The Bluegrass and Beyond

Kentucky doesn’t just produce writers; it celebrates them.

The biggest annual celebration is Saturday, when about 200 writers — 150 of whom are Kentuckians — will gather at the Frankfort Convention Center for the 28th annual Kentucky Book Fair.

Authors will sit behind long rows of tables so thousands of readers can stop by, meet them, buy their books and get their autographs.

This year’s lineup includes pop ular Kentucky writers Silas House, Erik Reece, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ed McClanahan, Thomas Parrish, Richard Taylor and David Dick.

Also there will be retired Courier-Journal columnist Byron Crawford, who has put together a 30-year collection of his work in Kentucky Footnotes, and journalist Leslie Guttman of Lexington, who writes about a year in the life of a race horse hospital in Equine ER.

Coach Rich Brooks and co-author Tom Leach will sign their book, Rich Tradition: How Rich Brooks Revived the Football Fortunes of the Kentucky Wildcats.

And retired Keeneland chairman Ted Bassett will autograph his memoir.

National authors at the fair will include George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, who has written a book about Abraham Lincoln.

“I’m always so proud to live in a state that supports literature the way Kentucky does, and the Kentucky Book Fair is real proof of that,” said House, who will sign his new novel, Eli the Good.

“Everywhere I go, all over the country, people assume that Kentuckians are illiterate,” House said. “And I always take that as an opportunity to correct them and tell them about our long literary history and how great the support for writers is in our state.”

When you think about that tradition and support, it makes perfect sense. Writing is about telling stories, and there are few things Kentuckians love more than a good story — and storyteller.

Jesse Stuart and me at his home, summer 1963. Photo by Marion Eblen

I’m the son of a school librarian and a bookstore manager. Writers, especially Kentucky writers, enjoyed celebrity status in our home. My first memorable encounter with that celebrity came the summer I turned 5, when my mother’s parents came up from far Western Kentucky for a visit.

My grandparents were Jesse Stuart fans and wanted to see the Greenup County he wrote about. While my father was at work one day, my mother took us to Greenup, thinking we could drive past Stuart’s home. What she didn’t know was that the narrow gravel road ended at his home.

It didn’t look as if anyone was home, so before she turned the car around, my grandparents urged her to look in the window beside the front door. When she did, Stuart looked back. Then he opened the door and invited us in to visit.

I had just learned to do somersaults, and, much to my mother’s horror, Stuart encouraged me to practice on the braided rug in his living room. I was barefoot, so when he took us to see the cabin where he wrote, he carried me out there, giving my mother a Kodak moment.

Writers such as Stuart and James Still found rich material in the people and places of Eastern Kentucky, just as Mason has explored the land and psyche of her native Jackson Purchase region, in far Western Kentucky.

I asked Mason last week about the importance of Kentucky writers, past and future. As you might expect, her response was well worth reading:

“Kentuckians have been confused about our identity, who we are and how others see us, what we have here and what there is in the larger world. Sometimes we feel smugly superior, sometimes inferior. Kentucky writers have always walked a tightrope between Kentucky and the Outside.

“Now even though the boundary lines are easing, and Kentucky is part of the wider mainstream, our writers can continue to lead the way on the most critical issues of our time, because we can write firsthand with passion and with historical perspective about what is happening to the land and its people. Our land of contrasts is an example and a warning to the rest of the world.”

I wrote Sunday about last week’s Shakertown Roundtable, which featured former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and included more than 50 of Kentucky’s most influential leaders in business, government, academia and philanthropy.

Given the complexity of the topic — economic crisis and recovery — and the caliber of the panel and participants, there was a lot to discuss and think about.

Here are a few additional notes from last Thursday afternoon’s conference in one of Kentucky’s most scenic settings, Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill:

■ One executive I found insightful was Paul Varga, president and CEO of the Louisville-based liquor giant Brown-Forman Corp. In stressful times like these, he joked, “You’ll all understand why I’m happy to be in the business I’m in.”

Varga said he understood some executives’ worries about a backlash of too much taxation and regulation after a period many people think had too little. Liquor has always been an easy mark for higher taxes, he said, adding that “our industry once had the ultimate government intervention: Prohibition.”

He noted that much of the economic crisis was caused by what people did with other people’s money and an abandonment of traditionally sound business practices. Varga said future prosperity will require companies to not just achieve revenue growth, but create value.

Brown Forman — and the entire bourbon industry — has remained relatively healthy by not taking on too much debt and by searching out new markets overseas and developing spinoffs such as the Bourbon Trail initiative around distillery tourism.

■ In response to a question, Volcker said ideology and economics don’t mix well. That’s because unpredictable human behavior can have a big effect on the economy.

“It’s not a rational activity,” he said of economics, adding that this crisis showed that free markets with little regulation can lead to greed, manipulation and disaster.

■ Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, who is running for lieutenant governor on Gov. Steve Beshear’s re-election ticket, reminded executives who criticized government spending on the social safety net that many average Americans are hurting.

“We have real families and real children who are going through some real difficulties,” Abramson said. The nation needs to take care of them, he said, not only because it’s the right thing to do but because they are the workers who will be needed to build the future.

■ Centre College President John Roush said most aging baby boomers won’t be able to enjoy the leisurely retirement they expected because our old economy and lifestyle expectations weren’t sustainable.

“We’re not going to get to go fishing every day,” said Roush, 59, who said he likes to fish.

But Roush said he is encouraged that today’s college students have different expectations. “They have a sense of possibility and optimism,” he said.

■ University of Kentucky President Lee Todd said America needs to renew its focus on research and development, advanced manufacturing and high-quality education. Kentucky students need more math and science — and more confidence in their abilities.

With the right education and training, Kentucky students can compete with anyone, said Todd, himself the product of a small town in Hopkins County. As an example, he mentioned UK students’ strong showing last week in the international solar house design competition in Washington, D.C.

Kentucky students need to start their own businesses, not just expect to work for someone else. And the state needs to emphasize entrepreneurship and business development, not just attracting employers from elsewhere.

“Kentucky people who start companies will stay in Kentucky,” Todd said. “We’ve got to create our own jobs.”

Kentucky Educational Television videotaped the Shakertown Roundtable and will show an edited version on Nov. 23 at 8 p.m. and at other times.

Paul Volcker, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve under presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and is a top adviser to President Barack Obama, has earned a reputation as one of the rarest of creatures: a straight-talking economist.

Volcker was true to form Thursday, when he came to Kentucky to speak at the Shakertown Roundtable, a gathering of about 60 of the state’s most influential leaders in business, government, education and philanthropy.

The 82-year-old economist was blunt in his assessment of what caused this economic crisis and what’s needed to fix it. And he brought things back into focus when some executives tried to point fingers, shift blame and complain about recovery strategies.

“We spent, as a nation, more than we were producing,” Volcker said. Mix that with a real-estate bubble, reckless financial manipulation and too little government oversight, and it was a recipe for disaster.

“We were leveraging the economy … and then it all unraveled,” he said, adding that the recovery will be a “considerable slog” that could take years.

Volcker has advised Obama to restore legal restrictions, enacted after the Great Depression but repealed in the 1990s, that separated investment and commercial banking and prevented banks from becoming “too big to fail.”

The Obama administration has balked at Volcker’s suggestions amid industry opposition. But Volcker warned that without such reforms the nation could face a repeat of its current crisis in a few years.

After Volcker’s remarks, the 11 other panelists gave their views on the economy and the proper relationship between business and government. They included Gov. Steve Beshear, Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, the presidents of the universities of Kentucky and Louisville and several business leaders.

David Grissom, president of Mayfair Capital in Louisville, said he was depressed at the quality of national leadership. He complained about the huge amounts of money government is using to try to rescue the economy.

Julie Janson, president of Duke Energy in Kentucky and Ohio, lamented new government regulations on energy and utilities.

Churchill Downs Chief Executive Robert Evans warned this was a bad time to raise taxes and increase government regulation of business.

U of L President Jim Ramsey cited sobering statistics about Kentucky’s economic “blood bath,” such as the decline in manufacturing jobs in the past decade from 310,000 to 200,000 and the fact that Kentucky spends $9,000 a year on each public school student, $6,000 on each college student — and $19,000 on each prison inmate.

As each panelist took his or her turn, things turned gloomier. Then the last panelist, the governor, spoke.

Beshear said he thinks Kentucky is in better shape economically than many states and, with smart strategy and investment, the state could position itself to take advantage of future economic opportunities, such as advanced manufacturing.

“Until I heard from the governor, I was in a state of desperation,” Volcker deadpanned, adding that he agrees with Beshear’s optimism.

But, Volcker said, Kentucky and the nation must see the economic crisis as a “wake-up call” and make some fundamental changes.

Volcker also agreed with comments by UK President Lee Todd, who emphasized the need for more rigorous math and science education and more technology research that can be commercialized to create jobs.

Todd criticized the recent emphasis on the service economy: “We can’t create wealth by serving hamburgers to each other.”

In the best line of the day, Volcker said Americans need to shift away from “financial engineering” and focus once again on civil, mechanical and electrical engineering.

We need to regain our leadership in technology development and manufacturing, he said, rather than churning out so many business school graduates who are focused on making big, quick and easy profits by manipulating money.

If there’s one thing this year’s Shakertown Roundtable made clear, it is this: Economic recovery will require us to figure out how to prosper in a new and different global economy, rather than simply trying to get back what we have lost.

Centre College President John Roush, commenting from the audience, perhaps said it best: “I think we are going back to a place of well-being. But it’s a different place.”

Tuesday is the National Day on Writing. Do you have a sentence or two to contribute?

If so, the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning wants to hear from you. To celebrate this day, the center is putting together what it calls the “longest short story ever written.”

The center is seeking contributions from average folks and from established local authors, including Ed McClanahan and Bobbie Ann Mason. First lady Jane Beshear plans to finish the story during an event at 5:30 p.m. at the Carnegie Center in Gratz Park.

The idea is to put together a snapshot of Lexington and what’s going on in people’s lives this day, said Neil Chethik, the Carnegie Center’s writer-in-residence.

People can add their contributions by stopping by the Carnegie Center from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or at the following places and times: Starbucks in Chevy Chase, 7-9 a.m.; Starbucks downtown, Third Street Stuff or the Eagle Creek Library, 9-11 a.m.; Joseph Beth Booksellers or Barnes & Noble, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.; The Morris Book Shop, Waldenbooks or Northside Library, 1-3 p.m.; or the Village Branch and Central libraries or Common Grounds Coffee, 3-5 p.m.

Ed McClanahan

McClanahan has started the story with these two sentences: “I found her sitting on a bench in Woodland Park. She looked up when my shadow fell on the letter she was writing.”

McClanahan, whose books include The Natural Man, said he doesn’t know what will come from this community story.

“It will generate some interest among people (in writing), I’m sure,” said McClanahan.

He said writing is a useful exercise for anyone. “It is an opportunity to examine one’s life and experiences and thinking processes. It’s a way of looking at yourself and what’s going on in the world.”

This community story will be written on butcher paper, the pieces of which will be taped together into a big scroll. Excerpts will be published online, including on www.galleryofwriting.org, the Web site of the National Council of Teachers of English, which sponsors the National Day on Writing.

It sounds like a fun project. I’m just glad I don’t have to edit it.

“I’m glad I don’t have to, either,” McClanahan said.

I’ve always found it ironic that Kentucky was considered more innovative and successful in the early 1800s, when it was on the edge of the American frontier, than during the past century, when it was at the geographic center of a booming nation.

Maybe success isn’t so much about where you are physically as where you are mentally.

The Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center’s annual conference in Louisville on Thursday looked at the usual problems that vex this state: health, education and economic development.

But much of the discussion focused on new ways of thinking about and tackling those problems.

Doug Henton, a Versailles-born author and consultant who heads a California company called Collaborative Economics, said Kentucky’s economic future could be much different than its past.

Natural resources, such as rivers and mineral wealth, will be less important in the future. What will be much more important is how human resources are developed.

Globalization of the economy is changing the importance of place and the strategies that states must use to create economic success.

Economic development strategies that focus on tax breaks, cheap labor and low-cost energy will no longer work. That’s because industries that depend on those things have either moved work offshore or eventually will.

What will be important is “quality of life” — creating a place where the best and brightest people want to live and the most innovative companies want to set up shop.

That makes a clean environment important, as well as smart land use and growth strategies, good urban planning and good transportation systems.

The most successful businesses now tend to be small- and medium-size companies that embrace change and are good at networking. Because collaboration is important, companies tend to cluster in areas where ideas can feed off one another.

Local and state governments are often either too little or too big to effectively address issues that will be important in the future, such as growth strategies and transportation, Henton said.

Breaking down old political barriers and promoting regional collaboration will become essential.

Northern Kentucky has had some success with regional cooperation, as has the Louisville area since metro consolidation. Central Kentucky? Not so much.

From his work around the country, Henton said, he has observed that the most successful regional initiatives are bottom-up and collaborative. They are ones in which leaders from government, business, universities, non-profits and citizen groups work together across traditional political boundaries.

“Focus on people and relationships, and not organizations and structures,” Henton said. “It’s about group creativity and regional stewardship, and the regions around the country where this happens seem to have more vibrant economies.”

The basic foundation for any region’s success in the future will be a well-educated population that is able to seize economic opportunities.

“We need well-rounded people who are creative as well as having the basic skills,” he said.

Kentuckians must become more comfortable with change, and more innovative in how they deal with it. One good example is in the way Kentuckians approach energy and the environment.

Peter Meyer, an environmental expert and University of Louisville professor, said climate change is real, and further worldwide restrictions on the burning of coal are inevitable, whether we like it or not.

But while Kentucky faces many challenges, it also has some opportunities.

Kentucky state government is doing good work in improving energy efficiency, especially with the construction of new public schools. The state’s first “net zero” energy use school building will open in Bowling Green next fall.

But state government could be doing more to promote those projects as examples, he said.

Rather than pledging $300 million in state funds for a coal-liquefaction demonstration project, Kentucky officials should put that money toward conservation efforts.

Home electricity consumption is 24 percent above the national average, which means we have a lot of opportunities to do better.

But it will involve a mental shift from Kentucky’s devotion to coal — and to doing things the way they’ve always been done.

“We need to become risk-takers in this environment,” Meyer said.

Earlier this year, there was a national celebration of the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the most famous of all Kentuckians.

But this is also a landmark year for perhaps the second-most famous Kentuckian — Daniel Boone, who was born 275 years ago this month.

Like many Kentuckians, I’ve always been fascinated by Daniel Boone.

When I got too old for Captain Kangaroo, my favorite TV show was Daniel Boone, where coonskin cap-wearing Fess Parker was always blazing trails and fighting Indians. I could only imagine how his Kentucky was so much different than mine. When I started first grade, I proudly carried a new Daniel Boone lunch box.

Of course, most of what we all think we know about Daniel Boone is wrong.

A celebration is planned next weekend at Fort Boonesborough State Park to mark Boone’s birth. Perhaps some of the reenactments, pioneer crafts, performances and talks by Boone authors will dispel the myths.

Unlike the tall, handsome TV actor, Boone was a rather ordinary-looking man who stood 5 feet, 8 inches. He hated coonskin caps and never wore one.

Boone fought Indians, but only when necessary. He once said he knew of only three Indians he killed, and he regretted that because Indians had often been nicer to him than white people, even though they killed his brother and two of his sons.

Some of Boone’s best friends were Indians. Once, while a prisoner of the Shawnee, Boone was adopted as the son of Chief Blackfish.

Boone was a hunter and explorer at heart. But at various times in his life, he also was a military leader, a surveyor, a tavern keeper, a land speculator, a farmer, a slave owner, a Virginia legislator and a Spanish government bureaucrat in Missouri. Unlike many frontiersmen, he could read and write. His favorite books were the Bible and Gulliver’s Travels.

Boone was also America’s first celebrity, thanks to John Filson, whose 1784 book, The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke, contained a long appendix said to be the autobiographical adventures of Daniel Boone.

Filson, who would have been a great choice for Kentucky’s first commissioner of tourism or economic development, was a colorful writer. His account of Boone’s exploits created a sensation across the young nation and throughout Europe.

“Boone became a legend in his own time because he had a good PR man,” state historian James Klotter, a history professor at Georgetown College, said of Filson. “But Boone was important in his own right, and his story is worth telling.”

Boone was born in Pennsylvania on Oct. 22 or Nov. 2 (calendars changed in 1752) and raised in North Carolina. He was a loner who also could be a leader when needed.

Boone first came to Kentucky in 1769 and, four years later, led his first group of settlers here. The next year, he was hired to blaze the Wilderness Road through Cumberland Gap for the Transylvania Co., which hoped to make a killing on Kentucky land speculation.

He built Fort Boonesborough from 1775-78 as a way station for settlers. He later moved several places in Kentucky — including Maysville and Fayette and Greenup counties — but lost all of his land in legal disputes and went into debt. He moved to Missouri in 1799 and died there in 1820, a month short of his 86th birthday.

Boone was a wanderer who, from his teenage years until well into his 80s, would disappear into the wilderness for monthslong hunting expeditions. “That wanderlust was part of him, just like it has been part of the American spirit,” Klotter said.

“In one sense, he represented the common people who settled Kentucky,” he said. “He’s an everyday man often thrust into difficult circumstances and responding in mostly honorable ways. He’s kind of what we want our heroes to be.”

While Boone has been the subject of endless fascination, Klotter would like to know more about his wife of 57 years, Rebecca Bryan Boone.

She had 10 children of her own, took in six more to raise and kept the family together despite her husband’s long absences. No images of her exist, and there are only a few written descriptions.

“She was a heroine in her own right,” Klotter said. “The story that hasn’t been told is the story of the women on the frontier.”

A good place to begin separating the real Daniel Boone from his myth is at Ft. Boonesborough State Park, where a generally accurate fort was built in 1974, up the hill from the flood-prone original site that historians hope someday to fully excavate.

About 40,000 people visit the fort each year to see costumed craftsmen make soap, pottery, fabric and firearms using authentic frontier tools.

Bill Farmer has been coming to work at the fort for a decade in homespun clothing and period steel-framed spectacles. Besides being the fort’s manager, he is an accomplished blacksmith.

“The truth about Boone is even better than the fiction … if people would take the time to find out the person he really was,” Farmer said.

Not far from the fort’s small museum is a surveyor’s office, where performer Scott New, 45, has portrayed Boone for a decade.

“This man is one of our founders, but his life is drowned in myth and fiction and nonsense,” said New, who will be performing next weekend along with Michael Fields as Chief Blackfish. “We need to make the road straight, as it were.”

Still, Daniel Boone can never fully escape his myth. Even in his own fort, the gift shop is well-stocked with coonskin caps.

“That’s one of those things that goes to the bottom line,” Farmer said with a sigh. “I couldn’t tell you how many hundreds of those we sell in a season.”

Non basta una vita - Italian for “one life is not enough” - was the late John Regis Tuska’s motto to describe his artistic ambitions.

Now, his son is discovering that two lives may not be enough, either.

For the past dozen years, Seth Tuska has worked to preserve and publicize the legacy of his father, a prolific artist and University of Kentucky art professor who died in 1998 at age 67.

Seth Tuska, 51, turned the family home at the corner of Old Park and Central avenues into a museum of his father’s art. He engaged a filmmaker and curator to put together a documentary film about his father and catalog and traveling show of his work.

He sought commercial outlets for reproductions of Tuska pictures and sculptures, which depict the human form in motion. And he started a bronze foundry on Walton Avenue to support regional sculptors.

But last November, after a bronze-pouring at the foundry, Tuska said he went home with a ringing in his ears. Then, on Christmas morning, he awoke at 4 a.m. with an intense pain in his chest. Foolishly, he didn’t see a doctor for three weeks. When he did, he was taken straight in for quadruple heart bypass surgery.

But the worst was still to come.

Tuska said when he resumed normal physical activity in March, the ringing in his ears, which had never really gone away, got much worse. He now suffers from a severe case of tinnitus - a constant sound like cicadas in his head that makes it hard to sleep, read or concentrate.

Tuska said he now needs to deal with his medical crisis and entrust his father’s legacy to others. “I have to move on and figure out what’s ahead for the rest of my life,” he said.

The first public steps in that direction will come Friday. Mayor Jim Newberry is to issue a proclamation honoring John Tuska and his work, and he will accept the loan of a bronze figure, Energy Source, for display at city hall.

That evening, during Gallery Hop, the Kentucky Theatre Gallery will display 18 Tuska pieces. The theater will have two showings, at 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., of  Non Basta Una Vita, a 2008 documentary about John Tuska by Arthur Rouse and Kiley Lane.

Thanks to the event’s sponsors, attendees also will be given a film poster, popcorn and a drink. Tuska said he has worked with local arts educators to distribute many of the 600 tickets to students.

Where things go from there, Tuska said, depends on community interest - both artistic, and financial.

Tuska sold the foundary to artist Amanda Matthews Fields and enlisted a group of community leaders to advise him on how to proceed with setting up a non-profit Tuska Museum and Learning Center foundation to take over the family home and his collection of his father’s art.

Tuska lives upstairs in the home, but is in the process of moving out. He wants to keep the collection of his father’s work in Lexington.

His vision is to continue the home’s first floor museum. But, more importantly, he wants to use the upstairs apartment to house visiting artists and the 2,500-square-foot lower level for educational space.

Downtown developer Phil Holoubek, a member of the advisory group, said several strategies have been discussed. “Seth will have to decide what he feels most comfortable doing,” he said.

Holoubek said the Tuska collection includes outstanding art that could not only enrich the community culturally, but promote economic development.

LexArts President Jim Clark, who for six years directed the New York Public Art Fund, agreed. “If John Tuska had done this work in New York City he would have been a very prominent sculptor,” he said.

Clark sees a lot of potential for the Tuska Museum and Learning Center, if it gets the right leadership that can attract the necessary money.

“Having a house museum is perfect for Lexington,” Clark said. “It is intimate in scale. It’s in a beautiful neighborhood. Anybody flying into Lexington for the (horse) sales, that would be a perfectly lovely discovery. Part of that is just working with what they’ve got and marketing it.”

With more regular museum hours, more advertising and an experienced curator, Clark thinks the Tuska museum could become an important cultural destination. And he thinks Seth Tuska has the right idea about using his father’s legacy to encourage arts education.

In addition to the high quality of John Tuska’s work, Clark said, what made him special was his dedication to teaching. Great artists who also are great arts educators, like Tuska and Centre College’s Stephen Rolfe Powell, are rare.

A learning center that promoted arts education - and honored arts educators with a “Tuska prize” and residency - could put Lexington on the arts map. “That would be a very big deal in this country,” Clark said.

What’s needed now is for people to step up and help Seth Tuska make it happen.

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FRANKFORT — Margaret Robinson Robertson lived in the Old Governor’s Mansion in the early 1840s, when son-in-law Robert Letcher was the governor. Legend has it that her ghost appears whenever evil befalls the house.

The way the place looks now, don’t expect to see her any time soon.

The 211-year-old mansion has just undergone a privately financed $1.5 million face lift so it can take on a new role as the state’s guest house and official entertainment space for the governor.

The magnificent renovation was a statewide, all-volunteer effort involving more than 300 people, including designers, decorators, contractors and donors who each adopted small parts of the mansion.

The renovation will be unveiled later this month with a series of big-ticket events, proceeds from which will benefit the Kentucky Executive Mansions Foundation and Kentucky Equine Humane Center. The home will then be open for $10 public tours Sept. 19 to Oct. 3.

“We wanted the house to be a welcoming spot for people who come to Kentucky,” said David Buchta, state curator and director of the Division of Historic Properties. His office oversaw the renovation with the mansions foundation and Kentucky Historic Properties Advisory Commission.

“It’s a great shrine to Kentucky’s history,” said Steve Collins, chairman of the commission and son of former Gov. Martha Layne Collins.

The home was first occupied in 1798, two years before the White House. For many years, it was the nation’s oldest executive residence.

The mansion housed 33 Kentucky governors until 1914, when the current governor’s mansion was built beside the “new” Capitol. From 1956 to 2002, the old mansion housed 10 lieutenant governors.

Eight U.S. presidents have visited the mansion, from James Monroe to Bill Clinton, as well as such notables as Henry Clay, Aaron Burr and William Jennings Bryan.

“There’s no other house in Kentucky that has been used like this one — that has the stories and history and reputation,” said Collins, a Shelbyville lawyer and funeral director.

The General Assembly put up money to build the governor’s mansion in 1795 after the state’s first governor, Isaac Shelby, convinced lawmakers that a rented log cabin just wouldn’t do. It was completed in 1798.

Although the mansion’s federal-style exterior was rather plain, it was called the Palace when Shelby’s successor, James Garrard, became its first occupant. It was the first home in Frankfort with carpet. A crowd gathered when the city’s first piano was delivered to its parlor.

Two men who helped build the house later lived there: Thomas Metcalfe, a stonemason who helped lay the foundation, was governor from 1828 to 1832; and Letcher, who helped lay the Flemish-bond brick, was governor from 1840 to 1844.

The house hasn’t been occupied since 2002, when then-Lt. Gov. Steve Henry moved out to make way for a renovation. Last year, the idea emerged to turn the home into a state guest house, like Blair House in Washington.

(Francis Preston Blair, by the way, was a Frankfort journalist who moved to the nation’s capital in 1830. Seven years later, he took up residence in the Pennsylvania Avenue house that now bears his name.)

First lady Jane Beshear, former first lady Phyllis George and Meg Jewett, owner of the L.V. Harkness & Co. gift shop in Lexington, led the renovation effort. They and others recruited volunteers and donors from all over.

Longwood Antique Woods of Lexington donated flooring for the downstairs powder room. The wood came from the Lexington barn of 1937 Triple Crown winner War Admiral.

Louisville artist Sandy Kimura donated nine weeks of her time to paint a mural around the main hall in the style of early 19th-century Zuber wallpaper. It incorporates Kentucky scenes, such as Daniel Boone looking across the Cumberland Gap and the gentlemen on the state seal shaking hands, for which Buchta and Collins posed in period wigs.

“I’m going to get it out and wear it to some of the events,” Collins joked.

The house now contains a treasure trove of Kentucky furniture and art. There’s a rare 1815 cherry Sheraton sideboard in the dining room, thought to be the work of a Maysville cabinetmaker. Other items include chairs from Henry Clay’s law office, and modern Appalachian furniture and crafts that furnish a third-floor bedroom.

Other furniture and art has been donated or is on loan from the state, the Kentucky Historical Society, the Speed Museum, the Filson Club, the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, the Rebecca and Jay Rayburn Collection and several individuals.

Recognizable to many Kentuckians will be four original paintings by Paul Sawyier, whose Kentucky landscapes from a century ago remain popular as prints.

“Every room has something significant,” Buchta said. “Without the generosity of a lot of people, this project wouldn’t have been nearly as successful.”

As a former resident of the mansion, Collins said he is especially appreciative of all of the people who have made it a showplace.

Collins was a student at Georgetown College when his mother was elected lieutenant governor in 1979. He lived in a third-floor bedroom and remembers the mansion as a busy place that was used for many public functions.

Collins said he encountered many people in the mansion, but not the ghost of Margaret Robinson Robertson.

“We never saw her,” he said. “But we felt very safe when we lived here.”

• If you go

  Kentucky Mansion Celebration

  ■ First Ladies’ Luncheon, noon, Sept. 15, $110.

  ■ Brunch in the Garden with Jon Carloftis, 11 a.m. Sept. 16, $110.

  ■ Governor’s Barbecue & Unbridled Spirits, 7 p.m. Sept. 17, $210.

  ■ Preview Gala, 7 p.m. Sept. 18, $300.

  ■ Public tours, Sept. 19-Oct. 3. $10.

  For tickets and more information, go to www.kymansioncelebration.org or call (502) 226-6440.

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With all of the public attention focused on President Barack Obama’s speech to the nation’s school children, I had to wonder: Did the adults learn anything?

Obama urged kids to study hard and not give up, even if they don’t like some classes or things are tough at home. He reminded students that each of them has special abilities, and it’s their responsibility to develop them.

The president acknowledged that, like many of us, he was “a little bit of a goof-off” when he was young. He told kids that success takes hard work, and nobody else will do it for them.

It was a speech that could have been delivered by any responsible leader, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative.

AP Photo by Stew Milne

It was a pep talk about personal responsibility, not politics. But from the way the right-wing fringe and some Republican Party officials reacted to it beforehand, you would have thought Obama was planning to sprout horns and advocate devil worship.

There was a lot of bluster about Obama “overstepping his authority,” even though previous presidents have made similar speeches. Timid school officials offered opt-outs for students whose parents objected. Cowardly school officials skipped the speech all together.

Steve Robertson, chairman of the Republican Party of Kentucky, last week called Obama’s plan to speak to children “very concerning and kind of creepy” and an attempt “to circumvent parents” and “gain direct access to our children.”

Robertson and some talk radio entertainers focused on an ill-chosen phrase that federal education bureaucrats used in material prepared for teachers. The phrase, suggesting teachers could have students write letters to themselves about how they can “help the president,” was reworded to how they “can achieve their … education goals.”

It seemed like a lame excuse for objecting to a presidential speech, because that’s exactly what it was.

Some GOP leaders have no interest in working with Obama and other Democrats, whether it’s rebuilding the economy, reforming health care or anything else. They just want to see Obama fail.

The talking heads of the right-wing media relentlessly bash Obama. They shamelessly distort facts, incite fear and call anyone who disagrees with them radical, socialist or even communist. It’s a profitable business model, because gullible listeners lap it up.

Obama is no radical, unless you think “middle of the road” means the right shoulder. But there are radicals out there, on both sides of the political spectrum, and this episode is a good reminder that responsible people should be wary of them.

American politics has always been messy, but it works pretty well. In robust, fact-based discussions among responsible people, ideology usually gives way to artful compromise and practical solutions. One of history’s best examples was Lexington’s own Henry Clay.

On the other hand, history’s ills can usually be traced to political or religious ideology and extremism, from Mao’s China and Hitler’s Germany to the Spanish Inquisition and modern Islamic terrorism. Those perpetrators believed they were right and their opponents were evil, and they had no reservations about saying or doing whatever it took to win.

Obama’s agenda and proposals should be carefully studied and vigorously debated. Thoughtful discussion could lead to good compromises, better ideas and ultimately solutions for the nation’s problems, some of which can be traced to past examples of ideology trumping common sense.

That has become more difficult, though, because modern communications technology amplifies the voices of irresponsible extremists, ideologues and the willfully ignorant people who follow them.

The best lesson to take away from the president’s speech to school children is that personal responsibility is a good concept for adults, too.

Lexington was born and grew up around the Town Branch of South Elkhorn Creek, but over the past century we’ve done our best to pollute it, bury it and forget about it.

Water finds its way, though, even if it sometimes needs help.

Town Branch Trail Inc. has been working for a decade to develop a greenway along the creek west of downtown. The first fruits of those labors will be on display next weekend, when the initial two-mile section of the trail is opened with a benefit concert and bicycle rally.

The Freedom Concert, with music by Cora Lee and the Townies and Fifth on the Floor, is at 8 p.m. Friday at the new Buster’s in the restored Old Tarr Distillery, which backs up to the creek on Manchester Street. Admission is $10, with all proceeds going to the trail project.

The next morning at 8:15, the public is invited to meet at Cheapside for a police-escorted 10-mile bicycle ride out and back on roads to the completed trail section off Leestown Road and Alexandria Drive. There will be a hospitality tent at Lewis Manor, a circa 1800 home beside the trail in Marehaven subdivision.

When I walked the trail last week, people were already using it.

Workers had just installed stone-cutter Richard McAlister’s beautiful sandstone benches and furlong posts made of finely crafted “Kentucky marble” limestone. And there were several new signs along the trail explaining Central Kentucky’s landscape, geology and ecology.

Van Meter Pettit, the Lexington architect who put together the trail project, sees it as more than a place to exercise; it’s a way to learn about Lexington’s history and environment. It’s also a way to rehabilitate and protect the watershed and help deal with runoff and pollution problems that have grown with the city.

“There is a compelling story to why we are the way we are that even many natives don’t understand,” he said. For example: Lexington’s downtown is long and narrow because it was built along Town Branch, which now flows beneath Vine Street.

Town Branch runs along the west side of the finished section of trail, just beyond tracks that were part of Kentucky’s first railroad line.

In one section, the trail goes around a giant, centuries-old tree, surrounded by a stand of native cane. When the first pioneers came here 250 years ago, much of the Bluegrass was covered with cane. Now, it’s hard to find.

“This is about as good a snapshot of authentic Kentucky as you can get,” Pettit said.

On the east side of the trail is Central Kentucky’s modern landscape: several new subdivisions.

Efforts to build trails in established neighborhoods often are met with “not in my backyard” opposition. But these subdivisions are new, and many homeowners are building decks and landscaping their yards to take advantage of trail access.

Indeed, subdivision developer Dennis Anderson was key to the Town Branch Trail’s success. That’s because he realized the trail would not only be an amenity for his development, but would help with drainage and be a financially attractive way to use undevelopable land.

“Without him,” Pettit said, “this trail would have been a nice idea that never would have happened.”

With this section of trail finished, Pettit is now turning his attention to another one-mile section that has funding. The remaining five miles is under feasibility study while trail organizers seek money, easements and rights of way.

So far, Town Branch Trail has received about $2 million in grants and other funding and $1 million worth of donated land, Pettit said.

Plans call for the trail to eventually be at least eight miles long, going from this first finished section to downtown. It will end along Manchester Street near Rupp Arena, where developers of the Distillery District plan to rehabilitate the stream and incorporate the trail into their multi-use project.

Eventually, Pettit would like Town Branch Trail to connect with the nine-mile Legacy Trail being built from downtown to the Kentucky Horse Park, as well as other walking and bike paths.

Even further in the future, there is talk of developing a trail beside the railroad line from Lexington to Versailles and eventually Frankfort.

So come out and see this first piece of Town Branch Trail. You’ll get some exercise, learn about Lexington and see how creative people are harnessing our rich heritage to literally pave the way to a better future.

With Second Sunday a little more than a month away, 100 of Kentucky’s 120 counties have plans to participate.

Each county plans to close a street or highway for a few hours Sunday afternoon, Oct. 11, and invite residents to come out to walk, bike, run or jog — and to think about how regular exercise could make them healthier and happier.

That was the basic idea used to launch Second Sunday last year, when 70 counties were involved. This year, though, many communities have more ambitious plans.

“It’s becoming a platform for all kinds of health-related events,” said Diana Doggett, a county extension agent in Lexington who is coordinating the statewide effort.

Dogget said many counties are planning health fairs, “fastest kid in town” races and even arts events.

Lexington will close a mile-long loop downtown — Main to Mill to Short to Deweese streets — from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Related events include bike polo demonstrations, health screenings and martial arts and yoga classes. A bike valet service will be available for cyclists to check their bikes while participating in other activities.

Jessamine County plans similar events downtown, plus a 6k run between West Jessamine and East Jessamine high schools to memorialize a popular coach and student athlete who recently died, Dogget said.

Elliott County’s events include speeches by House Majority Floor Leader Rocky Adkins, a cancer survivor, and a local man who lost 140 pounds without surgery. Festivities end with a concert by bluegrass star Don Rigsby.

Allen County citizens are building a two-mile bike and walking trail on property surrounding a Civil War site, Dumont Hill. Second Sunday activities there will include canon ball bowling.

Newport plans to close Monmouth Street between Fifth and 10th streets. Taylor County will include canoeing on the Green River. Franklin, Scott, Green and Adair counties all have big festivals planned around Second Sunday events.

UK’s Cooperative Extension Service is coordinating Second Sunday plans across the state, and some counties haven’t gotten involved because of vacancies in their extension offices, Dogget said. But anyone can step up and organize local events in those counties — and she hopes people will.

But the point of Second Sunday isn’t to get people outside exercising one day each October; it is to inspire them to start a regular exercise habit.

“What we need to do is change people’s lifestyles,” said Jay McChord, a Lexington councilman who helped create Second Sunday.

McChord also wants Second Sunday to attract national attention — and money — to Kentucky’s effort to shed its ranking as one of the nation’s least-healthy states.

He hopes exposure will attract millions in grant and foundation money to build a trail system throughout Kentucky so communities large and small won’t have to close streets for their citizens to have safe places to walk, run or bike.

Dr. Rick Lofgren, a physician at the University of Kentucky Hospital, appeared with McChord, Legacy Trail organizer Steve Austin and UK Agriculture Dean Scott Smith at the Lexington Forum’s monthly meeting Thursday to talk about trails, better health and Second Sunday.

Lofgren said he practiced in academic hospitals in many parts of the country before coming to UK five years ago. He noted that Kentucky ranks high nationally in obesity, diabetes, heart disease, strokes and lung cancer — all of the health problems nobody wants.

“This is the sickest group of patients I’ve ever taken care of,” Lofgren said. “Much of what I see is preventable. It has to do with the lifestyles we have around here.”

Lofgren said regular exercise would help a lot — on Second Sunday, and every other day of the year.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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HINDMAN — This is the season for family reunions in Appalachia, when people come home to celebrate kinship, community and the mountain culture that shaped their lives.

There’s a big reunion in Knott County this week. Many of the 100 people there have been attending for years, if not decades. Few are related by blood, but they’re family just the same, bound together by Appalachia’s storytelling tradition and the magic of words.

Ask participants at the 32nd Appalachian Writers Workshop what it’s like, and they use the word “family” a lot. They come for inspiration and advice on the craft from some of the best writers these mountains have produced.

The workshop was started by two Knott County writers, novelist and folklorist James Still, and poet Albert Stewart. Others associated with the annual gathering have included poet Jim Wayne Miller and novelists Wilma Dykeman and Harriette Arnow, author of the 1954 classic The Dollmaker.

“It’s a central part of my year that I never want to miss,” said novelist Silas House, who was a participant from 1996 to 2001 and has been on staff ever since.

Participants apply and submit writing samples in May. There are always more applicants than spaces; the 102-year-old Hindman Settlement School’s cabins can hold only so many people.

Each morning, participants gather in small groups according to interest: poetry, novels, short stories, nonfiction, memoir and children’s literature.

When I visited the workshop Tuesday, poet and writer George Ella Lyon was in one room talking about the challenges of publishing books for children. In another room, novelist Karen McElmurray discussed using memoir to explore universal themes. In another, novelists Ann Pancake and Laura Benedict explained storytelling techniques.

Afternoons are for group readings and individual coaching from the staff of published writers. Everyone eats together, then washes dishes. There’s writing time throughout the day, and bull sessions late into the night.

“It’s an intense week,” said journalist Jason Howard, who is here for a fifth year. “There’s a great sense of family, and a lot of spiritual detective work going on.”

Mike Mullins helped start the workshop in 1978, soon after he became director of the historic settlement school that now provides literacy and cultural enrichment programs. He marvels at the workshop’s success.

“I think there’s always a crying need for all of us to express ourselves, to tell our story, or a story we’ve made up,” said Mullins.

A few of this year’s participants are college students, but most are much older — academics and blue-collar workers, business people, housewives and retirees. Some are beginners; others have published several books.

Mountain life has always been a popular subject in Appalachian literature. But many now write about the mountains themselves and what has been happening to them over the past half-century. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been leveled by mountaintop-removal coal mining or scarred by strip-miners.

“What we do to the land, we do to the people,” said Don Askins of Clintwood, Va., whose poetry focuses on the coal industry’s environmental destruction.

House and Howard, who both come from coal-mining families, recently wrote the book Something’s Rising about opposition to mountaintop-removal within the region. Howard also edited a collection of essays, poems and songs called We All Live Downstream.

Many writers here are women who have raised families or had careers. “They come with this full lifetime of experience and a passion to write about it,” McElmurray said.

Benedict first came to the workshop 20 years ago. “I had only been writing for a year or so and I was looking for a cheap vacation,” she said. What she found was a calling – and a husband, Pinckney Benedict, who was on the workshop staff. “We didn’t start dating until after the conference, but I gather we scandalized a few people,” she said with a smile.

The Benedicts were back this week as staff members. He is a novelist and short story writer who teaches at the University of Southern Illinois and at writing workshops across the country. She recently published her second novel.

“There’s a sense of community, a spirit of cooperation here,” she said. “They read a lot, and they all take their work very seriously.”

But unlike some other workshops, Benedict and McElmurray said, the writers here don’t take themselves too seriously. There’s no “staff table” at meals, no caste system based on publishing success.

But Benedict has discovered one advantage to being on staff: “I don’t have to do dishes.”

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It is a tried-and-true model: an “incubator” building with shared office space that cuts overhead costs and provides a creative community where business entrepreneurs can learn from and be inspired by each other.

Could the same work for social entrepreneurs?

In fact, it works quite well in many cities.

The Kentucky Conference for Community and Justice wants to create such a place in Lexington.

Within five years, the KCCJ hopes to have perhaps 20,000 square feet of shared work and meeting space near downtown for emerging non-profit organizations and entrepreneurs interested in making the world a better place.

The organization has a non-binding letter of intent to put the facility in the Old Pepper warehouse, a cavernous building on Manchester Street that is planned as a focal point of the Lexington Distillery District.

“When people come together, you have the space between where so much can happen,” said KCCJ Chair Shannon Stuart-Smith.

KCCJ has been developing the idea for two years in cooperation with other local groups. But the effort was jump-started late last month when a delegation visited the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto, Ontario, one of North America’s most successful social incubators.

Located in a renovated industrial building, the Toronto center rents desks, telephones, printers, Internet connections and other modern necessities to social-oriented entrepreneurs, companies and non-profits that have fewer than five workers.

The center also fosters an atmosphere — both physical and psychological — that encourages networking, brainstorming and collaboration. That includes everything from informal conversations between desks to planned events, such as twice-weekly “salad club” meals.

That atmosphere is what KCCJ hopes to replicate in Lexington.

“The tenants didn’t think of themselves as tenants; they thought of themselves as partners in the program,” said jeweler Joe Rosenberg, a KCCJ board member. “What we’re hoping to do is take what they’ve learned and build on it.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that once you put this together, you’ll fill it up,” Rosenberg said.

Debra Hensley, an insurance agent and former Urban County Council member who has been working on the idea for several years, estimates there are 100 fledgling organizations and entrepreneurs around Lexington whose mission involves social and environmental issues. Many work out of their homes, or in isolated offices.

“Within 10 minutes, I thought, this is what I’m looking for,” said Jason Delambre, a young Lexington-based sustainable energy consultant. who went with the group to Toronto.

KCCJ, which started as a chapter of the old National Conference of Christians and Jews, has worked for decades to fight discrimination and promote human equality and inclusiveness. The organization sees creation of a social incubator as perhaps the best way it can contribute to future progress in Kentucky.

The next step involves figuring out how to raise $1 million to $5 million to build the space and develop a business model to sustain it, Hensley said. Similar centers in other cities have a variety of financial models, depending on local circumstances.

“We’re making a tremendous leap with this project,” said longtime member Marilyn Moosnick.

But then, the work of the Kentucky Conference for Community and Justice has always involved making tremendous leaps. Perhaps that’s why it has been able to do so much good.

Conversion of the Eastern State Hospital property into the new campus of Bluegrass Community and Technical College is perhaps Lexington’s most important urban redevelopment project in decades.

So it is good to see that the people running this project seem to be serious about doing it right.

BCTC President Augusta Julian assembled a strong planning team that has been working for months in consultation with a diverse group of specialists and stakeholders. Now, you can have your say.

Officials will hold a public forum to seek comments on the campus master plan at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the North Lexington YMCA at 381 West Loudon Avenue.

“We have made every effort to talk to everyone,” said Stan Harvey, a principal in the design firm Urban Collage. “Even though we’ve come a long way, it’s early enough in the process that it can still be refined.”

A second public hearing will be scheduled in the fall, when the site plan is near completion.

The project was made possible by a brilliant land swap announced last year: Eastern State, one of the nation’s oldest hospitals, will get a new facility on the University of Kentucky’s Coldstream property on Newtown Pike. BCTC will get a new campus on the Eastern State property. UK will get BCTC’s Cooper Drive campus for future expansion.

The new BCTC campus will be a landmark project for several reasons.

For one thing, it is a rare opportunity to build a new college campus for an institution experiencing huge growth and rapid change to meet the needs of Kentucky’s 21st-century economy. Julian sees the possibility that enrollment could double from the current 12,000 students within a decade.

But the planning team wanted to avoid the classic commuter-school design — an island of buildings surrounded by a sea of surface parking. The plan calls for more than 60 percent of parking to be in structures along railroad tracks, with surface lots concentrated near the “back” of the campus along Loudon Avenue.

Morgan McIlwain, of M2D Design Group landscape architects, said a lot of thought was given to how to integrate mass transit into the plan, as well as bicycle and pedestrian access. Officials plan to incorporate into the campus a part of the proposed Legacy Trail — a bike and pedestrian trail that ultimately will link downtown Lexington to the Kentucky Horse Park.

The planning team also realized that the campus will have a huge impact on redevelopment of the surrounding area, which includes the YMCA, Lexmark and Coolivan Park.

The team estimates that 88 acres of surrounding property is now either vacant or “underutilized.” Much of it is old industrial land that Harvey hopes can be rezoned for high-density residential, commercial and other private developments that he expects to grow up around the campus.

A lot of thought has been put into Fourth Street, which will connect the campus to nearby Transylvania University, and Newtown Pike, the extension of which will connect it back to UK and the Cooper Drive campus.

The 48-acre Eastern State site, which has been closed to the public since the hospital began operations there in 1816, was something of a mystery. When Loudon Avenue was extended many years ago, workers discovered 4,500 graves that were reburied there in an area that will be maintained as a cemetery.

The planning team has worked for months with the Kentucky Heritage Council and others to survey the site. Surprisingly, no more graves have been found, Harvey said.

The team is recommending the renovation and reuse of four of the dozen buildings now on the site. Those include the white-columned administration building, the hospital’s most recognizable structure, and an architecturally significant 1906 “laundry” building.

But it turns out that the most historic feature of the property is the front lawn, whose design has essentially been unchanged since 1816. McIlwain said the lawn will be preserved, as well as the relationship of buildings to Fourth Street and Newtown Pike.

Plans call for the campus to eventually have about 14 buildings of three to five stories, with a total investment exceeding $500 million over two decades. A new state law will require construction to adhere to “green” building standards. That could include roof gardens and water-permeable paving.

In addition to Urban Collage and M2D, the project team includes two other top local firms: EOP Architects and Staggs and Fisher engineering. International firms on the team include Perkins + Will, which specializes in campus design, and HDR civil engineers.

The new BCTC campus will change the face of northwest Lexington. Now’s the time to have your say about what that face should look like.

One of the November election’s big stories was how Barack Obama and other Democrats used the Internet to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in small contributions and connect with their supporters.

Much of that strategy and technology was developed by Blue State Digital, a company founded by four young guys who experimented with what the Internet could do for politics during the 2004 presidential campaigns of Howard Dean and Gen. Wesley Clark.

One of those guys, Ben Self, is a Lexington native. Not only that, he still lives here, although that seems to be a relative term these days. Last week he was in Portugal. Before that, Brazil, Mexico, Italy, Australia and the Dominican Republic.

Business is booming for Blue State Digital. Politicians and parties, businesses, universities, unions and non-profit organizations around the world are hiring the company to try to get some of Obama’s online magic for themselves.

“It seems non-stop these days,” Self said when I first met him at a downtown coffee shop in April. “We’ve never done any marketing. All of our clients are people who come in through our Web site and say, ‘Can you help us with this?’ It’s overwhelming.”

In the past year, Blue State Digital has doubled its staff to more than 100 people. It has headquarters in Washington, D.C., a technology center in Boston and offices in New York, Los Angeles and London.

Self, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he spends several days each week on the road, but always tries to get back to Lexington for the weekend.

Even when he’s here, Self has conference calls at odd hours with clients around the world. Earlier this week, there was an evening conference call to Australia, where one of his clients is the prime minister.

Self lives in an old house in the Aylesford neighborhood with his wife, Rebecca. They met as students at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. A former teacher who also has a degree from MIT, she is the education director for Seedleaf, a local non-profit that develops sustainable food sources for people at risk of hunger.

“We love Lexington,” Self said. “We would never leave.”

After studying in Boston and living in Madison, Wis., founding Blue State Digital gave the Selfs the flexibility to move back to Lexington and be close to their families.

Self knew the election campaign would be all-consuming. While partner Joe Rospars worked as the Obama campaign’s new media director, Self was technology director for the Democratic National Committee, where he managed an overhaul of its Web site, computer infrastructure and national voter file database.

Blue State Digital’s pace hasn’t slowed much since November. The company continues to work for the DNC and Obama’s Organizing for America arm, as well as a growing list of progressive politicians and parties worldwide.

Blue State Digital also is developing other lines of work, such as helping universities build fund-raising relationships with alumni. The company’s 200 clients include the University of Florida, the American Red Cross, the Carter Center, the Tony Awards, the Prince of Wales’ Rainforest Project, the Sundance Film Festival and Wal-Mart Watch, which criticizes the retailer’s employment practices.

Clients are interested in Blue State Digital’s technology and expertise in building online communities.

“Technology is enabling people to organize quicker, more effectively and cheaper … and (public) engagement is tearing down all the walls,” Self said. “It’s about talking to people honestly and making them feel a part of your organization instead of customers of your organization, no matter what it is.”

As the name implies, Blue State Digital’s political and commercial work reflects the progressive values of its partners and employees, Self said. Several politicians and companies have approached the company and been rejected because they weren’t compatible with those values.

Eventually, the whirlwind will subside. But Self thinks Blue State Digital has a bright future as people’s use of the Internet matures. He finds the work fascinating, and he hopes he can continue doing it from Lexington.

“I feel like I got a fantastic education here in the public school system,” Self said, adding that Dunbar’s math, science and technology magnet program prepared him well for MIT.

If Lexington wants to keep and attract more smart people like Ben Self, it must continue to focus on the infrastructure and quality-of-life issues that technology entrepreneurs and workers look for in a city.

“I do wonder what would happen if I didn’t have this company,” Self said. “Would I be able to stay here? For a technologist, there’s not a huge number of opportunities here.”