No Title 643

Co-op awards in Kentucky

Two Kentucky co-op leaders received national awards this spring for raising the prominence of electric cooperatives.

At the annual meeting of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, Ron Sheets, president of the Kentucky Association of Electric Cooperatives, which publishes Kentucky Living, accepted the William F. Matson Democracy Award for political action. The award recognized successful efforts to raise the level of local political participation by electric co-ops.

The 2003 Touchstone Energy Distinguished Service Award went to Mickey Miller, president and CEO of Nolin Rural Electric Cooperative, headquartered in Elizabethtown. Miller helped start Touchstone Energy and served as its first chair. Touchstone Energy was created in 1998 as a way to promote the combined advantages of the nation’s consumer-owned electric co-ops, through one easily identifiable “brand” and logo. Today, more than 600 Touchstone Energy co-ops in 44 states deliver energy to some 17 million customers.

Eggs in Washington

Tina Miles, a 22-year-old senior at Berea College, painted an egg for the White House annual Easter display last month. Her egg, decorated with a likeness of Churchill Downs racetrack in Louisville, represented Kentucky at the display, and will become a part of the president’s permanent collection. Miles, whose hometown is Raywick in Marion County, turned her longtime artwork hobbies into a craft business called Burning Image. She woodburns portraits and other figures onto gourds, creating ornaments to sell at local craft shows. After hearing that her aunt designed the Arkansas egg for a past White House display, Miles did some research and ended up getting invited to design the Kentucky egg for 2003. She found it a special challenge to paint a hollow egg without breaking it.

Paintings in Henderson

“By the Afternoon Light” is one of the oil and watercolor paintings in a solo exhibit by Rhonda McEnroe. Titled “SNAPSHOTS,” the show continues through May 30 at the John James Audubon Museum in Henderson. The paintings show people and places McEnroe found and photographed on her travels in the United States and overseas. The “SNAPSHOTS” exhibit is part of her portfolio called “OUR COMMON GROUND.” She says that on her first trip to Italy in 1979 she noticed many similarities between the United States and Italy, and her works now illustrate the common thread binding the United States and other countries.