February 2021 | Kentucky Monthly Magazine

Kentucky Explorer Lives On K E N T U C K Y

FEBRUARY 2021

M O N T H LY FEBRUARY 2021

The Literary Issue

Penned Literary Contest Winners Writer Ellen Birkett Morris

Nikky Finney

2021 Writers Hall of Fame Inductees

Black Heritage Exhibits Elite Kentucky Academies Dual Credit Programs

Display until 3/09/2021

VOLUME 24 ISSUE

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Thank you WAKY-LAND for sending our ratings through the roof … AGAIN!

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This issue published in memory of O. Wayne Gaunce (1933-2020).

in this issue

on the cover Award-winning poet Nikky Finney is the newest living inductee into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

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Photo by Forrest Clonts

D E PA R T M E N T S 2 Kentucky Kwiz 3 Readers Write 4 Mag on the Move 8 Across Kentucky 9 Music 10 Cooking 50 Kentucky Explorer 60 Off the Shelf 62 Past Tense/ Present Tense 63 Field Notes 64 Vested Interest

featured

FEBRUARY 2021 14 2021 Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame Inductee Profiles 25 Penned: The 13th Annual Writers’ Showcase The best of reader-submitted fiction creative nonfiction, poetry and novel opening

35 First-Class Opportunity STEM academies give top Kentucky high school students a head start on pursuing their dreams 40 An Early Start Kentucky high school students can take dual credit courses to launch their college careers

42 On Respect A Louisville author’s short stories explore the characters’ need to be acknowledged 46 Celebration and Remembrance Louisville tours and attractions honor Kentucky’s Black heritage

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 1

kentucky kwiz Test your knowledge of our beloved Commonwealth. To find out how you fared, see the bottom of Vested Interest.

1. Bowling Green’s Lida Obenchain, writing under the pen name Eliza Calvert Hall, drew the attention of which American president with her 1907 book Aunt Jane of Kentucky?

“I’ve noticed that whenever a woman’s willin’ to be imposed upon, there’s always a man standin’ ’round ready to do the imposin’.”

6. Aviator John Paul Riddle, co-founder of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, was named outstanding alumnus of which Kentucky school in 1988?

A. Lindsey-Wilson College B. University of Pikeville C. University of Kentucky

A. Theodore Roosevelt B. Woodrow Wilson C. Calvin Coolidge 2. Before Maysville’s Walter N. Haldeman founded the Louisville Courier and owned Major League Baseball’s Louisville Grays, he was a high school classmate of which future United States president?

A. Loretta Lynn B. Tyler Childers

A. Colonel B. Senator

B. Robert E. Lee C. Stonewall Jackson 4. Alice Lloyd College is located in the Knott County town of Pippa Passes, the name of which comes from a poem by which 19th century poet?

C. Mayor

A. Eight B. Twelve C. Two

A. Walt Whitman B. Robert Browning

A. Diane Sawyer

C. Edgar Allan Poe

B. Martha Layne Collins C. Janie Olmstead

A. Midway College

Deborah Kohl Kremer Assistant Editor Ted Sloan Contributing Editor Cait A. Smith Copy Editor

Jackie Hollenkamp Bentley, Bill Ellis, Steve Flairty, Gary Garth, Jesse HendrixInman, Kristy Robinson Horine, Kim Kobersmith, Abby Laub, Walt Reichert, Ken Snyder, Joel Sams, Gary P. West

Business and Circulation Barbara Kay Vest Business Manager Jocelyn Roper Circulation Specialist

9. Aside from Kentucky, how many states have counties named in honor of Isaac Shelby, Kentucky’s first governor?

10. Who was the Shelby County Tobacco Festival Queen of 1954 and the Kentucky Derby Festival Queen of 1959?

5. Centre College is named for being at the geographic center of Kentucky, but that distinction should go to which other nearby school?

Patricia Ranft Associate Editor Rebecca Redding Creative Director

Senior Kentributors

C. Ulysses S. Grant

A. Jefferson Davis

Stephen M. Vest Publisher + Editor-in-Chief

C. Dwight Yoakam

B. Abraham Lincoln

3. William “Bull” Nelson was shot and killed in the lobby of Louisville’s Galt House Hotel. His opponent was a fellow Union general with an unlikely name.

© 2021, Vested Interest Publications Volume Twenty-Four, Issue 1, February 2021

Editorial

7. Which Kentuckian is the most frequent musical guest in Tonight Show history?

8. Luska J. Twyman, the namesake of Glasgow’s Twyman Memorial Park, was the first Black Kentuckian to hold which title?

A. Andrew Johnson

Celebrating the best of our Commonwealth

Advertising Lindsey Collins Account Executive and Coordinator For advertising information, call 888.329.0053 or 502.227.0053 KENTUCKY MONTHLY (ISSN 1542-0507) is published 10 times per year (monthly with combined December/ January and June/July issues) for $20 per year by Vested Interest Publications, Inc., 100 Consumer Lane, Frankfort, KY 40601. Periodicals Postage Paid at Frankfort, KY and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to KENTUCKY MONTHLY, P.O. Box 559, Frankfort, KY 40602-0559. Vested Interest Publications: Stephen M. Vest, president; Patricia Ranft, vice president; Barbara Kay Vest, secretary/ treasurer. Board of directors: James W. Adams Jr., Dr. Gene Burch, Gregory N. Carnes, Barbara and Pete Chiericozzi, Kellee Dicks, Maj. Jack E. Dixon, Bruce and Peggy Dungan, Mary and Michael Embry, Frank Martin, Thomas L. Hall, Judy M. Harris, Greg and Carrie Hawkins, Jan and John Higginbotham, Bill Noel, Walter B. Norris, Kasia Pater, Dr. Mary Jo Ratliff, Barry A. Royalty, Randy and Rebecca Sandell, Marie Shake, Kendall Carr Shelton and Ted M. Sloan.

Kentucky Monthly invites queries but accepts no responsibility for unsolicited material; submissions will not be returned.

B. St. Catharine College C. Campbellsville University

2 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2 0 2 1

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More to Explore...

Counties mentioned in this issue...

Readers Write A Special Purchase I saw my first dulcimer when I visited my sister in Lexington, and she took me to Berea. I saw Mr. Warren May’s dulcimers, and I was in love (see September 2020 issue, page 24). But I didn’t have the money to buy one.

They cost more than $200 in 1983.

A year later, I was traveling to Atlanta for a seminar. As the plane was loading, the flight attendant announced it was overbooked and would anyone give up their seat for $50 and a later flight. My hand was the first one up.

After leaving Atlanta, I flew to Lexington with the extra $50 to visit my sister again, and we went back to Berea to buy the dulcimer. I bought a walnut dulcimer for $220.

After the purchase, I asked Mr. May to step outside so we could get a picture of him and me with the

dulcimer. He told me I was the first person who had asked to take his picture with a dulcimer.

I knew my dulcimer was special, but now I’m happy I got it when I did.

Shelia Kinneer Robb, St. George, Utah

True Kentucky Voice I really enjoyed Bill Ellis’ November Kentucky Monthly article (page 52), as I always do. Keep up the good writing. You know how to speak to your fellow Kentuckians.

Bill Robinson, Frankfort

With Appreciation Kentucky Monthly’s continual provision of quality articles, introduction of a new “generation” of writers, and a new format have been noticed and appreciated. That you continue to provide a vehicle for Kentuckians to discover our state and the

introduction of younger Kentuckians to their heritage are laudable.

Don’t ever stop writing that back page (Vested Interest by Stephen M. Vest), please.

Jim Roberts, Hopkinsville

The Kentucky Gift Guide Kentucky Monthly is thrilled to partner with Kentucky Proud, bringing to your attention some of the finest handcrafted gifts and treats our Commonwealth has to offer.

Corrections In the December 2020/ January 2021 issue’s “kentucky kwiz” question one has a glaring error.

The name should read “Daniel Chester French.”

Actually, French is considered the “designer,” and the Piccrilli Brothers firm did the actual sculpting/carving of the statue in the Lincoln Memorial.

A second error is on page 5 in the caption of the Goetz photo. Someone misspelled “Kentickian.”

Drink Local This handy guide to sipping in the Bluegrass State spotlights local breweries, wineries and, of course, distilleries. Discover unique ways to drink in Kentucky, creative cocktail recipes and more.

While these errors surprised me, I do enjoy reading Kentucky Monthly every month. Good job!

Joel Gittelson, Louisville

We Love to Hear from You! Kentucky Monthly welcomes letters from all readers. Email us your comments at editor@kentuckymonthly.com, send a letter through our website at kentuckymonthly.com, or message us on Facebook. Letters may be edited for clarification and brevity.

v Find more at kentuckymonthly.com.

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C O N N E C T.

UNITING KENTUCKIANS EVERYWHERE. k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 3

travel

MAG ON THE MOVE

These photos pre-date the COVID-19 outbreak, social distancing and mask mandates. Kentucky Monthly supports all safe travel measures.

Take a copy of the magazine with you and get snapping! Send your high-resolution photos (usually 1 MB or higher) to editor@kentuckymonthly.com or visit kentuckymonthly.com to submit your photo.

David and Patty Sellers CALIFORNIA (above) The Robards (Henderson County) couple posed in front of the iconic Half Dome in Yosemite Valley at Yosemite National Park.

They write: “[Photographer] Ansel Adams would have been proud to receive a copy of our iconic Kentucky magazine!”

David and Sue Shaw GERMANY (left) The Shaws of Lexington traveled to Germany, where they visited Trier, the oldest city, known as the “Rome of the North.” They are pictured at the city’s ancient Roman amphitheater.

4 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2 0 2 1

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Horticulture Meets Humor

Top, Crusing Family — Judy and Mike Lane of Lexington cruised the eastern Caribbean, making a stop in sunny Sint Maarten with their granddaughter, Montana Creighton.

Above, More Cruisers — Somerset residents Pam and Mark Knight took in the Old Fortress on the Greek island of Corfu while on a cruise of the Mediterranean.

shopkentuckymonthly.com 888-329-0053

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Get ready for gardening season with this down-home collection of practical advice and personal anecdotes from Kentucky Monthly’s gardening columnist, Walt Reichert. Organized by the seasons, each chapter offers color photography and straightforward tips for everything from combating critters to pairing plants.

The Bluegrass State’s green thumbs have proliferated, thanks to Walt’s encouraging and down-to-earth morsels of gardening wisdom.

Horticulture meets humor in gardening columnist Walt Reichert’s collection. o o o o o

To order: kentuckymonthly.com 1-888-329-0053

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 5

1/9/15

travel

Bob and Carey Doss CUBA The Lexington couple enjoyed an Oceania Panama Canal Cruise with a stop in Havana, Cuba.

Rhonda and Joey Taylor BARBADOS (above) The Taylors, who reside in Henderson, ventured on a 10-night Caribbean cruise to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. One of their stops enabled them to take in a scenic Barbados beach.

Luther and Cyndee Burton JAMAICA (left) The Henderson couple traveled to Jamaica not long after Cyndee had received a gift subscription to Kentucky Monthly. Here, they promote Henderson Brewing Co. and Kentucky bourbon.

6 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2 0 2 1

Jim and Joyce Hamberg BELIZE Celebrating Jim’s retirement and their upcoming wedding anniversary, the Southgate couple took a cruise to the western Caribbean, which included a stop in Belize.

“A Southern saga creates a fully realized world... a comfortable place worthy of a return trip.”

Kirkus Reviews on Granted

THE Randy and Denise Lawrence JAMAICA The Lawrences of Walton are pictured in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, celebrating their 39th wedding anniversary.

May Hollow Trilogy FROM KENTUCKY TO I TA LY A N D B A C K Available at Kentucky Soaps & Such www.kentuckysoapsandsuch.com

Jim and Bonnie Todd YELLOWSTONE

Also available on Amazon.com in all formats

The Lexington residents visited the vast Yellowstone National Park in August 2019. k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 7

BIRTHDAYS 1 Don Everly (1937), Hall of Fame musician from Muhlenberg County who performed with his late brother, Phil, as The Everly Brothers 1 Arturo Alonzo Sandoval (1942), noted fiber artist and University of Kentucky professor of art 5 Gary P. West (1943), Bowling Greenbased author and columnist 6 Tinashe Jorgensen Kachingwe (1993), R&B singer and actress from Lexington 10 John Calipari (1959), the University of Kentucky’s Basketball Hall of Fame basketball coach 10 Roger Auge II (1943), retired journalist from Covington 12 Ed Hamilton (1947), renowned sculptor from Louisville 15 Chris T. Sullivan (1948), UK graduate who founded Outback Steakhouse 18 Mark Melloan (1981), folksinger/ songwriter from Elizabethtown 20 Brian Littrell (1975), contemporary Christian singer/songwriter from Lexington 20 Mitch McConnell (1942), U.S. Senate Minority Leader from Louisville 22 Rajon Rondo (1986), UK AllAmerican and NBA basketball star from Louisville, currently with the Atlanta Hawks 21 John Clay (1959), sports columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader 24 Beth Broderick (1959), Falmouthborn actress who portrayed Aunt Zelda on Sabrina The Teenage Witch from 1996-2003 24 Kelly Dawn Craft (1962), U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from Lexington 26 Alexandria Mills (1992), Shepherdsville fashion model and Miss World 2010 27 Jared Champion (1983), Bowling Green-born drummer of the rock band Cage the Elephant

across kentucky

Kentucky Reads … and Discusses K

entucky author Crystal Wilkinson’s awardwinning novel The Birds of Opulence has been selected by Kentucky Humanities for its 2021 Kentucky Reads program. Twenty-five nonprofit organizations can host Kentucky Reads scholar-led discussions of the novel for a booking fee of $50 each. The organizations will receive 15 copies of The Birds of Opulence to share among participants, who will meet in person or virtually.

Wilkinson, who grew up in Indian Creek (Casey County), was awarded the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence for The Birds of Opulence, which centers on several generations of women. Wilkinson presents this tale of love, loss and madness in lush, poetic detail.

For more information and a booking form, visit kyhumanities.org.

Teacher Honored Elena Kamenetzky is the first Kentuckian to be named National Language Teacher of the Year by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. “I owe so much to the Kentucky World Language Association, which … has been a huge source of support throughout my career,” she said.

Kamenetzky, who teaches Japanese at Louisville’s Eastern High School, won state and regional awards to qualify for the national completion. She will serve as the national spokesperson for language learning in 2021.

Jake Bell, interim principal of Eastern High School, said, “She has been a wonderful example—she’s been extraordinary.”

ACTFL represents more than 13,000 language educators. Honorees must be full-time language educators who spend at least half their time in direct teaching and expect to continue teaching for at least two more years.

Effecting Change Through Art The Kentucky Foundation for Women has awarded its Artist Enrichment Grants to 44 feminist artists, writers and organizations around the Commonwealth. Totaling $164,960 this year, the grants are given to those enacting positive social change through their art. Applicants can request funds for artist residencies, developing new artistic techniques, and/or building a body of work.

“These grantees are reaching beyond their previous boundaries to expand their craft and their influence, while drawing attention to Kentucky’s rich history and the breadth of artistic mastery here,” KFW Executive Director Sharon LaRue said. “These artists build community as they grow their expertise and create new paths to social change.”

Among the recipients are Louisville poet Ashley Taylor, Berea arts and ecology program developer bugz fraugg, Paducah painter Jacquelyn Carruthers, Maysville writer Rosalyn Brandon, and artist/educator Vanessa Becker Weig.

For more information about KFW artist grants and a complete listing of Enrichment Grant recipients, visit kfw.org.

music

ROMPing It Up

BY LAURA YOUNKIN

I

f you’re a bluegrass and roots music fan and have never been to ROMP Fest in Owensboro, you’ve been missing a special musical event. And this year, fans get to have a say in who will be onstage.

Visit rompfest.com/band-contest Feb. 3-March 14 to vote for your favorite band in the Virtual Band Contest. The winner, which will be announced March 17, will get to play on the main stage as well as on the Jagoe Homes After Party Stage next summer.

ROMP is a bluegrass and acoustic roots music festival staged in Owensboro’s Yellow Creek Park during the last weekend of June every year. Sponsored by the Bluegrass Music Museum and Hall of Fame, the festival takes place June 23-26 this year. In 2020, due to the pandemic, the event was online.

The festival started in 2004, and last year was like no other, thanks to the pandemic. The entire festival was virtual, and live performances were on hold. “We remain optimistic about things,” Chris Joslin, executive director of the Bluegrass Hall of Fame and Museum, said of this year’s festival. “Hopefully, we can throw our big party in 2021.”

Typically, around 30,000 music lovers attend. Some camp on the grounds, some stay in downtown hotels and use the shuttle, and others commute back and forth from their homes. It’s a joyous, boisterous long weekend, with the festival organizers welcoming everyone from twirlyskirted neo-hippie girls to hardcore

country-music-loving retired factory workers. Everyone is welcome.

Voting is limited to one vote per person per day. In a video on the website, Joslin and Scott Jagoe promise that the bluegrass police will be keeping an eye on that limit. Joslin also promises ”violators will be sent to the cell block with all the out-oftune banjos.”

Banjo jokes are a staple in bluegrass music humor, but Joslin is fine with that, since he’s a banjo player himself.

How does he handle being the butt of so many jokes? Like other banjo players, he said, “We all have friends who are accordion players.”

Although the festival started 17 years ago, this is the first time there’s been a virtual competition for a spot in the limelight. The idea evolved from a pre-COVID thought of holding a band competition on the outdoor stage of the Bluegrass Hall of Fame and Museum’s new facility. Realizing that an in-person competition still wasn’t an option, Joslin and the festival organizers decided to hold the competition online.

“We could help emerging bands and still feature them online now, in person at ROMP Fest, and get fans involved,” Joslin said. While not all the acts are booked yet, Joslin is hopeful that many of the bands that signed for 2020 will come in 2021, as well as a few surprise acts.

One act won’t be a surprise. Find out March 17 what upcoming band will perform this year, thanks to fan voting.

Creating a Culture of Excitement We’re excited to welcome students to our Versailles, Ky campus in 2021!

Master’s and Doctoral Degrees for Registered Nurses Specialties Offered: • Certified Nurse-Midwife • Family Nurse Practitioner • Women’s Health Care Nurse Practitioner • Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner

Frontier.edu/KyMonthly

Proud to call Kentucky home.

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 9

cooking

Winter Comforts

Recipes provided, prepared and photographed

by Janine Washle of Cloverfields Farm & Kitchen and K’s Café & Catering in Clarkson.

With cold weather upon us, it is a perfect time to make a big pot of soup. Indulging in a bowl of soup, stew or chili has been compared to “a warm hug.”

Ever wonder about the difference between soup and stew? Stews typically are made with tough cuts of meat such as chuck or bottom round cooked with water, beer or stock over low heat for a long time until the meat is tender. Soup, on the other hand, is fairly quick to make, taking usually no more than an hour until ready, and has more liquid than a stew. The liquid can be stock, water or even milk.

Then there is chili, which usually takes several hours to make, but a chicken-based chili, such as white chili, can be ready in about an hour.

Because soup is so convenient and store shelves are stocked with every flavor imaginable, it is easy to forget how simple soup is to prepare at home, especially if you use a slow cooker or an Instant Pot. When you are in the mood for simple and delicious soup, take out your favorite pot and fill it with flavorful ingredients for a warm, comforting meal.

Janine Washle

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Chef’s Note: Both of these soups freeze well!

Roasted Mushroom Soup SERVES 6 This soup is rich without the addition of animal dairy. Use your favorite nut milk, but read the label to make sure it can be used successfully in cooking.

2 pounds brown mushrooms—portobello, shiitake (can use button mushrooms), washed and roughly chopped ½ cup olive oil, divided ½ teaspoon salt ½ cup sliced celery 1 cup chopped carrots 1 cup chopped onion 2 garlic cloves, minced ½ teaspoon bouquet garni or dried thyme 4 cups vegetable stock 1 tablespoon tomato paste (or ketchup in a pinch)

Hearty Cabbage and Sausage Soup SERVES 8

2 cups coconut milk or coconut creamer for a richer texture Salt to taste

2 tablespoons vegetable oil 1 large onion, diced

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Arrange mushrooms on foil-lined baking pan, cap sides up. Drizzle with ¼ cup olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Roast for 20 minutes. Remove pan from oven and pour juices into a large measuring cup with a pour spout. Place back in oven for an additional 20 minutes.

Pour off excess liquid again. Return pan to oven and roast an additional 20 minutes. Remove and set aside until needed.

4 large garlic cloves, minced

2. While mushrooms are roasting, pour remaining olive oil into a large soup pot set over medium-high heat. Add celery, carrots, onion and garlic to pan. Stir to combine. Sauté for 7-10 minutes or until onions are translucent.

3 pounds green cabbage, chopped

3. Add bouquet garni, vegetable stock, tomato paste and accumulated mushroom liquid to pan. Add roasted mushrooms and cook over medium heat for 30 minutes.

Remove pot from heat. Blend soup until almost smooth with an immersion blender. Can also blend in a heavy-duty blender or food processor in batches. Return soup to pot.

4. Stir in coconut milk and reheat over medium-high heat. If soup is too thick, add more vegetable stock or coconut milk to thin to desired consistency. Adjust salt if necessary. Serve hot. Refrigerate leftovers.

8 chicken andouille sausages or beef brats, casings removed, sliced 2 inches thick 1 teaspoon dried thyme 1½ teaspoons sweet paprika 2 teaspoons salt 4 cups cubed red potatoes 1 teaspoon black pepper 8 cups water 1 15-ounce can tomato puree

1. Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add onion and sauté until translucent, about 5 minutes.

2. Add garlic and sausages, and sauté until sausage is no longer pink, about 10 minutes.

3. Add thyme, paprika, salt, cabbage, potatoes, pepper, water and tomato puree. Stir to combine.

4. Cook 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until potatoes start breaking down and thickening the liquid. Serve hot. Refrigerate leftovers.

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 11

cooking

Cream of Chicken Soup SERVES 4 Comforting, easy, and no animal dairy necessary to make this delicious soup.

Southwestern White Chili

8 tablespoons cornstarch

SERVES 8-10 3 pounds chicken breasts or tenders, chopped into 2-inch pieces 6 cups chicken broth 1 teaspoon sea salt ¼ teaspoon black pepper 1 tablespoon garlic powder

6 tablespoons coconut oil or unsalted butter 3 cups chicken broth

2 teaspoons chili powder 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon dried oregano 1 tablespoon chopped cilantro Garnishes: sour cream, salsa and fresh cilantro

1 cup plain coconut milk, other nut milk, or regular milk 1 cup fat-free half-and-half, coconut milk creamer, or regular heavy cream

1 small can diced green chiles

1½ cups chopped cooked chicken breast

1 cup prepared salsa

½ teaspoon salt

7 cups (approximately 4 cans) white beans (great northern or navy beans), drained and rinsed

¼ teaspoon pepper

1. Place chicken in a large stockpot. Add broth, salt, pepper and garlic powder. Simmer on medium-low heat for 30 minutes until cooked through.

2. Add green chiles, salsa, white beans, chili powder, cumin, oregano and cilantro. Turn heat to medium high and cook for an additional 45 minutes to 1 hour. For a thicker mixture, mash some of the beans against the side of the pot and stir in.

3. Serve topped with garnishes. Refrigerate leftovers.

Chef’s Notes: This is a great make-ahead chili that freezes well. It’s perfect for the Instant Pot: Add all of the ingredients to the Instant Pot in the order listed. Set to Manual and time at 35 minutes. Allow pressure to Natural Release. Once pin drops down, remove lid, give a good stir to combine everything, and serve.

Variation: Chicken Tortilla Soup – Omit the beans and make a slurry with 2 tablespoons cornstarch and 3 tablespoons cold water. Whisk into soup. Cook over medium-high heat until thickened. Garnish with tortilla strips and garnishes listed above.

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1. Melt coconut oil in a heavy-bottomed soup pot over medium-low heat. Add cornstarch and whisk until smooth. Cook 3 minutes to eliminate starchy taste.

2. Gradually whisk in chicken broth. Once mixture is smooth, whisk in milk and half-and-half.

3. Bring to a simmer on medium-high heat. Cook 10 minutes. Stir in chicken, salt and pepper. Cook an additional 5 minutes. Serve hot. Refrigerate leftovers.

Sweet ’n’ Sour Pepper Steak Soup SERVES 6 3 tablespoons vegetable oil 2 pounds sirloin steak, excess fat removed, cut into 1½-inch pieces 3 large garlic cloves, minced 1 large onion, chopped 3 cups chopped sweet peppers (use red and yellow for vibrant color after cooking) 1 bag sauerkraut (approximately 2½ cups), not drained 2 tablespoons tomato paste (in a pinch, use ketchup) 2 tablespoons bourbon barrel smoked paprika 1 tablespoon caraway seed 1½ teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon dried marjoram 6-8 cups low-sodium beef broth

1. Heat vegetable oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add meat and cook until no longer pink. Don’t worry about browning.

2. Add garlic, onions and peppers to meat. Sauté an additional 3-5 minutes until onions are translucent and peppers are softened.

3. Add sauerkraut with juices, tomato paste, paprika, caraway, salt and marjoram. Stir to combine. Add broth and bring to a simmer over mediumhigh heat.

4. Cover pot with a lid. Adjust heat to low—just barely simmering—and cook for 1½ hours or until meat is very tender.

Refrigerate or freeze leftovers.

Chef’s Note: Use the small sweet peppers found prepackaged in the produce area for great flavor and color.

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 13

NIKKY FINNEY JOHN EGERTON CAROLINE GORDON ROBERT K. MASSIE III JOHN JACOB NILES ALBERT STEWART

Nikky Finney, winner of some of poetry’s most prestigious prizes and an essential American voice on such subjects as Black history, social justice and the power of community, is the newest living inductee into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

Finney, 63, a South Carolina native who says she became a writer during the 23½ years she lived and worked in Kentucky, was inducted at 7 p.m. on Jan. 27 in an online

2021 Kentucky Writers

ceremony. This year’s other inductees are journalist John Egerton (1935-2013), historian and biographer Robert K. Massie III (19292019), balladeer John Jacob Niles (1892-1980), novelist and short story writer Caroline Gordon (18951981), and poet and educator Albert Stewart (1914-2001).

They bring to 50 the number of writers inducted into the Hall of Fame, which was

Hall of Fame.

created by the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in 2012 to recognize outstanding writers with strong ties to Kentucky.

Members are chosen by committees at the Carnegie Center and the Kentucky Arts Council that include some of the state’s most accomplished writers.

Learn more about these Kentucky literary icons in this special section, written by Tom Eblen, a former Lexington Herald-Leader columnist and managing editor who is the Carnegie Center’s literary arts liaison.

14 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

PHOTO: FORREST CLONTS

Nikky Finney

N

ikky Finney was born and raised in South Carolina, and she moved back there in 2013 to be closer to her aging parents. But the acclaimed poet is emphatic on this point: It was during the 23 years and six months she lived in Kentucky that she became a writer.

“Twenty-three years, six months is a long period of time, no matter when it comes in a life,” she said in a recent interview. “But it came right in that incredibly central moment—30 to 53—and if you live long enough, you get to see that as a moment where, hopefully, you are making your mark in the world.”

Finney said she found it “slightly mesmerizing” to be chosen as this year’s living inductee into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. She joins previous living inductees Wendell Berry, Bobbie Ann Mason, bell hooks, Barbara Kingsolver, Gayl Jones, Gurney Norman, Ed McClanahan and Sena Jeter Naslund.

The Hall of Fame is one of many groups recognizing the mark Finney has made in the world. The poet’s powerful, visual and musical use of language has made her an essential American voice on such timely topics as Black history, women’s history, racism, social justice and the power of community.

Finney, 63, received three prominent honors in 2020. She won the Academy of American Poets’ Wallace Stevens Award, which comes with a $100,000 prize, and the University of the South’s $10,000 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry. She also was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 15

Nikky Finney

continued

Finney has attracted a global following since winning the 2011 National Book Award for her poetry collection Head Off & Split and delivering an electrifying acceptance speech that went viral online. While thanking family, mentors and colleagues, Finney put her award into historical context by poetically explaining that Black people in South Carolina were once legally forbidden from learning to read or write.

“Well, there’s going to be two more acceptance speeches tonight, and I don’t want you two winners to be intimidated,” the awards show host John Lithgow said as Finney left the stage, “but that was the best acceptance speech for anything I’ve ever heard in my life.”

YouTube videos of the speech have been viewed more than 68,000 times.

The video and Finney’s books were part of the inaugural exhibition of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. “That speech has introduced me around the world to so many people,” she said. “I’m still amazed.”

She also is still amazed by how she was embraced by her Kentucky community.

The morning after the National Book Award finalists were announced, Finney took her usual four-mile walk.

As she passed Thoroughbred Antiques on East Main Street, owner Jerry 16 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

Shrout was out sweeping the sidewalk. She said that he looked up for a moment and called out to her: “Hey, you’re gonna win!” She was startled. “He just kind of sends a lasso of words across the street,” she said. “He doesn’t look up but a second. He’s not waiting for my response. He’s just telling me what he knows.”

When Finney flew back from New York after the ceremony, she arrived at Blue Grass Airport late at night. With the trophy in hand, she walked toward baggage claim and began hearing a loud commotion. As she descended the escalator, she saw her friend Joan Brannon and 20 women gathered in the mostly empty terminal, serenading her with African drums.

“They were drumming my homecoming,” she said. “Joan said, ‘We won, Nikky!’ I started to cry. I’m like, who would do this for me except people who had watched me put words together, listened to me at the Carnegie Center, been there to support me? They didn’t have to do that. It was a crazy hour of the night.

I don’t care what I win in this world, that was the award for me. That was it: that I had a place that felt so strongly about me.

“Kentucky is the country where I became a writer. It’s always why I say I left Kentucky after all that time, but I keep a part of it tucked deep inside me.”

A Child of Books Lynn Carol Finney was one of three children, and the only daughter, born to Frances and Ernest A. Finney Jr., a civil rights lawyer who became a state legislator and the first Black person elected chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. She

grew up in Sumter and attended public and parochial schools. She loved to read and write as a child.

Her parents rarely passed up an opportunity to buy her a book.

Finney, who acquired the nickname Nikky in college, earned a B.A. from Talladega College in 1979 and studied African-American literature at Atlanta University. She focused on photography and poetry.

“I think the thing [about poetry] that captured my imagination is the complexity that a word can have,” Finney said. “A single word’s ability to fit one way and be turned another to reflect more light or a different kind of light. I also love the music that happens in the language when you care certain words together or when you etch a line on the page. I’m always paying attention to those two things: the way the light hits the word and also the sound.”

Finney became a more serious poet after a mentor, the late writer Toni Cade Bambara, asked her a pointed question. “She said, ‘So, you can write pretty. So what?’ ” Finney recalled. “I realized in that moment that the sound of words and that dimension that I’m talking about could move a mind like a drum, could have a heartbeat and a consciousness that could tell a story.”

Still, Finney had a lot to learn.

She left Atlanta University in a dispute about the format of her master’s thesis. She finished her first poetry collection, On Wings Made of Gauze (1985), and moved to California, where she earned money by managing a Kinko’s copy shop, as she had done in Atlanta.

It was during this time that she attended a Black writers’ conference in South Carolina and received another piece of advice that would change her life. Writer Percival Everett told her that “a poet could find a better way to work on her next book than by running a copy machine all day,” she said. “He had my full attention.” Everett was then teaching at the University of Kentucky. He helped arrange for Finney to come to UK for nine months as a writer-in-residence,

which provided her first taste of teaching and lots of time to write. “I said, ‘Yeah, I can do this,’ ” she said.

“Nine months. Nine months only.”

So how did nine months turn into 23½ years?

“I realized that I had colleagues all around me—Gurney Norman, James Baker Hall, Wendell Berry,” she said.

“There were critical people in the community, Doris Wilkinson, and a colleague, Jane Vance, who were incredibly supportive of me, of leaving me alone but also being there if I needed them. My self-evaluation was: You may not think you need to be in Kentucky, but there is something here that is working for you to be successful.”

While looking for a quiet, well-lit place to write, Finney discovered the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, housed in Lexington’s beautiful old Carnegie Library.

Although much of the building bustled with after-school tutoring and adult writing classes, there were cubby spaces tucked away in a big, quiet room.

“The air was good for writers there,” she said. “I went every day and scribbled out what became Rice,” her second poetry collection. She became active in the Carnegie Center’s literary community and was a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets group.

“The Carnegie Center was central in that understanding of how important books were to this little community called Lexington,” she said. “I kept finding people of all socioeconomic backgrounds who loved books, who loved reading. I would see and meet people in JosephBeth [Booksellers], and they didn’t want to be writers; they weren’t all artsy. These were working-class people who had books under their arms for themselves, for their children, for people in their families. I had never lived in a place like that.

Other places in Kentucky are like that, too, because I went all over the state, reading and teaching.”

Finney spent more than two decades on UK’s English faculty, with stints as a visiting professor at Berea College and Smith College in Massachusetts. After Rice (1995), she published a book of short prose,

Heartwood (1997), and another poetry collection, The World Is Round (2003).

She edited an anthology, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007).

Briefly among her colleagues was Guy Davenport, a writer who retired from UK in 1990 after winning a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant.” Finney said she never got to know Davenport beyond exchanging pleasantries in the hallway. But after he died in 2005, his longtime partner, Bonnie Jean Cox, offered to sell her his house in the Bell Court neighborhood. In 2012, UK named her the first Guy Davenport Endowed English Professor.

Finney wonders if her ties to Davenport go even deeper. He was from the same part of South Carolina as her mother, whose maiden name is Davenport. “I always wanted to go search the books,” she said. “In the next two years, I plan to go to the courthouse there and see, is this a crazy feeling I have?” Southern genealogy can be, well, complicated.

Look Back, Look Forward Finney had a special bond with her father. After he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, she left UK in 2013 for the University of South Carolina at Columbia, where she is now the John H. Bennett, Jr. Endowed Professor of Creative Writing and Southern Letters, with appointments in both the English Language and Literature and African American Studies programs.

During the last six months of his life, Ernest Finney lost his ability to speak. Missing the sound of his voice, the daughter he had always called “Love Child” began re-reading 300 or so letters he had sent her over the years. That experience became a seed for her newest book, Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry (2020).

The book is mostly poems she wrote to mark occasions. It also includes notes and bits of verse from her journal, which the avid gardener describes as her “hot bed” for ideas, similar to a hot bed for sprouting seeds. Amid these poems are images of some of her father’s letters, family photos and other personal ephemera, such as a newspaper advertisement

for her first poetry reading—in her hometown Kroger store. “I was between the cheese and the goat milk,” she said, laughing at the memory. “Ladies would come by shopping and say, ‘What are you selling, darling?’ and I would say, ‘Poetry!’ And they would be like, ‘OK! Next time!’ ” Love Child was published in April, just as the pandemic hit. A 20-city book tour was canceled, and what readings she could do were online, which was hard for someone who loves personal interaction. “Yet, there is a new intimacy that is keeping us going by way of the computer,” she said. “My book has taken flight in a different way” to a broader, international audience.

“You have to be open in this life, no matter how old you are and no matter how many times you go to your desk and work on something, to it not happening in the way you want to, but happening in the way that it is and adjust,” she said. “I think that adjustment is critical to poets remaining central to the discourse and the conversations that we need to have with each other.”

In addition to promoting her book, Finney has been hard at work on a new project. “It’s a long story, but I’m not sure [of] the form just yet,” she said. “It has to do with the arrival of Black people in America …

It has to do with coming home and realizing that South Carolina was such a portal of entry for Black people and Black culture.”

She also has been thinking about the poet’s role in times of social and political upheaval, as we have experienced in the past year with a global pandemic, a divisive president and the Black Lives Matter movement.

“The poet is the one who remembers and reminds us of what it means to be a human being,” Finney said. “I especially believe that is true right now. We have to as human beings remember what it’s like to lean in close to another human being and whisper something, because we can’t do that right now. So the poet’s job right now is to not look away; it is to look at where we are and cite those truths, but also to remind us we are human and what we need from each other.”

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 17

Robert K. Massie

R

obert Kinloch Massie III was a journalist, historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer who gained fame by writing popular, critically acclaimed books about the House of Romanov, Russia’s imperial family for two centuries.

Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra became a movie, and Peter the Great was made into a network TV miniseries.

Massie was born Jan. 5, 1929, in Lexington. His father, Robert K. Massie Jr., operated the Massie School, a boys preparatory academy in Versailles, from 1918 to 1929. When Massie was 15 months old, his father died.

His mother, Molly Kimball Massie, a progressive activist, married James Todd, a Lexington department store executive. The family later moved from Lexington to Nashville, Tennessee.

Massie earned degrees in American studies from Yale University and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. After serving in the Navy, he worked as a journalist for The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s and Newsweek magazines. He later taught at Princeton and Tulane universities.

He was president of The Authors Guild (1987-1991).

His most famous book was Nicholas and Alexandra (1967) about the last Romanov rulers. They abdicated in 1917 amid the Russian Revolution and

18 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

were murdered, along with their five children, by Communists after 16 months in captivity. The book, which The New York Times called one of the most popular historical studies ever published, sold more than 4.5 million copies and was adapted into a 1971 film of the same name starring Laurence Olivier.

Massie won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography with Peter the Great: His Life and World (1980). The book was the basis for the 1986 NBC miniseries Peter the Great, which starred Maximilian Schell, Laurence Olivier and Vanessa Redgrave and won three Emmy Awards. His book Catherine the Great (2011) won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld

Award for Biography.

Massie’s other books included: Last Courts of Europe: Royal Family Album, 1860-1914 (1981); Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (1991); There’s an Old Southern Saying: The Wit and Wisdom of Dan May (1993); The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (1995); and Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea (2004).

In The New York Times obituary of Massie, reporter Douglas Martin described his books as “gripping, tautly narrated and immensely popular … Mr. Massie captivated audiences with detailed accounts that read to many like engrossing novels.”

Massie married Suzanne Rohrbach, a Swiss diplomat’s daughter who became a noted Russian scholar, in 1954. They had three children: Robert, Susanna and Elizabeth. He became interested in Russian history while researching hemophilia, a bleeding disease that affected their son, Bob. (Nicholas and Alexandra’s son, Alexei, may have been history’s most famous case of childhood hemophilia.) The Massies together wrote the book Journey (1975) about their son’s illness and its effect on the family.

The Massies divorced in 1990. Two years later, Robert married Deborah Karl, his literary agent. They had three children: Christopher, Sophia and Nora. Robert died Dec. 2, 2019, in Irvington, New York.

John Jacob Niles

J

ohn Jacob Niles was an author, composer, singer and collector of traditional ballads who had a major influence on the American folk music revival of the 1950s and ’60s.

Niles was born April 28, 1892, in Louisville to a musical family.

His greatgrandfather was a composer, organist and cello manufacturer. His mother, Lula Sarah Reisch, played organ and piano, was a church organist, and taught him musical shorthand and music theory.

At 16, Niles composed “Go ’Way From My Window,” which became one of his signature songs. It has been recorded by dozens of artists, from Marlene Dietrich and Harry Belafonte to Joan Baez and Linda Ronstadt. Bob Dylan borrowed its title for the first line of his song “It Ain’t Me, Babe.”

After graduating from high school, Niles worked for the Burroughs adding machine company (1910-1917) in Appalachian Kentucky and collected folk songs on his travels.

During World War I, he was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Service, working primarily as a pilot ferrying aircraft to the front lines.

After the war, Niles studied music in Paris and Cincinnati. He sang opera in Chicago and folk songs on New York radio programs.

Niles’ early musical interests focused on Appalachian ballads and African-American songs and spirituals.

His first book, Singing Soldiers (1927), was a collection of Black soldiers’ songs from World War I. Over the

years, he recorded eight albums and wrote a dozen books, most of them collections of songs and ballads.

From 1927-1934, Niles also collected Appalachian ballads as he accompanied photographer Doris Ulmann on her expeditions to photograph mountain people in eastern Kentucky. His published ballad collections frequently included material he had collected as well as composed, such as his famous Christmas song “I Wonder as I Wander” and his new tune for the traditional Scottish/Appalachian ballad “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.” He toured Europe and America with singer Marion Kerby in the 1930s and performed at the White House in 1938.

Niles appeared at the Newport Folk Festival during the 1950s. Later in his career, he composed classical art songs for solo voice and piano as well as choral music. Niles became friends with the writer and Trappist monk Thomas Merton (a 2014 Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame inductee) and wrote 22 art songs based on Merton’s poetry. Niles collaborated and performed frequently with singer Jacqueline Roberts and accompanists Janelle Dishman and Nancy Field during the last dozen years of his life. On stage, Niles sang in a quirky high-pitched voice and played dulcimers and lutes that he made himself.

Niles married Rena Lipetz in 1936.

They had two sons, Thomas Michael Tolliver and John Edward, and lived on Boot Hill Farm in Clark County.

He was a woodcarver and built many of the instruments he performed with, some of which are now on display at the University of Kentucky’s John Jacob Niles Center for American Music. Niles died in Lexington on March 1, 1980.

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 19

John Egerton

J

ournalist John Egerton spent his career trying to understand the South by writing about its history, culture and food. His writing defied regional clichés and stereotypes, and championed things close to his heart, such as racial understanding, social justice and good country ham.

Egerton was born June 14, 1935, in Atlanta, one of five children of traveling salesman William G. Egerton and Rebecca White Egerton. Within a month or two of his birth, the family moved to Cadiz, where Rebecca Egerton had relatives. John Egerton graduated from Trigg County High School in 1953, attended Western Kentucky University (1953-1954), and served in the U.S. Army (1954-1956).

He earned a bachelor’s degree in topical studies (1958) and a master’s degree in political science (1960) from the University of Kentucky.

Egerton worked in public relations

20 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

for the University of Kentucky (19581960) and the University of South Florida (1960-1965). He was a Nashville-based staff writer (1965-1971) for the magazine Southern Education Report and its successor, Race Relations Reporter, before launching a freelance career. He contributed articles to several magazines, newspapers and the Atlanta-based Southern Regional Council.

His 1987 book Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History explored the history and culture of the region’s cuisine with an emphasis on unsung contributions of Black cooks.

Following the book’s success, Egerton wrote a syndicated food column for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other Southern newspapers (19881989). Egerton was one of the founders of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi in 1999. The alliance established the annual John Egerton Prize in 2007 for art, writing and scholarship that “addresses issues of race, class, gender, and social and environmental justice, through the lens of food.”

Egerton’s other masterpiece was Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South (1994), an ambitious memoir and history book that explored how progressive Blacks and Whites laid

the groundwork in the 1930s and ’40s for dismantling segregation in the South. It won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

He wrote seven other nonfiction books: A Mind to Stay Here (1970); The Americanization of Dixie (1974); Visions of Utopia: Nashoba, Rugby, Ruskin, and the “New Communities” in Tennessee’s Past (1977); Nashville: The Faces of Two Centuries, 1780-1980 (1979); Generations: An American Family (1983), a chronicle of the Ledford family of Lancaster, Kentucky, which won the Weatherford and Lillian Smith book awards; Side Orders: Small Helpings of Southern Cookery and Culture (1990); Shades of Gray: Dispatches from the Modern South (1991); and Ali Dubyiah and the Forty Thieves (2006), a “political fable.”

Egerton was a journalist-inresidence at Virginia Tech (1977-1978) and a senior lecturer in American Studies at the University of Texas in 1997. He was a friend and mentor to many writers, cherished for his wise counsel and humble good humor.

He was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2004 and the UK Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 2010. He received the UK Libraries’ Award for Intellectual Achievement in 2013.

Egerton died of a heart attack at his home on Nov. 21, 2013. He and his wife, Ann Bleidt Egerton, had two sons, Brooks and March.

Caroline Gordon

C

aroline Ferguson Gordon was a novelist and short story writer who explored themes of the history and evolution of Southern families. She also was a literary critic who became a mentor and friend to many of America’s best-known 20th century writers.

Gordon was born Oct. 6, 1895, in Todd County, the daughter of James Morris Gordon, a teacher from Virginia who lived there and married Nancy Meriwether, who was from a prominent local family. James Gordon established a school in nearby Clarksville, Tennessee, where the future novelist received her early education. An idealized version of Gordon’s father is a major character in her second novel, Aleck Maury, Sportsman (1934), and her award-winning story “Old Red” (1934).

She was a prolific author.

Her other books were: Penhally (1931); None Shall Look Back (1937); The Garden of Adonis (1937); Green Centuries (1941); The Women on the Porch (1944); The Forest of the South (1945); The House of Fiction: An Anthology of the Short Story, written with poet Allen Tate (1950); The Strange Children (1951); The Malefactors (1956); A Good Soldier: A Key to the Novels of Ford Madox Ford (1957); How to Read a Novel (1957); Old Red and Other Stories (1963); The Glory of Hera (1972); and The Collected Stories of Caroline Gordon (1981).

Gordon earned a bachelor’s degree from Bethany College in West Virginia in 1916. After working two years as a teacher at Clarksville High School, she became a reporter for The Chattanooga News in 1920. She wrote about and became involved with the Fugitives, a group of poets and literary scholars at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Robert Penn

Warren, a Todd County neighbor, introduced her to Allen Tate in 1924.

A year later, Gordon and Tate were married and living in New York, where she gave birth to their daughter, Nancy Meriwether Tate (Wood). The couple later lived in London, where Gordon was secretary to the British writer Ford Madox Ford, and Paris, where they became friends with many American expatriate writers.

Gordon and Tate returned to the United States in 1930 and settled in Clarksville, where she enjoyed a productive period of writing. She won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1932 and a second-place O. Henry Prize.

Tate and Gordon were active correspondents and gracious hosts.

Their houseguests included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and T.S. Eliot. Gordon became a mentor to several writers, most notably Walker Percy and Flannery

O’Connor. The legendary Max Perkins was her editor at Scribner’s, and William Faulkner was among her biggest fans.

Gordon is considered part of the Southern Renaissance literary movement that included authors ranging from Faulkner to Margaret Mitchell to Zora Neale Hurston. They sought in different ways to move beyond decades of historical romance literature and provide more of a realistic and diverse look at the complicated region.

“Her territory is the South—specifically Kentucky, in that time not so long ago when families still kept track of first cousins twice removed, and when the men spent their days hunting while the women, left behind, sat languorously on the gallery,” novelist Anne Tyler wrote in a 1981 New York Times review of The Collected Stories of Caroline Gordon. “The extraordinary vigor of her Collected Stories arises from the fact that Caroline Gordon’s heart lies more with the hunters than with those women on the gallery. No scent of faded lavender drifts from these pages. Instead, there’s the smell of frost and blood and wood smoke.”

Gordon lived in Princeton, New Jersey, from 1939-1942 while Tate was poet-in-residence at Princeton University, then moved to Monteagle, Tennessee. The couple divorced in 1945, remarried in 1946, and divorced again in 1959. Gordon left Princeton in 1973 to teach in the creative writing program at the University of Dallas.

Amid health problems in 1978, she moved to San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chapas, Mexico, where her daughter and son-in-law lived. She died there on April 11, 1981, after suffering a stroke.

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 21

Albert F. Stewart

A

lbert F. Stewart, a poet, teacher and editor, has been called the patron saint of two generations of Appalachian writers. He started what became the annual Appalachian Writers’ Workshop and founded and edited Appalachian Heritage magazine, which published many of the region’s emerging writers and poets.

Stewart published three volumes of poetry: The Untoward Hills (1962), The Holy Season: Walking in the Wild (1993), and A Man of Circumstance & Selected Yellow Mountain Poems, 19461996 (1996).

“Albert Stewart worked all his life to cultivate the literary fields of Kentucky so that younger writers might find opportunity,” wrote Gurney Norman, a 2019 Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame inductee. “As poet, teacher, editor, publisher and organizer of writers’ conferences, and as a personal mentor to young writers for 50 years, myself among them, Al Stewart designed his own literary career, a career equal in value to that of any post-war Kentucky writer.”

Stewart was born July 17, 1914, on Yellow Mountain in Knott County, the son of William and Lucinda Sparkman Stewart. His mother died in childbirth when he was 2, and Stewart moved to Hindman Settlement School at age 5. Novelist Lucy Furman, a 2020 Hall of Fame inductee who taught at the school, “practically adopted me,” Stewart

said. She also became his literary mentor. Stewart graduated from Hindman High School in 1932 and Berea College in 1936. He earned a master of arts degree from the University of Kentucky in 1943.

Following Navy service in the South Pacific during World War II, Stewart had a lifelong career in education. After teaching English and biology in several high schools in northern Kentucky and southern Ohio, he taught English at the University of Kentucky in the 1950s while working on a doctorate he never completed. He moved on to teaching jobs at Caney Junior College, Morehead State University and Alice Lloyd College.

He founded Appalachian Heritage magazine in 1972 and edited it for 12 years—first at Alice Lloyd College

and then at Hindman Settlement School. “There was so much claptrap being written about people in the area; I thought I’d just do a magazine that showed everybody wasn’t a poverty-stricken moron up here,” he said. After Stewart retired as editor, the magazine moved to Berea College and was later renamed Appalachian Review. Stewart organized what became the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop at Hindman Settlement School in 1977 and taught there for many years.

Berea College named him a distinguished alumnus in 1993, and Morehead State University honored him with the Appalachian Treasure Award in 1995.

When state highway planners decided in 1976 to build a new Ky. Route 80 between Prestonsburg and Hazard, the highway went through Stewart’s 300-acre ancestral farm, which he called the “Kingdom of Yellow Mountain” and was the inspiration for his nature poetry.

Stewart fought the plan but lost. His home—a large cabin built by his grandfather—was moved several hundred yards away to save it from destruction. He later donated most of the property to the University of Kentucky on the condition that the trees and underground minerals be preserved.

Stewart was married and divorced twice. He had two sons, Michael and Charles. He died April 1, 2001, in Knott County.

L E A R N M O R E AT CA R N E G I E C E N T E R L E X . O R G 22 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

poetry Tabitha Dial Adele Green Katie Hughbanks ky li Denton Loving Kelsey Magnine Sarah McCartt-Jackson Christopher McCurry

novel opening Natalie Eckerle Bonnie Herrick

fiction

nonfiction

Todd Autry Terry Boehmker

Kim Freeman John Pryor

PENNED kentucky monthly’s annual writers’ showcase

2 0 21

winning submissions

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FEBR UARY 2020

penned: nonfiction

Paradise Lost John Pryor

O

n a clear day, the tops of the stacks could be seen just above the tree line.

Especially the tall one. The tall stack with the red and white stripes like a colossal barber pole. The air above the stacks is an indescribable blue. On a clear day, the air would be clean; the air would be crisp.

This day was not one of those days. On this day, the air hung heavy above the stacks as the tall one, and its slightly less colossal minions, belched a cloud of putrid yellow, not unlike the yolk of an expired egg. On this day, the Paradise Steam Plant, locally known as “TVA,” was burning bituminous coal—high-sulfur coal, in the parlance of the Muhlenberg County coal miner. High-sulfur coal is prevalent in western Kentucky, as opposed to the cleaner-burning, lower-sulfur coal from the east.

Nonetheless, it was coal.

Coal fueled the county’s economy.

The serpentine vein of sulfur-laden air slithered across the northeastern sky, like the coming of the 10th plague. It set its sights on Chiggerville, eventually thinning out over the skies of Rochester and Provo.

Other days, the wind would carry the yellow cloud toward Echols or Rockport. That’s on a good day.

On a bad day, the yolky mist would come east. Toward our house, about 5 miles away in Drakesboro.

With the impending fallout of the sulfur cloud, we knew a car wash was inevitable. The T-bird, usually a lightblue metallic, now dusted in a hue of dingy yellow. The roads in this part of the county were perpetually covered in a layer of gray dust from the countless numbers of coal trucks that traversed the roads, seemingly nonstop, leaving behind coal dust, 26 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

BOWLING GREEN

mud and chuckholes. The dump trucks picked up the dust and mud from the miles of graveled haul roads meandering the coal-laden hills between the steam plant and the mines. The larger vehicles, the “Eucs”—too large for the highways— stayed on the haul roads. The occasional sighting of a Euc was cause for excitement, especially for a youngster with an affinity for large earth-moving equipment.

Times seemed hard. We didn’t know it then, but those were simpler times. The times may have been simpler, but the work was not. Most people in the county either “worked in the mines” or “worked at TVA.” Many others worked in support of the coal industry: gas stations, groceries, schools. A service station could fill the 26-gallon tank of the light-blue T-bird for 14 bucks, including a cleaned windshield, oil check and a cold drink. The local grocery store had three aisles. A “coke-cola” came in a 6-ounce glass bottle. The groceries were bagged in paper. The popular therapeutics were aspirin, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, mercurochrome and castor oil.

Crystal Wedding Oats had a drinking glass or dessert bowl in every package.

I attended one of seven schools in the county. Each school had a basketball team and a marching band.

I was not athletically inclined.

Inevitably, one of the teams from the county would win the district basketball tournament, win a trip to regionals and eventually lose to the perennial regional champion, Owensboro. Most of the school buses had two-digit numbers. In junior high, I rode bus 85. The driver of 85 kept a ball-peen hammer in the glove

box. At least once, Thor wielded that hammer to threaten the unruly kids.

The county had two cinemas. I saw Jaws in 1975. Star Wars in ’77. In ’78, Christopher Reeve became Superman. In ’78, I got my driver’s license. The new driver’s rite of passage was to drive over Chicken Hill at such a speed for the vehicle to become airborne. At least that’s what they said. I never tried it. Not fast, anyway. At least not fast enough to defy gravity. Chicken Hill was where the egg farm was. And the bootlegger.

With a drive-up window. On the morning of Dec. 22, 1978, my parents let me drive to school for the first time. Their parting words were, “Don’t ride anyone else in the car.”

That afternoon, my four passengers and I crashed the car into a tree.

Yes, times could be hard. But they were good times. Times to cherish, times to remember. Now, the skies are blue again. The roads are no longer dirty. The holes are filled. The Eucs are gone. Vehicles maintain their original color, albeit a bit rusty.

The mines have since closed, being on the losing side of the “war on coal.” The coal-fired boilers of the steam plant have since been decommissioned, converted to natural gas. The services of 400 longtimers are no longer needed. Seven schools became two, then one.

Chicken Hill is still there. The eggs are not. The liquor is now legal. The theater screens are dark. Superman, and Christopher Reeve, are gone.

Time marches on. Progress marches to a different drummer. In the midst of hard times, good times could be had, and memories could be made. Memories were made, and the memories remain. The memories may remain, but Paradise is lost.

penned: poetry

Green Soup Tabitha Dial

penned: poetry (Halloween Night 2020)

LEXINGTON

From a quiet keeping-space, I promise my motherghost to create meals and music.

Even if from dry bones and tangled memories, my vow as I unstem kale and spinach, add it to the copperlined pot with green onion, cilantro, yukon golds and snap peas.

Remember when I made your favorite soup last year? I caramelize the onions and recall that patient pot.

I’ve spent almost 2 hours at the stove, there’s only a little more: the garlic and ginger

Candles Christopher McCurry LEXINGTON

I woke to no light.

None of the switches or knobs worked.

They worked but had no purpose.

They could no longer create fire.

I ate at the bar at a Waffle House.

An old man tapped his cup for more coffee.

This was a front-row seat to small dramas: pregnancy, addiction, old age’s lonesome

sizzle in the pan, then slide into the pot. Another 10 minutes.

I add the broth, taste. I follow the recipe, as one day I’ll follow you. Blend in batches,

exploitation of public dining. In the afternoon, a butterfly scared the shit out of me

return to pot, simmer, flavor with lemon juice, white vinegar, salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder, and the sound of your name.

by landing on my steering wheel when I stopped for an Ale-8.

penned: poetry

I could have gotten cash back to give to a young guy holding a sign

What They Want to Hear

that said he was hungry and homeless but I forgot and thought why don’t

ky li

LOUISVILLE

Mother was born where the mountains dip their toes

the signs ever say I’m thirsty.

At the Goodwill I was asked if I knew

into the Kentucky River, where grass that is emerald has been christened blue, vowels sound in twos & locals preach an alloy of the Golden Rule — say unto others as you would have them say unto you. I first learned this when they smothered the funeral parlor in roses for Granny.

about the rip in the neck of the shirt I wanted. What I would give to be a dog when my father arrives for his birthday party. Not the dog’s birthday,

A spray of Forever Young tried to squeeze her wilted body from the open casket; her face resembled a pale reduction of chicken stock. One mourner said, Don’t she look nice? to which my six-year-old mouth said, No, she looks dead!

Mother smiled through teeth kept white with salt, bent down to my level & whispered, always tell folk what they want to hear.

I found my way through nyloned legs & polyester pants to a back room & the almost-honest smell of formaldehyde.

my father’s. But really either way.

It rains like only a sky used to sacrifice can.

It storms.

penned: fiction

The Fisherman Todd Autry

W

hen Sheriff Higg came looking for old man Nubbins, he found him out back in a jon boat.

On dry land. The eighty-year-old wore cut-offs, muck boots, and a floppy, straw hat. No shirt.

“Hey, Sheriff! Jump in here. Fish are bitin’. Beer’s cold.” Nubbins opened an ice chest and pulled out a can.

“Better not.”

“Maybe this bottle suits you better then.” The old man reached in and brought out a pint of bourbon.

“I’m not here for that, Morris. “ “Suit yourself. But at least get in here and help catch some of these catfish. Nothin’ like Caney Creek, flathead catfish.”

The lawman indulged him and stepped in at the bow. The hull’s thin, olive drab aluminum complained when he sat. Nubbins had his rodand-reels spread in all directions out over the sides of the small, twelve-foot craft. Monofilament line stretched from the rod tips to all points of the wide backyard.

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“Bring that one in to your port side there, Sheriff. I think bait stealers robbed me clean.”

“Morris, I’m not much of a fisherman.”

“Why you call me ‘Morris?’ You know everybody calls me ‘Nubbins.’ ” “I always call you ‘Morris.’ ” “And I want to know why.”

“Just being polite, I guess. I know why they call you ‘Nubbins.’ Always thought it was disrespectful.”

The old fisherman tilted his head.

“I know what you’re here for.”

“You do?”

“Miss Vincent sent you, didn’t she?”

“Morris …”

“I told her if she didn’t keep them cats away, I was goin’ a kill ’em, and by …”

Higg raised his voice. “Morris.”

Nubbins’ eyes widened, and his mouth opened to argue, but the sheriff went on.

“Morris, I’m here because your children are worried.”

“What?”

“Your children.”

Nubbins grunted, and his face turned red.

“I’m sorry, Morris. We’ll need to move you down to the home.” The sheriff paused. “It’s for your own good.”

The old man’s head slumped. He breathed hard. “My own good?”

“They think so.”

Nubbins raised his head. “What do you think, Mr. Higg?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think.”

“Don’t it?”

“No.” “You’re the law. Of course it does.”

The sheriff stared at the bottom of the boat. “Morris, I don’t know what you want me to say. It’s awful what your kids are doing, but then there’s this.” Higg gestured with his hands.

“You’re in a boat in your backyard fishing, Morris.”

“There’s fish to be caught everywhere, Sheriff. You know what my children are doin’? They’re killin’ me. How long you think I’ll last in that hole?”

Higg shrugged. “Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think.”

“Get out!” Nubbins shouted. “Get outta my boat!”

Sheriff Higg inhaled and shook his head. Slowly, he stood and stepped over the side. “Morris, it’s my job.”

“You like your job, Sheriff? You like roustin’ old folks off their property and throwin’ ‘em in jail?”

“You’re not going to jail.”

“Might as well.”

The sheriff reached in his pocket and brought out a paper. He unfolded it and offered it to the old man. Nubbins shook his head, so Higg laid it on the seat still warm.

“I’ll be back in a couple days, Morris. I’m sorry.” He turned to leave.

“How much?” Nubbins spoke coldly.

The lawman stopped and turned back. “Excuse me?”

“They’ll sell this farm if they can get rid of me. They’d give you a share to help ’em.”

“Now, Morris, you can’t go accusing me like that.”

“I know my kids, Sheriff.”

“Now, listen here …”

“You denyin’ it?”

“Yes.” “But they offered.”

“Morris …”

“Whatever they offered, I’ll double. A thousand. Ten-thousand.

Twenty-thousand. This farm made me a rich man, Sheriff. I might not live like it, but I got mason jars buried all over.”

“Morris …”

“Thirty-thousand?”

Higg swallowed. His voiced shifted up an octave. “Morris.”

“Step back in here with me, Sheriff. One of these poles is gettin’ a bite, and it might be a big’un.”

The sheriff hesitated then deflated and gave in. He sat in the flatbottom jon again.

“Reel that one in and see what a whopper!” Nubbins pointed to one of the rods.

The lawman studied it, his eyes following the fishing line as it trailed through ankle-high grass and disappeared behind a leaning, weathered shed.

“Pick it up and start pullin’ before he gets away.”

The sheriff stared at it until Nubbins took it and jerked back on

the rod, reeling until the line was taut.

“Here, Sheriff. You’ll have to fight for it.” The old fisherman nudged the handle between the sheriff’s hands until his fingers clasped around it and began winding the handle like a blank-faced sleepwalker.

The line tightened, the rod bent, and the sheriff heaved weakly.

Whatever was on the end of the line refused to budge.

“That’s it, Sheriff! You got him now!” Nubbins gripped the gunnels and rocked the boat sideways, shaking the lawman from his sluggish manner.

Higg yanked three times, each with more vigor than the last. On the third tug, something gave way so abruptly the sheriff nearly flipped backwards out of the boat. He struggled to stay in the vessel, as if he couldn’t swim. Settled, he began reeling again, and from behind the shed came a shiny, glass object. A quart jar.

“Looky there! You got one!”

Nubbins shouted.

The sheriff reeled faster. ”What is it, Morris?”

“You know what it is.”

Soon the jar had bounced and rolled right up to the boat. Higg stopped reeling and sat watching it.

The jar’s glass was freckled with caked dirt but clear enough that rolls of cash were visible. He raised the rod tip until the jar swung from the end of the fishing line, left to right, right to left like a grandfather clock. His eyes followed. He saw twenties, wads of them.

Nubbins laughed. “Get ’im in the boat before you lose ’im.”

The lawman twice blinked fierce and maneuvered the rod and lowered the jar down onto the flat, scratched-up bottom of the jon boat.

“You’re pretty good at this fishin’ business, Sheriff. You need to come around more, maybe a couple days from now, see if you can’t catch another one.”

Sheriff Higg laid the rod-and-reel against the starboard bow and stood. He stepped out, his eyes on the jar. “I’ll see you in two days, Morr … two, Nubbins, two.”

penned: a novel start...

To Reach California Natalie Eckerle LOUISVILLE

Day 1: Natasha The West Virginia summer sun glared on the highway in golden white ripples, displaying patches of light that disappeared and reappeared as a frail, stifled breeze stirred the branches of the trees lining the road.

Despite sitting in the shade of a towering, mature maple tree, I shaded my eyes from the unyielding sunlight with my hand, and I cursed softly for the hundredth time that I had forgotten my sunglasses. My long, light brown hair hung in tired wisps around my face, and I wiped my hand along my forehead, feeling the sweat there.

penned: a novel start...

What Happened to the Devil’s Baby Bonnie Herrick PROSPECT

The Doomsday Clock ticked off the final second. No one was left to turn the hands. Beau and I clung to a rocky ledge at the mouth of a cave. Far to the west, where a city once stood, skeletons of twisted steel loomed like doomsday sentinels above the scarlet haze. The outside world grew bleaker than our refuge—but for the white streak of a missile, the red flash of a flare.

penned: fiction

Sniper’s Nest Terry Boehmker

A

t the crest of the hill, the young man sat down to catch his breath as the first rays of sunrise peeked over the tree line. Resting his back against a broad oak tree, he placed the rifle across his lap and laid a large coil of knotted rope on the dewy grass beside him. His stomach growled; he had been too anxious to eat anything for days.

He could see the battle lines forming below him. Union soldiers in dark-blue uniforms assembled into companies at one end of the grassy field. They would soon march across the meadow and confront the grayclad Confederate soldiers standing along a copse of pine trees.

The young man put the coil of rope over the rifle barrel and slipped his arm through the gun’s shoulder strap before standing. With both hands free, he jumped to grab a low-hanging branch and pulled himself up into the tree. He climbed no more than 6 feet before finding the perfect spot for his sniper’s nest.

A true marksman needs to be above the din of battle to carry out his mission, he thought to himself.

Infantry units discharge their weapons in volleys with very few of them aiming at a specific target. Then they all scramble to reload as quickly 30 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

VILLA HILLS

as possible and do the same thing once again. It creates a melee of noise and smoke that he didn’t want any part of.

Scooting out a few feet on the sturdy branch, the young man tied one end of the rope around the thick limb and lowered the rest to the ground. He would use the knotted line to get out of the tree quickly after his mission was accomplished.

Easing himself back across the branch, he swung the rifle around and poked the barrel between the leaves of a thinner branch in front of him. As the Union soldiers were awaiting their marching orders, the hidden shooter spotted his target. An officer wearing a wide-brimmed hat with gold epaulets on both shoulders of his dark-blue jacket rode across the field on a majestic black horse.

To get a better look, the young man pulled a long-range scope from the inside pocket of his jacket and attached it to his rifle. When he looked through the scope at the horse’s rider, he saw the bearded face of the haughty college professor who had destroyed his career.

Dr. James Filmore had received one of the state’s highest literary awards for a book he published about Civil War battles in Kentucky. As a graduate assistant, the young man

had done most of the early research for the book, but he had received no credit for his work.

He confronted the professor about being slighted and was told that glaring mistakes were discovered in his research that had to be corrected by others. When Dr. Filmore spread that lie among the education community, the young man knew his reputation as a historian was ruined.

He dropped out of college and took a job stocking produce at a grocery store.

Several months later, a Facebook post stoked the young man’s dormant anger. He read that the “distinguished author” Dr. James Filmore would be taking part in a Civil War battle demonstration at a nearby municipal park.

That’s when he began plotting his revenge.

Now, the time had come to carry out his daring mission, like the celebrated soldiers he had been reading about ever since he was a boy.

The young man shoved a bullet into his bolt-action hunting rifle and scanned the weekend warriors dressed in blue with replicas of Civil War muskets resting against their shoulders. They were lined up and ready to perform for the spectators

gathered behind yellow-tape boundaries set up along both sides of the pretend battlefield. He noticed that many of the men and women had a smart phone in hand to shoot video of the military demonstration.

Dr. Filmore guided his horse to the front of one company of Union soldiers. He drew a sword from the scabbard belted around his waist and tilted the gleaming blade forward to commence the march.

The young man in the tree pointed his rifle toward the bearded officer and looked through the scope to draw a bead on his despised target.

As his index finger closed in on the trigger, however, he started having second thoughts.

He had been up all night wrestling with his conscience about taking the deceitful professor’s life. If he backed out now, he’d have to deal with the same shame that nagged the young soldier who deserted the battlefield in The Red Badge of Courage, the book that got him interested in Civil War history when he was just a boy.

With beads of anguished sweat coursing down his cheeks, a passage from that classic book suddenly crossed his mind: “He now conceded it to be impossible that he should ever become a hero. He was a craven loon. Those pictures of glory were piteous things. He groaned from his heart and went staggering off.”

The young man closed his eyes and laid his forehead on the wooden stock of the hunting rifle. With tears in his eyes, he removed his finger from the trigger just before the sound of a yelping dog came from the battlefield below.

He looked down and saw a small white poodle racing toward Dr. Filmore’s big black horse. The frightened mount reared up and the rider tumbled backward out of the saddle. Without releasing his sword, Dr. Filmore landed face down on the field. The soldiers in his company broke ranks and gathered around their fallen leader, but the other companies continued marching.

The young man swung the rifle

back onto his shoulder as the mock battle continued below him. He watched the other companies of Union soldiers come to a halt, raise their muskets, and fire at their enemies standing along the tree line.

The Confederates responded with a volley of their own, and then both lines of soldiers charged forward, screaming loudly.

Both lines halted a few yards before crashing into each other. All the soldiers began cheering and waving their hats to end the demonstration. While the spectators clapped and cheered, the young man climbed down the knotted rope.

As he was rambling down the opposite side of the steep hill toward his car, the young man drew some satisfaction from witnessing Dr. Filmore’s embarrassing mishap on the battlefield. Then another line from Red Badge of Courage popped into the appeased avenger’s mind: “So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath, his soul changed.”

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k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 31

penned: nonfiction

The Nest Kim Freeman

A

few minutes past dawn, the faintest glow gives the backyard patio a faded look like a Polaroid picture just before the developer fully activates.

A rare late July cool breeze crosses my tan arms, tickling out goosebumps, but my legs lay warmly tucked beneath a lightweight blanket I’ve grabbed from the spare bedroom. Coffee in hand, night dying to the day’s rebirth, I hear a sudden rustle, as sharp and quite disturbing as a peppermint being unwrapped in church.

I look toward the disruption and see high above a gray squirrel bouncing across a large tree branch, a leaf-filled twig held in its mouth. It disappears into a large McMansion of a foliage-made nest, where it seems an extra room is being added. A few seconds later, the sky rodent reemerges and scampers back down the branch to the end, its weight causing the bough to dip and swing wildly. Watching it balance reminds me of the “Hang in There, Baby” cat poster of the early 1970s.

Tail swishing, feet gripping, rustle, rustle, snap and another five leaves for the fortress secured. Racing back like a tightrope walker out-running a falling rope, the squirrel disappears into the green leafy half-moon. If it knows I am watching, it clearly doesn’t care, as it pays me no attention at all. Perhaps it knows that gravity is human kryptonite, and there is safety 30 feet up.

A tiny house wren lands on the top of a fence plank a few feet from me. It tilts its brown head right, then left, as if trying to figure out why I have 32 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

WESTERVILLE, OHIO

inserted myself into the early morning rituals of suburban wildlife.

Suddenly, the bird takes off from its perch, joins a friend mid-flight, and they fly to the well-traveled branch of the home-improving squirrel. They squat, chittering away, seemingly oblivious to the squirrel’s sky dance where, upside-down now, it selects choice leaves as if at IKEA in outer space. Rustle, rustle, snap! Choice made, the squirrel scrambles back, scattering the birds, who squawk indignantly before landing on a branch in the tree next door.

The squirrel races back and forth, to the edge of a branch, and then near the stout trunk. Plucking leaf clusters and fortifying the summer nest that is surrounded by a hedge of leaves the squirrel appears to have left in place, like a privacy fence.

As it continues its early morning industry, memories rise. I am a daughter of Appalachia. My father hunted in the eastern Kentucky hills and often brought home sacks of buckshot-riddled squirrels. He skinned them on the front deck of our creek-side home, sometimes preserving the pelts or the bushy tails. With the point of a small bonehandled knife, he cut off the head and slit open the chest cavity to pull out the tiny organs. Then he laid their slender naked bodies marked with pinprick crimson-rimmed holes on a nearby table.

It takes a lot of squirrels to make a meal. My mom, tasked with critter cooking, would freeze them until an annual wild game feast we hosted at our log cabin nestled against the backyard hillside. Game of all kinds

was served, including local favorites such as grouse, quail, turkey, deer, squirrel, rabbit and groundhog, and more exotic big game like moose, elk and Canadian geese from hunting trips out West or up North. Squirrels and rabbits typically were served fried with a gravy made of flour, milk, salt, pepper and skillet scrapings left in the cast-iron frying pan. Both required some care while eating to avoid cracking a tooth on a stray pellet.

Hunting and fishing remain a way of life for many, especially in eastern Kentucky. When we were growing up, my older brother hunted, too. He took an academic approach to the sport, telling us that during his first year at Princeton, he studied squirrels’ movements from his dorm room window. We chuckled that he needed to use his giant, Ivy Leagueeducated head to outsmart tree rodents with brains the size of the walnuts they gather each fall.

Now, the sun is up and floods part of the patio. Manmade sounds drown out natural ones, as nearby construction generates dust and disruption. I no longer see or hear the squirrel. My love joins me outside and brings more coffee. I look toward the squirrel’s nest, then back at ours, and smile.

Freeman was born and raised in Pikeville, where most of her relatives still reside.

Portions of this essay were printed in “Hillbilly Vegan,” published by Dirty Spoon in October 2020 (dirty-spoon.com/ hillbilly-vegan). Author retained all rights.

penned: poetry

Doxology Adele Green LEXINGTON I. We are the cloudless sky.

The unadorned horizon.

We are the snow drifts. The riptides.

We are the bird and flower coupled in fragile communion.

We are the curdled water and leavened wind that collide to displace a generation of memories.

We are the heaving heat that builds an altar of ember and ash.

II. We are birthed in our protest shroud.

Our skill cleaved. Bones brutalized.

Our organs bruised to ripe pulp.

Our spine wrested. Neck wrenched.

Grief is our marrow.

III. Pestilence shadows us.

Immunity’s ancient mysteries flood our swollen lungs.

Contagion pools in the stagnant well of our chest.

Blood rejects oxygen. Fear chills us.

We cannot breathe.

IV. Darkness seizes us and our glowing galaxy fades.

Where is the pilgrim. The pioneer.

The preacher.

They reached the glorious mountaintop.

They crossed the bridge to freedom and justice.

They march through our sleepless dreams of death by gun and disappeared children.

V. Orphaned by a poverty of spirit that evicts Dignity and decency.

Locks the school door, but teaches hate.

Hides the ballot.

Bullies the uncounted and uncovered.

VI. Suffering is not a melody.

It is a dirge; the low, thunderous anthem of a noble life.

A prayerful heart is the lyric.

History is our hymnal and love our common chord.

Kneel in hope.

Stand in faith.

penned: poetry

Copperhead

Denton Loving SPEEDWELL, TN Loving has lived in Kentucky, and his family has lived in the Commonwealth since the 1780s. Loving’s work often is about Kentucky and the larger Appalachian region.

Dead: the copperhead that slipped down the ridge in summer’s elongated dusk to forage small prey and taste cool creek. And me, racing against the sun on its path beyond the mountains to end my task mowing tall grass between apples, pears and peaches.

Before the snake, I had been looking without resentment at the day well spent, a day devoted to necessary labor. Later, memory of cold blood spilled on steel blades lingered in the night air like honeysuckle and regret.

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k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 33

penned: poetry

The Problem with Home Kelsey Magnine LOUISVILLE It’s a blurry sight, gazing across rolling landscapes and admiring similar variations of grasses upon the plains.

Planes taking you into the cold night on adventures you dreamed about in your worn-in sheets, meeting warm faces you already feel like you know.

No stone unturned, no clock unwound, connecting with a more complex version of yourself as you take on the impressions of others you meet there.

Their stories illuminating the deeply rooted, cold-hard truths pinned to our hearts and immortal scars we have etched on our souls.

Soles of our feet aching for the kind of rest we only know deep within, letting go when we float into a place of true safety and peace.

Piece together little bits of this and that from here and there into a medley of nostalgia coming on like a sixth sense.

Scents of unlikely elements, bringing pleasure and stopping our heartbeats, briefly remembering who we really are.

Our memories tethered to habits and tendencies we’re trying hard to change like the garments we wear.

Where the buds that grow from those roots are undeniably, overwhelmingly irreplaceable, despite the vast array of emotions that flood in like the tide.

Tied to it forever, yes, this is the problem with home.

34 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

penned: poetry

Antimatter Sarah McCartt-Jackson

penned: poetry

Burial Grounds

LOUISVILLE

If you are the sweet-stung smell of a half-rotted walnut, let me be the walnut leaves’ freckle as we dissolve our cell walls into winter.

You are like eye floaters casting tiny shadows on my retina: your face scuttles away when I try to see you in my memory. I have measured how far your fibers can swim: from mudbank to mudbank. All the way across the river. If I try not to see you, you static my sky.

If I look away, you sink and drown, piece by swollen piece.

Let you and me be the sum of falcon and talon after it rips a fieldmouse from her furrow. The tearing sound of fur from skin is the same as the sound of prey stripped from prairie grass: If you are the oooh that slips from a telephone wire into space’s troposphere, let me be the electrons that carry you like a woman carries a body inside her womb even after it’s gone still: She carries it with her one stilled heartbeat at a time. Let her be the matter that cannot be created or destroyed.

Katie Hughbanks LOUISVILLE

In a capital city fraught with history rest plots of mystery, of misery where dead men and women lie in state in a state of inequity.

Up a white hill, overlooking Kentucky River and the white Capitol building, Old Frankfort Cemetery glistens with pearly golden sunlight that gleams on polished marble.

Elaborate statues and monoliths of seventeen governors in this hallowed ground.

One vice president.

Neat rows of deathly elegance.

Even the birds here sing symphonically.

Two miles and a world away, Green Hill Cemetery waits.

Grizzling cars pass by the adjacent highway, sputtering exhaust with thrumming motors that might be mistaken as cries for the dead.

Headstones of former slaves tilt sideways like unsteady lines of lynched men.

A faded memorial for colored soldiers protrudes above disheveled scrub bushes.

How we treat the dead bespeaks their value, yes?

Perhaps burial grounds are only for the living.

FIRST-CLASS OPPORTUNITY STEM academies give top Kentucky high school students a head start on pursuing their dreams

BY JACKIE HOLLENKAMP BENTLEY

C

olby Winters of Catlettsburg has presented astronomical research at the international level. Gabriella Lynn of Hopkinsville is studying at London’s Royal Veterinary College.

Cayenne Warren of Falmouth is conducting research for scientists on board the International Space Station.

Other than a fantastic résumé, what do these Kentucky youth have in common? They are attending, or have graduated from, one of the Commonwealth’s residential STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) programs for gifted and talented high school juniors and

seniors. Yes, high school.

“It’s just a really great opportunity for students who are maxed out in certain courses in their district. They have taken all the advanced courses [their district high schools offer], and they’re just ready,” said Sunshine Stamper, assistant director of admissions, public relations and recruitment for the Craft Academy for Excellence in Science and Mathematics at Morehead State University. “For us, it’s a great opportunity to kind of build that pipeline of students into STEM careers.”

Craft Academy welcomed its first

group of Kentucky juniors and seniors in August 2015. It is modeled after Bowling Green’s Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science at Western Kentucky University, which launched in 2007.

“Back in 2007 when we were created, there was a big push of trying to build more STEM students within the state … and also keep those students in state if we could,” said Elise Swift-Taylor, Gatton’s assistant director of admissions and public relations. “Some of the counties send us the best of the best.

We see students being able to develop … and they do so much more

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 35

Dr. David Keeling of the WKU Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Environmental Sciences speaks to students at The Gatton Academy.

than what they probably would have done if they would have stayed in their hometowns.”

Just ask Cayenne Warren. With NASA as a career target, Warren has been able to study alongside Morehead State students at the university’s Space Science Center. She also joined the ExoLab program that teams students from across the country with scientists aboard the International Space Station to study the behavior of legumes on Earth and in space.

“I am a junior from Pendleton County High School, a small school in northern Kentucky. I had limited access to advanced courses as well as courses that fueled my interests,” Warren said. “I joined the Craft Academy hoping to help strengthen my academics, but it has become so much more to me. I wouldn’t trade this opportunity for the world.” ggg

The Craft and Gatton academies accept a limited number of students from across the Commonwealth based on GPA, letters of recommendations, essays and ACT scores. For Craft, that number per class is 60, with 95 generally accepted at Gatton. When students complete the two-year programs, they will have earned both a high school diploma and at least 60 college credit hours, 36 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2 0 2 1

free of charge. Funding for both programs comes from state appropriations approved by the Kentucky General Assembly.

Craft Academy also receives significant donations from coal magnate Joseph Craft III and his wife, United States Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft. Joe Craft said they were approached in 2014 by state legislators to help launch a second academy, building off the success of Gatton.

“While the Gatton Academy was open to students throughout the state, at that time few students from east of I-75 enrolled,” said Joe Craft, a native of Hazard. “We wanted to help those from regions of the state where we were born and raised [and] to help them understand they can achieve success beyond what they may think possible as they begin their life’s journey.”

Senior Colby Winters is one of those students on his way to achieving his dreams. “Classes at Morehead State University were refreshing compared to the standard form of education at most high schools that Craft Academy students came from,” he said. “For me, taking advanced courses in calculus, cosmology, space science and even political science broadened my perspective in education and

simultaneously aided in narrowing my prospective career field … I am also extremely appreciative of this opportunity to take courses that most high schools simply don’t have the resources to offer, such as differential equations, spacecraft mechanical design, or information theory and codes.” ggg

Gabriella Lynn said she wouldn’t have believed months ago that she would be studying veterinary medicine in London. But in May 2020, she learned that she had been admitted to the Royal Veterinary College and was the sole recipient of the institution’s full scholarship.

She credits the study-abroad programs offered by Gatton as well as the educational support, advice, and all that she learned and experienced at the academy.

“Just all those compacted together really made it an important thing for me to get to where I am,” Lynn said.

Swift-Taylor and Stamper say it’s not just the academics that make the programs special for their students.

They learn how to work with other students whom they would not have met at their home high schools.

“They’re in [a college] class with a very diverse group with a very diverse population of other students, and they are living on campus, so

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k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 37

Crafting Excellence When several state legislators in 2014 teamed up with Dr. Wayne Andrews, thenpresident of Morehead State University, to pitch an idea to Joe and Kelly Craft for a second residential STEM program in Kentucky, the timing couldn’t have been better.

Joe Craft, the CEO of the Alliance Resource Partners coal company, is a native of Hazard.

Kelly Craft, a Barren County Joe and Kelly Craft native, is the United States ambassador to the United Nations.

The couple was looking for ways to “give back” to their state, particularly to improve the future of eastern Kentucky. So the opportunity to help the region’s youth couldn’t be passed up.

“This request was an easy YES!” Joe Craft said.

Kelly Craft, who also served as the first female U.S. ambassador to Canada (2017-2019), said growing up on a farm taught her the value of treating others with respect. “My father, a veterinarian, taught me the example of a hard day’s work,” she said. “My mother, an educator and homemaker, provided me with a desire to learn, to always compare myself with yesterday and improve upon my abilities, always be curious, and give back to my small town of Glasgow.”

Thanks to the Crafts’ initial donation of $4 million, the Craft Academy for Excellence in Science and Mathematics was able to welcome its first group of juniors and seniors to the Morehead State University campus in August 2015.

Sunshine Stamper, Craft Academy’s assistant director of admissions, public relations and recruitment, said the Crafts’ dedication didn’t end with that initial donation. They not only offer scholarships to Craft graduates to help them complete their undergraduate degrees, they also take a keen interest in each and every student who attends.

“They come every year to graduation. Not only are they the speakers at the ceremony, they stay and speak to every student and family that want to speak to them,” Stamper said. “They want to talk to the students; they want to know what they’re passionate about. They want to hear about some of the ideas they’re having, what research projects they’re working on … They take pride in watching these students grow and evolve.”

The Crafts said it’s just how they were raised. “Joe and I combine our life lessons of growing up in Kentucky to giving back to our state, and we feel there is no stronger investment than with the youth, the future leaders of Kentucky,” Kelly Craft said. “Our priorities consist of giving back to Kentucky what she gave to us—the opportunity to go out unto this world and be welcomed back to make a difference.”

— Jackie Hollenkamp Bentley

38 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2 0 2 1

Ashley Fraser photo

they get that residential experience,” Stamper said. “We also do a lot of [activities] here because they are still high school students. Outside of the classroom, we are still trying to provide opportunities for them that they would see in their home high school, such as clubs and organizations like FBLA [Future Business Leaders of America], Kentucky Youth Assembly and more.

We also have evening and weekend activities.”

While Gatton and Craft students take classes alongside traditional college students, their residential life is a bit different.

Gatton students live in Florence Schneider Hall on WKU’s campus under the supervision of residential counselors who live on the floor with students. Craft students reside at Grote-Thompson Hall at Morehead.

In addition to nightly curfew checks, both Gatton and Craft students are prohibited from visiting other residential halls, and college students are not allowed inside Gatton’s and Craft’s halls.

“They have to sign in and sign out if they go off campus,” Stamper said of Craft students. “They can drive, but they have to be in the county through the week. If they go home, they need a parent’s written permission.”

Swift-Taylor said Gatton students aren’t allowed to drive at all while on campus and can only drive to and from their hometowns.

“As a WKU alumnus, I can attest that there is a difference being a WKU student and being an enrolled Gatton student,” SwiftTaylor said. “They’re having their own experience within this own little world of WKU at Gatton.”

Warren said applying for Craft Academy was the best decision she ever made. “I have developed a wide variety of skills and a sense of independence to help me in the future,” she said. “The students and staff are friendly and welcoming, creating a family-like environment for everyone. I joined hoping to help strengthen my academics, but it has become so much more for me.” Q

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k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 39

“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X

q

An Early Star t

Kentucky high school students can take dual credit courses to launch their college careers

BY JACKIE HOLLENKAMP BENTLEY

I

n Kentucky, thousands of high school students are getting a jump start on their college educations by taking dual credit college courses at their schools. Three dozen Kentucky colleges and universities help those students by offering those courses in a variety of settings.

According to a September 2020 report from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE), more than 40,000 high school students took advantage of dual credit offerings from a higher education institution during the 2019-2020 academic year. That’s a 75 percent jump from the fall of 2016, when two Kentucky initiatives were launched to make dual credit studies more affordable and accessible to all Kentucky students.

The first came from CPE, which called for high school students to have access to at least three general education and three career/technical dual credit courses. The second initiative provided a scholarship program from Kentucky Lottery proceeds that allows juniors and seniors the chance to earn credit for two college courses free of charge.

To date, 36 colleges and universities across the Commonwealth have teamed up with high schools to give those students a boost to their postsecondary educations. We talked with several to highlight how they are educating Kentucky’s future.

CRESTVIEW HILLS

Thomas More University Once known as the Gemini Program, the Dual Credit Program at Thomas More University has provided a higher education boost to hundreds of northern Kentucky high school students for several years.

Leann Morgan, Thomas More’s senior enrollment counselor, said the institution typically sees 400-600 students sign up annually.

“Most students that take it through

40 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

Thomas More are actually at their high school, and their teachers are certified through us to teach our classes,” Morgan said. “Some students actually run out of classes to take in high school, as crazy as that sounds. They are pretty advanced and take all those upper-level classes early on, so they run out of classes. At that point, why not go ahead and start getting the college credit at a much cheaper rate?”

That rate, agreed upon by all the participating colleges and universities, is $72 per credit hour, a significant savings considering colleges charge hundreds—even thousands—more for undergraduate credit hours.

“At Thomas More, they get their student ID card, and they get access to the [recreation] center, all sporting events, printing, the book program [and peer tutoring],” she said. “They have access to all of that with no extra cost.”

Aside from the perks, dual credit offerings enable the students to knock out a few general education requirements before they even set foot on a college campus. Morgan said Thomas More’s offerings include introduction to business, introduction to political science, calculus, English, philosophy and more—a wide sample for those students who are still deciding on their career path.

“Some of them will take classes just trying to figure out if that’s what they really want to major in when they do go to college,” she said.

More information about Thomas More University’s Dual Credit Program can be found at thomasmore. edu/admissions/dual-credit-program.

MURRAY

Murray State University Nearly 150 high schools have taken advantage of Murray State University’s dual credit initiative since 2012. Now named Racer Academy Pathways to Success, the program was streamlined

into seven academic tracks by the western Kentucky institution over the past year.

“This newly revised program of dual credit courses … will assist our high school students in getting a head start on their collegiate experience while continuing to offer high-quality and valued academic programming,” said Dr. Tim Todd, Murray’s provost and vice president for academic affairs. “We believe this streamlined version leading to specific academic and, in fact, career pathways will serve Kentucky students and families extremely well.”

Each pathway offers a set of five courses in seven areas, including nursing and health; science, engineering and technology; business/ entrepreneurial; education and human services; humanities and fine arts; agriculture, and even university studies/undeclared for those high school students who haven’t yet made up their minds.

“Enrolling in Racer Academy allows students to take courses in a subject area that interests them,” said Lisa Schmidt, a Racer Academy coordinator. “As they work one-onone with a faculty member from the university, they will be discovering possible career paths and the majors that are available to them as they decide on their future.”

Schmidt said students get more out of Racer Academy than just advanced academics. “In addition to the tangible benefits of dual credit, taking college courses in high school can give students a taste of college and also boost their confidence,” she said. “We have found that high school students who do not have a parent who graduated from college are hesitant and sometimes fearful of college. As they work through their college courses with the support of their high school and Murray State faculty, they learn that they are able to and ready to attend college.”

More information about Murray

State University’s Racer Academy can be found at murraystate.edu/students/ undergraduate/gettingstarted/ raceracademy.

LEXINGTON

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky’s dual credit program, dubbed Next Generation Scholars, launched just two years ago.

Lu Young, the executive director of the UK Center for Next Generation Leadership, said UK’s model differs from many other dual credit programs in that they offer “partnerships” to only a handful of high schools that want to work closely with the university.

“In a lot of cases, dual credit is taught by the high school teacher, and those scores are just submitted to the university. But in our case, our faculty are very hands-on and involved in the process,” Young said.

“Our [program] is all synchronous online, so we actually build a master schedule, and then the high schools fit our blocks into their schedule. All of our courses are taught by UK instructors with a partner high school teacher. It’s very much a partnership between the high school teacher and the university faculty member.”

Young said their dual credit courses are part of the UK core requirements—general education classes covering subjects such as algebra, composition/communication and history.

Since these classes are taught online at a fraction of the cost of normal college tuition, Young said they have the added benefit of reaching rural and lower-income high school students who may not otherwise have the opportunity to attend college.

“We’re able to serve students in the most rural of areas, the most remote of areas,” Young said. “[We can] serve them in a 21st century kind of way with our outstanding UK faculty … really supporting those candidates while in high school to encourage them to think about UK and their future.”

To learn more about UK’s Next Generation Scholars program, visit uky.edu/sal/dual-credit. Q

CAMPBELLSVILLE UNIVERSITY Founded in 1906 Campbellsville, KY campbellsville.edu 1-800-264-6014 Enrollment: 14,271

Campbellsville University is a widely acclaimed Kentuckybased Christian university with more than 13,500 students offering over 100 programs of study, including Ph.D., master, baccalaureate, associate, pre-professional and certification programs.

The university has Kentucky-based off-campus centers in Louisville, Harrodsburg, Somerset, Hodgenville and Liberty with instructional sites in Elizabethtown, Owensboro and Summersville. Out-of-state centers include two in California—one in Los Angeles and the other in Lathrop, in the San Francisco Bay area.

Students are provided with services beyond the traditional academic expectations, including complimentary counseling and access to tutors tailored to students’ areas of study. Academic coaches, internships and partnerships with programs around the globe make CU a place of opportunity.

CU is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award certificates and degrees.

THE GATTON ACADEMY OF MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE Founded in 2007 Bowling Green, KY wku.edu/academy 270.745.6565 Enrollment: 95 accepted/year Since 2007, high school juniors and seniors interested in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields have come from across the Commonwealth of Kentucky to attend The Gatton Academy.

Students at Gatton, which is located at Western Kentucky University, finish their high school requirements at the same time they start college. Our students take college classes taught by WKU faculty members while exploring opportunities that include conducting research with WKU professors and studying abroad. The students are challenged both inside and outside of the classroom and thrive in a supportive community designed just for them.

What does it cost to attend Kentucky’s “Public Elite” school, as named by The Washington Post for nine consecutive years? The Commonwealth of Kentucky pays for tuition, fees, and room and board. That means that you, too, can have a future filled with infinite possibilities at The Gatton Academy.

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 41

T EXT BY J O E L SAM S P H O T O S BY JE S S E H E N D R IX - IN MAN

On Respect A Louisville author’s short stories explore the characters’ need to be seen and acknowledged

A

n aging woman removes all the mirrors in her house. A girl, haunted by the disappearance of her neighbor, enacts a yearly ritual of remembrance. A grieving mother and an obnoxious teenager make an unlikely connection over a drum set.

“It’s this idea of being seen as your authentic self,” explained author Ellen Birkett Morris, whose short story collection, Lost Girls, was released in June 2020. “There are recurring stories of loss … and yet, ultimately, in the mix of all of that are moments where people honor other people’s unique experience.”

A Louisville native who resides in the Highlands, Morris has been published widely, with stories and poems in journals including The Antioch Review, Shenandoah, South Carolina Review and Upstreet. Lost Girls, Morris’ first short story collection, has earned attention in Kirkus Reviews, The Southern Review of Books, Story Circle, Texas Public Radio and other outlets.

Though loosely linked by a few recurring characters and a setting in a fictional eastern Kentucky town, the stories in Lost Girls are distinct and varied.

What connects them is Morris’ means of approach—a tender attention to the interior lives of her characters and an unflinching will to find what lies just beneath the surface.

A Writer’s Journey Writing has been part of Morris’ life for as long as she can remember. Her father, John Birkett, wrote two detective novels set in Louisville and Lexington: The Last Private Eye and The Queen’s Mare.

“I had a sense of exactly what that job looked like and entailed,” Morris said. “It didn’t look very fun to me as a kid. He’d sit at a typewriter, and in that respect, it looked boring.”

The bedtime stories he read each evening were far from boring, however, and Morris began creating her own stories at a young age.“I actually have the first thing I ever wrote,” she said. “It’s in crayon on lined paper and bound with ribbon.”

Morris has worked as a freelance writer for publications such as The CourierJournal, Today’s Woman and Kentucky Monthly; was writer/editor for the newsletter

42 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

Learn more about Ellen Birkett Morris at ellenbirkettmorris.ink.

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 43

Get to Know Ellen Kentucky Monthly: What’s your favorite Louisville restaurant?

Ellen Birkett Morris: Le Relais at Bowman Field. It has a 1940s feel to it, the food is really wonderful, and on a really nice night, you can sit on the patio and watch the small planes fly in and out. There are times in COVID when I grab a book, sit in my car, and watch planes going and coming to replicate that feeling.

KM: What’s something you’ve always kept on your desk?

EBM: A picture of my first dog, Tippi.

She’s on the ground among some early spring-blooming crocuses, a little hybrid mutt with lush fur and a funny little face. I’ve had many lovely pets, but that one dog that’s your soul connection—she was it.

KM: Three books for a desert island?

EBM: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, the complete works of William Shakespeare, and Winnie the Pooh, which was the first book I was ever given.

KM: Advice for beginning writers?

EBM: Read a lot. Read widely. Read stuff that you wouldn’t expect you might be interested in just to see what other people are doing with words. And sit down and write. Be brave; it’s hard … Try to immerse yourself in the whole thing. Continue your education, and take the classes you can get ahold of and build your confidence. But above all, believe in yourself; believe it’s worth it to give it a try. Be fearless.”

44 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

of the George Patton Foundation at Fort Knox; and continues to work for a number of clients as a contributor, editor and media relations consultant.

She had long wanted to write creatively but didn’t begin doing so until she was in her early 30s.

“I said, ‘If you don’t do this now, you’ll never do it,’ ” Morris said. “I was afraid to be bad—and I was. I wrote some really bad poetry and stories. But then I wrote some better stuff.”

Morris said events like the Antioch and Kenyon Review workshops provided valuable feedback and helped sharpen her skills. She also completed a Master of Fine Arts in fiction at Queen’s University in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“I’ve had some really good publications, but also—along the way—received a lot of rejections, as writers do,” Morris said. “You have to find a way to develop a philosophy around rejection. Does it mean you need to go in to revise? Or does it just mean you didn’t get the right editor at the right journal on the right day?”

Morris has taught seminars and given talks at conferences on the subject of getting published, and she has advice for others starting on their writing journey.

“The process of submitting is like throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing if it sticks,” Morris said.

“It’s also a bit like gambling … Be ready to put your work into the world and let it happen.”

Lost Girls The title story of Morris’ book, Lost Girls, was inspired by the 1983 disappearance of 12-year-old Ann Gotlib from a Louisville shopping mall. “That whole story—her kidnapping—led to the creation of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,” Morris said. “In this story, I wanted to take a personal lens. How does one honor those who disappear? How do we lend them the dignity of saying, ‘I remember you?’ ” Each story in the collection focuses on a woman or girl in a fictional eastern Kentucky town. The stories are short; some are only three or four pages long, and the longest is 16 pages.

But each examines relationships and interactions—what Morris calls the emotional landscape—with

tenderness, clarity and insight.

“The success of Lost Girls has been that these stories really belong together thematically and emotionally,” Morris said. “Together, they send a message about the lives of women and girls—how we strive to be heard, struggle with self-actualization, and how we can help each other on those paths; how we can be triumphant in our ability to honor each other and lift each other up.”

A unifying theme of the work, she said, is the characters’ desire to be seen, and to see others, authentically.

She pointed specifically to the title story, in which the narrator leaves a gift each year for a “lost girl” on the spot where she disappeared. Every year, the gift changes to reflect the age the kidnapped girl would have been.

“She left tampons, she left a set of car keys when the girl would have turned 16, and, in this story, the girl is turning 21,” Morris said. “The last line of the story is: ‘Tonight, I’ll leave this bottle of Jack Daniel’s. By morning, it’ll be gone.’ So she’s doing what she can to remember and to honor that girl. There are moments throughout the stories where people find ways to really see the other person, to honor their experience.”

The theme of being seen is deeply personal to Morris, as well as to her characters.

“As a kid who was really, really shy, as a woman, as a woman from the South—there are these ways in which I can feel unseen,” she said.

“That’s just a really basic element of respecting people—trying to see them as they are. It struck me that my own experience with feeling unseen because I was quiet or because I didn’t speak up or because I was never told it was OK to speak up is really universal for a lot of women.”

Morris writes for many reasons, but one of the most significant is selfunderstanding.

“While I write fiction, the stories I tell draw on emotions and feelings I’ve had that are deeply embedded in my experience and give me a way to work through those in a way that’s useful,” she said. “It’s a way to understand myself, to understand the world, and to share whatever sorts of insight or understanding I’ve gleaned from my experience.” Q

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k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 45

C E L E B R AT I O N + REMEMBRANCE Louisville tours and attractions honor Kentucky’s Black heritage

BY TRACEY TEO

During the 1976 bicentennial celebration of the United States, President Gerald R. Ford designated February as Black History Month—the result of a proposal first set in motion in the late 1960s by Black educators. It has been observed in our country ever since. But those wishing to learn about Kentucky’s Black heritage can do so any time of year, particularly in Louisville, where enlightening exhibits and experiences can be found.

KENTUCKY DERBY MUSEUM The Kentucky Derby is known for pageantry, fun and horse racing excellence, but today it’s not so well known for Black equestrians. The

46 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

Kentucky Derby Museum hopes to change that with its new 90-minute African Americans in Thoroughbred Racing Tour that covers the museum and the adjacent Churchill Downs racetrack.

Tour guide Keyana Bilyeu leads a group to the Aristides Garden, where a life-sized bronze statue ringed by scarlet tulips honors the chestnut colt that won the inaugural Kentucky Derby back in 1875. Some are surprised to learn Oliver Lewis, the Kentucky jockey who rode Aristides to victory, was Black, as were 12 other jockeys in the 15-horse field.

As Bilyeu walks the horse-loving crowd over to the white post that once marked the racetrack’s finish line, she imparts an interesting fact: In the first 28 runnings of the Kentucky Derby, African-American jockeys won 15.

Kentucky’s famous Thoroughbred racing industry has a long history of Black jockeys, trainers and grooms,

especially in the early years of the Kentucky Derby, when horse racing was one of the most popular sports in America. These horsemen were widely regarded as some of the best in the world, but the 1896 Plessy v.

Ferguson Supreme Court decision that endorsed racial segregation and the rise of Jim Crow laws in the postReconstruction South pushed Blacks out of the sport, and their contributions were all but forgotten.

When sidelined jockeys did manage to ride, they often encountered hostility from resentful White jockeys.

“If they were even able to get a mount at that time, White jockeys would push the African-American jockeys up against the rail and hit them with their riding crops,” Bilyeu says. “The people that were the backbone of the [racing] community were being betrayed by the sport that they had put everything into.”

Even Willie Simms (1870-1927), the

IF YOU GO:

African Americans in Thoroughbred Racing Tour Churchill Downs 704 Central Avenue, Louisville Saturdays at 1PM $15 admission 502.637.1111 derbymuseum.org

only African American jockey to win the Triple Crown—the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes—had a hard time getting on the track during such a racially charged era.

But it’s a new day, and African Americans are slowly returning to their rightful place in the sport.

“We’ve seen a big resurgence of African Americans owning horses again and trying to get back into the sport to connect to those original roots,” Bilyeu said.

When Marlon St. Julien placed seventh aboard Curule in the 2000 Kentucky Derby, he became the first African-American jockey to compete in the race since 1921.

The most thrilling part of the tour is standing in the grandstands overlooking the track where thousands of Derby fans cheer on their favorite horse during the “most exciting two minutes in sports.” The stands are empty now, but it’s still a

great spot for captivating stories of history-making victories.

The Churchill Downs clubhouse is home to the “Peb Murals,” a pair of 60-foot-long paintings named for Pierre “Peb” Bellocq, the FrenchAmerican horse-racing cartoonist who created them. The first features goodnatured caricatures of every Derbywinning jockey from the first running of the iconic race in 1875 through the 2004 edition, and the second is an homage to the trainers who helped the victors to the winner’s circle.

Bilyeu points out Kentuckian Isaac Burns Murphy, considered one of the best jockeys of all time. A former slave, he won the Derby three times— in 1884, 1890 and 1891—and was a wealthy superstar, much like modern NFL players, at a time when African Americans got little respect.

Ansel Williamson, also a former slave, trained Aristides and is depicted in the trainers’ mural.

The tour concludes at the

museum’s African Americans in Thoroughbred Racing exhibit. Artifacts include the yellow silk purse Murphy received when he won the 1891 Kentucky Derby and ankle boots worn by Aristides. The exhibit is slated to expand and move to a more prominent location.

Bilyeu passes around a list of all the Black Derby-winning jockeys and asks everyone to read the names aloud in unison as a way of remembering them.

“Oliver Lewis, Jimmy Winkfield, Billie Walker, Willie Simms, Alonzo Clayton, James ‘Soup’ Perkins …”

The list goes on. The recitation feels like a prayer. Perhaps that’s how it should be—a prayer for future racial equality in the sport that defines the Bluegrass State.

ROOTS 101 AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM Another place to explore Kentucky’s Black history is the Roots

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 47

IF YOU GO:

Roots 101 African American Museum 819 West Main Street, Louisville $6-$8 admission 502.384.1940 roots-101.org

This mixed media collage at Roots 101 African American Museum by Jason Dafri Thompson prominently features a photo of Jimmy Winkfield, the last African-American jockey to win the Kentucky Derby.

101 African American Museum, the newest addition to Louisville’s Museum Row. It was in the planning stages long before the city became embroiled in protests sparked by the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black medical worker shot and killed by Louisville police during a bungled nighttime raid on her apartment. But now the March opening of this “healing space,” as founder Lamont Collins calls it, is more meaningful than ever.

Exhibits unfold on four floors, 48 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY F EBR UARY 2021

beginning with the Stolen Legacy gallery. A wide-eyed African fon (king), holding a pair of elephant ears that symbolize strength and intelligence, stands tall and proud behind glass. The life-sized wooden figure—probably from the 18th century—is a fine example of the Bamileke art of the Cameroon grasslands, a region widely heralded as the source of some of Africa’s most compelling art.

The ruler is surrounded by bronze figures inspired by the Benin period

(13th-19th century), including a royal courier and a 4-foot sitting man that once served as a boundary marker in Nigeria. For those knowledgeable about African art, these stately figures may bring to mind the Benin Bronzes—priceless, culturally significant artifacts looted by British troops in 1897 when they captured Benin City, now part of southern Nigeria.

In stark contrast to these dignified depictions of Africans, the Derogatory Images gallery exhibits

Kentucky Firsts The Frazier History Museum also shines a light on Kentucky’s rich Black heritage.

“Great Kentuckians,” part of the new “Cool Kentucky” permanent exhibit, includes many of Kentucky’s Black trailblazers in a list of “firsts.”

Anna Mac Clark was the first African-American WACC officer to command White troops; St. Elmo Brady was the first to earn a doctorate in chemistry; and Moneta Sleet Jr. was the first to win a Pulitzer Prize, a recognition of his photography at Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral. A 1978 copy of Rolling Stone features boxing heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali. Admission is $10-$14.

Frazier History Museum 829 West Main Street Louisville, 502.753.1699 fraziermuseum.org

The Unfiltered Truth Collection Want to meet jockey Isaac Murphy? You can, thanks to the Unfiltered Truth Collection that launches in March. Actors take on the identities of Black Kentuckians of the past, both famous and not famous, providing accounts of their experiences during the era in which they lived.

Murphy shares enthralling tales of hurtling toward the Derby finish line, but an enslaved laundress and a 19th-century bourbon distillery worker tell their stories, too. Hear how an African king’s misfortune led to enslavement in America and how Mary Ann Fisher became Ray Charles’ muse.

Performances will be at the Frazier History Museum, the Kentucky Derby Museum, Roots 101 and other locations around Louisville.

Muhammad Ali Center Located in downtown Louisville, the Muhammad Ali Center serves as a tribute to one of Louisville’s favorite sons, the late boxing great Muhammad Ali. But the center offers so much more. With an awardwinning interactive museum, educational programs and special events, it seeks to inspire those who visit to achieve their greatest potential. Particular focus is given to the six core principles of Ali’s life—confidence, conviction, dedication, giving, respect and spirituality.

As of press time, the center remained closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with tentative plans to reopen in April. For updates on its reopening, visit alicenter.org.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT

gotolouisville.com/ unfiltered-truth-collection.

grotesque caricatures of African Americans. Mammy dolls smile contentedly in their servitude, and other figures portray men as buffoons and simpletons. Many of these images are attached to mainstream products—everything from beans to syrup—marketed to White consumers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A box with the name of a defunct tobacco company that includes a racial slur is jarring. (See Spike Lee’s 2004 mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America.)

While such overtly racist images are no longer common, Collins believes that young African Americans still encounter negative messages and remain alienated from their cultural heritage. He hopes the museum will change that and help shape a positive self-image.

“If they think of themselves as the descendants of queens and kings that were enslaved in America, that’s a whole different mindset,” Collins said. “If young people have that

mindset, they have a responsibility to live up to that legacy.”

A replica of a room in the Allen Hotel, once Louisville’s largest Blackfriendly hotel, takes visitors back to the era of racial segregation, when Black travelers had to carefully plan their trips. Many relied on The Negro Motorist Green Book, a booklet that listed hotels and other businesses that welcomed Blacks and often were Black-owned. A 1940 copy is incorporated into the exhibit.

The uplifting, joyful side of AfricanAmerican culture also is showcased.

“September,” the 1978 song by Earth, Wind & Fire, reverberates throughout The Roots of African American Music of Kentucky exhibit, a tribute to lead guitarist Johnny Graham, who hailed from Louisville.

Sequined blue dresses worn by The Pearls, a trio of popular Louisville vocalists, sparkle alongside a flashy jacket owned by Jerry Green, a local music celebrity and nightclub owner.

Hang around long enough, and the music segues to “What Kind of Man

Are You” featuring Mary Ann Fisher’s bluesy vocals. Fisher (1923-2004) rose from humble beginnings—she spent part of her childhood in the Kentucky Home Society for Colored Children in Louisville—to tour with Ray Charles.

Check out her chic black evening gown.

Also noteworthy are artworks by talented Black Kentucky artists such as Sam Gilliam and Ed Hamilton.

Behind the Roses, an exhibit of artwork by Jason Dafri Thompson that references the Kentucky Derby, is a tribute to African Americans in Thoroughbred racing.

A memorial to Breonna Taylor in Jefferson Square Park is being relocated to the fourth floor, a sobering reminder of the city’s 2020 protests demanding social justice.

Collins said that Taylor’s death solidified the need for the museum.

“You have to have a museum to break the myth of [White] supremacy,” Collins said. “I want to break down barriers so we can go through a healing process.” Q k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 49

“I never met a Kentuckian who wasn’t either thinking about going home or actually going home.”

— A L B E RT B E N J A M I N “ H A P P Y ” C H A N D L E R S R .

K ENTUCKY

EXPLORER

Dear Faithful Readers of Kentucky Monthly and Kentucky Explorer, Kentucky Explorer invites readers to submit old stories, memories and photos, as well as genealogy research and tips, recipes, classified ads and letters to the editor. All submissions may be edited for clarification and size.

EMAIL deb@kentuckymonthly.com MAIL TO Deborah Kohl Kremer Kentucky Monthly PO Box 559 Frankfort, KY 40602

For the last 22½ years, Kentucky Monthly magazine has been sharing the best of the Commonwealth with our readers. It is our mission to celebrate our state’s places, events, culture and—most of all—its people.

Similarly, Kentucky Explorer had been sharing stories of our past since 1986, publishing reader-submitted stories covering genealogy, memories, history and folklore. Among the stories were photos, maps and interesting passages from long-forgotten newspapers, books and magazines.

At Kentucky Monthly, we have always considered Kentucky Explorer an ally in our pursuit to share our love of Kentucky with our readers. It only made sense when Charles Hayes, the founder of Kentucky Explorer, contemplated retirement that we would step in to help.

Beginning with this issue, we enable Kentucky Explorer live on within the pages of Kentucky Monthly. When Hayes created Kentucky Explorer, he included black-and-white photos and published the quarterly periodical on newsprint—a strikingly different look than that today’s glossy magazines. But in his honor and because his readers appreciated it, we plan to designate a section of each issue to the familiar stories from Kentucky Explorer, even creating the pages to resemble what Hayes referred to as “the ugly duckling.”

Another part of our mission is to unite Kentuckians everywhere and create a sense of pride and community. With that in mind, we welcome the 30,000 Kentucky Explorer readers and unite them with the 100,000 Kentucky Monthly readers in our hopes to always share the best—whether past or present— stories of our Bluegrass State.

Sincerely, Stephen M. “Steve” Vest

50 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2 0 2 1

A section for Kentuckians everywhere … inside Kentucky Monthly.

K ENTUCKY

E

All About Kentucky

XPLORER Volume 36, Number 1 – February 2021

Ancestry of Peter S. Smith and Joseph L. Smith -- page 52 Revolutionary War Soldier Moved to Final Resting Place -- page 55 Memories of Alex & Mary “Addie” Dickerson -- page 56 Mrs. Keckley’s Book and Mrs. Lincoln’s Reaction -- page 58

“I Remember” By Our Readers

and More!

Featuring Things Old & New About Kentucky

52

THE KENTUCKY EXPLORER

Ancestry of Peter S. Smith and Joseph L. Smith of Kentucky DNA shows the relationship of the Smith families

By Harold L. Brown - 2020

M

any Smiths in Kentucky’s Pulaski, Rockcastle and Lincoln counties descended from Peter S. Smith and/or Joseph L. Smith. Despite work by lots of people, no one, to my knowledge, has proven the relationship between Peter S. and Joseph L. or identified their parents.

Now, both issues are believed resolved. Hopefully, DNA results will prove the strong circumstantial evidence to be correct.

The hypothesis is that Peter S. and Joseph L. were brothers, sons of Joel and Eleanor Smith. A sister of Peter S. and Joseph L. helped support the conclusions. The 1877 death certificate for Sarah Brady in Rockcastle County, Kentucky, listed her parents as Joel and Ellen Smith, both born in North Carolina. The Feb. 18, 1916, Pulaski County, Kentucky, death certificate for Peter S. Brady listed his parents as Josiah Brady and Sarah Smith, both born in Virginia. It seems likely that Peter S. Brady was named for his uncle, Peter S. Smith. The families of Josiah Brady, Peter S. Smith and Joel Smith were all listed in the 1840 Washington County, Virginia, Census with Joel and Peter shown to be next door neighbors. Hardin Wilder, believed to be father of Peter’s wife Elizabeth Wilder, was also in Washington County, Virginia, in 1840 and in Pulaski County, Kentucky, in 1850.

The 1850 Pulaski County, Kentucky, Census included Joel and

Eleanor Smith with three children— Creasa, Richard and James—still at home. Peter S. Smith and family were still shown in the 1850 Washington County, Virginia, Census. Their oldest son was named Joel Smith.

Four years later, Joseph L. and wife Cyrena Ellis Smith named a son Joel Martin Smith. Also both Smith families named sons Richard Asbury Smith and sister, Sarah Brady, named a son Richard A. Brady. All three families named a son William. Peter S. and Joseph L. both named sons George Washington Smith.

In a Pulaski County deed dated March 11, 1863, Peter S. Smith and Joseph L. Smith purchased 249 acres in partnership. In 1870, after the death

of Joseph L., his widow and family lived close to Peter S. and family. Also, in 1880 after both Joseph L. and Peter were deceased, their widows lived close together. A daughter of one of them said the two Richard Asbury Smiths were cousins, but she was not sure how close. Another Smith relative told me many years ago that she had been told by “family” that Peter S. and Joseph L. were brothers.

In summary, the evidence supports the hypothesis that Joel and Eleanor Smith were the parents of Peter S. Smith and Joseph L. Smith, and that the latter were brothers.

DNA findings could prove or disprove these conclusions.

Peter S. Smith, b. 18 Jan. 1810 in N.C.

Joseph Leslie Smith, b. 10 May 1824 in N.C.

Wife Elizabeth Wilder, b. 1822 in Ky. (Married 16 Dec. 1853 in Ky.)

Wife Cyrena Ellis, b. 3 May 1833 in Ky. (Married in Va. or N.C.)

Son JOEL Smith, b. about 1834

Son JOEL Martin Smith, b. 1854

Son WILLIAM Riley Smith b. about 1842 in Virginia

Son John WILLIAM Smith b. about 1854 in Virginia

Son JOSEPH L. “Jody” Smith, b. about 1844 in Va. (Believed named for his Uncle Joseph L. Smith) Son GEORGE WASHINGTON Smith b. 4 Dec. 1849 in Va.

Son GEORGE WASHINGTON Smith born 11 Dec. 1856 in Ky.

Son RICHARD ASBURY Smith born 16 Oct. 1859 in Ky.

Son RICHARD ASBURY Smith born 30 April 1859 in Ky.

Note that each family named three sons the SAME as listed above across from one another.

“I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.” – Abraham Lincoln

FEBRUARY 2021

53

The Kentucky Explorer a magazine published for Kentuckians everywhere Charles Hayes, Jr. g Founder Stephen M. Vest g Publisher Deborah Kohl Kremer g Editor Rebecca Redding g Typographist One Year Subscription to Kentucky Monthly: $20

“Normally during the months of March woodchucks are mating but this depends to some extent on the geographical location, the severity of the weather and other reasons best known to woodchucks.”

The Menifee County News Wednesday, May 4, 1955

The Kentucky Explorer and Our Readers Bring You Old-Time Recipes to Enjoy Betty Crocker’s Divinity Recipe Cook 2 2/3 cups sugar, 2/3 cup light corn syrup and 1/2 cup water in 2-quart saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly, until sugar is dissolved.

Continue cooking, without stirring, to 260 degrees on candy thermometer or until small amount of mixture dropped into very cold water forms a hard ball that holds its shape but is pliable. Beat 2 egg whites in medium bowl with electric mixer on high speed until stiff peaks form.

Continue beating while pouring hot syrup in a thin stream into egg whites, beating constantly on medium speed. (For best results, use electric stand mixer, not a portable As of 2021, Kentucky Explorer will appear inside every issue of Kentucky Monthly magazine. Subscriptions can be purchased online at shopkentuckymonthly.com, or buy calling 1.888.329.0053.

FOUNDED 1986, ISSUE 335, VOLUME 36, NO. 1

What do you do when your phone rings and on the other end is a frantic reader urging you to “save their magazine?” What do you do when that one phone call turns into dozens? For us, the answer was easy.

We contacted the good folks at Kentucky Explorer and asked if we could help. The global pandemic was the last straw and they were closing after 34 years. We offered to continue portions of Kentucky Explorer in Kentucky Monthly and give its 30,000 loyal readers a new home. Standing features, such as “I Remember,” “Strictly Kentucky Genealogy” and “Kentucky Kinfolks” will continue in Kentucky Monthly and give a voice to a broader spectrum of Kentuckians in a special section designed to resemble what its founder called “the ugly duckling."

handheld mixer, since beating time is about 10 minutes and mixture is thick.) Add 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until mixture holds its shape and becomes slightly dull. (Mixture may become too stiff for mixer.) Gently stir in 2/3 cup coarsely chopped nuts.

Drop mixture from buttered spoon onto waxed paper. Let stand at room temperature at least 12 hours, turning candies over once, until candies feel firm. Store in airtight container.

Claudia Sanders’ Yeast Rolls Sift together 2 cups flour and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Work in 1 tablespoon butter or corn oil or margarine. Set aside. Dissolve packet of cake yeast in 1/3 cup lukewarm water or milk.

Combine 1 egg, well beaten, and 1 tablespoon granulated sugar. Add to flour mixture. Gently stir until blended. Shape into rolls and let rise in greased baking pan for about 2 1/2 hours or until doubled in size. Bake in a preheated 425-degree oven for 15-20 minutes.

In memory of Donna Jean Hayes, 1948-2019

It is believed that the name “Kentucky” comes from the Iroquois word “ken-tah-ten,” which means “land of tomorrow.”

4 THE 54 THEKENTUCKY KENTUCKYEXPLORER EXPLORER

“I Remember” Send your memory in today!

By Our Readers

Winter Evenings Beside the Blazing Fireplace

kitchen stove. This has homemade butter on it. I liked this best.

Either Mom or Dad would begin to tell us a story of how life was like for them when living in Letcher, Rowan, Elliott or Morgan County in Kentucky. We children loved hearing these stories. Mom told most of these stories about how her life was when a little girl.

We Johnsons never had a radio but my sister Geldie did, and we’d go to her house and listen to the Grand Ole Opry for only a few minutes on Saturday evening.

Couldn’t listen for a long time or the battery would go dead. We didn’t know about TV—perhaps it wasn’t invented back then in the 1930s or early ’40s. I’m so glad that there weren’t those things around to crowd our minds, or I wouldn’t not have been able to remember all the stories I write.

The living room had three homemade rocking chairs in a half circle in front of the huge fireplace; these were for the adults. We children all sat on the linoleum covered floor and watched the flames of the fire dance around. This sometimes would make us sleepy.

Loved these winter evenings!

First things first. The ground needs to be plowed, then disced to break up the lumps of soil. Next, the rows are laid out for the planting of the popcorn seeds, which are smaller than those for the corn-on-the-cob-type seeds.

When the popcorn seeds are planted, they need to be covered with soil. Then, in a few weeks, the popcorn plants are coming through the soil along with weeds, these need hoed (cut down with a hoe). The weeds keep coming back again and again, so the hoeing is never ending, or seems never to be.

When matured, the corn is gathered from the cornstalk, which Fashionable Landlines: becomes food for the farm animals, Remember when your phone as do the corn husks. Then, the corn is placed in a special area in the reflected your home décor? corncrib, because it’s so small. A few nights each winter week, some This article appeared in The Voice of popcorn is brought into the living East Kentucky newspaper, January 7, 1971 room, where it’s shelled from the cobs. These cobs are our toys to The Decorator Telephone, a new build corncob log houses with or series of fashion telephones, is now other playthings, such as placing being offered by General Telephone three or more chicken feathers in of Kentucky, it was announced this the big end of the corncob and week by district manager Burl ggg tossing it into the air. It will twirl Phillips. around and around.

By Lois Wilcox Nine distinct styles are available Later, these popcorn cobs 1612 West High Street in the series and include an antique become fire starters in the woodPiqua, OH 45356 French cradle model in carved burning kitchen stove. On the farm, walnut; Wedgwood blue and white; Lois was born in 1933. She was one of 13 nothing goes to waste. brocade in gold, green or red; and children, three of whom passed away in After the popcorn is shelled, it’s antique white. Gold-fitted receivers infancy. Her family grew tobacco, tomatoes, placed in a corn popper with a long complete the styles, one of which corn, potatoes and beans on their 100-acre handle and moved around on the will complement any décor. farm located on Big White Oak Road in Load, huge fire. When the sound stops The chest model in walnut or Kentucky, which is in Greenup County. popping, the corn is done and is leather also being offered is placed in a large dish pan. More particularly suitable for a den or corn is popped and placed in the office setting.

Send memories to Deborah Kohl dish pan until it’s filled, at which A premium charge of $2.30 a Kremer at deb@kentuckymonthly. time, we Johnson kids could start month, plus tax, will apply for any com or mail to Deb Kremer, eating it. of the telephones. This is an Kentucky Monthly, PO Box 559, Sometimes, the popcorn is addition to the regular price of Frankfort, KY 40602.

SEND YOUR MEMORY IN: DEB@KENTUCKYMONTHLY.COM OR PO BOX 559, FRANKFORT KY 40601 popped in an iron skillet on the service.

The town of Washington, in Mason County had the first postal station west of the Allegheny Mountains.

FEBRUARY 2021

55

Revolutionary War Soldier Moved to Final Resting Place with Military Honors One of the founding fathers of Harlan

By Cindy Howard

S

amuel Howard was born in Buckingham County, Virginia, in 1762. He served during the Revolutionary War under Capt. Mayo Carrington, then transferred to Capt. James Baytop’s Company, then to Col. Fleming’s Virginia regiment at Valley Forge. He experienced a musket ball shot through his hat near Dismal Swamp. He was at Yorktown when Cornwallis surrendered. Samuel was awarded a pension of $60 per annum.

He and his wife Chloe were the first white settlers in the Mount Pleasant area of Harlan County in 1796. They built a log house with mud and a stone chimney at the foot of Ivy Hill.

Harlan County was formed when Knox County was divided in 1820.

The county seat was approved, and 12 acres were purchased for $5 from John N. and Susannah Howard and Samuel and Chloe Howard. Samuel built the first jail and courthouse and remained active in building Harlan.

Samuel and Chloe had eight children—Benjamin, b. 1781; Adron, b. 1783; John, b. 1785; Mary, b. 1788; Nancy, b. 1790; Sarah, b. 1794; Samuel, b. 1793; and Hiram, b. 1801.

Samuel died Dec. 5, 1840. He was buried in Highbank Cemetery in Harlan, along with Chloe and a baby. He later was moved to Wix

Howard Cemetery in Loyall, Kentucky, when the United States Army Corps of Engineers rerouted the Cumberland River. In August 2016, Fran Howard Harvey sent photos of the cemetery sliding into the Cumberland River to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

That started a full-time job for us, for months making phone calls.

Eventually, the Army Corps saw that the cemetery needed fixing as soon as possible. However, it was a slow process.

Samuel, Chloe and baby were then moved to Resthaven Cemetery in Harlan. In 2017, Samuel received a full military funeral. It was so exciting for his 200 descendants

attending. The Army Corps, Old Guard, Continental Color Guard, The Fife and Drum Corps, The Commanders-in-Chief’s Guard and Brig. Gen. R. Mark Toy provided a ceremony for Samuel, wife Chloe and their baby. The respect for a veteran shown was true American patriotism.

We are still busy to this day researching all of Samuel’s children and descendants. Thanks to Vernis Howard for starting me on this journey in 1980. My husband Edsell, b. 1951, is from the Adrons line.

Cindy Howard West Milton, Ohio cinannh@yahoo.com

Pennyrile Forest is named for its abundance of Pennyroyal, a plant that smells like spearmint when crushed.

6 56 THE THEKENTUCKY KENTUCKYEXPLORER EXPLORER

Memories of Alex & Mary “Addie” Dickerson Early days of a Bardstown farm

By Jean M. (Dickerson) Jury

B

enedict Alexander “Alex” Dickerson (b. 11 Sept. 1886, d. 5 Nov. 1967) married 1 Feb. 1905 to Mary Addie (Rogers) (b. 12 Apr. 1887, d. 6 June 1954).

He was the only child of John Dickerson (b. 4 June 1831, d. 1903) and Mary Kate Shehan (b. 26 Sept. 1845, d. 1917). Mary Addie was the daughter of William C. Rogers and Josephine (Ice) Rogers. In the early 1900s (possibly after Kate died), they inherited a 400-or-so-acre farm 7 miles west of Bardstown on Barnes Road which is off of the Boston Road (US 62 West). By 1918, they had six children, two of whom died before then, and two yet to be born.

I lived on the Boston Road farm in the adjoining wing of Alex’s house from 1953 to 1959. I am the daughter of Thomas C. Dickerson (1918-1996), Alex’s youngest son. In my memory, a question arose as to why Alex would trade a 365-acre farm on Barnes Road for a 71.3-acre farm 2 miles from Bardstown. Here is commentary from the grandchildren, Roger William Dickerson and his sister Betty (Elizabeth Lola Dickerson) Montgomery—children of Alex’s oldest son Roger William (19071953)—of the fond memories of our grandparents Alex and Mary Addie and the Barnes Road farm: Dad (Roger William) told me how his job was to harness the horse and buggy, load up the younger kids, and drive 7 miles to Bardstown for school. After dropping the kids off at school, Dad

would take the horse to rented pasture in Bardstown and then return to school. In the evening, he would go get the horse and buggy, pick up the kids, and return to the farm. I don’t know how fast a horse and buggy runs under normal conditions, but it probably took at least a couple of hours each way.

Certainly, the farm close to Bardstown was a significant improvement.

I asked Dad why Pawpaw (Alex) would trade such a large farm for such a small one, and he said it was because Nanaw (Mary Adelaide Rogers) wanted to live closer to town. This also makes sense. Nanaw was always a prim and proper lady.

The dresses she wore were always clean and starched. She was a descendent of Col. James Rogers, an early pioneer in Nelson County.

Betty Montgomery told the story when she spent a vacation on the Boston Road farm. Nanaw had taken

her into town to buy clothes. Nanaw was mortified when a neighbor lady approached her in Spalding’s Dry Goods offering to pay a stud fee that was owed.

Now Nanaw never shirked from her duties as a farmer’s wife. She was up every day at 4 a.m., right along with Pawpaw, drawing water and cooking a huge breakfast on a wood-fired stove. When Pawpaw traded farm work, she would put on the biggest spread I have ever seen for the farm hands.

So why did Pawpaw trade a large farm for a small one? Yes, it was closer to the Bardstown schools. And yes, it made Nanaw happy … But I believe Pawpaw also was happy with the trade. You can see from the photo that the Dickerson children were too young in 1918 to be of much help on a large farm. The trade gave Pawpaw buildings to house, maintain and repair his wheat-threshing and

Carrie Nation the hatchet-bearing spokesperson against rum, tobacco, pornography, and corsets was born 1846 in Garrard County.

FEBRUARY 2021

well-digging equipment. He took me on several wheat threshing jobs.

While the other farmers were doing the hard work hauling the wheat shocks to the thresher, all he had to do was keep his thresher running and count the bags of wheat. He was paid in bags of wheat. Being closer to town (and the distilleries) also gave him free slop for his hogs, and you can’t raise hogs any easier or cheaper than that.

This period had to be in the early 1920s that the farm was traded for the 71.3-acre Boston Road farm. In 1961, Bardstown-Nelson County condemned 20 acres of Alex Dickerson’s land and took it for the airport.

Stated in The Kentucky Standard: “Attorneys for Mr. Dickerson, Fulton, Hubbard & Hubbard, appealed to the Nelson Circuit Court on the grounds that the amount ($9,481) was insufficient to satisfy the damages to his farm and to compensate him adequately for the land. The Air Board filed a cross-appeal stating that the figure set by the commissioners was too high. Most of the testimony was concerning land valuation. Mr. Dickerson said this was the best land on his farm, that it produced more than 100 bushels of corn per acre … This was the last of the three

condemnation suits arising from the airport project.” He was awarded the sum of $15,500 for the 20 acres; however, it was said he nearly lost his mind during this process. Mary Addie had died in 1954, and in 1962, this farm was his livelihood. Once again here are the memories of Roger William (his grandson) of the Boston Road farm: Nanaw (Mary Addie) loved nice things. After they lived on the Boston Road farm for a while, they built on a brand new wing with all new furniture, just for them. At one point, Nanaw wanted to sell the farm and move to Bardstown, but Pawpaw (Alex) just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Which now, perhaps, gives you even more insight. Pawpaw loved machinery. He had a well-drilling rig and a threshing machine. He had a Ford Model T pickup truck and a slop truck. I am told he had one of the first steam tractors, but I never saw it. I am sure you remember the Boston Road farm. It had more outbuildings than you could shake a stick at. As you stood on the front porch, the barn was to the left. The garage was to your right. An equipment shed was in the upper pasture (that’s where he kept the Model T pickup). From the back porch—to your far left, just next to

57

the garage—there was a building that I never did learn its purpose.

Moving around, there was a blacksmith shop, a root cellar, an outhouse (they also had indoor plumbing), a building for grain storage, a building across from grain storage, a brooder house and a chicken house. At the chicken house, I learned that roosters could draw blood—mine.

Back closer to the main house was the building where they kept the hog-killing equipment—large black vats for rendering pork fat and hoists for holding the hogs in the air for gutting and butchering.

Just off the rear screened porch, there were two more buildings joined together with concrete sidewalks from the rear porch. One of the buildings stored the milk pails, cream separator, butter churns and 10-gallon milk cans.

The other building was a smokehouse full of country hams. I believe it was the blacksmith shop that clinched the deal (for the 71.3acre farm closer to Bardstown for which he traded his approximately 365 acres 7 miles west of Bardstown in the early 1900s). ggg

Jean M. (Dickerson) Jury jmjury99@yahoo.com

“I just wanted a style of music all my own.” – Bill Monroe

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THE KENTUCKY EXPLORER

Mrs. Keckley’s Book and Mrs. Lincoln’s Reaction Famed seamstress’ plan to help the First Lady backfired

By Dr. Marshall Myers

I

t wasn’t enough that she was an ex-slave and a woman. It wasn’t enough that she was just a seamstress for Mary Todd Lincoln and became her confidant and best friend. It wasn’t enough when she wrote a book, she said, to support Mrs. Lincoln in her efforts to sell her old dresses.

But it was way too much when her 1868 book, Behind the Scenes, Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House became an expose of her “friendship” with Mrs. Lincoln.

The book had two major parts.

First, it was one of many slave narratives, tracing the injustices that Mrs. Elizabeth Keckley had suffered as a slave, including her rape and subsequent life as a “sex slave.” She records, to a degree, her indignant and harrowing experiences, including the terrible treatment by her masters and mistresses, and even her half-brother. While readers are told of her difficult fight to buy herself and her son, the book is a bit sketchy and limits her readers’ responses. Absent, for example, are the names of her owners. Mrs. Keckley excuses her “owners’ names” because it would be embarrassing to her perpetrators.

As a slave narrative, then, the book is only ordinary, with so many competing books on the market, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, far surpassing Mrs. Keckley’s in even the basics of sentimental and alarming detail. Although most slave narratives are quite sentimental, describing the many whippings, in great detail, and highlighting the harsh treatment slaves received,

Mrs. Keckley’s book suffers from a lack of details about these actions.

Second, the other part of the book records her friendship and support of Mrs. Lincoln’s emotional state, her time with the Lincoln family, and reflections of the bond she had with Mrs. Lincoln. Mrs. Keckley soon earned the trust of Mrs. Lincoln, who called Mrs. Keckley “my best living friend.” Mrs. Keckley, for example, was there the night the Lincolns’ young son, Willie, died, watching over him as the President and First Lady were hosting a reception at the White House. The Lincolns periodically checked in on Willie who steadily got worse before succumbing to typhoid fever.

Mrs. Lincoln also requested that Mrs. Keckley be at her side while President Abraham Lincoln slowly succumbed to an assassin’s bullet.

Realizing how much Mrs. Keckley meant to Mrs. Lincoln, one group frantically went to find Mrs. Keckley, only to get lost in the process.

Yet Mrs. Keckley was there for the First Lady’s grieving process,

Mrs. Lincoln telling someone that Mrs. Keckley “watched faithfully by her side.”

But Mary Todd Lincoln was practically inconsolable. She once summarized her state of mind: “I had an ambition to be Mrs. President; that ambition has been gratified, and now I must step down from my pedestal.”

To Mrs. Keckley’s credit, she didn’t give up on the grieving widow while others criticized the First Lady for her months of grieving. In fact, Mrs. Lincoln extended the whole grieving process by wearing a widow’s habit for the rest of her life.

At the time, it seemed that nothing could break the bond between Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckley. But the publication of her book in 1868 did lasting damage to the relationship with Mrs. Lincoln.

Particularly, the book’s publication so marred and so angered the First Lady that the friendship they once knew was no longer a bond that would not break. What Mrs. Keckley’s book said then created so deep a wound that it never healed.

One of Mrs. Lincoln’s contentions was the publication of the intimate letters between Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckley. Mrs. Keckley claimed that the publishers felt that the letters were “sensational” enough to “spice up” an otherwise dull tome. But Mrs. Keckley, in truth, had secured the letters from Mrs. Lincoln, creating lasting doubt on Mrs. Keckley’s story and purpose. But Mrs. Keckley’s retort was that she only wanted the public to know about Mrs. Lincoln’s financial problems.

The Kentucky Horse Park, the world’s only park dedicated to man’s relationship with the horse, opened in 1978.

58 K E NT U C K Y M O N THLY NOV EMBER 2 0 2 0

FEBRUARY 2021

Mary Todd Lincoln’s Many Debts Unknown to the President Lincoln’s assassination had another effect that Mary Todd Lincoln hadn’t planned on. Prior to the awful night at Ford’s Theatre, Mrs. Lincoln had incurred a number of outstanding debts that she hadn’t told her husband about, hiding the costs in the gardener’s account and budget. Lincoln was not in favor of the many projects that Mrs. Lincoln had for the White House.

In fact, Lincoln pooh-poohed Mrs. Lincoln’s attempt to re-do the White House, labeling her efforts a “bunch of flubadubs,” using good money, he reasoned, that could better go to the troops. But she paid little attention and routinely exceeded the amount of money in charges at elite stores in New York and Boston. While Congress had allotted certain monies for the “freshening” of the people’s house, she continued to spend extravagantly and thoughtlessly, despite Congress and her husband’s efforts to stop her.

Now those bills had come due and she was without enough money to pay them.

The Old Clothes Scandal But now, Congress balked at paying the bills. Realizing her fate, Mrs. Lincoln had to come up with some money-making method of paying all the bills. She hit upon the idea of selling the old dresses she had worn during her term as First Lady. She imagined that many of Lincoln’s admirers would jump at the chance of buying them. To assist her, she and Mrs. Keckley again went to New York to find someone to mastermind the sale.

Yet, the whole scheme soon leaked to the press, whose relationship with Mrs. Lincoln was tenuous at best. The press often called her the “rebel in the White House.” There were even hints in the press that she also was a “spy,” who had leaked information that would be helpful to the Confederacy.

But the sales of the used dresses went nowhere, a ploy in the end that cost money instead of earning any.

She again asked Congress for more and more money, funds that Congress soon found to be unnecessary and ultimately denied the requests. Part of their reaction could be traced to her attitude.

She boasted that President Lincoln, the dead martyred President, “saw my rich dresses and [was] happy to believe that the few hundred dollars that I obtain[ed] from him supply all my wants.”

At the same time, Mrs. Lincoln received some good news about her finances when she found a friend in Judge Dan Davis, who arranged for her to receive an inheritance that made the former First Lady financially comfortable. In spite of the money given to Mrs. Lincoln, she designated none for Mrs. Keckley to help deal with Mrs. Keckley’s indebtedness for material that Mrs. Keckley herself had charged, expecting to be paid back.

Mrs. Lincoln seemed to have forgotten her “best friend” amid her financial recovery and would not deign to give her seamstress any of the money.

But money wasn’t the only slight Mrs. Keckley suffered.

When Mrs. Keckley’s book was published, the public began to view Mrs. Lincoln in a more focused light. It quickly became a kind of guidebook for Mrs. Lincoln’s uncontrolled disposition. In Mrs. Keckley’s book, Mrs. Lincoln was often portrayed as a petulant, selfcentered, narcissistic person—traits that Mrs. Lincoln did not display openly to the entire world. But Mrs.

59

Keckley’s book revealed many particular instances; for example, the publication of intimate letters between Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckley provided the specific examples that the press only knew in part. In fact, the letters verified to the press that some of their own misgivings about the First Lady were true.

Mrs. Lincoln sought answers about her suspicions of Mrs. Keckley, convincing herself that she was the object of terrible cruelty.

Mrs. Lincoln then saw a sinister side to the publication of the Mrs. Keckley-Lincoln letters and quickly reached conclusions about Mrs. Keckley’s reasons for including the letters. In fact, Mrs. Lincoln remarked that she now “understood” what “evil” use the letters served.

Now, Mrs. Lincoln felt “betrayed,” likening it to the gross insult she had received from

“If these United States can be called a body, then Kentucky can be called its heart.” – Jesse Stuart

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THE KENTUCKY EXPLORER

Mrs. Keckley’s Book continued

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Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon, who told Mary Todd about the Abe Lincoln-Ann Rutledge romance in New Salem, Illinois, when Lincoln was a resident there.

Feeling deeply hurt, Mrs. Lincoln then called Mrs. Keckley “that colored historian.” The former First Lady maintained that Mrs. Keckley had no right whatsoever to relate the events that transpired at the White House.

Others said Mrs. Keckley was nothing but a “gossip monger.” One critic accused Mrs. Keckley of imposing herself in the everyday life of the Lincoln family, using that as a “cover” for the close friendship between the First Lady and Mrs. Keckley merely to gain information about the Lincolns. A reviewer even called Mrs. Keckley a ‘treacherous creature,” while another said that the lesson of the experience was that educating blacks was “a dangerous act.”

To many, then, Mrs. Keckley—an ex-slave at that— had described to the world what went on in the White House in her “tell-all” book. It was way beyond good taste in their view.

Robert Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln’s son, convinced the publisher to halt production of the embarrassing work, but it was again published to low sales in the early 1900s.

Ardently arguing her case, Mrs. Keckley tried to explain that she, too, had been duped by her publisher, but to no avail. She again tried to defend the book as a way to spur sales and alert the public of Mrs. Lincoln’s financial condition. Mrs. Keckley put it more gently and thought that Mrs. Lincoln “labored under pecuniary embarrassment.”

Apparently, Mrs. Lincoln remained cautious of Mrs. Keckley’s intentions and continued to believe that Mrs. Keckley had “betrayed” her.

The deep and abiding friendship and trust they once enjoyed had been destroyed.

And Mrs. Lincoln’s response to the entire relationship, whether intended or not, followed the script that Mary Todd Lincoln seems to have written for herself. ggg

Dr. Marshall Myers 313 Dylan Court, Richmond, KY 40475

CLASSIFIED ADS WANTED: Want to buy Kentucky license plates, 1960 and older. Contact: Ray Mauer, 3193 High Ridge Drive, Taylor Mill, KY 41015; 859.363.8880 or rmlm@fuse.net.

KENTUCKY POSTCARDS WANTED: I am interested in buying pre-1920 Kentucky postcards. Interested in topic or subject from Paducah to Pikeville. Please send photocopies of postcards with prices or call after 7pm: Carl Howell, PO Box 116, Hodgenville, KY 42748, or call 270.325.4952.

With 4.3 million people, there are now almost two barrels for every person living in Kentucky. – Kentucky Distillers Association k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 60

off the shelf

(P)-Paperback (C)-Clothbound (H)-Hardback

Fierce Friendship

Sports Stories

In Kimmery Martin’s second novel, protagonist Dr. Georgia Brown, who is from Kentucky, practices as a urologist at a hospital in Charleston, South Carolina. Her best friend, Dr. Jonah Tsukada, works at the same hospital but is fired for treating transgender patients. As the pair reacts to these developments, one of their friends notes, “There’s an antidote for everything. Sometimes you just have to figure out what it is.”

Martin’s characters are beautifully developed and a bit quirky. Georgia is such a fierce friend that she makes a mistake when she concludes the means justifies the end.

The setting, a busy hospital, is a scene with which Martin is familiar.

She was an emergency room doctor in Charlotte, North Carolina, before she started writing full time. She indicates she was inspired to write this book in part because she had a colleague who was instructed to stop providing care for transgender patients in her practice and was fired when she refused.

Martin’s first novel, Queen of Hearts, was among Real Simple magazine’s Best Books of 2018.

Martin has deep roots in Kentucky, having grown up just outside of Berea.

Few have witnessed and written about as many sporting events as Billy Reed, who cut his teeth covering Henry Clay High School sports for the Lexington Herald-Leader, while he a student there in 1959, and then stayed on the beat for more than six decades.

In Last of a BReed, Reed provides colorful accounts of his adventures while covering a sport or event, along with some of the notable coaches, players and insiders he encountered. Details of his experiences at NCAA games, the World Series, the Super Bowl, major golf events and, of course, the Kentucky Derby give the reader a glimpse of what Reed witnessed throughout his career. The book includes black-and-white images of Reed with some of his well-known friends, such as Denny Crum, Bob Hope, William T. Young and Muhammad Ali. Originally from Mount Sterling, Reed is an award-winning journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated, the Louisville CourierJournal and the Lexington HeraldLeader and has been featured in many media outlets, including Kentucky Monthly, as a freelance writer, radio host and television contributor. He has written 18 books.

By Mary Lynn Collins

By Deborah Kohl Kremer

The Antidote for Everything, By Kimmery Martin, Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House, $26 (H)

Last of a BReed: A Legendary Kentucky Writer’s Journey Through Six Decades of Sports and Journalism, By Billy Reed, Acclaim Press, $26.95 (H)

An Inspiration for Many Jane B. Stephenson likely can count 1,000 and probably legions more individuals she has influenced in a positive, life-changing way.

That’s because in 1987, she founded the New Opportunity School for Women, a program in Berea that empowers women from Appalachia to overcome severe obstacles and build fulfilling, successful lives.

I Am Not a Nobody relates how the school began, shares inspiring testimonials from a selection of its 925 graduates, and includes a biography of Stephenson written by Crystal White Kieloch, an assistant professor of English at Virginia’s Bluefield College and a volunteer for NOSW. The idea for the school was spurred by a phone call to Stephenson from Kentucky writer Gurney Norman regarding an eastern Kentucky woman in need.

The endeavor has now grown to serve people in Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

The dynamic Stephenson, a recipient of the Use Your Life Award on the The Oprah Winfrey Show, is the widow of former Berea College president and Appalachian scholar John Stephenson, who died in 1994.

By Steve Flairty I Am Not a Nobody, By Jane B. Stephenson, with Crystal White Kieloch, Shadelandhouse Modern Press, $20 (P)

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m

61

past tense/present tense

by Bill Ellis

“Four Score and Seven Years Ago”

L

ike many folks of my generation, I memorized President Abraham Lincoln’s immortal Gettysburg Address back in elementary school. I still can repeat the 272 words if given a little prompting. Lincoln read his brief speech in a rather high-pitched “backwoods Kentucky drawl” that did not carry well.

Photographs of the scene indicate a crowd that probably would not have even heard his voice as they milled about the recent battlefield.

Is there room for one more book about the most famous Kentuckian in American history? Though an estimated 4,000 books have been written about the 16th president, there is always a new slant on Lincoln’s life.

Marshall Myers’ The Rhetoric of Lincoln’s Letters, published in 2018, addresses another facet of this immortal president’s life. With only a smidgen of education, Lincoln began writing letters for himself and others.

He honed his writing skills early in his career as a lawyer and as a politician, becoming first a Whig, then a Republican. As president, extensive correspondence and speeches became essential. At least 5,000 letters in his handwriting have been authenticated.

In the days before modern media, Lincoln mastered the art of letter writing. According to Myers, “Lincoln chose not only the matter he discussed but also the manner.” As the exemplar of a “rhetorician,” he was “a writer who was concerned about what he wanted to say but also about how he wanted to express himself.”

During his presidency, Lincoln not only had to deal with the unprecedented rebellion of 11 Southern states while keeping Kentucky and other border states reined in, he also addressed oftentimes “recalcitrant 62 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY F EBR UARY 2 0 2 1

generals,” pacified some cabinet members who thought themselves among the angels, and dealt with a public that soon tired of war and its terrible bloodiness. He pulled it all off rather effectively and gracefully for the most part.

Myers credits many of the books about Lincoln as recognizing his brilliance in communicating his thoughts and ideals to the public.

Lincoln was not good at speaking extemporaneously; he was, according to one source, a “little better than dreadful.” He took full advantage of modern technology of the time, receiving and sending messages daily at the telegraph office at the War Department, sometimes staying through the night. In other words, he stayed on top of things. According to Myers, “Lincoln had his own voice, one that captured the essence of his rugged beginnings.”

Myers organized his book into convenient logical chapters, first developing the importance of studying Lincoln’s ethos (character, culture, and attitudes), the influences on his writing style and thoughts, then examples of his writings.

Lincoln prodded Generals George McClellan, Don Carlos Buell and Joseph Hooker to “move into action” without much success before realizing that William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant were competent officers who could lead to victory.

Lincoln was not always consistent in his thinking and actions, particularly when it came to granting “clemency” for desertion. Lincoln dealt quite easily with Kentucky since it occupied such a prominent place in the nation’s economy. His famous statement that to “lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game” led him to be lenient in pardoning Kentucky’s Union soldiers for desertion. Moreover, he felt compassion for the younger soldiers.

Even Lincoln’s love letters offer valuable insight into this most complicated individual. Importantly, Lincoln knew that he was not attractive. “Besides having large ears

and a prominent nose, Lincoln’s neck was long and thin,” Myers explained. “He had coarse black hair that rarely was neatly combed.”

Combined with his squeaky voice, his gawky unusual gestures, and backwoods Kentucky drawl, he was not the most suitable of bachelors.

However, he had romances with Ann Rutledge, Mary Owens and, finally, with Kentuckian Mary Todd.

Though opposites, Abe and Mary became a formidable love match that blossomed into a political partnership.

When the final ballots of the election of 1860 were confirmed, Lincoln exclaimed, “Mary, we are elected.” In his letters, he always addressed her as “My dear wife,” showing an undying affection even when she sometimes acted impetuously.

In an age of tweeting without thinking, it is a pleasure to read a book about a president who had a brilliant mind, masterful touch with the written word, and uncompromising love of people and his country.

I have written before about my fascination with Lincoln, including his wonderful sense of humor that buoyed his spirits in an otherwise tragic life. There is another book about Lincoln that all Kentuckians should be aware of.

Loathing Lincoln: An American Tradition from the Civil War to the Present (2014), written by native Kentuckian John McKee Barr, is not to be missed. From the beginning of his public life, Lincoln always had detractors pointing out flaws in his personality, looks and passions. As Barr explained in our email exchanges some time ago, he received letters from individuals who still detest the 16th president.

One person said that he celebrated the birthday of John Wilkes Booth. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Actually, no, considering the super-charged political atmosphere of the present day.

A brief review by Deborah Kohl Kremer of The Rhetoric of Lincoln’s Letters appeared in the September 2020 issue of Kentucky Monthly, page 39.

field notes

by Gary Garth

Stuff Nobody Wants, But Nobody Wants to Get Rid Of

I

live in a house that was built in 1970. That makes it about 50 years old, give or take a few months. And it’s about what you would expect: three bedrooms, a couple of baths, single carport since converted into an office.

Paneling. Ceiling tile. Hardwired in-wall ceramic heaters (no longer in use), the sight of which nearly caused my young electrician to suffer a stroke, but a half-century ago, they were state-of-the-art home heating units. A large, comfortable kitchen designed and equipped for functionality and not show. The place is homey in a takeyour-home-seriously-but-don’t-take-your-stuff-tooseriously sort of way.

My wife and I have lived here for about 25 years, and in this Calloway County house, we have built a happy life, reared our twin daughters, and put off any serious remodeling until it could no longer reasonably be avoided.

Until recently, what few improvements that had been made to the place had been made by me. They, too, are about what you would expect. Of the few skills I possess, carpentry is not among them.

Most things had become outdated, and a few things were beginning not to work, so we spent the last few months of 2020 and the opening weeks of 2021 basically living with carpenters. Plumbers and electricians ducked in and out but rarely stayed long. However, our carpenters, Dave and Shannon, were here most mornings at 7. They have been delightful housemates: skilled, professional, efficient, polite and courteous. They also made a mess, which was unavoidable but also surprisingly enlightening.

Example: At one point in the process, my wife and I decided to redo the pantry, which never really was a pantry but a closet lined with rickety shelving and stuffed with a mishmash of gear and goodies—everything from broken fishing tackle to past-its-use-by-date food items. A bucket of spinning reels and parts of spinning reels, and a box of undeveloped 35mm film. Fly rods and assorted reels; some cased, others not; some lined, others empty.

Raincoats and muck boots. Hats and caps. Bottled water and sale-rack wine. A turkey-hunting vest with no fewer than four mouth and two box calls crammed into various

pockets. An envelope of receipts from the 2013-2014 tax year. Canned tomatoes. Water chestnuts. A jar of pickles.

Two bags of whole-bean coffee. A soft-sided shotgun case.

A cigar box of yet-to-be-sorted memories from the home of my deceased brother. A portable fly-tying vise with a missing tension screw. Two wooden bowls cut by a longdeceased and much-beloved uncle, his initials shakily cut into each. Another wooden bowl purchased from a street vendor in Dakar. A set of .030 oversized piston rings for Ford 4-cylinder engines from 1928-1934.

While shoveling out this hovel and readying it for the carpenters to do their work, one of the last items excavated was a cardboard box from the corner of a top shelf. In it were a pair of child-size Cabela’s neoprene boot-foot waders. The left knee had been patched—a repair I’d hastily made nearly two decades ago in a motel in Wawa, Ontario, not far from Lake Superior Provincial Park and the Sand River, where my daughter Sarah and I had spent the day catching brook trout barely big enough to hold. The crud that’d been smeared across the waders’ chest could have been fish offal or dregs from a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was that kind of trip.

The child who fit the waders is a woman now. She still likes to fish, and she’s still good at it.

My wife walked in.

“Are those Sarah’s waders!?”

I nodded.

“Where did you find them?”

“In a box on the top shelf.”

She took them from me and turned them over in her hands, running her fingers over the patch, which was loose at one corner.

“What are you going to do with them?”

It was a strangely emotional moment. Lives become cluttered with the stuff nobody wants but nobody wants to get rid of.

I glanced at the box I’d designated for items destined for Goodwill. It was about half full—a few pieces of clothing, books, one of the raincoats and a tennis racket.

“I think I’ll keep ’em for a while longer.” k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 63

vested interest

extra vested I have struggled with what, if anything, I can write about the recent events in our nation’s capital. All I know is that everyone, regardless of which side of the aisle they’re seated, is more “visceral” than at any other time—other than maybe the months leading up to the Civil War. Visceral in that they’re thinking from their gut—a place of deep-seated fear—and not their brain—a place of logic.

I have witnessed friendships, years in the making, dissolve over a few ill-considered words.

We are Kentuckians—we are Americans, which means we value freedoms, beginning with, but not limited to, the freedom of speech. When speech turns into actions, such as the sacking of the Capitol or the vandalism of Senator Mitch McConnell’s house, things have not only gone too far but border on a breaking point from which there is no easy return. Actions do speak louder than words.

We have numerous nasty phrases in our lexicon that people are quick to use (some with accompanying hand gestures) but would never commit. When they do, most often, they go to prison.

Part of my hesitation in writing anything presently is that things are so fluid.

I’m writing in the early weeks January, and most of you will not read this until early February. If anything, we’ve learned thus far in 2021 that only two to three weeks can alter the social and political landscape and render useless any previous understanding of the world in which we live.

Bull Run

I

would like to welcome once again the readers of Kentucky Explorer. You may notice a new section in this month’s issue, and it’s dedicated to the longtime efforts of the dedicated team in Jackson, Kentucky, led by founder Charles Hayes.

When Charles decided to retire at the end of 2020, we approached him and asked if we could continue what he started—a reader-submitted view of Kentucky’s diverse history.

What can you expect? Here’s an example, from A History of Jessamine County from Its Earliest Settlement: Maj. Benjamin Netherland opened a racetrack on the Willoughby place near Sulphur Well and maintained it for many years. In 1802, there was a quarter-mile race on the track, and the Major announced an upcoming 1-mile race with a $50 purse, which was “free for anything with four legs and hair.”

At that time, working on a farm, Michael Arnspiger had broken a bull to the saddle, which he often rode to the mill. He immediately put the bull in training and for several days gave him turns around the racetrack. He used spurs on the bull, and when these were dug into his sides, the bull was accustomed to bellow. On race day, Arnspiger appeared with his bull. He placed a dried ox-hide on the bull’s rump and carried a tinhorn. He demanded the judges the right to enter his animal, to which the horse owners vehemently

objected. Arnspiger appealed to Major Netherland, asking if he hadn’t said the race was free to “anything with four legs and hair.” Netherland admitted that he had and said the bull had a right to enter.

When the drum was tapped, Arnspiger blew his horn and planted his spurs in the sides of the bull, which bounded off with a dreadful bellow. The ox-hide flapping presented a spectacle, combined with the noise, that had never been seen on the racetrack before.

STEPHEN M. VEST The horses Publisher + Editor-in-Chief immediately fled the track, and Arnspiger galloped home the winner. The losers claimed they had been swindled, and Arnspiger should not have been allowed to blow the tinhorn or use the ox-hide, and that but for this, he could not have won. Arnspiger accepted a rematch, taking the ox-hide off and leaving his tinhorn in the stands.

Arnspiger planted his spurs in redoubled fury. The loud bellow that followed drove the horses from the track despite the riders’ exertions, and Arnspiger pulled in the second $50 purse.

Kwiz Answers: 1. A. Sales of Hall’s book jumped when Teddy recommended it during one of his speeches; 2. C. Haldeman, a secessionist, attended Maysville Academy with U.S. Grant and Union Gen. William “Bull” Nelson; 3. A. Jefferson C. Davis, a Hoosier, shot and killed Nelson because he said his superior officer had disrespected him; 4. B. Pippa Passes was the name of a verse drama (a 19th-century performance similar to the Broadway show Hamilton) written by English playwright and poet Robert Browning; 5. C. The geographic center of Kentucky is in Taylor County, 55 miles southwest of Danville; 6. B. UPIKE (then Pikeville College); 7. C. Dwight Yoakam; 8. C. Twyman, a former grade-school principal, was elected mayor of Glasgow in 1968; 9. A. There are eight counties and a dozen cities named for “the hero of Kings Mountain”; 10. B. Kentucky’s first female governor considered a career in modeling before going into politics.

64 K E NT U C K Y M ON THLY F EBR UARY 2021

10 Consecutive Appearances on

6 Straight Years Advancing to the National

Jay Mathews’ List of Top Performing Schools with Elite Students

Science Bowl Competition in Washington, D.C. 156 National Merit Finalists

We come from all across Kentucky to The Gatton Academy on the campus of Western Kentucky University. As juniors and seniors in high school, we enroll in WKU courses, conduct research with WKU professors, and study abroad. While we are challenged academically, we thrive in a supportive environment designed just for us and make lifelong friends. Best yet, our tuition, meals, housing, and fees are all paid for by the Commonwealth of Kentucky. You, too, can have a future filled with infinite possibilities.

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