Saturday, April 20. Skaters, bikers, and bladers line up at Woodland Park for Friends for Skateparks’ First Annual Greenskate one-mile fun ride. Greenskate supports action sports as a healthy and environmentally friendly alternative mode of transportation, while also supporting the development of action sports facilities within the Lexington Parks & Recreation system. To learn more, find us on Facebook by searching “Friends for Skateparks.”
Photo by Jeanna Justice: You, Me Studio
Find more at notfromherecomic.blogspot.com
By Colleen Glenn
Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) strike an unlikely friendship with a wanted man, Mud (Matthew McConaughey).
Every now and then, a film comes along that feels authentic and startlingly fresh. This rarity happened twice this spring, as two such films graced the screen at the Kentucky Theatre during April/May: Mud (dir: Jeff Nichols) and The Place Beyond the Pines (dir: Derek Cianfrance).
Although the Kentucky Theatre had to cancel its special premiere of Mud when Oscar-nominated, Lexington native actor Michael Shannon’s shooting schedule on HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” changed, you should still get down to the Kentucky to see the film. The theatre, currently in the expensive process of converting to digital projection, still needs funds to support this transition, and Mud will not disappoint. Continue reading »
By Joseph G. Anthony
“Ohio Street opened up—300 block, then the 400 block. The powers-that-be would select certain streets or certain areas where we could live.” Amanda Cooper Elliot. Photo by Danny Mayer.
“The past is a foreign country; they did things differently there,” says the narrator in the 1970 movie, The Go-Between.
I certainly hope so.
I wonder if it’s a particularly American trait that the past so quickly becomes first a rumor and then something so dead we view it with the same amazement present-day Romans must feel when they try to extend their subway only to discover yet another lost civilization. But I am not speaking of ancient cities. I’m talking of the lifetime memories of many of our fellow Kentuckians.
I say this because I’ve been researching and writing a novel—Wanted: Good Family—timed mostly in 1948 with long visits to the 1920s. It’s set in Fayette, Scott, and Estill Counties. Three of my narrators are African-American, or—as was the still-respectable and self-applied appellation—colored. My other three narrators are white. My white narrators don’t have an easy time of it: being poor and white in the first half of the century in Kentucky wasn’t, as Bette Davis said of old age, for sissies. But being poor and colored in Kentucky…well, if they had been Hindu instead of Baptists, they might have wondered just what the hell they had done in those past lives to be faced with so many challenges: spiritual, emotional, physical. Continue reading »
For more Epling creations, visit www.christopherepling.com
By Wesley Houp
Editor’s note: What follows is an account of Wesley Houp and Danny Mayer, intrepid paddlers of the Kentucky River watershed, as they branch into Tennessee waters.
Floating on the upper Duck. Photo by Wesley Houp.
By the time we’ve trimmed the gear and bungied loose odds and ends, the sky has turned to pitch, not quite the “bible-black” of Tweedy’s predawn, but close enough. The waning crescent, locked out, fails to backlight the low cloud-cover. It’s only 5:30pm but it might as well be midnight. The magnetic sibilance of shoalwater dilates my pupils as I turn in the current to face the dark downstream. This is Danny’s first Duck River paddle, a stretch we’ve planned for months, and we’ve already had to trim eight miles off the front, concession to wives and children waiting patiently at journey’s end. We’ll miss the Little Hurricane and Fall Creeks, but we’ll still camp tonight at the mouth of Sinking Creek above the nameless island and mussel-bound braids of Shearin Bend. We find our line, hit the chute and shoot down the middle in quick succession, boats for tongues in a manner of articulation, the river, the ultimate grammar, its nominals of stone and deadfall submerging and emerging, modifications lisping and lapping, auxiliary perfect and progressive with modal: “Even when you’re gone, I will have been traveling over the stones for an eternity.”
Danny lets out a joyous little “whoop”, but I’m momentarily distracted; some water finds its way over my gunnels and into my shoes, reminding me of what I’ve forgotten: waterproof boots. My worn out Sperrys sponge up the slosh. At least the night is mild, and with only a thirty percent chance of rain perhaps my feet alone will suffer the indignities of damp. As if to lighten the mood, the bottle of Jim Beam #7 clears its throat: “Shoes come and go, but a river lasts forever. Bottoms up. Downstream and seaward!” Danny drifts up beside me, and we heed the call. Continue reading »
DDG employ Killbox strategy to victory
By Sunny Montgomery
Junk Drawer makes a GRRR face at opposing pivot. Photo by Johnna Mckee of Speakeasy Studios.
On April 20, the Rollergirls of Central Kentucky (ROCK) faced off against the Dixie Derby Girls (DDG) of Huntsville, AL, during the first home bout of the 2013 season. After two full seasons of coverage, I was finally in the swing of things. As I entered the arena, I delighted in its familiarity.
The arena smelled of hot dogs and beer. Beyonce blared from the speakers overhead while the Pebbles, ROCK’s junior roller derby, chased each other excitedly through the crowd. I nodded hello to the photographers, the score-keepers, even the avid fan who never misses a home bout and who brings a bean bag chair from home so that he may lounge comfortably in the suicide seating.
I took a seat close to the action, opened my notebook and peered onto the track where ROCK was warming up. I squinted and adjusted my glasses…
Wait. Something was different. Continue reading »
Open Letter to members of the University of Kentucky community
March 31, 2013
Dear UK Faculty, Students, and Staff:
I am writing this letter to make you aware of a discriminatory policy that is in place at the University of Kentucky, a policy that I have been personally affected by and which the University continues to stand behind. According to the UK-HMO Description of Benefits and Services, the following health care coverage is listed as an exclusion: “Sex Transformation/Sexual Dysfunction–Services, supplies, drugs or other care related to sex transformation, gender identity, sexual or erectile dysfunction or inadequacies.” Setting aside the problematic conflation of sex transformation and sexual dysfunction, this policy directly discriminates against transgender members of the UK community. Continue reading »
Family fun bike ride
On Saturday, May 18, a morning of children-focused bike activities will take place in downtown Lexington. The morning will commence at 8:00 am with a “Bike Safety Rodeo” and the “Sprout Sprint,” a free youth bike race coordinated by the YMCA that is open to all kids up to age 12!
This year’s Sprout Sprint course will be a short closed circuit on which particpants will ride laps; kids will compete for prizes in several age brackets: 5 and under, 6 – 9, and 10 – 12. Heat races will take place every 10 minutes beginning at 8:00am.
At 10:00 am, the Family Fun Bike Ride will leave downtwon. The route will take riders along Fourth Street, down Newtown Pike, across Maxwell and High Streets, up South Ashland and around Richmond Road along the July 4 10K race route. Organizers demand that all riders must register in order to participate in any of the biking activities.
The morning promises raffles, music, booths, and more.
Design Your Own Revolution
“Design Your Own Revolution,” the third component of a larger work in progress called “discomfort,” will take place on May 24.
Announced in February, the revolution design project offered community members a limited amount of resources with which to design a revolution. Resources offered to the winning participant include one pop-up office space, one design consultant, one table, two chairs, two pencils and a pencil sharpener, one copy machine, 500 sheets of copy paper, and 100 $1.00 billls.
After reviewing entries, Dakota Smith was selected to define the role of the revolutionary. On Friday, May 24, from 9 am-3 pm, Dakota will be designing his own revolution at Land of Tomorrow (LOT) Gallery (527 East Third Street) with the help of Revolution Designer Paul Michael Brown.
Revolution curator Bruce Burris of ElandF West attributes no preconceived hopes for the project, “There is no particular method here and absolutely no expectation. I may or not be present. Dakota is welcome to buy $100 worth of cigarettes and beer, design a revolution or anything at all. Paul is welcome to assist or hinder or leave. 9am-3pm is meant to mimic a typical business day. Anyone may attend/observe during this time.”
NoC interviews Phil Tkacz
Eastern State Hospital Cemetery. Photo by Danny Mayer.
North of Center sat down with Eastern State Hospital Cemetery Preservation Project president Phil Tkacz to get an update on the mass graves that have been found over the years around the grounds of Eastern State Hospital (soon to become the Bluegrass Community and Technical College Newtown Pike campus) . On May 14, Tkacz and others will gather to both remember and properly re-bury the remains of a number of the hospital’s former patients.
North of Center: In December 2010, Bruce Burris published an article in North of Center on your attempts to draw public awareness and recognition to a mass grave discovered on the back side of the Eastern State Hospital lot. Bruce described the site as a “tiny spot, not much larger than a typical middle class backyard, [that] contains the remains of between 4,000 and 7,000 people — mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, politicians, shopkeepers, farmers…humans.” He also noted that “these numbers do not include the remains of the many thousands more we believe to be scattered throughout the original ESH property.” Can you update us on what new things you have found since then? Continue reading »
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