The Bluegrass and Beyond

State Rep. Darryl Owens has a good idea; he just hasn’t taken it far enough.

The Louisville Democrat proposed legislation last week that would end a 160-year-old requirement that Kentucky state officers, legislators and lawyers swear they haven’t been dueling.

The state constitution requires them to swear that: “… (I) have not fought a duel with deadly weapons within this State nor out of it, nor have I sent or accepted a challenge to fight a duel with deadly weapons, nor have I acted as second in carrying a challenge, nor aided or assisted any person thus offending, so help me God.”

The oath never fails to elicit giggles and snickering at otherwise dignified swearing-in ceremonies, and Owens thinks that is bad for Kentucky’s image. Besides, the state’s last known duel was fought in 1867.

I’m for anything that improves Kentucky’s image. And there’s a lot about our 1891 constitution that needs changing. But this issue is worth a closer look.

The Kentucky Encyclopedia says there were 41 duels fought in the state between 1790 and 1867. Sixteen men died, but there were never any prosecutions. In an attempt to end the illegal practice, the oath has been part of Kentucky’s constitution since 1849.

When you think about it, the oath was a smart idea that worked pretty well. That’s because duels were generally fought by ambitious men, the same men who wanted to be Kentucky’s lawyers, legislators and state officials.

So instead of just deleting the archaic anti-dueling language, as Owens wants to do, let’s think about modern illegal activities that persist among the ambitious men and women who now seek to be Kentucky’s lawyers, legislators and state officials.

With that idea in mind, here’s my proposed rewrite of Section 228 of the Kentucky Constitution:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm, as the case may be) that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of this Commonwealth, and be faithful and true to the Commonwealth of Kentucky so long as I continue a citizen thereof, and that I will faithfully execute, to the best of my ability, the office of …. according to law.

And I do further solemnly swear (or affirm) that since the adoption of the present Constitution, I, being a citizen of this State, have not lined my pockets nor enhanced my political standing by any of the following means:

■ Paving constituents’ driveways and private roads; buying votes; conspiring with highway contractors to rig or award bids; arranging sweetheart deals to lease or sell my property to public agencies;

■ Accepting money, favors or jobs from lobbyists and special interests; giving government jobs or huge taxpayer-funded raises to my friends, relatives or supporters; steering public work to my businesses; doing special favors for my friends, relatives and campaign contributors; eating high on the hog at fancy restaurants or visiting strip clubs on the public tab; so help me God.

My proposed oath would narrow the field of potential lawyers, legislators and state officials, perhaps urging more honest men and women to get involved in the law and public life. Plus, can you think of a more effective system for term limits?

OK, so maybe it wouldn’t eliminate giggles and snickering at public swearing-in ceremonies. But, like the once-useful dueling ban, it would do a lot to improve Kentucky’s image — and a whole lot more.

Today I have updates on two previous columns, plus a tip on how you can help a new neighbor while scoring a cheap set of wheels.

You may remember the story of Gordon Burnette of Lexington, a tool-and-die maker and amateur art sleuth.

After a neighbor died and her house was sold, Burnette noticed several old, beat-up paintings on the curb. One showing a mare and foal caught his eye. Written on the back was the mare’s name, the artist’s name and June 1882.

Gordon Burnette and Genevieve Baird Lacer with the Thomas J. Scott painting Burnette found on the curb. Photo by Tom Eblen

Impressed by the painting’s quality, Burnette had it restored. Then he began a quest to learn more about the mysterious Thomas J. Scott, one of the top equine artists of the 19th century. He also created a Web site (www.thomasjscott.com) in hopes of identifying other Scott paintings, many of which have been lost over time.

Since the column appeared in May, the Headley-Whitney Museum has agreed to host an exhibit next year of paintings by Scott and his more-famous teacher, Edward Troye. And Burnette has heard from several people with Scott paintings who had no idea what they had.

A Louisville woman bought one at an auction, where it was propping open the door.

The strangest call came from a Lexington woman with a painting almost identical to Burnette’s, only smaller.

“She was so thrilled because she had had this painting all these years and didn’t know who the horses were, who the artist was or where it came from,” Burnette said. He thinks it was the study for his painting, or a copy made for a subsequent owner of the horse.

Where had the painting been hanging all these years? About three blocks away.

Money for Tanzania

Like Burnette, Flaget Nally had no intention of embarking on a quest. But that’s what happened as she was ending a three-year stint as a Catholic lay missionary in Tanzania.

Flaget Nally

A group of nuns asked Nally to raise money for them to build an English-language boarding school for as many as 800 girls of all faiths in a part of Tanzania where girls rarely have a chance to be educated. The Bardstown native had no idea how to do that — or even if she could.

Nally formed Giant Steps for African Girls (www.educateafricangirls.org), which held a fund-raising walk in Lexington last April and other events around Kentucky. So far, it has raised more than $104,000. About $50,000 of that has come from the Lexington area.

A cheap set of wheels?

While writing about Bike Lexington in May, I mentioned Shifting Gears, a partnership between Pedal Power bicycle shop and Kentucky Refugee Ministries, a multi-denomination Christian group that works with the U.S. State Department to resettle legal refugees.

Shifting Gears takes good-quality bikes, which are either donated or taken in trade by Pedal Power, and fixes them up to give to refugees, many of whom have no other transportation. Shop employees and volunteers fix bikes; others are sold to raise money for parts.

The goal is 52 bikes a year. “We’ve been able to beat that every year,” said Brad Flowers, a partner in Bullhorn Marketing who started Shifting Gears in 2003 while working at Pedal Power.

Last year, more than 80 bikes were given away. In addition to adult bikes for refugees, children’s bikes are given to The Nest, a non-profit social service agency off North Limestone.

Pedal Power owner Billy Yates said community response has been so strong that he has far more donated bikes than Shifting Gears can fix. They’ve filled his shop’s attic, and some have to go.

Beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday, Yates will be selling about 200 of the bikes for between $25 and $75 in the parking lot of his shop at Maxwell and Upper streets. There also will be bike parts for as little as a dollar each. All proceeds go to Shifting Gears and Kentucky Refugee Ministries.

“This sale will raise money to allow us to continue fixing up some bikes and give us some space to get more organized and efficient,” Yates said.

Last spring, I wrote about two University of Kentucky professors who have studied Vancouver, British Columbia’s successes in urban redevelopment and sustaintability and how some of those lessons could apply to Lexington.

As part of their work, Ernest Yanarella, a political science professor, and Richard Levine, an architecture professor, organized a conference here in May. Yanarella has just published a Web site with more information on the subject.

After announcing Tuesday that the state would find money to bury power lines along the Newtown Pike extension, Gov. Steve Beshear remarked that if we hadn’t done this project right, we would have regretted it for decades.

He’s right about that. And it’s scary how close it came to being done wrong.

Many people deserve credit for quickly changing the course of this project and saving it from mediocrity, including Beshear, Mayor Jim Newberry and several Urban County Council members.

But after city officials take their bow, they need to take a hard look at why this sort of thing happens too often in Lexington.

The Newtown Pike Extension has been on the drawing board in one form or another since the 1930s. As dreams turned into designs over the past few years, city officials promised the project would create a beautiful new gateway into Lexington, complete with a “signature” bridge.

Somehow, though, those dreams and promises didn’t make it into the state Transportation Cabinet’s blueprints.

Many people — including Urban County Council members — just assumed the power lines would be buried, rather than strung up on poles like those that clutter much of Lexington’s skyline. Not so.

Architects Graham and Clive Pohl, brothers who own property along the Newtown Pike corridor, sounded the alarm after Kentucky Utilities contacted them about buying an easement to string lines.

That created public outcry, prompting Newberry to ask Beshear for state help in paying to bury utilities and the governor to shake loose some Transportation Cabinet contingency money.

“Citizens got our attention on this issue,” Beshear said.

It was a good save all around. But the bigger issue is why the save was needed.

Lexington has come a long way recently in creating a vision for excellence in downtown development. Part of it is a desire to “clean up for company” before the Alltech FEI 2010 World Equestrian Games. Part of it is the realization that quality of life is a key component in economic development.

But if Lexington is to stop settling for second-best, we need to find the missing link that too often keeps vision from becoming reality.

Settling for second-best is how we get buildings like the suburban-style High Street Post Office and the federal prosecutors’ building on Vine Street, which looks like a cheap suburban hotel. It’s how we allow the city’s historic core to be demolished for ego-driven, pie-in-the-sky projects like CentrePointe and the World Coal Center.

We’re getting better with vision, but we often seem to lack the structure, leadership and will to make it happen.

The Downtown Development Authority has traditionally seen its mission as facilitating the plans of private developers, although, since the CentrePointe fiasco, Chairman David Mohney has talked about the need to serve a broader public interest. Still, the DDA has limited power.

Great cities seem to find ways to make developers, businesses, government agencies and utilities build in ways that are good for the whole city and not just themselves.

These cities don’t do it by trying to write rules for everything, or creating dense bureaucracies that discourage development. They do it by requiring that major projects undergo public scrutiny and professional review by people with expertise in urban design and planning.

Last winter, I wrote about how the nine-member Downtown Commission has guided the revitalization of Columbus, Ohio’s urban core. Many other cities also have effective design review boards to make sure new parts of the urban landscape fit in and contribute to the whole. Those boards have broad authority, and they don’t settle for mediocrity.

Distillery District developer Barry McNees said the ability of officials to find a way to bury power lines along the Newtown Pike extension is a promising sign for future development in Lexington.

“It begins to define the kind of urban DNA we want for downtown,” McNees said. “A lot of the concern was, if we’re willing to compromise at the beginning, where will we end up?”

Louisville may be the state’s largest city, but for 11 days each August it becomes the center of rural Kentucky at its best.

Sure, city people enjoy the Kentucky State Fair, too. Just ask Farm Bureau Freddie, the giant talking statue who has been welcoming visitors to the fair for 52 years.

The fair has midway rides, concerts, corn dogs, vendors and booths promoting just about every organization in the Commonwealth.

You can buy picture frames, porch swings and storm windows, get a mammogram or prostate screening and learn a tractor-trailer load about Abraham Lincoln at the Kentucky Historical Society’s history mobile.

Huge exhibit halls show average Kentuckians’ art and crafts, from quilts to paintings, baskets, Christmas trees, homemade beer and intentionally ugly lamps.

But to truly appreciate rural Kentucky and the people who live there, turn left after you say hello to Freddie, cut through Freedom Hall and wander through the vast livestock pavilions and into Broadbent Arena.

Here you will find farm families from across the state, showing off the bounty of their hard work, rich land and considerable ingenuity.

“There’s so much pride in Kentucky, and this is where it all comes together,” said Miss Kentucky Mallory Ervin, a Union County farm girl. “I’ve been coming here since I was little, but they treat you a little better when you have a crown on your head.”

Ervin was enjoying her celebrity role at this year’s fair, even if she was afraid to eat any funnel cakes. The Miss America pageant is only five months away.

Besides, the “Kentucky Proud” food she was promoting is more nutritious. The Great Kentucky Cookout Tent is the place to eat. I got a country ham sandwich, but the barbecue, pork chops, steak, catfish and trout looked tempting, too.

Inside the air-conditioned pavilions, one room held prize-winning hay and honey. Another was filled with caged rabbits, pigeons, chickens and dairy goats. They will move out Monday to make room for sheep and swine.

As I walked by, I watched big, strong men carefully cradling their fluffy bunnies on the way to the judges’ tables.

“It’s a fabulous hobby; they don’t bark, but they will bite,” said Michael Wiley of Stamping Ground, the secretary-treasurer of the American English Spot Rabbit Club. “I started out in 4H when I was 10 years old. Now I’m 62.”

This week’s schedule includes the World Championship Horse Show, plus shows for morgan, quarter and miniature horses.

Last week, dairy cows were the stars. Bathed and freshly clipped, they lounged in fresh hay as they awaited their turn in the show ring. Some stalls were quite fancy: framed photos of cattle, white picket fences and chairs embroidered with the farm’s name or logo.

“I’ve been coming up here for 37 years,” said The Rev. Sammy Adkins of Somerset, who was watching over his son’s prize cattle. “It’s a good family vacation. You know where your kids are and what they’re doing.”

In fact, the next generation of Kentucky farmers was everywhere. Many proudly wore their blue corduroy Future Farmers of America jackets, even when they went outside in the heat.

These kids know food doesn’t come from a grocery. They know state fair competitions lead to better-quality food, and that farming isn’t a way to make a living so much as a way of life.

Dan Shearer’s Jessamine County family has been showing prize-winning Ayrshire cattle at the Kentucky State Fair for three decades. This year, his four grandchildren, ages 12 to 21, were carrying on the tradition.

“There’s a whole lot of work involved, but it’s good for the kids,” said Shearer’s son, Danny. “When kids grow up on a farm, it teaches them about animals. It also teaches them responsibility. ”

I stood beside the ring in Broadbent Arena for more than an hour, watching and photographing impressive kids with fine-looking cattle.

My favorite may have been Taylor Graves, 10, of Perryville. Her father, dairy farmer Ray Graves, said she started showing goats almost as soon as she could walk. This was her second year in the ring with the family’s Brown Swiss cattle.

The cows were at least 10-times bigger than Taylor, but she was a young woman in control. She skillfully paraded them around the ring, petting and rubbing each one when they followed her lead and stood still at the appropriate times. When they tried to pull away, she just as confidently got their attention with a hard smack.

What does Taylor like best about being a farm girl?

“Getting to play with the animals,” she said with a shy voice — and a pocket full of blue ribbons.

• If you go

  Kentucky State Fair

  Gates open daily at 7 a.m. through Aug. 30

  Exhibit Buildings open 9 a.m. - 10 p.m.

  Admission: $8, $4 for seniors and children 3-12

  More information: kystatefair.org

Click on each thumbnail to see entire photo

I went to opening day of the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville on Thursday. I had a great time, and everyone I saw seemed to be having fun, too.

Click on the arrow below to see a slide show of some of my photos. Some of the photos will be in Friday’s Herald-Leader, on the City|Region section front.

Also, watch for my column about the state fair here and in the Herald-Leader on Sunday.

If you want to join in the fun yourself, the state fair is open until Aug. 30. Go to the fair’s Web site for more information.

It was an exhausting two-day trip from her home in Chendu, China, to Lexington, where Tianjiao Yang will become a nursing student at the University of Kentucky.

But when she arrived Sunday at Blue Grass Airport, Judy Phillips was there to greet her and take her to her dormitory. And Yang didn’t need to worry about dinner.

That’s because Phillips and other volunteers from UK’s International Hospitality Program, along with the Lexington Rotary Club, had put on a huge picnic spread to welcome Yang and more than 100 other new international students.

A long table on one side of the E.S. Good Barn, where UK’s College of Agriculture has its offices, was loaded with hamburgers, brats, side dishes and all of the trimmings. Outside, for the few who dared brave the heat and humidity, there were corn hole boards and written instructions on how to play.

Mostly, though, there were a lot of smiling faces to welcome Yang and her fellow students from 24 nations to their new Kentucky home.

“I was a little nervous, but American people are very friendly,” Yang said only a few hours into her first day on this side of the world. “Judy is very kind. She helped me a lot.”

The program has been making the transition to American life a little easier for UK’s new international students for more than four decades.

Later this week, as they did last week, volunteers will take students shopping for everyday necessities they couldn’t bring with them. Later this fall, a square dance is planned to introduce them to traditional Kentucky culture.

And for students who want one, there is a host family or person who has agreed to spend some time with them off campus once a month — invite them to their home for dinner, or take them on a family outing.

Hosts also are only a phone call away for seemingly simple questions that can baffle someone fresh from another culture, such as how to open a bank account, get a driver’s license or figure out what size sheets to buy for their unfamiliar American bed.

The transition usually isn’t difficult for students from Australia, Western Europe and other places with cultures similar to the United States. But it can be daunting for some students from Africa, Asia and parts of Eastern Europe.

Yang was one of several students getting airport pickup service this year from Phillips, who is in her 19th year as an IHP volunteer and host.

“It’s really a great program in that you can have a relationship with an exchange student, but they don’t live in your home and you don’t have a financial commitment,” said Phillips, who over the years has traveled to Poland, Egypt and Dubai to visit exchange students she once hosted. “They become like your own kids. I have thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Stephanie Hong, executive director of the city’s Partners for Youth program, has served for many years as an IHP board member and host because she remembers how important it was for someone to show her around when she arrived from Taiwan to become an undergraduate at Eastern Kentucky University.

She often takes students to a pumpkin patch before Halloween, to a Thanksgiving dinner and to see Christmas lights to help explain American culture. “It’s a one-year commitment for the host family, but it often becomes a lifelong friendship,” said Hong, who once traveled to India to attend a former exchange student’s wedding.

“We’re always looking for more host families,” said Karen Slaymaker, assistant director of UK’s international affairs office, who oversees the program. People interested in becoming hosts or volunteers may call her for more information at (859) 257-4067, ext. 237, or go to the Web site, www.uky.edu/intlaffairs.

UK usually has about 300 international students from as many as 100 nations at any given time, from teenage undergrads to post-doctoral students.

“They’re all somebody’s children,” said Pat Bond, assistant dean of UK’s graduate school and chair of the International Hospitality Program. “They’re courageous to be doing this in the first place, coming to a new country and culture. Just little acts of kindness mean so much to these kids.”

FRANKFORT —Frank Lloyd Wright was hired in 1910 to design a Frankfort home for a Presbyterian minister he met during a trip to Europe. But it would be nearly four decades before the architect would visit his creation.

Wright was speaking in Louisville and Lexington, and he asked to be taken by the house. When the man who then lived there answered the door, the story goes, Wright walked in as if he owned the place.

During the visit, the man asked Wright, then 80, what he had in mind when he designed the display case around the top of the living room fireplace. It is the only one like it in any of the hundreds of homes Wright designed.

After a few moments, Wright replied that he couldn’t remember what he was thinking at the time, “But I’m sure it was very advanced.”

Ed Stodola, who has owned the Rev. Jesse Zeigler house at 509 Shelby Street for nine years, smiles when he tells the story. Wright was almost as famous for his outsize ego as for his innovative architecture, so Stodola thinks the story of that 1948 visit just might be true.

One thing is for sure: Of the more than 1,000 structures Wright designed during his 70-year career as perhaps America’s greatest architect, only one was built in Kentucky.

Wright is getting a lot of attention this year, the 50th anniversary his death in 1959 at age 91. It also is the 50th anniversary of Wright’s last great building, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The art museum on Fifth Avenue marked the occasion with a retrospective of Wright’s work.

Wright is best known for his “prairie” style buildings that blend into the natural landscape. His most famous creations might be the Guggenheim and Fallingwater, a house built over a waterfall in rural Pennsylvania.

Wright’s ideas about architecture had a profound influence on 20th-century home design, from the bungalows of the 1920s to the ranch-style homes of the 1950s. He pioneered and popularized open floor plans, built-in cabinets and carports. He experimented with pre-fabrication and even designed furniture and fixtures for his houses.

Stodola and his wife, Sue, are Wisconsin natives who were taught in school about native son Frank Lloyd Wright the way Kentucky children are taught about Abraham Lincoln.

Stodola, a psychologist, was living in Lexington in 2001 but doing most of his work in Frankfort. He vowed he would move to Frankfort if the Zeigler house ever came up for sale. Driving by one day, he noticed a “for sale” sign in the yard. He soon bought the house, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The four-bedroom Zeigler house, which like most Wright houses is of modest size and distinguished by strong horizontal lines, was built by a Frankfort contractor. The leaded-glass windows and Roman brick on the fireplace came from Wright’s studio in Chicago, Stodola said.

Zeigler, who had a wife and three children, economized in a few places: the upstairs floors are heart pine, rather than oak, and plain glass was used in rear, upstairs windows.

All but one room open to an outside terrace or deck. That and the windows help accomplish Wright’s goal of “organic” architecture that visually brings the outside environment inside.

There are many small design touches, such as the pink dogwood blooms painted on the shades of wall-mounted light fixtures in the master bedroom, echoing the pink dogwood tree that has always been in the front yard.

Although Wright’s designs are an architect’s dream, they can be a structural engineer’s nightmare. Fallingwater has been jokingly called “Fallingdown” because it has required costly repairs over the years.

Luckily for the Stodolas and the four previous owners, the Zeigler house hasn’t had many such problems. One reason could be that its roof is more steeply pitched than those of many Wright houses. It also has a basement, a rarity in a Wright house.

“This home is very livable,” Sue Stodola said. “I never feel crowded in the rooms, because they feel bigger than they really are.”

Light shines through the wavy, leaded-glass windows and reflects off the oak woodwork differently depending on the weather and season. Ed Stodola loves sitting on the back, upstairs terrace with a glass of wine during a summer rain; the drops make an interesting sound on the roof overhang.

“There’s this ongoing discovery with the house,” he said.

The Zeigler house also has another claim to fame: Woodrow Wilson slept here.

Soon after the house was built, and three years before Wilson became president, he was Zeigler’s guest while attending a National Governors Association meeting in Louisville. Wilson was then president of Princeton University and had just been elected governor of New Jersey. The two men had known each other at Princeton.

The Zeigler house has had a state historical marker out front for many years. The Stodolas added a small “private home” sign after more than a few curious sightseers knocked on their door or looked in their windows, thinking the house was a museum.

One woman came to the door and explained that she was a schoolteacher visiting Wright houses as part of a cross-country trip. As it turned out, she was from Denmark, Wis., Stodola’s tiny hometown. After a few minutes of conversation, they discovered that his mother had been her fourth-grade teacher and she now taught in her old classroom.

The Stodolas have come to accept that the occasional stranger at the door is the price you pay for living in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. His designs are so iconic, his influence on architecture so great, that it feels natural for some people to want to walk right in as if they owned the place.

This is one thing about which there seems to be no debate: J.W. Patterson is a University of Kentucky treasure.

Patterson, a communications professor and the student government adviser for 42 years, is retiring from his last and most significant job. At age 81, he is stepping down as director of UK’s debate program, which since 1971 he has shaped into one of the nation’s best.

Nearly 100 former students are in Lexington this weekend from as far away as New York and California for several parties and a big dinner in Patterson’s honor.

“J.W. had a legednary career at UK,” said Mayor Jim Newberry, who was advised by Patterson when he was student government president in 1977-78.

“He put the debate team on the map and kept it there for decades,” Newberry said. “There are not going to be very many people like him in the years to come, because it is rare to see anyone with the longevity at an institution that he had. He will be missed.”

Gov. Steve Beshear was on UK’s debate team under Patterson’s predecessor, Gifford Blyton. But as a law student, Beshear worked two summers at the high school debate camp Patterson started and built into one of America’s most prestigious.

“He has such a good rapport with students,” Beshear said. “He would, in a sense, be your friend as well as your professor.”

One of the first to arrive for the weekend festivities was Murray Stewart, 78, who drove from Tulsa, Okla. He was on the first debate team Patterson ever coached, at Muskogee (Okla.) Central High School in 1948.

“He had quite an influence on my life,” said Stewart, a retired tax lawyer who said Patterson taught him self-confidence, organized thinking and impromptu speaking. “He’s just a wonderful man.”

Patterson, whose initials are the only first and middle names his parents gave him, is a native of Oklahoma who taught high school before earning graduate degrees from the universities of Michigan and Oklahoma. He joined UK’s faculty in 1960, arriving on campus the day John F. Kennedy came to campaign for president.

“I came to UK because it was the best offer I got that didn’t require me to do debate,” Patterson said. “I was planning to get out of debate forever.”

He became UK’s student government adviser in 1964. That proved to be an interesting experience as the campus was swept up in national turmoil over the Vietnam war and societal change.

“It was a difficult time,” said Patterson, who often was caught between students and top administrators. It didn’t help that Patterson also was president of a faculty organization that sued UK to force the removal of National Guard troops from campus.

Perhaps UK’s most controversial student president was Stephen Bright in 1970-71. He has since become one of the nation’s leading death-penalty opponents and legal scholars, teaching at the Harvard and Yale law schools.

“Steve was an excellent president,” Patterson said. “People would expect this long-haired radical and he would come in with hair shorter than mine and wearing a suit. It would blow their minds.”

Bright also remembers Patterson fondly. “He was engaged in more things involving students than just about any member of the faculty,” said Bright, who heads the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta.

“It was a tumultuous time,” Bright said. “There were a lot of issues being passionately debated at the university … the great issues of the day — war and peace, wealth and poverty and what kind of future the country ought to have. Dr. Patterson was somebody who liked to facilitate the exchange of ideas, which is really what you should try to do at a university.”

Patterson served many roles at UK, including assistant to the president and organizer of UK’s centennial celebration in 1965, which included a visit by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

But debate was always his first love. His greatest legacy is the UK debate team, which has consistently won top awards, including several national championships.

“It’s almost like a one-on-one tutorial job,” Patterson said of coaching debate. In retirement, he hopes to update a debating textbook he co-authored.

About 75 percent of Patterson’s debate students were pre-law and political science majors. But one of his best, who won a national championship, became one of Kentucky’s best restaurateurs, Ouita Papka Michel of Holly Hill Inn in Midway.

“I went to the Culinary Institute of America, while others went on to Harvard and Yale,” she said. “But debate was definitely one of the best aspects of my college career and serves me well in my life today.”

Like many others, Michel remembers Patterson’s passion for helping students succeed, both in debate and in life.

“He was really tough, but in a friendly way,” she said. “He’s a person who in my mind will be forever young.”

There’s no zealot like a convert, and when it comes to believing in Kentucky’s potential, there’s none like Pearse Lyons.

The energetic Irishman, who moved to Lexington three decades ago and built his Alltech nutrition supplement company into a global giant, has a few thoughts about how the future could shine brighter on his new Kentucky home.

Lyons shared some of those thoughts Thursday with the Lexington Forum, telling the monthly gathering of business folks that the keys are education, innovation and building on Kentucky’s existing strengths and resources.

Lyons hopes to showcase many of those resources next fall, when his company sponsors the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games at the Kentucky Horse Park.

But he’s getting a head start in Britain this month at the Alltech FEI European Jumping and Dressage Championships, Aug. 25-30.

More than 60,000 spectators and 150 competitors from 32 nations are expected to attend the games at Windsor Castle. One thing they’ll find, a short walk from the arena, is a Kentucky oasis.

The Alltech Kentucky Village, a tented area inside a white-plank fence, will give visitors a literal taste of Kentucky: burgoo, hot Browns, Maker’s Mark bourbon, Dippin’ Dots ice cream and, of course, Alltech’s Kentucky Ale and Bourbon Barrel Ale.

Everett McCorvey from the University of Kentucky’s Opera Theatre program will direct a vocal ensemble. There also will be displays promoting Kentucky tourism and products.

Muhammad Ali and Pearse Lyons announced creation of the Alltech Muhammad Ali Center Global Education and Charitable Fund in Lexington in May. Alltech Photo

Lyons is taking Muhammad Ali to Windsor, thanks to the Alltech-Muhammad Ali Center Global Education and Charitable Fund. After that, Lyons and Ali head to Dublin for a fund-raising dinner and a visit to the Irish town one of Ali’s great-grandfathers left for America in the mid-1800s.

Lyons said he gets dizzy sometimes thinking about how an Irish lad of modest means could grow up to earn a Ph.D. and create a company with annual revenues of $500 million and a 35 percent profit margin — much less hobnob with people such as Ali and Queen Elizabeth II.

It all came down to education, entrepreneurship and taking advantage of opportunities. The same formula can work for Kentucky, too, he told the Lexington Forum.

Lyons noted that Kentucky and Ireland have many similarities. They’re both beautiful, mainly rural places with about 4 million people, rich heritage and a history of seeing their smart young people leave for opportunities elsewhere.

Ireland reversed its fortunes by focusing on education and innovation, and Kentucky can do the same.

This time of economic transition is when Kentucky should look for new opportunities and new ways of doing things, Lyons said.

For example, Kentucky should neither ignore its rich coal reserves, nor expect to continue mining and burning coal the old way, given environmental concerns and climate change. Instead, he said, Kentucky should be at the forefront of figuring out how to make coal more valuable “within the new rules and regulations.”

One way to do that is by focusing on carbon-capture research. Lyons thinks one solution could be algae — the fast-growing slime that produces two-thirds of the world’s oxygen by soaking up carbon dioxide.

Another opportunity is aquaculture, because Kentucky has enormous reserves of fresh water, much of it underground.

“Fish is an incredible opportunity for Kentucky,” he said. “Where the poultry industry is today, the fish industry will be tomorrow.”

Algae and aquaculture are two of many things Alltech researchers are working on.

“The possibilities for innovation are enormous,” Lyons said. But innovation requires education.

Lyons said Kentucky universities must develop programs that will retain the state’s own students and attract those from elsewhere. And he challenged Kentucky businesses to invest in education.

He said Alltech donates laboratories to schools and pays graduate students to earn Ph.D.s, do research for the company and stay in Kentucky after graduation.

While looking for new opportunities, Kentucky should continue developing signature industries such as bourbon and horses that already have infrastructure and international reputations. For example, one thing that led Alltech to develop its popular Bourbon Barrel Ale was Kentucky’s ready supply of used bourbon barrels.

Along with more focus on education, Lyons said, Kentucky needs leaders.

“The leader’s job is to bring uncertainty out and certainty in,” he said. “That’s what our state needs. Because in 20 years’ time the whole world is going to change. Which way? I’m not sure. But it’s going to change. And please God it will change, because therein lies our opportunity.”

After the big storm Tuesday afternoon, I drove down Main Street to check on Lake Lexington. As I was waiting to turn left from Upper to Vine, I looked back at the CentrePointe site and saw Coleman Larkin and his dalmatian, Sal. I’ll leave any commentary to Sal.

FANCY FARM — The governor was vacationing in Florida. Members of Congress were working in Washington. The audience was smaller and less rowdy than usual. Even the traditionally oppressive heat stayed away from this year’s Fancy Farm Picnic.

With no statewide elections this year, the best reason to make the long drive to Graves County on Saturday was the barbecue, fresh vegetables and homemade pies prepared by the families of St. Jerome parish.

The focus of this year’s political speaking was the 2010 U.S. Senate race, which turned into a wide-open contest last week, when Republican incumbent Jim Bunning, 77, became the last person in Kentucky to realize it was time for him to retire.

Three Republicans and four Democrats who are seeking their parties’ nominations for the seat next May spoke to the crowd. I found them all disappointing. Click here to hear the speeches.

Democrat supporter Thomas Kirby of Clinton was among those at the 129th annual Fancy Farm Picnic. Photo by Tom Eblen

When they weren’t beating up on each other, the Democrats were blaming eight years of Republican government for the nation’s economic problems. The Republicans were stoking fear about what might happen as a result of Democrats’ efforts to solve those problems.

The sharpest words came from the two Democratic frontrunners, Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo and Attorney General Jack Conway.

Mongiardo, a Hazard physician and coal industry advocate, tried to portray himself as the candidate of the common man. He attacked Conway, of Louisville, for his Duke University education and alleged “silver spoon” background.

Then Mongiardo tried to link Conway to President Barack Obama’s “cap-and-trade” legislation, which is designed to reduce pollution from burning coal. It was a stretch. Besides, Fancy Farm seemed like an odd place to argue, in essence, that concerns about man-made climate change are unfounded.

Western Kentucky’s trees remain bent and broken from last fall’s bizarre hurricane winds and last winter’s crippling ice storm. It’s usually about 100 degrees at the Fancy Farm Picnic. This year, temperatures never left the low 80s, while, across the country, usually balmy Seattle is gripped by a heat wave.

Conway, whose supporters held up signs that said “Mongiardo doesn’t know Jack,” took a few verbal swipes at the doctor and showed he knows how to cuss. The attorney general talked about how much he has worked on consumer-protection issues.

Secretary of State Trey Grayson’s speech was straight from the conservative playbook, complete with sneering references to Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reed and House Speaker Nancy Pelonsi.

Grayson needed to play to the GOP’s conservative base. His main challenger is Bowling Green eye doctor Rand Paul, son of Texas congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul, the darling of libertarians.

Paul attacked Republicans and Democrats alike. He talked about balanced budgets and held up a thick stack of paper, saying senators shouldn’t vote on any bill they haven’t fully read. At one point, somebody in the GOP cheering section behind me yelled, “You’re boring!”

Three virtual unknowns cast themselves as alternatives to politics as usual: Democrats Darlene Fitzgerald Price, a former U.S. Customs agent from McCreary County, and Maurice Sweeney, a businessman from Jefferson County; and Republican Bill Johnson, a Todd County businessman.

The Fancy Farm crowd is always more interested in heckling than listening, so it’s hard to tell which candidates’ messages might resonate with average voters. For me, the most relevant words came from State Auditor Crit Luallen, once you filtered out her obligatory Democratic partisanship.

Crit Luallen

As citizens have seen jobs disappear, Luallen said, “they have watched banking scandals unfold, the meltdown on Wall Street, the disclosure of extravagant corporate perks and irresponsible spending of their tax dollars by public leaders. The American people have had it up to here. They’ve said enough is enough.”

What voters want is accountability, and she said it is not a partisan issue.

“These are times that demand leaders with integrity to restore trust, leaders with principles to act responsibly, leaders with the courage to take on powerful interests and leaders who will insure accountability for your hard-earned money,” she said.

“It’s time to honor the public’s demands for greater accountability. Every public leader is a guardian of the taxpayer’s trust. And we must all recommit ourselves to honor and hold sacred that trust.”

It was a good speech. But I couldn’t help but think Luallen should have delivered it facing the stage rather than the audience.

BARDSTOWN — Gerald Smith, a Lexington native and University of Kentucky history professor, had never visited My Old Kentucky Home State Park before last summer.

Smith arrived early for a speaking engagement at the Nelson County Public Library and had a couple of hours to kill. So he and a student decided to take the park’s tour of Federal Hill, the Rowan family mansion where, legend has it, Stephen Collins Foster was inspired to write Kentucky’s state song.

“The people were very nice,” Smith said. But he noticed that the tour guide, dressed in a hoop skirt, kept referring to the “servants.”

“I finally said, ‘You mean the slaves?’” Smith recalled.

The tour didn’t include the mansion’s attic or basement, where slaves lived, or small rooms beside the kitchen, where they worked.

Finally, Smith asked where the slaves were buried. In the cemetery beside the garden? No, the guide said. Out back. Way out back.

Smith and student A.J. Hartsfield walked across a field to a stand of old trees. Underneath, inside a split-rail fence, were 22 small, unmarked stones and a plaque dedicated in 1945 to Judge John Rowan’s “faithful retainers.”

“As we approached the entrance to the little wooden fence, this guy was looking for his golf ball,” Smith said. The cemetery is in the bend of the 13th hole of the park’s golf course. Balls frequently land there.

“There was nothing sacred about it,” Smith said of the slave cemetery. “It was painful. It was sad.”

Smith went home and shared his experience with two other prominent African-Americans, Lexington writer Frank X Walker and Everett McCorvey, the UK Opera Theatre director who has sung My Old Kentucky Home many times in concerts here and overseas.

They decided to approach state officials with a simple message: We must do better. And, with the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games about to focus the world’s attention on Kentucky, we must do it quickly.

“Folks sing the song; it stirs up such emotion,” Smith said. “It celebrates the state’s history and culture and hospitality and traditions. But this is the way we remember the people who built and lived and worked at this symbol, this monument, this shrine to Kentucky. The African-American presence here has been erased.”

Smith, McCorvey and Walker were hardly the first to complain. But their message seems to have been heard — loud and clear.

“We have already taken a number of steps to interpret things better,” said Gerry Van der Meer, the state parks commissioner. “There’s a bit of uncomfortableness, naturally, about slavery. But it’s a fact. It’s a part of history. We’re embracing this.”

Several changes are planned for My Old Kentucky Home. And Van der Meer has ordered a review of how African-American history is interpreted at all state-run parks and historic sites.

Historically, a raw nerve

My Old Kentucky Home, the place and the song, hold special significance, both for Kentucky’s international image and its complex history of race relations.

The mansion is one of Kentucky’s most recognizable landmarks, depicted on both the state’s postage stamp and quarter. It is the state’s most-visited historic site, with more than 55,000 people touring the mansion each year.

My Old Kentucky Home is the most famous song about the state, sung for an international television audience by more than 100,000 people in the Churchill Downs grandstand before the Kentucky Derby each May. But it wasn’t until 1986 that the word “darkies” in the song’s lyrics was officially changed to “people.”

Foster published the song in 1853, as Kentucky was in the cross-hairs of the national debate over slavery that would lead to the Civil War.

While many people love the song for its romanticized view of Kentucky, they rarely sing past the first verse. The complete song, which Foster originally called Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night, is actually about a slave being “sold down the river.”

While researching My Old Kentucky Home, Smith came across a journal article by the late Thomas Clark, Kentucky’s most eminent historian, published in 1936. It discussed parallels between the song and the controversial, anti-slavery novel of Foster’s time, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Many whites have always tried to portray slavery in Kentucky as somehow more humane than in the Deep South, but abolitionists of the 1850s argued just the opposite, Clark wrote. That’s because slavery in Kentucky was more personal.

Plantations were smaller, and Kentucky slaves had more interaction with their owners than in many Southern states. Whippings and runaways were common, and tens of thousands of Kentucky slaves were separated from their families each year and sold in the South for profit as the cotton, sugar and rice industries grew.

“It is significant,” Clark wrote more than 70 years ago, “that the author’s use of a title obscured his context sufficiently to cause Kentuckians, to whom Uncle Tom’s Cabin was anathema, to take the song to their hearts and claim it as their very own.”

For years after state officials opened Federal Hill to tourists in 1923, black men were hired to walk around portraying Foster’s song characters “Old Black Joe” and “Old Uncle Ned.”

“They fit that standard stereotype of the happy servant who was there to welcome the white guests to the mansion,” Smith said.

He sees the 1945 cemetery plaque honoring Rowan’s “faithful retainers” as part of the effort to soften Kentucky’s collective memory.

“If we allow the site to exist the way it is now, then we perpetuate the myth that slavery was a benign institution in Kentucky,” said Smith, who has been working for years on the Kentucky African-American Encyclopedia project. “This is not about compensatory history. It’s just about history.”

Park changes planned

Officials are working on several modifications at My Old Kentucky Home State Park, where the mansion has been meticulously restored and chimes broadcast Foster tunes across the grounds.

Tour guide scripts are being revised to reflect research on slaves at Federal Hill, who numbered from two to 100 at any given time between the 1790s and 1865. Interpretive displays are planned as money becomes available.

Eventually, the park would like to have audio tour equipment to supplement its small guide staff.

Park Director Alice Willett Heaton is seeking an archaeological survey to find cabin foundations and other evidence of where slaves lived and worked. It is thought the cabins were located near the amphitheater where a Stephen Foster musical has been performed since 1958.

Safety and accessibility issues may keep the attic and basement closed to visitors, Heaton said. But there are discussions about converting one of the rooms beside the kitchen into a place to explain slavery at Federal Hill.

Van der Meer said trees will be planted to screen the slave cemetery from the state park system’s most popular golf course.

“Somebody’s family is buried there,” Van der Meer said. “We want that to be treated more respectfully.”

Heaton is looking for money to build a path from the house to the cemetery. The park master plan she developed in 1987 called for the path, as well as moving the 1930s golf course further away from the cemetery.

She got money a few years ago to move a fairway that went between the house and cemetery. But she hasn’t been able to move the other hole, or build the path.

“It’s always been a money issue,” Heaton said. “But I’m thrilled with Dr. Smith’s interest. This could be a real opportunity for us.”

Smith said he has been pleased by the response from state officials. He plans to work with them to make sure changes are made.

Smith said he wants Kentucky’s international image to be positive — but historically accurate. “For me, it’s about telling the rest of the story,” he said. “So far, we’ve only been telling half of it.”

Perhaps enough time has passed, enough progress has been made, that both black and white Kentuckians can begin coming to grips with slavery and a racist past.

“I’m excited about the future,” Smith said. “I’m excited about the cemetery, about the possibilities and ways of including African-American history in that story of My Old Kentucky Home.”

As a historian, Smith acknowledges the difficulty of accurately interpreting African-American history at My Old Kentucky Home. Little physical evidence remains. Records are sketchy, and much is based on oral tradition.

But, he notes, Federal Hill’s very association with Stephen Foster is based on oral tradition among the Rowans, who were the songwriter’s cousins. There’s no written evidence that Foster ever visited the mansion, much less set his song there.

“We know the slaves were there,” Smith said. “But that other fellow, the one they’ve got the statue to out in the garden, we’re not sure about him.”

Click on each photo to enlarge

Listen to the Fancy Farm Picnic speeches of the three Democrats and three Republicans running for their parties’ nominations to the U.S. Senate in 2010. They’re listed here in the order they spoke to the crowd in Graves County on Saturday. (Click on the link to hear each candidate’s speech.)

Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo (Democrat)

Attorney Gen. Jack Conway (Democrat)

Secretary of State Trey Grayson (Republican)

Darlene Fitzgerald Price (Democrat)

Bill Johnson (Republican)

Maurice Sweeney (Democrat)

Rand Paul (Republican)

In addition to the 2010 Senate candidates, here are remarks from State Auditor Crit Luallen (Democrat)

Attorney Gen. Jack Conway, left, and Secretary of State Trey Grayson chat on the stage before the speaking began Saturday at the 129th annual Fancy Farm Picnic in Graves County. Conway, a Democrat, and Grayson, a Republican, are seeking their parties' nominations for the U.S. Senate in 2010. Photo by Tom Eblen