What’s Up? with Merlene

It won’t be exactly like an episode of American Idol, although there might be some folks who sing better in their minds than they do in our ears.
Still, First Baptist Church Bracktown’s “Kentucky’s Sunday Best Voices” gospel music competition promises to be just as entertaining as that TV reality show.
Based on BET’s Sunday Best talent competition for gospel singers, Bracktown’s venture is a fund-raiser for its Black Males Working program, open to African-American boys in grades six through 12.
For nearly five years, BMW, which meets on ­Saturdays, has stressed ­intense academics and personal responsibility. It was founded by former ­Lexington public schools educator ­Roszalyn Akins.

Roszalyn Akins

The students learn ­German, history and math, and work on reading during weekly three-hour ­sessions. If any have behavioral problems or excessive tardiness at school during the previous week, they must stand before their fellow BMW students and apologize.
And the program has big plans.
“We are trying to take the 20 young men with the highest GPAs (grade point averages) to Europe next year,” Akins said. “On June 13, 2010, we’re going to get on a plane and go to Europe. I don’t even talk about it not happening. God gave us the vision, and we’re trusting him for us to have the opportunity to take these young men.”
The idea of the talent competition was born during a brainstorming session with the BMW parents advisory board. Akins said there are a lot of people in Lexington who sing gospel and would welcome the opportunity to “show off the gifts they have been blessed with.”
The competition will run for six Sundays, beginning Nov. 1, skipping the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and concluding Dec. 13.
The winner will receive two tickets to the 25th ­annual Stellar Awards in Nashville on Jan. 16 and $500. The Stellar Awards celebrate gospel artists much as the Grammys focus on all musical genres.
“We’d like to send them to see the people whose songs they sing,” she said.
Participants must be legal residents of Kentucky and at least 16 years old. During the two first-round trials, ­contestants will select from a pre-approved list of songs that must be sung a ­cappella in their chosen style. ­Thereafter, contestants may choose their songs and ­accompanists.
Judges for the ­competition include noted singer, ­organist and music workshop ­instructor Delma Peoples; Sandra “Cissy” Williams, who has performed in ­local ­musical productions, ­including Mahalia in 1981 and Above My Head in 2007; Clay Coffey of the R&B duo Black Coffey; and pianist and accompanist Charles F. Little.
All applications and the $25 entry fee must be returned by Oct. 18. ­Applications are available at First Baptist Church ­Bracktown, 3016 Bracktown Road, or by calling (859) 231-7042.
Tickets for the first rounds, on Nov. 1 and 8, are $5 each night. Tickets for the second round, scheduled for Nov. 15 and 22, will be $10 each night. The semifinals, on Dec. 6, will be $15, and the finals, on Dec. 13, are $20. A $50 ticket is available for the entire competition.
Not only will the trip ­benefit the 20 young men who earn a chance to go, but it also will help change the image of young black males that Europeans see on television.
“They will see that they are not gangsters and thugs,” Akins said. “They will be ambassadors for the United States. It will take all the things that they read and bring them to life.”

My friend and I were saying last week that 60 is the age to dread. That’s how old our grandparents were when we were young, and we always saw them as ancient.
We obviously need to spend more time with Catherine Ledford Duff of Lexington and Alexander (Al) Feher of Lynch. Duff told me she is “1011/2.” Feher is 85. They look back on 60 as a part of their youth.
Duff and Feher, along with five other Kentuckians who have aged gracefully, will be honored at the University of Kentucky Sanders-Brown Center on Aging Foundation’s 23rd annual dinner tonight at the Griffin Gate Marriott Resort.
And rightfully so.
Duff was born on a farm in Mt. Sterling and moved to Lexington when she was 17 to take secretarial courses at Fugazzi Business College.
She never became a secretary, though, because those choice jobs were “scarce” in the late 1920s, she said.
Instead, she married, worked in retail, reared two sons and found time to volunteer as a nurse’s aide three days a week during World War II. When her boys were 7 and 11, she said, she returned to work and soon became a buyer and bridal consultant at Wolf Wiles.
Her neighbors nominated her for the 2009 Dr. David R. Wekstein Centenarian Award because she is still independent, still has a zest for life. Duff gave up her driver’s license last November, but only because her insurance rates had increased $200 a year.
“I wasn’t going to pay that,” she said last week.
During the ice storm last winter, when most of Kentucky was covered in ice, Duff remained in her home for five days without electricity. She wouldn’t hear of leaving.
“I didn’t get cold,” she said. “I had the gas logs in the living room. I cooked oatmeal and warmed up food. I had candles and flashlights when it got dark. I was fine.”
During the 2003 ice storm, she stayed in her home seven days without electricity.
Duff said she thinks we are now too reliant on organizations and agencies for help when we can help ourselves or our neighbors who are in need.
Feher seems to think that as well.
On his daily 1-mile walks, Feher carries a large bag and a stick with a nail protruding from one end, and he picks up any trash he sees around Lynch. Why wait for others to do it?
Born in Manhattan, N.Y., Feher enlisted in the Army in 1943 and served in Europe.
When he returned to the States, he earned a degree in education, and in 1957 he moved to Lynch, where he worked for U.S. Steel until 1986.
He has been a police judge, a city councilman and a commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars post for several terms. He was well known as the announcer for Lynch High School football games for many years.
Feher, whose parents migrated from Hungary, also has written two books: Escape from Hungary, written three years ago, and Ellis Island to Lynch, Ky., written six months ago. And now that his beloved city is in a deep financial bind, Feher has organized the City of Lynch Golf Classic on Oct. 10 to help raise money. It will be in conjunction with the city’s Coal Miners Day.
“I’m the chairman of the tournament,” Feher said. “I came up with the idea. We’re hoping to get some good money.”
Why not just rest at 85?
“I am a Virgo,” Feher said of his astrological sign. “I can’t sit still. Virgos usually take over; they want it done right. I am a pest, a pain in the neck, but things get done.”
Three of this year’s Sanders-Brown honorees — Pearl Greer, 101, of Glasgow; Hazel M. Dillon, 100, of Maysville; and Duff — will receive the 2009 Dr. David R. Wekstein Centenarian Award, named for the former associate ­director of the Sanders-Brown Center, who also was a UK physiology and biophysics professor emeritus. Wekstein initiated the nationally recognized Biologically Resilient Adults in Neurological Studies, an extensive research collection of brain tissue.
The four other honorees — Maurae Hunley Foster of Glasgow, who died Aug. 12 at age 86; Joseph Elias Isaac, 83, of Lexington; Effie Kemp, 82, of Murray; and Feher — will receive the 2009 William R. Markesbery Senior Star Award, named for the director of the Sanders-Brown center who is widely respected for his Alzheimer’s disease research.
Pearse Lyons, founder and president of Alltech, sponsor of the Alltech FEI world Equestrian Games, will be the guest speaker.
A few tickets for the dinner are available for $150. Call (859) 323-5374.

We often hear of organizations holding this event or that one, trying to raise awareness for a particular cause. Most of the time, many of us ignore the pleas.
In 2005, Yolonda Kelsor Clay had planned to do the same thing: ignore the efforts of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Lexington, to make Central Kentuckians aware of how prevalent mental illness is in our families and how much we don’t want others to know that.
But a friend insisted she accompany her to a free showing of Out of the Shadow, a 67-minute documentary about recognizing and treating depression.
At that point in her life, Clay was a mess behind her smile. She had survived two failed marriages and was enduring severe back pain from a fall a decade before. She was a school teacher who couldn’t teach, a single mother of two children, a real estate consultant, a cosmetic home-sales representative, an ordained minister and people pleaser.
She knew she suffered from depression, a condition diagnosed when she was 35 years old, but she also believed in the power of prayer. So when well-meaning Christian friends urged her to abandon her medication, she did. The spiraling began.
By 2004, her body had begun to show signs of physically breaking down because of her frenetic manic episodes, forcing her to bring her activities to a halt. That led to more depression, more self-doubt, more low self-esteem.
So when her friend, who had watched her become more and more reclusive, nagged her to attend the showing of the documentary during Mental Health Awareness Week four years ago, Clay went just to please a friend.
She saw herself, as well as members of her family, on the screen.
“I joined NAMI that day,” Clay recalled. “I got their mailings, but I still was not emotionally able to go to the meetings.”
Each month, those newsletters planted seeds of curiosity that sprouted in January 2006, when Clay attended her first meeting of a Family-to-Family Education Program class.
After the meeting, one of the volunteers asked Clay to review Shadow Voices: Finding Hope in Mental Illness, a Mennonite Ministries documentary challenging all of us to rethink the stigma of mental illness.
“I watched the video, and that turned my life completely around,” Clay said.
Phill Gunning and his wife, Kelly, taught the Family-to-Family class that Clay attended. He said he watched as Clay seemed to awaken each week. After a month of crying and breaking down during discussions, Gunning said they knew, if Clay stayed to complete the 12-week class, she would be not only an asset to her family, but also to this community.
“She stuck with it,” said Gunning, acting executive director of NAMI Lexington, “and after that, as I remember it, she just got more enthused as we went along, and we realized Yondi was going to be a part of the team.”
And she did. Clay has been instrumental in NAMI Lexington’s outreach to the African American, Hispanic and faith communities through the Multicultural Action Committee she coordinates and a faith-based initiative.
The frustrated teacher re-emerged, and Clay became certified in several leadership and training courses through the Kentucky Department of Mental Health. She is a trainer for suicide prevention counselors in this community and is involved with Signs of Suicide (SOS), which is a two-day intervention and screening program for secondary schools.
“I considered suicide after my grandmother died when I was 15,” Clay said. She believes that was the beginning of her depression, and she wants to make sure young people know help is available.
And she wants the rest of us to know that, as well.
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, the fourth anniversary of when Clay’s healing began. It could be your beginning as well.
This year’s events include a candlelight vigil, free screenings for depression, a 5K fund-raiser walk and, once again, a free movie at the Kentucky Theatre.
This year’s feature is The Soloist, the story of a musically talented homeless man with schizophrenia and his relationship with a reporter. It stars Jamie Foxx.
Consider this a nudge from Clay to you to start your road to recovery.

Mental Health Awareness Week activities
Monday: Candlelight Vigil, Phoenix Park, downtown Lexington. 6 p.m.
Tuesday: Free screenings for depression, W.T. Young Library, University of Kentucky Campus. 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
Thursday: The Soloist and Consumer Art Show, Kentucky Theatre, 214 East Main Street. Free. 6 p.m.
Saturday: 5K NAMI Walks for the Mind, Kentucky Horse Park. Registration at noon. (859) 272-7891. 1 p.m.
Visit: www.namilex.org.

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 lung cancer. Other than a sore arm at the spot of the injection, I’ve not noticed any other side effects.
And I’ve not had the flu.
There is no way to change the minds of those who fear a government conspiracy to kill us all with the H1N1 vaccine, although I don’t know why the government would want to get rid of taxpayers in these economic times. But the rest of us should make educated decisions about the issue and not fall for some of the myths and inaccuracies that are racing through our communities and the Internet.
I called Dr. Melinda Rowe, Fayette County’s commissioner of health, to ask about the misconceptions and the truth.
Myth: The most common myth the health department has dealt with, Rowe said, is that swine flu, or H1N1, comes from pigs.
Fact: There are a few illnesses that one can get from under-cooked pork, but the flu is not one of them, she said. “People stopped eating pork” when the swine flu was first reported earlier this year, she said, but that wasn’t necessary.
Myth: There is an effort afoot to get rid of old people. ­Besides, people older than 65 are not eligible to get the H1N1 vaccine.
Fact: That misinformation might stem from a nationwide push to get children, young people, pregnant women and people of all ages who have other health problems immunized first, Rowe said. That is the demographic that seems to experience the worst effects and complications from this strain of flu.
According to recent studies, it seems that the elderly have come across a similar strain of H1N1 bug sometime in their past, giving them partial immunity.
Numbers in the United States from April indicate that 9,000 people were hospitalized with H1N1. There were 600 deaths. Of those hospitalizations and deaths, 75 percent of the people were younger than 49. Plus, Rowe said, 70 percent of those hospitalized and 80 percent of those who died were people who had underlying health conditions.
“I want those people to be first in line for those vaccines,” Rowe said. “I want those 65 and older to get immunized, but let their children and grandchildren get it (the immunization) first and then come get it.”
Myth: When I get the flu shot, I always get the flu. Getting H1N1 is inevitable.
Fact: “You don’t get the flu from a flu shot,” Rowe said. The vaccine contains a killed virus. The problem might be that people get inoculated when the virus is already in circulation in a community. People are infectious 24 hours before signs of the flu appear, so they might already have the flu before getting the shot. Still, with the shot, their symptoms might be less severe.
Myth: The H1N1 vaccine is mandatory.
Fact: No, Rowe said. Health care workers are strongly urged to get the vaccine, but nowhere in Kentucky is it mandatory. “We like to nudge people instead of hitting them over the head with a hammer,” Rowe said.
Rowe also recommended that patients receiving dialysis and folks like me with a history of lung problems also get a pneumonia shot every few years.
Since April, not many people who have had flu symptoms have been tested for H1N1, Rowe said, so it might be good for them to get the vaccine as well. “It won’t hurt you to get the shot,” she said. “It’s extra protection.”
She also said that people of color, who are more often saddled with diabetes, hyper­tension and other chronic medical conditions, don’t tend to get immunized.
She said there will be free flu-shot clinics set up when the virus arrives, eliminating access and cost excuses.
“We want to increase immunization rates for people of color,” Rowe said.
She has gotten the seasonal vaccine and will get the H1N1 when it gets here.
I plan to do the same.

A friend and former neighbor of mine, Marjory Woolery, 88, always says she must have her cup of coffee and her newspaper to get her day started right.
Because I earn a living in the newspaper business, I love hearing that.
But what about those people who, like Woolery, love in-depth looks into the news, but who, unlike Woolery, aren’t able to read them? How do they fill that void?
In Kentucky, anyone who is visually impaired or has other disabilities that block access to newspapers and magazines, can call Newsline, a service of the National Federation of the Blind that offers free access to newspapers and periodicals 24 hours a day.
Since 2004, the service has been available throughout Kentucky with no long distance charges. It’s also available in 45 other states.
Pamela Roark-Glisson and her husband John Glisson, who are both visually impaired, heard about Newsline in 1994 and began working to bring it to Kentucky. They were so dedicated to the mission, they became the volunteer state staff for Newsline.
(Roark-Glisson is the executive director of Lexington’s non-profit Independence Place, which offers resources for independent living to the disabled. Her husband is a counselor there.)
There are about 280 newspapers and magazines accessible, including 10 Kentucky newspapers as well as TV listings.
John Glisson said once enrolled in the service, the user calls a toll-free number, enters an identification number and security code, and then selects a newspaper, magazine or topic. A ‘favorites’ option can be set up, making selections faster.
Callers can get access to breaking news nearly as quickly as their sighted friends searching online. Rather than a human voice, Newsline uses synthetic speech.
While Newsline is free to the consumer, it’s not free. The Kentucky Office for the Blind pays $40,000 annually for the statewide subscription, and the Glissons raise about $12,000 to pay the phone bill.
Glisson said the service is of particular value to impaired students who need access to current events for classes.

John Glisson - photo by Charles Bertram

In 2003, he said, there were an estimated 20,000 students with disabilities in Kentucky schools. With Newsline, students can download news articles to their computers. “I’m not suggesting they plagiarize by any means,” Glisson said, laughing.
The visually impaired can also download newspapers onto their Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) players and listen to the newspaper wherever they go.
Margaret Chase, executive director of Central Kentucky Radio Eye, doesn’t think Newsline is competition for that 24-hour reading service even though both serve the same audience.
CKRE, which does not get state funding, operates through a special closed circuit, pre-tuned radio that is loaned to the listener and features local volunteers reading the Herald-Leader live from 8 to 10 a.m. daily with repeats at 5 to 7 p.m. weekdays. At other times, regional newspapers are read followed by health news and other features. “Their delivery method is quite different from what we do,” Chase said. “It’s all about choices.”
Newsline, she said, is all about getting the news on the fly. “If you are on your way to work on a bus and have a cell phone, what a great way to travel on the bus,” she said.
“If I want to sit down and have my breakfast, turn on the radio and listen, then that is fine, too,” Chase said. “One shoe doesn’t fit everybody.”
Glisson estimates about 300,000 people in Kentucky are eligible for Newsline, but only 1,500 are using the service. Chase said CKRE serves about 3,000 consumers in Central Kentucky.
That means there are a lot more people who need to sign up for one of the two or for both.

For more information
To apply for access to Newsline in Kentucky, call Independence Place (859) 266-2807 or 1-877- 266-2807. To sign up for CKRE, call (859) 422-6390. You will be asked to document your disability.

We’ve had a spat of adults acting badly lately and it is time it stopped.
The most recent incident involved high school teachers in the Bluegrass whose disagreement landed one of them in jail and both of them out of the classroom.
We’ve had a rapper yanking glory from a true winner, a U.S. Congressman yelling out during a presidential speech, angry attendees at health care meetings shouting down everyone else and fans being tossed out of games because of their lack of decorum.
What is going on here? How did we allow our behavior to get this ugly?
In my church, there are several mature members who try to keep the rest of us in line and on point when it comes to expectations and doing what is right.
One of them is Stella A. Marshall who, at 83, dispenses wisdom as easily as some people spread germs. She doesn’t have a degree in psychology, just in life.
I asked her why we adults behave so badly.
“I think we have just lost respect for each other. We are a selfish generation,” she said.
Marshall said she was raised in a single parent household in Maysville, Ky. Her mother died in her 40’s after giving birth to 13 children, of which she was No. 11. Her father, Eli Lewis, raised six children alone.
“He always instilled in us that a good name is all you have,” Marshall said. “He always said let your name be that which people judge you by.”
But the unseemly behavior that concerns me is occurring in adults, not children. We expect children to need correction. We assume adults, the ones in charge of teaching young impressionable children, have learned their lessons. We should be the ones setting better examples.
“It is just that we are going to have to learn how to respect each other’s thoughts,” Marshall said. “I may not agree with you, but we can disagree in a more civil manner.”
There was a time when honesty and integrity were highly valued. People knew that shouts and upstaging and confrontations reflected badly on your upbringing. You were not only embarrassing yourself, but also your parents and other family members.
There was a sense of connectivity and accountability that doesn’t hold much sway any more. Do we think of how our children view us when they see us behaving worse than they do?
“People have got to realize we are not living in this world on our own,” Marshall said. “There is a higher entity than we want to admit to.”
For Marshall, that higher entity is Jesus Christ. When we believe we are only a small part of something bigger, we will behave better. Maybe it is the family name. Maybe it is a community.
“People need to think before they speak,”she said.
Marshall said among other jobs she has held through the years, she was an inspector at Parker Seals O-Ring division, a subsidiary of Parker Hannifin Corp., and a union steward there.
What she learned in that capacity, she said, is that you don’t have to “fly off the handle” to make a point. “Some things are better left unsaid,” she said. “That takes a lot of willpower.”
Well, we aren’t very good at that in this country. Just look at our ever increasing girth. Telling ourselves “no” doesn’t come as easily as telling someone else “no.”
But, she said, it is never too late to change. We just have to set our minds to doing better.
“Until we learn how to respect each other or love each other, we are a lost generation of people,” Marshall said.
If we can’t find the wherewithal to control ourselves, I suggest we seek the council of folk like Marshall who are willing to remind us that young eyes are watching.
With our current behavior, we shouldn’t be O.K. with what they are seeing.

Autumn officially begins this afternoon, signaling a need, at least for me, to hibernate.
Holing up in my house, eating whatever doesn’t run away is an ­ideal fall and winter for me. Of course, that means by the time the new year rolls around I am quite vulnerable to weight-loss ads that promise to make my fat magically dissolve.
I know better. We all know better.
So, what’s say we do something different this year?
Let’s not hibernate and eat ­unceasingly. Let’s move and be healthier for it.
I joined the 50 Million Pound Weight Loss Challenge again, which is being held at the William Wells Brown Community Center, 548 East Sixth Street. (For more information call (859) 389-6678.)
I first joined Jan. 20 along with more than 200 men and women. Those who stuck around until the program’s end May 27 lost a ­respectable total of 135 pounds. ­Janet Burley lost 35 pounds, the most of all of us, and won a flat-screen TV.
Burley has continued to work out in the center’s gym, which is free and open to the public and has treadmills, stationary bicycles, free weights and an elliptical machine.
So the rest of us have a lot of work to do to catch up.
Mark Johnson, assistant center director and health ­equity team leader for the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department, said not only did participants lose weight, they lost inches. Some were taken off ­medications by their doctor.
“People who came last time made friends or renewed friendships,” Johnson said. “That made it a ­community thing. When ­individuals thrive, the community thrives, and that makes it ­better for everyone else.”
In fact, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects the ­physical ailments associated with obesity — hypertension, heart disease and diabetes — will become a bigger drain on shrinking health care dollars than the diseases spawned by smoking. An estimated one-third of adults in the United States and 16 percent of children are overweight, and the numbers are not falling in any state.
We no longer walk to work or walk much at work. Our commutes, which are longer, are mostly via personal vehicles or mass transit. And when we do get back home, nearby parks and our neighborhoods might not be amenable to walking or jogging.
Combine that with bigger TVs and softer recliners, larger portions and our desire for fast food, and you get a nation that should never think hibernation is an option.
That’s why Johnson said he’ll continue encouraging us to get off our duffs.
On Tuesdays and ­Thursdays through Dec. 8, after Johnson teaches a low-impact aerobics class from 6 to 7 p.m., a variety of other group exercises such as line dancing, Pilates, Zumba, tai chi or walking will take place from 7 to 8 p.m. All the ­activities are free, but you need to fill out a registration form to use the facility.
“There will also be a hip-hop boot camp,” Johnson said. “I don’t know what this is.”
Neither do I, but it sounds painful.
On Saturday, the health department and Lexington Parks and Recreation will also host a health fair at the center, featuring 27 ­exhibitors to help you get started on a new lifestyle. You can get your glucose, cholesterol and blood ­pressure checked.
Before the health fair, the Frankfort-Lexington Chapter of Links Inc. will host its 11th annual Walk-a-Thon at 9 a.m., featuring one-, two- and  three-mile distances. The ­entry fee is $10, $8 for groups of eight or more, $6 for seniors. The money goes to the Sister-to-Sister Outreach Project, which focuses on making women more aware of breast and cervical cancer.
You see, this is a ­community thing. Everyone is trying to look out for us.
Now we just have to learn to look out for ourselves.

John and Vivian Nash, owners of The Nash ­Academy of Animal Arts, a dog-grooming school in Lexington, have a home in Brighton, Jamaica, and have visited the small village in St. Elizabeth parish for 25 years.
They grew to love the Jamaican people and to hate the poverty that ensnared one generation after another.
So, John Nash decided to raise funds to build a ­community center and pre-school in the rural community. A good, affordable education, after all, can help people bypass hopelessness.
“We’ve helped young people get educations, helped send them to college or to get other types of education so that they could better themselves,” Vivian Nash wrote via e-mail, “but our efforts always felt like a tiny drop in a very large bucket. We wanted to do more, and to help in a widespread way, that would lift the entire area out of the morass of poverty and illiteracy.”
She and her husband thought the best way to lift an entire region out of poverty would be to make it financially self-sufficient, an undertaking that would require more than a community center and pre-school, but that was all the couple could manage.
That was before Nathan Cryder, one of the founders and executive director of Global Gain, entered the picture. Global Gain is a Lexington-based non-profit that works locally and internationally.

Vivian Nash, left, John Nash, and Nathan Cryder

In the past two months, with Cryder’s help, the Nashes have made plans to enlarge their dream into the Nash Brighton Project, which would include a microfinance model.
Microfinancing provides loans to those too poor to qualify for bank loans. Small amounts, at low interest rates, enable the poor to ­become entrepreneurs. Cryder’s vision is to make Brighton a self-sustaining tourist destination.
Muhammad Yunus, a banker and economist, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering such efforts through his bank, Grameen Bank, in Bangladesh as far back as 1976.
Families in Jamaica could use the loans to start businesses that flourish in the tourist industry, Cryder said.
How much money is needed won’t be known until the Jamaican families submit loan proposals. But loans could also focus on improving farm production, or something simpler such as a sewing machine for a tailor shop.
Cryder sees it as a community-to-community effort.
“It would be like adopt-a-family, or a Sister City ­program. We only need about 10 people in Lexington to adopt those families in ­Brighton,” he said.
Through video connections and visits, families here could meet, advise and support families in Brighton. Their visits could be half vacation and half hands-on help for projects. Vivian Nash said the average family lives in a small, wooden shack with several people sleeping in a room. With more personal money, the residents would be able to afford to put their children in private schools and send them to college.
Cryder said the loans would stymie any possibility of creating dependency and that he doesn’t anticipate any trouble working with the Jamaican government.
Although the concept of the Nash Brighton Project has expanded, education is still the goal. The plan is to add a grade to the pre-school each year.
Cryder became involved in a roundabout way.
Through twists and turns and divine intervention, the Cryders vacationed at the Nash home in Jamaica.
Before they went, John Nash asked the Cryders to check out the progress of the community center.
Cryder took one look at the area and decided to push Nash’s dream into the realm of a reality.
“International development is my passion,” Cryder said. Although Jesus said the poor will always be with us, this project is one effort to ensure the number of poor will at least be smaller.
“Extreme poverty can be like a trap,” Vivian Nash wrote. “Many people in Brighton feel stuck. But self-sufficiency is about freedom of choice, and we want the people of Brighton to have the same kinds of choices we have in the U.S.”
To give the project a good start, Cryder has organized “Spirits of Giving,” a fund-raiser at Buster’s Billiards & Backroom, 899 Manchester St., on Sept. 29.
And that’s fine by John Nash, who watched the fruition of his dream be slowed by a demanding disease.
Just as things appeared to be falling into place to make the center happen, John Nash was diagnosed with ­bladder cancer. Doctors advised against traveling so far from home.
“It hasn’t been easy, but Johnnie is a fighter,” Vivian Nash wrote from her home in Lexington, where she is caring for her husband, “and The Nash Brighton Project has given Johnnie another reason to hang on and fight this thing. He is extremely excited about it.”

Although Vertner ­Woodson Tandy was born in Lexington in 1885, he made his mark in New York, where he became the first registered black architect in the state.
Local members of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., the black fraternity Tandy helped establish in 1906, want people in Lexington to remember Tandy.
The ­fraternity will unveil a ­Kentucky historical highway marker Saturday in front of his ­boyhood home at 642 West Main Street.
There were some delays in reaching this day.
“We wanted to get a historical marker during our centennial in 2006,” said Lee A. Jackson, chairman of the education foundation for the local branch of Alphas. But ­paperwork was not accepted in time for that to ­happen. Only 30 marker applicants are approved each year, and there sometimes is a backlog.
Approval for the marker came last year, but the group decided to wait to celebrate during this year’s the Roots & Heritage Festival ­festivities, Jackson said.
Tandy, whose father, ­Henry Tandy, was a builder in Lexington, attended ­Chandler School before heading to Tuskegee Institute to study architecture under Booker T. Washington.
After a year, however, he headed for Cornell ­University in Ithaca, N.Y., in 1905. There he met six other men and later formed the Alphas, the oldest black fraternity in the United States.
He graduated in 1908 with a degree in architecture. In 1917 he was the first African-American to pass the military commissioning exam and became an officer in the New York National Guard. He rose in rank from l­ieutenant to major, commanding a segregated unit of the 15th Infantry during World War I.
During his architectural career, he partnered with George Washington Foster and designed several homes and buildings in New York City’s Harlem and in Mount Vernon.
Tandy designed St. ­Philip’s Episcopal Church in New York City, then ­considered the richest black congregation in the ­country. He also designed Villa ­Lewaro, a mansion for Madam C.J. Walker, the first African-American female ­millionaire.
In Kentucky, Tandy ­designed Berea Hall, a ­dormitory on the Lincoln Institute campus in ­Simpsonville.
In Lexington, he ­designed Webster Hall, 548 ­Georgetown Street, as ­living quarters for ­teachers at the Chandler school, which operated just behind that building. Both buildings still stand, one a church, the other a private residence.
Tandy and six of his friends at Cornell formed the fraternity as a means of uniting against the racially charged environment they had entered. Six African-American student who entered Cornell in 1904-05 did not return for a second year. Fearing that might happen to them, the men formed a fraternity to help get them through.
It worked.
The marker will sit in front of the house Tandy’s grandparents bought in 1853. Tandy’s parents moved in ­after his grandfather died. It is now the office of the ­Kentucky chapter of The Nature ­Conservancy.
Vertner Tandy’s father and partner Albert Byrd owned a brick masonry and building company that reportedly made Henry Tandy the richest black man in Kentucky.
Tandy’s former home will be open for tours from 9 to 10 a.m Saturday. The historical marker will be dedicated at 10 a.m. and a reception will follow at Sovereign Grace Chapel of Main Street Baptist Church.

In the darkness of the room, lighted mostly by a photograph projected on the wall, the discussion revolved around concepts such as reflection, personality, negative space and placement.
“It didn’t turn out like I wanted it to,” said Lulu Anderson, 14. “The house was supposed to be blue.”
There had been the typical youthful chatter and activities prior to the critiques before the lights dimmed. But once the slide show began, creativity became the focus.
“I just like taking pictures,” Gus Anderson, 13, said later. “I’ve learned about abstract and contrast and lines.”
Inside that room, which is inside the Seventh Street Center/Kid’s Café, young people who have been deemed at-risk of falling through the cracks, were transformed into young people at risk of finding a reason to succeed.
I had entered Our World in Pictures, a program established this summer by the husband and wife team of Jeff and Christina Gora, wedding photographers with a love of their craft and a desire to serve.
They combined their passions and created OWIP, which held two four-week workshops this summer at the center. Each class met twice a week for 90 minutes with as many as a dozen students. Professional photographers from the Lexington Herald-Leader, and photography students from the University of Kentucky served as mentors.
“We weren’t really sure what to expect,” Jeff Gora said. “Some of them had done some photography in the past and some hadn’t.”
Young people up to 10th grade were given simple cameras that soon proved to be inefficient. They then were given better equipment similar to what their mentors used. The transition was a smooth one, as they took lessons taught in the classroom and applied them to their photography, all the while having fun.
“They treated everything with respect,” Christina Gora said. “They were so gentle with our cameras. They took it seriously. I was blown away by their respect.”
“By the end, we weren’t worried about them misusing the cameras,” Jeff Gora said. “It encouraged them to ask more questions about things they weren’t used to.”
For the Goras, the program was a way to mentor. “Photography is just a way to get to that mentoring,” she said. “We need to build up our young people. There is a lot of potential there that nobody can see. They can work with technology and make a difference in their lives. That is huge.”
The mentors, with whom the young people bonded, pointed out the different fields in which photography is used and stressed how important it is to stay in school. They used photography, what the young people had grown to love, as a tool to open their eyes to the larger world of possibilities and opportunities.
“I could have walked away and never come back,” said Ebony Benton, 14. “But I like photography. I want to take fashion classes.”
And that’s what the Goras want to see. Discovering they had unlocked good photographers was gravy.
“We didn’t expect them to produce the quality of pictures they did and use the high-level cameras,” Jeff Gora said.
He hopes to put similar classes in other local centers throughout the area, training volunteers at each location. Eventually he wants to open programs overseas as well, to bridge the culture gap. He’s already had inquiries from Costa Rica.
That’s the future, down the road when funding is secured. Right now, he’s seeking enough support to leave cameras in the hands of each child who completes the class.
To get the word out, various photographs taken by the youth will be on display during the Gallery Hop on Sept. 18. On Nov. 20, OWIP will have an exhibit in the second floor lobby of the Downtown Arts Center, 141 East Main St., at which some of the young photographers and mentors will be on-hand to discuss their experiences.
“I’ve learned things don’t always turn out the way you think it will,” Lulu said. “You have to take more than one picture. Since I took this workshop I see things differently.”
More of our young people, the ones being dismissed because of their financial station in life, should be thinking like that.
Visit www.ourworldinpictures.com/e7center/ for a glimpse of OWIP.

If you go
Our World in Pictures exhibit
When: 5-8 p.m., Sept. 18.
Where: Gallery Hop. M.S. Renzy Photography, Inc., 903 Manchester St.
More info: (859) 255-2951. Web Site: www.lexarts.org