Features

When faced with an unplanned pregnancy, hope is a welcome word.

With the surprise that often accompanies this revelation, there can also be fear, sadness or delayed joy. Hope comes with an understanding of the choices a woman has to live with her discovery. Hope comes with an embrace, a place of welcome, and a caring person to walk with in dealing with the event of an unplanned pregnancy. 

The band Caribou of Louisville will be playing at a pool party Saturday night at the Shelbyville Country Club. Paul Woods, a native of Shelby County,is drummer and vocalist in the band. Woods, 53, was educated at Shelbyville and Shelby County high schools and attended the University of Louisville and Murray State. He took a few moments for questions from The Sentinel-News about his career, Caribou and the event.

The Sentinel-News: How did you become a part of Caribou?

Bettie Allen Meriwether, owner of Allen Dale Farm in Shelby County, took great pride in knowing that her farm had been in her family since its establishment in 1795 by Robert Polk Allen. Her great grandmother, Ann Allen, widow of John Allen of Frederick County, Virginia, had been buried in the family graveyard on the property in 1805.

She valued the land, having fought a successful legal battle (1885-1889) to wrest the farm from control of her brother, George Baylor Allen, whose plans to mortgage the property would have undoubtedly been tantamount to its sale.

“I had no idea, I can tell you I was just completely bowled over.”
Those are the words  of Shelby County Attorney Hart Megibben, who Thursday was named 2011 Outstanding County Attorney by the office of the state attorney general.

Megibben, accompanied by his family, attended the Prosecutor’s Conference in Louisville, where the award was announced. Two recipients are chosen each year, and the other was John Estill of Mason County.

Megibben said he never expected to receive such an award and that was very honored.

Some folks in Bagdad are trying to keep a light on for you, but they’re having a little trouble with the bill.

The city lights in Bagdad – all 28 of them – are funded by annual assessments of the residents, but lately there have been some antes not being upped and the fund to pay the bill has gotten a little thin.

So members of the Bagdad Ruritan Club are trying to collect money to pay the $225-a-month bill from Kentucky Utilities until the end of the year, when they hope to help form a better solution.

“Do I model the characters in my stories after my relatives? Well, I can tell you that I can see my aunts and uncles in my characters, but they can’t see themselves,” said Gurney Norman at a presentation at the public library Thursday night.

Norman, a well-known author, popular for his stories about Appalachia, spoke to a crowd of about 30 people who gathered to hear him speak in one of the library’s Spend An Evening With An Author series.

An unofficial landmark left Shelbyville on Thursday when the old caboose on U.S. 60 just east of the city was carted off.

The caboose was purchased nearly a year ago by Scott Nash, a retired teacher in Louisville, who hired Adkins Export Packing and Machinery Movers to cart the caboose to his home in Fern Creek.

This year has been a whirlwind of excitement for members of Salem Baptist Church, with guest speakers and historic plays and a Homecoming planned for October.

But through it all, underlying all the excitement at the picturesque church with its own little cemetery on Mount Eden Road, is a steadfast sense of family among its members.

Being broken up with by your girlfriend in elementary school is always a traumatic event, especially when she bluntly tells you that you would go better with her cousin, whom you don’t even really know at the time.

That’s how I met Jen, my friend Carrie Miller’s cousin, when I was about 10.

If I could sum her up in one word, it would simply be funny…with awkward as a close second. She was a lanky, tall tomboy with the most outrageous personality ever.