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Columns

  • This isn’t just the 1st day of spring

    Today to you is the first day of spring, arriving on the calendar if not exactly aligned with the forecast this week of lows perhaps near the teens. Just when the daffodils start to feel welcome, they get smacked with snow, ice and more petal-numbing temperatures. Maybe this is the confernal equinox.

    But I’m not here to talk about the weather, no matter how easily that topic has been known to consume dead air, recourse dragging dinner conversations and fill the blank pages of uninspired typists. But those aren’t me.

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  • Pieces of downtown Shelbyville are gobbled up

    At about 5:45 last Wednesday morning, I saw a photograph of the flames.

    They were bright and beautiful in their red, orange and gold deadliness, these flames. They were growing and scary and mesmerizing.

    Joseph Vance, guitarist extraordinaire and downtown resident, awakened by the fearsome smell of smoke, went into the cold March morning and saw downtown Shelbyville on fire.

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  • Bridging the best of our state

    If you know me and grasp that I have spent a large portion of my life in the shadows of Disney World, you might be surprised to learn that there are places in Kentucky that I have visited innumerable times and yet always have returned with a gift of something ineffable.

    To have survived the daily assault of tee-shirts and billboards perhaps left me inured to overwhelming promotion and more embracing of our state’s precious jewels, even if they are sadly too often unpolished to the sheen you see of their peers elsewhere.

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  • Despite the quiet, a roar will remain

    The scene has no great artistic value, other than to galvanize one fictional man’s words with a living man’s conviction.

    Humphrey Bogart. Ed Hutcheson in the film Deadline USA. Crusading editor for The Day. He’s taking down a mobster, seeking the truth against a cunning corruptor looking to control his city. Hutcheson is winning. He is telling the truth. He is gloating.

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  • A perfect first snowfall day to play

    Wasn’t that a lovely gift for Mother Nature to deliver our first real snowfall on a Saturday during a holiday break? No work for many, no school for any and no planned hootenanny.

    The snow wasn’t too deep, the temp wasn’t too cold and the landscape The Artist painted was one of great elegance, Christmas card-quality and pure whiteness. We can even forgive its arriving four days too late to give Santa safe landings.

    Ultimate beauty, moderate temperatures and mild disruption equal the perfect snowfall.

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  • A rhyme for the season 2012

    With apologies to Clement Moore, we adapt our rhyme for the season and wish you a very Merry Christmas.

     

    ‘Twas the night before Christmas,

    And up and down the street,

    Joy and happiness ruled,

    Not a frown did anyone greet.

     

    The residents were nestled

    All snug in their beds,

    Only post-holiday bills

    Put dread in their heads.

     

    And me with my laptop

    And the Mrs. with her iPad

    Were checking the late news,

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  • Life’s dark moments enlighten perspective

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  • How did Andy Griffith have such an impact on so many of us?

    In the eight awful days since God summoned angel Andy Griffith to the top of Mount Pilot and told him his baritone was needed among the heavenly hosts, I have read perhaps 10,000 words, watched about six hours of episodes, introduced a neophyte to What It Was Was Football and immersed in countless Internet comments about how this sole and soulful if sadly unacclaimed actor possibly could have risen to be an icon for two generations.

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  • The greatest story ever reported

    And in the same country, two editors were keeping track over the newsroom by night.

    And, lo, an angel of the Lord came before them, and the glory of the Lord shown round about them.

    But they weren’t afraid, because they knew this was Fred, a neighbor in St. Peter’s Loving Arms Apartments.

    “I have glad tidings of great joy,” he said. “Which shall be unto all people.”

    They shook their heads.

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  • A salute of honor from a non-vet of Veterans Day

    Veterans Day took on a new meaning for me a few years ago.

    As a child of the Vietnam Era, I admired and feared for those who took up arms for our country, but being a timid little country boy, I shamefully admit that I wasn’t real keen on participating.

    Perhaps admiration and guilt combine to form my odd interest in fiction and films about World War II, maybe they are  why I’ve read The Winds of War/War & Remembrance six times and watched the miniseries of the latter nearly that many times.

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