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Opinion

  • Bankruptcy, poor health and life...

    Let’s call them Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
    They live in Anderson County.
    Mr. and Mrs. Smith may be your neighbors.
    Mr. Smith will be 65 in August.
    Mrs. Smith is 62.
    Mr. and Mrs. Smith don’t want to be identified by their real names because of you, their neighbors.
    “We don’t want to be looked down on,” Mrs. Smith told me last week.
    Don’t want to appear like they’re looking for a free handout, they said.

  • Saudi prince doesn’t like fracking...

    There will be plenty of dire predictions and scary scenarios on tap when the fiscal court hosts a meeting Tuesday to allow residents to share their views about the proposed Bluegrass Pipeline.
    The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the basement of the Extension office in the county park.

  • What middle schoolers can expect 21...

    Reader discretion for this column is advised.
    If you are an Anderson County student (some Anderson County teachers may find they feel the same), there is incredibly disturbing information in the following sentence.  
    There are only 21 days between today and the first day of school.
    I know this because I recently dreamed of a tornado (one of my tried and true “school is coming” nightmares) descending upon Lawrenceburg and swallowing up the Bypass.  

  • Law enforcement done the right way

    Column as I see ’em …
    Rather than discuss something negative this week, how about something positive?
    Positive if you share my opinion, that is.
    I have never been more proud to call Anderson County home than I was last Tuesday morning.
    After catching wind that a man dressed in black was walking north on the Bypass while carrying a military-styled rifle (they’re not assault rifles unless used in an assault), I hustled to the location to see what was going on.

  •
    One not-so-fine day in Paris

    This was not the day trip to France I imagined.   
    I wanted magic. Flaky croissants floating down from the sky like biblical manna. The “La Vie en Rose” orchestral soundtrack piped through discreet speakers along the Seine River.
    My expectations may have been a little high.
    What I got were a few sleepy minutes stolen in the hotel room to scribble three words in an empty reporter’s notebook —
    “We hated Paris.”

  • A public lesson in school taxes

    Column as I see ’em …
    Here’s something most of you (and I suspect at least several members of the school board) don’t know.
    By the end of next year, local property tax revenue for the school district will have increased by an estimated $612,000 since 2009, a whopping 9 percent jump at a time most folks are happy to simply avoid getting their hourly wages slashed.

  •
    Hardware purchase an Independence...

    Don Simmons was shocked when he saw the receipt.
    When the Fairview Drive looked at the total for the hardware he purchased July 4 at Tractor Supply, it came to the $17.76 — the year of our nation’s birth on our nation’s birthday.
    “I thought it was funny, being the year of the American Revolution,” Simmons said Monday by phone. “I asked the clerk, ‘Hey, since you have to work today, are you charging everyone the same amount?’ She laughed in return and agreed that was pretty interesting.”

  •
    Bringing sewing machines back to...

    The Mad Hermit of the Hill brings sewing machines back to life in the basement of a spacious, two-story Lawrenceburg log cabin.
    His patients — the black swans of antique Singers and their white and squat modern offspring — wait in queue for Nelson Maynard, the one-stop repair shop at Nelson Maynard Sewing Machine Service and Repair.
    Maynard himself sits perched on a stool in front of a modern Singer 5825 C model, pausing a moment to snap a photo of a common sewing machine problem for his Facebook page.

  • The perfect choice for library’s PR...

    Dear Anderson Public Library Board of Trustees,
    I read in this week’s edition of The Anderson News (see A1) that you are considering hiring a public relations firm to help improve the library’s image.
    Despite being the person viewed by several (or more) of your board members as responsible for creating the library’s negative image in the first place, please consider this letter as official notice that I’m applying for job of repairing it.
    Oh, stop laughing. I’m serious about this!

  •
    From Meaghan’s mailbag: Twins...

    Given the choice, I’d prefer to lick envelopes than type e-mails.
    Letter writing, to me, can still be an art form.
    That’s all it is now, really.  
    You sit down with a carefully chosen piece of stationery and your favorite smooth-inked pen.
    You reflect on the week’s events and write them down unhurriedly, mostly because you’ve now forgotten how to hold a pen.
    You are a modern calligrapher, you tell yourself. Your seasick, unreadable cursive letter will one day be kept behind plated glass, a symbol of a bygone era.

  •
    Want to shut me up? Here’s your...

    Judge-Executive John Wayne Conway will probably have to cheat.
    Again.
    Brian Stivers, the property value administrator who couldn’t hit the ocean from a boat, probably won’t even bother to show up, not after his embarrassing rubber-armed performance last time.
    In fact, I’d be more worried about getting dunked by bunch of 5-year-olds who got cut from a pee wee league team than Stivers or Conway, neither of whom could dunk me the last time I sat in a dunking booth for a good cause.

  •
    On being soldiers and fathers

    Many men can be fathers, but not all can handle being in the military and maintaining a family.
    Families with fathers in the military must endure a great amount of fear for the one serving, but appreciation for what they are doing.
    The children who live the uncertain military lifestyle can become more resilient as they must patiently wait for mom or dad to return.
    With Father’s Day approaching, we recognize and celebrate the some of those fathers who are not just known as heroes to the many Americans they help protect, they are also known as dad.

  •
    ‘Glass mountain’: beautiful or...

    A meth lab burned down.
    Firefighters set the fire to practice for future blazes in the industrial park.
    Tim Hostetler, the operations manager at Dlubak Glass Co., in Lawrenceburg, has heard both rumors as the reasons behind the recycling plant’s massive fire May 3.
    He’s heard other descriptions of “glass mountain” in the past 12 years he’s worked for the Dlubak Glass Co.:
    Eyesore.
    Diamonds.
    And especially this conversation topic:
    What will happen if a tornado ripped through glass mountain?

  • Search for .22 round a living...

    It was common when I was in high school for me to dig deep for milk money and pull several loose .22 rounds out of my pants pocket while sorting my change.
    The lunch lady at the cash register didn’t run away screaming and the local police department’s version of a S.W.A.T. team didn’t storm the building.
    It was a fact in our rural little town that boys (and a fair number of girls) had and used guns. Seeing them hanging from racks in the rear windows of their trucks parked outside the school building was as unremarkable as it was commonplace.

  • The Beatles, robots and helping...

    Robots could lead lost Alzheimer’s patients to their rooms with a little help from the Beatles.
    “We discovered music helped seniors regain some of their memory,” Quetzal Velasco told me at the Extension building Monday afternoon.
    Quetzal is not an engineer.  She’s not an Alzheimer’s disease specialist.
    She is 15, and a member of the local LEGO Legends team that programs robots through workshops (there are several coming up this summer) and competitions to help solve real problems.

  • Coffee maker little help for needy...

    Column as I see ’em …
    Raise your hand if you think it’s acceptable to use tax dollars to feed a hungry child.
    OK, now raise your hand if you think it’s acceptable to use tax dollars to clothe that child.
    Now raise your hand if you’re OK with using tax dollars to purchase that child’s parents a coffee maker.
    Hmm. Didn’t think so.
    Those who didn’t raise their hand on the coffee pot question won’t like what they’re about to read.

  • Wishing Anderson County, and myself...

    Inserted in your newspaper this Wednesday are the traditional two-year anniversary gifts: cotton and china.
    Not really.
    Please don’t go searching for cotton tufts or delicate china dishes tucked behind your sports section.
    Unless we have unusual coupons for all of our readers this week, they’re not there.
    Saturday marks my two-year anniversary of working at The Anderson News.
    In the lifespan of the average toddler raging through his terrible 2’s, I’ve learned to make Lawrenceburg and The Anderson News my home.

  • Trustees’ pay raise histrionics...

    Column as I see ’em …
    Library trustees Amy Kennedy and Katie Hutton need to take a deep breath and calm down.
    Or at least log onto this newspaper’s website and read what I’ve actually written instead of what they apparently think I have.
    Their histrionics during last Tuesday night’s library board meeting about getting “slayed” in the newspaper after voting to give library employees a pay increase was, to be kind, unfortunate. To be not so kind, ridiculous.

  • Previously, on amateur wrestling ...

    I attended Wildcat Championship Wrestling for the first time about a month ago.
    Might as well been four years ago.
    Forget British period dramas with swooning orchestral soundtracks.
    Forget Grey’s Anatomy.
    Try following the soap operatic dramas of amateur wrestling.
    You miss one Saturday of Lawrenceburg wrestling, you’ve missed pages of plot.
    Amateur wrestling flits from storyline to storyline, with the motivations of characters with names like TJ Lightning and Black Rain constantly changing.

  • Do mom and dad or government know...

    A philosophical debate is shaping up as class action lawsuits against public libraries continue to spread across Kentucky.
    The overarching question is fairly simple, and goes something like this: Should taxpayers, with an assist from fiscal courts, have the power to control library tax rates, or should that be left to those smart enough to actually understand how important libraries actually are?