The Bluegrass and Beyond

Do you ever worry about where your next meal is coming from? Maybe you should.

I don’t mean how you will pay for it, although that seems to be a concern for more and more people these days.

I mean literally where it’s coming from, what’s in it and whether the food and the methods used to produce it are good for your body, your community and your environment.

Those issues brought more than 100 people to Crestwood Christian Church last Thursday and Friday for the Bluegrass Food Security Summit. Organized by community activist and local dynamo Jim Embry, the summit was a place for farmers, educators, social workers, government bureaucrats and even clergy to talk about how to make this region better-fed and more environmentally sustainable.

The scientific and economic revolution that reshaped American agriculture after World War II did a lot of good, and a lot of bad. Many family farms were replaced by industrial agriculture that could produce more food cheaper and more efficiently. But cheap food has had other costs.

Pesticides and herbicides have contaminated soil and water. Overuse of antibiotics in animals has led to drug-resistant infections in people. Industrially processed food and fast-food culture have caused a decline in nutrition among many segments of the population.

Cheaply produced meat, vegetables and fruits are trucked great distances to market — something that will be less possible as oil supplies diminish and prices rise.

Controlled-feeding animal operations — such as the hog and chicken farms that plague many parts of rural Kentucky — produce huge amounts of waste that pollute groundwater and create an unbearable stench for miles around.

Things are changing, though, as more people seek healthier and tastier foods. Kentucky is making more progress than many states, thanks to wise investment of tobacco settlement money in agricultural diversification. And the family farm is being re-invented in many parts of the state, thanks to groups like the Community Farm Alliance, which is celebrating its 25th year.

Kentucky has seen tremendous growth recently in organic and naturally produced meat and produce, much of it on small, family-owned farms that sell through farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture (CSA) plans. The University of Kentucky now even has an organic farm and CSA operation — and a degree program in sustainable agriculture.

Co-op groceries that focus on fresh, locally produced food are becoming more popular. Lexington’s Good Foods Co-op on Southland Drive now has nearly 5,200 owners.

There also has been a lot of emphasis on starting school and neighborhood gardens, a focus of such organizations as Seedleaf (www.seedleaf.org) and Embry’s Sustainable Communities Network (www.sustainlex.org).

In Lexington, gardens have been created in many neighborhoods, at Bryan Station High School, the Chrysalis House program for women with substance-abuse problems, the Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program and Employment Solutions, a company that provides vocational training to unemployed people.

Outside Lexington, many organizations are working to promote local food alternatives and environmental stewardship. One notable example is Sustainable Berea (www.sustainableberea.org), which offers workshops in gardening and related skills and helps people in the Madison County community plant berry bushes and fruit trees.

“It’s an issue of stewardship,” the Rev. Kory Wilcoxson, senior pastor at Crestwood Christian, said at the summit’s opening session. “When you read the Bible, the world was started in a garden.”

Many of Lexington’s community gardens have a strong emphasis on participation by children and youth, and there were many of them at the summit’s opening dinner and program Thursday evening. Embry believes that children are the key to steering society back to the local food and sustainability ethics that were the norm in America until the late 20th century.

“The great work of this century is to restore the sacredness of the earth and its connections to ourselves,” Embry said. “It means we have to find new ways of doing things. We don’t want our children to inherit the problems we created.”

Joe Riley is an evangelist for historic preservation, good urban design and proven strategies for making cities more livable and economically successful.

He founded the national Mayors’ Institute for City Design. The Joseph P. Riley Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Studies at the College of Charleston is named for him. But Riley’s best credential is his day job: since 1975, for an unprecedented nine terms, he has been the mayor of Charleston, S.C.

People who know Charleston often remark on what a great city it is — the beautiful waterfront, the Spoleto arts festival and the colorfully painted historic homes. Those old enough to remember what the city used to be like talk about how much it has improved.

During Riley’s tenure, Charleston’s annual tourist trade has increased from 1.7 million to 4.4 million visitors. At the same time, the city has often made lists of the best places to live and do business.

Riley was in Lexington last Wednesday to speak to an overflow crowd at the Downtown Public Library. Many civic leaders were there, as well as all four candidates for mayor.

With a rapid-fire PowerPoint presentation that lasted for more than an hour, Riley flashed slide after slide showing Charleston’s transformation from the time when “our downtown almost died.”

The pictures showed dozens of dilapidated buildings restored to elegance and commercial success; modest but well-designed public housing so attractive that expensive condos were later built across the street; neighborhoods and commercial streets rescued from neglect by city leaders who demanded and got high-quality private development; an elegant public park on what was once a waterfront eyesore.

“A big challenge was this vacant lot right in the middle of downtown,” Riley said at one point, prompting the crowd to erupt in laughter. “Oh, you have one of those, too?”

A key factor in Charleston’s success has been historic preservation. “We work hard to keep the bulldozers out,” he said.

Historic preservation hasn’t been so much about preserving the past — “we’re not a movie set or a theme park,” Riley said — but about creating an authentic, irreplaceable and human-scaled environment where people naturally want to be. The city also insists that new development be well-designed, well-built and, well, worthy of being in Charleston.

That means having effective laws and regulations, but also the kind of professional architectural review processes Lexington lacks. Such a process helps ensure that new development is appropriate, well-designed and in the best interests of the entire city and not just an individual developer or property owner.

“Try not to plop things down,” Riley said of new development. “Make it work. Make it fit.”

Excellence is often achieved with that last 5 percent of effort, the mayor noted. He repeatedly gave examples of using his political skills to make sure old buildings were saved, money was found to restore them and proposed new construction added to rather than detracted from the rest of the city. Riley said he once called then-President Bill Clinton to insist that a new federal building respect Charleston’s downtown esthetic.

“There’s never an excuse to build anything that doesn’t add to the beauty of a city,” Riley said, acknowledging that “the political land mines are all over the place.”

Successful cities put a lot of emphasis on beautiful public space that attracts people. “The things of value are increasingly the things we own together,” he said. “When you build a great public realm, the private money and development will follow.”

Riley’s strong leadership is controversial; he has always had a re-election opponent, and last time he had three. But Riley’s approach has clearly worked for Charleston and most of its citizens. He was re-elected for an eighth time in 2007 with 64 percent of the vote.

City-building is a complicated stew, but the principles Riley outlined are simple: vision, leadership, and a commitment to long-term value for the entire city rather than just short-term profit for individuals.

When Lexington has followed those principles, it has enjoyed some of its greatest success: creating the Urban Services Boundary in 1958; restricting rural lot sizes in 1964 and 1999; starting the Purchase of Development Rights program in 2000; and creating historic districts over the past 50 years (often, though, after significant damage was already done.)

Lexington has failed when it ignored those principles and allowed tacky, vinyl-box housing, commercial sprawl, haphazard architecture and, since the 1950s, the destruction of classic downtown buildings to make way for parking lots, drab concrete boxes and ego-driven glass towers.

“Our success as a culture, economic and otherwise, will depend on our cities,” Riley said. “We must treat them as precious heirlooms that we inherit and hold in trust for future generations.”

Want to explore the latest ideas for making cities successful? Plan to attend the Creative Cities Summit in Lexington, April 7-9.

Want to discuss how those ideas could be applied to Lexington? Mark April 17 on your calendar.

That’s when a companion session called Now What, Lexington? will be held at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.

Unlike the Creative Cities Summit, there are no big-name speakers and no admission charge. Everyone is welcome to attend — or to lead a session, if they wish, on any topic that interests others enough to participate.

Now What, Lexington? isn’t a conference; it’s an “un-conference,” said Ben Self, a Lexington technology entrepreneur who is helping to organize the event. To sign up, go to www.nowwhatlexington.org.

“Our goal is to take the excitement, ideas and momentum from the Creative Cities Summit and spark some action from it,” Self said.

There is no agenda for Now What, Lexington?, just five or six rooms available for breakout discussions during seven 45-minute blocks between 9 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. The only request of session leaders is that the groups discuss action steps, not just ideas.

For example, Self wants to lead a discussion on what citizens and neighborhoods could do to self-organize and take up some of the slack of cuts — and possible future cuts — in city government services.

Now What, Lexington? is being organized by a new group called ProgressLex, which hopes to advocate for a variety of urban Lexington issues the way The Fayette Alliance does for land-use issues, said the group’s chairman, Dan Rowland, a University of Kentucky history professor.

Rowland said Lexington has many organizations that do good work, and ProgressLex hopes to bring them together to be more effective. He envisions a bipartisan online community of as many as 30,000 people focusing on issues ranging from good urban design and historic preservation to ­social justice and government transparency.

He said Now What, Lexington? seemed like the perfect launch event for ProgressLex, because it is focused on putting new ideas into action to improve Lexington’s quality of life.

Phil Holoubek, a downtown developer who is one of the main organizers of the Creative Cities Summit, said Now What, Lexington? is a perfect companion event. That’s because the summit is aimed toward ideas for cities generally — and attracting attention to Lexington as a place where good ideas are discussed. Now What, Lexington? could help get some of those ideas put into action.

“We really need both types of events to move ­Lexington forward,” ­Holoubek said.

This two-step approach — gathering ideas, then discussing an action plan for Lexington — offers a good model for Commerce Lexington’s annual Leadership Visit.

Each May, more than 200 local business and civic leaders spend three days together in another city, networking and gathering ideas to bring home to Lexington. This year’s trip, to Pittsburgh, promises to be one of the most useful of these visits, because it is being taken with Greater Louisville Inc.

Kentucky’s two largest cities need a closer working relationship, and this is a good step in that direction.

Although past ­Commerce Lexington trips have eventually led to some action in Lexington, a frequent criticism is that more could be done. In a letter to the editor recently, former Urban County Council member Dick DeCamp suggested that Commerce Lexington’s trips be scaled back to every two or three years, with time in between devoted to meetings focused on applying ideas already gathered.

That’s a sensible approach. At the least, Commerce Lexington could take a cue from the Creative Cities Summit and Now What, Lexington? and schedule public follow-up sessions after the Pittsburgh trip. Those sessions would be good places to discuss how ideas generated in Pittsburgh — and relationships made with Louisvillians — could be put to good use.

Speaking of ideas: One of America’s most successful mayors — Joseph P. Riley Jr. of Charleston, S.C. — speaks Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the Downtown Public Library. Riley, Charleston’s mayor since 1975, has been a key player in growing the city’s economy while preserving its historic buildings and decreasing crime. The free program is sponsored by The Fayette Alliance and UK’s Gaines Center for the Humanities.

Conservative politicians love to rail against government regulation of business, and voters lap it up.

After all, nobody likes being told what to do. This is a free country, isn’t it?

Almost any small business owner can point to examples of what he or she considers to be excessive government regulation, and many of those complaints are valid.

But to say that they show government regulation is bad is like saying the earth is flat because it looks that way from your window.

During the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, the nation went from a strong economy and federal budget surplus to a deep recession and huge deficit. Much of that was the result of big tax cuts and two wars waged on credit.

The financial crisis that severely damaged our economy was largely the result of a lack of government regulation of investment banks and mortgage lenders. That included the repeal of regulations enacted during the Great Depression to prevent it from happening again.

Congress is now trying to re-regulate the financial services industry to prevent future crises. Still, conservative politicians are whipping up anxious voters by railing against government regulation. Go figure.

One especially troubling example comes from Bill Johnson, a Todd County businessman seeking the GOP nomination to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky. I heard Johnson and eight of the other 10 Senate candidates speak last month at the annual meeting of county judge-executives.

Johnson declared that several federal agencies should be abolished, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior. And he said it with a straight face.

The Interior Department, created in 1849, does a variety of things from overseeing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey to managing federal land, including the national parks. It also regulates surface mining, which may be what has Johnson steamed.

Congress created the EPA in 1970 at the urging of Republican President Richard Nixon because businesses and cities were poisoning the air and turning the nation’s lakes and rivers into sewers.

So, if we abolish the Interior Department, do we open more government land, including national parks, to oil drilling and coal mining? More logging and development? Or do we simply sell off federal lands to private interests and let them do as they please?

If we abolish the EPA, do we let mines, refineries, factories and cities pollute at will? Or do we rely on states for environmental regulation, which is often weak?

When the first white settlers came to Kentucky, they found a land that had been inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years, yet remained an almost virgin wilderness. Less than 250 years later, Kentucky is covered with sprawling development, scarred by poorly reclaimed surface mines and challenged by air and water pollution. Without government regulation — indeed, better regulation than we’ve had up to now — what will Kentucky be like in another 250 years? Or 2,500 years?

American free enterprise is a wonderful thing. But business needs good government regulation to save it — and the rest of us — from greed, exploitation and excess. That’s especially true now that corporate vision rarely extends beyond the next year’s earnings forecasts and executive bonus plans.

Like most Americans, I don’t want government to be either too big or too small. I just want government that works in the best interests of the nation as a whole, for my grandchildren and their grandchildren’s grandchildren. In the long run, that’s also good for business.

When I moved back to Lexington in 1998, I realized just how much my hometown had sprawled in the 22 years I was away.

It wasn’t a complete surprise, of course. I had visited Lexington several times each year and watched things change around my parents’ home in a once-rural part of southern Fayette County. Farm after farm was carved up into subdivisions, shopping centers and estate lots.

Any healthy city needs to grow, and Lexington has managed growth better than most. Sprawl was limited by the Urban Services Boundary, created in 1958 and expanded a few times since then, as well as by minimum lot sizes for rural homes — 10 acres from 1964 to 1999, when they were increased to 40 acres.

Still, it was clear more than a decade ago that unless more was done, Lexington could eventually lose the rural landscape and unique agricultural soils that made it famous as the Horse Capital of the World. The World Monuments Fund has declared the Inner Bluegrass Region one of the planet’s 100 most endangered environments.

So, in 2000, the Urban County Council created the Purchase of Development Rights program. The goal was to permanently protect 50,000 acres of Fayette County’s most sensitive rural land — 27 percent of the county’s total land — with voluntary conservation easements by 2020.

So far, 24,126 acres have been protected, and program manager Billy Van Pelt expects to reach the halfway goal of 25,000 acres later this year. Landowners have either donated easements or sold them for an average of $2,500 per acre.

Conservation easements lower property taxes for landowners, because the cash value of their land is much less if it can’t be developed. “But nobody is getting rich off this,” Van Pelt said. If anything, it costs landowners in long-term economic benefit.

So far, the PDR program has cost $57.6 million — $31.5 million of which has come from state and federal grants. Van Pelt said the PDR program currently has applications from landowners wishing to sell about $8 million worth of conservation easements.

“The sooner we get to our goal, the sooner we’ll know when, how and where we’ll grow,” he said. “We need to preserve our farmland and plan for growth in the future.”

This year’s PDR program budget is $1.1 million, or about $4 for each Fayette County resident. That’s a pretty small amount in the grand scheme of things. But I’ve seen a few letters to the editor recently questioning the program’s value. And a couple of council members have made offhand suggestions that maybe PDR money should be diverted to other needs.

That would be a big mistake. While balancing the city budget won’t be easy this year — and perhaps for several years to come — Lexington must guard against the temptation to shortchange investments in long-term prosperity. Few of those investments are more important than protecting Fayette County’s unique landscape and environment.

Everyone knows Fayette County contains Kentucky’s second-biggest city, but many people don’t realize that it also has the state’s second-most valuable agricultural economy. Much of that comes from horse breeding, which provides 6,300 jobs. The horse industry also gives Lexington its global brand and is the anchor of its tourism industry.

Protecting Fayette County’s farmland is a good short-term deal for taxpayers. That’s because, unlike homeowners, the owners of farms and open land pay more in taxes than they use in taxpayer-funded city services.

But preserving farmland and open space is also an important long-term investment. In addition to preserving a large agricultural economy, it protects the environment from pollution. And it provides the open space and scenic beauty that are important factors in the hard-to-quantify “quality of life” attribute that makes people want to live in and around Lexington.

It also hedges Lexington’s bets for the future. For example, locally grown food could become increasingly important as rising oil prices make long-distance transportation of food more expensive.

“In our minds, PDR plays a critical role in Lexington’s economic future,” said Knox van Nagell, executive director of The Fayette Alliance, a non-profit organization that focuses on land-use issues and sustainable development policy.

“If we’re going to preserve this rural land, we can’t leave it up to chance and politics,” said van Nagell, whose own family has donated conservation easements for the Fayette County land where they have raised cattle and row crops for 200 years. “We need to preserve this land in perpetuity.”

For more information

To learn more about Lexington’s Purchase of Development Rights program, visit the city’s Web site by clicking here.

To see PDR easements donated and granted as of September 2009, click here to see a searchable database.

There was unease among some journalists, mayoral candidates and their staffers about the format for the first public forum of the Lexington mayor’s race. That’s because the candidates were to be questioned by three community bloggers as well as four journalists.

The concern was this: would the bloggers act professionally?

As it turned out, the bloggers were fine, and they asked some excellent questions.

It was one of the mayoral candidates, Clarence “Skip” Horine, who went off the deep end.

Horine is a businessman who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1993. He was last to join this race, which also includes Mayor Jim Newberry; the mayor he defeated four years ago, Teresa Isaac; and Vice Mayor Jim Gray.

Many of Horine’s responses to questions were fine, although they included a lot of generic conservative “free enterprise will solve everything” language. Then he started making vague and confusing allegations about police corruption and bid-rigging on city projects, prompting Newberry at one point to say that if Horine has evidence of wrongdoing he should give it to prosecutors.

Then, when it was time for the candidates’ closing statements, Horine began with what he (accurately) described as a convoluted story about alleged police wrongdoing. Then he accused a police officer by name of vague impropriety and mentioned that his mother was murdered in Lexington years ago.

As I surveyed the crowd at the Main Street business incubator Awesome Inc., people were glancing at each other with “what the …. ?” looks. Whatever credibility Horine had as a serious candidate evaporated. He seemed more motivated by his own issues than Lexington’s issues.

Aside from the Skip Horine sideshow, the forum offered good discussion on a variety of issues, but few surprises. The three major candidates said jobs and economic development are the biggest issues Lexington faces. Horine said the biggest issue is “trust” of city government (see above).

Newberry had good answers to many questions, but was defensive and aggressive for an incumbent.  Gray made good points about his business expertise and the need for more visionary leadership, but some of his answers were rambling. Isaac answered many questions well, but portrayed her administration as much more successful than most others remember it. (She was voted out of office four years ago by a wide margin.)

The panel’s journalists were me, Bill Bryant of WKYT-TV, Erik Carlson of Business Lexington and Kenny Colston of the Kentucky Kernel, UK’s student newspaper. The bloggers were Bianca Spriggs, Joe Sonka and Steve Smith of UK College Republicans. The forum was organized by Kakie Urch, assistant professor of new media at the University of Kentucky’s School of Journalism and Telecommunications. It was sponsored by the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center at UK.

I was too busy asking questions, listening to answers and condensing them into dozens of 140-character Twitter posts to take notes. But Herald-Leader Andy Mead has a well-done news story summarizing the forum. Read it here.

If this forum was any indication, the 2010 Lexington mayor’s race will be interesting. Let’s hope that amidst the bragging, blaming, posturing and Twilight Zone moments the candidates will give voters some clear information about who would do the best job of helping make a fine city even better.

The four candidates for Lexington mayor will answer questions from a panel of journalists and community bloggers tonight from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the first major forum of the campaign.

The forum at Awesome Inc., a business incubator space at 348 East Main Street, will feature Mayor Jim Newberry, former Mayor Teresa Isaac, Vice Mayor Jim Gray and businessman Skip Horine. Seating — and standing room — is very limited, so here are the best ways to follow the action:

• Watch streaming video at www.wkyt.com.
• I’m one of the panelists, and I will be sending Twitter updates at twitter.com/tomeblen. (While you’re there, click “follow”.) You can follow everyone’s Twitter feeds on the forum by using the hashtag #lexmayor.  I’ll also post assessments of the forum afterward on this blog.
• Live blogging at www.kykernel.com.
• Reporter Andy Mead will write a news story for www.kentucky.com and Thursday’s Herald-Leader.
• Read and watch what other panelists have to say about the forum.

Other journalists on the panel are WKYT’s Bill Bryant, Business Lexington’s Erik Carlson and the Kentucky Kernel’s Kenny Colston. Community bloggers are Joe Sonka, Bianca Spriggs and Steve Smith of UK College Republicans.

In addition to presenting the mayoral candidates’ views, the forum is an effort to show the variety of ways voters now get political news, information and commentary. The forum is being organized by Kakie Urch, a veteran journalist and assistant professor of new media at the University of Kentucky’s School of Journalism and Telecommunications. It is sponsored by the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center at UK.

Central Kentucky is known as a center for horses, bourbon and basketball. As a center for creative technology people? Not so much.

Yet, technology employment in the Lexington area has grown at a rate that is more than four times the national average in the past decade. More than 6,000 people are now employed by technology and software companies, including Lexmark, Belcan Engineering, ACS/Xerox, Hewlett-Packard and Mersive Technologies.

“I don’t think people realize how pervasive technology is here,” said Ben Askren, a Lexmark engineer. And that makes it difficult for technology companies to attract and retain the best employees so they can keep growing.

Askren is part of a volunteer group called In2Lex that has worked to help Lexington’s creative technology workers get to know each other through events such as Geek’s Night Out and Pecha-Kucha, an idea-generation program in which speakers make presentations of no more than six minutes and 40 seconds each.

Now the group wants to raise Lexington’s national profile as a place where creative technology people can find career opportunities and a pleasant, interesting lifestyle.

In2Lex is promoting “April Is …” to focus attention on more than 20 events being sponsored by several organizations that month. They include the Creative Cities Summit and a “TedX” seminar — a local version of the Technology, Entertainment, Design events that feature big-name speakers with “ideas worth spreading.”

Several technology gatherings are planned: the Kentucky Innovation & Technology Conference, the Kentucky Space Conference, and seminars related to electronic health information, mobile devices, government information systems, social entrepreneurship and business development.

And then there’s the geeky, fun stuff.

Mechanalia is an interactive game in which small teams drive electric rovers with robotic arms and try to accomplish tasks while opponents shoot at them with tennis-ball cannons; Tinker is a combination jazz festival and science fair for adults; and at the No Mercy Full-Blown Gamers’ Party, attendees can play unreleased video games.

All this will be going on during one of Lexington’s traditionally interesting months: the horses are running at Keeneland and competing in the Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event. And then there is the Best of the Bluegrass festival.

“We really want to promote Lexington as a lifestyle, career and education destination for people in creative technology,” Askren said.

OK, I can already hear some of you snickering. But, if you think about it, this economic development strategy makes a lot of sense. Digital technology increasingly allows creative workers to live wherever they want. And they usually want to live near a city with a lot of professional opportunities.

Competing with Austin, Texas, and Seattle is a challenge, but Central Kentucky has some advantages that it can exploit. “Once people see what’s here, it changes their perception of Kentucky,” said Gina Greathouse, Commerce Lexington’s senior vice president for economic development.

Those advantages include a laid-back, affordable lifestyle; a beautiful landscape; more arts and cultural offerings than many people realize; and a central location not far from Cincinnati and Louisville. Plus, Lexington has one of the nation’s best-educated labor forces: 38 percent of people older than 25 have college degrees, and there are 15 colleges and universities in the area.

Those attributes regularly put Lexington high on national rankings of places to raise a family or start a business.

In2Lex hopes to make its “April Is …” an annual event, and it is looking for new ways to market the region’s creative technology potential. “It really comes down to how do we make Lexington a better place,” Askren said.

• If you go

  For more information about In2Lex and a schedule of events planned in April, go to www.in2lex.com.

When the Lexington Film League announced a contest last September for short videos about “do-ers” in Kentucky, organizers didn’t know what to expect.

Kiley Lane and several other filmmakers had formed the all-volunteer league last year to promote and showcase what has become an increasingly popular form of storytelling and self-expression.

Almost anyone these days can make a short video and post it online. The league promotes film arts through classes at the Carnegie Center, with lectures at the Lexington Art League and through its Web site: www.lexingtonfilmleague.org.

While discussing a film project with a friend at a Lexington non-profit group, Lane said, “We thought it would be great if we had a contest that got people who are doing these things in the community involved with filmmakers. It could show off both what the filmmaker and the organization can do.”

So the league sent out e-mail, posted information on its Web site and even called non-profit organizations to suggest that a staffer or volunteer might have the video skills to tell their story.

Then contest organizers waited. And waited.

As the deadline approached, only two or three entries had been posted to the league’s YouTube channel. Then, suddenly, entries began flooding in. They came from experienced filmmakers, photojournalists, lawyers and even high school students.

“It was really exciting,” Lane said. “The number that came in really surprised us, and thrilled us.”

Twenty-two videos are vying for two awards, which will be announced at a free public event beginning at 6 p.m. Feb. 26 at Natasha’s Bistro on Esplanade Avenue, where the top 10 videos will be screened.

The best video award, selected by the league’s judges, comes with a $400 prize, to be split between the filmmaker and a non-profit organization of his or her choice. The prize money comes from the Lexington-based clothing company Make Yourself Necessary, which helps charities raise money.

Judging criteria include storytelling, production quality, use of images and interviews, editing and overall artistic impression, Lane said.

Then there is the people’s choice award, with a prize that has yet to be determined. Online viewers can see the 22 entries at the league’s YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/user/lexfilmleague, and e-mail their votes to lexfilmleague@gmail.com.

Several organizations have mobilized supporters for “people’s choice” votes, Lane said. One video has more than 150 votes. You can vote only once.

What kind of videos was the league looking for?

Lane said organizers purposely left contest criteria vague. Should film subjects be people or organizations doing “good” in their communities? “Good is such a relative term,” she said. “In the end, we decided we wanted to be open-ended. We wanted different people’s takes on what a do-er is.”

Many of the videos profile non-profit organizations, including Central Kentucky Radio Eye, which records periodicals for the blind; the Backside Learning Center in Louisville, which teaches immigrant horse workers English and computer skills; the Bluegrass Miracle League, which organizes baseball games for handicapped children; and Wholesome Table, which teaches immigrants to prepare locally available foods.

Angela Shoemaker used audio interviews and black-and-white photographs to tell about a family helped by Louisville’s Volunteers of America Family Shelter. Jennifer Miller’s video profiled Lexington’s zany March Madness Marching Band.

And there are several individual profiles: a photographer who produced a popular calendar of female mechanics while riding her motorcycle across the country; a woman who spent 21 days living in a window at the 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville; and a man who reads aloud in downtown Lexington parks.

At the Feb. 26 event, the league will announce details of its next video contest. Lane wouldn’t divulge the subject, but she said it would involve music and culminate in an event at Buster’s Billiards & Backroom in May. The winning video, she said, would be shown at the Louisville Film Society’s annual Flyover Film Festival in June.

The league plans to repeat this contest next year in the hope of getting entries from beyond Lexington and Louisville, Lane said. She thinks it’s fertile territory.

“Most people have their day jobs but they’re also interested in something else,” she said.

“Organizations and people across the state are doing some amazing things in their communities, and they are passionate about community support. You see that through the videos.”

A century ago, farm-to-market roads were the new infrastructure Kentucky needed to move its economy forward. A half-century ago, it was interstates and parkways.

Now, it’s the information superhighway.

As the federal government begins taking applications Feb. 15 for $7.2 billion in second-round stimulus money to expand broadband, it’s a good time to check in on a Kentucky program that has become a model for other states.

ConnectKentucky was launched as a public-private partnership in 2004 to map high-speed Internet access in Kentucky, find gaps in coverage and work county-by-county with citizens, local officials and service providers to fill them. Much of the work focused on rural areas and the mountains.

From 2004 to 2007, broadband availability grew from 58 percent of Kentucky households to 95 percent, ConnectKentucky says.

The organization’s newest initiative uses money from coal severance taxes and the Appalachian Regional Commission to expand broadband access in Breathitt, Powell, Estill and Lee counties.

ConnectKentucky also works to teach people how to use computers and to promote broadband as a way to improve economic and community development, education and health care.

That’s because broadband availability and affordability aren’t the only issues, said René True, executive director of ConnectKentucky. “Sometimes there’s a lack of understanding of the value that broadband can bring to a household or an individual,” he said.

ConnectKentucky’s Computers 4 Kids program has distributed 3,203 computers to low-income families and non-profit organizations. Many of those were older models refurbished by state inmates, who in the process learned skills they can use to get jobs when they leave prison.

The organization’s Web site — www.connectkentucky.org — includes county-by-county information and broadband speed-testing software.

ConnectKentucky has become a national model for broadband expansion. After Ohio and Tennessee wanted to copy ConnectKentucky’s approach, a national non-profit, Connected Nation, was formed as an umbrella organization. Connected Nation also now works with 10 other states and Puerto Rico.

ConnectKentucky and Connected Nation haven’t escaped controversy. Critics complain that the public-private partnership favors major telephone and cable companies at the expense of small providers and public broadband solutions.

The organizations dispute that, saying they work with all providers in a given area. Nationally, 19 big corporations now provide 93 percent of all broadband services, according to Leichtman Research Group, an industry consultant.

They also have been caught up in a larger debate about national broadband policy. Critics say America needs a more ambitious national broadband strategy than simply supporting the individual business strategies of private providers.

Connected Nation has attracted bipartisan political support, as has ConnectKentucky, which was launched by then-Gov. Ernie Fletcher, a Republican, but built on work begun by his predecessor, Gov. Paul Patton, a Democrat.

Still, in the scramble to balance the two-year state budget in 2008, Gov. Steve Beshear vetoed $1.2 million in annual funding for ConnectKentucky, which surprised some lawmakers. True said the organization hasn’t asked for state funding for the next budget cycle.

ConnectKentucky is being kept afloat now by Connected Nation, $100,000 in corporate support and other revenue from grants and consulting work, True said. Rather than statewide projects, it is focusing on local efforts where it can secure grants and other funding.

One such project begins in April, when ConnectKentucky will use a $134,000 Kentucky Housing Corp. grant to provide computers, broadband connectivity and training to low-income residents in the redeveloped Equestrian View neighborhood of Lexington’s East End. Lexmark is donating printers.

True said ConnectKentucky plans to apply for some of the new federal stimulus money to expand that kind of program to other public housing in Kentucky.

“It’s a key component for participating in the 21st-century economy,” he said of computer knowledge and broadband access. “Without it, we’re going to be left behind.”

I don’t usually go out to the Lexington Cemetery this time of year; it’s much nicer in the spring or fall.

But I thought Henry might want to talk.

Henry Clay is remembered as one of America’s greatest statesmen. During the first half of the 19th century, he was a powerful speaker of the House, a senator of great influence, secretary of state and a frequent candidate for president.

As leader of what became the Republican party, he could be as partisan as anybody. But time after time, when the nation was in a jam, he put ideology and partisanship aside and convinced other politicians to do what was best for the country.

Clay became a model for diplomacy, conciliation and conflict resolution. He negotiated an end to the War of 1812, which he helped start, and brokered compromises over taxes and slavery that delayed the Civil War three times.

Clay died in 1852. His tomb is at the Lexington Cemetery, and a marble statue of him stands atop a 120-foot column overlooking the city.

Whenever I drive by, I wonder what Clay would think of the institution he once led — a Congress that seems gridlocked by partisanship and perverted by special-interest money.

So I decided to stop and ask him.

“I have a pretty good view from up here,” Clay said when I asked if he follows current affairs. “And I catch wind of a lot of things.”

He didn’t want to discuss individuals, such as his successor, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “After all,” Clay said, “he’s the leader of my party, and he has sat at my old desk in the Senate chamber.”

Clay blamed both Republicans and Democrats for the sorry state of American governance. He also complained about ideologues who pressure the reasonable people on both sides, making it almost impossible for them to find middle ground.

“There are few principles so important that there can be no compromise,” Clay said. “For example, preservation of the Union.”

What about slavery?

“OK, you got me on that one,” he said. “In hindsight, I should have had the courage of cousin Cassius. Alas, every man is a product of his time.

“But my point is this,” he said, quickly changing the subject, “I always said we should govern with the spirit of brothers. Brothers will disagree, even fight. But when the family is threatened, they band together.

“I was right about a lot of things, such as trade protection to strengthen American industry and federal spending to build roads,” he said. “But I wasn’t right about everything. Nobody is. Leadership isn’t about always winning; it’s about figuring out what’s best for the nation. If the nation isn’t strong, none of the rest matters.”

That may be good leadership, but is it good politics?

“Of course not,” Clay said. “I famously said that I would rather be right than president. Well, I ran for president five times and was never elected. I’ll tell you this, though: I’m more highly regarded now than some of the men who defeated me.”

I asked Clay what he thought of McConnell’s strategy of filibustering almost everything Democrats try to do in the Senate, and of House Democrats’ strategy of pushing through major legislation without even consulting Republicans.

“I told you I don’t want to discuss individuals,” he said. “But it’s no wonder that public opinion of both parties in Congress could hardly be lower. From a purely political standpoint, what will happen when the shoe is on the other foot? What will happen when the other party is in power? Or in the minority? Will revenge and pettiness never end?”

I asked Clay about all of the millions of dollars that corporations and other special interests spend on campaign contributions, attack ads and lobbying Congress. Does he think it perverts government?

“What do you think?” he replied. “Campaigns weren’t so expensive in my day. There was no television or talk radio. We just had newspapers, and they were vile enough.

“But it seems obvious,” he continued. “If wealthy and powerful interests are spending millions of dollars to make you wealthy and powerful, are you going to do what’s best for their interests or what’s best for the public interest? In my day we called it bribery.”

So you don’t think money is simply free speech?

“I told you,” Clay replied with a cold, marble stare, “I don’t want to discuss individuals.”

Reading Wendell Berry is like having a conversation with a friend — an old friend whose wisdom makes you want to do nothing more than hush and listen.

That’s how I felt, snowbound last weekend, reading Berry’s new collection of essays, Imagination in Place. Berry reflects on writers he has known or admired and the role that a sense of place played in their lives and work.

Place has special significance to Berry, as he explains in the book. After sojourns on each coast, Berry and his wife, Tanya, and their two children returned to his native Henry County in 1964. They bought a farm along the Kentucky River near Port Royal, which became the Port William of his fiction.

“I believe I can say properly that my fiction originates in part in actual experience of an actual place: its topography, weather, plants, and animals; its language, voice and stories,” Berry writes.

He has farmed and written in that place for 45 years. Along the way, he has become perhaps the nation’s most eloquent advocate for time-honored agrarian values that are attracting new appreciation in the 21st century after being dismissed during much of the 20th.

These 15 essays, written from 1993 to 2009, have been published previously, most in The Sewanee Review. Berry fans might appreciate them most for the insights they offer into his own development as a writer.

Berry writes about being a graduate student at Stanford under Wallace Stegner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 30 books, most of which were set in the American West.

“The fact is that at the time I did not understand him as an influence, and the reason was that at the time I did not know what kind of influence I was going to need,” he writes. “At the time I wanted only to be a writer; beyond that, I had little self- knowledge, and not an inkling of what I wanted to do or where I wanted to do it.”

In other essays, Berry writes of Donald Hall and his New England; of James Still and Gurney Norman and their Eastern Kentucky; and of Hayden Carruth, whose poetry was rooted in Vermont, where he lived for many years.

There are essays of literary criticism, and remembrances of departed literary friends, including James Baker Hall, a classmate of Berry at the University of Kentucky and later a colleague when they both taught English there.

These pieces include the flashes of wisdom that Berry’s fans cherish, such as this description of his first visit to an Eastern Kentucky strip mine in 1964 with Norman, who was then a newspaper reporter in Hazard: “It had never occurred to me that people could destroy land with an indifference that perfectly matched the capability of their technology.”

And then there is this wonderful critique of literary “realism” that focuses only on the dark side of life: “Why should one read a book that is programmatically more depressing than the news?”

Although much in these essays celebrates the warmth and humanness of life, Berry also does some of what he does best: hold up a mirror to modern society and make observations of blinding moral clarity.

“We have pretty much made a virtue of selfishness as the mainstay of our economy, and we have provided an abundance of good excuses for dishonesty,” he writes. “Most of us give no thought to the state of nature as the context of our lives, because we conventionally disbelieve in natural limits.”

Imagination in Place is the latest example of why Wendell Berry is not only a Kentucky treasure, but an American treasure.

Last year, economists thought America needed economic stimulus.

Debra Hensley thought Lexington needed social stimulus.

So the former three-term Urban County Council member sent an invitation to everyone on her e-mail list, set up tables and chairs in the front yard of her insurance agency across from Commonwealth Stadium, and fired up the grill.

A diverse crowd showed up for lunch that Friday in June. An even bigger crowd came in July. “Then I thought, ‘Step back. What are you really trying to do?’” Hensley said.

That’s when she created Debra’s Social $timulus, a project dedicated to “people, planet, purpose.” She took her project on the road — and online with a Web site (www.debrassocialstimulus.com) and a Facebook page.

Since last fall, Hensley has organized increasingly larger events in three Lexington neighborhoods. A fourth event is planned Friday, from 5 to 8 p.m., in a barrel house on the grounds of the former Old Pepper Distillery, 1200 Manchester Street. As always, everyone is welcome.

“When we’re in difficult times, it’s especially important that we stay connected,” Hensley said. “But it’s more than that.

“I want people to see parts of the community they might not know much about and learn about our history and culture. I want them to meet and interact with people they might not otherwise. And I want them to help the local economy.”

Debra’s Social $timulus went to South Limestone in August. The city had closed and begun rebuilding the street between downtown and the University of Kentucky campus — a project that continues — and merchants were complaining that their businesses had suffered.

Hensley booked the Sound Bar, hired Hanna’s On Lime next door to provide food, and encouraged people to come over — and keep coming back to spend money on South Limestone.

In September, she organized an event that drew more than 100 people to Morris Book Shop on Southland Drive to meet authors Gurney Norman and Neil Chethik and to enjoy food from several neighborhood businesses: Slone’s Signature Market, Good Foods Market and Butt Rubb BBQ.

When an old British bus from Commonwealth Double Deckers and the March Madness community marching band showed up, things really got stimulating.

Hensley’s October event attracted even more people to the Old Episcopal Burying Ground on East Third Street. That gathering showed off the neighboring London Ferrell Community Garden, the Seedleaf community food organization and the YMCA drum choir.

This week’s event will showcase the Lexington Distillery District project and surrounding neighbor hoods of Irishtown and Davis Bottom. The area has long been one of Lexington’s poorest, but it is being transformed by construction of Newtown Pike Extension.

“How many people drive by and never go into these neighborhoods?” Hensley wondered. “It’s an interesting part of our city with a rich history and culture.”

She plans to show several videos that were made recently in the area. They include interviews with residents and a volunteer nurse at Nathaniel Mission, a United Methodist church that Hensley calls “the glue that has always held the neighborhood together.”

Food will include chili from C&P Market, which Paul Holland has operated in the neighborhood since the 1970s. Dancers from Mecca Live Studio on Chair Avenue will entertain. Mecca is best known for the annual Halloween Thriller parade down Main Street, which has become a sensation in Lexington and on Internet videos.

“I want people to not only see the talent there, but know they can hire them to enliven any kind of gathering,” Hensley said of Mecca’s dancers.

What started as a cookout has become almost an obsession and a second career for Hensley, who in her spare time lately has been raising money for Haiti relief.

What is stimulating her to do all of this?

Hensley said she has no plans to get back into politics, although this is a good way to market her business as community-oriented. More than helping her insurance agency, though, she hopes Debra’s Social $timulus will help build a stronger, more inclusive Lexington.

“I feel like I’m reinvesting in the community,” Hensley said. “It’s really hard to explain what all of this is about. But it is fun.”

• If you go

  Debra’s Social $timulus

  What: “Barrel of Fun” event.

  When: 5-8 p.m. Feb. 5.

  Where: Former Old Pepper Distillery barrel house, 1200 Manchester St.

  Admission: Free.

Everett McCorvey performs at "A Prelude to A Grand Night for Singing" in May 2008. The "Prelude" and "Grand Night" events have become big fundraisers for UK Opera Theatre and popular community events. Photo by Tom Eblen

Everett McCorvey isn’t a businessman; he’s a musician and a teacher. He has started a lot of companies, but not the kind you usually associate with entrepreneurs.

McCorvey is a skilled entrepreneur nonetheless, having accomplished the unlikely feat of turning Lexington — a city best known for developing racehorses and basketball players — into a center for developing opera singers, too.

Since McCorvey came to Lexington in 1991, he has transformed the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre program by attracting public support and private donations. He said the program he began building with a $20,000 loan now has an annual budget of more than $1 million and an endowment approaching $5 million.

In his spare time, McCorvey started the American Spiritual Ensemble, which has toured the world and recorded several albums in an effort to preserve music inspired by slave melodies. The group began another tour last week with a sold-out performance at Frankfort’s Grand Theatre.

McCorvey recently formed Global Creative Connections to produce opening and closing ceremonies for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. He said he wants those productions to include as many Kentuckians as possible.

Last week, McCorvey, with backup from the American Spiritual Ensemble, gave a lecture at UK about entrepreneurship. He offered many insights into the attitudes, behaviors and strategies that have helped him succeed.

Some of them might work for you, too, even if you have little interest in business — or opera. That is because entrepreneurship isn’t necessarily about making money; it’s about figuring out ways to achieve your dreams.

McCorvey, 52, was born into segregated Montgomery, Ala., and lived around the corner from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. His mother was a librarian. His father worked overnight for the post office, ran a grocery, dabbled in real estate and sprayed homes for bugs. Plus, he was active in church and the local civil rights movement.

“My father was a tremendous role model for me,” McCorvey said. “My only problem was that I didn’t have the energy to keep up with him.”

McCorvey’s interest in music was sparked by a student trumpeter at Alabama State University who rented a room in their home. McCorvey persuaded his father to rent him a trumpet so he could learn to play. Performing in school bands, he later switched to baritone horn.

When McCorvey auditioned for the University of Alabama, he mentioned, as an afterthought, “Oh, by the way, I also sing.” Professors soon convinced him that his primary talent was singing, so that’s where he focused. “I had to work very hard to develop that talent,” he said.

McCorvey earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from the University of Alabama, then spent years in New York and abroad, performing in a wide variety of genres and venues — opera houses, Broadway theaters, TV commericals. That’s when he met his wife, singer Alicia Helm McCorvey.

He learned a lot about the business of show business before returning to Alabama to earn a doctorate. “And because Alabama was not like New York, I learned that if I wanted to do something in music, I had to create the opportunities,” he said.

McCorvey joined the UK faculty after teaching at a small college in Knoxville, Tenn., but a mentor warned him that opera would never be appreciated in Kentucky.

“I don’t know if I took that as a challenge, or what,” McCorvey said. He knew that creating an outstanding program would require recruiting the best singers available and producing professional-quality operas to train them.

While serving on the UK Athletics Association’s board, McCorvey studied the basketball program’s strategies and applied them to his goals.

“I thought that I needed my own athletics association,” he said. “Babies here leave the hospitals in UK sweatshirts. I thought that what I need to figure out is how to make Kentucky babies grow up loving the arts.”

He noticed that Lexington was filled with amateur singers and others who appreciate music. So he convinced some of them to create the Lexington Opera Society, which raises money and rallies support for UK Opera Theatre.

Entrepreneurship, like an opera production, is all about collaboration, he said. It requires engaging people who have skills you don’t have and creating a vision others want to share.

McCorvey said his job was best described by the late comic actor Charles Nelson Reilly, an opera lover he met while spending time with the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

“He said, ‘If it’s important to you, your job is to make it important to them,’ ” McCorvey said. “That’s basically what I do.”

• McCorvey’s advice for entrepreneurs:

  • Enjoy what you do. If you don’t enjoy what you do, do something else because life is too short.
  • Surround yourself with positive spirits.
  • Celebrate the amazing talents of others.
  • Be patient, be persistent and pray constantly.
  • Don’t try to do things that aren’t in your skill set.
  • Work harder than anyone else at the things you do well.
  • Engage people who have skills you don’t have and collaborate with them.
  • The more collaborative you are, the more you can achieve.
  • Engage your community in every way possible.
  • Find the good and praise it. (A tip from his friend Alex Haley, the late author of Roots.)
  • Stay away from ‘energy vampires.’
  • Embrace your fears and go with them.
  • Stay focused on your dreams and goals. Stop doing things that don’t support them.
  • Be good and kind to everyone; you never know when it might come back to you.
  • When a door closes, a window opens. Some doors should close; celebrate that.
  • Expect good things, and look forward to the next opportunity for something special to happen.

While I appreciate the kind words about my writing in Urban County Councilman Ed Lane’s letter to the editor today, his critique of my Dec. 20 column shows that he completely missed the point of it.

I did not suggest that a government-subsidized art museum like the Guggenheim Bilbao — or a government-subsidized anything — should be built on the CentrePointe site. I merely used the Guggenheim, the Humana Building in Louisville and the Ascent in Covington as examples of how quality architecture can contribute to a city.

The point of the column was that the high-profile CentrePointe site is an opportunity for outstanding architecture, something rarely produced by Lexington’s commercial developers.

Improving Kentucky’s economy will require more capital. Finding that capital, both human and financial, is likely to involve more small steps than big leaps.

Two groups are taking steps worth noting. They are the Young Professionals of Eastern Kentucky and the Lexington Venture Club.

The Young Professionals of Eastern Kentucky is a new organization that hopes to help talented young people stay in — or return to — Eastern Kentucky’s mountains. It is having its kickoff event Monday night in Hazard.

“We really want to combat the brain drain,” said Bradley Parke, 24, of Knott County, the group’s vice president. “There are a lot of people who leave and want to come back, but there’s just not the opportunities for them.”

The free event, which begins with a 6:30 p.m. reception at First Federal Center on the campus of Hazard Community and Technical College, will include speeches by U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers and former Gov. Paul Patton.

Kevin Smith, 26, a Laurel County native who lives in Inez, was inspired to start Young Professionals of Kentucky after reading Visioning Kentucky’s Future, a 2008 report by the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center.

“There was a need for young professionals to come together,” he said, not only to create new economic opportunities for themselves and their communities, but to be more aware of opportunities already in the region.

“Many of us have a passion for this region,” he said. “We want to live and work here.”

Smith, Parke and others formed a steering committee and then a board of young professionals from across Kentucky’s 32 Appalachian counties. They applied for non-profit status and organized small get-togethers in London, Hazard, Prestonsburg, Somerset, Whitesburg and Pikeville.

“We’re pretty spread out, so we’re trying to reach every part of the region so everyone feels like they’re included,” said Parke, adding that online networking tools will be key. The organization has created a Web site (www.ypek.org) and a Facebook group with nearly 1,200 members.

In addition to networking, Smith and Parke said the group plans to form working groups to study and undertake projects around six themes: economic development; energy and environment; education; health care; technology; and civic engagement. That work will get started at the group’s next regional meeting, tentatively scheduled for early April.

They said the organization’s board includes Republicans and Democrats, and they’re being careful to avoid political associations that could limit their effectiveness in the region.

“We’re trying to say, no matter what your background or ideology is, we’re here to make a difference,” Smith said.

Meanwhile, the Lexington Venture Club gathered last week to discuss the state of venture capital funding in Kentucky.

The club reported that entrepreneurial companies in Central Kentucky attracted $47.5 million in venture funding last year for a two-year total of $116 million — not a bad showing considering the overall economic climate.

The 88 companies surveyed by the club said they hired 386 people last year, up from 230 in 2008 and 162 in 2007. The average salary for full-time jobs at those companies was $69,800, up from $61,000 two years ago.

Venture funding comes from a variety of non-traditional sources outside bank lending, such as venture capital funds, private investors and entrepreneurs and their friends and families.

It is a vital source of capital for young companies in fields such as technology and bio-sciences. Innovation is often a risky investment, but it can pay off big, both for investors in those companies and for their communities.

The gathering at Lansdowne’s Signature Club attracted nearly 200 people, prompting UK President Lee Todd to remark that Lexington’s venture capital and entrepreneur community “could not have filled a closet 10 or 15 years ago.”

The keynote speaker was David Jones Jr., chairman and managing director of Chrysalis Ventures in Louisville, the region’s oldest and largest venture capital firm with about $400 million under management. He also is non-executive chairman of Humana Inc., which his father helped found.

Jones said Kentucky is behind many neighboring states in creating the kind of innovative companies that can attract venture funding. A key to improvement, he said, will be for Kentucky to emphasize and invest more in education at all levels.

Sunday before last, the Herald-Leader published letters to the editor from two local men deriding those of us who are less cynical about Lexington than they are.

“This vanilla white-bread snobbish city has never been, and will never be, creative,” one wrote. Added the other: “… Lexington is not, and probably never will be, a great city. It is, however, the most pompous, insecure and deluded town I’ve ever seen.”

I waited to see if anyone would respond, and I was pleased Sunday to see letters from three citizens taking them to task.

Ask any coach or entrepreneur and they will tell you that two of the most important ingredients to success are attitude and timing. It’s as true for cities as it is for individuals.

Lexington needs an attitude adjustment, and there’s no better time than now. Some people will continue to carp, of course, but beginning this year, the rest of us should just ignore them.

This city has always had a lot going for it, from a beautiful landscape to good people to a stable economy. But those advantages often have bred complacency — a willingness to accept good enough rather than to strive for better. There’s a can’t-do attitude among many Lexingtonians that I’ve never understood.

We often approach local problems in one of two ways: We complain loudly and blame others. Or — polite folks that many of us are — we avoid debate and constructive conflict and simply ignore the problems.

Fortunately, I’ve noticed a shift in just the past few years. Some business leaders are more progressive and inclusive than in the past. Some elected officials are more willing to embrace new ideas and tackle tough issues.

Most encouraging of all, I have noticed an increasingly young and diverse group of citizens and entrepreneurs who are not beholden to traditional structures and stigmas. Empowered by technology, they are getting involved and creating a broader community conversation.

This year could be a turning point, though, if we seize the moment. That’s mainly because of the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, which will focus international attention on Lexington from Sept. 25-Oct. 10.

Cynics are quick to dismiss the Equestrian Games as an elitist party for rich horse snobs. That attitude misses the transformative effect major international events have had on cities that embraced them and used them as catalysts.

I lived in Knoxville before and during the 1982 World’s Fair. Knoxville had plenty of naysayers and a huge civic inferiority complex. But when a Wall Street Journal reporter described Knoxville as a “scruffy little city,” angry locals became determined to make the most of their energy-themed exposition.

The World’s Fair wasn’t perfect, but it got Knoxville’s highways fixed, jump-started a downtown renaissance and did wonders for the municipal ego. On the fair’s closing day, many people wore buttons proclaiming, “The scruffy little city did it!”

I also lived in Atlanta before and during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Atlanta’s Olympic bid was a long-shot, and there were many skeptics. In the end, though, the Games helped transform a dowdy downtown and secured Atlanta’s place among international cities.

Much of the skepticism in Knoxville and Atlanta focused on whether they could actually pull off the events. I have little doubt about Lexington’s ability to do that. The Equestrian Games are run by experienced horse people, and the Kentucky Horse Park may be the world’s finest equestrian facility.

My concern is whether Lexingtonians will embrace and take advantage of the Equestrian Games in ways that will have a lasting impact on community development, economic growth and Kentucky’s international image.

When the spotlight shines on Lexington, what will the world see? When Lexington looks back on the Equestrian Games years from now, what will the legacy be?

April will be another big month. Lexington hosts the Creative Cities Summit, where about 600 people will gather April 7-9 to discuss ideas and strategies for making cities more successful.

Also in April, several groups are organizing events to promote Lexington as a place for emerging technology companies, especially those related to health care. Speakers include former Indian President Abdul Kalam, a scientist and engineer. It’s a perfect opportunity to bring the city and its universities together to focus on economic development.

Despite a tough economy, 2010 presents unique opportunities for Lexington to shape a better future. Do we have the right attitude to take advantage of them?

I recently bought a CSA share, but I won’t get a weekly basket of fresh vegetables. I’ll get a monthly limited-edition art print by Alex Brooks of Press 817.

This isn’t community-supported agriculture; it’s community-supported art.

Brooks adopted the CSA business model for the same reason many small farmers have: It gives him a reliable stream of income so he can focus on his passion.

He earns much of his living as a letterpress printer, book binder and maker of archival storage boxes. Brooks works for many local clients, as well as several New York customers. He also creates art for prints, cards, books and posters.

Brooks said he wants to spend less time printing other people’s wedding invitations and business cards and more time creating art with the antique printing equipment that fills the two front rooms of his small home and shop (www.press817.com).

“I think of it as a way to preserve that spot on time,” said Brooks, who since launching his CSA in mid-December has sold more than 80 of the 100 shares for $60 each — $4 per print, plus postage.

Brooks figures the CSA income will free him one week a month to focus on those pieces of art, his writing and other creative endeavors.

“A lot of artists I know want to steal the idea, and that’s great,” he said.

The 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville, which tries to support the region’s contemporary artists, bought two CSA shares.

“That’s a little intimidating,” Brooks said, because the pressure is on to create outstanding work.

Brooks, 29, was a math, science and technology major at Louisville’s duPont Manual High School when a favorite teacher exposed him to creative writing. He came to the University of Kentucky as a math and English major and was selected for a Gaines Fellowship in the Humanities.

His writing led him to book binding, which led him to volunteer at UK’s King Library Press, where director Paul Holbrook taught him letterpress printing.

“I would have never guessed I would be doing this,” Brooks said. “Setting type by hand is almost meditative. It’s like reading really, really slowly.”

Lexington has a rich heritage of letterpress printing, thanks to Victor Hammer and his disciples. The Austrian printer and type designer came here in 1948 as an artist in residence at Transylvania University. His wife, Carolyn Hammer, helped found the King Library Press.

Brooks, the first in his family to graduate from college, thinks he inherited craft skills from his father, a woodworker, and mother, who knits and spins wool.

“There’s something about making things with your hands and doing it as well as you can and knowing that a book I make will last 100 years,” he said.

Press 817 was named for the address of Brooks’ former apartment. Five years ago, he bought a century-old house on North Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and set up shop there because he couldn’t find affordable downtown commercial space to rent.

Letterpress printing experienced an artistic renaissance in the 1960s, when it was replaced commercially by offset printing. Unfortunately, though, some of the best old presses ended up in scrap yards.

Brooks said a lot of old metal type is bought by gun enthusiasts, who melt it down for bullets. “I have to beat them to it,” he said.

Brooks’ equipment includes a platen press from 1887, a guillotine paper cutter from 1897 and a standing press from about 1900 that is used to form books. His newest press was made in 1961. Most of the equipment was given to him or found at estate and garage sales.

“I like old stuff,” said Brooks, who built computers as a kid. “I like that it’s not in a museum. It all works, and I use it.”

The more he got into printing, the more he wanted to explore visual arts through such techniques as woodcuts and linoleum cuts. He’s still thinking about what he wants to create for me and his other CSA customers over the next 12 months.

“I don’t really know what I’m going to do,” Brooks said. “That’s part of the fun. Everybody will find out when they get it in the mail. Hopefully, that will be exciting.”

Brooks was taught how to make conservation boxes by a woman who learned the craft at the Library of Congress. He has applied for a Fulbright Scholarship to study book conservation in England.

“But I’ll be a little conflicted if I get to go,” he admitted. Brooks wants to travel, see new places and try new things. But he has found a community with a powerful hold on him.

“I love this neighborhood; it’s the first place I’ve lived where I know all my neighbors,” he said. “A lot of my neighbors have bought my art. I like to think they like my art, but it’s also probably out of a sense of neighborliness.”

Brooks said the concept of community-supported art seemed like a natural idea. He said he tries to patronize local businesses whenever he can, such as Pat Gerhard’s Third Street Stuff Café and Steve and Kristy Matherly’s Sunrise Bakery on Main Street.

“When you think about it,” Brooks said, “there’s not much difference between me making art and Steve making bread.”

Click on each thumbnail to see complete photo:

Urban County Councilman George Myers wrote a commentary in the Herald-Leader recently. He recalled wasteful spending by the Lexington Public Library’s director, who was subsequently fired, and criticized a state law that guarantees library funding.

Myers, who with other elected officials is scrambling to maintain services in a tough economy, questioned the wisdom of requiring that 5 cents of every $100 in Fayette County property valuation go to support libraries.

It’s a legitimate question, and I understand why Myers is raising it. But, like many issues, this one requires a longer view than today’s crisis. We must look back three or four decades and ahead to what kind of city we want Lexington to be.

For a look back, I went to visit Joe Hayse, 72, a retired state map maker, Scoutmaster and father of four who lives with his wife, Heidi, in a modest home on Clay’s Mill Road.

You won’t find Hayse’s name on a plaque in Lexington’s handsome Central Library or any of the five modern branch libraries around town. Without him, though, they probably wouldn’t exist.

After moving here from Louisville in 1971, Hayse became a frequent patron of the old main library at Gratz Park and its Southland branch, which was then housed in a cramped building that later became a bicycle shop.

The main library — now the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning — had a leaky roof, outdated wiring, crumbling plaster and peeling paint. A wet basement threatened irreplaceable records of Lexington’s early history. Art treasures that had been donated to the library were being sold off to meet operating expenses. Building inspectors finally closed the second floor because they were afraid it might collapse.

Hayse said he became so frustrated that one day he left the library and walked to the office of his high school classmate, lawyer William Jacobs.

“Lexington is a rich city, but we have a library you can’t even use,” Hayse recalled telling Jacobs. “Surely this city can afford to do better than this.”

Lexington could afford to do better — and was required to by state law. City officials were simply ignoring the law, as they had for years, because they didn’t want to raise taxes.

Library board members, who were appointed by the mayor, had agreed to accept only about half the funding they were entitled to receive. Hayse and Jacobs thought the law was clear, and when the library board refused to demand the law be enforced, they filed suit in 1979.

The city fought the lawsuit for nearly five years, but the courts sided with Hayse and Jacobs. Finally, Lexington was required to properly fund the library — plus make back payments owed since the lawsuit was filed. That paved the way for construction of the Central Library on Main Street.

Since then, the Lexington Public Library system has become a model instead of an embarrassment. Its modern buildings, resources and services have made Lexington a more literate community whose citizens are better able to compete in a knowledge economy.

Since the final Court of Appeals decision 25 years ago, the percentage of Lexington residents with library cards has risen from 30 percent to 46 percent. Last fiscal year, nearly 2.75 million items were checked out from public libraries — an average of 10 per Fayette County resident, up from four per resident in 1984.

Computer literacy is now essential for people to keep up and get ahead, and Lexington’s libraries last year provided computer-skills classes for 4,192 people. Libraries contain 237 public-access Internet computers that were used 482,710 times last year.

Sure, the former library director wasted taxpayer money on travel and fancy meals. Taxpayers are cheated by wasteful government spending, just as stockholders are cheated by wasteful corporate spending. The way to solve those problems is through better management, oversight, transparency and accountability.

Nobody likes paying higher taxes — or any taxes at all. It doesn’t matter whether the economy is good or bad. Appealing to personal selfishness has always been good politics. But that’s the difference between politics and leadership.

At a recent symposium in Frankfort, several economists pointed out that Kentucky taxes property less than most states do. They also noted that Kentucky law gives cities and counties few ways to raise revenue to meet their special needs and make long-term investments in their communities.

Rather than seeking state permission to turn an excellent public library system into a mediocre one, Urban County Council members and Mayor Jim Newberry should take another approach.

They should keep pushing for better management, more transparency and greater accountability of taxpayer-supported agencies to make sure money is being spent wisely.

They also should lobby the General Assembly for more local taxing authority — and not be afraid to use it to fund important public services and investments that will make Lexington a more just, prosperous and pleasant place to live.

I can only imagine what the late Martin Luther King Jr. must think, gazing down on our 25th celebration of the national holiday that honors him and the civil rights movement he led.

America still too often falls short when it comes to peace, justice and racial harmony. But we keep inching closer to realizing some of our nation’s highest ideals.

In Lexington - where one of the South’s busiest slave auction blocks once stood, and where some lunch counters of my childhood were still segregated - the downtown streets were packed Monday with marchers of every age, color, creed and cause.

Hundreds of people stretched the length of downtown as they marched in a big oval, down Vine Street and back up Main.

This annual celebratory march is a symbolic reminder of those tense and sometimes violent civil rights protests of the 1960s. There are no police to fear now; they’re marching, too. Lexington’s top leaders in government and education lead the parade.

I’ve attended many of these marches over the past dozen years, and Monday’s crowd was the biggest I’ve ever seen. It may have been because the weather was unusually nice, with sunshine and temperatures rising well into the 30s. But I like to think social progress had something to do with it, too.

After a quarter-century, this finally seems to be shedding its image as a “black” holiday and becoming simply an American holiday.

One of my barometers is the fact that I see more white children marching each year, some with black and Latino friends. Many come in groups from churches and schools, which have the day off.

Jill Montgomery, a 15-year-old sophomore at Mercer County High School, came with a youth group from Burgin Christian Church. They had attended the Sunday night service honoring King at Lexington’s Central Christian Church, followed by a “lock-in” program about King’s legacy.

“It made me realize the struggle that people went through to get equality,” she said. “We learned how our country has evolved.”

About 35 students and parents from The Lexington School were enthusiastic marchers. Last week, the private school held a special program about King featuring pre-school students, said Headmaster Charles Baldecchi, who was marching Monday with his wife, Erin, and their three young children.

“Our school really emphasizes the importance of everyone getting along, and how important it is to accept others,” said pre-school teacher Shelly Rogers.

In addition to the school and church groups, many families came on their own. Some said it was their first march. Others march every year and have been since the kids were infants in strollers.

“I just want them to know about racial harmony and how important it is for our country,” said Stacey Kimmerer, who was there with children Allison, 6, Greg, 9, and Will, 12.

As a white family living in the historically black East End neighborhood, Sherry Maddock said she thinks it’s especially important for her son, Isaac, 6, to appreciate the values this holiday represents.

“We’re teaching our children that this is really a day of blessing,” said Rabbi Marc Kline of Temple Adath Israel, who was there with his daughter Rachel, 10. “We keep getting stuck in 1963, but these kids have to make it real in the 21st century.”

Van Knowles and Susan Pollack bring their daughters Katie, 12, and Lucy, 8, each year for similar reasons.

“More’s still ahead for justice for everyone of all colors, and immigration statuses and sexual orientations … none of these things is finished,” Pollack said. “Marching alone is not enough. There’s a lot of work to do.”

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