Features

It’s the time of year to take a moment to enjoy the beautiful autumn colors, but if you’re going to slip on an old pair of shoes you left on the porch before heading outside to admire your colorful trees, you’d better not – you could end up dead or scarred, experts said.

That’s because along with an abundance of beautiful fall foliage, the spider population has really exploded this year, and two extremely poisonous varieties could be lurking in unlikely places.

Members of Beechridge Baptist Church have seen a lot of changes in its 200 years, including moving indoors and a name change.

This Bagdad-area church, located on Benson Pike about 3 miles east of the intersection with KY 395, started nearby its current location when parishioners would gather in the woods on log benches with lanterns hanging in the trees.

But it persevered, and by 1888 what was then the Baptist Church of Jesus Christ at Beech Ridge had its own building.

As he heads out to Louisville International Airport on Saturday morning to begin a trip to visit three war memorials at the nation’s capital, John Miles of Bagdad said he will be remembering a day he lived through 68 years ago.

A day he lived through, but so many of his friend didn’t – D Day.

“It was like time had no meaning, with what was happening around us,” he said. “I was scared; we all were. If you were breathing, you were scared.”

“I just had a baby three months ago, so this is a piece of cake compared to that!”

Those were the words of Tristan Stansfield, a fitness instructor, as she wriggled out from under the last strand of barbed wire in a sand pit.

“Hey, I think I ripped my pants,” came a comment from behind her.

The “sands of time” was only one of 23 activities set up on a 10K obstacle course set up for adults during the Swamp Tromp at Clear Creek Park on Saturday. A course for kids had 16.

Does caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s sometimes seem frustrating or overwhelming?

If so, there is a new organization in Shelbyville that provides a support group for caregivers of people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

The group, headed by Lisa Claire, former chaplain at Baptist East Hospital in Louisville, will meet on the third Wednesday of each month at 10:30 a.m. at First Christian Church on Eminence Pike.

The mood at Smith-McKenney in Village Plaza today will be one of bittersweet emotions as employees wrap up their last day of business before being taken over by CVS.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, forty years, and I know these people – we’re like a family, and it’ll be tough, leaving,” owner Greg Hayes said. “But the cycle goes on, you know, and the one thing that’s constant in life is change.”

On June 24, 1916, a tremendous and sustained artillery bombardment by the allied armies of Britain and France commenced the Battle of the Somme, the pivotal conflict in World War I, where 19,240 died on the first day, including my birth father, Reginald Bareham, a member of the 11th Suffolks. This barrage on the German army foretold not only the unfolding of that battle but a sequence of events that changed both the world and many lives forever.

With almost as much hat as rider in the saddle, Alex Hockensmith wasn’t the expected winner of the Mark Trumbo Memorial Horse Show in Mount Eden this past June.

In fact, most observers probably thought the then-5-year-old was more of a little buckaroo than a serious competitor.

But this Frankfort first-grader is trained well beyond his years.

‘No plan survives contact with the enemy.’

 Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800-1891)

The bloody Battle of the Somme, which commenced on July 1, 1916, has continued to fascinate me. My English father, Sgt. Reginald George Bareham, was one of 19,240 British soldiers – nearly 20 percent of the entire British fighting force – who were killed that day on the French countryside in one of the pre-eminent battles of World War I.

I was born a week later, on July 8.