Dirt On Kids, Miss Cherry Blossom, And More
Taking out the trash for Mother Earth
College scholarships, courtesy of co-ops
Time Capsule: 50 years ago in Kentucky Living
A cherry blossom for Washington
Lexington author Karen Angelucci feels fortunate to have grown up in a setting where it was okay for a kid to get her hands dirty. As young as age 5, she began to help her grandmother in her vegetable garden, fostering a lifelong passion for nature and a distinction as Master Gardener. Angelucci hopes to plant these same seeds in many other children with her book, Grimy, Grubby Gardening: Kentucky Kids Dig It! (McClanahan Publishing House, $14.95).
The book provides a thorough, but kid-friendly, explanation of how plants grow, what is required to garden, the anatomy of a plant, and instructions on growing particular crops. In addition, Angelucci says, “Children gain more than just plant knowledge. They gain independence and self-awareness. They learn about the cycle of life and learn to appreciate the earth and how to nurture it.” Brightly colored illustrations depicting the author’s own children will also catch the reader’s eye.
Angelucci loves to grow just about anything, herbs, flowers, trees, or bulbs, but her favorite species is the Japanese iris. As a child, she says her “first love was the bearded iris…ugly yellow ones. Well, then they weren’t ugly, but compared to the great selection now, they pale in beauty.” She was also very active in 4-H and the local and state fairs.
Angelucci’s gardening passion has recently branched out to include trees, and she now serves as chair of the Lexington Tree Board. “They do so much for us, more than any other plant out there,” she says. Visit www.lexington treefoundation.org, her new nonprofit foundation, to learn more about including them in your landscape.
Avid gardeners will also enjoy visiting karenangelucci.com to see photos of the author’s gardens, or find helpful links for more gardening tips.
Penny Woods for Joseph-Beth booksellers, pennymouse1@yahoo.com,(800) 248-6849, www.josephbeth.com.
Taking out the trash for Mother Earth
In observance of Earth Day in April each year, volunteers converge upon Tygarts Creek Gorge in Carter County to clean refuse from its banks. For information on how to participate in this year’s cleanup on April 24, call Bryan Mattingly at (606) 928-6959.
College scholarships, courtesy of co-ops
Women in Rural Electrification (Kentucky W.I.R.E.) is taking applications for $1,000 scholarships. The scholarships are open to any eligible student whose family is served by a Kentucky electric cooperative and has at least 60 hours of credits at a Kentucky college or university by the start of the fall term. W.I.R.E. will award three scholarships. The deadline for application is June 18. For an application form, go to www.kaec.org and click on the link at the bottom of the New Info box, or call your local electric cooperative or the Kentucky Living office.
A significant amount of the average home energy bill pays for heating water. Take five-minute showers instead of baths and make sure your water heater is set no higher than 120° F.
Described as both visually appealing and mentally stimulating, photographs by University of Kentucky student Michelle Combs are on exhibit at The Center for Rural Development in Somerset through May. In her “Fences” photograph series, Combs’ imagery draws attention to economic stereotypes associated with the type of fence surrounding a home—a chain-link fence, an elaborate wrought-iron fence, or a faded white picket fence.
“My goal is to challenge the viewer of my photographs to question the judgments they make based on appearance,” says Combs, a London native.
Her work can be seen at the center from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday. More information available at www.centertech.com.
“I signed the Rural Electrification Act (in 1936), which set the grand experiment of the member-owned electric cooperatives into motion. It enabled citizens to bring power to themselves, and with only a little help from government. When those electric cooperatives were unleashed, they grew to a force of more than 900, that powered Alaskan and Hawaiian fishing villages, dairy farms in Vermont, oil fields in Texas, Indian reservations out west, and so many communities in between. That, friends, is progress. Progress never rests.”—Actor Ed Asner, portraying President Franklin D. Roosevelt in February at the annual meeting of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association in Atlanta.
Calling all techies, entrepreneurs, inventors, artists, and other creative types—Lexington is the place to be in April. The city is the location for a monthlong series of events dedicated to creative people and technology professionals.
“Lexington has a vibrant and growing community of people who thrive on creating innovative approaches to business, society, and the arts,” says IN2LEX chair Ben Askren, a systems integration engineer with Lexmark.
The ball gets rolling with the national Creative Cities Summit, April 7-9, with many notable speakers including Kentucky native Ben Self, creator of President Barack Obama’s official Web site for his presidential campaign. Kentucky’s first TEDx conference will be April 23. Based on the national TED (technology, entertainment, and design) conference, the program is designed to bring together communities, organizations, and individuals. Other events during the month include seminars, presentations, exhibits, collaborative works sessions, music, parties, and charity events.
For details and dates of more than two dozen IN2LEX events, check out www.in2lex.com.
Time Capsule: 50 years ago in Kentucky Living
I’ll Be Frank
By Frank Strunk, editor, Rural Kentuckian
On February 22, in St. Louis, the 18th annual meeting of your National Rural Electric Cooperative Association officially got under way.
Nearly everyone I unofficially “polled” there was very much in favor of discontinuing the use of “REA co-op” to designate our locally owned rural electric systems.
There is a growing antipathy in this country to bureaucracy in its many forms, and we are doing ourselves a disservice by identifying our organizations as government agencies—because we are not.
Let’s let people know we are rural electric co-ops, not “REAs” or “REA co-ops,” because we need to stress the fact that we are just as vital and integral a part of the American free-enterprise system as any other segment of this nation’s business, and are NOT a government agency any more than any business is an agency of the bank which holds its mortgage.
For the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, the Kentucky Beef Council is holding a “Meat” Your Neighbor Educational Tour on April 14, so that people interested in learning where food comes from can tour four farms and see production and environmental practices firsthand.
The four tour farms are located in Bourbon County. These producers represent a small part of the state’s 38,000 beef-producing farms, which all raise a variety of beef types. These cattle producers are following the best environmental practices available by rotating grazing, installing water systems, fencing off ponds, and participating in the Animal ID Program and the national Beef Quality Assurance Program.
To date, four Kentucky beef-producing families have been recognized as national or regional winners of the annual Environmental Stewardship award, which has been sponsored in part since 1991 by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
To make a reservation for the tour, contact Kentucky Beef Council Director of Marketing Alison Smith at (859) 285-0204 or asmith@kycattle.org. Reservations will be taken on a first-come, first-served basis, and there are 55 seats available on the bus. Participants will meet at 9:30 a.m. at the Bourbon County Extension Office. Lunch will be served, there is no charge for the tour, and the bus will return at 5 p.m. For more info visit www.kybeef.com.
If you’re looking for a spring excursion that features natural beauty, history, and wildlife, plus provides a good dose of exercise, check out Cave Hill Cemetery tours. Located in Louisville, Cave Hill is a garden-style cemetery founded in 1848 and is a nationally recognized arboretum with more than 500 different plant species.
Visitors can enjoy one of five themed tours sponsored by the Cave Hill Heritage Foundation—the Civil War Walking Tour, Birding Tour, Historical Walking Tour, Twilight Driving Tour, and Geological Tour. Reservations must be made in advance by calling (502) 451-5630. The tour schedule is available at www.cavehillcemetery.com.
Cave Hill is the final resting place for more than 135,000 people, including philanthropists, judges, authors, politicians, and Union and Confederate soldiers. Many notable Kentuckians are buried there, among them frontiersman George Rogers Clark, KFC founder Harland Sanders, long-time Courier-Journal publisher Barry Bingham Sr. and his wife, Mary Caperton Bingham, a patron of the arts and civic leader.
When visiting, remember to take your camera. The foundation is sponsoring a photo contest open to the general public through October 1, 2010.Entrants may submit one Cave Hill Cemetery photo from each of the four seasons. Winners will receive prizes and their photographs will be featured in a calendar. Official rules and entry forms are available at the cemetery’s Web site address.
A cherry blossom for Washington
Cassandra Compton of Somerset is representing Kentucky at the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., where she will compete with young women from all 50 states to be named the 2010 U.S. Cherry Blossom Queen. A Somerset Community College student, Compton was chosen through a competition that included an application, essay, and interviews. The annual competition is sponsored by the National Conference of State Societies.
The National Cherry Blossom Festival is an annual two-week event that celebrates the 1912 gift of cherry trees from Japan. This year, events run through April 11. More information about the festival is available at www.nationalcherryblossomfestival.org.
