The Bluegrass and Beyond

At Thursday Night Live, Dave Floyd watches Ilias Pappas of the Athenian Grill food truck prepare his gyros sandwich. Pappas started his business as a food truck last September and plans to transition to a small Greek restaurant in Chevy Chase this summer.  Photos by Tom Eblen

Since food trucks and stands started popping up in Lexington a few years ago, they have become popular with customers but created tension with bricks-and-mortar restaurants.

Some restaurant owners have fought efforts to make food trucks more accessible, saying their low overhead makes them unfair competition. So far, the city has only permitted them to operate on private property or at special events.

Council member Shevawn Akers chairs a food truck ordinance work group, which has streamlined the permitting process. Last week, the group came up with a proposal that council should approve. It would allow a pilot project to let food trucks operate in designated downtown parking areas.

What will be interesting to see is how many food truck operators go on to start restaurants.

Ilias Pappas, owner of the Athenian Grill food stand, is well on his way.

Pappas, 33, was born in Lamia, Greece, and emigrated to this country to attend college at Lexington Community College, the University of Kentucky and Florida International University. After working in technology in Miami for a year or two, he returned to his first love: food. He worked in several Miami restaurants.

Pappas is now renovating a former bakery on South Ashland Avenue to be his Greek restaurant and market.

Pappas had grown up living over a bakery and eating traditional Greek food prepared by this mother and grandmother. While attending college in Lexington, he had helped his aunt and uncle, George and Louiza Ouraniou, a welder and a chef. They also were caterers and became popular fixtures at community events over the years, serving barbecued lamb and Greek gyros.

Then tragedy struck: George Ouraniou, 71, died in a car wreck in September 2011. Pappas returned to Lexington to help his aunt. Then he moved back for good a few months later.

“I never imagined I would end up living here,” Pappas said of Lexington. “But I realized this was the place I wanted to stay.”

Pappas said his uncle had always dreamed of opening a Greek restaurant, but never did. Pappas had the same dream, and figured a food truck would be an affordable way to start.

Last September, he created Athenian Grill, a food stand serving four types of gyros, Greek salad, spinach pie, Cypriot meatballs, hummus and baklava. With help from several friends, it became a popular fixture outside Country Boys Brewing and West Sixth Brewery and at Thursday Night Live on Cheapside.

“I didn’t have a business plan; I learned on the job,” Pappas said. “The (brewery) owners have been very good to me. The exposure I got as a food trucker provided opportunities for exposure and allowed me to introduce myself to people.”

That has led to catering and event opportunities. But Pappas wants to do much more than he can do now cooking on the street and preparing things in advance in commercial kitchen space he rents in Nicholasville.

“The food truck doesn’t allow me to give people a good exposure to a traditional family-style Greek dining experience,” he said. “It’s very limited what you can do out on the street.”

So Pappas has rented the former Belle’s Bakery building in Chevy Chase — an old two-car garage set back off South Ashland Avenue between Euclid and High streets— and has begun renovations. He hopes to open the restaurant in July.

In addition to a few inside and outside tables, the non-mobile Athenian Grill will have lunch delivery and a Greek market upstairs, which can be booked for small private dinners. In addition to traditional Greek food, Pappas plans to offer some of the flavors he grew to like while working in Miami.

“Ninety percent of the menu will be things you cannot find in Lexington at the moment,” he said.

Pappas is financing the venture with his own savings, plus loans from family and friends. He also has launched a campaign on Kickstarter.com, as much to attract community involvement as financing.

“Because of my food truck, people have given me the chance to take the next step,” Pappas said. “My uncle worked very hard in the food business. I want to dedicate my restaurant to him.”

Click on each thumbnail to see larger photo and read caption:

Moving from one house to another comes with many challenges and anxieties, but one I had not expected was the Yellow Wall.

This was the wall of bookcases in my basement. They were filled with several hundred National Geographic magazines dating back to the 1950s.

Every American knows it is a sin to throw away a National Geographic. If you are a journalist who comes from a family of librarians, it is a mortal sin.

But here’s the thing: I do not have a good place to put them in my new house. I rarely go back and read them. And, back at the dawn of the digital age, I bought a set of CD-ROMs containing every issue of National Geographic from 1888 to 1995, plus a two-volume index. This digital archive is no bigger than a bread box.

I have no good reason for keeping almost six decades worth of National Geographic magazines in all of their heavy-coated paper, perfect bound bulk. So why do I hesitate to pitch them? It’s complicated.

Like many boys, I first became aware of National Geographic in elementary school. A friend discovered that the magazine contained photographs of women wearing much less clothing than we were accustomed to seeing. It wasn’t pornography; it was anthropology.

But I didn’t fully appreciate National Geographic until a friend of my father gave me a box of them. He was moving and, well, just couldn’t pitch them. During the many hours I spent thumbing through those magazines, looking for anthropology, I found so much more.

Before cable TV and the Internet, National Geographic literally opened the world to a young mind. Each magazine was filled with fascinating reports about history, science and culture. As an adult, I have traveled to many exotic places that I first saw in the pages of National Geographic.

One well-thumbed issue was August 1965. It included a tribute to Sir Winston Churchill and coverage of his elaborate funeral. There also was some cutting-edge technology: a thin, plastic phonograph record I could tear out of the magazine and put on my record player to hear excerpts of Churchill’s speeches. I wore it out.

That issue also contained a classic example of National Geographic photojournalism: William Albert Allard’s picture essay about Pennsylvania’s “Amish Folk.” It is one reason I have always been awed by the power of documentary photography.

National Geographic has always set a standard for journalistic excellence, despite some now-laughable culture and class bias. The magazine has suffered from cost-cutting in recent years, as most publications have, but it continues to do work that no other magazine does.

National Geographic has a longer shelf life than most magazines; many of its stories are timeless. Still, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, even the best print journalism becomes clutter.

Back issues of the magazine have little value as collectibles, probably because nobody ever throws them away. Wherever you find a flea market, downscale antique shop, used bookstore or charity book sale, you will find stacks of National Geographics.

Some people leave their old copies in barber shops and doctors’ offices. Others give them to schools so children too young to know any better can cut them up for classroom projects. The rest of us just keep accumulating them, despite our best intentions. We cancel our subscription, then buy a box of old copies at a neighbor’s estate sale.

One of these days, I fully expect to see this newspaper headline: “Couple killed in bedroom ceiling collapse; police blame National Geographics in attic.”

In the weeks before we moved, I agonized over the Yellow Wall. Becky would ask for a logical reason why we should keep so many old magazines. I had none.

Faced with a decision, I ducked it. I filled six big boxes with enough National Geographics to make my muscular movers groan. They stacked those boxes upstairs, where they have sat for a month and a half.

But now is the time to act. I will save the Churchill issue and a few others, but the rest of my National Geographics must go. Here is my plan: I will give them away to the reader who emails me by April 1 with the best reason why he or she wants them.

The recipient just can’t blame me the next time he or she moves.

After many years of being a so-called grownup, I returned to riding bicycles for fun and exercise in 1995. Since moving closer to downtown Lexington a few weeks ago, I also have been riding a bike to the office, to interviews and to run errands when I can. It’s an especially easy choice on a beautiful early-spring day like this.

Lexington isn’t a bad city for bicycling, but it could be much better. I think back to what I saw last April when I went on a bicycle trip around Holland with Lexington friends Mike and Janette Heitz.

Here is a good, short video about bicycle transportation in the Netherlands. What’s interesting is not so much how bicycle-friendly that country is now, but how bicycle-unfriendly it was less than four decades ago. Why the change? The Dutch in the 1970s decided that they were tired of automobile traffic congestion, high gasoline prices and huge numbers of traffic fatalities. Do those problems sound familiar?

Some members of Congress, flush with campaign contributions from oil companies, have been trying to take bicycle infrastructure out of highway investment in the name of deficit reduction. That’s a very bad idea, since, among many other benefits, more bicycle infrastructure can reduce the need for more-costly automobile infrastructure in many places.

This country is, geographically, very different from the Netherlands. Among other things, it’s bigger, hillier and more spread out. Bicycles cannot be as big a solution to transportation problems in this country as they are there, but they could be much bigger than they are now in many American towns and cities. As this video shows, if you build it, they will come.

From the Netherlands to America from Bikes Belong on Vimeo.

At a five-year anniversary meeting of Poezia, a poetry-writing group she helped start, on Feb. 9 at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer is greeted friends, including group co-founder Colin Watkins, right. Photos by Tom Eblen

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer already was a classic American success story.

Born in Bulgaria, she immigrated to the United States at age 24 with her young son and married her American pen pal, Daniel Klemer. She earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science, then a master’s in business administration. She became a software engineer for IBM, then a project manager for Lexmark International.

Increasingly, though, she felt something was missing in her life.

Then, on Dec. 20, 2006, while driving down a Lexington street, she realized what it was. A poem popped into her head. She pulled into a Kroger parking lot and wrote it down.

Stoykova-Klemer, 40, had begun writing poetry at age 8. She was published in Bulgaria, to some notice. But in her rush to build a new life in a new country, she had stopped writing. The poem that popped into her head was her first in 11 years and the first she had written in English.

“I suddenly had this feeling of joy and thought, ‘I can’t let go of this!’ ” she said. “The most important voices in our lives are often quiet ones.”

A year later, Stoykova- Klemer quit her job at Lexmark, where her husband works as an engineer.

“Before I started writing again, my job was the most important thing I did; then it was just something I did,” she said. “I realized that I didn’t want to spend so much time doing something I am not passionate about.”

Katerina Stoykova-Klemer talks with poet Jude Lally. Accents Publishing has published two of Lally's books, including his new collection, "I'm Fine, but Thanks for Asking."

Since her passion for poetry reignited, Stoykova-Klemer has been a ball of fire. She started a poetry group, earned a master’s in fine arts from Louisville’s Spalding University; taught classes at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning; and created Accents, a radio show about arts and culture that she hosts on WRFL-FM at 2 p.m. each Friday. She writes poetry and encourages dozens of other writers.

In 2010, she combined her business, technical and artistic skills to start Accents Publishing, which has produced 21 poetry books by 20 authors. Eight authors are Kentuckians, including well-known poets Richard Taylor and Frederick Smock.

“I think she is one of the most creative people in this town,” said Neil Chethik, director of the Carnegie Center. “She has a combination of business sense and creative juice, and she is such a compassionate person.

“Her poetry is fantastic. Plus, she’s trying to find a way to make literature and poetry marketable, to help other creative people make a living. She’s exactly what Lexington needs.”

Chethik watched Feb. 9 as more than 50 people came to the Carnegie Center to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Poezia. That is the writing group Stoykova-Klemer started with Colin Watkins, a poet and songwriter she met at a New Year’s Eve party 11 days after her epiphany in the Kroger parking lot.

The writing group meets at 7 p.m. Thursdays at Common Grounds coffeehouse. New members are always welcome. Poezia got its name when a member asked Stoykova-Klemer the Bulgarian word for poetry.

At the anniversary celebration, Stoykova-Klemer announced she was stepping down as a leader of the group, in part to focus more time on Accents Publishing.

The company’s most popular and profitable books are small “chapbooks.” Making them is a family affair: Stoykova-Klemer prints and cuts them, and her husband binds them. Her son, Simeon Kondev, a student at Rhode Island School of Design, creates cover art.

Stoykova-Klemer handles distribution to stores from Kentucky to New York and New Hampshire. “They all know me at the post office,” she said.

Chapbooks sell for $5. “What we found out is that people rarely buy just one,” she said. Profits from chapbooks help support larger, professionally printed paperbacks that sell for $10 to $15.

“Our idea of affordable books seems to be working,” she said. “They say poetry books don’t sell, but our books sell. We keep selling more and more of them.”

Accents Publishing sponsors an annual contest to find new authors. “We have had hundreds of people submit work,” she said. The company covers all publication costs and pays authors by giving them 10 percent of the press run. Accents broke even its first year, and she expects a profit this year.

Stoykova-Klemer wants to keep growing the company — adding prose books and widening distribution — as long as it doesn’t crowd out her writing time.

“I say the most important thing I can do for Accents Publishing is to keep writing,” she said. “That keeps me centered for everything else.”

Keeping up with Katerina Stoykova-Klemer

Personal Web site: Katerinaklemer.com.

Company site: Accents-publishing.com.

‘Accents’ radio show: 2-3 p.m. Fridays, WRFL-88.1 FM, or Katerinaklemer.com/radio.

Poezia writing group: 7 p.m. Thursdays, Common Grounds coffeehouse, 343 E. High St. Online at Meetup.com/poetry-439. A prose writing group meets at 7 p.m. Tuesdays. Meetup.com/writers-583.

Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning: Carnegieliteracy.org.

A selection of books published by Accents Publishing of Lexington. Poet Katerina Stoykova-Klemer started the publishing company to make inexpensive poetry books available to a wider audience.

A scientist — originally from Mexico City, now living in Ottawa, Canada — sent me an email last Monday. She had been reading my columns online because her husband was offered a job in Lexington.

She planned to visit for the first time this weekend, but she wanted my answers to these questions: Why should she move to Lexington? What makes life beautiful in Lexington?

Her questions made me stop and think. She is the kind of worldly, educated person that Lexington leaders want to attract to build the city’s economy. The answers to questions like hers will determine Lexington’s future, because people now have more choices about where to live and work.

This is how I replied to her:

I admit to a bias for Lexington because I was born and raised here. But I also have some outside perspective. I went away to college and didn’t return for 22 years. Before moving back, I lived in Bowling Green, Nashville, Knoxville and Atlanta. I liked all of those places, especially Atlanta, except for its horrible traffic. But I miss Atlanta less than I ever expected.

Lexington feels like home to me because it is home. But I know people from all over the world who moved here and say they will never leave. When asked why, they usually talk about friendly people and a pleasant environment.

This is a comfortable place to live. Downtown has mostly retained a human scale, and the surrounding countryside is spectacular: green pastures filled with horses, stone and plank fences and scattered patches of limestone-etched wilderness.

Housing is more affordable here than in most larger cities. Lexington is blessed with a variety of lovely neighborhoods and country homes. The biggest improvement I have seen since moving back in 1998 is the renaissance of urban neighborhoods.

Lexington people are genuinely friendly, and they have become more welcoming as the city has grown more diverse. This has always been a great place to raise a family, but it also is becoming a more interesting city for young professionals.

The economy is stable, thanks to a variety of industries, a large medical sector and a wealth of schools. The University of Kentucky and Transylvania University bring many interesting people here, and they energize the city.

Lexington’s political leadership has been generally capable, and sometimes even inspired. Having a non-partisan mayor and Urban County Council makes a big difference, because it frees city government from the petty party politics that have made a mess of state and national government.

Lexington has a rich history, both positive and negative. Lexingtonians were slow to realize that tradition doesn’t have to be limiting; it can be leveraged to create an attractive brand and a foundation for innovation. But most of us realize it now.

I worried that I would miss Atlanta’s cultural attractions, but I haven’t much. The Lexington arts scene is getting richer and more accessible all the time. Poet Nikky Finney just won the National Book Award, and she is just one of many great writers in town. The visual arts have exploded over the past decade. The high level of musical talent is astonishing.

I have noticed a shift in Lexington attitudes and culture over the past four or five years. Many others have noticed it, too. Nobody can explain it, but the city seems more entrepreneurial, more willing to take risks and more open to new ideas.

A new generation of leaders is emerging, and they are finding creative ways to get things done. Maybe technology and social media are helping to connect and empower them.

Lexingtonians love to get together and have fun. The quirky “Thriller” parade down Main Street each Halloween has become almost as popular as the city’s huge Independence Day celebration. Other big gatherings include Picnic with the Pops, the Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event, the Roots & Heritage Festival and the Festival Latino. Keeneland Race Course is the place to be each April and October.

One of my favorite local celebrations is the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. I had just left it when I got your email. Like any city, Lexington has its share of problems, divisions, conflicts and tensions. But I think it is significant that a couple of thousand citizens — including most city officials and community leaders — show up every year, often in terrible weather, to make a symbolic, mile-long march through downtown to celebrate brotherhood.

As I photographed this year’s march, Andrés Cruz was doing the same thing. He publishes La Voz de Kentucky, a weekly bilingual newspaper that covers Central Kentucky’s growing Latino community.

Cruz and I have talked many times about the struggles and frustrations he and other immigrants have faced. But the Costa Rican native now considers this home, and he has played a significant role in making Lexington a better place to live.

Cruz is an example of what I see all over Lexington — and what I think is one of the best things about this place.

Lexington has many advantages of a larger city, but it is still small enough that a committed individual can make a big difference.

As the Unity Breakfast began Monday morning in Heritage Hall, Jim Embry was working the room.

Lean, fit and hard to miss in his colorful clothing and gray dreadlocks, Embry was quickly moving from table to table, handling out leaflets to promote his annual Bluegrass Local Food Summit, March 22 to 24 at Crestwood Christian Church.

Breakfast was followed by inspirational speakers and award presentations. But when Embry’s name was called as one of two Unity Award winners — along with Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the Bluegrass — he was gone. A son accepted the award for him.

“I have to leave by 8:15 to catch a 9 o’clock flight,” Embry had told me as he rushed from table to table, handing out leaflets to the breakfast’s 1,400 attendees. “I’m speaking this afternoon at Yale.”

It was classic Jim Embry. Who has time to rest on laurels when there is a world out there in need of improvement?

Embry, 62, was the featured speaker Monday afternoon in New Haven, Conn., at a master’s tea, sponsored by Yale University’s Pierson College and the Yale Sustainable Food Project.

Jim Embry, left, talks with Richard Knittel of Versailles in October, as they both joined Occupy Wall Street protesters on Main Street in Lexington. Photo by Tom Eblen

Embry now spends most of his time promoting sustainable living and locally grown food. But the Richmond native has been an activist since age 10, when his mother was president of the Covington chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality. He grew up attending civil rights events.

As state youth chairman of the NAACP, he helped organize the 1964 March on Frankfort, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Embry went on to become president of the University of Kentucky’s Black Student Union. While he was in college, a summer job in New York City sparked his interest in health and food justice. In 1971, he helped found Lexington’s Good Foods Co-op.

After a four-year stint in Detroit as director of the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, Embry returned to Lexington in 2005 and founded the Sustainable Commun ities Network (Sustainlex.org). He has helped develop more than 30 community gardens and taught school garden workshops for more than 300 teachers.

Embry’s other passions range from the Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice to the Interfaith Alliance and Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden. Later this year, he plans to publish his autobiography, Black and Green, and a book of photographs, Through the Lens of a Sacred Earth Activist.

“I come from a long lineage of activists, so I don’t know any better,” he said.

Outlook for 2012

John D. Stempel, retired director of UK’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, doesn’t so much try to improve the world as understand it.

He spent 24 years as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, including a four-year stint in the U.S. embassy in Iran before the 1979 revolution.

Stempel gave his annual State of the World speech to the Lexington Rotary Club earlier this month, saying he expects this year to be even more turbulent than last year. Among his concerns:

■ The likelihood that European debt and American politics will hamper economic recovery.

■ The possibility of cyber attacks on critical U.S. infrastructure. “Our illusion of invincibility serves us poorly,” he said.

■ The potential for an Iranian nuclear crisis, increasing instability in Pakistan and tensions between India and Pakistan.

■ Iraq’s future. “The violent sectarianism the U.S. takeover and occupation provoked has already begun to transform Iraq from a nastily ruled balancer of Iran into a traumatized society under extensive Iranian influence. Not a good trade-off.”

Stempel said he worries about a “crisis of global governance that impedes common-sense solutions to common challenges like climate change, energy and food costs and availability, plus the imbalance between expanding human needs and the limited capacity of the world’s ecosystem to satisfy them.”

The U.S. presidential election is unlikely to help, he said.

“An administration that has delivered on only a precious few of the major promises it made to achieve election in 2008 seeks re-election against an opposition that seems more intent on repealing the 20th century than addressing the real and pressing challenges of the 21st,” Stempel said. “No one expects a serious discussion of the challenges now facing either the United States or the world.”

As University of Kentucky diplomacy students follow Egypt’s attempt to transition from dictatorship to democracy, they can get some behind-the-scenes perspective from one of their teachers.

Stacy Closson, below, a visiting lecturer at UK’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, spent eight days in Egypt last month as an official observer during recently completed parliamentary elections.

An academic with years of international field experience, Closson found the experience fascinating, inspiring and, at one point, frightening. She left with a better understanding of the Middle East’s new political complexities — and why her fellow Americans should pay attention.

“Even after 30-plus years of dictatorship under (Hosni) Mubarak, people don’t lose their taste for freedom,” Closson said. “They seem very excited about the future prospects for their country.”

Closson is a Truman National Security fellow who worked six years for the U.S. Defense Department. She was among 33 observers from the National Democratic Institute who watched the second of three rounds of parliamentary voting Dec. 14 and 15.

Other observers were there from two more U.S.-based organizations, the International Republican Institute and the Carter Center. (Despite their names, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute are non-partisan.)

Closson and another American woman — a congressional staffer — went to 25 polling stations in the Beni Suef region with an interpreter. Voting seemed to be orderly, with each polling station run by a “judge.” Each political party also had poll observers.

Because election turnout was low during Mubarak’s reign, voting was a new experience for many Egyptians.

“There was this initial excitement and pride that they could vote and know their vote could count,” she said, adding that the main issues for most voters were freedom, dignity and jobs.

New liberal parties were much less organized than the Muslim Brotherhood, which is expected to end up with a majority of seats in parliament, Closson said. But one surprise was the strength of a more conservative Islamic party, Salafi al-Nour. It seemed highly organized, with plenty of cars, computers, cellphones and operating funds, reportedly from Islamic interests in neighboring gulf states.

When the polls closed, Closson and other observers followed election officials as they transported ballot boxes through busy city streets to a central counting center. There, they found perhaps 200 rowdy Salafi partisans creating a chaotic scene.

Only a few international observers were able to get inside the center to witness the counting. Closson wasn’t among them.

“I still regret it,” she said. “I think we would have gotten pushed and shoved, but we would have gotten in. But when the two-star general said he couldn’t guarantee our safety, we decided not to push it.”

The third and final round of parliamentary voting was last week, and results could be announced this week. “There are a lot of mathematical shell games in how they’re going to allocate seats,” she said. “I think it’s going to be a political decision as much as a mathematical decision.”

Egypt has scheduled a presidential election for June. But without a constitution, it remains unclear how the president and parliament will function and relate to powerful military officials.

Egypt is likely to end up with a government dominated by Islamists, but the faction that comes out on top will have a big influence not only on foreign relations but on internal economic recovery.

Tourism is one of Egypt’s biggest industries, and last year’s revolution has all but brought it to a halt.

“The hotels were empty except for us,” Closson said. “You have more people in downtown Lexington than at the Giza pyramids. Even the camels where bored.”

If Islamists carry through with threats to ban alcohol sales to foreigners and require tourists to dress conservatively, Egyptian tourism might not recover.

Once all the voting is done, Closson said, “The question now is how they’re going to govern.”

Why should Americans care? Egypt’s transition could affect oil prices, Closson said. It also could have a big effect on Israel’s security and what happens in other unstable Arab countries, especially Libya, Yemen and Syria. But she is hopeful.

“Egyptians are pretty steadfast people,” Closson said. “They see this as the first step of a long process of getting more freedom.”

LOUISVILLE — The number of nations in the world has doubled in the past 60 years, and that trend will continue as post-colonial countries in the developing world break apart along ethnic, political and economic lines.

That was the prediction of Parag Khanna, a geo-strategist and author who spoke Thursday during the second day of the Idea Festival.

The trend helps explain the so-called Arab Spring uprisings that began earlier this year, and, he said, the inevitability of a Palestinian state.

“This is a tide of history that simply can’t be stopped,” he said.

Khanna criticized United States opposition to Palestinians’ request for recognition by the United Nations, saying it will leave America on the wrong side of history.

Recent revolutions in the Middle East will likely spread to other parts of the developing world. He predicted that 80 or 90 more new countries will likely emerge in the next decade or so as post-colonial monarchies and dictatorships break up and are reshaped by technology-enabled citizens and economic interests.

“It’s going to be one of those hold-your-hat decades we’re looking at, and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing,” he said.

Many current national boundaries were arbitrarily set within the past century, anyway, while ethnic and cultural associations often go back thousands of years.

In the future, Khanna said, non-governmental organizations, foundations and multinational corporations will often be better suited to solving global problems than governments and traditional diplomacy. Companies are becoming more influential than many governments, he said, noting that Wal-mart’s supply chain produces more greenhouse gasses than Ireland does.

There are few truly global problems — one, he said, is climate change, and it has been poorly dealt with through global approaches.

“You don’t fight climate change by flying to conferences and signing documents,” he said. Instead, the answer is coordinating efforts by companies and non-profits to create new technologies that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

“The way we think of running the world is being turned on its head,” Khanna said. “The best global governance is local governance.”

Khanna is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of the best-sellers How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance (2011) and The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (2008).

Soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Dr. Nadia Rasheed met a co-worker at the Veterans Administration hospital in Lexington for the first time. The woman asked the anesthesiologist if she was Muslim.

“I said yes, and then she said, ‘Are you going to kill me?’” Rasheed recalled, still shocked by the question. “I said, ‘No, why would you say that? And she said, ‘That’s all I see on television.’”

Mohammed Nasser has a different memory of that terrible day a decade ago. The retired IBM engineer, a Muslim from East Africa, was so upset that he went for a walk in his Jessamine County subdivision.

“People kept coming up and asking if there was anything they could do for us,” he recalled. A few days later, Christ Church Cathedral reached out to him. “They were so nice,” he said. “They said you can even come and stay in the church if you have any problems.”

I talked last week with several Lexington Muslims, both immigrants and native-born Americans, about what their lives have been like since the 9/11 attacks by terrorists claiming to act on behalf of Islam.

Non-Muslims are generally friendly toward them, they said, but they get more questions — and stares — and they wonder about subtle discrimination. More than anything, though, they worry about misinformation and hatred being promoted by right-wing extremists and the media outlets that give them a voice.

“For everybody, the world has gotten a lot smaller,” said Shahied Rashid, an Ohio native and religious leader, or imam, at Masjid Bilal Ibn Rabah, a Muslim congregation on Russell Cave Road.

Generally, Rashid said, Lexington has been “very welcoming” to Muslims. “Not only as an American, but that’s the only thing I have heard from the immigrant community who have relocated to Lexington,” he said.

Mehmet Saracoglu, a Muslim from Turkey and a graduate student in mining engineering at the University of Kentucky, agrees. He came to Lexington in 2004, and two years later helped start UK’s Interfaith Dialogue Organization, which recently has broadened its mission and changed its name to the Intercultural Dialogue Organization. The organization’s work has been embraced throughout the community, he said.

“I honestly feel pretty comfortable here,” said Fatimah Shalash, 25, who was born and raised in Lexington and wears hijab, a traditional Muslim head scarf. “You’ll get the curious looks and sometimes the not-so-kind looks. But, overall, I’ve felt pretty safe and treated well.”

Shalash, who recently finished a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy, said many non-Muslims are curious about her faith and why she wears hijab.

“It has bridged a lot of conversations, and that has been a positive experience,” she said. “The way I act in general is hopefully going to show another side of Islam; someone who’s educated and friendly. It’s not what you see in the media.”

Rasheed, the anesthesiologist, was born and raised in New York, went to medical school in Iraq and has lived in Lexington for 20 years. She does not wear hijab, but she has noticed more stares in restaurants when she dines with friends who do.

Many Muslim friends have told her stories of rude comments made to them and perceived, if not overt, discrimination.

“Nine-eleven was not caused by Islam, but people want to say it was,” Rasheed said. “There are some bad Muslims, yes. But there are some bad Christians and Jews, too. None of the religions say you can kill and attack.”

Rasheed said she speaks to many community groups about Islam. “I have noticed that there is a lot of misinformation, misconception, mistrust,” she said. “But when I am one-on-one I am able to answer them and it clears things up.”

While many Americans blame Islam for the terrorist attacks, many Muslims blame Islamophobia for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“Muslim Americans and Arab Americans are patriotic, we love this country, but we have freedom of speech like everyone else,” she said. “We might see things differently because we know how people in other countries are suffering.”

Jenny Sutton-Amr, who also speaks about Islam to community groups, said she hasn’t experienced any bad treatment or discrimination, but is alarmed by increasing misinformation and organized anti-Muslim activities.

“People for the most part are respectful, but they come with a lot of loaded questions,” she said. “I can usually presume where they get their information.”

A recent public opinion poll by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution found that Fox News viewers were more misinformed about Islam and expressed more anti-Muslim sentiment than those who got their news elsewhere.

And a report issued last month by the Center for American Progress identified seven right-wing foundations that are spending millions of dollars fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment across the country. Some of them are behind legislation introduced in 29 states that would ban Muslim sharia law — even though nobody has ever tried to impose it.

“We have a slander campaign that’s being spoon-fed to a large population of this country, and they are lapping it up,” Sutton-Amr said. “I’m hoping that reason will prevail and the vast majority of Americans will see through this.”

In many ways, Valentine Awa is lucky. She and five of her eight children now live in Kentucky, where they can work, go to school and live in peace after years of terror in their native Congo and poverty in refugee camps in the Central African Republic.

But Awa says she can’t be happy until her youngest child — an 7-year-old girl who is frequently ill — joins the family in Lexington.

Occasionally, Awa said, she is able to speak briefly by phone with the child she hasn’t seen in years, and her two grown daughters, who are caring for her as best they can amid the poverty that grips that part of Africa.

“They say she cries, Mommy! Mommy!” said Awa, a native French speaker who struggles with English. Awa said she sends them money each month from her modest earnings to help with living expenses.

Awa, 50, is getting help from Kentucky Refugee Ministries and the office of U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Ky., and from a French professor and her students at Transylvania University, where Awa works as a housekeeper.

Awa’s case is more complicated than most. But, sadly, it is not an unusual circumstance among the more than 400 Congolese refugees who have been resettled in Central Kentucky.

“There are multiple examples of people who are trying to get their children here,” said Barbara Kleine, who heads the Kentucky Refugee Ministries office in Lexington. “It’s a painful process.”

Many cases involve families separated by fighting or in refugee camps, Kleine said. Others stem from complicated family relationships, inconsistent answers given in immigration interviews, lack of documentation and government bureaucracy on two continents.

Awa’s saga began in early 2000, when the Democratic Republic of the Congo was torn by civil war, she said through an interpreter, recent Transylvania graduate Julianne Norman, who has taken up her cause.

Awa’s husband was a retired soldier, and the military wanted to press him back into service. After he repeatedly refused, he was beaten. Ten days later, he died from his injuries. Awa and her children fled across the border into the Central African Republic, wandering four days through the forests to avoid capture. They finally reached a refugee camp, where there was little food or work.

After a year, they returned to the Congo. The military men returned, telling Awa that her sons would be conscripted because of her husband’s refusal to rejoin the army. Again, the family fled the Congo. And again, there was little food or work in the refugee camp.

This time, though, Awa said an elderly man promised to feed and protect her family in exchange for sex. That resulted in her youngest daughter, Amélie, who remained behind with him when Awa and her other daughters were granted refugee status and allowed to emigrate to United States.

Amélie couldn’t get refugee status because she was born in the Central African Republic, Awa said. Since the old man died in February, Awa has been trying to regain her daughter. But that could take years, said Lydia Curtz, who is working on her case for Kentucky Refugee Ministries.

It is a difficult case because Awa didn’t initially declare her daughter, perhaps because of the circumstances of her birth. Several years have now passed, there is little documentation, and Awa made errors in her applications, Curtz said.

If the child is finally given permission to emigrate, Kentucky Refugee Ministries will pay to bring her here. But Awa must repay the loan, as she is doing for passage for herself and her children.

Awa’s case has inspired Simonetta Cochis, a French professor at Transylvania, to see how her students might work with Kentucky Refugee Ministries to help Lexington’s French-speaking Congolese refugees with longer-term settlement issues. That could include translation services, tutoring for children and even fund-raising for special circumstances, she said.

“They are coming from a different world into our world, which can be very complicated,” Cochis said. “People feel so tremendously overwhelmed by what is going on in Africa. When you hear stories like Valentine’s, how can you not want to help?”

Mayors Greg Fischer, left, of Louisville and Jim Gray of Lexington announce the project in Louisville last Thursday. Photo by Mark Cornelison

LOUISVILLE — The Bluegrass Economic Advancement Movement was announced Thursday with all the fanfare that two cities’ business leaders could muster.

A furry University of Louisville cardinal mascot escorted Lexington Mayor Jim Gray to the stage of a Galt House ballroom as a furry University of Kentucky wildcat did the same for Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer. More than 1,000 people from both cities applauded, and a marching band played the Superman movie fanfare, symbolizing the goal of creating a super-region for advanced manufacturing.

The hype might have been goofy, but the ideas behind the effort and the process for achieving it could be an economic game- changer, not only for Louisville and Lexington, but for the entire state.

Brookings, the public- policy think tank, chose Lexington-Louisville as one of seven regions where it will work with business, government and educational leaders to develop a plan for regional economic development. The idea is to focus on business sectors that already are strong and have potential to become major players in international trade.

Brookings thinks regions, rather than individual cities, are the economic powerhouses of the future, especially as the world becomes more urbanized. More than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas, up from 30 percent in 1950 and 2 percent in 1800. By 2030, it could be 60 percent.

Kentucky mirrors the trend. More than 55 percent of Kentuckians live in urban areas, which account for 72 percent of the gross state product of $50.5 billion a year. More than 2 million of Kentucky’s 4.3 million people live in the 27 counties that make up the Louisville- Lexington region, which includes Elizabethtown. Metro Louisville accounts for 31 percent of gross state product; metro Lexington, 14.2 percent.

Fischer got the ball rolling with Brookings. A review of 11 previous economic studies quickly identified advanced manufacturing as an area for focus. Manufacturing employs 65,000 people, or 11 percent of the work force, in metro Louisville, and 30,000, or 8 percent of the work force, in metro Lexington.

The biggest manufacturing niche is the auto industry, with the Toyota assembly plant in Georgetown, two Ford assembly plants in Louisville and suppliers across the state.

Manufacturing jobs were key to creating the American middle class a century ago, and it is no coincidence that the middle class has declined as manufacturing has moved overseas. But some of that high-end manufacturing is moving back to the United States, and Kentucky has the potential to attract it, Fischer said.

“This is a can-do region with enormous assets,” said Amy Liu of Brookings. “We think there’s a real opportunity to succeed here.”

So what could make this different from so many well-intentioned but marginally successful economic development efforts in Kentucky? Several things.

Brookings brings a level of expertise to which Kentucky has rarely had access. The institution is donating its services, valued at about $750,000. Kentuckians are providing about $250,000 in support services and expertise, which will be paid for with private donations.

Fischer and Gray — two new mayors with similar entrepreneurial backgrounds and political outlooks — are powering the initiative. Sports entrepreneur Jim Host will chair the effort. Host is one of Kentucky’s most capable leaders — a drill sergeant with a strong record of getting things done in both cities. His most recent accomplishment: building the KFC Yum Center in downtown Louisville.

Host will lead a 15- to 20-member committee the mayors will appoint soon. And if the mayors are smart, two of those appointments will be the presidents of UK and U of L, which will be vital to this effort’s success.

The committee will develop a specific business plan to be announced by the end of 2012. The key to execution will be forming partnerships among government, industry and education groups. The public may offer suggestions at Facebook.com/bluegrassmovement.

Beyond the goal, though, this cooperative effort could be a big deal for Kentucky. That is because Louisville and Lexington — cities only 70 miles apart but long separated by cultural differences and sports rivalries — will be working more closely than ever before.

The effort also will focus statewide attention on the economic importance of the Louisville and Lexington metro areas. After all, 40 cents of every tax dollar generated in Louisville goes to the rest of the state, as does 23 cents of every Lexington tax dollar, Host noted. When the cities succeed, the whole state benefits.

“The leverage potential this has, we don’t even know,” Gray said. For example, he noted, Jefferson County school board members invited Fayette County school board members to the announcement luncheon. What might a closer working relationship there lead to?

“Greg and I naturally see alliances as a big deal,” he added. “And in this case, one-plus-one could add up to three, four or five. That’s what all of this really represents.”

The year is 1944, and Marshall Stone is flying a B-17 back to England after a bombing run over Germany. Suddenly, everything goes wrong.

The “flying fortress” is separated from its unit. A German fighter attacks. Marshall must crash-land in a Belgian field. He and other surviving crew members are rescued and sheltered by a series of families in La Résistance Francaise, smuggled through France and across the Pyrenees mountains to Spain and safety.

It is a dangerous and memorable adventure. But once World War II ends, Marshall never looks back. He marries his sweetheart, they have two children and he becomes absorbed in his career as an airline pilot.

Then, it’s 1980. Marshall is 60, and federal regulations say he must retire. His wife has died, his children are grown and he can no longer fly airliners. Marshall realizes that the only way he can go forward is to look back.

Marshall returns to Europe, determined to find the people who saved his life, especially Annette, the young girl in a blue beret who bravely guided him through the streets of Nazi-occupied Paris. Marshall finds her, and in the process, he discovers more than he bargained for about his saviors and himself.

That is the story that Kentucky author Bobbie Ann Mason tells in her intimate and haunting new novel, The Girl in the Blue Beret (Random House, $26).

Most of Mason’s acclaimed novels and short stories have drawn on her Western Kentucky heritage. This book takes place in a landscape very different, but almost as personal. The story was inspired by the wartime experiences of her father-in-law, Barney Rawlings, and her own travels through Europe after his death to get to know the aging survivors of La Résistance who risked their lives to save his.

“I’m very proud of it, I must say,” Mason, 70, said when we met for lunch last week after her French class at Lexington’s Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. “I knew I was jumping in over my head.”

Rawlings, who before his death in 2004 was a Trans World Airlines captain, had talked about his World War II adventures and had written a memoir. Mason started thinking about that in 2006, when she resumed the French studies she had given up after college. “I thought there was a good premise (for a novel) in what would happen if he went back,” she said.

Rawlings had gone back in 1993; he visited his crash site and some of the people who had helped him. That included a young girl he remembered as having worn a blue beret or scarf so disguised GIs could follow her through Paris at a discreet distance. Rawlings left his reunion at that, but it provided Mason a launching point for her novel.

Mason eventually made five trips to Paris. She became friends with the girl, now a lively woman of 81, and she learned harrowing details of the woman’s own wartime experiences. “She was my model for Annette,” Mason said, “but I made up so much stuff.”

Mason traveled to Belgium and found people who had witnessed her father-in-law’s crash-landing. She met a man near Paris who, at age 15, had photographed Rawlings disguised as a Frenchman so the photo could be used for a fake ID card.

“They really helped open up the period for me in a way that books couldn’t. They made it real,” she said.

“The people welcomed me like family because I was the daughter-in-law of this bomber co-pilot and they were so grateful to the American bombers,” she said. “I was astonished by their hospitality. I didn’t know French that well, and some people didn’t speak English, but we carried on.”

The novel required intense historical research. Mason’s husband, Roger Rawlings, is an aviation buff like his father, so he helped teach her about airplanes. Mason read everything she could about World War II. She patterned characters after the Europeans she met and others they told her about.

Mason’s stories are famous for their authentic voices, steeped in the cadences of small-town Western Kentucky. Creating authentic dialog for French characters was a challenge. “In my head I could hear the voices of the people I met, and I was trying to get that sound,” she said.

Another thing about this novel was different for Mason.

“Usually when I finish a project, I just box up all the research and turn my back and it’s done; I’m through,” she said. “This subject is going to stay with me for the rest of my life, and I will keep on reading about it. The war was the biggest story of the 20th century.”

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I have a column in Sunday’s Herald-Leader about Bobbie Ann Mason‘s fascinating new novel, The Girl in the Blue Beret. It is a story about World War II and self-discovery, based on the experiences of her late father-in-law, Barney Rawlings, who was a B-17 pilot shot down by the Germans and rescued by civilians in the French Resistance.

As we had lunch last Tuesday at Stella’s Deli on Jefferson Street, after her regular French class at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, Mason told me something about her writing technique.

“Writing is so complicated,” she said. “What I tend to do is just to go over and over it. I read it again and again, and each time I change a few things. I have trouble with radical revisions. I think in reading it over and over like that you get too close to it. I just write it and polish it until I can’t think of a single other thing to do to it. I write it until it sounds right.”

Mason, a native of Graves County who now lives in Anderson County, is the author many books, including: In Country, Shiloh and Other Stories, Clear Springs and Feather Crowns. She is the winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, two Southern Book Awards and other prizes, including the O. Henry and the Pushcart.

Did you hear we are at war? I don’t mean the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the covert wars in Libya and Yemen or even the nebulous wars against terrorism and drugs.

I mean the “War on Coal.” All of Kentucky’s politicians are talking about it — at least all of those who want campaign contributions and support from the coal industry.

“They have declared war, war on Kentucky’s coal industry,” U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell said of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a speech to the Kentucky Coal Association earlier this month. The U.S. Senate’s Republican leader claimed the EPA wants to see the “coal industry driven out of business altogether.”

The next day, state Rep. Jim Gooch, a Providence Democrat who heads the state House Natural Resources Committee, went even further as he complained about the EPA’s efforts to make coal-fired power plants reduce their air and water pollution.

“This is a war on Kentucky,” Gooch exclaimed during a hearing, “because what we’re talking about is totally destroying our economy.”

And don’t forget Gov. Steve Beshear’s tantrum against the EPA during his State of the Commonwealth address in February. “Get off our backs!” Beshear bellowed. “Get off our backs!”

So what is this War on Coal? A lot of baloney, that’s what. It is a public relations campaign by an industry with a long history of maximizing profits by disregarding environmental stewardship and mine safety.

The coal industry is apoplectic because federal regulators are doing their jobs more aggressively now than they did during the Bush administration. The EPA is enforcing the Clean Air Act by requiring industries to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change. The agency also is trying to curb destructive surface-mining practices and reduce water pollution.

Some politicians and business executives have responded by claiming that climate change is a myth, despite overwhelming scientific consensus to the contrary. Others just fear costs. But the costs of pollution have always existed; we just haven’t paid enough of them with our power bills and corporate bottom lines. We pay for them with sickness, premature death and degradation of our fragile planet.

I was encouraged to see that the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce has invited journalist James Fallows to be a keynote speaker at its annual meeting July 12 in Louisville. He will talk about his December cover story in The Atlantic magazine, Why the Future of Clean Energy is Dirty Coal.

Fallows’ article — click here to read it online at TheAtlantic.com — is excellent. For one thing, it punctures illusions on both the political right and left. Yes, climate change is real and carbon emissions must be dramatically reduced to avert disaster. No, renewable energy cannot replace coal — at least not in our lifetimes.

Because coal will be essential to civilization for generations, the sensible thing is to figure out how to mine and burn it more cleanly, Fallows wrote. Most of that responsibility must fall to the United States and China, which together produce more than 40 percent of man-made greenhouse gasses and bring different strengths to the fight to reduce them.

Fallows profiled U.S. and Chinese scientists who are working on innovative solutions. The most intriguing experiment may be “underground coal gasification.” Jets of oxygen, mixed with steam or chemicals, are blasted into coal seams deep underground. That creates a chemical reaction, producing a gas that can be piped out and burned to create electricity. The process avoids the need for traditional mining and leaves most of coal’s nasty by-products underground.

Kentucky politicians and business leaders could learn a lot from Fallows’ thinking, which transcends ideology to see the coal issue for what it really is — a technology problem to be solved.

Rather than fighting a “war” to protect pollution, Kentucky’s leaders should look past political clichés and entrenched economic interests.

They should position Kentucky to be a leader in meeting the technical and economic challenge of making “clean coal” a reality instead of an oxymoron. It won’t be cheap, easy or painless for anyone, but it is the smart thing to do.

Journalists are often not popular. People love to fuss about their local newspaper.

But you would not have known that Saturday night. A dozen Latino groups and businesses threw a fancy dinner party that packed the Bell House to pay tribute to Andrés Cruz, editor and publisher of La Voz de Kentucky.

The bilingual newspaper, which publishes more than 8,000 copies every other Thursday and online at Lavozky.com, has covered Central Kentucky’s growing Latino community for a decade.

Tertulia Latina de Lexington, a social club whose members gather each month to share food and culture from the many Latin American countries of their origins, organized this impressive outpouring of affection.

“He does a lot of wonderful things for the community,” Tertulia member Rosa Martin said, “so we decided to do this for him.”

There were performances by amazing musicians who had immigrated from Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico and Ecuador. There were award presentations and remarks by Latino community leaders and Mayor Jim Gray.

La Voz means “the voice” in Spanish. “He really is the voice of our community,” Freddy Peralta told the crowd.

Cruz is a physically small man, lawyer Joshua Santana noted in a formal toast, “but his intellect, passion and courage have allowed him to cast a huge shadow within the city of Lexington and beyond.”

“I don’t know what to say except thank you,” an emotional Cruz said after the tributes were over. “Thank you for helping me to feel useful.”

“Useful” has been Cruz’s watchword for La Voz since he bought the newspaper in 2003 from Alejandro Gomez, a Mexican immigrant who started it two years earlier.

Cruz, 42, came here from Costa Rica in 1993 to study history at the University of Kentucky. “I got to UK and fell in love with Kentucky,” he said. After school, he did translation and literacy work for several years, then La Voz captured his imagination.

Cruz said the newspaper has allowed him to use his training as a historian to chronicle the dramatic growth of Central Kentucky’s Hispanic population. “Being able to witness all of this has been an incredible privilege,” he said.

Hispanics accounted for more than half of the nation’s population growth from 2000 to 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau reported recently. Kentucky’s Hispanic population more than doubled, to 132,836. Hispanics represent 3.1 percent of the state’s 4.3 million people, well below the national level of 16 percent. The Census counted 20,474 Hispanics in Fayette County — 6.9 percent of the population — with more than 15,000 of them of Mexican heritage.

La Voz’s coverage focuses on Hispanic businesses, community resources, education, the arts and sports — especially the local baseball and soccer leagues that are meeting places for Latinos of all nationalities.

By publishing all articles in Spanish and English, La Voz aims for wide appeal — recent immigrants trying to make their way, and Anglos looking for a better understanding of their new neighbors.

Because Cruz sees La Voz as a community voice, he has not shied away from advocacy on immigration issues. He has urged passage of the DREAM Act, which would give undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children a path to higher education and citizenship. After La Voz helped to organize a huge immigrants-rights rally downtown in April 2006, Cruz said, he received several death threats.

Illegal immigration remains a controversial problem with no easy solutions, but La Voz tries to reflect the contributions documented and undocumented immigrants are making to Kentucky.

“I have come across incredible stories, incredible people,” Cruz said. “There is an incredible desire in this community to work, to get an education, to better ourselves.”

The weak economy has been hard on La Voz, as it has been on all newspapers. Cruz now runs La Voz out of his home in the Kenwick neighborhood with help from friends. His wife, Jennifer, who is from Elliot County, works as a nurse.

“At La Voz, we have a responsibility to help make Lexington a better place,” Cruz said. “I don’t make a lot of money, but it’s a great way to live my life.”

How do you turn liabilities into assets, then use them to improve the economy? That is a challenge facing the University of Kentucky’s College of Design and leaders in three Kentucky cities along the Ohio River.

While the work in Henderson, Paducah and Louisville is still in early stages, it could soon get some international attention. UK hopes to receive confirmation next week that its Kentucky River Cities project has been chosen for inclusion in the 5th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam in April 2012.

The architecture and urban planning exhibition, held every other year in Holland, says it “aspires to stimulate a wider discourse on the relationship between our environments and the quality of our lives.” Next year’s Biennale will explore new ways of planning and creating more sustainable cities, which over the next few decades are projected to house 80 percent of the world’s people on less than 3 percent of the earth’s surface.

The exhibition will focus on three cities — Rotterdam, Istanbul, and Sao Paulo, — but will include other examples of innovation around the world. “It’s a big deal to be included,” said Michael Speaks, dean of the UK College of Design. “They get a huge number of applications from all over the world.”

Henk Ovink, director of national spatial planning for the Netherlands and a Biennale organizer, has visited Kentucky three times to speak at the college and observe the River Cities project.

The River Cities project began nearly four years ago as a five-day design workshop in Henderson by the college and the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, where Speaks then directed the graduate program. Several people from those schools were Henderson natives, and they were trying to help local business and civic leaders imagine how to redesign and revitalize the cities to adapt to the changing economy.

After Speaks moved to UK a year later, “The Henderson Project” was broadened to include other Ohio River cities that face similar issues. Along with local leaders and design professionals, the college is working with UK’s Center for Applied Energy Research and architects from Los Angeles, Detroit, Holland and Norway.

“It’s an opportunity to show that design is not just about aesthetics,” Speaks said. “Good design can be a real economic value-adder, and it can change the economics and cultural makeup of cities.”

UK students also are working on redevelopment ideas for an area of Louisville’s West End near the Ford Motor Co. plant and investigating long-term possibilities for reusing a former uranium enrichment plant in Paducah.

But most of the work has been in Henderson, with a focus on the Henderson Municipal Power & Light Plant No. 1, an old coal-fired plant that was decommissioned a few years ago.

Originally, city leaders thought the power plant needed to be demolished to redevelop the area. But Speaks said that has turned to looking for ways to renovate the huge plant for uses such as a convention center, offices for energy-related companies or even an IMAX movie theater.

“We have tried to make ourselves part of these communities,” Speaks said, by working closely with local leaders to help create design solutions that will meet their needs and achieve their goals.

The River Cities project is an example of how Speaks wants the college to become a state resource, offering design-related help for economic and social issues. Another example is a project that has designed attractive, affordable and energy-efficient homes that can be mass produced at idle houseboat factories around Lake Cumberland. Another idea on the horizon: creating a Kentucky Mayor’s Institute for Design to help local officials with urban planning issues.

This kind of collaboration could have applications far beyond Kentucky, which is why the Biennale is interested in showcasing UK’s work.

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Bill Lear, left to right, a Keeneland trustee who was the moderator, former Keeneland Presidents Ted Bassett, Bill Greely and current President Nick Nicholson shared a laugh. Photo by Charles Bertram

Keeneland changes constantly, yet never seems to. Behind stone walls and an image of timeless tradition, the elegant race course has faced one challenge after another.

To kick off its 75th anniversary, Keeneland invited Lexington’s business community to breakfast Friday to hear President Nick Nicholson and his two predecessors swap behind-the-scenes stories.

Nicholson, president since 2000, was joined by Ted Bassett, who became president in 1970, and Bill Greely, who succeeded him in 1986. They entertained a Commerce Lexington crowd of 185 people with tales of triumphs and troubles — and all the funny things that happen when you play host to movie stars, tycoons, Arab sheiks and European royalty.

“We worked hard, but we played hard, too,” Greely and Bassett both said.

“The biggest difference between then and now is we no longer play — we just work, work, work,” Nicholson added, sending the other two into gales of laughter.

Bassett recounted Keeneland’s founding on a shoestring budget in 1935, the middle of the Great Depression. Horsemen Hal Price Headley and Louie Beard wanted a racing venue to replace the old Kentucky Association track near downtown, which had closed in 1933. Their unorthodox vision was to create a non-profit institution to benefit the sport and the community.

After Bassett arrived in 1968, after heading the Kentucky State Police, he added barn space to bring in more horses for racing, and a new sales pavilion to boost the horse auctions that are the Keeneland Association’s bread and butter.

Although steeped in tradition, Keeneland has always been an innovator, opening with the state’s first electronic tote board. Bassett added the state’s first turf track in 1984, where half of Keeneland’s stakes races are now run.

Bassett resisted installing a public address system. Like the founders, he didn’t want to disturb Keeneland’s ambiance. The PA system came under Greely, in 1997, which Bassett jokingly reminded the crowd — several times.

“I had almost all of the support of the board,” Greely replied.

Innovations have continued under Nicholson, from high-tech electronic systems to a synthetic track surface that has reduced injuries to both horses and riders. Still, Nicholson is passionate about maintaining Keeneland’s timeless beauty, down to tiny details of the landscaping.

“We take our traditions seriously,” Nicholson said. “We take our trees seriously.”

Keeneland also takes its Clubhouse dress code seriously, but that, too, has evolved. Denim is still not allowed, though, as actor Joe Pesci found out once when he showed up wearing jeans.

Bassett recalled that the prohibition against women’s pant suits ended in 1975 after Anita Madden, the flamboyant owner of Hamburg Place farm, wore one and was told she must have a dress. So, she stepped in the ladies room and removed her pants. Her suit jacket became her dress.

Two of Bassett’s favorite Keeneland guests were actress Elizabeth Taylor and Queen Elizabeth II. The queen’s visit in 1984 had Bassett worried, although she turned out to be a friendly guest and knowledgeable horsewoman.

“She was very easy to talk to,” he said, although there were some anxious moments when she lost a shoe under the table at lunch. Who should retrieve it?

“He got Queen Elizabeth, but I got Ashley Judd,” Nicholson said. And Charlize Theron, whose photograph standing beside Nicholson during her 2009 visit is reproduced in Keeneland’s new 75th anniversary book.

Nicholson recalled taking Judd and her husband, race car driver Dario Franchitti, to meet some famous jockeys at Keeneland. They compared notes about their two racing sports, and Franchitti concluded that racing horses was more difficult, Nicholson said.

Nicholson said Keeneland has faced big challenges under his watch, beginning with the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which occurred the morning of what he had expected to be one of Keeneland’s biggest-ever auction days. The economic slowdown that followed the attacks hit Keeneland hard, as did the mysterious disease that killed many Kentucky foals that year.

When Keeneland finally managed to recover in 2008, the worldwide financial crisis began. Things are getting better, Nicholson said, but the horse industry’s long-term prospects remain challenging.

What will not, change, Nicholson promised, is Keeneland’s commitment to providing the highest-quality horse racing and sales environment possible. “That was our founders’ philosophy,” he said. “It is a wonderful philosophy that has made this organization strong.”

If we can learn anything from recent headlines, it is that powering our economy and lifestyle will only get more difficult and expensive, at least in the near future.

Japan is struggling to avert catastrophe from an earthquake-damaged nuclear power plant. The crisis has the rest of the world taking a second look at the safety of its nuclear systems.

Kentucky outlawed nuclear power in 1984 until the federal government came up with a plan for storing spent fuel, which it has yet to do. The ban was prompted by a leaking radioactive dump in Fleming County that took years to contain. The state Senate voted last month to repeal the ban, but the bill died in the House.

Should Kentucky reconsider nuclear power, which now provides 20 percent of this nation’s electricity? Maybe so. We’re in no position to ignore any source of energy. But Japan’s disaster reminds us nuclear power is an imperfect, unforgiving technology that can be dangerous and costly.

I spent the early years of my career covering another example, much closer to home.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides electricity to parts of Kentucky and six other states, narrowly averted a nuclear accident in 1975 when one of its reactors in Alabama caught fire.

By the time I started covering TVA in 1981, the utility was raising electricity rates and writing off billions of dollars in investment because officials realized the agency was building too many nuclear reactors.

Then, in 1985, TVA shut down all its reactors after its own nuclear engineers secretly came to me and other reporters with evidence that raised questions about whether those plants had been built safely. That led to years of repairs and billions in additional cost.

Coal provides half the nation’s power and more than 90 percent of Kentucky’s power. Electricity has been cheap in this state, because many of the health and environmental costs of mining and burning coal have been ignored. That is changing, because it must.

The Environmental Protection Agency last week proposed tighter rules for how much mercury, other toxic substances and particle pollution coal-fired power plants can release into the air. The EPA claims the rules will save 17,000 lives a year, and the $10 billion cost of making plants cleaner would produce $100 billion worth of health and environmental benefits.

Utilities will fight the new rules, just as they fought many previous rules that made coal-fired plants much cleaner and safer. Expect opposition, too, from many politicians, especially those in the pockets of industries that fund their campaigns.

They will say we “can’t afford” to protect public health or the environment, and higher standards will “kill jobs.” Change is inevitable, though, because research shows that pollution and climate change are killing a lot more than jobs.

Many of those same politicians have fought against fuel-economy standards for vehicles, leaving us all the more vulnerable to political instability in the Middle East and rising demand for oil in developing nations such as China and India.

Increasing domestic oil production in ways that harm the environment isn’t the answer, because that would barely make a dent in the price or supply of what is now a globally traded commodity.

So what is the answer? There isn’t one, but many.

We must invest in research and technology to mine, drill and burn coal and oil more cleanly and efficiently. We must incorporate whatever lessons are learned from Japan’s crisis to make nuclear power safer.

We must develop renewable energy sources — solar, wind and biomass — that will be able to sustain civilization long after coal and oil are gone. Government must play a significant role in this research where private industry cannot or will not.

Perhaps more than anything, we must get serious about designing buildings, vehicles and gadgets to use less energy. Conservation isn’t as difficult as many people think. Take, for example, Kentucky’s many new energy-efficient school buildings, including one in Warren County that will generate as much power as it uses.

We have a choice: ignore the headlines and fight inevitable change, or learn from them and get serious about balancing our needs and desires with those of future generations. Anyone who thinks we can maintain our energy status quo is a dim bulb.

America has a tragically bad track record when it comes to understanding the political dynamics of the Middle East.

So what should we make of the popular uprisings now sweeping the region? How will they affect the United States? What about oil?

I posed those questions to John Stempel, a career foreign service officer who is now a senior professor at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, which he directed from 1993 until 2003.

Stempel’s 24-year diplomatic career included a dozen years overseas, five of which were at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran just before the 1979 hostage crisis. He wrote a book, Inside the Iranian Revolution, based on the experience. A former naval officer, he also held senior Middle East policy jobs with the Defense and State departments.

While the turmoil is likely to continue for some time, Stempel is hopeful that change could be good for America — if we play our cards right. “Understanding how the Muslim world functions politically is our basic problem,” he said.

The Internet-enabled uprisings point to an age divide in the Middle East. Young, educated people there tend to be more sympathetic to American ideals, such as democracy. Still, there is less separation between church and state than in Western societies. “Whatever comes out of the governments will involve a religious element,” Stempel said.

Those are just some of the things Americans must keep in mind, he said. Another is the distinct cultural and political differences among nations in the Middle East, which are the results of unique histories of tribal, religious and political strife.

The king of Jordan will likely be able to pacify unrest, because that nation has a political system in which many people feel they have a voice. On the other hand, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi is probably on his way out.

Iran remains “a serious problem,” Stempel said, “But we should back off and let China and the European countries deal with Iran.” China could be especially influential because it has a multibillion-dollar oil deal with that nation.

Stempel thinks America would be wise to maintain good working relationships with all factions in the Middle East as societies change and new governments emerge.

“It doesn’t have to be perfectly democratic, as long as you don’t have ayatollahs screaming ‘death to the infidels,’” he said. “If you see people who want reasonable popular participation dominating the dialogue over the fundamentalists, then things will be going our way, I think.”

The best thing American government and business leaders can do is try to create partnerships that are mutually beneficial, Stempel said. That is especially true with oil. The United States has 4.5 percent of the world’s population, but consumes 40 percent of its gasoline.

“There’s always going to be a shortage of oil,” he said. “The demand is growing so much in India and China, we’re never going to be in a soft market.”

There’s no way America’s domestic oil production can be increased enough to make more than a dent in the increasingly international market, despite what the “drill baby, drill” crowd thinks. America needs oil from the Middle East, but those nations need Western technology and expertise to maximize the value for their oil reserves, Stempel said.

That creates fertile ground for consortiums of American and international oil companies to do business in a reshaped Middle East. Stempel thinks deals could eventually be done with some of the biggest producers: Iraq, Algeria, Iran and Libya.

He also sees opportunities for America in helping the region develop agriculture and, perhaps, even nuclear energy, with proper safeguards.

Stempel, who was very critical of the Bush administration’s disastrous Middle East policies at that time, gives good marks so far to the Obama administration for keeping dialogue open with all factions in the region. He thinks Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is doing an especially good job.

A self-described “radical moderate,” Stempel said he fears that the right-wing elements that have seized control of the Republican Party will make it harder for America to forge good working relationships with these new and changing Middle East governments.

“The important thing is to get people to understand these countries,” Stempel said. “We do have people who understand the Middle East, if they’re allowed to function properly. That’s been a problem since 9/11.”