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.