Sonora Louise Smart Dodd wanted to celebrate her father, William Jackson Smart, who had reared six children, one a newborn, after his wife died in childbirth in 1898.
Lexington’s fifth annual Fatherhood Celebration this Saturday is a continuation of Dodd’s celebration of her father, who was the spiritual and emotional head of her family, as well [...]
Oprah did it. Surely I can, too.
That was my thought when I finally joined the world of Twitter this week.
It wasn’t an unthinking proposition on my part to follow in her footsteps. Oprah does a lot of things I don’t, not the least of which is pay several thousand dollars for a purse.
But the young [...]
Jewel Bell of Lexington had gotten high on drugs and alcohol for nearly 30 of her 42 years of life.
“I saw my mother drinking Boone’s Farm wine and it looked like she was enjoying it, so I started drinking it, too,” she said, adding that she later abused drugs and alcohol with her parents and [...]
Dr. Thomas W. Burton was born a slave near the banks of Tates Creek and Shallow Ford in Madison County on May 4, 1860.
I came across him when I was surfing the University of Kentucky Libaries’ Notable Kentucky African Americans database, and thought some of the wisdom he shared in his autobiography What Experience Has [...]
A study, first published nearly three years ago, found that with just a few minutes of self-affirmation, some black students narrowed the achievement gap with their white counterparts by nearly 40 percent. A follow-up study, conducted in 2006-08 and recently released, produced the same results.
There was some fanfare with its release, but not that much.
I [...]
When white people join groups in which blacks are equal participants, unconscious racial biases fall away. In other words, the more we interact with one another, the less biased we are.
A study published in the March issue of “Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin” has found that. And it found that people form bonds with other [...]
I’m always a bit perplexed when Christians decry the mortgage bailouts, saying their neighbors should have known better than to buy houses they couldn’t afford. “Why should ‘our’ money go to save them? No one is bailing me out and I pay my mortgage every month,” they say.
Christians say that. Christians. It blows my mind.
I [...]
American workers are quickly finding themselves in one of two basic categories:
■ The recently laid-off who are struggling to find strong footing in the workplace again.
■ Those who fear they will find themselves in the first category one day soon.
In either scenario, comfort and security are not banners we wave. The shock of being laid [...]
Three reported cases of elder abuse have come to light in recent weeks, in which a grandchild allegedly was involved in severely beating, poisoning or killing a grandparent with whom he or she was living.
That is astounding to me. Unfortunately, cases like those might not be all that uncommon.
“I suppose it has been around forever,” [...]
I was talking with a friend last week, catching up on all the years we had not been in contact, when the conversation turned to the economy and our wallets.
We are both journalists, but his job in Mississippi seems more secure than mine here in Lexington.
Still, he was more worried and completely stressed out about [...]
I am a native Kentuckian, and I have worked at the Lexington Herald-Leader for nearly a quarter of a century. I've been a columnist for almost 20 of those years, dispensing my opinions about anything and everything. Born in Owensboro, Ky., I'm old enough to have lived through racial segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, protests against the Vietnam War, and the break-up of the Beatles. That means I am "old school," and my thoughts emanate from that perspective.