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Opinion

  • What we think: We need to know...

    Were you as amazed as we were to read the story of Thomas Samuel “T.S.” Baxter, the first African-American elected to Shelbyville City Council, where he served for almost two decades before being gerrymandered out of his seat because of his race?

    We discovered Mr. Baxter as a small photograph in Portrait of the Past, Shelby County Kentucky 1865-1980. In fact, the caption beneath his photograph was the only clue we had to the story of T.S. Baxter.

  • MY WORD: Here's a needed...

    Steve Doyle seems to be very poorly educated on the art of tattooing ("On Valentine's Day, no love loss for tattooing," Feb. 15). I am going to try my best to inform him without offending him, a quality he would be well advised to inherit (oops, there I go already).

  •
    MY WORD: Let’s review options...

    I have been interested for some time in Joe Ruble’s proposal to erect a statue in east end Shelbyville to counterbalance the beautiful horse statue in front of the fairgrounds (“Help us to honor Squire Boone,” Feb. 22). While I have some reservations about the need for such a status, I think Mr. Ruble has picked the wrong man.

    The fact that he is distantly related to Squire would seem to me to be a conflict of interest. But that is beside the point; if we’re going to have a statue, Mr. Ruble is entitled to make the case for his candidate.

  •
    MY WORD: Students learn to live...

    As many as 3 million Americans may have type 1 diabetes, often referred to as juvenile diabetes. The rate of type 1 diabetes incidents among children under the age of 14 is estimated to increase by 3 percent annually worldwide.

    Those statistics hit home with Shelby County Public Schools students Bryan Stapleton and Jacob Lisby, who both have experienced two of the warning signs – extreme thirst and frequent urination.

    Jacob said he also remembers “sitting around and doing nothing; felt I couldn’t,”

  • An honest history lesson on Abraham...

    History always has been one of those amorphous topics to most of us, defined by our relationships to events and eventualities more than encyclopedic endeavors.

    If you had no reason to have studied the dynasties in China, the crusades to the Middle East or the founding of our nation/state/county, then you probably didn’t, unless someone stuck a book in front of you and required your attention for a semester or so.

  • What we think: Let’s bulldoze...

    The owners of the former Wesley Apartments, on the corner of U.S. 50 and Freedom’s Way, now are asking to be annexed into the city of Shelbyville, and the city council has given that request its first approval.

    We’re not opposed to having the property annexed – in fact, we think it should be and positioned for new businesses – but why on earth would the city want to accept this excruciating eyesore as it now exists?

  • We congratulate: Shelby’s public...

    The new garden plots that the North Central Health Department and Shelby County Fiscal Court have laid out for free public use in Shelbyville are a bloomin’ good idea.

    We like the fact that some awkward space at the intersections of 11th Street, Kentucky Street and Equity Street, which could have been a magnet for new concrete, has been prepared for the ultimate in green endeavors.

    We can’t think of a better initiative to promote public health for the health department to embrace.

  • MY WORD: Help us honor Squire Boone

    As I looked through my grandmother’s family Bible, I saw where our family was kin to many famous pioneers. And after reading further, I found out how much one of my cousins, Squire Boone, had done.

    Of the first white men who dared to enter “the dark and bloody ground” in the early 1770s, brothers Daniel and Squire were the only two to come back alive. They had lived in the Radkin Valley in North Carolina. Squire was born in Pennsylvania.

  •
    MY WORD: Some serious questions...

    State Rep. Brad Montell (R-Shelbyville) has introduced two bills to the Kentucky legislature that put forth very specific agendas concerning our public schools. One bill, BR116, has the catchy title of “The Great Schools Tax Credit Bill” and the other is BR117, a bill creating charter schools.

  • MY WORD: Chamber undergoing many...

    A healthy business environment is a foundation for economic growth. Business provides the services and products consumers demand; and business creates the jobs people need. Business success fuels the tax base that allows government to provide the services citizens want. Business activity supports development of the quality of life we all want in the Shelby County Community.
    Creating the kind of community where business can succeed and grow is hard work and takes considerable planning and implementation – and it is serious business for your Chamber of Commerce.

  • On Valentine's Day, there’s no...

    I have escaped a scourge of Valentine’s Day that I had feared might stain my life.

    No one in my family received a “tattoo Valentine,” and I am forever grateful that their precious hides were spared.

    Now, I know those boxes I saw among the kids’ cards at a couple of stores this past weekend didn’t include needles and ink, but they did carry with them, I fear, an impression on delicate minds that was equally dangerous and potentially damaging.

  • What we think: Video of shooting...

    We now have watched the troubling final frames of  Trey Williams’ life, heard the fuzzy words Shelbyville Police Officers Suzanna Marcum and Frank Willoughby exchanged with Mr. Williams and seen some of what they saw on that Saturday afternoon.

    But although we have studied that video, watched those final minutes unfold and read the accompanying transcripts, our picture remains equally cloudy and minus the understanding we had hoped we would have received.

  •
    MY WORD: Painful lessons about...

    I departed Dec. 26 for London, England, for an advertising class that lasted two weeks, but would also count as college credit for a course at UK.  As I knew absolutely no one else going on this trip, to say I was nervous would be an understatement.
    I woke up every morning at 7 a.m., which would be 2 am here.  I had a complimentary breakfast provided by one of London’s finest hotels.  I would then attend a 30-minute class with around 30 other students from 12 different other universities in the U.S.

  • What we think: Education needs new...

    Recently members of the Shelby County Board of Education met with our elected leaders and gave them quite an elementary lesson in public education’s most well-known subject: Your budget is killing us.

    That, of course, required no piece of post-graduate analysis for anyone elected to any office in this state or for parents who pay careful attention to how their children’s needs are being met by the annual outlay of tax dollars.

    The chants on both sides are loud, clear and enumerated with valid points, if not universal solutions.

  • Clint Eastwood's suddenly...

    Maybe you were watching the Super Bowl on Sunday with a heartfelt interest in whether the Giants or the Patriots won in what became a sensational and scintillating scenario.
    Maybe you, like most of the tens of millions who watched, were more interested in the overpriced and overdeveloped – and sometimes overly stupid – commercials that have become so famous.

  • What we think: Recyled idea works...

    The saga involving Midwest Metals’ desire to open a facility in Shelby County seems to be on the road to an appropriate conclusion, which leaves us to ponder why there was such an unnecessary detour along the way.

    Midwest Metals, the recycling company, earned approval from the Triple S Board of Appeals on Thursday night to construct its collection complex on Windhurst Way, basically across the street from the acreage set aside for the new Shelby County Convenience Center adjacent to the Shelby County Industrial Park.

  • We congratulate: Shawn Allen’s U.S...

    Shawn Allen Jr., a junior at Shelby County High School, has spent these past few months getting to understand a process that most of us in the senior classes of life only barely can grasp.

    Mr. Allen since September has been a page for U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell as part of the Senate Page School program.

  • MY WORD: Why attack those health-...

    The price of a full-page ad in a local county paper costs an average exceeding $500. The Kentucky Medical Association has placed ads regarding “Identify Medical Doctors” in many local papers statewide. The total money spent by this organization on their recent smear campaign targeting non-medically degreed health-care providers probably totals thousands.

  • Here are a few points to debate

    Unless you are a devotee of the man himself, you probably had to giggle a bit as I did when I heard Newt Gingrich say recently that he wanted to be nominated for president and challenge Barack Obama to a series of 3-hour, Lincoln-Douglas-style debates on the issues facing our country.

    Unless I miss my guess: Honest Abe, the founding Republican, and Short Steve got off a good guffaw from the Great Peanut Gallery in the sky as well.

  • A first visit to a familiar place

    The boy climbed to his seat high in Rupp Arena on Saturday, his every sense keen to the sights and sounds of this famed arena, a Mecca to which he was pilgrimaging for the first time.

    He had passed its outer lobby while visiting the Hyatt Regency Hotel, reading the signs, noting the doorways, but his only peeks inside were from the narrow views of pixilated formations on a variety of television screens.