Letter to my former editor, part one

In his take on the massacre in Aurora, CO, Roger Ford excoriates what he calls “the far Left” for “exploiting a tragic event to advance their political agenda”.

That said, Ford begins to advance the “far Right’s” political agenda by doing what the “far Right” does after every “tragic event” of this nature: They immediately reassure us that “more gun control” is not the answer.

And while he does not say what the answer to psychopaths with semiautomatic weapons is, Ford does offer this helpful suggestion: “…this time is better spent praying with the families, not pursuing an agenda to undermine the Second Amendment.”

This I will gladly amen! These “tragic events” have become a staple of the news and are not likely to abate any time soon, so the ability to pray afterwards would definitely be a plus for everyone in the U. S., as almost any locality could be the site of the next “tragic event”.

I would like to reassure Mr. Ford and those who have paranoid delusions about having their weapons taken from them:Relax.Your side has, for all practical intent and purposes, won this debate.The nation has accepted your interpretation of the Second Amendment, so much so that no one, not even the “far Left” thinks gun control has even a snowball’s chance.

To further bolster his argument against more gun laws, Ford cites some “22,000 gun control laws…on the book…”. What Ford implies is these laws are binding on every citizen of the U. S.They are not.

The great majority of these laws are undoubtedly local laws, and therefore binding only on the citizens of the more than 30,000 incorporated cities in the U. S. or individual states wherein they were enacted. Only those laws enacted by the federal government binding on all American citizens.

One gun control measure that might have prevented the Aurora massacre was the prohibition against owning assault weapons that was enacted in 1994.When this law came up for renewal in 2004, Congress, controlled by the conservatives, declined the opportunity.

The few calls from what I suspect Ford considers “the far Left” have been for a renewal of the assault weapons ban. And for a good reason; these weapons have only one purpose, to kill people and to kill them quickly.

The alleged perpetrator of the Aurora massacre reportedly bought over 6000 rounds without raising an eyebrow. He also had a 90-round drum magazine and was wearing body armor when he shot 71 people in that movie theater.

This “tragic event” could be a foretaste of a truly “tragic event”.What happens if, say, terrorists are able to buy weapons and ammo in the same quantity?If they could situate themselves in the right place at the right time, there is theoretically no limit to the number of people they could kill before being taken down by law enforcement.

But it’s our choice, and so far, no mass killing has moved us to conclude even an assault weapons ban, advocated by members of the "far Left, such as Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, would stop the carnage.

Me and the hot habanero.

I’m not an unadventurous type; that is to say I don’t mind trying something new.  For some time now, I’ve been a fan of hot, spicy food.  Can’t explain why, maybe it’s those endorphins once you get the burn going good.

Hot and spicy is certainly nothing you take to right away; it helps if you’re willing to gradually build up your endurance to the more molten peppers, say.  You know you don’t want to pop a ghost chili into a mouth that has never known anything other than sweet peppers, although the reaction you’d get would be funny. Not if you’re the one who’s getting burned, but it you are watching someone else get burned, different story.

I had my own introduction to the hot stuff when I was in the Army way back in 1982.  We were in Fort Goodfellow, aka Fort Goodbuddy, in San Angelo, TX, and I got my first plate of nachos with those funny looking jalapeno peppers on them.

“Whut is them thangs?” I axed in my inimitable hillbilly accent. “Oh, them?” responds the waiter. “Don’t worry nuttin’ ‘bout them! They is good fer you!” 

Well, if good fer you means it's something that will get you to chug a fresh pitcher of beer, it certainly was good for me

But I got used to the heat and in time I even learned to enjoy it.  I have learned since that the jalapeno is a mere 2500-9000 scoville heat units and in the world of hot peppers that means it’s an ice cube. 

I know this because while I cannot eat a lot of good food, owing to my diabetes, I can still watch others scarf down all the fat and sugar and whatever else they want and that don’t hurt anything except my pride and my appetite.

One particular type of eating competitions I really like to watch is the one that involves eating food stuff that has the temperature of molten lava.  Adam Richman, one time host of Man Vs Food, could wolf down some fiery chow and in most instances, he never seemed to suffer.  Sure, he’d sweat profusely and hold his stomach and moan, but suffer?  Nah!

Another show-can’t recall its title or its host-had two guys who would go after stuff that would make molten lava seem cool.  It was funny because they knew they wouldn’t be able to eat what they had in front of them but they’d give it a try anyway and how those poor souls would carry on.

Now I’m nowhere near that much of a masochist.  Shoot, all I ever wanted to do was try a habanero.  Take a look at this link and it’ll let you know what’s hot and what’s not and where the habanero fits in: http://ushotstuff.com/Heat.Scale.htm. 

A couple of days ago, I went through the Food City at Vanzant, VA, and picked up some nice looking jalapenos.  Close by were some habaneros; orange habaneros.  Here they were, and I so wanted to eat one to show how macho I was.  Well, why not pick up one and see?  I’m no wimp and I could eat a jalapeno or cayenne with relative ease, so let’s see.

Anyway, I had a plan.  I felt like you’d feel the heat more if you had the idea that the habanero was simply too hot to bother with.  With an attitude like that, it’s like you’re beat before you start.

So I got around to fixing some dinner today-turkey sandwich with pepper jack and some jalapenos on for some extra heat, and I decided I’d dice up a little of that habanero and spread it around on the sandwich, too.

After I was finished, I took a look at the habanero, now minus around 1/3 of its original size and I thought I’d take a small bite and I did.  Within a few seconds, I could feel the heat and while it was warmer than a jalapeno, it was what I reckoned as tolerable. 

I started to put the thing away and something inside me said “Go for it!”  I debated the idea for a couple of minutes, then decided to take another somewhat larger bite, but for whatever reason, the whole of what I had left came off the stem and nestled itself inside my mouth and I figured must be a sign so I started to chew.

After about the second or third chew, I got the idea that mebbe the only reason that first bite of the habanero had seemed tolerable was there wasn’t much of it.  And now, by comparison, I had a much larger amount of orange habanero in my mouth. 

Look it up on the scoville scale, and remember a jalapeno is anywhere from 2500-9000 scoville heat units.  By comparison, an orange habanero is rated at anywhere from 150,000-325,000 scoville heat units.

Mind you, I didn’t know those numbers at the time, but the fire building up in my mouth that actually melted the spoon I popped in my mouth to cool it some already let me know I wuz in way over my head.

It was about this time I decided I wasn’t as hungry as I thought I was and that I couldn’t possibly hold that much orange habanero, so I spit out what I had in my mouth directly into my hand. For whatever reason, I didn’t want to take the time to find a napkin.

I disposed of the habanero, but the heat in and around my mouth was increasing in intensity.  Luckily I did remember Adam Richman drinking milk after one of his hot lunches, so I got out an open gallon jug of milk and drank a small bit directly from the jug.  Again, I didn’t feel like looking for a glass. 

I reacted to the habanero's side effects much the same way I did to a face full of tear gas in the Army.  Yes, I was mighty uncomfortable, but I didn’t panic. 

I held my breath, then I noticed the sandwich I had made.  Maybe some food would cool down the fire in my mouth, I thought. And I took a big bite.  It was then I remembered putting the habanero on this sandwich.

Okay really, there was tomato and mayo and mustard and bread and turkey and pepper jack cheese there, too, so the heat from that bit of habanero wasn’t so bad.

But I could have starred in a remake of M*A*S*H.  I mean I had me some Hot Lips.  Oh, if I could have just kissed a pretty girl right then, I know she’d never forget me.  Might not ever talk to me again, but she’d always remember me.

The pain really didn’t last all that long.  I got another small drink from the milk jug and in a bit, I had some more of my sandwich and within a reasonable amount of time, the fire around my mouth went out and in about another 10-15 minutes, the one in my stomach was also doused.

And the endorphins, man, when they kicked in, almost worth it.  In fact, I’m thinkin’ with a little time, I could become immune to third degree burns on my tongue.

Pikeville in the good old days

I’m at that age now where it’s fun to sit around and think about my life. I now live out in the county where everything is a bit slower and the pace more comfortable for an old-timer such as me, but when I was young, being the daring fellow I was, I made the move to the Big City of Pikeville.

Well, you have to understand that this was back in what now passes as the good old days. That would have been around 1975 or so and Pikeville wasn’t quite the impressive metropolis it has since become.

I lived in an apartment then overlooking Deskin’s Motors. This was when railroad tracks ran through that part of town that is now Hambley Blvd. In fact, the railroad that went through town was still called the C&O. I had a two bedroom apartment, utilities paid, including a $5.00 per month cable TV fee, fully furnished, for $125.00 a month.

I worked at South Central Bell’s Second Street offices. I was temporary, part time. This meant that I’d come into repair where I helped get info for anyone who had a complaint. I worked three weeks and was off a week.

There were still a lot of 8 party lines then. The 633 exchange didn’t exist. This meant that whenever one subscriber took their phone off the hook, the other seven called repair. How much fun was that?

I’d walk the railroad to get to work. There were still coal cars on that track. They actually served to let me know that I’d had too much to drink at the Christmas party the phone company threw in 1975. On my way back, I couldn’t quite make out the letters C&O unless I closed one eye.

You wouldn’t believe how many people worked there then, even operators. Remember the people you could get by dialing “0”? This wasn’t an option, either; you couldn’t make a long-distance call without them.

There were still real service stations all around town in those days, too. You’d drive up; they’d pump your gas and check under your hood, just like Goober.

Groceries I got from the only Velocity Market opened in those days. I think there’s a pizza place there, now. In town, you could go to G C Murphy’s and buy, well, pretty near anything.

I didn’t drive in those days, so having a lot of time on my hands, I used to walk around the berg to see what I could find. You’d had to have seen the scenery to have believed it.

If you went towards Goff Furniture, you’d get to the Upper Bridge, but if you stayed in town, you ran across a real, honest-to-God dirt road. I used to love to walk out that way.

There was an actual illegal garbage dump before you ran across what passed for housing. There were real tar paper shacks out that way. You could find the same thing on the other end of Pikeville near Poor Farm Hollow.

From the top of Peach Orchard Mountain, you could see the work being done on the cut through. If we’d only known what was coming.

Yes, Pikeville has so much more now, but it seems like there’s a lot less, too.

Hemphatic Support Needed

It’s not been too terrible a year to be a supporter of industrial hemp in the Bluegrass State. We did, for example, see a new Commissioner of Agriculture, James Comer, sworn in who just stood up and endorsed this marvelous plant.

There’s also been one state official who’s been trying relentlessly to reintroduce industrial hemp in Kentucky, mostly without a lot of help, and that would be Senator Joey Pendleton (D) Senate District 3. Well, anyway, that’s where he was prior to redistricting.

The truth is that while the bill introduced by him this last legislative session didn’t get out for a vote in the Senate, Kentucky has already passed a bill that would allow its farmers to grow industrial hemp.

The big roadblock is the Drug Enforcement Administration, and while they may not be convinced of the fact that hemp and its cousin, marijuana, really belong on the list of schedule one narcotics, this doesn’t mean they won’t stop enforcing this idiotic inclusion.

This list, by the way, includes opiates, opiate derivatives, depressants and stimulants and psychedelic substances. If you look, you’ll find one little substance in that last grouping, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, and it’s this that industrial hemp has in such small quantities that it couldn’t even get a fly high.

What can industrial hemp do? C’mon, get real. This plant has over 22,000 uses (maybe considerably over) so it’d take a lot more than 550 words to list them all. But more than that, better than that, even, is the possibilities of the jobs it would mean, not just in Kentucky, but all across the U S, if we could just get the feds to drop hemp prohibition.

For the record, by the way, we aren’t the only state that has passed laws concerning industrial hemp. Here’s some info included in an e-mail I got from an organization I am a member of-Vote Hemp: “To date, thirty-one states have introduced hemp legislation and seventeen have passed legislation; nine (Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont and West Virginia) have removed barriers to its production or research.”

Sadly, no state law will ever trump federal law on hemp. And it is from this unenviable position anyone whose aim it is to see renewed hemp production in the U S must start.

Yes, there is presidential aspirant, Ron Paul, R., TX, who reintroduced his bill that would exclude hemp from the list of schedule one narcotics. It’s in the same position the bill that was passed over in Kentucky was; it was assigned to a cold and unfeeling committee (House Judiciary Committee) where it was left to languish.

And until very recently, no one would co-sponsor that bill in the U S Senate, not even Rep. Paul’s son, the transplanted Texan we elected to that august body, one Rand Paul.

But we did get word a while back that Senator Ron Wyden, D. OR, has introduced Senate Amendment 2220 to the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2012, S.3240.

This amendment is Rep. Ron Paul’s bill, H. R. 1831. Now hemp supporters must contact Members of Congress to urge them to vote aye. So I urge you all to call or write (snail or e-mail) them.

This may be our best chance ever.

Kentucky Fried Extinction

Firstly, this title was borrowed from an e-mail I got from Greenpeace, an environmental group whose goal is to “ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its diversity".

This e-mail brought up two very important issues. One would be the deliberate destruction of rainforests, and two could be the extinction of the Sumatran tiger as a result of lost habitat.

Yes, I know it’s just such stuff as this that brands people as tree huggers, but what do I care? Trees and humans have had a symbiotic relationship for so long. We each survive on parts of the atmosphere the other cannot use. So as long as trees are helping to make the atmosphere conducive to life, I won’t apologize for wanting to live in a world where they are included.

Oh, and in our part of the world, trees also help disperse water from a heavy rain so it doesn’t cause a flash flood and needlessly destroy houses and upset people’s lives. It’s when forests are clear cut that these natural disasters occur. But those who live on Harless Creek know that.

But back to the title of this piece: Kentucky Fried Chicken is doing business with a major contributor to rain forest destruction; it gets the paper for its packaging from Asia Pulp & Paper (AP&P).

This destruction takes place throughout Asia, but AP&P is hitting Indonesia particularly hard. Not only are they destroying this nation’s invaluable rain forests, they are destroying the habitat of the last remaining subspecies of tiger found here.

It was as recently as 80 years ago that Indonesia was the home of three such subspecies. Two are now extinct, and the one remaining subspecies, the Sumatran tiger has been classified as on the brink of extinction. One reason for this is that 93% of the tigers’ habitat has already been destroyed. And without their natural habitat, those few that are left cannot survive for long.

Why does Kentucky Fried do business with AP&P? Possibly because it’s a cheap source of paper for their packaging. It’s just too bad their need for packaging material for body parts of a dead chicken that have been coated with 11 secret herbs and spices and deep-fried is allowed to endanger Sumatran tigers and their habitat.

Of course, a much better source for that packaging paper would be available to Kentucky Fried if the U S hadn’t outlawed a superior source of paper and categorized it as a schedule one drug.

It has been pointed out in this column many times that one acre of industrial hemp will provide as much paper as 4.1 acres of trees, without the chemical pollution produced by the process that turns wood pulp into paper. And hemp can be ready for more production in a much shorter time. In fact, in Kentucky, when it was legal to do so, a good farmer could get several crops of hemp in, in a single planting season.

Trees by comparison take around 20-30 years to recover.

Well, this was done before we were made aware of the fact that hemp is a dangerous drug that needs to be listed with narcotics such as heroin and cocaine. Of course, when that was made known, we all happily abandoned the idea of ever using industrial hemp again.

Coal vs Obama

President Obama did one thing in the 2012 Kentucky presidential primary he didn’t do in 2008-he won it. This time, he won 58% of the vote, although 42% went to uncommitted delegates. Not that that means anything; Obama is the only Democratic candidate for President this year.

That, by the way, was the good news for the Obama camp. The bad news is he lost to uncommitted in about half of Kentucky, and one of the counties that saw him get flayed alive again was our own Pike County.

Yes, here the uncommitted vote took 65% of the vote. But considering how few votes Obama got in the 2008 primary in Pike County, you could say he did pretty well by comparison. Hey, you take your victories where you can.

At least it’s not like West Virginia, where a federal prisoner, Keith Judd, who is serving out a 17-year term in the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institute in Beaumont, Texas got over 42% of the vote against Obama.

Yeah, Obama took a drubbing in the 2008 primary in that state, but to have a federal prisoner run so close this time has to hurt the pride a little.

There was a well thought out analysis of the primary published in the Friday, May 25^th edition of the Appalachian News-Express that covered pretty much every factor that might have had some influence on these outcomes.

Of course, we all know that Obama’s war on coal, as defined by the various coal producers and associations that have been running negative ads against Obama for the better of his first term, had a large impact on how the vote turned out.

Obama’s war as waged by the Environmental Protection Agency has cost this area jobs, according to these ads. Well, no, not according the latest jobs numbers. In both Kentucky and West Virginia, coal jobs are at the highest levels since around 1997.

But we do have a lot to be thankful for in Pike County, or more specifically, in Pikeville. There is the Eastern Kentucky Exposition Center, for instance. We wouldn’t have that if it weren’t for coal, huh?

Not really. It seems that the Exposition Center was on the verge of closing when a deal was struck by the various governmental agencies that ran it to turn it over to the city of Pikeville.

Coal could have contributed enough money to keep the Center afloat by buying the right to name it, but they’d already contributed some $7 million to the University of Kentucky to name the new men’s basketball dorm the Wildcat Coal Lodge. Maybe next time, though.

Well, the city of Pikeville was able to take on the Exposition Center because it has such a progressive government. Their tax base, helped by the coal industry, is what made the difference, huh?

But those jobs in town because of the many construction jobs, on the new Judicial Center, the new building that will house the medical school at the University of Pikeville, and the new additions to the Pikeville Medical Center, have all been aided considerably by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the first major act of the Obama administration.

So maybe the reality is, even if Obama has helped this area, we don’t care. We just don’t like him.

Let the punishment fit the crime

The news media has the unenviable job of not only reporting the news but of dealing with any fallout it might produce.  Fallout, by the way, usually comes in the form of criticism from those who may think the news media has made them look bad.

No government official ever likes to see bad press, and no government official has ever hesitated to launch a preemptive strike against any news source that might shine a light on any of their more nefarious activities. 

Of course, you don’t have to be a national politician to distrust the press.  We’ve had plenty of those in our area who are just as unhappy with the Appalachian News-Express and who’ve been all too willing to let the paper know all about it.

The most recent unhappy office holder to take action, literally this time, was Elkhorn City’s Mayor Mike Taylor, who filed a criminal complaint against News-Express staff writer Ross Coleman because Coleman won’t stop asking him questions.

Of course Coleman won’t stop asking him questions.  It’s his job.  It’s what motivates him as an individual.  In certain circumstances it could even get him recognition by his peers.  And let’s face it, if reporters were jailed for being inquisitive, our prison population, already the world’s largest, would swell to far greater numbers.

In its response to Taylor’s actions, the News-Express published an editorial in which it called on Taylor to resign as Mayor.  With all due respect to those people who publish my drivel, I think this is going a bit too far. 

Yes, Taylor may be trying to intimidate Coleman and his colleagues, but it’s not the most intimidating action ever taken against an employee of the News-Express.

It’s not been too long ago, if you remember, when another Mayor took exception to a story published in the News-Express.  Only this Mayor was a bit more direct in his try at intimidation. 

Instead of bringing criminal charges against any measly newspaper reporters or staff writers, this Mayor took a swing at the editor; popped him right in the nose.

Cooler heads prevailed because the thing was smoothed over rather quickly; the mayor apologized and the editor forgave him.  No calls for any resignation were heard.

In a story published only this past week, the Fiscal Court tried their hands at intimidating a citizen.  And this wasn’t your ordinary citizen, either.  This was Monk Sanders, the one man who makes it his life’s work to bring help to the poor and needy.  And God only knows how much of that there is to do.

Seems Monk had the temerity to question members of the Fiscal Court in some letters to the Editor.  And that made those members of the Fiscal Court mad, mad enough to tell Monk not to be seen around the county with stationary or postage stamps ever again if he wanted the Fiscal Court to help him.

Of course, Monk agreed, because he does need to get the Court to help him in his mission.  It’s too bad he had to give up his right to express his opinion in exchange for this help.  It’s also too bad that our paper didn’t come to his defense as quickly as it did with its own reporter.

No Independents Need Apply

This coming Tuesday, May 22, will be Kentucky’s primary Election Day.  I’m rerunning a column I wrote for last year’s primary because independent voters are still suffering under what I call taxation without enfranchisement.

Way back when, lawmakers in Kentucky proposed to hold elections on even-numbered years only.  That way, the electorate wouldn’t tire themselves out by voting so often.

Well, not all odd-numbered years would be void of elections; just every other odd-numbered year.  Otherwise, the electorate might emulate Rodney Dangerfield’s dog:  It took him two years to teach his dog to sit and then the dog forgot how to stand.

Take away all the odd-year elections and the electorate might forget about Election Day altogether.  So in odd-numbered years, like 2011, we vote for state-wide offices; otherwise, no odd-year elections.

So how has that worked for us?  From here it doesn’t appear to have achieved its goal of getting more of the electorate out on Election Day.  Despite that one one-year break every four years, people are still staying away from the polls in droves.

It would seem our voters are like the ex-leper from Monty Python’s film “The Life of Brian”.  This leper was cleansed by Jesus, but then complained that since he could no longer beg for alms, he now had no trade, whereupon Jesus was said to have told him “There’s just no pleasing some people!”

Okay, so we know what is used to pave the road to h-e-double hockey sticks, don’t we?  Yep, good intentions.  What was forgotten in the rush to get more people out is why more people don’t vote in the opening act in our election years.  Part A is the primary election, where the successful candidate will represent one of the two major parties in the General Election.

But in Kentucky, you have to register as either a Democrat or a Republican.  No Independents need apply.  No, you cannot vote in a Primary Election.  Don’t forget to pay your taxes, though.  The Commonwealth of Kentucky will use part of that to pay the tab so the two major parties can set their slate for November.

That hardly seems fair, now does it?  The Commonwealth of Kentucky will use the Independent voters’ tax money but then disenfranchise them in half of the elections.  So how are Independent voters supposed to work up any enthusiasm for any candidates when they have no say as to who that candidate will be?  It’s like trying to work up fervor for a date whom you’ve never seen and about whom you know nothing.  That doesn’t always work so well, either.

I sometimes get the impression that neither the Democrats nor Republicans are all that anxious to see this scenario changed anytime soon.  Why would they?  They have it made in the shade. If only those who bother to register one way or the other can vote in the primaries, that’s that many fewer voters the candidates need to see to get elected.

Once again, I call on the Commonwealth of Kentucky to open its Primary Elections up to all voters.  The only info the Commonwealth needs is the voters address and precinct.  Those voters could then decide in which party’s primary they will vote when they cast their ballot in May.

A feud revisited

Like most area residents, I’ve always had a passion about the Hatfield and McCoy feud. I've heard about it from the time I was old enough to sit and listen to my elders. No complete story formed in my mind, just the idea that two families had taken an intense dislike to each other and that bloodshed was the result.

I eventually got my hands on a book that more or less explained the whole thing to me. That was a rarity, something that went into detail on local history. That was something that was lacking even in our 7^th grade Kentucky history book.

I even wrote my first research paper in college on the feud. I eventually narrowed the thing down to how the feud got started. This was in Comp 102 at Eastern Kentucky University.

But it was here that I found out just how little was actually written on the feud itself. In all of that school’s mammoth library, I found just three books.

No matter, I wrote an A paper, one that had only one red mark, at the beginning where I used the past tense of the verb to dwell as dwelt. That, I was told, is an archaic form of the verb. Not where I come from, I responded.

The one thing that kept me interested in the feud was the part played by a relative, probably a distant one, but a relative, nonetheless, who went by the name of Bad Frank Phillips.

Bad Frank went into WV after the members of the raiding party that was responsible for killing Alafair McCoy. Now you know you had to be bad to be able to do that. These boys weren’t coming out peaceably, after all.

But knowing all about the feud, and also finding out how widely the feud itself became known in its time always made me want to see this thing on the wide screen.

Well, all of us who have always wanted to see this tragic bit of history acted out as well as it could be have been disappointed in those feeble attempts made so far. Pretty much all you ever saw about the feud was satirical references to it in cartoons and sitcoms.

That may be about to change. I’m pretty sure everybody knows by now that the History Channel is doing a miniseries on the feud and it stars no less than Hollywood legend Kevin Costner.

Now you and I both know that Kevin is not going to halfway do anything, so his portrayal of Devil Anse will be done right.

And while I’m definitely no actor, I would have given my eye tooth to have gotten the role of Bad Frank. I really do believe I was born to play this part. 

But you ought to also know that I found reference to a real movie being developed by Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper, Robert Duvall and Brad Pitt. And if you’ve ever seen Robert Duvall do anything, you know he’s gonna really own the role he’ll play; no doubt Devil Anse again.

At any rate, the History Channel’s version, the miniseries, will begin starting on Memorial Day and will continue for three nights, and I can’t speak for everyone else, but I can’t wait

Lean and hungry times

Lean and hungry times

Boy, talk about a turnaround. I’d bet Lazarus wasn’t this surprised when the Lord brought him back to life after he’d been dead long enough to have developed an odor problem.

If I hadn’t read it with my own two eyes, I certainly would never have believed Pike County’s projected $3 million dollar deficit could become a $2.1 million dollar surplus.

I don’t know how this came about, but I’m seriously tempted to ask whoever worked this miracle to take a look at my financial situation. A similar turnaround might even allow me to eat some this coming year.

No, seriously, while one facet of Pike County government finds it may have a little breathing room, another one finds itself mired down and digging itself deeper in as it tries to extricate itself. That would be the Pike County Board of Education whose free lunch program is facing a $600,000 deficit.

By the way, I’m tempted almost beyond endurance to make something of the fact that a “free lunch” program is the one involved; something about “no such thing as a free lunch”, but I think I can resist.

The one thing pretty much everyone could say to the Board of Education is “We feel your pain.” Anyone who’s been on the inside of a grocery store knows exactly how Sabrina Thompson, the BOE’s director of food service, feels.

In fact, when I make my pilgrimage to the supermarket, I’m like the suitor in an old poem who visited the girl he’d fallen in love with. Our hero tried standing on one foot and then the other and he couldn’t tell which made him more miserable.

That’s because we’re being hit by a double whammy; the ever-rising price of food, and the cost of the stuff you need to buy in order to get to the store and back again, what the local comics call the motion lotion, or gasoline.

It almost seems like there’s a race between two sets of workers at the supermarket to see which can set prices the highest; those in the store and those who work at the gas pumps.

Of course it isn’t the fault of anyone in the supermarkets: This is the work of Wall Street speculators. Yes, the group who brought us such enjoyable phenomena as the housing bubble has now moved into the commodities market and is raising havoc AND food prices worldwide.

We’ve already noted their work in the higher gas prices we’ve been paying: Because of their handiwork, gas prices have gone up by 40% over the last few months; but the so-called commodity index funds have poured some $400 billion into commodity markets, and we are all now seeing the result of that.

It’s not like this is the first time speculators have been involved in commodity markets, but in order for everything to work out well, speculators’ involvement should be limited to 30% of market activity with commercial traders taking up the remaining 70%.

According to an article on cnn.com by Better Markets President Dennis Kelleher, this has now been reversed: Speculators now control 70% of commodity markets with commercial traders getting just 30%.

This, according to Kelleher, is the result of “investment banks creating and selling ‘commodity index funds’ that gamble on, and usually drive up, food and energy prices.”

See? And we all thought it was just our imaginations working overtime.

Home is where the hillbilly is

If you ask a hillbilly, he’ll tell you there is no one place that the Hillbilly Nation calls home. It’s true. Thanks to CBS, there was even a clan out in Beverly Hills, California. Well, they were originally from the Ozarks, but what with all that oil money, you know….

 

But while a hillbilly can come from any number of states or regions, there can be no argument that the capital of the Hillbilly Nation is Pikeville, Kentucky, and all because of our little annual celebration called Hillbilly Daze.

Yes, and any denizen of the Hillbilly Nation can tell you all about this little affair, its cofounders "Dirty Ear" Howard Stratton and "Shady" Grady Kinney and its very noble purpose; raising money for the Shiners Children’s Hospitals.

It also gives hillbillies of all stripes a chance to come to the Hillbilly Nation’s capital and compare notes on what it means to be a hillbilly or just to see old friends who make Pikeville an annual destination.

Hillbilly Daze was first held in 1977, so that means that 35 years have come and gone since the Hillbilly Nation first assembled in Pikeville, and a whole lot of things have changed since then. For one thing, we now live in the New Millennium, aka the 21^st Century, and we have computers. So keeping up with all your hillbilly friends is a lot easier, especially with Twitter and Facebook.

Still, I sometimes wonder if we haven’t lost a little of ourselves to modern innovation. In times past, without the TV or computer to occupy us at night, we might have spent more time out of doors in the spring and summer. That would have allowed us to become better acquainted with nature.

For instance, back in the late 70’s, when I lived in Paintsville, some of us used to occasionally drive along the Paint Creek road on a summer evening and sit and just listen. By around 9 or 10, you could hear whippoorwills call from every direction.

Going back considerably farther in time, when I was a teenager, we had TV, but it was black and white and we only had 3 networks and no more than 5-6 stations. In springtime, when extreme boredom with the idiot tube drove us away from it, we could sit on the front porch and listen to the frogs as they sought romance.

Or on those evenings when a thunderstorm came up and we were forbidden to watch the TV lest we and it get struck by lightning, we could again sit outside and watch the lightning strike, then count to see how far away it was.

I don’t think any of us had any inkling of the advances that awaited us in what was then the distant future. But tomorrow had to get here eventually and here it is, with youtube replacing the idiot tube.

Oh, who am I kidding? We most certainly were not better off in the age of dinosaurs. Can anyone really way they were happy sitting on a front porch, watching lightning and counting? Really! That’s about as exciting as listening to frogs make out.

So when you show up at Hillbilly Daze with your new-fangledy stuff, enjoy using what we’d have killed for in 1977. And don’t for a minute feel guilty. After all, who knows what’ll be here in another 35 years.

On Duck Fork

Chester Thacker March 24, 1951 - March 27, 2012

I met Chet and Judy many moons ago, when they were members of the Morehead Mafia. No, I didn't go to Morehead with Chet, but my brother, Steve, did. Steve and Chet were roomies at MSU, and got to be best friends by the end of their time together with the Eagles.

Well, they were both from Pike County, KY, although Steve and I went to Feds Creek on one side of this fairly large county and Chet and several of his cohorts went to Belfry, some forty miles away from our little hole in the road.

The Belfry gang had a positive impact on my brother, Steve's life. In addition to Chet, there was Jerry Battistello and Bill Bevins, to name but two. Rounding out the Morehead Mafia was Judy and Deb, sisters from Pikeville and daughters of a most engaging couple, Jim and Lena Kitchen. Yes, the same Deb who married Jerry and the same Judy who married Chet

.
I remember t Chet and Judy’s wedding very well, BTW. It took place at the Zebulon Church of Christ, and was officiated over by Bill Ford, as I recall; a very lovely ceremony.

I distinctly remember when Chet took a job as an English teacher in Lee County, Ky. Lee County is on the edge of the mountains and not that far from the Bluegrass region. Its county seat is Beattyville and that was where the school that Chet taught in was located.

When Chet took the job, the first thing they needed to do was get a house, and they found one some distance from the school in a place called Duck Fork. That name was the butt of a lot of jokes, btw.

Chet and Judy found a house that belonged to an elderly lady who had operated a country store with her husband. He had passed away at the point, as I remember, and Chet and Judy were just about allowed to move into the house for taking care of it.

To get that job done, Chet and Judy called on the Morehead Mafia to come up and help clean up the house. That call was answered by my brother, Steve (he and I were sharing an apartment in Pikeville), and Jerry and Deb. Steve let me come along after a lot of begging, and we all had a ball painting and cleaning and what not. Before too long, the old home, which was a fantastic old farm house, was livable and Chet and Judy were in business.

It was about this time I found out that Chet's favorite poet was e. e. cummings. cummings, for those who know him, wrote poetry w/o much in the way of punctuation or capital letters. I'd got to know of him by what I'd read of him in high school, and that unconventional manner of writing caught my attention.

Chet was as unconventional as his favorite poet. I recognize it in the tributes his students have written in his memory. I don't doubt that the good Chet has done in his interaction with his students will live on for many years to come and will magnify itself many times before it is done.

My sympathy to those who survive Chet; I'm still as impressed with him today as I was all those many years ago when I first met him.

  dying is fine)but Death
e e  cummings

?o
baby
i

wouldn't like

Death if Death
were
good:for

when(instead of stopping to think)you

begin to feel of it,dying
's miraculous
why?be

cause dying is

perfectly natural;perfectly
putting
it mildly lively(but

Death

is strictly
scientific
& artificial &

evil & legal)

we thank thee
god
almighty for dying
(forgive us,o life!the sin of Death


Note, this is how the poem was published, and may show why he was Chester's favorite.

Time to rethink stand your ground

As of this last Monday, the state of Florida had not yet arrested the alleged killer of 17 year-old Trayvon Martin, 28 year-old George Zimmerman. That decision on whether or not to arrest Zimmerman will come from State Attorney Angela B. Corey instead of a grand jury, however.

Race and Florida’s stand your ground law have both been cited as possible factors in the killing of Martin. The alleged shooter, George Zimmerman allegedly had a history of using what many consider to be racial profiling in his work as a member of his neighborhood watch program, a racial profile that 17 year-old Trayvon Martin just happened to fit.

But there is the vagueness of the stand your ground law to consider: That part of the law being used as a defense by Zimmerman reads “A person… not engaged in an unlawful activity and… attacked…where they have a right to be have no duty to retreat and have the right to stand their ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if they reasonably believe it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm….”.

In this instance, both Zimmerman and Martin had a right to be in that Sanford neighborhood, and from the evidence made public so far, both could claim they were the one being attacked. The fact does remain, though, that Zimmerman was the only one of the two who was armed.

But what if Martin had also been armed? Martin’s girlfriend is on record as saying that Martin knew he was being followed by a large, unknown male. Anyone who’s been followed in any city knows the fear Martin must have felt.

In such a situation, wouldn’t it have been reasonable to believe the stalker was planning on attacking Martin? So, if Martin had been armed, and became convinced that, unless he used deadly force against his stalker, his own life might be forfeit, then the situation might have been reversed, with Zimmerman dead and Martin the alleged killer, and seemingly also covered by this law.

So the next question to be answered: How would the Sanford Police Department have treated a young African American who’d just shot a 28 year-old member of a neighborhood watch program, especially if that young man had been wearing a hoodie? Would they have refused to arrest him if he’d claimed that he was covered by the stand your ground law?

Let’s just agree that no one knows for sure what the Department’s reaction would have been; but I don’t think too many people would believe Martin would have been released and given his gun back.

Still, this law seems geared towards provoking a reaction by people who might otherwise not have resorted to deadly force. Since this law was enacted in 2005, so-called justifiable homicides have increased by 200%.

One critic of the law in Florida law is Sen. Chris Smith, a Democrat who represents Broward and Palm Beach counties. One important change Smith would make would prohibit the use of stand your ground where the shooter has provoked a confrontation, as was allegedly done by Zimmerman.

A more certain way to keep stand your ground from being a focal point in such cases, though, would be to have the police conduct a more professional investigation after every such shooting occurs. It’s when questions are left unanswered, after all, that allegations of injustice arise.

Good Rivals make for good basketball

I’m a fan of the men’s basketball program at the University of Kentucky, much as the most of us who reside in the hinterlands of Kentucky are. Not that U.K.’s men’s program is the only game in town, of course; there is also the Hoops team from U. K., aka women’s basketball.

This team, though, languished in the background until U. K. hired one Mikki DeMoss in 2003, a long-time assistant under Tennessee’s Coach Pat Summit. Coach DeMoss just proceeded to work miracles at U. K.

When Coach DeMoss left U. K. to take a circuitous route back to Tennessee, she left behind Coach Billy Mitchell, who was also schooled under Coach Summit. For that reason, the recent successes the U. K.’s hoops team has enjoyed can be indirectly attributed to one of its bigger rivals, Tennessee.

This year, for instance, the hoops team made it to the Elite 8 again before bowing out to a Hoops giant, the UConn Huskies team, under legendary head coach, Geno Auriemma. And as for the future, well, the skies the limit.

Kentucky fans never gave Tennessee a break because of this, though. But the average U. K. fan’s ire when directed at Tennessee is rather tame when compared to how they feel about a closer school.

That would be Louisville. This school, whose mascot is the Cardinal (as in the Kentucky cardinal), can evoke very strong feelings in a Wildcatophile; harsher feelings than are directed at even U. K.’s SEC foes.

I can’t take the hard-nosed approach when it comes to Louisville’s men’s basketball program, though, and this isn’t entirely my fault. I was a wet-behind-the-ears U. K. fan in 1971 when Louisville hired a new basketball coach by the name of Denny Crum.

This Coach Crum wasn’t your ordinary run-of-the-mill novice; he came from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) where he’d spent an inordinate amount of time under the tutelage of one John Wooden.

Because of this, I was sure Louisville’s program would blossom, and it did. Later when Coach Joe B. Hall took over U. K. from the legendary Adolph Rupp, he, Coach Crum and Coach Bob Knight (B-O-O-O-O-O!), formed a friendship that lasted until Coach Knight when wacky and clubbed Joe B. in 1975.

Indy was killing U. K. at the time. Later that season, U. K. upset an undefeated Indiana in the finals of the Southeast Regional, and suddenly Joe B. wasn’t mad anymore.

For years afterwards, Coach Knight would go around saying “We should have been undefeated!” And Coach Hall would ask “Would you like some cheese to go with that whine?”

When Coach Crum retired from Louisville, the Cards hired U. K.’s ex, Rick Pitino. Knowing his history with U. K., I cannot find it in myself to hate him, either. Without Coach Pitino, Kentucky’s pride and joy, the U. K. men’s basketball program, might have wound up in much the same boat as Southern Methodist University’s football program after it received the death penalty.

Because Coach Pitino did show up, U. K. rebounded nicely, and even though he’s at another school, simple courtesy suggests that U. K. should honor him incessantly, because without him, we might not now have anything to cheer for.

Anyway, good rivalries do make for good basketball, as was demonstrated in the Final Four game between U. K. and the Cards on Saturday last.