Opinion

I just love the smell of dead leaves.

It sounds a little creepy, but it's true. And up until a couple weeks ago, I hadn't really realized what I was smelling.

My husband and I were at Veteran's Park in Lexington enjoying a lovely evening and sauntering along the walking path.

I took a deep breath and made a comment something like, "I just love the smell of fall. I can't really describe it, but there's just a smell, and when you smell it, you know it's fall."

It goes without saying that the world has no shortage of repugnant, awful people.

Given my chosen profession, I happen across at least my fair share of those people, most of which are foul-mouthed agitators bent on telling me why they or someone they know shouldn't be listed in the paper's court docket or some such nonsense.

I have never lost a moment's sleep over those people, mostly because along with their charges, we also print the outcomes of their cases. In short, if you're charged, it's in the paper; when you're exonerated or found guilty, that's in there, too.

To the editor:

I would like to comment on the folks who don't want to pay to have their refrigerators, TVs, couches and mattresses taken away or mess with it themselves.

We live in the beautiful country area. We love it here. Why do you want to dump your unwanted things on our roadsides? The deer and turkey just can't figure out what to do with it.

It is enough that we have to deal with the folks dropping kittens, puppies, old dogs and cats and any other animals they don't want. We can't take them all.

Nowadays, I'm just working part-time at The Anderson News. While I do enjoy the additional time to myself, there is at least one downside-I have way too much time available to contemplate things that bug me but over which I have no control.

While I can't control these things, I can fantasize about dealing with them when I'm king. Here are a few.

To the editor:

Just wanted to give a shout out for the Anderson County Road Department for repairing Lanes Mill Road.

Thanks goes to road foreman Chip Chambers and crew for a job well done.

Scott Frasier

Lawrenceburg

We now have 1.2 million reasons to be optimistic about the possibility of new jobs and industry finally making their mutual way to Anderson County.

That's the number of dollar bills soon to be neatly stacked in the Economic Development Authority's bank account, courtesy of the privately held Industrial Foundation's decision to disband and hand over its dough.

Test scores have been on the minds of a lot of folks as of late, especially those with children in public schools.

Most media attention tends to focus on the local schools' progress in meeting academic goals so that the schools can be compared with ones in neighboring communities, or so one state's progress can be matched against another state's.

Not nearly as much ink is spent on student dropout rates. Perhaps it should be. While Kentucky has made progress, it continues to have one of the nation's highest dropout rates.

If recent newspaper articles about the scandal involving former University of Louisville's College of Education Dean Robert Felner are accurate, school president James Ramsey has some serious fence mending to do with his faculty.

Felner is no longer with the university and is currently being investigated by the feds for alleged misappropriation of grant money. By most published accounts, he is not a pleasant person.

Last week my wife and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary.

Other than exchanging cards and perhaps going out to dinner, we usually don't do anything special or exchange gifts on our anniversaries.

But realizing that I needed do something extra for this anniversary, since staying together for so long has become increasingly rare, I purchased her a set of nice ruby earrings. (I looked on the Internet and discovered that the 40th is the "ruby" anniversary and it's also her birthstone.)