The Bluegrass and Beyond

When I first heard about plans to turn the block of Mill Street between Main and Short into a pedestrian mall, I thought it was a good idea.

After seeing how a larger pedestrian mall has transformed downtown Charlottesville, Va., I think it could be a truly great idea.

I went to Charlottesville recently with a group of friends for a bicycle tour. On Friday and Saturday evenings, we went to the Downtown Mall for dinner.

The place was hopping. Hundreds of people were eating, shopping, listening to live music and visiting with each other.

The eight-block mall on what used to be Main Street has 30 restaurants and 120 shops in a mix of old and new buildings. At one end is a children’s museum and an amphitheater that hosts big-name performers and has free weekly concerts by local bands.

The mall has become a big tourist draw and economic engine. More importantly, it has become Charlottesville’s community front porch. Most of the people we saw there seemed to be locals. Some said they come every week between May and October.

It’s a good example of the urban planner’s maxim that if you build a city to appeal to its residents, others will want to be there, too.

The Downtown Mall was hardly an overnight success. More like a 35-year slog.

As with many American cities in the early 1970s, suburban growth had turned Charlottesville’s downtown business district into a ghost town.

So, in 1975, Charlottesville got on the bandwagon of cities building pedestrian malls. Many of those malls failed, such as Louisville’s River City Mall, although it would later be reborn as the popular Fourth Street Live.

But Charlottesville stuck with it, trying new ideas and making periodic improvements over the years. The city recently finished a $7.5 million renovation, which included new pavers and free wireless Internet service.

As with most successful developments, good design is key. The former street is 60 feet wide, with pedestrian corridors on each side and cafes in the center, shaded by giant willow oak trees. The trees make the mall pretty as well as comfortable in the summer heat.

The trees’ rapid growth was a pleasant surprise, said Rhetta Bearden, a guide for the local historical society who gave several of us a great downtown walking tour.

Planners knew that Main Street had once been part of “Three Notch’d Road,” a pioneer path from the James River to the Shenandoah Valley that got its name from hatchet marks on trees to blaze the trail. But they didn’t know there were springs beneath it that would make the willow oaks flourish, Bearden said.

If you compare Charlottesville and Lexington, you find that Lexington is a bigger city, with a bigger metro area. It also has more college students.

So what would it take to make downtown Lexington more of a people magnet?

There certainly seems to be public interest. Just look at the growing crowds for Thursday Night Live, Gallery Hop and big events such as this weekend’s Independence Day festivities.

One pedestrian block of Mill Street doesn’t compare with Charlottesville’s eight-block mall, but it fits nicely into a bigger picture. The block is strategically located between Cheapside and Victorian Square, both of which are having success recently with restaurants and bars.

With a little money and imagination, Mill Street could become the heart of a downtown entertainment district that would pull University of Kentucky students a few blocks north, Transylvania University students a few blocks south and a variety of Central Kentuckians in from the suburbs.

My guess is that a new skyscraper wouldn’t do nearly as much to revitalize downtown Lexington as a bigger community front porch.

Nothing refreshes you like a good vacation. Riding a bicycle more than 350 miles up, down and around the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia may not be everyone’s idea for a refreshing vacation, but it worked for me and the 2,000 others on the annual Bike Virginia tour.

This was my sixth Bike Virginia, a five-day tour that each June goes through a different part of the Old Dominion. I went with a group of about 20 friends from Central Kentucky, plus a couple of riding buddies from when I lived in Atlanta. One of our group referred to it as “summer camp for adults.” That’s a pretty good description.

While on the trip, we had dinner a couple of nights along the huge pedestrian mall that attracts hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of locals to downtown Charlottesville each night to eat, shop and visit with each other. It’s a great place, and a larger version of the idea proposed for Mill Street between Main and Short streets in downtown Lexington. I’ll be writing about what lessons Lexington can learn from Charlottesville’s experience in my column in Wednesday’s Herald-Leader.

I’ve had several seriously ill friends and relatives suffer through chemotherapy. They do it because it is a short-term poison that often results in a long-term cure.

With the General Assembly now meeting in special session, I can’t help but wonder if the proposal to allow slot machines at horse-racing tracks doesn’t amount to chemotherapy in reverse: a short-term cure that could turn out to be long-term poison.

It’s easy to dismiss some of the arguments for slot machines, such as balancing the state budget and funding new school buildings. Expanded gambling won’t pay for state government and education in the long run any more than it has in other states.

The proper way to do that is a modern tax system that raises enough money so Kentucky can invest in creating a successful 21st century economy and society. The only way to create that modern tax system is for citizens and politicians to be honest with themselves and one another, and make some tough choices.

The problem I have with gambling as a substitute for honest taxation is that it’s based on the myth of easy money.

Sure, slot machines at racetracks would prompt some Kentucky gamblers to lose their money here rather than in other states. It also might attract some out-of-state gamblers.

But a lot of that money would go into the pockets of gambling interests, soak up discretionary income now spent elsewhere in Kentucky’s economy and create more social costs. If slot machines at racetracks were a panacea, the states that now have them wouldn’t be struggling with many of the same problems Kentucky faces.

The only reason to even consider slot machines, in my view, is to preserve Kentucky’s horse industry. It is one of Kentucky’s claims to fame and a vital piece of an agricultural economy that protects irreplaceable rural land from development.

As the Herald-Leader’s John Cheves reported last Sunday and Monday, the horse industry’s arguments for slot machines may be overstated, but the problems are real. Kentucky’s race purses and breeder incentives are no longer competitive with other states. No business can survive if it’s not competitive.

While the horse industry’s public face may be the wealthy owners of Central Kentucky’s showplace farms, its heart and soul are the small breeders and owners, merchants, farriers, veterinarians and others who make their living in the industry. They will follow the money, and who can blame them?

For Kentucky’s horse industry to be healthy, racing and breeding must be economically competitive. Other states have become more competitive with money generated by expanded gambling. That might be a quick cure for Kentucky’s horse industry, but could it be a long-term poison?

The danger, as Cheves’ articles pointed out, is that slot machines at racetracks can go from subsidizing horse racing to crowding it out. Kentucky’s long-term economic interests aren’t tied to the owners of racetracks so much as to the horse breeders, owners and workers who depend on them.

Horse racing thrived during the 20th century because it was the only way many people could gamble. That’s no longer the case. There are now many quicker, cheaper and more accessible ways to gamble — and, it seems, new ones are being invented every day.

The only way for horse racing to survive is for the industry to build a fan base around the enjoyment of watching and wagering on competition among equine athletes.

Putting slot machines at racetracks would clearly be in the best short-term interests of both state government and the horse industry. But what about the long term? That’s the real issue the General Assembly must face.

In the long run, will slot machines improve Kentucky’s economy and quality of life or detract from it? Will they help save the horse industry or hasten its demise?

A tough economic period isn’t the time to hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. It’s a time to seek new ideas and create a more prosperous future.

In fact, history has shown that some of the best innovation occurs in uncertain times like these.

“I think it’s an opportunity to think strategically,” said Kris Kimel, president of the Kentucky Science & Technology Corp. “It kind of gives you cover while everybody else is scurrying around to think about new opportunities and how to take advantage of them. Anytime there’s disruptive change, there are new opportunities.”

Kimel is also the founder of the annual Idea Festival in Louisville, which on Friday is announcing the lineup of speakers and performers for this year’s event, Sept. 23-26.

As usual, the Idea Festival will feature an eclectic assortment of some of the brightest minds on the planet. You can hear what they’ve been thinking, and the massive collision of ideas might give you a few of your own.

The biggest celebrity appearing this year may be chef Anthony Bourdain, the author of Kitchen Confidential and host of The Travel Channel’s No Reservations. On the other end of the food spectrum, Will Allen, founder of the non-profit organization Growing Power, will talk about developing community food systems worldwide.

Musicians performing at the festival include the Ahn Trio, a chamber music group from South Korea; concert pianist and psychiatrist Richard Kogan and 10-year-old cellist and pianist Marc Yu, who will talk about what it’s like to be a child prodigy.

Scientists speaking include Bert Hölldobler of Germany, co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for a book based on his research about the behavior of ants; noted astronomer Bob Berman; Chris Turney of Australia, who studies the history of climate change; University of Kentucky neurobiologist Diana Snow; and University of Louisville biologist Lee Alan Dugatkin, who studies the evolution of goodness.

As always, there is a large group of speakers from the world of film, including actress Veronica Bero; actress and director Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, daughter of Martin Scorsese; screenwriter Michael Dougan; and documentary filmmakers Arthur Rouse of Lexington and Kembrew McLeod of Iowa.

The Belgium-born sidewalk chalk artist Julian Beever will be creating a special piece during the festival, and Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde will discuss his work, which explores the dynamic relationship between architecture, people and electronic culture.

The second $100,000 Curry Stone Design Prize will be awarded. Last year’s winner, architect Luyanda Mpahlwa, will speak about his work designing affordable housing in South Africa. Also speaking about architecture will be Kulapat Yantrasast, whose Los Angeles firm is designing the expansion of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville.

Speakers from the media include best-selling humorist A.J. Jacobs; Jurriaan Kamp, editor of Ode, a print and online publication about people’s passions; National Public Radio technology journalist Moira Gunn; and Dana Canedy, a Kentucky-born editor for The New York Times, who will discuss the memoir she wrote for her young son about his father who died fighting in Iraq.

Nat Irvin of the U of L College of Business will speak about his demographic research into African-Americans in business; UK psychology professor Phil Kraemer will discuss the psychology of innovation; and social scientist Michael Johnston, who won U of L’s prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, will talk about his research into political corruption.

Cambodian human rights activist Somaly Mam will discuss her efforts to fight human sex trafficking, and Hira Ratan Manek, an engineer from India, will talk about his research into the ancient practice of sungazing.

The festival has moved from the Kentucky International Convention Center to the Kentucky Center for Performing Arts and the surrounding area of West Main Street, including the 21C Museum Hotel and the Galt House.

The festival will include a dinner under the stars on the streets of downtown Louisville, activities for kids and IF 2.0, a program that includes a pre-festival workshop and special events.

For the Idea Festival schedule, ticket prices, reservations and more information, go to: www.ideafestival.com.

It seemed almost inevitable.

Chris Canon’s family farmed hundreds of acres of cotton and soybeans in Mississippi. Sandy Canon’s parents raised begonias and fuchsia in California and finally “stopped entering them in fairs so other people could win.”

But the Canons had two sons, white-collar careers and a suburban home. Agriculture didn’t have a place in their busy lives until Chris got some 2×4s and built a raised bed in their backyard.

Then another. And another. And a dozen more.

“Chris kept planting more and more,” Sandy Canon said of her husband. “And I had to freeze it and can it.”

So, for the third summer, the Canons are selling vegetables once a week at the Lexington Farmer’s Market — most grown in their backyard and some in the fraction of an acre they cultivate on a wooded farm in Washington County.

“We make some pocket money, but a side benefit is that we’ve spent more time together than we have since before the children came,” she said. “And we really enjoy the people at the market. It’s a social experience.”

The Canons’ backyard on Duncan Avenue near the Red Mile is the smallest and most urban of the dozen Central Kentucky farms that will be on display Saturday during the self-guided Lexington Farmer’s Market Farm Tour.

Other farms on the tour include Abigail’s Apiary, which will demonstrate how bees work; Bleugrass Chevre, which specializes in goat cheeses; the Chrisman Mill and Lover’s Leap wineries; Henkle’s Herbs and heirloom tomatoes and the Barton Brothers’ sweet corn farm.

This is the 2nd annual tour sponsored by the Lexington Farmers’ Market, which recently moved its Saturday market to Cheapside and this week begins a Wednesday evening market at The Mall at Lexington Green. It also has a Sunday market on Southland Drive and Tuesday and Thursday markets at South Broadway and Maxwell streets.

The Lexington Farmers’ Market has been around since 1975, but its recent popularity coincides with growing public interest in locally grown food. Rona Roberts, a Lexington communications consultant who writes the Savoring Kentucky food blog, cites several reasons.

“Part of it is driven by a longing for flavor and the realization that the very best flavor comes from things closest to you,” Roberts said. “There’s a lot lost in transportation.”

That, along with more focus on health and nutrition, has prompted more people to buy produce from farmers’ markets and other local growers such as Elmwood Stock Farm in Georgetown and Honest Farm in Midway.

Many people are becoming more conscious of the environment. They’re concerned about agricultural chemicals and the petroleum used trucking food cross-country.

In addition, the economy has prompted people to look for ways to save money and make their communities more self-sustaining.

Local organizations such as Seedleaf are promoting urban gardening as a way to get nutritious, economical food to people at risk of hunger. Seedleaf teaches people how to grow food and helps establish community gardens.

On the farm tour last year, more than 50 people stopped by to see the Canons’ backyard garden. It inspired one woman to go home and build two raised beds in her backyard. “She said it changed her life,” Sandy Canon said.

More than anything, though, organizers want to inspire more loyal customers for local farmers. After all, that’s what it will take to grow and sustain a local food economy.

If you go

Lexington Farmers’ Market Farm Tour

Saturday, June 20, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

$10 adults, $5 students, younger than 12 free

More information: www.lexingtonfarmersmarket.com

Seedleaf: www.seedleaf.org

Savoring Kentucky: www.savoringkentucky.com

Marlendale Farm has been in Ellen Clark Marshall’s family for six generations.

What the General Assembly does in the next week or two, she thinks, could determine whether it stays in the family much longer.

Marshall’s parents stopped breeding Thoroughbreds on the 200-acre farm on Newtown Pike nearly 40 years ago. Since then, the insurance agent and her two sisters have leased most of the land to other horse breeders.

But the standardbred breeder who has rented 130 acres for six years isn’t renewing his lease in December. He’s moving his horses to Pennsylvania to take advantage of lucrative incentives funded by slot machines at the state’s racetracks.

As we sat on her patio looking out over lush green pastures, Marshall showed me a long list of other horsemen she said she has approached, without success, about leasing her farm. Many of them also are shipping horses to Pennsylvania and other states with slots-enhanced race purses and breeder incentives.

“I’m frantic trying to find someone to lease this farm,” she said. “How am I going to pay my taxes, my insurance and maintenance? The farm pays for the farm.”

Unless the General Assembly approves legislation backed by Gov. Steve Beshear to allow slot machines at Kentucky race tracks, Marshall fears she will have to sell her land.

That could include the home where Marshall has lived for most of her life. The oldest part of the home is an enclosed log cabin built decades before her ancestor Caleb Tarleton acquired the property in 1826 from John Bradford, publisher of Kentucky’s first newspaper.

As small horse operations leave for other states, Kentucky risks losing its signature industry, Marshall said.

“People are going to go where the money is to sustain their operations,” she said. “Where does that leave me? Where does that leave my 200 acres?”

More than who owns the land, Marshall worries about the land itself. Central Kentucky’s unique landscape is disappearing at such a pace that the World Monuments Fund has identified it as one of the 100 most endangered places on earth.

If horses follow tobacco as a declining industry in Central Kentucky, landowners who aren’t independently wealthy will have little choice but to sell their property for development. As suburbia sprawls, the lush green pastures will disappear.

Some opponents of slots at tracks are skeptical of giving the horse industry a monopoly on expanded gambling. Others worry about gambling’s social costs. Still others fear that expanded gambling will prop up the horse industry in the short run, only to kill it in the long run.

State Sen. President David Williams, R-Burkesville, has said he recognizes the horse industry’s competitive disadvantage but opposes expanded gambling. He recently proposed raising $83 million a year for race purses and breeder incentives through a lottery ticket surcharge and other taxes and fees.

But Beshear would not add Williams’ plan to the agenda for the special legislative session that begins Monday. The governor wants lawmakers to vote on his slots proposal.

Solutions to the horse industry’s economic problems may be debatable. But Carter Duer, the breeder who is ending his lease on Marshall’s farm, said the problem is real.

Most people in the Kentucky horse industry aren’t billionaires who breed and race as a hobby. “It’s the way we make our living,” Duer said.

Duer said he stopped leasing a second Lexington farm two years ago and shipped those horses to Pennsylvania. His last remaining local operation will be the 360-acre Peninsula Farm on Ironworks Pike, which he owns.

“I’d move them all up (to Pennsylvania) if I could, but I have too much invested here,” he said. “There’s no advantage in Kentucky, except Kentucky itself.”

As Marshall and I talked on her patio, Wayne Ball, who does maintenance on her farm, joined us. He ticked off a list of people shipping horses out of state and farms up for sale. “We’re losing our grip on the horse industry,” he said.

“No,” Marshall replied. “We’re throwing it away.”

I had been meaning for some time to check out the Southland Jamboree, a free bluegrass music show each Tuesday evening during the summer on the lawn beside Collins Bowling Centers-Southland.

I arrived after this week’s show had started, and more than 200 people were there. A great band was on stage, each man dressed in perfect Bill Monroe style: dark suit, tie and white cowboy hat.

It was a classic Kentucky scene until the music stopped and the band leader started speaking — with an Australian accent.

It turns out the band, Bluegrass Parkway, hails from Perth, Australia. Southland Jamboree was a warm-up gig for this weekend’s 35th annual Festival of the Bluegrass at the Kentucky Horse Park campground.

Band leader Paul Duff said afterward that he wasn’t a musician until he was 18 and walked into a northern Australian pub where a bluegrass band was playing. “I walked out and said, ‘I’ve got to play it,’” he said.

Duff learned to play the mandolin, then learned how to make one. He first came to Kentucky to work and study in the early 1980s, then returned to live in Lexington for a time in the early 1990s. He went back to Australia with a Lexington-born wife, Maria Ketron, and a mission to spread bluegrass music.

“It’s real music …. It has got that universality,” he said, explaining that bluegrass is increasingly popular around the world, especially in Australia and Europe. “I love the sociology of bluegrass music. The sound is great, and the lyrics are about hard times and people sticking together.”

The Festival of the Bluegrass this weekend will include fans from across the globe. Find the performance schedule and other information at www.festivalofthebluegrass.com. And if you doubt bluegrass music’s international appeal, check out the Web site’s online guest map.

Also worth seeing, doing

Visitors also will be coming to Kentucky this weekend for Cycle the Gorge rally and family fun ride Saturday and Sunday at Stanton. It’s a prelude to a summer of racing events at the Red River Gorge that will attract cyclists from around the country.

It’s not too late to register for the rally and family run ride. Go to www.tour-rrg.com.

For a less strenuous tour of Kentucky’s natural beauty, consider booking one of the Suburban Women’s Club’s behind-the-fences tours of local horse farms. This year’s tour dates are June 19, July 17, Aug. 21 and Oct. 16.

The five-hour bus tour visits Chesapeake and Woods Edge farms, with lunch at Chrisman Mill Winery. The tour costs $50, with profits going to the club’s charitable works, which include college scholarships and Operation Read.

The Suburban Women’s Club, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, has been doing these tours for 36 years. For more information, call (859) 624-2338.

If you like contemporary art, Breathitt County artist and former corporate lawyer Theo Edmonds, whom I wrote about in April, is back in Lexington. He has rented space at 351 West Short Street for a free gallery show 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day through June 19.

The show features some terrific work he created during six months in New York. Edmonds has set up a studio in the back of the gallery space, where he is working and eager to talk.

If you like less-contemporary art, you have three more days to see Excavating Egypt, the fascinating show of antiquities at The Art Museum at University of Kentucky in the Singletary Center. The exhibit closes Sunday at 5 p.m. For more information, go to the museum’s Web site, www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum.

For ideas and more information about things to see and do in Central Kentucky this summer, go to the Lexington Arts Council’s Web site, www.lexarts.com, or the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau’s Web site, www.visitlex.com.

Urban County Council members voted 11-4 to move forward with a project to put sidewalks along a busy stretch of Tates Creek Road between the University of Kentucky and Lansdowne Shopping Center.

Voting against the project were council members Cheryl Feigel, Julian Beard, Chuck Ellinger and K.C. Crosbie.

The project was opposed by some residents along the busy south Lexington road who objected to having sidewalks put in the public right-of-way in their front yards.

Council member Linda Gorton said it best: “This road isn’t just for people who live on it. It’s for everybody.”

For more details, read Heald-Leader reporter Beverly Fortune’s story here.

You know it’s time for the Ichthus Christian music festival when the storm clouds start rolling in.

For most of its 40-year history, Ichthus has been plagued by bad weather, as Herald-Leader culture writer Rich Copley reminded us today.

For most of those years, Ichthus was held on the last full weekend of April and it always seemed to rain. And rain. And rain. More years than not, the site near Wilmore became a sea of mud by the time the festival was over.

After it snowed on festival weekend in 2005, organizers moved “Ickythus” to June in hopes of better weather. Judging by today’s storms, the rain seems to have followed.

But rain rarely seems to dampen the fun for those who attend Ichthus. This year probably won’t be any different. You can follow the action on Rich’s blog, Copious Notes.

I’m not a musician, a meteorologist or a theologian, but I have a suggestion: Move Ichthus to August. We always need rain then.

Urban County Council members, this is a test.

You and Mayor Jim Newberry have made a great start in the past two years toward making Lexington a more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly city. The vision you have outlined is ambitious and progressive.

How you vote Thursday night on whether to proceed with the Tates Creek Road sidewalk project will tell the rest of Lexington whether you’re serious.

These long-overdue sidewalks would connect with existing sidewalks on either end of a 1.6-mile stretch of Tates Creek Road, which runs from Dove Run Road to Lakewood Drive.

That busy stretch includes a shopping center, two banks and three large churches. It also is a key connector between southeast Lexington and the University of Kentucky’s Arboretum and campus.

If the sidewalks aren’t built, Lexington would likely have to give up $811,000 federal funds secured to pay most of the project’s $1.1 million cost.

These sidewalks have strong support from many area residents, including the Lansdowne Neighborhood Association.

Several dozen sidewalk supporters rallied at Lansdowne Shopping Center on Wednesday evening and walked along the proposed sidewalks’ path toward town. “We’re very hopeful that tomorrow night this thing will pass the council,” Council member Linda Gordon told the group.

But a group of residents along Tates Creek Road who don’t want sidewalks going through their yards — even though it is public right-of-way acquired when the road was widened several years ago — have hired a good lawyer and raised objections. Two council members, Julian Beard and Cheryl Feigel, have echoed their opposition.

I can understand some of the Tates Creek Road residents’ “not in my front yard” attitude. But these sidewalks have been planned for years. Many of Lexington’s nice residential thoroughfares, such as Richmond Road, have sidewalks that make them better places to live.

People already walk and bike down this busy stretch of Tates Creek Road. They’ve been doing it for years. It’s time they were able to do it safely and comfortably.

Besides, council members, if you reject the Tates Creek Road sidewalk project at this late date because of some special-interest pressure, you will lose public credibility for your vision of making Lexington a more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly city.

If you’re going to talk the talk, you need to build the walk.

Click here to see a video report on Wednesday evening’s pro-sidewalk demonstration.

At age 25, Ben Sollee has gained a national following with his heartfelt songs, his soulful voice and his unconventional cello technique.

Sollee can do amazing, unexpected things with a cello. He’s doing one this week, and it also involves a bicycle.

“I was looking for something a little bit different in touring,” he said. “I had gotten in this habit of flying to one side of the country and flying back for one gig, then hopping in the car and driving six hours for another gig. The pace was inhuman. I wasn’t really feeling the places I was at anymore.”

Sollee is feeling those places this week.

Oh, is he feeling them.

Last Wednesday, Sollee and two friends began riding bicycles from his Lexington home to the annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festval at Manchester, Tenn., where he will perform this weekend.

They rode from Lexington to Frankfort in a steady rain, and Sollee gave a concert when they arrived. The next morning, they officially began the 330-mile Pedaling Against Poverty Tour.

Each day since then, the trio has ridden about 50 miles a day, stopping to play concerts in Danville, Berea, Somerset and Cookeville, Tenn. Another show is planned near McMinnville, Tenn., on Wednesday. Then they ride to Bonnaroo.

In addition to making a statement about environmentally friendly music touring, Sollee said the trip is intended to promote the anti-poverty charity Oxfam America and Xtracycle, the California company that made the bikes he and Marty Benson are riding.

The stretch bicycles have 24 gears, disc brakes and a cargo platform in back. Sollee has his cello case strapped to one side. His gear is strapped to the other side for balance.

Benson is videotaping each day’s progress and posting it on Xtracycle’s Web site.  Benson’s sister, Katie, is with them on a regular road bike.

“Considering I hadn’t really ridden much before this tour, it’s going great,” Sollee said Monday. As he talked on his cell phone, Sollee pedaled Ky. 90 through Wayne County. His voice was occasionally drowned out by the swoosh of a passing truck.

“We had a really hard day going from Berea to Somerset … hauling about 60 pounds of gear up all those big hills,” Sollee said. “Heading into Somerset I didn’t think I was going to make it. We pulled in eight minutes before show time.”

There have been a few minor breakdowns and a couple of wrecks without injuries. Sollee ran off the road near Harrodsburg while trying to ring a bell on the back of Benson’s Xtracycle. It’s a game: Whoever rings the other’s bell the most pays for dinner at the end of the trip.

“Marty rang my bell today and wrecked his bike,” Sollee said. “It was sweet revenge.”

Sollee said he has learned several things on the ride, such as how roads are graded, how diet influences stamina and the importance of pacing yourself. And he has learned it is hard to draw a crowd at small-town concert venues.

Usually, Sollee is good at drawing crowds. National Public Radio named him one of the top 10 “unknown artists of the year” in 2007. He became a lot better known last year with two CDs, If You’re Gonna Lead My Country and Learning to Bend.

He performed on ABC-TV’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! in March and was among those who played at Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday concert last month in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Sollee was the featured performer at February’s “I Love Mountains” rally in Frankfort. His next project is a CD with Daniel Martin Moore to raise awareness about mountaintop removal coal mining.

It is an impressive resume for a native Lexingtonian who not that long ago was studying at Yates Elementary, Winburn Middle, Lafayette High and the University of Louisville school of music.

When I called again Tuesday afternoon, Sollee had 45 miles under his belt for the day and was eight miles from Cookeville.

“We’re within spitting distance,” he said. “We made really good time today.”
With Bonnaroo only two days and about 75 miles away, Sollee seemed to have gotten a second wind.

It’s hard to know if Sollees’ Bonnaroo performances will be as high-energy as usual. Life on the road is hard on a musician, especially when he has to pedal his cello up all of those big hills.

Check out Marty Benson’s daily videos from the trip:

I sat through a long and painful presentation Thursday at a meeting of the General Assembly’s Interim Joint Committee on Appropriations and Revenue.

It reminded me of a bad trip to a dentist, complete with noise and vibration from workmen drilling into a nearby wall in Frankfort’s Capitol Annex.

The presentation itself was excellent, and it was obvious that Mary Lassiter is a smart and capable state budget director. What made it painful was Lassiter’s step-by-step outline of Kentucky’s financial mess — and the clear but unspoken message that it won’t improve much until lawmakers enact real tax reform.

The national economic recession isn’t the problem, although it has turned state government’s steadily rising river of red ink into a holler-washing flood.

The problem is that Kentucky is trying to operate a 21st century state on a tax system designed for a mid-20th century economy. It hasn’t worked for years, and everyone knows it.

“Clearly we’re going to have to do something,” said Rep. Jesse Crenshaw, a Lexington Democrat, echoing several others lawmakers’ comments. “We can’t come back here every six months or every year without addressing the larger problem.”

Here’s the basic issue: Kentucky has an income tax, but its limited range reflects 1950s income levels. That means low-income people pay too much and high-income people pay too little. Kentucky has a sales tax, but it covers mostly goods and not services, the fastest-growing part of the economy.

The problem and possible solutions have been studied to death for years. But governors and legislators have never found the political courage for anything but quick fixes that ignore the larger issues.

Fortunately, the last half-hour of the meeting was devoted to lawmakers’ first real discussion of two good tax-reform proposals. One comes from Rep. Jim Wayne, a Louisville Democrat, and the other from Rep. Bill Farmer, a Lexington Republican.

The two plans are different in philosophy and approach. But they both meet the four tests of a good tax system: being fair, equitable, efficient and sufficient to meet Kentucky’s needs.

Neither plan will be considered during this month’s emergency special session, which will be yet another quick-fix exercise. But maybe, just maybe, they will set the stage for real tax reform when the General Assembly begins its next regular session in January.

Wayne’s plan would update the income tax range to make it fairer. He would raise the tax on people earning more than $75,000, while providing a 15 percent earned income tax credit for many poorer people.

Wayne’s plan also would tax services used mainly by rich people — such as country club dues, aircraft leasing and limousine rental. He also would restore the “death” tax on estates worth more than $1 million.

Farmer’s plan would eliminate personal and company income taxes and cut the sales tax rate from 6 percent to 5.5 percent. It would extend the sales tax to most personal and professional services, including commercial real estate leases. But there would be no sales tax on goods and services that meet basic human needs, such as groceries, housing and medical care.

While I admire the social justice idealism behind Wayne’s plan, I think Farmer’s approach would be better for Kentucky’s future, for many reasons.

Farmer’s plan makes Kentucky more economically competitive with other states. It encourages people to make money and save money. It encourages businesses and financially successful people to come here and stay here, increasing the amount of money that will be spent on taxable goods and services.

Farmer’s plan would be easy for the public to understand. It also would be an easy, cheap and effective way for the state to collect revenue. As the economy grows, tax revenues would grow with it.

It would be important that lawmakers keep such a sales-tax system “pure” — in other words, not exempt some products and services for reasons other than to protect poor people. Otherwise, the special-interest lobbyists will have a field day and the system won’t be fair.

Also, it would be important to remove many existing state taxes and fees that unfairly target — or exempt — certain businesses, products and people.

Another attraction of Farmer’s plan is that, politically, it would seem to stand a better chance of passage. That’s because it would allow politicians to brag that they eliminated income taxes and cut the sales tax rate, too.

Kentucky’s tax system doesn’t need another bandage; it needs major surgery to make this state the healthy, prosperous place Kentuckians deserve. Lawmakers have two realistic approaches from which to choose, and the timing couldn’t be more urgent.

I first visited Vancouver to cover the opening of Expo ‘86. When I next returned in 2002, I noticed that a lot had changed in western Canada’s largest city.

I didn’t realize how much had changed until last Saturday. That’s when I attended a seminar at the University of Kentucky, Planning for Livability and Sustainability: Lessons of the Vancouver Achievement for Lexington and the Bluegrass.

It looked at how Vancouver’s focus on people-friendly development has improved the quality of life. In fact, the research arm of Britain’s Economist magazine calls Vancouver the world’s most livable city.

The seminar was organized by UK professors Ernest Yanarella and Richard Levine. Like the annual Commerce Lexington trip, it was an opportunity to look at other cities’ experiences.

Of course, it’s not that Lexington doesn’t already have a lot going for it. It could teach other cities a thing or two. But Vancouver is a good example of a city that never seems to be content with good enough.

Vancouver is twice the size of Lexington, with a metropolitan area population seven times larger. But the cities have some similarities, such as being surrounded by uniquely beautiful landscapes that are both valuable assets and barriers to growth that increase the cost of living.

The seminar’s main presenter was Ian Smith, Vancouver’s former senior planner and now project director for a large mixed-use development that will begin life as the 2010 Winter Olympic Village.

Smith said Vancouver’s approach to city planning and development has changed dramatically in the past two decades. The process began with Expo ‘86. When the world’s fair was over, its 165-acre site became the first of several old waterfront industrial areas to be redeveloped into mixed-use urban neighborhoods.

It isn’t just the look of Vancouver that has changed, Smith said. It is the development dynamic. Vancouver has become more aggressive about working with developers to make sure projects are as good for the city as they are for the developers.

“We needed to create a different model between the city and private developers that was win-win,” Smith said. “Local government needs to take a leadership role. It can’t be left to chance.”

Smith’s description of Vancouver’s development process reminded me of a similar system in downtown Columbus, Ohio, that I wrote about in February. Rather than asking developers to submit detailed plans based on a complex set of rules to a fragmented city bureaucracy, there’s a collaborative process aimed at making developments the best they can be.

That process includes public participation and a professional urban design review board, which in Vancouver’s case has 12 members — six architects, two landscape architects, two engineers, a developer and a city planning commission member.

Vancouver emphasizes good urban design, especially human-scale streetscapes friendly to pedestrians, bicycles and public transportation. Planning for large mixed-use projects doesn’t just consider utilities, roads, stores and schools, but child care, parks, indoor recreation facilities, public art and environmental impact.

Vancouver’s housing prices are among Canada’s highest, largely because of the constraints of being surrounded by water and mountains.

But Vancouver has shown that high-density, mixed-used neighborhoods can be great places to live.

With each new development, Vancouver has pushed for environmental innovation. A showpiece is the 2010 Olympic Village, the first phase of a new urban neighborhood that by 2018 could have 18,000 residents.

Like other cities Lexington has looked to for ideas, Vancouver has plenty of flaws. But its experiences offer some good lessons:

Lexington’s mayor and council must be aggressive about setting standards that encourage exceptional development. That means articulating a clear vision for high-quality downtown growth rather than reacting to disparate projects as developers propose them.

It also means engaging the public in meaningful participation and empowering the city’s professional staff to focus more on innovation and excellence than local politics.

One more thing: Lexingtonians must get comfortable with increasing density in urban neighborhoods. More density is good for the environment and will protect precious farmland. It also can make neighborhoods better. That will require leadership.

Pearse Lyons, the founder and president of Alltech, says he has arranged to take Muhammad Ali to England in August to meet Queen Elizabeth II.

His next mission: Persuade the queen to return to Kentucky in the fall of 2010 to attend the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games.

Pearse Lyons talks with Queen Elizabeth II at the Royal Windsor Horse Show last month. Alltech photo

Lyons and his wife, Deirdre, met the queen for the first time May 15 at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, on the grounds of ancient Windsor Castle, the British monarch’s weekend home just west of London.

Nicholasville-based Alltech is the title sponsor of both the 2010 Games at the Kentucky Horse Park and the Alltech FEI European Jumping and Dressage Championships, Aug. 25-30 at Windsor.

Thanks to a new charitable foundation that Alltech has created with the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Lyons said he has arranged to take the boxing icon to the horse show at Windsor.

After that, Lyons said, he hopes to take Louisville-born Ali to Lyons’ hometown of Dublin, Ireland, on Aug. 30 for a fund-raiser he is organizing for the Alltech-Muhammad Ali Center Global and Charitable Fund.

Lyons and Ali announced the fund’s creation last month at Alltech’s 25th annual International Animal Health and Nutrition Symposium, which brought more than 1,200 people from around the world to Lexington.

Muhammad Ali and Pearse Lyons announce the Alltech-Muhammad Ali Center Global and Charitable Fund last month. Photo by Charles Bertram

Alltech launched the charitable fund with a $50,000 gift, and Lyons said several companies have indicated interest in supporting it. The goal is to raise $500,000 before the 2010 Games. The fund will support higher education scholarships and mentoring programs as well as humanitarian and disaster relief.

Lyons said he spent more than an hour with the queen at the horse show, chatting while they watched children compete on ponies. He said he talked about his new partnership with the Ali Center.

“She seemed particularly interested in Muhammad Ali,” he said. “And she’s very much into philanthropic things.”

He also made a pitch for her to return to Kentucky, which she has visited at least five times since 1984.

Lyons thinks there’s an especially good chance she will attend the 2010 Games if her granddaughter, Zara Phillips, who won the eventing championship at the 2006 World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Germany, comes to Kentucky to defend her title.

Lyons could never be described as shy, but he said meeting the queen for the first time was intimidating, even though she was friendly and down-to-earth. Before they met, Lyons said, he thought a lot about how to begin the conversation.

“I told her, ‘Your majesty, I have been disappointed in you since 1953,’” Lyons said. “To which she replied, ‘Whatever for?’

“So I explained that as a young boy my brother and I went to London. My mum and dad were going on to France, and so they left us with an aunt of ours in London. And my aunt explained that she would bring us to see the queen and then we would have tea.”

It was the queen’s coronation day, but the Lyons boys just assumed they were having tea with her personally.

Instead, they were taken to the coronation parade, where they saw her ride by in a coach.

“I said, ‘I waved at you along with hundreds and thousands of others, and then we had tea in a tea shop.’” Lyons said.

“‘Oh, how disappointing,’” she said. “‘We shall have to rectify that.’”

Lyons doesn’t know if that means he will have tea with the queen when he returns to Windsor Castle in August. But if he has Muhammad Ali with him, the odds would seem better than they once were for an Irish lad of 8.