The Bluegrass and Beyond

MONTEREY — Gray Zeitz thinks the best way to experience poetry is to hear it read aloud.

The second-best way is the way Zeitz has presented it for 36 years: in hand-set type with woodcut illustrations, printed by letterpress on thick, creamy paper, hand-stitched and beautifully bound.

“Everything else,” he said, “is downhill from there.”

In an age when books themselves seem threatened with extinction by virtual type on digital screens, Zeitz’s Larkspur Press uses antique methods to publish elegant volumes of poetry and short fiction by Kentucky authors.

Larkspur Press will have its annual open house Nov. 27 and 28, unless too much rain falls on this corner of Owen County. The business is in a timber-frame shop on Gray and Jean Zeitz’s 60-acre farm. A downpour can send Cedar Creek out of its banks and across their precarious gravel driveway.

If the creek doesn’t rise, visitors will see trays of metal type and the table where Zeitz, 61, can hand-set three pages of prose a day when he is on a roll. The table stands near a 1915 Chandler & Price press, into which Zeitz feeds single sheets of paper, adding a dab of ink every 33 sheets.

“They’ve never made a better press,” he said. “They’ve just made them faster.”

Upstairs in the small shop, Carolyn Whitesel designs books, incorporating her illustrations and those of other artists. Leslie Shane sits at a nearby bench, stitching pages together with needle and thread and gluing handmade covers.

Zeitz is as particular about what he publishes as how. He has produced books by some of Kentucky’s best-known authors, including Wendell Berry, Bobbie Ann Mason and Guy Davenport. He published the first books of several Kentucky poets, including Richard Taylor, James Baker Hall and Frederick Smock.

Larkspur Press produced three books this year: Andy Catlett: Early Education, the latest story in Berry’s series about fictional Port William; and two books of poetry, Maureen Morehead’s The Melancholy Teacher and Smock’s The Blue Hour.

“Last year, we did five books, and it about killed us,” Zeitz said. As time allows, the shop also produces wedding invitations and other job printing to help with cash flow.

The process for deciding which books to publish is simple: “It’s mainly what I like,” Zeitz said. Poetry dominates, perhaps because Zeitz and Shane are occasional poets.

Zeitz wanted to become a poet when he studied under Berry at the University of Kentucky. Then he discovered the University of Kentucky’s King Library Press, where he spent two years as an apprentice to Carolyn Hammer. She and her husband, Victor, became mentors to dozens of fine-art printers.

“I was addicted,” Zeitz said. “When I decided to move up here, she gave me a press and a drawer of type and sent me on my way.”

Larkspur Press opened in Monterey in 1974, but a flood four years later left the shop chest-deep in water. The Zeitzes dried their equipment and moved it to their farm, building their present shop in 1991.

Over time, Zeitz has added equipment, most of which is hard to find because it hasn’t been made in nearly a century. “Buying a new type is like buying a good used car,” he said.

Larkspur Press has been a good life — if not always a good living — for the Zeitzes, whose bright purple house stands up the hill from their shop. In the early years, they raised tobacco and calves to supplement their income.

Zeitz has expensive tastes in materials. Still, he tries to keep prices low because he is more interested in selling books to readers than to collectors.

“Gray’s goal is to make a book that’s beautiful to hold in your hand, but one that a person who loves poetry but isn’t rich can afford,” said Jean Zeitz, a retired teacher.

Many Larkspur Press books are published in three editions. For example, Berry’s poetry book Sabbaths 2006 has a $120 collector’s edition, a $28 hardcover and an $18 paperback.

Larkspur Press books are sold at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, The Morris Book Shop and Black Swan Books in Lexington and several other shops around the state, and at Larkspurpress.com.

The Web site was built and is maintained by a friend, because the Zeitzes don’t own a computer.

“Every now and then, Gray will send me to the library to look at it to see if a new book got on,” his wife said.

John Lackey, a Lexington artist whose woodcut illustrates A Short History of the Present, a poetry book by Erik Reece that Larkspur published last year, thinks Zeitz’s craftsmanship pays unique tribute to Kentucky’s writers — and readers.

“Writing like Wendell Berry’s deserves to be treated like a work of art,” Lackey said. “I have a huge amount of respect for Gray. Those little books he makes are wonderful pieces of magic.”

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VERSAILLES — Woodford County, like a lot of places, is struggling to adapt to a changing economy. How can people there create a more prosperous future while protecting their community’s beauty and quality of life?

Those were the big questions posed one morning earlier this month when community activist Deborah Knittel and the Woodford Coalition, a citizens group, invited more than 100 local leaders to meet in a church’s fellowship hall.

The facilitator was Doug Henton, a California-based consultant who has helped more than 40 communities across the country deal successfully with these issues over the past three decades. Henton is also a native of Woodford County, where his family has lived for two centuries

Doug Henton

The points Henton made, the questions he raised and the research and further discussions he suggested could help other Kentucky communities that are struggling with these issues. In other words, every community.

To an outsider, Woodford County would seem an unlikely place for anxiety. It ranks first among Kentucky counties in per-capita income, is strategically located between Lexington and Frankfort and has some of the Bluegrass’ most beautiful countryside.

But income statistics may be skewed by wealthy landowners. The Thoroughbred industry is in a slump. Tobacco farming is all but gone, and many of the factories that once gave Woodford County workers a middle-class lifestyle have closed. Conflict over growth, development and land-use planning has created deep divisions.

Henton, CEO of Collaborative Economics of San Mateo, Calif., didn’t come home with all of the answers. What he offered were tips for analyzing a community’s strengths, weaknesses and opportunities, with the goal of creating a shared vision for growth.

Long-term economic development isn’t about cheap labor and tax breaks, Henton said. It is about regional collaboration, productivity and continuous innovation. It is about having infrastructure, a skilled workforce and sufficient economic and social capital.

“It’s not just about having assets, but creating networks of people who can make the best use of those assets,” he said. “It’s not just the ingredients, it’s the recipe.”

It also is about quality of life, a hard-to-define combination of environment, resources and social conditions such as inclusiveness. “Economic development today is about where people want to live,” he said. “You can’t have a strong economy without a good community.”

Henton advised Woodford County leaders to assess weaknesses they need to fix and unique strengths — “economic clusters” — they can build on and market to bring money in from elsewhere.

He talked about his work with Sonoma County, Calif., in the early 1980s, which leveraged its wine industry for more tourism and used its beauty and quality of life to attract professionals who could live wherever they chose.

The Woodford County folks quickly got the point: horses, bourbon, scenic beauty, good quality of life. Other assets to build on: good roads, attractive downtowns in Versailles and Midway and educational assets such as Midway College. They even started reeling off names of people who do business all over the world but choose to live in Woodford County.

The discussion also identified things the county lacks: public transportation, motels, a movie theater, enough affordable housing for low-wage workers.

Then talk turned to deeper concerns: fragmented local governments that don’t cooperate enough, a lack of support for entrepreneurs, friction over land-use planning and old debates over private property rights vs. public good.

The people, seated at round tables, were asked to talk among themselves to identify Woodford County’s strengths and weaknesses. As each table reported, you could hear the buzz: what some thought of as strengths, others saw as weaknesses.

As one table’s representative discussed social issues, Larry Blackford, who was there representing a local African-American group, rolled his eyes and leaned over to me. “They’re in denial,” he said.

Nothing was resolved, but I had the sense that this sort of frank and open discussion doesn’t happen very often.

“We need to listen to each other,” said Dan Rosenberg, a Thoroughbred industry consultant. “It’s not a situation of you’re right and you’re wrong. We all have different perspectives.”

Henton urged the group to keep meeting, identify champions to take on specific issues and visualize what they hope to achieve. “It’s about people and relationships,” he said. “The critical point in all of this is trying to define goals for a shared future.”

It was a good first step. But without diverse leadership and buy-in, Knittel fears, the effort could fizzle. “I think good things will come out of this,” she said. “Any conversation is better than the one we haven’t had.”

For any Kentucky community wanting a brighter future, that’s good advice.

When artist John Lackey moved his studio to the former Spalding’s Bakery building at the busy corner of North Limestone and East Sixth streets a couple of months ago, he quickly got a taste of life in a transitional neighborhood.

“People had been coming here to get doughnuts for 70 years,” he said, “so they were used to just walking right in.”

Lackey’s paintings are detailed and colorful interpretations of wild Kentucky landscapes, with trees and plants that seem to dance in the breeze. Think Vincent van Gogh does Paul Sawyier, with touches of M.C. Escher and Max Ernst.

An old man wandered into the studio one day and silently studied Lackey’s paintings. “Those trees are awfully curly,” he finally said. “Trees aren’t really that curly, you know.”

A few days later, a little girl walked in, looked around and, just as matter-of-factly, announced: “I like roses. If you paint roses, I might buy some.”

Like some of his new neighbors, Lackey isn’t exactly sure what he is trying to accomplish with Homegrown Press Studio & Gallery. It officially opens Friday for Gallery Hop with a show of painting and woodblock prints. Lackey’s paintings also will be featured during Gallery Hop at Alfalfa Restaurant, 141 East Main Street.

“My personal goal with this place is to come to maturity as an artist,” said Lackey, who began painting six years ago after doing woodblock engravings for two decades. A former TV station art director, he is a prolific graphic artist. Lackey also writes poetry, short fiction and songs, and he has experimented with filmmaking.

“Somehow, I want to bring them all together here,” said Lackey, 48. “That’s the good part of middle age. I feel like an artist now.”

Lackey’s father was a teacher at Sayre School and his mother is a nurse. His wife, Jenny, manages a medical office. They live in a south Lexington suburb and have two sons: Quinn, 18, a freshman at Furman University in South Carolina, and Dylan, 14, a student at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. Lackey loves hiking in the woods, which inspires much of his art.

During the past couple of years, Lackey’s art has started getting a lot of attention. He recently completed a four-seasons series of landscape paintings for the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce’s board room in Frankfort. He also has paintings on display in the Kentucky Artisan Center in Berea.

Lackey has created posters for the band Wilco. He did woodblock engravings for a poetry book by Erik Reece and the book Abraham Lincoln of Kentucky, which was written by four Kentucky poets laureate and published by the Kentucky Arts Council for the Lincoln bicentennial in 2009.

He just finished a woodblock engraving for the cover of the late James Still’s unfinished novel Chinaberry, which was edited by Silas House and will be published in spring by The University Press of Kentucky.

Lackey said it feels like his artistic career is at a crossroads, just like his new studio’s location and the diverse neighborhood around it.

Al’s Bar across the street has become a hangout for young urban pioneers who are moving into the area, fixing up old buildings and trying to blend in with, rather than displace, longtime low-income residents. The streets can be dicey after dark, but conditions are improving steadily.

Chad Needham bought the Spalding’s building last year. It had been vacant since 2004, when bakery owner James Spalding decided to retire after being pistol-whipped during a robbery. In 2006 his f amily reopened the bakery on Winchester Road in a new building that looks like the old one.

Needham is only the third owner of the circa-1880 building, which was a grocery, saloon and coal yard before the Spalding family bought it in 1934. Before that, the Spaldings had been selling their famous doughnuts for five years out of their house on nearby Rand Avenue. After a major renovation is complete, the old building will have a beautiful upstairs rental apartment in addition to Lackey’s studio.

“I just fell in love with this place,” Lackey said of the big, high-ceilinged room, whose bare brick walls are bathed in light from the storefront windows. In addition to working and showing his work here, he hopes the studio will become a place for other artists to gather and collaborate.

“I feel like this is an appropriate place for me to be right now,” Lackey said. “I also hope that what I’m doing helps the neighborhood. We’re on the crest of a wave here, and I want to help pull it along.”

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The people who market tourism and conventions for Lexington think the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games will be a gift that keeps on giving. But here’s the challenge: How do we take advantage of the many lessons learned from the Games?

David Lord, who will retire March 31 after 17 years as president of the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, has been thinking a lot about that. His biggest lesson from WEG was the value of having shared community goals — and a firm deadline for accomplishing them.

“Can we embrace that, so the next time we’re looking at something like a new farmers market location it doesn’t take 20 years?” Lord said. “When it comes to something we’re excited about like the Distillery District, does it have to take another 20 years?”

The Lexington Distillery District along Manchester Street is slowly turning long-abandoned distilleries and run-down industrial buildings into nightclubs and arts and entertainment venues. Lord, who studies these things, thinks the Distillery District has huge potential because it reflects Lexington’s unique heritage and culture — and because it isn’t so much designed for tourists as for local people.

When such places become popular with locals, tourists like them better than artificial “tourist districts” because they are authentic. The same thing applies to impromptu restaurant districts popping up downtown, such as Cheapside and Jefferson Street.

“I love watching what is happening on Jefferson Street, which is not a planned development,” Lord said. “The synergy of those little places playing off each other is wonderful.”

Lord said Lexington should consider what other quality-of-life improvements could have similar “crossover” potential for locals and tourists alike. Those could include more events and festivals, such as the successful Spotlight Lexington concerts downtown during the Games. They also could include more passive recreation facilities like the Legacy and Town Branch trails.

Lexington could also do more to promote and develop the assets it already has, Lord said. Those include such things as the Woodsongs and Red Barn Radio shows staged downtown weekly. Or things as simple as Central Kentucky’s network of scenic country roads, which are becoming increasingly popular with cyclists who travel from all over the country to ride them.

That kind of thinking is important because tourism and conventions are big business. State officials estimated they were worth $1.66 billion in economic impact for Fayette County and $2.4 billion for the Bluegrass region in 2009.

Lord and his colleagues also have a few other ideas about how Lexington can build on the priceless international exposure and momentum from the Games:

■ Make Lexington more beautiful: Tourists may come primarily for horses, bourbon, history and the scenic beauty of our countryside, but when convention planners look at Lexington, “the look of downtown becomes the primary decision-making factor,” said Dennis Johnston, who oversees convention sales for the bureau. “The downtown streetscape project we just finished is huge, but it’s only a start.”

■ Continue to improve the look of downtown: This involves a lot of big issues, from better architecture to historic preservation to public art. It also includes small things, from the artistic quality of temporary banners to cleaning up litter, an issue recently taken on by the new Keep Lexington Beautiful Commission.

■ Create more public-private partnerships: These are for everything from improving downtown to staging big events like WEG. “If we didn’t have a strategic alliance with Alltech, the state would be having a lot of bake sales to pay off the Games,” Lord said.

■ Capitalize on the $30 million worth of Games-related improvements at the Kentucky Horse Park: This can attract more and bigger equestrian events. The park has huge potential as an economic engine for the region.

■ Capitalize more on the horse industry and the ways it is changing: The Thoroughbred racing business is struggling, but the Horse Park and Lexington are well-positioned with the growing popularity of other equestrian sports.

“That could be a saving grace 20 years from now,” Lord said. “And maybe one of these days there will be a place where (a visitor) can actually ride a horse.”

Welcome to the mayor’s office, Jim Gray. You are inheriting a Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government short on money and beset by challenges.

Despite the shortcomings that got him voted out of office, Mayor Jim Newberry did a lot to move Lexington forward. He tackled some tough issues so you won’t have to.

Many difficult issues remain, though, and the stagnant economy is sure to make many of them worse. Consider last week’s news about a $7.2 million shortfall for city employee health care as a sign of things to come.

Still, this is a time of great promise for Lexington. There are encouraging grass-roots efforts all over town. The Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games brought Lexington global attention, and the air seems filled with energy and possibility.

I’m sure you are getting plenty of advice, but I have some, too. Much of it comes from smart people I have talked with who know Lexington and city government quite well. Some of them didn’t vote for you, but they still want you to succeed — because they want Lexington to succeed.

First, don’t surround yourself with “yes” men and women. Too many politicians make that mistake and become insular, defensive and thin-skinned — and they fail. Be open with the media and the public. Don’t hold grudges. Your ability to engage the community is what got you elected. Don’t stop.

Mayor-elect Jim Gray

Many people, especially your friends and allies, will have ideas for you and requests of you. Give them honest, tactful and prompt answers. A non-answer angers most people more than a “no”. You can’t make everybody happy, and remember that your allies can be harsher critics than your opponents.

Seek out diverse opinions from both experts and average folks. Encourage opposing viewpoints and constructive criticism, especially when it comes from people who seem to be motivated by Lexington’s best interests rather than their own. Don’t fall into the trap of analysis paralysis. Be prepared to deal with unpleasant surprises.

Don’t pretend to have all of the answers, or feel like you must. Often, the best thing you can do is offer encouragement to other people’s ideas and efforts. Sometimes they need city government’s help; other times, they just need city government out of their way.

Look for public-private partnerships and smart ways to leverage city resources. Do more to engage the non-profit and philanthropic communities, not to mention the bright minds at the University of Kentucky, Transylvania University and Bluegrass Community and Technical College. A successful mayor is about coordination and collaboration, not control.

Reach out to Newberry’s supporters. Work to build credibility with your critics. It is especially important to have a good working relationship with the Urban County Council, which should have an excellent leader in Linda Gorton, your successor as vice mayor.

You must build better relationships with council members to whom you are not close — and be prepared to distance yourself occasionally from some to whom you are close. Be a good listener. Compromise when you can, but don’t be afraid to take unpopular stands when you think you must.

Everyone, including you, knows you are a better big-picture leader than a detail-oriented manager. That’s not necessarily bad — and certainly better than the other way around.

Some big-picture leaders make the mistake of getting too bogged down in details, which causes them to neglect the big-picture issues where they could do the most good. Play to your strengths.

Assemble a strong leadership team. You have chosen Richard Maloney, a former council member, as chief administrative officer and Jamie Emmons, your campaign manager, as chief of staff. Both are smart and well-liked. Do they have the management skills and toughness they will need? Time will tell. Be sure they have good mentors.

You must hire (or retain) strong leaders in key jobs, because inertia is the natural tendency of any bureaucracy. Elected officials come and go, and bureaucrats know they are likely to outlast you. Change takes time and persistence. Choose resourceful leaders who will motivate city employees to do their best — and hold them accountable when they don’t.

Avoid rewarding supporters with city jobs or contracts, because it will reflect badly on your biggest campaign contributor: you. Nothing will sour a “fresh start” honeymoon quicker than patronage and favoritism.

Good luck. Nobody said this would be easy.

Shane Tedder, left to right, Brad Flowers and Tim Buckingham are among those starting the Broke Spoke Community Bicycle Shop. Photo by Tom Eblen

Lexington has four good bicycle shops. They have expert mechanics and sell a wide selection of new bikes, specialty clothing and accessories.

The Broke Spoke Community Bicycle Shop won’t be much like them.

That is because the volunteers starting Broke Spoke hope to focus on a different slice of Lexington’s growing cycling community: “The people often referred to as ‘invisible cyclists,’” said Brad Flowers, one of the organizers.

Many of these cyclists are not like those of us who ride for fun and fitness. We can afford to buy what we want — or drive a car when it serves our transportation needs better than a bicycle.

Broke Spoke’s primary mission will be to get used bicycles — like the ones gathering dust in your garage — into the hands of poor people, kids and others who could use them for basic transportation, exercise and fun.

Used bikes and parts will be sold at low cost, or in return for work at the shop, which is in a room behind Al’s Sidecar at East Sixth Street and North Limestone.

The shop opens this weekend to begin taking donations of used bicycles and spare parts. Musicians Ben Sollee, who often tours by bicycle, and Justin Lewis will perform a benefit concert at 8 p.m. Saturday next door at Al’s Bar to raise cash to help cover the shop’s startup costs.

Broke Spoke’s opening also coincides with the Midwest Open Bike Polo Tournament, which will bring 48 teams from across the region to Coolavin Park. That confluence of events says a lot about how Broke Spoke came about — and what organizers hope it will become. It is neither a business nor a charity, but a place for community engagement around bicycles.

Broke Spoke will make tools and space available at nominal cost for people who want to work on their own bikes. A network of amateur mechanics will provide instruction. The shop hopes to become a hub for people interested in local cycling advocacy. And it will provide consignment space for those who make bicycle-related crafts.

“We want this to be a social space,” organizer Shane Tedder said. “A place where all of the great things about cycling would be celebrated.”

Many bigger cities have community bicycle shops. The idea for this one began five years ago, when Tedder started the Wildcat Wheels loaner bike program at the University of Kentucky.

“We were doing a lot of the wrenching out of my living room, and it developed a community bike shop feel,” he said. “We thought (a shop) would be a good idea, but we didn’t have the time or money.”

After several false starts, things started coming together a few months ago. Les Miller, an owner of Al’s Bar and Al’s Sidecar, and Stella’s restaurant on Jefferson Street, offered to make the Sidecar’s back room available under flexible rent terms. He also offered Al’s Bar for monthly benefit events.

Nick Such, a young technology entrepreneur, donated money he made from selling “I Bike KY” T-shirts to help buy shop tools. The Bluegrass Cycling Club, which uses profits from its annual Horsey Hundred tour for bicycle-related causes, also is providing support.

Organizers hope that Broke Spoke eventually will be self-sustaining, with regular hours beyond the initial 1 to 4 p.m. Sundays.

“We know that there’s a strong market for used bikes that is competitive with the cheap bikes sold at big-box stores but not the new, good bikes sold at the bike shops,” Tedder said.

Lexington’s bicycle shops have always been community-minded. One example is the Shifting Gears program at Pedal Power Bike Shop, which Flowers started when he worked there. It takes donated bikes, repairs them and gives them to legal immigrants resettled by Kentucky Refugee Ministries.

“The last thing we want to do is be competition for local bike shops,” organizer Tim Buckingham said. In fact, Broke Spoke hopes to boost the shops’ sales through sales of new parts and stronger community interest in cycling.

“The degree this will be successful,” Flowers said, “will be the degree to which we can make it really fun, useful and inclusive.”

A successful team requires talented people in roles that play to their strengths. Lexington voters seem to have achieved that last week by electing Jim Gray as mayor and Linda Gorton as vice mayor.

Gray and Gorton have complimentary strengths and good communications skills. They both enjoy working with people and solving problems, and they have a good relationship with each other. They met for coffee soon after the election, and they plan to make it a habit.

That is important, because Lexington has suffered from poor communications and collaboration between the executive and legislative branches of city government over the past four years. Changing that dynamic will make it easier to tackle tough issues. It also will help Lexington take full advantage of its newfound confidence and energy coming out of the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games.

Gray comes to the mayor’s office with a perspective that outgoing Mayor Jim Newberry didn’t have. After losing his first race for mayor in 2002, Gray was elected vice mayor in 2006 and has served four years on the Urban County Council.

“That was an unexpected benefit of me losing that mayor’s race,” Gray said. “I’ve now got that experience.”

The legislative role didn’t always play to Gray’s strengths. Being mayor could be a better fit. Gray has an executive background; he is on leave as chief executive of Gray Construction Co., an innovative and successful family-owned company.

Gorton, a registered nurse, has become a superb legislator in her dozen years as both a district and at-large council member. She has often been willing to take on tough jobs and master the minutia of issues and process. She has an exceptional ability to bring people together and help them reach consensus.

When I met separately with Gray and Gorton last week, each said they don’t expect to agree on everything, but they are confident they will work well together.

“We can have good conversations,” Gorton said. “I think Jim Gray and I come from the same mold of being inclusive, wanting to hear other people’s ideas. And we’re both very much into laying things out in the open and talking about them.”

Recent changes in council procedures will give Gorton more influence than Gray had. The vice mayor, rather than the mayor, will chair council work sessions. And there will be fewer work sessions, because more work will be done in committees.

Those committees, which the vice mayor appoints, will be organized to more closely relate to the city’s administrative structure. “I think that will make our legislative process much more efficient and much clearer,” Gorton said.

The election also added three new council members — Steve Kay, Chris Ford and former Councilman Bill Farmer Jr. All bring a deep knowledge of Lexington and strong people skills to the job.

Gray said he will work hard to gain council members’ trust and respect. “My dad used to say that people do business with people they like,” he said. “It’s true in business, in politics and in life. My job is to reach out and listen.”

Much work must be done before Gray, Gorton and the three new council members take office in January. Gray’s first order of business is appointing key administration officials.

Gray knows he is better at ideas and vision than details, so he plans to restore the job of Chief Administrative Officer. He expects to make that appointment this coming week.

Before making other appointments, Gray wants to assess those already in place — many of whom are quite talented, he said. Gray, who was endorsed by all of the city’s employee organizations, said improving communications and employee morale is a priority. Shaking things up isn’t necessarily the best way to improve performance.

“I know better than to be a bull in a china shop,” he said.

Gray’s longer-term goals include more public-private partnerships, which were used so effectively during the Games. He also wants to engage the philanthropic community more, and encourage all segments of Lexington to get involved in civic life.

“I want to have everyone working together, because we want (Lexington) to come out of this recession stronger,” Gray said. “We want to increase the level of confidence about what this city can achieve with the resources we have.”

ELIZABETHTOWN — When people think of great photojournalism and compelling stories, they often think of big news, distant lands and exotic cultures.

But over the years that I have been volunteering as a writing and story coach at the Mountain Workshops, I have come to realize that some of the most compelling stories and photographs can be found right under a journalist’s nose.

The Mountain Workshops is an annual documentary photojournalism project run by Western Kentucky University. Each fall, participants spend a week documenting everyday life in a small town in Kentucky or Tennessee.

The workshop began when I was a WKU student. A few of my photographer friends and two of their professors went to the mountains to document the last one-room schoolhouses in Kentucky.

In the 35 years since then, the Mountain Workshops has grown into a major, nationally known training program in still and multimedia photo journalism and picture editing.

This year’s workshops came to Elizabethtown in late October. There were 70 “students” who had paid to brush up on their storytelling skills using photographs, video, words and audio. Some were students at WKU and other universities; others were working professionals at newspapers ranging in size from small weeklies to USA Today.

Their coaches and the support staff were an all- volunteer corps of photojournalists, writers and editors from across the country. This year’s faculty included Jahi Chikwendiu, a Lexington native who has photographed extensively in Africa and the Middle East for The Washington Post; Karen Kasmauski, who has photographed more than 25 stories for National Geographic magazine; and Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalists Rick Loomis of the Los Angeles Times and Mark Osler of the now- defunct Rocky Mountain News.

This was my 12th workshop during the past 18 years, and others have been coming even longer. Some regulars, including Loomis and me, are WKU grads. But others had no connection to Kentucky before they started coming to the workshop and fell in love with the experience. They include Mick Cochran, director of photography at USA Today, who teaches picture editing; and fellow writing coach Lynne Warren, a former National Geographic writer and editor.

Now that many of Kentucky’s small towns have been covered, the workshops have started going to larger towns. Besides, 150 people need a lot of motel rooms — not that anyone spends much time in them. With so much to do in a week, everyone works from early in the morning until early the next morning.

Three days before the workshops began, a volunteer technical crew turned a vacant industrial building into a state-of-the-art news-gathering and education center with dozens of borrowed computers and miles of Ethernet cable.

The workshop starts at noon Tuesday, when participants literally draw a story assignment out of a hat. The assignments are little more than leads, though, and participants spend the next four days getting to know their assigned subjects — figuring out what their stories are and how to tell them in pictures, words and sometimes audio and video.

By Saturday night, this around-the-clock learning experience has produced a Web site, about 70 picture and video stories, a framed gallery show and a book that will be published in a few months

The professional journeys that students make between the first and fifth days is amazing. And the faculty and staff always seem to learn as much as the students. The collective effort is a remarkable snapshot of a town.

I always come home from the workshops exhausted — and exhilarated. It is my annual reminder of the power of storytelling. And as digital technology advances, creative people find new and powerful ways to use it to tell stories.

“The Mountain Workshops reaffirms my belief in the value of age-old and priceless community journalism,” said Gordon “Mac” McKerral, a fellow writing coach and past national president of the Society of Professional Journalists.

“It’s not so much about the people the Mountain Workshop stories focus on — the barbers, the single father, the mother of an autistic child or the book mobile driver — but about how those people collectively tell a story about the world we live in,” McKerral said. “An inherently good world filled with people who do special things while not believing they are special at all.”

To see photo stories and videos from this and past Mountain Workshops, click here.

Tim Jenkins is in the money and investment business. As the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games approached, all he could think of was how to profit from them.

Jenkins did not end up making a lot of money, but he gained something he now considers much more valuable.

“Most of my conversations with friends and my thoughts leading up to the Games were about how much money do you think we can make from renting our house, our car, whatever we have,” said Jenkins, 29, a principal in Keystone Financial Group LLC in Lexington.

Jenkins had a rental agency look over his modest 1950s home. He was told that he could get $1,000 a night if he signed up and paid some fees. He declined. “That seemed outrageous,” he said. “I wouldn’t pay that to rent my house.”

Still, Jenkins found a renter. A client who runs a bed-and-breakfast had filled her rooms, so she referred a family coming from South Africa to him. They negotiated a price that Jenkins said was a good deal for him and a substantial savings from the hotel bookings they were able to cancel. “It was worth it for my wife and I to do it, but it really wasn’t that much money,” he said.

As the Games drew nearer, Jenkins started catching the spirit. He volunteered as a driver, picking up international team members at the airport and taking them to their hotels. On one trip, he pulled into a gas station to buy beer for some thirsty Argentines.

When Leon and Elizabeth van Tubbergh arrived from Johannesburg, South Africa, with her mother, sister and brother, Jenkins settled them into his home and drove them around Lexington to help them get their bearings.

“They said, ‘Where can we get some fried chicken?’ and ‘What about biscuits and gravy?” Jenkins said. “They had been looking forward for four years to coming to where we live every day. It dawned on me that we needed to be good hosts.”

As it turned out, the van Tubberghs were the same ages as Jenkins and his wife, Lisa. “We had a lot in common,” he said.

Soon it was the van Tubberghs’ turn to play host. They invited the Jenkins family to their own home for a barbecue, or what South Africans call a “braai.” The van Tubberghs cooked lamb and sausages on the Jenkinses’ grill. They also invited the neighbors, who brought Derby-Pie, bourbon balls and bourbon cream sauce.

“We were having an international experience right on our itty-bitty deck,” Jenkins said. “And it was just because people wanted to get together and learn about each other. It was just about life, but it really opened up our minds.”

In an e-mail message from South Africa, Elizabeth van Tubbergh wrote last week that her family was impressed with the Games, Kentucky’s beauty, and Bourbon Cream liqueur, “which is to die for — it’s going to become a staple in our family!”

But what impressed her most were average Kentuckians, “the utter friendliness we encountered,” she wrote. The Afrikaans word for it is “grasvry,” which she said translates roughly to “hospitable.”

“Tim was an amazing host, and we wanted for nothing while we stayed in his and Lisa’s home,” she wrote, adding that he borrowed a bike so her husband could ride the Legacy Trail. “That we could stay in their home was just lucky. Or fate maybe?”

The Jenkinses now have their home back, and a little extra money in their pockets. But they need more, because they are saving for a trip to South Africa next fall. They will visit the van Tubberghs and tour their country. “Elizabeth is mapping it all out for us,” he said.

Jenkins said he has been reflecting on how much the Games enriched his life.

“When it was all over, I realized that value doesn’t always come in the form of that dollar,” he said. “I deal with people and their money every day. But this was a unique opportunity to put money behind us and just be people, people who have a lot in common even though they live on the other side of the world from each other.”

The next time Lexington has an opportunity like the Games, Jenkins said, “I would encourage everyone to focus on the experience and the opportunity to be gracious hosts. If you focus on the money, you’re missing the point.”