What’s Up? with Merlene

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

The Salvation Army is recruiting bell ringers for the coming holiday season to volunteer in its annual Red Kettle Campaign. Yes, they know it’s only September.
“We could use thousands of volunteers,” said Maj. Debra Ashcraft, co-coordinator of the Salvation Army’s Central Kentucky service area.
The campaigns runs 41 days this year, with kettles stationed in 31 locations. Hundreds of volunteers will be needed to meet the need.
Although there is an orientation session scheduled for 1 p.m., Nov. 3, it’s unlikely everyone will be able to make it, Ashcraft said. So, when groups gather at their posts, after signing up with the Salvation Army, an official will explain the ins and outs of bell ringing.
“It’s not rocket science,” Ashcraft said. “You smile, ring the bell, and say ‘thank you.’”
The hope is to get church groups, clubs, businesses, families or individuals to stand by the kettles, ringing the bells and helping to raise enough money to fund the many programs the Salvation Army has implemented.
The kettle campaign — established in San Francisco in 1891 and scheduled from Nov. 6 to Dec. 24 in Lexington — is the oldest and largest fund-raiser for the Army each year. Last year, Ashcraft said, more than $355,000 was raised. It was a record. This year, she said, the goal is $400,000.
“We live in a very generous community,” she said. “But because of the economy, more people are coming to use the services. The kettle money closes the gap.”
Services sponsored by the Salvation Army include emergency shelter, disaster relief, a food pantry, an early learning center, Boys and Girls Clubs as well as other programs available throughout the year.
Standing and ringing a bell seems like a small contribution to such worthy programs.
If a group decides to take this on as its project for the holidays, the Salvation Army recommends sequential shifts of no less than half a day. The Army will provide a sign recognizing your group if you wish.
Each group can have volunteers sign up for time slots of an hour or more at a time, or two people can share the duties. At no time should the kettle be left unattended, however.
If standing outside isn’t appealing or doable, there are two other ways to participate in the kettle campaign.
Folks can build their own home page at www.onlineredkettle.org and have friends and family donate there. Last year, she said, nearly $7,750 was raised locally by 10 people that way.
Or, said Rayann White, development director, a business can place a kettle in a prominent place where donations can be collected. That campaign, called Counter Top Kettles, is in its fifth year, raising more than $4,000 last year, down from the year before.
This year’s Red Kettle Campaign kicks off at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Nov. 3 with the Christmas Breakfast Roast, featuring Mira Ball, head of the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees. The breakfast begins at 7:30 a.m. and tickets are $50. For more information call White at (859) 252-7706, ext. 117.
But if you want to be a bell ringer, sign up at www.salvationarmylex.org, or call Tiffany Priest at (859)252-7706, ext. 125.
It might be wise to register early and sign up for the warmer days. Otherwise, Ashcraft recommends wearing a hat and gloves. I think thermal underwear would be a good bet, as well. If you are still chilled, just think of the warmth you’ll generate by helping your neighbors.

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 the White House. He is a public figure, and this is America.
And by all means question his health care agenda, the stimulus spending and his increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan. That’s government of the people, by the people.
But to have public figures in Kentucky, representing conservative views, use the word “creepy” to describe Obama’s plan to speak to all the nation’s schoolchildren today is nothing but embarrassing.
Their attitude dishonors the office of the president, not just Obama himself.
Several years ago, I interviewed a Liberian couple who were living in Lexington with their son and who were hoping to live out their golden years in a country that provided a sanctuary from the wars they had fled back home.
They told me that the difference between Liberia and the United States is that here, there is a peaceful transfer of power after an election. In Liberia, they said, the loser wouldn’t relinquish power, choosing instead to start a war or kill his opponent in defiance of what the voters had wanted.
We are doing the very same thing with words in this country since Obama became president.
I was not a fan of George W. Bush’s presidency. I didn’t think he had a good grasp of what the ordinary citizen needed. He seemed to prefer to go along with the big oil companies, with big business and with policies that kept them happy.
I never approved of his push for war with Iraq and thought we should have stayed focused on finding Osama bin Laden.
Still, never once would I have characterized him as “creepy” because he wanted to talk with schoolchildren. He was the president. My kids needed to listen to what the commander in chief had to say.
It’s respect for authority. It’s respect for the president. It is respect for our upbringing.
For reasons that every black person knows and many white people are learning, this president is receiving 400 percent more death threats than then-President George W. Bush, according to the Secret Service.
It’s not all about Obama’s desire to bring equity and compassion into the health care reform debate, although some people couch it that way. President Harry Truman tried to get health care reform several times, but he failed. President Lyndon Johnson signed a socialist program called Medicare into law. Neither drew as much ire as Obama.
It’s not his pro-choice stance on abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court has had numerous opportunities to overturn Roe vs. Wade. In 1992, the 20th anniversary of that law, the Supreme Court had eight members who were appointed by Republican presidents who were opposed to abortion. Those justices decided to let Roe vs. Wade stand. They are the ones who can change the abortion laws of this land, not a president. But they didn’t. Did the number of death threats they received go up 400 percent?
If it is about the deficit that the Obama administration has dug out in this economy, then there should have been a similar outcry and similar death threats for Bush, who quietly used a bulldozer to get the hole started.
But it is not about that.
Obama has been a magnet for these unfounded fears, these innuendos, these lies because he is black.
He has not done anything that would justify the outrage we are seeing in factions across this nation. Nothing. He hasn’t had time. He has been in office less than eight months.
What this is about is that there are too many people who are afraid of what a black man might do because they have no idea what a black man is all about. The fear is unfounded and insane, fueled by our inability or lack of desire to interact with folks who are different.
I hear he’ll lead this country into socialism or Marxism, as if he has the power to do that all by himself. When did the Constitution change?
Brainwash our children into voting for health care? When did we give children the right to vote?
Get them to persuade their parents to vote for Obama’s policies? When did our children become the decision-makers in our homes?
What has happened to critical thinking in this country? Why are we following along with the first Pied Piper who blows an unreasonable note?
Presient George H.W. Bush spoke with schoolchildren in 1991 and advocated his educational policies. I didn’t see a single parent, black or white, conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, pass out from fright.
So you tell me why this president is so different, why people carry guns to his rallies, why ministers call for him to die and go to hell. What God do they serve?
Obama’s talk is about staying in school and getting a good education, and I hope the kids watch and listen.
The more they see a black man in the Oval Office, the less likely they will be to imitate the head of the Republican Party in Kentucky or a conservative talk-show host.

They took what little they had and made do.
From old clothes and discarded materials of no better use, they fashioned beautiful, artistic quilts for badly needed warmth. From drudgery, they found life.
They are the women of Gee’s Bend, Ala., a few thousand acres of land in the southern part of the state that is surrounded on three sides by the Alabama River. Mules from Gee’s Bend pulled the casket bearing the remains of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Until recently, the women of Gee’s Bend lived hard lives, just as their mothers had and just as it appeared their daughters would.
But that was before the world noticed those quilts.
Now those quilts have been on display in museums throughout the country, and the women who have been hailed as artistic geniuses, have formed a collective to allow about 50 women to share in the profits of all sales.
Two of the women of Gee’s Bend will be in Lexington this week, along with about 20 of those highly prized quilts.

A Gee's Bend quilt. Photo by David Perry

Mary Ann Pettway and China Pettway will be in Lexington Thursday and Friday,
Then, on Sept. 20, the Agape Theatre Troupe will perform Gee’s Bend, a play written by Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder at the Lexington Opera House.
Deb Shoss, who directs the production, saw the play in Atlanta last year and thought it was well-suited for Agape, a group started by members of Imani Baptist Church.
Cathy Rawlings, a founder of Agape, said the troupe wants to expose Central Kentuckians to plays written for, by or about black people who have made positive advancements in their lives.
“I want to expose them to cultural pieces,” she said. “I want to let people know who Lorraine Hansberry and John Henry Redwood and Pearl Cleage are. We want to educate and nurture.
“Our goal is to be the first to perform in the (renovated) Lyric Theater,” Rawlings said.
For now, though, she will be performing in Gee’s Bend, the story of Sadie, her mother, Alice, and sister Nella from the early 1930s until recent years, featuring a capella singing. We can watch as Sadie gets married, gives birth to eight children and tries to be a part of the civil rights movement.
The one connecting line to life and death for Sadie is quilting, which yields not only comfort, but also fellowship and financial stability.
In May, members of the troupe visited Gee’s Bend and met the women. Earlier this month, Rawlings returned with her son to bring quilts back to Lexington for display and for sale.
“My son is 26,” Rawlings said, “and he hasn’t stopped talking about it. It touched him so much, and that’s what I’m talking about. We need this in Central Kentucky.”
From the age of about 13, the girls of Gee’s Bend were expected to make quilts, using the bold and distinctive, folksy and simplistic designs handed down through the generations. Those who were good at it tried to outdo their mothers and grandmothers by creating new designs from the old styles while staying true to the traditional character of the quilts.
“When I retired from Actor’s Guild, I took up quilting,” Shoss said. “It’s an art you can practice without collaboration.”
Once the rights to the play were secured, a location for the production was still needed. The Opera House opened its doors to the fledgling group and “did all kinds of things to help us out,” Shoss said. “It just worked out that we were able to do it. It seats 900 people. It would take two weeks or three weeks to reach that many people at Downtown Arts Center.
“But we really have got to fill the seats,” she added. “The play is worthy in every possible way. It is truthful and the essence of the black experience.”
The Gee’s Bend Quilt Collective exhibits and speakers, as well as the play, are a part of the 20th Annual Roots & Heritage Festival scheduled for Sept. 3-26.

IF YOU GO
Gee’s Bend
Quilt Collective
Two members of Gee’s Bend Quilt Collective, Mary Ann Pettway and China Pettway, will discuss quilting and life in Gee’s Bend, Ala., and Gee’s Bend, the play, will be performed by the Agape Theatre Troupe. For more information, visit www.agapetheatretroupe.com.
Quilt exhibit:
■ 5-7 p.m. Sept. 3 Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, 251 W. Second St. Free.
■ 5-7 p.m. Sept. 4. Imani Baptist Church, 1555 Georgetown Rd. Free.
Play: Gee’s Bend will have only one performance. 3 p.m. Sept. 20. Lexington Opera House, 401 West Short St. $15.50-$24.50. (859) 233-3535.

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 put that “best foot” forward. It’s like ­installing an in-ground pool with money set aside for college tuition. It’s not a ­prudent use of our dollars.
Mary Lassiter, the state budget director, just issued a warning that state officials have said we have an $82 million revenue shortfall and that many state agencies will be asked to cut their budgets another 4 percent.
That’s what bothers me about the funds the state came up with to put ­utility lines underground when ­overhead lines are far ­cheaper, although less aesthetic. An estimate of the cost of burying lines is about $475 a linear foot. The old-fashioned way is $35 a foot.
Why are we even ­considering spending so much extra money in these economic times?
Burying the lines will ­increase the cost of the ­project by hundreds of ­thousands of dollars, the ­closest estimate anyone is willing to make.
We have a contingency fund that can handle that? It seems we do.
The contingency fund at the state Department of Transportation contains about $30 million, according to Chuck Wolfe, executive director of the cabinet’s
office of public affairs. Some $24.5 million can be used at the discretion of the transportation secretary. “By definition, that fund is for any unanticipated needs that may pop up,” Wolfe said.
Why couldn’t the money in that fund that is being robbed to pay for underground utilities be used to improve roads in the rural stretches of Kentucky? Maybe some of the money could go toward buying more salt or more trucks to deliver salt to roads that are habitually closed to school buses in our mountain regions.
I’m sure some people think getting better roads in the mountains would be considered unanticipated.
Right now, we don’t even know just how much money the change of plans is going to cost. So I called around to see whether I could zero in on a cost. I found more questions than answers.
Underground lines are pretty much a given in new subdivisions that are built on green space. No one knows what engineers might run into as they try to bury lines in the inner city.
We also don’t know how much it would cost to circumvent any surprises found.
Plus, will we have above-ground power lines on Newtown Pike north of Main Street and underground to the south? How does that work out?
How can we taxpayers — especially those of us who scream when we hear someone is feeding their family with food stamps or living in government-subsidized housing — stay silent when our money will go to digging very expensive trenches?
I have friends who are entering their second year of unemployment. And there are bright young people out there who can’t make school loans and parental input stretch far enough to pay for tuition.
None of those problems could have been solved by the department of transportation’s contingency funds, which must be used for road projects. Government policy demands departmental pots of gold have dedicated targets.
I get that, too.
But we are in very difficult times. We all know that. So why not be better stewards of our money?
Most households have had to rein in spending, draw back on plans, adjust. Would the Newtown Pike extension have been that bad with utility poles along it just as they are along the rest of Newtown Pike? Would that new stretch be such a turnoff to visitors that they go back overseas flabbergasted?
Please.
So be it. We will spend hundreds of thousands of extra dollars to hide power lines and look lovely.
Later on, when money is too tight to fund higher education or shore up the finances of the unemployed who are losing their homes, don’t say there’s no money to be found. We won’t believe you now since we’ve seen you draw this money out of a hat.
Our government can sometimes be perceived as picking and choosing the programs or projects it deems worthy of funding. Sometimes — too many times — those choices don’t go in favor of the voiceless.
We get that, but I don’t think our government does.

One thing I will remember about the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and will appreciate him for is how he overcame the arrogance of wealth.
Despite his numerous servants and the luxury of owning a sailboat or two, Ted Kennedy understood the needs of blue-collar workers, of the poor and of the disenfranchised.
Eula Hall, founder of Mud Creek Clinic in Grethel, shares my sentiment about the senator, who died Wednesday after serving 47 years in the U.S. Senate. She met Kennedy when he visited Floyd and Letcher counties in 1983. Kentucky was Kennedy’s final stop on a seven-day survey of hunger in America.
“I gave him the tour,” said Hall, widely recognized as a tireless advocate for the disadvantaged in Eastern Kentucky. “I loved him and thought he was a real down-to-earth and very caring person.”
They visited families and the clinic while he was there, Hall said. The relationship forged that day continued throughout the years.
When she went to Washington, D.C., to lobby for coal miners and others in Eastern Kentucky, Hall would stop by Kennedy’s office and talk with him or a staffer.
“I always considered him someone we could count on to stand up for the poor,” Hall said.
Wednesday morning, Hall sat for two hours with her scrapbook, picture album, memories and tears as she recalled her meetings with Kennedy. She re-read letters he had written to her, which triggered memories of phone calls he had made to her after his visit in 1983.
There was a copy of a $200 check from his foundation, which she said was meant to help pay for food and turkeys for families during the holidays.
“He sent more than one, but I don’t have copies of them,” she said. “He told me to go to get turkeys and food at Christmas. He didn’t ask for any publicity. It was just between me and him.”
At 81, Hall still works at the clinic she founded in 1973 as a community clinic, supported initially by the United Mine Workers Union. She serves as a patient advocate, finding food, transportation, counseling and whatever else patients need to improve their lives.
The clinic, in rural Floyd County, was destroyed by fire in 1982, but Hall helped raise enough money to open a new clinic two years later. When Kennedy visited the area in 1983, the clinic was housed in a trailer while the new facility was being built. Hall gave him a tour, nonetheless.
The activist and the senator shared a vision of providing affordable health care. Kennedy declared at the 2008 Democratic Convention that health care is the “cause of my lifetime.”
Now that Kennedy has passed, Hall said she will bend the ear of anyone in Washington who will listen. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is aware of her work and has praised it, she said.
“I’ll just have to look to whoever is there who will listen to the problems we have,” she said. “You never know till you talk to them and let them know what’s not right. Kennedy was one person you could talk to. He is going to be missed.”
I agree.
Kennedy didn’t need the assurances of a minimum wage to make ends meet, yet he fought hard to give it to others. He didn’t need a better public education for his children, but he worked with President George W. Bush to give it to my kids and yours through the No Child Left Behind Act.
That same selflessness was true for his work with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Kennedy-Hatch Law of 1997, which provided health care for uninsured children.
Kennedy could have lived a full life without any of those bills, but he knew we couldn’t.
Hall said she kept up with his recent brain cancer diagnosis as much as she could through the media.
“I was saddened to hear he wouldn’t live long,” she said. “He was a great person for our country. He looked at things that touched the lives of so many disadvantaged people.”
Ted Kennedy didn’t have to do that.
As a former single mother, as a black person, and as someone who might need to take time from work to care for ailing loved ones, I am so glad he did.
And I plan to remember him for that.

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, the Governor’s Office of Minority Empowerment, the Kentucky Finance and Administration Cabinet and the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center want that future to include everyone, not just business people.
Delquan Dorsey, executive director of the minority empowerment office, said improving the economy of a state or region should mean improving the income potential for everyone.
That would mean more money for schools, ­better education for students, improved housing and health care and possibly a more equal justice system. Everything improves if we have more money at our disposal.
“That is what this is all about,” Dorsey said of Gov. Steve Beshear’s Economic Success through Minority Empowerment Summit, which is scheduled for Thursday at the Lexington Convention Center. “Whether you are a minority or not, if you want to see Kentucky better off, you need to come.”
The summit will feature three workshops — economic development, leadership and education — each emphasizing advancement through inclusion.
Young people have embraced the concept of inclusion, as evidenced in their overwhelming support of President Barack Obama’s candidacy. Companies are embracing diversity, because they know we baby boomers are nearing retirement age and replacements need to be found. If those replacements value ­diversity, then the company trying to attract them must reflect that. And if a state wants to ­attract those companies, that state must join the trend.
Economic development now “speaks more to the awareness of grass-roots issues and getting individuals involved from the boardroom to the corner,” Dorsey said. “And it is about getting those who already hold government, education and political positions more aware of the issues.
“Kentucky hasn’t fully maximized inclusion and diversity in the state and developed that brand,” he said.
The summit starts at 8:30 a.m., with representatives from the three sponsors and the presentation Minorities in Kentucky: An Education, Economic and Leadership Snapshot.
After the three workshops, which begin at 10 a.m., Beshear will speak at the luncheon, as will keynote speaker Kevin Powell, a writer, entrepreneur and former congressional candidate in Brooklyn, N.Y.
At 2 p.m., Renee Shaw, host of KET’s Connections with Renee Shaw, will moderate a panel discussing how Kentucky prospers when opportunity extends to all of its citizens.
Those attending the summit will be asked not only to give feedback on what they have heard, but to suggest other ways this state can position itself for prosperity.
“We will ask them for challenges we have not addressed,” Dorsey said.
Folks are constantly saying that Kentucky is years behind other states. I’ve said it, too.
Now is the time to correct that.
Now also is the time for minorities, for the poor and for those marginalized by region to play a role in changing that perception.
The summit costs $50, and $10 for students, including lunch. There is a discount for groups. Scholarships are available, Dorsey said, so don’t let a lack of money stop you. You need to register online at http://ome.ky.gov, or call 502-564-2611 or 866-230-1587.
All of us in Kentucky need to get prepared.