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Opinion

  • To be heard by the men, she spoke...

    The Roman Catholic priest called, the sing-song lilt of his voice heard through the telephone:
    “So, what are we going to suggest today?” he asked her, the usual conversation necessary before the next committee meeting.
    Retired Disciples of Christ minister Pat Yates, sitting at her kitchen table last Friday afternoon, said her ideas on Christian education would only be heard if spoken through the mouth of her friend, a Roman Catholic priest also serving on a committee to develop programs for inner-city youth in Ohio.

  •
    Gaines case a black eye for legal...

    Column as I see ’em …
    I’ll bet you’re curious about this photo, and I’ll get to that in a moment, but first let me say how disappointed I am that the fellow charged with drunk hunting and wanton endangerment has pleaded guilty instead of standing trial.
    David Gaines, a Lawrenceburg man who in my view was railroaded into this mess, pleaded out on three Class D felony counts and in essence now admits to shooting in the direction of other hunters earlier this year in a dove field.

  • Blood, letters and tears

    My sister cried into my coat early Monday morning.
    The frost on her windshield hadn’t melted, so we puffed goodbyes outside into the cold air as her car purred low while it warmed.  
    I only knew she cried by the quivering sound of her words muffled into the thick, green fabric of my shoulder as she hugged me goodbye.
    You see I prefer no eye contact when I say goodbye to people, because as everyone knows, tears are highly contagious.

  • Fiscal court saves taxpayers...

    With a pair of unanimous votes last Tuesday morning, the Anderson County Fiscal Court saved taxpayers here and across Kentucky $1 million.
    OK, that’s probably not accurate. It’s more likely that those two votes save taxpayers several million dollars in the coming years by simply doing the right thing.
    The first vote was about the county’s 120-plus miles of so-called orphan roads, the second about making developers honor their commitments.

  • Turner first grade students offer...

    First graders are champions of the non sequitur.
    They’ve perfected the art of the artless transition. One minute, you could be asking them what they think the tools of being a reporter are.
    The next, they’re describing the most efficient and safest way to enter a burning building.
    Since I cover education for The Anderson News, I’m in and out of schools fairly often, but unfortunately, I don’t often spend unlimited time with students.

  • Harold Todd is no Tea Party whack-...

    Column as I see ’em ...
    Lawrenceburg’s Harold Todd might light a candle before the altar of Tea Party darling Sen. Ted Cruz each night before going to bed, but I doubt it.
    Yet a column by Al Smith in Sunday’s edition of the Lexington “Herald-Leader” would lead readers to believe that anyone associated with the lawsuits against several Kentucky libraries is a Cruz-loving Tea Partier bent on wreaking havoc on America — or at least Kentucky’s stable of authors.

  • $1M healthcare question

    Ben, the man pictured directly above me on this page, recently handed me a news article about $1 million.
    Turns out that during a recent school board meeting in Woodford County, the Woodford County school board learned they could face $1 million in Affordable Care Act or Obamacare penalties if it failed to offer adequate health insurance to those full-time employees working 30 hours a week.

  • Medicaid flourishing here, not...

    Uh oh. That was my takeaway after watching Gov. Steve Beshear’s appearance Sunday on “Meet the Press.”
    Paraded out by Democrats looking for something, anything positive to say about Obamacare, Beshear was supposed to trumpet how well Kentucky has done signing up people for the controversial health tax (yes, I said tax, not law, and point to the Supreme Court decision to back it up).
    Beshear did an admirable job spouting that there have been roughly 25,000 sign-ups and heralding the state’s ability to create a website that actually works.

  • Chewing on news leftovers

    A little known fact about me — I am the queen of leftovers.
    Endless possibilities leave me paralyzed, gnawing on a block of cheddar cheese because I’m too overwhelmed by choice to cook a proper meal for myself.
    Give me an almost bare pantry, and I can whip up something pretty delicious.
    OK, that adjective should probably be “edible,” not delicious.
    Consider this week’s column an exercise in leftovers: the last week’s tidbits layered in an informational news sandwich.
    Great. Now I’m hungry.

  • Paid labor trumps free labor any day

    Column as I see ’em …
    Judge-Executive John Wayne Conway made a good decision and a questionable one during last Tuesday night’s meeting of the Anderson County Fiscal Court.
    Lest I be perceived as always focusing on the bad, let’s start with the good.
    Conway informed magistrates that he had recently rejected the Shelby County Detention Center’s offer of work release inmates, a wise choice once you think it all the way through.

  •
    Pluck, pluck, plucking on heaven’s...

    With three fingers clenched into a curved claw, I tried to pluck heaven out of Jane Bennett’s harp.
    No rich, strong and angelic voices sang from the chord’s strings as I had imagined. Moments earlier, I had glided my pointer finger up the strings in a glissando like a child clumsily drags a stick across the bars of a fence.
    My first harp lesson had lasted a total of five minutes, and I was already frustrated.
    And strangely, kind of relaxed at the same time.

  • Billboards new weapons of choice in...

    Column as I see ’em …
    The holy war that has been waged first on the sidelines of local football games and subsequently in the editorial section of this newspaper apparently has plenty of company.
    Just in the past month, high school football players were told their coach couldn’t lead them in prayer (although in actuality he really wasn’t), followed by the school board’s decision to pray, but only before it actually opens its meetings.

  • Pipeline: Pipeline developers...

    By Rob Hawksworth
    The Bluegrass Pipeline team has begun negotiating easements with landowners. This is a critical step in finalizing the route for this important piece of American energy infrastructure. Prior to commencing these negotiations, Bluegrass Pipeline sent a letter to the affected landowners that addressed a number of issues including the important landowner question “how does this benefit me?”

  • Pipeline: Landowners should think,...

    By Terry Geoghegan
    and Tom FitzGerald
    Landowners contacted by the Bluegrass Pipeline Partners LLC, the Williams Company or one of their representatives about selling an easement for the construction of a 24-inch pressurized natural gas liquids pipeline across their property rightfully have questions about whether granting such an easement is in their interest.

  • How does school district monitor...

    You sign your name in blood on the Internet.
    Not literally, because that’d be gross and virtually impossible.
    But no other metaphor, in my opinion, gives the right weight of gravitas when it comes to discussing the permanent nature of representing yourself on the Internet.
    It’s an unconscious blood oath that you sign with the entire online world, that everyone you write and post will exist for infinity.

  • Repo’d property shouldn’t be among...

    Column as I see ’em …
    The chart attached to this column is both interesting and sad.
    Interesting in that it shows just how much Wild Turkey currently pays in property taxes after investing over $100 million in our fair county during the past four years.
    What’s sad is the bottom half of the list because it points out just how poorly Anderson County has done in attracting more taxpaying behemoths like Wild Turkey.

  •
    Romance blooms during Civil War...

    The metal crane, with one video camera attached to its arm, slowly panned over the field to capture the sound of cannons, the snicker-snack of cavalry sword against sword and yells from Confederate soldiers as they died.
    The battles of Dogwalk and Lawrenceburg caught on film to be used as the backdrop of a larger love story.
    I’ve attended the Civil War re-enactment in Lawrenceburg for the last three years, listened to Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis trade speeches and steeled myself not to jump when cannons bellowed their first boom.

  •
    My turn is next, queen of pranks

    There’s an old adage that says it’s a bad idea to argue with someone who buys ink by the gallon (that would be me).
    It’s also a bad idea to get into a prank war with someone like me, particularly when the prank involves purchasing an ad in The Anderson News Extra that pokes fun at me for turning 50 this week.
    Cheri Johnson, a health department nurse who fancies herself Lawrenceburg’s Queen of Pranks, did just that, placing an ad in Monday’s Extra in a somewhat lame attempt to exact a measure of revenge for a crime I did not commit.

  •
    Five things your children may not...

    Because I work for an Anderson County institution that has been in operation since the late 1800s, I feel it’s my duty to appreciate the reporters, designers and proofreaders who came before me by taking a trip into The Anderson News archives.  
    I recently got my hands on a bound archive of the paper from 1973, and I realized something.
    Well, two things.

  • Trying to explain the unexplainable

    Good people die nearly every day in Anderson County.
    From age to disease to accidents, people beloved by their friends and families are taken too soon no matter their age, leaving mourners in their wake and questions about why God takes them from our lives.
    Most, through no fault of their own, go largely unnoticed outside of their immediate circle of loved ones. Others, for whatever reason, leave a deeper impression on those around them — not for any tangible reason, just because they do.