What’s Up? with Merlene

For about two years, United Way organizations collectively have been pushing toward more sustainable improvements to the lives of people in their communities.
In other words, the organizations want to help agencies teach folks to fish so they will be fed for a lifetime.
United Way of the Bluegrass Chairman Harry Richart said William W. “Bill” Farmer [...]

I received an e-mail message Monday that was filled with fear and warnings about the seasonal and H1N1 vaccines. The sender, and all those before him on the forwarding list, admonished me not to take the flu shot.
It was wasted on me.
I’ve been taking a seasonal flu vaccine since 2005, after my first bout with [...]

Barack Hussein Obama is president of the United States of America.
As such, he is due the respect that the highest office of the land commands.
Spew rumors, falsehoods and outright lies about his policies, about his birth place, about his intentions. That’s freedom of speech.
Attack his wife’s clothing choices, his children’s pet, his mother-in-law’s room in [...]

There is absolutely ­nothing wrong with sprucing up for company.
Everyone should want to sweep away cobwebs, to mow the lawn, to wash the car just so our visitors will know we made an extra effort to be hospitable and welcoming.
I get it.
But there is something naggingly unsettling about spending more money than we have to [...]

As we search for the light signaling the end of this economic recession, wise states, counties and cities are positioning their residents for the better days to come.
That means focusing government efforts on economic development, a broad, fuzzy concept whose meaning and benefits don’t always filter down to the lives of ordinary folk.
In Kentucky, however, [...]

We need health care reform. Period.
Any time working ­American citizens cannot afford insurance, any time providing insurance can eat up the profits of small businesses and any time pre-existing medical conditions can send insurance premiums into the stratosphere, we need to take a closer look at our health care system.
It is not always laziness, skewed [...]

Just as the East End is experiencing revitalization, rebirth and renewal, a part of its soul and history is scheduled to be sold at absolute auction later this month.
The Phillis Wheatley Center, a community and social gathering place for decades, will be sold at 11 a.m. Aug. 28. The Brenda D. Cowan Coalition for Kentucky [...]

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a highly respected historian who has spent much of his life documenting some of the cultural differences that exist between blacks and whites.
He works at Harvard, lives in a two-story house that he rents from the university, and travels throughout the world making documentaries.
So when Gates, 58, was arrested for [...]

A couple of hours after the shock of Michael Jackson’s death began encircling the world on June 26, Marvin Benjamin Jones, 78, quietly slipped away from this life at the Veterans Administration Hospital off Cooper Drive in Lexington.
Jones, the former editor and publisher of Town Meeting, a monthly magazine that focused on local, [...]

The subject line of the e-mail simply said “Mayor of Lynch.”
Since it was in my personal account, I assumed, correctly, that it was for my husband, a Lynch native. Like any dutiful wife, I read it.
I was amazed.
My husband has always told me Lynch is no ordinary town and the residents aren’t ordinary folk. The [...]