Runaway

Crystal Wilkinson, Perfect Black / Chris Helvey, Last Train to Miami

Kathleen Driskell, The Vine Temple / Patricia L. Hudson, Traces spalding.edu/mfa

Matthew Strandmark

Gatewood: Kentucky’s Uncommon Man

Matthew Strandmark is an educator, researcher, and archivist. Gatewood: Kentucky’s Uncommon Man weaves together personal stories, public records, and oral history interviews to provide a comprehensive overview of the life and career of an eccentric and fascinating figure.

Emily Strasser

Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History

Emily Strasser’s award-winning essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and elsewhere. In Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History, Strasser exposes the toxic legacy— political, political, environmental,

and personal—that forever polluted her family, a community, the nation, and the world.

Richard Taylor Fathers

Kentucky Poet Laureate for 19992000 and an inductee into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame, Richard Taylor is the author of numerous poetry collections, historical novels and books relating to Kentucky history. Fathers is a combination of memoir and creative nonfiction, focused on multiple fathers—both paternal and associational.

Milton C. Toby Unnatural Ability: The History of PerformanceEnhancing Drugs in Thoroughbred Racing

Milton C. Toby is an award-winning author, journalist, and attorney with

more than 40 years of experience in Thoroughbred racing and equine law. In Unnatural Ability, Toby addresses the historical and contemporary context of the Thoroughbred industry’s most pressing issue.

Alicestyne Turley

The Gospel of Freedom: Black Evangelicals and the Underground Railroad

Alicestyne Turley is director of Freedom Stories for the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, TN. The Gospel of Freedom seeks to fill the historical gaps and promote the lost voices of the Underground Railroad.

EIGHT YEARS AS KENTUCKY’S #1 HOSPITAL

Jamie H. Vaught

Forever Crazy About the Cats: An Improbable Journey of a Kentucky Sportswriter Overcoming Adversity

Veteran sportswriter Jamie H. Vaught has covered the University of Kentucky’s basketball program since his early college days. If you feel nostalgic for UK’s glorious basketball past, this 408-page hardcover could be of interest. It also contains football stories and inside accounts about the Kentucky Wildcats.

Gary P. West

King Kelly Coleman: Kentucky’s Greatest Basketball Legend Lives On

The authorized King Kelly Coleman story, never before in print, is recounted by award-winning author Gary P. West, based on interviews and information from Coleman himself. West is a freelance writer living in Bowling Green, KY.

Act of Power

That means eight years of leading-edge trials, breakthrough discoveries, nationally ranked specialties and dedication to helping Kentuckians live healthier lives — and we’re just getting started. See how at ukhealthcare.com/best Between Two Worlds Linda Bryant Davis

Davis

Kim Wickens

Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America’s Legendary Racehorse

Kim Wickens grew up in Dallas, TX, and practiced as a criminal defense lawyer in New Mexico for 20 years. Lexington is the dramatic true story of the champion Thoroughbred racehorse who gained international fame in the tumultuous Civil War-era South and became the most successful sire in American racing history.

Scott E. Wigginton

Adventures to Godliness: Filling the Hole in Your Bucket List

Scott E. Wigginton, Ph.D., serves as Professor of Pastoral Ministries and Counseling at Campbellsville University. Adventures to Godliness blends scripture, practical wisdom, and fascinating stories with the in-depth insight of a seasoned soul shepherd to help readers contemplate a theology of adventure.

Events and authors are subject to change. Visit kybookfestival.org, for information including the latest updates.

2023 Featured Writer Linda Bryant

Mama Said

KRISTEN GENTRY

$19.99 PB

“This book has staying power. . . . [A] collection of brilliant stories that are of Kentucky, of Louisville, of Black communities throughout the United States.”

—Crystal Wilkinson

ALSO OF INTEREST

Clear Creek

Toward a Natural Philosophy

ERIK REECE

$21.99 PB

“We need more books like this out in the world, books that give us hints for how to be in a time of crisis.”

—David Gessner

OUR PARTNERS

2023 SPONSORS

KENTUCKY BOOK FESTIVAL DONORS

This list includes individuals and organizations who donated to the Kentucky Book Festival from September 2022 through August 15, 2023 (note: organizations who sponsored the Book Festival are listed above.)

AARP Kentucky State Office

Jerry Abramson

Helen C. Alexander

Robert W. Baird and Co., Inc.

Rogers Barde

Karl Benson

Janice Birdwhistell in memory of Terry Birdwhistell

Campbellsville University

Dennis and Jennifer Carrigan

Central Bank & Trust Co.

Nastasha Collier

Commonwealth of Kentucky

Toni Daniels in memory of Betty Maddox Daniels

Tom Eblen

Michael and Mary Embry

Hardscuffle, Inc.

James F. Hawk

Ellen Hellard in memory of Vic Hellard, Jr.

Christopher J. Helvey

Honorable Order of KY Colonels

Hap Houlihan

Joseph-Beth Booksellers

Kentucky Youth Advocates, Inc.

LFUCG

The Kentucky Book Festival is a program of

LG&E Foundation

Harris (Hank) and Sally Meves

Kathy Paynter

PNC Foundation

Carolyn Purcell

Snowy Owl Foundation

Spaulding University

Tallgrass Farm Foundation

Transylvania University

University of Kentucky

Jen Walker

The 1901 Kentucky Derby was the 27th running of the Kentucky Derby. The race took place on April 29, 1901.

The Buddendick sisters—Katherine, Mary Ann (Lodder) and Louise—at their dry goods store in Covington, circa 1908. Born to German immigrants, the sisters worked as seamstresses before opening a store on the corner of 8th and Bakewell around 1903. Several years later, they moved the shop to beneath the family home at 525 (now 521) Main Street. Katherine and Louise mainly ran the store, as Mary Ann moved out once she was married to Henry Lodder. The store closed around 1935, when Katherine and Louise retired and moved to live with the then-widowed Mary Ann in Fort Mitchell. Photo courtesy of Kenton County Public Library. To see more historic photos,

Kentucky Explorer

Why Learn About Our Ancestors?

Knowing about our ancestors won’t change who we are. However, it can give an improved understanding and appreciation for those who came before us and whose DNA we may still carry.

Letters to the Kentucky Explorer

Letters

Memories of Kentucky

I have lived in Korea, Japan, Germany and now, after U.S. Army retirement, I live in the Philippines. I have nothing left in Kentucky except gravesites and good memories.

I lost my mother and two sisters in the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire. I went to first and second grade at Cardome in Georgetown, one of only two male students. I then went to St. Paul’s and graduated from Lexington Catholic High in 1965. We had prom dinner at a fancy restaurant called the Little Inn. While in college, I worked at the Cape Cod Restaurant on Southland Drive in Lexington. I graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1970, the same year that I was drafted. We had a farm near Donerail General Store in Fayette County near the Scott County line. Does anyone know if these places still exist?

Sincerely,

Charles J. Dwyer

PSC

517 Box 4610R

FPO AP 96517-0047

Editors Note: If you have information about the places Charles mentions, you can write him at the address above, or you can email deb@kentuckymonthly.com and it will be forwarded to him.

“It is about history, and the role our ancestors played during their time on earth. Their decisions, including who to marry, where to live, when to move, how to worship God, when to fight for a cause, and many others, impacted the generation that followed them, and eventually filtered down to those of us who are living today. Our ancestors are part of us.” This quoted section was written by Rita Brown Sampson, a cousin, friend and soulmate, who has done more on our Brown ancestors than anyone I know. Rita also quoted Linda Goetsch as writing, “Remember me in the family tree. My name, my days, my strife; Then, I’ll ride upon the wings of time and live an endless life.”

Learning about our ancestors should not be just to build them up or put them down. Are we arrogant enough to think that we could or would have done better under their circumstances? How would we have reacted to the Great Depression, flu epidemics, other diseases with no prevention or cures, hungry and cold children, practically no education or resources, and no good alternatives? Perhaps, the COVID-19 pandemic provides a hint of what many had to survive in past generations. At least in the 2020s, we know what viruses are, and we had access to “modern” medical care with insurance, communication, knowledge, transportation and other resources. Still, it was not easy, was it?

Our ancestors survived and reared more ancestors to thrive until we arrived to benefit from those before us. We are not self-made men and women. Without the strengths and weaknesses of our ancestors, we would not exist. We are products of our DNA and environment. Many ancestors provide our DNA, and more recent ones determine our environment—enabling education, good jobs, comfortable living and much more that we are prone to take for granted or credit ourselves for our good luck and success. It has been said that luck is the crossroads when preparation and opportunity meet. Our ancestors did much to make our good luck possible. How can we now show our appreciation?

For your ancestors that are gone, I hope they are not forgotten. For any still living, why not call, visit, hug and compliment them with questions that only they can answer...about their, and your, ancestors?

Harold Lee Brown, Indianapolis, Indiana haroldlbrown43@yahoo.com

In memory of Donna Jean Hayes, 1948-2019

Cardome in Georgetown

Louisville Courier-Journal Culinary Archive: Pumpkin, the Flavor of Fall

By Jackie Young, MLS, Ed.D Library Director, Sullivan University

There may not be a food more closely associated with a holiday or more represented in popular culture than the pumpkin. Peter kept his wife in one; Cinderella rode in one; Linus waited for the big one; Stingy Jack replaced his turnip for one; Ichabod was chased by a horseman with one

and latte lovers drool over that spice. But the best way to honor pumpkins is to eat them.

It is no wonder the pumpkin is all over our cultural landscape. It has been cultivated in the Americas for approximately 7,000 years, predating even maize. Pumpkin is highly nutritious, and almost all of the plant is edible, including the leaves and blossoms. Here are recipe selections

The Courier-Journal’s great pumpkin collection, spanning five decades.

which includes 30,000 recipe cards, 1,500 cookbooks and decades of newspaper clippings. Each month, Kentucky Explorer shares a piece of this history, along with a recipe or two, and takes a look at how Kentucky cooked. If you would like more information about Sulivan University, please visit sullivan.edu or call 1.800.844.1354.

Kentucky’s second-largest city is named for Lexington, Massachusetts.

“I Remember” By Our Readers

Plucking the Geese

By Odell Walker

From the book: In Lyon County, Saturday Was Town Day

Back in the day, folks built their own beds. Contrary to popular belief, chicken feathers were not used to make feather beds. Feather beds were made of goose feathers.

The basic design of beds was not a great deal different from what it is today. There was a standard headboard, footboard and side rails. The side rails of the old-time beds were made of heavy timbers, about 4 inches by 4 inches. The base of the bed was composed of wood slats placed about 10 inches apart or a web of ropes. When ropes were used, holes were bored into the side rails and the base of the headboard and footboard were about 10 inches apart. One single rope was strung from front to back. When finished, the base of the bed had 10-inch squares between the ropes.

After constant use and changes in climatic conditions, the ropes would get loose and sag. There was a special tool used to tighten them. After the ropes were tightened and a child was put to bed, the mother would say, “sleep tight tonight.” We still hear this expression today.

The next layer of bedding placed on the slats or ropes was the straw tick. A special heavy cloth material, bed ticking, could be bought at the dry goods store. A sack or bag-like container was sewn together made of the bed ticking. The sack was filled with wheat straw, rye straw or corn shucks, depending on which was available. The straw tick was the foundation or base layer for the bed. Because of the sack-like container that held the straw or

shucks, an expression came into use when one was going to bed: “I am going to hit the sack.”

The next layer of bedding was the feather bed proper. The feather tick or sack was made similar to the one that held the straw and was filled with goose feathers. The sheets, pillows and quilts were placed on top of the feather bed.

Each morning when the bed was made, the feather bed was fluffed and leveled uniformly on top. The sheets, pillows and quilts were placed back on the bed. When you lie down, you sink into the soft feather of the feather bed. They were very warm in winter but hot in summer.

Now back to goose feathers. Most farm families raised a flock of geese. The main purpose for raising geese was for the feathers. The feathers could be used to make feather beds and pillows for the family, or the feathers could be sold—either directly to neighbors or to the produce house, a market that bought and sold chickens and eggs, ducks, geese, wool, furs, ginseng and other herbs. Feathers were sold by the pound, and it takes a lot of feathers to weigh a pound.

The geese were caught and the feathers plucked every four weeks. Only the small, soft feathers were taken. No tail or wing feathers or those with a large stem were plucked. The feathers were not hard to pull from the body of the goose, but no doubt it was not a comfortable procedure for the goose, and they tried to fight back. Geese do not have teeth, but around the edge of their beaks are fine, sandpaper-like projections that are sharp enough that it can hurt if one bites you. In order to keep the goose from biting the person picking the feathers, a sock was slipped down over the head and neck.

The small underdeveloped feathers close to the body of the goose are called down. Expert feather bed makers wanted a certain amount of the down to mix with the regular feathers. The down intermingled with the feathers and made the feather bed hold its shape after it was fluffed.

Geese make pretty good watchdogs. If they see or hear anything strange or unusual, they make a loud honking noise in unison.

University of Louisville Photographic Archives

Louisville Wagon Manufacturer, East Main Street, 1895

Tales of a Tenacious Young Reader

By Don Amburgey, Jenkins

Growing up in Knott County in the 1930s and ’40s, I remember at age 2 or 3 my mother, a teacher, read to me from Roman mythology the story of twins Romulus and Remus. Their mother and father abandoned them. Luckily, a she-wolf suckled them.

How I grieved for those children! I demanded Mother to read the story so many times that she said, “If I have to read it again, you will get an unforgettable spanking!”

Did that threat stop my requests?

At 6, I had Mother’s aid in reading the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I asked her about many ancestral lists. Why did the writers tell almost the same story about Jesus?

I loved Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but the unfamiliar language style presented a tough problem. My interest in the story carried me through. I loved Tiny Tim, The Ghost of Christmas Past and Scrooge for changing his stingy attitude toward life.

Mother passed when I was 8. She left my siblings and me a collection of books bought from book clubs. Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton contained stories she told us such as those about Lobo, Red Rough and The Pacing Mustang. I cannot forget the excitement caused by those stories of animal realism.

When I was around 11, my neighbor came over to give me a copy of a dime novel she had found while cleaning out her attic. She said she heard I liked to read. The title was The Rise and Fall of Jesse James by Robertus Love. While reading it that very day, I found that mice had eaten away parts of the last pages.

The nearer I got to the last page, the more the mice had eaten. I read page by page and stopped. I filled in words to try and restore sense to the missing lines. Little did I realize that that was my first attempt at creative writing.

During sixth grade, another neighbor loaned me The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. When I started it, I felt it was the best book I had ever read. I could not put it down. I started to lay out of school, smoke a corncob pipe filled with tobacco gleaned from cigarette butts, and gather corn silks to roll in brown paper as cigarettes. My older brother and I would stop at a neighbor’s house to warm our toes while on the way to school. After getting warm, we decided to whistle up the dogs and go rabbit hunting on the snow-covered hills. Since Huck did not go to school, neither did we until the last week of school. Did I receive a passing grade? No! I repeated sixth grade.

Near the age of 12, I found in Mother’s book collection the chilling story of the sinking of the Titanic. That was followed by stories of Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. When I had read all the books on Mother’s shelf, I tried to decide which ones I could stand to read again.

I graduated from Carr Creek High School in 1950. My high school had no library. There was no other way to get books then, so I took a feed sack and went through the neighborhood to borrow books from teachers and college students. I got some Canadian stories of hunting and

trapping. I liked those.

One selection stood out above all others: The Thousand and One Nights. Scheherazade told many stories to save herself from a beheading by her wicked husband. The story of Sinbad, the sailor, saved her neck. I learned how the Arabs searched out the geography of ancient Baghdad, Sinbad’s home. He made seven voyages. I read only six. The seventh voyage was torn out of the old book. How did Sinbad get back home from The Island of Diamonds? Years later, I got a good book from a library and read the full account.

On a deliciously cold, frosty morning, one incident stands out far above the others. I decided to read Dickens’ Oliver Twist. That was during my first year of high school.

The house was quiet. Dad had gone to work. All the siblings were out somewhere. In no time, I had built a cheerful fire. It went roaring up the chimney over the oldfashioned grate.

In the peace and quiet, I sat reading. I identified with young Oliver. He was captured by a gang of thieves in London, who forced him to climb a ladder up to the window of an abandoned house. They intended to hide out in it. Oliver, as lookout, was climbing the ladder. I could feel the London fog creeping down my shirt collar.

Suddenly, a door slammed wide open. I heard, “Boy! Ain’t you sompen?!” Dad was home from work and not at all happy to see me reading.

He ran forward, hooked his brogan shoe in the red-hot ashes beneath the grate and, with one sweeping action, sent live coals streaming across the wood floor to the far wall! Then, he stalked out.

I leaped into action putting out flames as the coals started blazing along the puncheon floor.

My dad’s explosion happened because he hated to see me with my nose stuck in a book all the time.

I have forgiven my dad, Monroe Amburgey, many times because he took to reading books himself in his 70s and 80s. He even subscribed to The Louisville Courier-Journal and borrowed books from the Knott County and Letcher County public libraries.

People can change: Dad climbed the reading ladder!

I hated to see a good story end. It caused withdrawal symptoms. I did not want school to get out. What was there to do in my early days in Appalachian Kentucky in summers? The summer of my second year in high school I spent reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. That book introduced me to the pleasures of reading adult literature.

But that’s another story.

Don Amburgey was employed by the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives from 1961-90. He is the author of two books—Dreams and Poetry (Kindle Direct Publisher) and Kentucky: Stories of a Regional Librarian (Covenant Books)

… soldier who served as a scout for Gen. George Rogers Clark during the Revolutionary War.

Mary Todd Lincoln’s Excursion to Kentucky and Visit to Mammoth Cave

By Bob Thompson Mason, Ohio

Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln both were born in Kentucky, only a few hours away from Mammoth Cave. As young adults, they probably knew of the famous cave by word of mouth and from newspapers, as formal tours of the cave commenced in 1816. The famous attraction, second to Niagara Falls in New York, did not play a part in their lives, except for Mary’s brief visit in September 1876.

Mary visited Mammoth Cave when it was privately owned and operated by the heirs of John Croghan of Locust Grove. Other than a written letter from her eldest sister, Elizabeth Edwards, to her son, Robert Todd Lincoln, on Oct. 29, 1876, there is no record of her visit to the cave in books, newspapers or the old hotel registers at Mammoth Cave. Mary’s visit to the cave probably was brief, and few knew of it.

Before her visit, Mary was briefly institutionalized in May 1875 by Robert Lincoln for the erratic behavior she had displayed as a result of the personal tragedies in her life but was released after four months into the custody of her sister in Springfield, Illinois. In June 1876, she was declared sane by the courts.

By September 1876, with her sister’s grandson Lewis Baker as a companion, Mary traveled by train from Springfield to Kentucky to visit Mammoth Cave and Lexington before traveling north to Philadelphia and New York.

After hosting historic celebrities of the past, such as Swedish singer Jenny Lind; American essayist, philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson; Norwegian violinist Ole Bull; and the Russian Grand Duke of Alexis, in 1876, Mammoth

Cave drew the interest of Mary Lincoln, Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro and the American Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes Booth

Eleven years after his brother had assassinated Abraham Lincoln, Edwin still made his living as a touring actor. In March 1876, Booth toured the South, including stops in Bowling Green and Louisville. There was still a strong desire by many Southerners to see Booth.

With a few days of downtime, Booth had a profound interest to visit the famous Mammoth Cave. His visit came just six months before Mary’s.

Mary’s visit to the cave came when she was 57, and her health and state of mind remained an issue. Like most guests to the cave during that time, she probably came and left with little fanfare. From Louisville, Mary and her nephew traveled on the L&N Railroad to Cave City, 10 miles away from the cave. From there, a stagecoach took them over rough rural roads to the Mammoth Cave Hotel.

If Mary stayed at the Mammoth Cave Hotel, she probably would have remained only one night and would have had Baker sign the hotel register, not wanting to draw attention. The cave estate did have a dining room for meals and a ballroom for dancing. There were also hotels and inns in the nearby towns of Munfordville and Cave City, which may have been her choice for overnight accommodations.

The noted cave guides escorting Mary in the cave would have been Mat Bransford, Nick Bransford or William Garvin. Mat and Nick were formerly enslaved men brought to the cave before the Civil War and had much to do with the early exploration of the cave.

Mary’s stance on slavery is uncertain. Despite growing up to be a strong supporter of the Union, historians know little about her personal thoughts on slavery.

Lake Cumberland is the largest artificial lake in water volume east of the Mississippi River.

Mary Todd Lincoln’s probable cave guides, William Garvin, left, and Mat Bransford, 1876

The Lincoln “spirit” photograph, the last image of Mary and “Abraham” Lincoln, 1872. (Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana)

It would have been interesting to overhear any conversation she may have had with her cave guides.

It is unknown how far Mary walked into the cave, but because of her health, she probably walked a only short distance. From the historic entrance, wearing a “costume” provided by the cave management so as to not soil her fine clothes, Mary would have seen parts of the main cave, including the Rotunda, Gothic Avenue, Booth’s Amphitheater (named for Edwin Booth) and Giant’s Coffin. The photos included of the cave hotel, cave entrance and cave guides were taken around the same time of Mary’s visit.

After Mammoth Cave, Mary and her companion spent one or two days in Lexington, revisiting scenes from her childhood before traveling to the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and then to New York for a week. From New York, she traveled alone to Europe for four years. Mary returned to Springfield in 1880 in deteriorating heath to live with her sister until her death in 1882.

It is interesting to note that, although President Lincoln never visited Mammoth Cave, his successor, President Andrew Johnson, made a “torchlight” visit in September 1866. It was noted in newspapers that “the President, while in Kentucky, was desirous of visiting the Mammoth Cave.”

The Todd Family Home in Lexington

This was Mary Todd Lincoln’s childhood home in Lexington from 1832-1839. Over the years, the building had many uses, including a boarding house, a brothel, a grocery store and, in this postcard, a “swap shop.”

Letcher County’s Black Mountain has a summit elevation of 4,145 feet and is the state’s highest point.

Mary’s house today at 578 West Main Street, Lexington. In 1977, the house was restored and opened to the public as a museum, the Mary Todd Lincoln House, mtlhouse.org.

Top right, entrance to Mammoth Cave, 1876, right, Mammoth Cave Hotel, 1876.

Harlan County’s Highsplint

By Dustin Blackson, Castlewood, Virginia

The community of Highsplint in Harlan County was first known as Seagraves Creek, named after the Seagraves family who first settled there. The family was buried in the local cemetery, but their bodies were exhumed and relocated when the railroad was built.

The Highsplint name comes from one of the coal beds in the area that was around 3,000 feet in elevation and 5 feet thick. In 1892 and 1893, two sections of this coal bed were displayed at the Chicago World’s Fair. The Highsplint Camp started in 1913. Issac Creech was the first to own the land there. When Creech traveled to record his deed in Frankfort, it took him 17 days on horseback to make the roundtrip

journey. The Creech family built most of the houses in Highsplint.

On Jan. 11, 1917, the Articles of Incorporation for Highsplint Coal Company were filed at the Whitley County Courthouse by Dr. Ancil Gatliff and his son, J.B. Gatliff of Williamsburg. The business capital was $200,000, and the company’s main office was in Williamsburg. The Gatliffs and Dr. Samuel Bennett of Middlesboro soon purchased 10,000 acres between Seagraves Creek and Kilday. The first post office opened on Feb. 7, 1918, with John D. Casey as postmaster. The children rode the train from the nearest starting point into Harlan for school until the Highsplint School was built in 1918. The school building was used for classes during the day and as a theater at night. The Creech family soon built a restaurant, company store, church and doctor’s office.

The railroad started laying tracks in 1919. The steel for the tracks was shipped to Kildav and brought via wagon to Highsplint. There was no boarding house in Highsplint, so the railroad crew stayed in tents. On March 10, 1919, L&N car number 81074 was the first to be loaded with coal. In the spring of 1920, the railroad started laying tracks to the mine. The L&N car number 71357 was the first car at the mine loaded with coal on May 25, 1920. A passenger train started running once a day but ended in 1936.

Highsplint Coal Company miners made about $2 a day, working from dawn to dusk.

Highsplint was growing into a big camp, with sections of it called Gobbler’s Knob, Al Duff’s Hollow, Nine Spot, Four Spot, Depot Hill and Eversole Hollow. The Highsplint Church was built in 1926. Everyone attended a companyowned Baptist church, and part of the miners’ salaries was deducted for the pastor’s salary. Some pastors were Oscar Davis, J.C Watson, O.C. Anderson and Wayne Markham. In the summer of 1933, Rev. Oscar Davis baptized 62 people at

John Marshall Harlan from Frankfort served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 34 years.

Left, the Highsplint Church; below, Highsplint Coal Co.

the railroad bridge in Highsplint. There were many other baptisms at the Granny Pond.

The Granny Pond was a popular recreational spot for residents. My grandmother, Helen (Harp) Blackson, said, “I was afraid of [Granny Pond]. Nobody went swimming, and the boys said there wasn’t any bottom—that it goes on and on. Then, when they hadn’t put the baptistry in the church, I was baptized at the edge of Granny Pond.”

Many others I spoke to mentioned trying to reach the bottom of Granny Pond but were unsuccessful.

The 1930s were a notorious time for Harlan County due to coal companies looking to cut costs and wages. The miners demanded that the companies unionize. In 1934, the United Mine Workers of America offered Superintendent Jack Taylor a union contract deal for Highsplint Coal Company. His refusal started a considerable disagreement. The miners and the UMWA went ahead with a local union in Highsplint, despite the company’s refusal. Highsplint got its union recognized as local union 6074 in UMWA District 19. But that didn’t stop the company from bringing some form of hardship on its miners.

In 1945, in a legal case between Highsplint Coal Company and the United Mine Workers of America,

District 19 filed a lawsuit to determine if the company could deduct miners’ wages for loading debris and impurities with coal. The company deducted miners’ wages from 1941-1942 totaling $12,654.40. The Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed the company’s declaratory judgment because of an old contract that was enforceable at the time.

On April 15, 1961, Highsplint Coal Company ceased operations and leased the land to Seagraves Coal Company. The Gatliffs sold the land to the Eastover Land Company on June 29, 1970. Highsplint was one of three mines Eastover owned in Harlan County. Eastover tore down the church and most of the company houses. Earlier in January of that year, the company store had caught fire and burned to the ground.

In 1974, the UMWA worked with the miners to form picket lines. However, the rival Southern Labor Union represented the Highsplint mine and its employees. The SLU dismissed two Highsplint miners for honoring the UMWA. The picket line soon started at Highsplint. The 13-month strike was successful for the miners. Eastover soon honored a UMWA contract.

On Aug. 4, 1983, Eastover sold the Highsplint mine to the Manalapan Mining Company.

High Bridge, a railroad bridge in Wilmore, was dedicated in 1879 and was the first cantilever bridge in North America.

In the summer of 1933, Rev. Oscar Franklin Davis, a Baptist Minister, baptized 62 people at the center railroad bridge in Highsplint.

Left, the Highsplint Coal Company Store,; above and right, the location of Highsplint.

Harriette Simpson Arnow: American Novelist

By John W. McCauley, Lexington/Bronston

When I think of my favorite novels, Jesse Stuart’s Daughter of the Legend and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea quickly come to mind. However, I would be remiss not to mention Harriette Simpson Arnow’s The Dollmaker, which was the runner-up for the 1955 National Book Award.

It is a story of triumph and tragedy about a poor Kentucky mountain family who moved to Detroit during World War II due to bad economic conditions. The main character is focused on Gertie Nevels, a strong woman of faith who left her Kentucky roots with her family for a Detroit housing project. It is, perhaps, one of the best novels of its time.

Harriette Louisa Simpson was born July 7, 1908, in Wayne County, near Bronston, but in 1913, the family moved to Burnside (Pulaski County) shortly before Harriette’s fifth birthday. She grew up in old Burnside, which was a stop on the Southern Railroad that had a steamboat landing, where the South Fork and Cumberland Rivers met. Burnside was known for its luxurious Seven Gables Hotel, where travelers to Nashville could spend the night before boarding the boat the next day.

In 1952, when Wolf Creek Dam was constructed in Russell County, the Cumberland River became the primary tributary of Lake Cumberland. With the impounding of the lake, lower Burnside was flooded and became a memory. Today, lower Burnside lies beneath the waters of Lake Cumberland at Burnside Marina, and Burnside, as we know it, sits on the hill above the lake. The last book written by Arnow was Old Burnside, her memoir, published in 1977.

Harriette was one of six children. Both parents were teachers, and they wanted her to teach. When she was young, she wanted a typewriter, but instead, her mother bought her a cow. Much of her summers were spent canning blackberries, green beans, and other fruits and vegetables as well as helping in and around the home.

Harriette was educated at Burnside High School before attending Berea College, where she earned a teaching certificate. She later graduated from the University of Louisville. After college, she returned home for a couple of years to teach in a rural school. Harriette eventually made her way to Cincinnati, where she met the man who became her husband, Harold B. Arnow, a newspaper writer from Chicago. While living in Queen City, she worked for the Federal Writer’s Project, a New Deal program under the Works Progress Administration for

unemployed writers during the Great Depression. It was during that time when she published her first two short stories—“A Mess of Pork” and “Marigolds and Mules.” Due to the gender challenges that faced female writers in that era, both were published under the pen name H.L. Simpson. In 1936, she published her first novel, Mountain Path, under the name Harriette Simpson.

Arnow returned to Pulaski County with her husband, where she briefly taught school before the couple made their way to Detroit in 1944. After residing in an inner-city housing project, the Arnows’ left Detroit to purchase a 40-acre farm near Ann Arbor, Michigan, which became the adopted home of the talented writer. The Arnows had two children, Marcella Jane and Thomas Louis.

During her life, she authored many books, including the aforementioned Mountain Path (1936) and The Dollmaker (1954); Hunter’s Horn (1949), which won the Saturday Review Best Novel Award; Seedtime on the Cumberland (1960); Flowering of the Cumberland (1963); The Weedkiller’s Daughter (1970); The Kentucky Trace (1974); Old Burnside (1977); and, posthumously, Between the Flowers (1999) and The Collected Short Stories of Harriette Simpson Arnow (2005).

In 1984, The Dollmaker, was produced into a made-fortelevision movie that featured Jane Fonda, who won a Primetime Emmy Award for her portrayal of Gertie Nevels. Others in the movie were Levon Helm, Amanda Plummer and Susan Cardwell Kingsley, who hailed from Middlesboro. In 1987, Appalshop filmmaker Herb E. Smith produced a film about Arnow.

When Arnow returned to Burnside later in life, she saw that the steam locomotive had been replaced by a diesel engine and a smaller less-populated Burnside located above the lake on Bunker Hill. It proved to be a challenge in finding old landmarks in the area once known as upper Burnside.

Arnow died on March 22, 1986 at age 77 at her home in Washtenaw County, Michigan. In 2013, she was inducted posthumously into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. She and her husband are buried at the William Casada Cemetery, south of Burnside.

While writing this story from my porch above Lake Cumberland, I looked across the lake to the water-covered area that once was lower Burnside, thinking about the acclaimed author and the once-thriving community of another era.

Harriette Simpson Arnow, through triumphs and struggles, was a true pioneer who forged a path for female writers.

Harriette Simpson Arnow

One of the greatest sports victories in Kentucky history

C6HO: When Centre Defeated Harvard

By Bobbi Dawn Rightmyer, Harrodsburg

The 102 anniversary of the historic 1921 Centre vs. Harvard football game is Oct. 29. According to Centre College of Danville, this game was a regular-season away game played at Harvard Stadium in Allston, Massachusetts, before an estimated crowd of 45,000. The Centre Praying Colonels and the Harvard Crimson each were undefeated that season, and the game was a rematch from the year before. When Centre scored 6-0 against Harvard, many sportscasters considered this one of the greatest upsets in college football history.

Centre had around 300 students in 1921, and at the time, there were no college divisions in football. Harvard was considered the top university, and its football team had gone undefeated in 1919 and ’20, laying claim to the national title in each year and winning the Rose Bowl in 1920.

Centre and Harvard first met in 1920 at Harvard Stadium. Harvard was undefeated in 1920, and Centre College had had no success in football before star quarterback Bo McMillin arrived on campus in 1917.

Centre shocked Harvard in the 1920 game by taking a 14-7 halftime lead. In the second half, Centre faded, and Harvard won 31-14. Following the game, Harvard's captain offered the game ball to Centre’s quarterback, but McMillin declined the ball and promised, “We’ll be back next year to take it home with us.”

The Centre victory in 1921 was a shock but not a lucky break. The team finished the 1921 season 10-1, defeating several of the nation’s powerhouses, including Auburn, Arizona and Clemson. Centre’s only defeat was a 22-14 loss to powerful Texas A&M in the 1922 Dixie Classic (forerunner of the Cotton Bowl) in Dallas on Jan. 2, 1922. This is the game where A&M’s famous “12th man” was born. Texas was an underdog team with limited reserves, so they had to pull a non-uniformed player off the bench. Quarterback McMillin had gotten married in Dallas the day before the game, and the Colonels were in the midst of a grueling long-distance train trip, having played Arizona in San Diego the week before. Up until their final game of the

CLASSIFIED ADS

WANTED TO BUY — All types of antiques and collectibles. Top prices for gold, silver and costume jewelry. Scrap gold. Gold and silver coins. Wrist and pocket watches. Collections. Early post cards and fountain pens. Civil War swords and other military items. Vintage toys. Pocket knives. Lighters. Old eyeglasses. Pottery and stoneware. All types of railroad items. Advertising signs. Handmade quilts. Marbles. Jars. Much, much more. Complete and partial estates. Call Clarence, buyer for more than 30 years, at 606.531.0467. (F-D)

Reach 120,000 readers with classified advertising available in Kentucky Explorer. Classified ads $50 per issue (up to 25 words). Contact Deborah Kohl Kremer at deb@kentuckymonthly.com

season, the Colonels had outscored their opponents by a margin of 314 to 6.

It was a historic upset and made the front-page news across the country, increasing interest in college football. In 1950, the Associated Press named Centre 6/ Harvard 0 the greatest sports upset of the first half of the 20th century. In 2005, The New York Times called it “arguably the upset of the century in college football.” In 2006, ESPN named it the thirdbiggest upset in the 138-year history of college football and was ranked No. 4 in a similar list published by Bleacher Report in 2011. The game also ranked No. 126 on a 2019 ESPN list of the 150 greatest college football games of all time.

The phrase by which the game is most commonly known, “C6H0,” originated from a comment made by a Centre professor shortly following the game: Harvard had been “poisoned” by the organic compound Oxanorbornadiene, represented by C6HO on the periodic table. It stuck, and all-around Danville, students painted the so-called “impossible formula.”

On the 75th anniversary of C6H0 in 1996, Centre challenged Harvard to a rematch. Harvard declined

WANTED — Paying cash for large diamonds; collections of vintage wrist and pocket watches; gold and silver coins; sterling flatware and serving pieces; gold and silver jewelry; collections of arts and crafts and pottery; antique advertising signs; antique walking canes; pocket knives; collections of antique guns and swords; military collections; early hand-crafted crocks and jugs; musical instruments. Call Clarence, buyer for more than 35 years; 606.531.0467. (S-D)

SELF-PUBLISHING: On-Demand Book Printing, Softcover, Hardcover, and Spiral Binding, Side-Sewing for Children’s Books, Kindle Books, Typesetting, Editing, Graphic Design, Amazon Listing, Bible-Rebinding, etc. Contact Reformation Publishers, Inc., DBA 24-Hour Books, DBA Williams Printing Co., 14 S. Queen Street, Mt. Sterling, KY 40353, Email: rpublisher@aol.com, 1.800.765.2464, Telephone 859.520.3757, Fax 859.520.3357, Text 606.359.2064, www.reformationpublishers.com. (O-D)

Ellis Park Racetrack in Henderson was built by the Green River Jockey Club in 1922.

Above, Centre’s 1921 football team; right, quarterback Bo McMillin.

Natural Treasures

Ron Ellis characterizes his latest book, Yonder: Tales From an Outdoor Life, as “a collection of new and selected stories gathered over many seasons spent with friends in the woods and on the waters. These are tales and sketches about treasured friends and places, wild birds and bright fish, and, if we were very lucky, occasional brushes with wonder and magic in the wild places we liked best.”

Ellis, a retired administrator at Northern Kentucky University, eloquently shares his love of the outdoors in a way that celebrates personal connections of all sorts. The setting of his stories is the liberating environment of fresh air and natural beauty, a place he believes communion begins.

The 28-story collection is a treasure. From the signature offering “Yonder,” in which Ellis recalls his gratifying summer fishing experiences near Maysville with Uncle George, to “Box of Light,” the poignant remembrance of a tree carving his father saved that his son finds 27 years later, these slices of life enrich each of us.

Ellis has contributed to Kentucky Monthly, and his previous works include Cogan’s Woods and Of Woods & Waters: A Kentucky Outdoors Reader

By Steve Flairty

Yonder: Tales From an Outdoor Life by Ron Ellis, Praus Press, $28.95 (H)

A Soldier’s Story

Based on the real-life experiences of the author’s greatgrandfather, Ghosts of Blackberry Holler is told from the viewpoint of Harper Hunt, a Union soldier in the Civil War. The book easily engages the reader with well-written descriptions and interesting, realistic characters.

This piece of historical fiction presents the harsh realities of war and its effects on a young man as he tries to make sense of his postwar life. Harp, as the main character is called, travels around the state looking for work and for himself. In reading about Harp’s adventures, Kentuckians will recognize locations that make the story hit home a little more intensely.

C.W. Shumate is a writer and culinary enthusiast from Nicholas County. He has penned several children’s books in the Blackberry Tails series and produces and sells Kentucky Blackberry BBQ Sauce.

By Deborah Kohl Kremer

Sympathy for the Hitman?

Chris Helvey has a habit of writing about sordid protagonists who flash just enough humanity to gain the reader’s sympathy. The Frankfort author uses Last Train to Miami, set in 1961, to coax a few more of those reactions out of us regarding a Mafia hitman sent from Philadelphia to do a job down south to please the Miami boss.

But for Moe Horwitz, this job doesn’t evolve as he had planned. Moe develops a friendship with the target, and he grows even closer to the man’s wife, who has a child whom she worries receives no emotional support from his father. Moe’s personal “professionality” gets challenged. Adding to the complexity, the Mafia family members in Miami are quite puzzling characters, too.

Will this veteran in the field of crime come out of this situation alive? If so, will he emerge with at least a trace of observable humanity? Those questions come up often with this author, and readers seem to be squarely in tune and waiting for answers. Getting there usually is the most exciting part.

By Steve Flairty

Ghosts of Blackberry Holler, by C.W. Shumate, Butler Books, $24.95 (P)

Last Train to Miami, by Chris Helvey, Wings ePress Inc., $14.95 (P)

by Bill Ellis

Exercising the Mind and the Body: Charles Atlas, Encyclopedias and Dictionaries

Most people these days rely on the internet to answer their every question. I am really showing my age now as I recall the importance of encyclopedias and dictionaries in my lifetime.

I was about 12 when my folks bought for me The Book of Knowledge, an encyclopedia for youths. The volumes were a bit daunting for a kid my age. Don’t get me wrong. I did not sit for long lengths of time exploring the encyclopedia. However, on a rainy day, a hot August day, or in my spare time, I found comfort in seeing in those volumes a world I could only imagine.

Grolier Inc. published an American version of what originally was a children’s encyclopedia. I had the new American edition, which was full of pictures and illustrations, plus text I could understand as a 12-yearold.

I depended on The Book of Knowledge for numerous reports for schoolwork all the way up through high school.

• • •

In addition to exercising my brain, I exercised my body. This is a bit off the subject, but some of you oldsters may remember Charles Atlas as an exercise guru. With my own money, I bought his exercise routine and kept it up for some time into my teenage years. He claimed that “dynamic tension” was the answer to his muscular physique. But it didn’t seem to work for me.

I eventually used weight training that added some muscle to my scrawny physique. There weren’t gyms on every street corner as there are now, so I devised my own exercise program. Since Pop ran a Shelbyville welding shop, I built a barbell by welding two truck wheels at the

ends of an old axle. Over the years, I added a little more weight by welding scrap metal on the wheels, until I had nearly 130 pounds. Some of the local guys eventually dropped by for an occasional lifting session.

• • •

Well, back to the brain exercising. (You must forgive my 83-year-old brain for wandering off a bit at times.)

When writing, I always keep “The New College Edition” of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language nearby, along with The New Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language

My prize possessions include The Kentucky Encyclopedia, published in 1992 by the University Press of Kentucky, the first of several such tomes with a Kentucky theme. The Mary and Barry Bingham Sr. Fund headlined a group of sponsors that funded a large enterprise overseen by Editor-in-Chief John E. Kleber. Associate Editors Thomas D. Clark, Lowell H. Harrison and James C. Klotter added their expertise to this venture.

Kleber, professor of history at Morehead State University, accepted Clark’s challenge to embark on the three-year project. “It was a very difficult project to complete,” Kleber maintained.

Klotter recalled that, when the book went on sale on June 1, 1992, at the Old State Capitol, more than 600 books were sold. “All 5,000 copies sold out in two days, and there was a mad rush to print more,” Kleber recalled.

“Editor-in-Chief John Kleber deserves all the accolades he can receive for his yeoman work,” Klotter concluded.

The nearly 1,000-page volume touched off renewed interest in Kentucky history, not only among scholars like myself but also the general public.

There followed a series of three volumes covering other important Kentucky topics and areas. The Encyclopedia of Louisville, also edited by Kleber and a product of the Thomas D. Clark Foundation, was published in 2001. For it, George H. Yater provided an essay, “Louisville: A Historical Overview.” If nothing else, check out the picture of Ted Williams hefting a Louisville Slugger “roughout” on page 572.

In 2009, University Press of Kentucky published The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky, edited by Paul A. Tenkotte and James C. Claypool

Another hefty volume at nearly 1,000pages, it covers Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties, plus much of the surrounding area, as far south as Carroll, Mason and Harrison counties.

Published as a “Thomas D. Clark Medallion Book,” the Kentucky African American Encyclopedia was released by the University Press of Kentucky in 2015. It was edited by Gerald L. Smith, Karen Cotton McDaniel and John A. Hardin, who said the effort took more than 10 years. I wish I’d had this book before me when I was researching A History of Education in Kentucky.

These books and the Atlas of Kentucky are always nearby when I am writing.

It could make you wonder if “A History of Western Kentucky” or “A History of Eastern Kentucky” someday will be added to our bookshelves.

Anyone who wants a well-written history of this state must begin with A New History of Kentucky, Second Edition, written by Klotter (who else) and Craig Thompson Friend

Readers may contact Bill Ellis at editor@ kentuckymonthly.com

OCTOBER 28 29

KEYNOTE

WORKSHOPS PANELS READINGS

tinyurl.com/kspsconf

Funding provided, in part, by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts

Kristen Renee Miller

Poet and translator, Executive Director and Editor in Chief at Sarabande Books

by Gary Garth

The Best Month

October is everyone’s favorite month. Various reasons abound.

Weather: The average daytime temperature is 69 degrees. Nights, on average, dip to a cool 47. Relative humidity rarely creeps above 70 percent. Rainfall is about 2 inches.

Sports: Football at every level— pee-wee, prep, college, professional— is at full throttle. Baseball is launching into the postseason. Kentucky is not home to a major league team, of course, but we have a trio of local favorites. At this writing, the St. Louis Cardinals, unfortunately, aren’t going anywhere. But the Cincinnati Reds might, and the Atlanta Braves are soaring toward October baseball.

Fishing: Every sportfish that swims in Kentucky can be caught in October. Fish are out of their summer doldrums and are actively feeding. Find them by following the baitfish. Grassy cover. Woody cover. Ledge cover. Crappie, arguably the state’s most popular fish during the spring spawn, typically display a spurt of fall activity and are readily available to anglers who seek them out.

Trout fishing ranges from good to fantastic. The Cumberland River tailwater, the state’s largest and most productive trout water, typically surrenders some of its best fish in the fall. The delayed harvest trout season begins on 13 streams Oct. 1. While trout angling on these small waters is restricted to single hook, artificial lure, catch-and-release action, the scenery and weather are delightful, and the fish, generally, are cooperative. Look for details at the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources’ Fishing Guide,

fw.ky.gov, pages 25-26.

October is a wonderful time to canoe or kayak a Kentucky stream, many of which harbor excellent fishing. A good information source, including current water levels for numerous floatable streams, is the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Blue Water Trails series, available at fw.ky.gov

Camping: The COVID-19 outbreak, deadly and destructive as it was, resulted in a surprising boost in outdoor recreation, particularly camping. There is rarely a better time to go than October. The weather has become camping friendly, and the crowds that often clog summer campgrounds will have dwindled. Kentucky’s state parks, Daniel Boone National Forest, Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area, Mammoth Cave National Park and the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area are prime fall camping spots.

Hunting & Wildlife: Hunting season is open for nearly every game animal except waterfowl. Look for details at fw.ky.gov. For those who prefer to hunt with a camera, October is a good time to go. The Land

Between the Lakes Elk & Bison Prairie (free-ranging elk, bison and other game within a 700-acre fenced enclosure) is on full display in October and provides excellent photo opportunities. Find out more at explorekentuckylake.com/lbl/elkbison-prairie. Kentucky also has an elk herd across 16 eastern counties. Hunting is by quota draw only, but the animals are fairly easy to view and photograph for wildlife watchers and photographers.

Foliage: Fall colors are on display

across the Commonwealth. You won’t have to travel far to find them. Get out and enjoy it. Every day of it.

October also affords Kentucky’s firearm hunters their first opportunity at a deer for the 2023-24 season. Youngsters get the first shot during the two-day youth-only gun hunt Oct. 14-15. The weekend hunt is open to hunters ages 15 and younger. Unless license exempt, hunters 12-15 years old will need a license and deer permit, but for hunters younger than 12, no license or permit is required. All other regulations apply. Youngsters should be accompanied by an adult.

The following weekend, Oct. 21-22, will usher in the early muzzleloading deer season, which is open to hunters of all ages. Kentucky is generous in what it defines as a “muzzleloader,” as hunters are not restricted to the long gun of Daniel Boone. State game officials define legal muzzleloading equipment as: “Muzzle-loading rifle or handguns of any caliber, with flint or percussion ignition [including in-lines], shooting round balls, conical bullets or saboted bullets. Muzzle-loading firearms equipped with open sights or telescopic sights [scopes]. Muzzleloading shotguns no larger than 10-gauge, shooting round balls, conical bullets or saboted bullets.” Look for details at fw.ky.gov

Last year, Kentucky deer hunters checked 144,493 deer. Muzzleloader hunters accounted for 10,684.

Readers may contact Gary Garth at editor@kentuckymonthly.com

by Walt Reichert

Old Lessons and New Projects

October marks the month for putting the garden—and this gardening column—to bed. Before I enter hibernation, I want to share some thoughts on the past season and share a few of my plans for the next gardening year. Lesson: Always look ahead.

The past two springs have made me think that late frosts and freezes are challenges we might have to deal with for the foreseeable future. Whether they go hand in hand with climate change, I’m not able to say. But they certainly wreaked havoc this year and last.

There were almost no peaches in Kentucky, few apples, a very poor strawberry crop, tattered shrubs and even some damaged trees. There isn’t much we can do to make Mother Nature behave herself, but as gardeners, we can try a few strategies to cope. One is to plant varieties of flowers and fruits and vegetables that bloom later in the season. The earliest daffodils, for example, got badly zapped by a freeze; the late bloomers were unscathed. My apple tree that had the most fruit is a late bloomer and producer called ‘Goldrush.’

Lesson: Earlier may not be better.

Almost every growing season features at least one dry spell, but what was strange about this year (and last) is that the dry spell came not in the middle or end of summer, as you might expect, but in the usually wet months of May and June. I had to

irrigate the vegetable garden in early June—something I have never done before. Rains finally arrived in late June and July, with some parts of the state experiencing torrential rain and flooding. But for some gardens and garden plants, the water came too late.

Lesson: Have the watering equipment ready to go before you think you need it.

Back in the 1980s, Japanese beetles were a scourge. I remember lots of

freezes didn’t take out. Nothing like picking blackberries only to have the disgusting little things interrupt their mating festival to buzz right in your face. I prefer not to use insecticides unless necessary, but they clearly needed to die. When I went to the store to purchase my standard insecticide, they were sold out. “When will you get more?” I asked. “Next spring” was the reply.

Lesson: While you’re stocking up on watering equipment, make sure you have a season’s supply of spray material.

NEW PROJECTS

But enough of looking backward. Gardening is always about next season.

I have a few plans I hope I have the time and energy to pull off.

folks buying the yellow pheromone traps and catching them by the bags full. (Note: Bad idea. You attract more beetles than land in the traps.) But, at least in my garden, they had appeared only in small numbers and did very little harm the last several decades— until this year. This year, they were everywhere. And they were ravenous. They ate the grapes. And the roses. And the okra. The raspberries, blackberries and whatever fruit the

One is a rose garden. Yes, believe me, I know—high maintenance. But my dad, who died two years ago this month, always had a rose garden, although I took care of it the last several years of his life. And I don’t want just any roses; I want the varieties he grew, though some of them are “antiques” and will be hard to find. ‘Tiffany.’ ‘Mr. Lincoln.’ ‘Chrysler Imperial.’ ‘Love,’ among others. I know I’ll have to scour the garden centers, catalogs and online stores to find what I want, but the task will be kind of fun.

My plan is to mark off a welldrained spot, kill all the hateful Bermuda grass growing anywhere within 800 miles of the rose bed, dump the cleanings from the barn to

The Japanese beetle was back this year, ravenouly ravaging our plants.

improve organic matter and drainage, and then plant. Then clip and prune and spray. And spray. And spray. Dad, you better help!

When I’m not spraying roses, I plan to install an heirloom apple orchard. I want varieties that grow well in the upper South, are at least somewhat disease resistant, and— most of all—taste good. What’s the point of growing your own apples if they don’t taste better than store bought? It sure isn’t to save money. ‘Grimes Golden,’ ‘Sops of Wine’ and ‘Cox Orange Pippin’ (Thomas Jefferson’s favorite apple) are some of the varieties I’m looking for.

I’m hoping to get eight to 10 trees on dwarfing rootstock, so they don’t take up too much space. Dwarf trees bear more quickly than semi-dwarf or standard trees—no small consideration at my age. I may plant a few this fall, the rest in spring. By the way, November is a good time to plant apple and pear trees.

Finally, I hope to start a few more trees from seeds. I’ve had good luck starting red oak, burr oak and white oak from acorns. I put the acorns in loose potting soil in an old tub or wheelbarrow in the fall, keep them watered during dry spells, and by spring, I have seedlings emerge. I set the seedlings out in rows in the garden for their first year, then transplant them to their final spot in the fall.

I’m hoping to start seedlings of shingle, swamp white and chestnut oaks, walnut and Kentucky coffee tree. I know I won’t live long enough to sit beneath any of these, but that’s what gardening is about: looking ahead.

See ya next spring.

Readers may contact Walt Reichert at editor@kentuckymonthly.com

Barbara K. & Stephen M. Vest, 1001 Silver Creek Drive, Frankfort, KY 40601; Michael & Mary Embry, 152 Skyview Drive, Frankfort, KY 40601; Thomas Hall, 661 Berry Lane, Lexington, KY 40502; Leesa Shake, 4014 South First Street, Louisville, KY 40214; Mary Jo Ratliff, PO Box 1347, Pikeville, KY 41502; Rebecca & Randy Sandell, 7419 Falls Ridge Court, Louisville, KY 40241; Jack E. Dixon, 6114 Franklin Villa Way, Indianapolis, IN 46237; Robert Hawkins, 1140 Rostevor Circle, Louisville, KY 40205; Barry Royalty, 4325 Cloverleaf Drive, Louisville, KY 40216; Tom & Judy Harris, 1713 Parkridge Parkway, Louisville, KY 40214; Gregory Carnes, 4106 Montalto Court, Louisville, KY 40299; Ted Sloan, 1067 Macland Street, Lawrenceburg, KY 40342; Walter Norris, 418 Northridge Drive, Lexington, KY 40505; Kendall Shelton, 204 Denison Way, Frankfort, KY 40601; Barbara Ann Chiericozzi, 7114 Topsail Court, Tega Cay, SC 29708; Michelle McDonnell, 10706 Norman Avenue, Fairfax, VA 22030; 11) Known

or

& Other Security

OCTOBER 2023

1 Oktoberfest Harrodsburg downtown Harrodsburg, 859.734.6811

8 Penn & Teller Present The Foolers Tour, Louisville Palace, 1.800.745.3000

15 Disney Junior Live on Tour: Costume Palooza, The Carson Center, Paducah, 270.450.4444

22 Wheel of Fortune Live! EKU Center for the Arts, Richmond, 859.622.7469

29 Broadway Show: Mean Girls, SKyPAC, Bowling Green, 270.904.1880

2

3

Brad Brown Comedy Magic Barnwood Bravo Theater, Dry Ridge, 859.428.8085

4

5 Lauren Daigle Kaleidoscope Tour KFC Yum! Center, Louisville, 502.690.9000

6 Bourbon on the Banks, downtown Frankfort, through Oct. 7, 970.270.6573

7

Lincoln Days, downtown Hodgenville, through Oct. 8, 270.358.8710

10

Jelly Roll, Yelawolf and Struggle Jennings in Concert, Rupp Arena, Lexington, 859.233.4567

16

Dance Fever: Eleni Katz, with Llewellyn SanchezWerner, Mahr Center for the Arts, Madisonville, 270.824.8650

23

11

Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band in Concert, Paramount Arts Center, Ashland, 606.324.0007

12

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, S helby County Community Theatre, Shelbyville, through Oct. 13, 502.633.0222

19 The Adventures of Tortoise and Hare: The Next Gen, Felix E. Martin Jr. Hall, Greenville, 270.377.3115

26

30 Poetry Slam KMAC, Louisville, 502.589.0102

31

Annie, EKU Center for the Arts, Richmond, through Nov. 1, 859.622.7469

Ongoing Weep No More, Victorian Mourning My Old Kentucky Home State Park, Bardstown, through Oct. 31, 502.348.3502

Ongoing Quilts of Valor, National Quilt Museum, Paducah, through Nov. 10, 270.442.8856

13 Court Days, downtown Mt. Sterling, through Oct. 16, 859.498.8732

20

Haunted History Tour Old State Capitol, Frankfort, also Oct. 21, 26 and 27, 502.564.1792

27

Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, Renfro Valley Entertainment Center, 606.256.0101

Ongoing Henry Faulkner Exhibit, Headley-Whitney Museum of Art, Lexington, through Nov. 11, 859.255.6653

9 a guide to Kentucky’s most interesting events

For a more extensive listing of events, visit kentuckymonthly.com.

14

Fall Market on Main & Chili Cookoff downtown Henderson, 270.826.7505

21 Oktoberfest Glencoe General Store, Glencoe, 859.643.1234

28 Dia de los Muertos downtown Henderson, 270.826.3128

Ongoing Tunes in the Vines, Equus Run Vineyards, Midway, through Nov. 11, 859.846.9463

Court Days in downtown Mt. Sterling

Vested Interest 250

One recent morning, I awoke from a troubled dream and quickly put on my 18th-century clothing for a Constitution Week event at Collins Lane Elementary School in Frankfort. Four of us, appropriately attired, appeared before a student assembly to discuss the importance of the United States Constitution and the rules we, Americans, live by. Signed in 1787, the Constitution ensures the rights and responsibilities of our citizen-led nation.

When we were introduced as visitors from 236 years ago, it got me thinking about Kentucky Monthly’s 25th anniversary. That may seem trivial, but when you consider the massive amount of work that has gone into such a relatively minor enterprise, the effort it has taken to keep our United States of America moving, more or less together, is 10 times longer. “We the People” are fewer than three years away from the Semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, which triggered a decade-long war with the British Empire. Four score and seven years later [Abraham Lincoln’s fancy way of saying 87 years], “We the People” waged war against each other to define the rules we find self-evident and the rights we consider unalienable. Now, eight score more, our nation is divided again, but in Kentucky, we know that “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” We can choose to do either. It’s our right.

Kwiz Answers

1.

My nephew’s retirement from the United States Air Force in September took us to southern Maryland, the same area where my mother’s people lived before migrating to northern Kentucky (then western Virginia) in the late 1700s. We traveled the path they took north toward Pennsylvania and crossed the Susquehanna, Shenandoah and Ohio rivers, and the Appalachian and Cumberland mountains. Leaving Annapolis, Maryland, after breakfast, we stopped for lunch and gasoline in West Virginia and still arrived home in central Kentucky before sunrise the next day. We were in a car on a paved interstate, and the trip seemed tiresome. Imagine those first Kentuckians on dirt paths or flatboats making that same trek. It took six weeks to two months if they owned mules or horses. Many did not. While I struggled to stay awake, they struggled to stay alive.

As we travel across Kentucky this year, we will visit some of those early settlements. We started with Frankfort in September, and this month we are going to Stanford (Oct. 20), which offers an excellent opportunity to see an early Kentucky city (founded in 1775), renovated and reimagined, and Constitution Square in nearby Danville, where our state Constitution was adopted in 1792, five years after the national one. In November, we will visit the headquarters of the National Society Sons of the American Revolution in Louisville. In December, we’ll see Fort Boonesborough, hosted by the folks from Winchester to the north and Richmond to the south.

Come along for the adventure. It’s your right.

While I was strolling through the Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort one day, a man, seeing the Kentucky Monthly logo on my shirt, stopped me and said, “You know, my mom subscribes to Kentucky Monthly.”

“Really?” I said. “I imagine many people’s moms subscribe to Kentucky Monthly.” It reminded me of when I told someone my grandmother lives in Clearwater, Florida. His response: “Everyone’s grandmother lives in Clearwater, Florida.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “She’s subscribed since the first issue and orders dozens of gift subscriptions yearly to send to relatives and friends.”

“Oh,” I said, “your mom is Judy Masters.”

“You know my mom?” he asked with a hint of surprise. “Well, yes,” I said. “Everyone at Kentucky Monthly knows Judy Masters.”

Mrs. Masters is among those familiar names around our office, along with the Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal (who always called me Stephen), Nina Clooney (noted for her love of opposums), author Allen Anthony of “Fort Davis, Texas,” Muhlenberg County native Homer T. Smith and Georgetown’s Don Dampier, an expert on all things Carlisle.

“I picked up the first issue in Dr. Delbert Fritz’s office in Richmond,” Mrs. Masters said. “I thought it was quite interesting and started sending it to people I knew from Richmond who moved away. They all enjoyed it, and so I kept thinking of other people to send it to.”

When Charles Hayes entrusted Kentucky Explorer to Kentucky Monthly in 2020, Mrs. Masters was among the first readers to call. “I was so pleased,” she said. “My dad read every issue of the Explorer, and to include it in Kentucky Monthly is brilliant.”

the Alien and Sedition Acts on October 10, 1798, for his relentless criticism of President John Adams; 10. A. The only time the peace-seeking Chickasaw waged war against any English-speaking people was as members of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.

Mrs. Masters, who has read all 270 issues of Kentucky Monthly, often calls to say, “Keep up the good work.”

:

C. The Southern Exposition, which did more to promote interior lighting than any other event; 2. A. Court Days in Mount Sterling dates to 1794; 3. C. French played a hippie in Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. in 1969 and later as Goober’s sister on the failed sitcom Goober & the Truckers’ Paradise; 4. A. She was born in the Paintsville Hospital instead of at home; 5. B. The Jordanaires also were Elvis Presley’s background singers from 1956-72; 6. C. Christopher Alvin Stapleton played football and was class valedictorian at Johnson Central High School before attending Vanderbilt University in Nashville; 7. C. Abraham Lincoln’s least favorite general did well in Monroe County; 8. B. Dix also wrote Dictates for a Happy Life and How to Win and Hold a Husband; 9. B. Lyon was found guilty of violating

STEPHEN M. VEST Publisher + Editor-in-Chief

STAY

DINE EXPLORE

3,000 Acres of Discovery

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill is Kentucky’s largest National Historic Landmark bridging the past to the future. With miles of wideopen spaces to roam, stories to share and memories to make there’s something for everyone to discover.

Plan your visit at shakervillageky.org

Compliments of Tallgrass Farm Foundation

Secure Your Future

Berea College, founded in 1855 to serve students in Kentucky and Appalachia with great promise and limited means, has not charged tuition since 1892. The highest-ranked institution in the state, Berea provides a supportive community, personalized education, and paid work experience so students can build their best lives.