Silas House, Pet Awards, Glacier Run
Completing the College Guide correction
50 Years Ago: Man on a mule carries the mail
Electric co-op group offers scholarships
Glacier town comes to Louisville
Lily author Silas House quickly became a household name with his best-selling novels Clay’s Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, and The Coal Tattoo. His foray into the world of young adult fiction exposes a different side of House’s writing in Eli the Good (Candlewick Press, $16.99), the story of a 10-year-old boy growing up in the post-Vietnam years of the ’70s.
Eli isn’t like most boys. He devours books, he records his thoughts in a journal, his best friend is a girl, and he can feel the trees speaking to him if he quiets himself enough while snuggled in the roots of his favorite one. He discovers, though, that he is thankful for these differences, revealing a maturity far beyond his years.
Neither is his family a “normal” one. His father, a Vietnam veteran, is deeply scarred from his time in the war, which has left him plagued with nightmares and hair-trigger reactions to seemingly unconnected stimuli. Eli’s aunt, his father’s sister, was a war protester whose actions are forever documented with a photo in Eli’s history textbook. His mother has her own set of secrets that will affect Eli’s sister Josie in ways that could tear the family apart. Yet through all these difficulties, Eli remains the constant, the one who keeps the family connected.
Eli listens to what is going on around him, sometimes hiding to eavesdrop on conversations, then mulls it over and over trying to reason everything out. As he reflects back on his childhood, he says, “I tried to turn my mind elsewhere. Years later I would realize that this was one of the world’s great problems, that people often allow themselves not to think. They choose to not think, and that’s how the whole world gets into trouble.” It would seem that Eli could teach the world a thing or two.
Adults and ’tween readers alike will enjoy this tale of growing up in a time when the country’s attitude was changing and when the meaning of patriotism was redefined.
Penny Woods for Joseph-Beth booksellers, pennymouse1@yahoo.com, (800) 248-6849, www.josephbeth.com.
Hop on the Cottontail Express in New Haven. Kentucky Railway Museum’s annual Easter excursion is Saturday, April 23, at 2 p.m. The Easter Bunny will be on board handing out treats while the train chugs along its 22-mile round trip. Tickets for coach seating: adults $18, children (2-12) $13; or the dining car where pizza will be served: adults $22.50, children (2-12) $17.50. More info: (800) 272-0152 or www.kyrail.org. Photo by Lynn Dawson.
Check your heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning system’s air filter monthly. If it looks dirty, change it. A dirty filter makes your system work harder.
Many of us (in Congress) are concerned that the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations are all about artificially raising the cost of using coal and other fossil fuels in order to drive them out of the marketplace—in other words, reducing energy choices.
—U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield
Completing the College Guide correction
February’s Kentucky Living 2011 College Guide missed one—Daymar College, operating in four states and headquartered in Owensboro. It includes 16 campuses and more than 35 career tracks.
Daymar opened as Owensboro Business College in 1963, with a focus on general business studies. In 2001, the name changed to Daymar College as the school opened locations outside of Owensboro, including a Louisville South campus that same year, followed by the Louisville East campus in 2009.
Now, Draughons Junior College has joined Daymar College. Daymar College’s newest campuses are located in Bowling Green, Russellville, Clinton, and Madisonville.
Career education continues to be the college’s forte, says Tom Nunez, vice president of marketing and communications.
Among the examples of the school’s attention to students, Nunez cites the Daymar Foundation, which provides small grants and scholarships to help students who have a financial need that might otherwise necessitate them leaving school.
To review the other colleges in the 2011 guide, click 2011 College Guide.
50 Years Ago: Man on a mule carries the mail
In the little community of Bruin in Elliott County, mail carrier Arlie Robinson has entered his 13th year of service and covers the route on a mule named Kate. It takes about three hours for Mr. Robinson to complete his “run” over 13 miles of logging road. There are 75 families on the route and 52 boxes.
Last winter the going got pretty tough for both the mail carrier and the mule. Kate couldn’t walk too well over ice so Mr. Robinson had to tie her to a tree and walk to many of the mail boxes.
When the mail has been delivered, Mr. Robinson rides back to his small farm to look after his garden and raise his tobacco crop.
Electric co-op group offers scholarships
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 at least three scholarships. The deadline for application is June 17. 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 at (502) 451-2430.
Paula Sparrow, author of Kentucky Living’s Creature Comforts book and the column by the same name on KentuckyLiving.com, has been awarded the 2010 Media Advocacy award from Pet Groups United, an organization representing animal welfare and rescue groups from Kentucky and southern Indiana. The award is given to a person who uses the media to educate the public about animal rescue.
Comments from the essay nominating Sparrow included, “The book is one of a kind: no one in Kentucky, or possibly the country, has written a book that covers the entire state about animal rescue…The animal rescue and welfare community could not have a better crusader.”
Other awards included Community Service, Youth Service, Service Animal of the Year, and Hero Animal.
Glacier town comes to Louisville
Glacier Run, the fictional town at the Louisville Zoo where seals and sea lions already swim and play, will open an additional habitat for bears. A grand opening is slated for April 26. Live polar and grizzly bears, permanent new residents, will be roaming their rugged wilderness terrain. The exhibit is modeled after a real town in Churchill, Canada, known as “Polar Bear Capital of the World,” where humans and bears co-exist out of necessity.
The zoo’s mission, “Bettering the bond between people and our planet,” will tell the bears’ survival story in their harsh arctic environment. Glacier Run will show how small changes in our everyday life can make a difference for the planet and animals. Visitors can experience near nose-to-nose daily feeding and training demonstrations. A series of window views will provide guests a chance to watch bears at play above and below water level. An additional display in the town will allow visitors to climb into a truck cab, separated from the bed by thick glass, to simulate being on the ice with a polar bear hunting food.
For tickets and more info, go to www.louisvillezoo.org.
Before you build a birdhouse by following the instructions in the March Kentucky Living, here are a couple of things you should know:
CORRECTION: You need a 1/8″ drill bit for the birdhouses.
CLARIFICATION: The wood dimensions are accurate, but admittedly confusing because we included both the lumberyard terminology for the size of the wood, as well as the actual size of the wood. For example, 1×6 lumber is actually 3/4″ x 5-1/4″.
