Stories
Kentuckians carry around an unusual sense of place.
Your county. The mountains or hollow. The lake or the river. The farm. We stay here, we return, because of an almost mystical relationship between where we are and who we are.
For 22 years, David Dick gave that relationship a voice and a face in The View From Plum Lick on the back editorial page of Kentucky Living.
David Dick cannot be replaced. But the tributes you�ve sent in for publication in the magazine or posting on KentuckyLiving.com prove that what he meant to you will live forever.
Our Kentucky identity lives on as well. Proof of that can be found across the state in coffee shop conversations, titles in bookstores, and private journals, as we try to describe this important and elusive spirit.
One of the most thoughtful and respected chroniclers of that Kentucky character will begin a monthly column in that back page spot in January.
Byron Crawford has been writing the Cooperative Hero column in this magazine for the past year. Before that, many of you met him on KET�s Kentucky Life, or through his column in the pages of Louisville�s The Courier-Journal newspaper where he worked until 2008. He grew up in Lincoln County, and studied speech and broadcasting at Murray State University.
Even more than that fitting background, I�ve been impressed with Byron�s understanding of what that back page has meant to Kentucky. I thought he was a perfect way to end each Kentucky Living. But he wasn�t so sure. He had a lot of questions he wanted answered first. The concerns behind those questions didn�t come just from the carefulness of a thorough and accurate reporter. They came from his respect for the trust between Kentuckians and the people who tell their stories.
He gets it.
We�re calling the column Byron Crawford�s Kentucky as a simple, direct description of the observations he will be bringing us from around the state. Because a good story doesn�t need a lot of embellishment. And the story about the land and the heart of Kentucky is one of the best.
