The Bluegrass and Beyond

 Patrick Just of Louisville takes a turn on an improvised water slide during an afternoon downpour in the infield at Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby day. “You don’t do Derby,” he said. “Derby does you.”  Photos by Tom Eblen

Like many people, I attended my first Kentucky Derby as a college student in the infield. Except I was an intern for the Associated Press, assigned to write a feature about one of the world’s biggest and wildest parties.

It was 1979, when Spectacular Bid won the 105th Derby, then the Preakness and fell just short of the Triple Crown. But that’s not what I remember most.

Derby Day was sunny and hot, and the infield was a “boiling sea of people”, just as Hunter S. Thompson described it in his famous 1970 essay, The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved. Alcohol flowed freely and, as the afternoon wore on, many a young woman became separated from her clothes. As I wrote in my story that day, the infield was a place where “you are liable to see almost anything — except perhaps the Kentucky Derby.”

I have been to 16 Derbys since then, and each year the infield seems to get smaller and tamer, even as the admission price has risen from $10 to $40. But the 139th Derby was proof that the infield is still quite a party — even on a day like Saturday.

For most of the day, it poured rain, but that didn’t keep people away. The Derby Day crowd was more than 151,000.

The wet weather wasn’t a problem for big-ticket Derby patrons, who enjoyed catered food high and dry in enclosed luxury suites above the track. Saturday was a good day to be rich or famous — or a guest of someone who was.

Outdoor grandstand seats were problematic. But the infield crowd just got wet. Very wet. Not that anyone seemed to mind.

The steady downpour quickly turned the infield into swamp. In the past, that wouldn’t have been a big problem. Although umbrellas have always been banned, infield regulars usually come equipped with large picnic tents.

But this year, citing security concerns in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, Churchill Downs banned tents and coolers. Still, many people brought tarps that became makeshift tents, attached to the chain-link fence along the track’s edge or propped up on folding chairs. A few people managed to sneak in forbidden tent poles and stakes.

“I knew people would get creative,” said John Asher, the Churchill Downs spokesman.

While some in the infield tried to find shelter, many others didn’t bother. People walked around, drank and danced in the rain and mud.

“You’ve got to do it,” said Cathy Hanrahan of Louisville, who has been to six or seven Derbys and was enjoying this one dancing in the infield with friends while wearing a hat that looked like a lamp shade. “You can dry out tomorrow.”

Still, even on a dry day, the Derby infield isn’t what it used to be.

For one thing, the infield is a lot smaller. A big chunk of the real estate was taken in 1985 when Churchill Downs built the turf track inside the dirt oval. The whole front side of the infield is now taken by two-story enclosed and tented luxury boxes. And, each year, more and more vendor tents compete with fans for space.

The infield also is a lot tamer. Although it is harder to smuggle in booze, Churchill Downs makes it very easy to buy alcohol, from beer to mint juleps to champagne. But a multitude of cops keep patrons’ good times from getting out of hand.

There is little nudity anymore, even on a warmer, drier Derby Day than we had this year. Before Churchill Downs’ most recent renovations, the Herald-Leader’s work room was next to a room where Louisville police with high-powered binoculars scanned the infield looking for nudity and other misbehavior.

But none of this seems to have stopped the infield crowd from having a memorably good time, year after year.

“I heard it’s the most wild time you could find,” said Jesse Jerzewski, 26, of Buffalo, N.Y. “And I’m not disappointed yet.”

Jerzewski’s first Derby was doubling as his brother’s bachelor party. They and their poncho-clad friends were especially fond of mint juleps.

A big crowd of young people gathered around a huge plastic sheet, which became a well-lubricated water slide in the heavy afternoon rain. They dared each other to give it a try. Patrick Just of Louisville was among those who accepted the challenge.

“You don’t do Derby,” he said. “Derby does you.”

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Wendell Berry, right, joined conference attendees on a tour Saturday of the farm at St. Catharine College in Washington County. Photo by Tom Eblen

SPRINGFIELD — Wendell Berry is a true conservative. He believes in conservation, the idea that God gave us the Earth to sustain our lives and the responsibility to care for it so it can sustain the lives of future generations.

Four decades ago, the writer and farmer was alarmed by the methods and economics of modern farming and mining, which were (and still are) destroying land, water and rural communities. So he wrote his 1977 book, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture, which has become an international classic.

That book and Berry’s subsequent work did much to spark the sustainable agriculture and local food movements, just as Rachel Carson’sSilent Spring in 1962 helped spark the environmental movement.

So it was no surprise that 300 people from 35 states and several foreign countries came to Louisville and Springfield last weekend for a sold-out conference revisiting the book. Well-known speakers discussed both progress and challenges, and they pondered this question: What will it take to resettle America?

The conference was organized by the Berry Center in Henry County, which is run by Mary Berry Smith to promote the philosophy of her father, as well as her uncle and late grandfather, both farmers, lawyers and conservationists named John Berry.

On Saturday, the conference was at St. Catharine College in Springfield, where the Berry Center has just begun a partnership to create undergraduate degree programs in ecological agriculture. The Catholic college campus includes an 800-acre farm the Dominican Sisters of Peace have operated since 1822.

The conference included an on-stage interview of Berry by veteran journalist Bill Moyers, who will use it on one of his Public Broadcasting System programs. Other speakers included Bill McKibben, the best-selling author and climate change activist; Wes Jackson, a MacArthur “genius” award winner and founder of The Land Institute, a leading sustainable agriculture organization; and Vandana Shiva, a renowned author, scientist and environmentalist in India.

In his interview with Moyers, Berry blamed many of today’s ecological problems on industrialization, unbridled capitalism and political systems that favor wealthy corporations, which make big political contributions to reap far bigger returns in taxpayer subsidies and lax regulation.

“There’s no justification for the permanent destruction of the world,” Berry said. “It’s not economically defensible. It’s not defensible in any terms.”

Berry, 78, lamented that the three and a half decades since his book’s publication have been marked by further environmental degradation, from strip mining and soil erosion to water pollution and accelerating climate change.

“It’s mighty hard right now to think of anything that’s precious that is not in danger,” he said.

Berry noted that black willows no longer grow beside his Henry County farm on the banks of the Kentucky River, 13 miles from where it empties into the Ohio River, but still flourish just upriver on the Ohio. There seems to be something in the Kentucky River’s water they can no longer tolerate.

“If the willows can’t continue to live there, how can I be sure that I can continue to live there?” he asked.

Berry, a lifelong Baptist, said the unholy alliance between corporate capitalism and many conservative Christians is “a feat which should astonish us all.”

“A great mistake of Christianity is speaking of the Holy Land as only one place,” he said. “There are no sacred and unsacred places; only sacred and desecrated places.”

But Berry noted that many faith communities are beginning to heed the Bible’s call to environmental stewardship and justice. That gives him hope, as does the growing popularity of organic food, local farmers markets and the sustainable agriculture movement.

“I don’t like to talk about the future, because it doesn’t exist and nobody knows anything about it,” Berry said. “The problems are big, but there are no big solutions.”

Berry said he thinks “resettling America” will require enough people living on and being able to earn a living from the land to take care of it. That will take individual initiative, better government policies and the political will to deal with urgent global threats such as climate change. Can it succeed?

“We don’t have a right to ask whether we’re going to succeed or not,” Berry said. “We only have a right to ask what’s the right thing to do and do it.”

Journalist Bill Moyers, left, and writer Wendell Berry autograph books after Moyers filmed an interview with Berry. It was part of a two-day conference revisiting Berry’s landmark 1977 book, “The Unsettling of America.”  Photo by Tom Eblen

America’s Best Racing’s ambassadors, left to right, are Hallie Hardy, John Cox, Jose Contreras, Mary Frances Dale, Chip McGaughey and Victoria Garofalo. The bus tour began in March at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, and ends at the Breeders’ Cup in Los Angeles in November. Photos by Tom Eblen 

The centerpiece of The Jockey Club’s $5 million marketing campaign to attract more young fans to Thoroughbred racing rolled into Lexington this week.

A brightly painted hospitality bus with six horse-racing “ambassadors” between ages 22 and 27 is on a national tour. The tour began in March at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, and will end in November at the Breeders’ Cup outside Los Angeles.

Before leaving Lexington for Louisville on Sunday, the bus will be at The Red Mile on Wednesday for the Kentucky Thoroughbred Farm Managers Club meeting, at Thursday Night Live at Cheapside with some well-known jockeys, in the parking lot of Tin Roof on South Limestone on Friday night, and at Keeneland on Friday and Saturday.

Kip Cornett, president of Lexington-based Cornett Integrated Marketing Solutions, said the campaign grew out of a McKinsey & Co. study that The Jockey Club commissioned three years ago.

It concluded that one of racing’s biggest opportunities to increase the fan base was by doing more with special events, such as the Kentucky Derby. The research showed that 1.8 million people ages 18 to 34 watch the Derby on television, yet they pay little attention to Thoroughbred racing most of the year, Cornett said.

So the Jockey Club created a strategy similar to ESPN’s GameDay events to reach young people. That included an advertising campaign; a website, Followhorseracing.com; and the bus with six ambassadors chosen from 150 videotaped applications.

Three of the ambassadors are from Central Kentucky; the others are from California, Georgia and Tennessee. All plan careers in the Thoroughbred industry and hope this gig will help them learn and make good contacts.

During the 17-stop bus tour, the ambassadors are trying to attract peers not only to the sport of Thoroughbred racing, but to the fashion, celebrity and party “lifestyle” surrounding it. They have given away a lot of souvenir jockey goggles and have registered hundreds of people for a contest to win an all-expenses-paid trip for four to the Derby.

The ambassadors identify young leaders and those with big social media followings in each city, take them to the local track and show them a good time in the hope that they will encourage their friends and social media followers to try racing.

The ambassadors also scout popular venues to take the bus — “places where people like us would hang out,” said José Contreras of Long Beach, Calif., who said he “started reading the Daily Racing Form before I could read books.”

“I’ve been surprised by how many people really want to talk to us,” said Hallie Hardy of Frankfort, an equestrian for most of her life.

When the bus was at the Florida Derby last month, Chip McGaughey of Lexington said young Miami leaders were given behind-the-scenes tours of Gulfstream Park and showed how pari-mutuel betting works. Based on the initial efforts, the strategy seems to be working.

“Winning them some money definitely helps,” McGaughey said.

Kentucky’s new “religious freedom” law sure looks like an attempt by conservative Christians to justify discrimination against gay people and get around local “fairness” ordinances.

That is why many people were puzzled when Jim Gray, Lexington’s first openly gay mayor, was the most muted voice in the choir of opponents who urged Gov. Steve Beshear to veto the bill.

Beshear did issue a veto, but the General Assembly overturned it by a wide margin last week.

Beshear’s veto came at the urging of dozens of organizations and individuals — liberal churches, gay rights groups, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Kentucky League of Cities, the Kentucky Association of Counties and Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, who said the bill would “take us backwards as a city and Commonwealth, hurting our strategic position in an increasingly global economy.”

Gray, however, issued a tepid statement that stopped short of urging a veto. He has declined to elaborate publicly.

“The legislation’s stated goal is to encourage religious freedom. That’s a worthy goal,” his statement said. “However, many citizens are concerned the bill may unintentionally open the door to discrimination. Last Thursday, I talked to the governor, shared these concerns and urged him to consider these issues carefully.”

Gray took a beating in social media from some gay people and their supporters, but gay rights leaders were more circumspect. Lexington Fairness chairman Roy Harrison, in an interview Friday, avoided any criticism of Gray.

“We are really happy that he brought more discussion to the bill,” Harrison said. “Everyone has their own political calculus.”

The General Assembly’s political calculus was clear. Most opponents of the bill were lawmakers from progressive urban districts. Legislators from more conservative rural, small-town and suburban districts voted for it.

In a conservative district, there is nothing more dangerous in the next election than having an opponent claim you voted against “religious freedom.” Rural Democrats, especially, are feeling the heat.

Gray is seeking re-election to a second term as mayor next year, so he may have wanted to avoid alienating conservatives. But few people expect Gray to get serious opposition. Former Police Chief Anthany Beatty floated a trial balloon about running, but it hasn’t gotten much lift.

Gray seems to be widely popular in Lexington, even among former critics. As mayor, he has had significant accomplishments and has made few missteps.

Besides, voters knew Gray was gay when they elected him to council in 2006 with enough votes to make him vice mayor. His sexual orientation wasn’t really an issue when he unseated incumbent Mayor Jim Newberry in 2010. Since then, Gray hasn’t tried to be “the gay mayor” — just “the mayor.”

Gray’s political calculation may have been that everyone, including the governor, knew where he stood on this subject, so he had little to gain by being vocal on a statewide controversy where he had no real influence.

Gray did come out strong a year ago on a Lexington controversy, when Hands on Originals cited religious objections in refusing to print T-shirts for a gay pride festival, sparking an ongoing investigation by the city’s Human Rights Commission.

A more important political calculation may have been that Gray didn’t want to anger the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Bob Damon, D-Nicholasville, an influential member of the Central Kentucky delegation. Rep. Sannie Overly of Paris may have unseated Damron as chair of the House Democratic caucus this year, but the way this bill sailed through the General Assembly showed Damron still has plenty of clout.

For all the huffing and puffing on both sides, nobody seems to really know what this legislation will do. The stated intent is to make it easier for Kentuckians to ignore state laws or regulations that conflict with their “sincerely held” religious beliefs unless there is a “compelling governmental interest.”

Bill supporters such as The Family Foundation, which could be more accurately called the Foundation for Families Just Like Ours, insists it is not a vehicle for discriminating against gay people. But a spokesman also has argued that the Hands on Originals case wasn’t really discrimination.

The law’s uncertainties and unintended consequences were a big reason Beshear said he vetoed it. “As written, the bill will undoubtedly lead to costly litigation,” he said.

Don’t forget the hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars that have been wasted on defending clearly unconstitutional attempts by some local governments to post the Ten Commandments in public buildings.

Harrison, the Lexington Fairness chairman, said gay rights and civil liberties groups will be watching to see if this new law is used to try to justify discrimination. If so, they will aggressively challenge it.

Rep. Kelly Flood, D-Lexington, a Unitarian Universalist minister and opponent of the new law, mused that one unintended consequence of it could be to advance gay rights.

Unitarians support gay marriage. Could not they use this law to challenge Kentucky’s 2004 constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions as an infringement of their “sincerely held” religious beliefs? Might the state then be forced to show a “compelling governmental interest” for banning gay marriage?

One thing is for sure: this bad law will keep the culture warriors battling for years to come.

Rob and Bill Samuels at the Maker’s Mark distillery, March 2011. Photo by Tom Eblen

I’m not saying Bill and Rob Samuels planned this all along, but I sure wondered last week when I heard they had quickly canceled plans to water down Maker’s Mark whisky to make supplies go further.

Maybe I wondered because Bill Samuels is one of America’s sharpest marketers, or because I was a business editor at the Atlanta newspapers when the New Coke affair was still fresh in everyone’s mind.

Whatever the case, the Maker’s Mark affair was anything but the “debacle” some media reports called it. In case you weren’t paying attention, here’s what happened:

Rob Samuels, who has been taking over the reins of the Beam Inc. brand from his father, announced Feb. 9 that there just wasn’t enough Maker’s Mark to keep up with demand, despite the distillery’s frequent expansions in recent years.

So, he said, they had decided to dilute their bourbon from 45 percent alcohol, or 90 proof, to 42 percent alcohol, or 84 proof. They said the decision was made after much testing to make sure that a tad more water wouldn’t change the taste.

Nine days later, Rob Samuels reversed course, saying, “You spoke. We listened.” He said the company, which has its offices in Louisville and its distillery near the Marion County town of Loretto, got thousands of complaints from loyal customers who didn’t want their favorite bourbon messed with.

The Samuelses had to know there would be pushback, because bourbon lovers are a tradition-loving bunch. There’s a reason Kentucky bourbon has been marketed for more than a century under labels of “old” this and “old” that.

Bourbon’s popularity is booming around the world, and a big reason is that so much good stuff is now being made. A few decades ago, when many bourbon distillers were producing mediocre stuff, Maker’s Mark was one of the few quality choices. Now, the top shelf is a crowded place, with dozens of great bourbons to suit every taste.

The Maker’s Mark affair will go down in marketing textbooks as another stroke of Samuels genius. Think about it: if nobody had complained, the distillery would have had more bourbon to sell. When, predictably, customers raised hell, Maker’s Mark got a barrel full of free publicity.

Thirty years ago, Kentucky created the Governor’s Scholars Program. Twenty-six years ago, the Governor’s School for the Arts. Now, the Governor’s School for Entrepreneurs.

The idea for this new summer program is the same as with the other two: identify high-potential high school students and bring them together to boost both their development and Kentucky’s future.

The Governor’s School for Entrepreneurs is now taking applications for the first class of 50 students who will attend a free program June 9-29 at Georgetown College. The deadline to apply is Feb. 15. For more information, go to: Gse.kstc.com.

Kentucky’s economy needs more entrepreneurial thinking, said Kris Kimel, president of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corp., which is creating the program.

“Increasingly, people are going to have to create their own jobs, figure out how to create their own value,” he said. “Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking. It’s a different mindset.”

More young Kentuckians need the skills and mindset to start their own businesses, rather than assuming they will always work for somebody else, Kimel said.

This three-week program will include tours of innovative companies and talks by Kentucky entrepreneurs. Students also will hear from lawyers and other professionals who help entrepreneurs make their companies successful.

There will be a lot of teamwork time devoted to students’ ideas for products or services that could be turned into companies. That will include learning about business plans, iteration, investment capital, production, sales, marketing and long-range strategy.

“The program will be all about creative thinking, critical thinking, innovative thinking,” said Kimel, who in 2000 started the Idea Festival, an international creativity festival now held each September in Louisville.

The program is open to 9th, 10th and 11th graders in Kentucky’s public or private schools. Students may apply as individuals or in teams by filling out an online application and submitting adult references.

They also must create a two-minute video explaining their idea for an innovative product or service, or why they would be suited to become part of a team that comes up with one.

One criteria that will not be considered for admission is a student’s grades. After all, some of America’s most brilliant innovators — from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates — didn’t do well in school.

“Just because you’re a ‘C’ student doesn’t mean you’re not incredibly smart,” said Laurie Daugherty, the program’s director. “Sometimes the personality types and thinkers who make the best entrepreneurs are the kids sitting in the back of the class not really engaged in the stereotypical classroom style of learning.”

Daugherty has been traveling around Kentucky, speaking at high schools to attract applicants and raising money for the program among business people.

“There has been a lot of excitement about it,” she said. “The first application was from a student in Louisville who already has a company and wants to learn more about how he can grow it.”

KSTC has a $50,000 seed grant from the state Economic Development Cabinet. The rest of the estimated $200,000 needed for the program is being raised from businesses. There will be no cost to students.

Gov. Steve Beshear kicked off the fundraising effort recently by bringing 40 entrepreneurs and corporate leaders to Frankfort for a presentation.

“Business people get it,” Kimel said. “I think they realize this is an important part of our future, our ability to create these kinds of people and companies and jobs.”

Randall Stevens, who has started several companies in Lexington to develop innovative technology, is one of the entrepreneurs who will be teaching at the program.

“I’m a big believer in the educational process of how to become an entrepreneur,” he said.

Part of that process is learning to be comfortable taking the calculated risks needed to succeed.

Part of the program’s value will be creating a network of young Kentucky entrepreneurs going forward, Stevens said. He is trying to organize that kind of network among his fellow 24,000 graduates of the Governor’s Scholars Program.

“I want them to leave with a good education,” Kimel said of the first class of students in the Governor’s School for Entrepreneurs, “but also with a sense of empowerment that I can do this, or I can think differently.”

Wild Turkey master distiller Jimmy Russell prepares to taste some Old Barbee, distilled in 1901 and bottled in 1914. Photo by Mollie Eblen

You don’t have to be a bourbon whiskey expert to know that age is good and more age is usually better. But how old is too old?

I have pondered that question for 25 years, ever since I was given a pint of Old Barbee. It was distilled in 1901 when my wife’s great-grandfather was president of the company that made it.

This bourbon was aged for 13 years in a charred, white-oak barrel to acquire its color and flavor, just as bourbon is made today. It was bottled at 100 proof in 1914, according to the tax stamp, but never opened.

I always wondered: Would this Old Barbee still taste good? Or, after almost a century in a bottle, would it be nasty — or even poisonous?

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to find out.

I took my grown daughters, Mollie and Shannon, to Anderson County to open and taste my Old Barbee with one of Kentucky’s bourbon experts: Jimmy Russell. The third-generation distiller has worked at Wild Turkey for 59 years and been the master distiller there since 1966.

Russell explained that bourbon does all of its maturing in the barrel. Once bottled, the process stops. As long as the amber liquid remains clear, he had told me, my Old Barbee should taste as good as the day it was bottled.

The cork stopper and celluloid wrapper had started to disintegrate in recent years, causing nearly half the bottle’s contents to evaporate — distillers call it “the angels’ share.” As Russell readied some snifters, I removed the cork carefully.

I had heard about Old Barbee since the late 1970s, when my wife, Becky, and I began dating. According to her family lore, it was a smooth bourbon with excellent flavor.

My wife’s great-grandfather Herman Volkerding was born in 1869 to a German family in Cincinnati. He moved to Louisville and worked for John T. Barbee & Co. By the early 1890s, he was the distillery’s president.

The company’s offices were on Louisville’s Main Street, then known as “Whiskey Row.” The distillery was in Woodford County, along Griers Creek near the Kentucky River, within two miles of where Wild Turkey is made.

John T. Barbee & Co. prospered, and Volkerding and his wife, Mary, lived in a West End mansion with their eight children. But he died in 1912 at age 42, and his partners sold the business to the Weller distillery.

When Prohibition came in 1919, the remaining stock of Old Barbee was sold as “medicinal whiskey,” which required a doctor’s prescription. The Woodford County distillery was abandoned and reclaimed by nature.

I have researched Old Barbee over the years, and that led me to the person who, in 1987, gave me the unopened bottle.

My daughters and I watched as Russell poured small samples into four snifters. He swirled his glass and held it up to the light.

“It’s got a great color, that good, bright, which means it should still be a good-tasting product,” he said. “When it stays that same color all those years you know it’s well-made, been aged well.”

Russell took several deep sniffs. “It’s got a great nose on it,” he said.

Then he took a sip, rolling it around his mouth for several moments as Herman Volkerding’s great-great-granddaughters and I held our breath.

“Typical old-fashioned bourbon,” Russell finally said with a smile. “It’s got the sour mash, it’s got the caramel, vanilla, the sweetness. And that age it’s got a lot of woody, oaky taste to it.

“The thing I really like about it is the finish. It’s got a great finish on it. To me, that’s one of the most important things is the finish. What kind of taste does it leave in your mouth?”

With Russell having pronounced Old Barbee good, my daughters and I took sips.

Then, as if drawn by a sixth sense for special bourbon, Eric Gregory, president of the Kentucky Distillers Association, and Rick Robinson, Wild Turkey’s distillery director, walked in, and I offered them a taste.

We all agreed that the oldest bourbon any of us had ever had was mighty good stuff.

When Becky’s family came to our house for Christmas, I put eight small glasses on an Old Barbee serving tray she had inherited and poured everyone a taste. Then we offered a toast to Herman Volkerding for a job well done.

Click here to watch a video of Jimmy Russell taste-testing Old Barbee.

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The Civil War band President Lincoln’s Own posed with Lincoln director Steven Spielberg on Nov. 19 after he spoke in Gettysburg, Pa., at ceremonies marking the 149th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The band includes four Kentuckians. From left to right, Garman Bowers, Jeff Stockham, Wayne Collier of Lexington, Denny Edelbrock, Reece Land of Campbellsville, Steven Spielberg, Don Johnson of Lebanon, Mike Tunnell of Louisville, Dana Schoppert, Chris Johnston, Mark Elrod and Jay Norris. Photo Provided.

Steven Spielberg’s new movie, Lincoln, features several notable Kentuckians of the past, from the 16th president and his Lexington-born wife to a long-forgotten congressman from Owensboro.

When I wrote about them last month, I didn’t know that four modern Kentuckians also appear in the acclaimed movie. They provide an authentic taste of Civil War music on period brass instruments.

About 15 minutes into the film, President Abraham Lincoln, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis, is shown at a flag-raising ceremony. A 12-piece military band wearing red uniforms plays as the crowd sings, “We are coming, Father Abraham,” a popular patriotic song of the day.

The scene was filmed in Petersburg, Va., in December 2011. But it wasn’t until the movie was released this fall that members of the band, President Lincoln’s Own, were allowed to reveal their participation.

The Kentucky musicians are Wayne Collier, a Lexington lawyer with Kinkead & Stilz; Reese Land, associate professor of music at Campbellsville University; Michael Tunnell, a University of Louisville music professor; and Don Johnson, a musician and antique instrument collector from Lexington who now lives in Lebanon.

The band also played with Spielberg when he spoke Nov. 19 in Gettysburg, Pa., at ceremonies marking the 149th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

“It was one of those who-you-know situations,” said Collier, explaining how a real estate lawyer and amateur trumpeter found his way into a Spielberg movie touted as an Academy Award favorite.

The Civil War band grew out of Kentucky Baroque Trumpets, an award-winning group that Johnson, Collier and two others formed in 2005. Collier has been playing trumpet since he was 10 and earned a music theory degree from the University of Kentucky before going to law school. The Tates Creek High School graduate got to know Johnson, who went to Henry Clay, when they played together in a youth orchestra in the early 1970s.

To film the scene in Lincoln, band members drove to Petersburg, Va., one weekend last December. They found tons of dirt spread on the streets in a neighborhood of antebellum buildings “at great expense, I’m sure,” Collier said.

Band members had been told not to shave or cut their hair for a month before filming so makeup and hair stylists could make them look authentic to the period. They were then photographed so the makeup and styling could be quickly recreated before filming on Monday morning.

Band members practiced their music on original Civil War-era horns, which are pitched higher and are more difficult to play than modern instruments. Collier said he had it easier than some because he played a horn from his own collection: an 1861 nickel-silver D.C. Hall E-flat alto with rotary valves.

After makeup, costuming and rehearsal, band members attended a cast party and met actress Sally Field, who had visited Lexington last year to prepare for her role as Mary Todd Lincoln.

Filming the flag-raising scene took three hours. Freezing temperatures made it difficult to play the antique brass horns. But Spielberg liked the band’s performance so much that he made the unusual decision to use the live performance rather than redub the music with a studio recording.

In the movie, the band members are seen and heard for only a few seconds — and they were left out of the credits, which was a disappointment.

Collier said his legal background helped him appreciate the dialogue-heavy movie, which focuses on Lincoln’s legal thinking and political arm-twisting in 1864-65 to enact the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution to abolish slavery. Lincoln thought the amendment was legally essential to expand and make permanent his 1862 Emancipation Proclamation.

A key figure in the movie is U.S. Rep. George Helm Yeaman, a lawyer and judge from Owensboro whom Lincoln cajoles into becoming a key swing vote for the amendment.

After seeing the movie, Collier found copies of two Yeaman speeches. One was given in 1862 on the floor of the House, criticizing the legal weaknesses in the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln was trying to fix two years later. The other speech was given in 1899, when Yeaman taught constitutional law at Columbia University in New York and was reflecting on the amendment.

“He was a lot brighter than he came across in the film,” Collier said of Yeaman.”Compared to him, our role in the movie was minuscule. But it was a phenomenal experience.”

It is a common fantasy: Quit the rat race. Get back to nature. Embrace adventure.

Few people ever do it, at least not for long. Even Henry David Thoreau, the 19th-century writer and icon for this fantasy, moved back to civilization after a couple of years on Walden Pond.

But Kentuckians Anna and Harlan Hubbard did it for more than four decades, until their deaths in 1986 and 1988. They floated down rivers on a shantyboat, then lived in a riverbank cabin, both built with their own hands.

The newest telling of the Hubbards’ story is a charming documentary,Wonder: The Lives of Anna & Harlan Hubbard, by Louisville filmmaker Morgan Atkinson. The film (Annaandharlan.com) premiered last week in Louisville. Atkinson is looking for a non-profit group to sponsor a Lexington showing, and he hopes to have the film shown on KET.

Atkinson’s previous work has includeed documentaries about other American originals: Thomas Merton, the Nelson County monk and writer; and John Howard Griffin, a white man who turned his skin dark and traveled the Deep South in 1959 to write the best-selling book, Black Like Me.

Atkinson never met the Hubbards, but he read about them. “One night, I had this very vivid dream about Harlan Hubbard,” he said. “I woke up thinking, that’s odd.”

He started reading more, and, before he knew it, he was making this film.

It tells the Hubbards’ story through old photos and film, re-enacted scenes and narration by actor Will Oldham, who reads from Harlan’s journals, and writer Wendell Berry, who reads from his 1989 book, Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work.

“They were enormously gifted people,” Berry said in an interview. “What made them unique was they were determined to live according to the requirements of their gifts, and that’s what they did.”

Harlan, who was born in 1900, grew up in Northern Kentucky and New York City.

He liked to paint, write, play music and explore nature. He earned money as a day laborer, having little interest in the modern world or its definitions of success.

He met Anna Eikenhout, two years his junior, at the Cincinnati Public Library, where she was a librarian. After several years, they began a courtship by playing music together — he the violin and viola, she the cello and piano. They married in 1944 and chose adventure over conformity.

They lived in a shack on the Ohio riverbank while Hubbard built a shantyboat. They lived on that boat for nearly eight years, five of which they spent drifting down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, fishing, hunting and stopping for months at a time to grow vegetables.

When they ran out of river in Louisiana, they headed back to Kentucky and settled at Payne Hollow in Trimble County, which had been the first long stop on their river odyssey. Harlan bought seven acres, built a cabin and planted a garden. Anna cooked, kept house and had family in Michigan send down her Steinway grand piano.

The Hubbards read to each other after meals — in French and German, as well as English. In the evenings, they played music together. Harlan had studied art in New York and Cincinnati, and he earned what little money they needed by selling his prolific output of paintings and drawings of scenes along the river.

“It’s hard to tell how long work by Harlan will be turning up, because he gave away pictures and traded them for sacks of corn or sold them for $5,” said Berry, who has used Harlan’s paintings on the covers of several of his books.

Harlan wrote three books about their life and adventures, and they attracted a steady stream of visitors to the cabin. Among them was Berry, who said he happened upon it by accident in 1963 while canoeing with a friend. Over the years, Berry and the Hubbards became close friends.

Other visitors included Louisville’s Bingham family, wealthy former owners of The Courier-Journal. Eleanor Bingham Miller, who as a child visited the Hubbards on family boat outings, was a major funder of the documentary, along with the Rivers Institute at Hanover College, across the river from Payne Hollow in Indiana.

“I think a lot of people subscribe to the Hubbards’ values,” Berry said. “There are some very serious flaws in modern life and the life of the industrial world. I think people were attracted by that. They were attracted by curiosity, too.”

Few people really would or even could live as the Hubbards did. But Atkinson thinks there is a lot to learn from them, and he tried to bring out those lessons in his film.

“I would hope that people would be inspired to be open to adventure in their own lives, whatever that may be,” he said. “To be aware of the wonder of the natural world. And just appreciate what a person or a couple can do. It’s being unafraid of what convention might make of what you’re doing.”

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America zigged and Kentucky zagged. The majority of the nation’s voters rejected right-wing politics in last Tuesday’s election, but Kentuckians outside of Lexington and Louisville embraced them all the more.

Big swings have become the norm in national elections, because neither party has succeeded in solving America’s problems on its own. But deeper forces may have been at work this time.

Much of the post-election analysis has focused on demographic shifts that go against the hard conservative turn the Republican Party has taken in recent years.

Young people, women and minorities voted overwhelmingly for President Barack Obama’s economic policies over those of challenger Mitt Romney, and they rejected socially conservative candidates for the U.S. Senate.

Republicans’ run to the right has been marked by increasingly rigid ideology on both economic and social issues. But analysts of all stripes warn that without more tolerance of diversity — including intellectual diversity — the GOP could become the incredible shrinking party of old, white men.

Demographics are destiny, and it will be interesting to see how Republicans cope with these demographic trends. As it does, Kentucky will be in the spotlight, because the state’s two high-profile U.S. senators now seem to be caught between Barack and a hard place.

Voters in many states signaled that they have grown tired of Tea Party radicals. Paul won election in Kentucky two years ago as a Tea Party idol and immediately started preening like a future presidential candidate. Are his 15 minutes of fame about up?

By re-electing Obama and giving Democrats more seats in the Senate, voters rejected Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s relentless obstructionism. He went to great lengths over the past four years to oppose the president on just about everything.

While other Republican leaders were making conciliatory statements after the election, McConnell, the anti-Henry Clay, struck his usual pose against compromise. He indicated he will continue to fight against raising historically low income taxes on America’s richest people to lower the nation’s budget deficit, even though opinion polls show overwhelming public support for it.

In an especially cynical comment, McConnell called on Obama to “move to the political center.” McConnell is nowhere near the political center himself, and the Tea Party wing of his party would need a telescope to even see it.

Kentucky and other Southern states have played a big role in supporting the Republican party’s anti-tax, anti-government ideology. But that is deeply ironic when you look at the statistics, said Ron Crouch, director of research and statistics for Kentucky’s Education and Workforce Development Cabinet and the guru of Kentucky demographic trends.

Kentucky and other Republican-leaning “red” states tend to receive much more federal assistance than they contribute in taxes, while the reverse is true of Democrat-leaning “blue” states.

In Kentucky, Crouch noted, the largest per-capita federal transfer payments go to poor, rural counties that vote Republican.

Kentucky and other states whose populations are largely white, aging, rural and traditionally male-dominated will increasingly be overshadowed, both politically and economically, unless and until they catch up to these broader demographic trends, Crouch said.

“We need to be more supportive of immigration and open to diversity,” he said of Kentuckians. “When I drive around Kentucky, I see a lot of Confederate flags.”

Immigrants and minorities could play an important role in keeping the state’s small towns and rural areas vibrant as the white population ages and shrinks from declining birth rates.

But Kentucky already is becoming more diverse than many people realize, Crouch said. The majority of Kentucky’s population growth since 2000 — and all of it under the age of 18 — has been among minorities, especially Hispanics.

As immigrant, minority and urban populations grow in Kentucky, voting patterns are likely to become less Republican, unless that party moves more to the political center. The same is true as women gain more economic and political clout in the state.

“Blue-collar men are an endangered species,” Crouch said. “We’re seeing an economy more and more that is favoring female employment.”

Kentucky’s future, both economically and politically, will depend not only on the availability of jobs, but whether those jobs pay enough to support middle-class families, Crouch thinks. And those families are bound to become more diverse, like it or not.

Few mayors come into office knowing much about architecture, design or urban planning, even though those issues are at the heart of some of the biggest, most expensive and longest-lasting decisions they will make.

And that is why many of those decisions are not very good. Multimillion-dollar projects with a huge impact on city life and image are often victims of political compromises, well-connected developers, traffic engineers and low bidders.

That is why Joe Riley, longtime mayor of Charleston, S.C., and the National Endowment for the Arts created the Mayors’ Institute on City Design in partnership with the United States Conference of Mayors and the American Architectural Foundation.

Since 1986, the institute has brought together more than 900 mayors and 650 professionals to discuss creative, contemporary approaches to city planning and design.

Earlier this month, the University of Kentucky’s College of Design hosted an institute conference that brought seven mayors to Lexington. They came from a diverse group of cities: Cambridge, Mass.; Joplin, Mo.; Clarksville, Tenn.; Atlantic City, N.J.; Waterbury, Conn.; and Pennsylvania’s Reading and Lower Merion.

The mayors spent two days with a group of world-class design professionals. At an opening reception, Mayor Jim Gray and Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, both graduates of the institute, urged them to seize the opportunity.

“Like any great business, you’ve got to be planning,” Fischer said.

Each mayor was to give a 15-minute presentation about a local project. It would then be discussed by the other mayors and the professionals. The “experts” weren’t there to design for the mayors; they were mostly advising them on how to get the help they need to achieve their cities’ goals.

The professionals included two names familiar in Lexington: Gary Bates of Norway-based Space Group, who did the Rupp Arena, Arts & Entertainment District plan and is now doing a master plan for Louisville; and Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, the MacArthur “genius” award winner who did the site plan for Lexington’s proposed CentrePointe development.

Others offering advice included Neil Denari and Roger Sherman, two Los Angeles architects who design projects all over the world; Roberto de Leon of de Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop in Louisville; and landscape architects Shane Coen, whose Minneapolis firm has an international reputation, and Paul Morris, who as deputy secretary of the North Carolina Department of Transportation tries to marry good design with highway engineering.

The institute has some strict rules: The professionals cannot be hired to do work for the mayors’ cities for a year. Also, sessions are limited to mayors and design professionals; no observers. The goal is open, honest discussions, because achieving good urban planning and design often involves a lot of strategy and politics.

The design by De Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop for a restroom at Louisville’s Riverview Park mimics a traditional Kentucky tobacco barn in an artful, and low-maintenance, way. Photo by De Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop

Michael Speaks, the UK college’s dean, and his faculty also were there to advise, something they do for Kentucky cities when asked. Speaks said he hopes to create a program similar to the institute as an ongoing resource for Kentucky mayors.

Several mayors said afterward that the conference was an eye-opener.

“It was a terrific, creative, collaborative learning process,” said Liz Rogan, president of Lower Merion’s Board of Commissioners. “I learned that there are creative solutions and processes and different ways of seeing things.”

Melodee Colbert-Kean, mayor of Joplin, came with the most complicated project: rebuilding a city devastated by a tornado in May 2011.

“It was incredible,” Colbert-Kean said of the session. “The information they have given us will go a long way toward redeveloping our city the way we want it to be.”

There was one public session at the end of the conference. Gang, de Leon and Denari showed some recent work, which offered lessons about the value of good design.

For example, de Leon showed designs for a restroom building at a riverfront park in suburban Louisville. In most cities, this would be a concrete-block box, painted beige. But de Leon designed a beautiful, low-maintenance, reasonably priced piece of highly functional metal-and-concrete art that echoes the look of a traditional Kentucky tobacco barn. It isn’t simply a park services building; it is an icon.

Denari said it is important that any city or company planning a major project hire the right design professionals and give them time to think through all of the client’s needs and problems — some of which the client may not even realize they have.

“It’s about thinking, ‘How can we maximize this project?’ ” de Leon added. “How can we maximize what we’re willing to spend to get the most value?”

What if Lexington had the opportunity to attract more than 500 highly skilled technical workers, many of whom suddenly had the flexibility and motivation to start their own companies?

The good news is that Lexington doesn’t have to attract them; they’re already here. The bad news is that many of them are getting ready to leave.

Lexmark’s decision last month to lay off 350 employees and 200 contractors as part of closing its inkjet printer operations has prompted entrepreneur support organizations and state and local officials to scramble to find ways to keep them in Kentucky.

The Kentucky Science and Technology Corp. is marshalling resources across the state for a project called “Another Path.” It is inviting workers being cut by Lexmark to a free informational meeting Sept. 24 from 9 a.m. until noon at the Embassy Suites Hotel, 1801 Newtown Pike.

Meanwhile, a non-profit group called Startup Advantage has scheduled another free event for the Lexmark people to meet local technology entrepreneurs and investors at 5:50 p.m. Sept. 26 at West Sixth Brewery, 501 W. Sixth St. Learn more at Meetup.com/Startup-Advantage.

“We see this as an exciting positive reaction to an unfortunate situation,” said Kris Kimel, president of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corp., a private, non-profit organization working to develop the state’s high-tech economy. “This is a unique infusion of experienced technical knowledge and creativity, and we need to do whatever we can to keep it here.”

Kimel said many of the people Lexmark is letting go are engineers and senior-level designers with expertise and experience in microfluidics, the precise manipulation of tiny amounts of fluids. That specialty has many valuable applications besides inkjet printing.

“There’s a lot of knowledge and talent that we think has adjacent uses,” Kimel said. “There are new companies there, without a doubt.”

Kimel said several of the people leaving Lexmark have already contacted KSTC for information and advice about starting their own companies.

Kimel said he has enlisted help from the offices of mayors Jim Gray of Lexington and Greg Fischer of Louisville, the University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, state economic development officials and even private insurance companies.

Among the things they’re looking at: Could state unemployment insurance be extended to these entrepreneurs while they get new companies started, the way it would be if they were simply searching for a job with an established company? Could health insurance companies figure out creative ways to extend coverage to these startup entrepreneurs and their employees until they get going?

Another Path will not just be a “one off” meeting, Kimel said. KSTC staff members plan to set aside at least three or four hours a week to work with those leaving Lexmark to help them navigate the complexities of starting a company or working for a startup.

“We’re trying to design a pretty comprehensive process to mine that talent and see how many companies we can grow from this,” said Kimel, whose organization already runs several entrepreneur-support programs as part of its work.

“It’s a different mindset than just going to work for another big company,” he said. “Starting your own company isn’t for everyone.

“This effort is about creating an ecosystem to support those people who want to try.”

Randall Stevens, a Lexington technology entrepreneur involved with Startup Advantage, said the group wanted to reach out to those leaving Lexmark to help them get to know local entrepreneurs, investors and those who provide support services for startup companies.

“If you get people in a room together, you have more of a chance of things happening,” Stevens said. “A lot of being a startup is being around others who can encourage you.”

The Lexmark workers also might be able to find some short-term work opportunities or entrepreneurs they could help mentor with their expertise and experience.

Kimel believes Kentucky’s economic development future will depend more and more on entrepreneurship, rather than enticing established companies to relocate to the state.

“Lexington has never had this big a pool of technology talent suddenly available,” Kimel said. “And if we don’t do something, most of that talent will leave.”

More than 400 local business leaders packed a Lexington Center ballroom last Tuesday to hear lectures encouraging entrepreneurship in Kentucky from two of the state’s most successful entrepreneurs.

Jim Host, the founder of Host Communications and now chief executive of iHigh.com, and Pearse Lyons, founder and president of Alltech, told their personal stories, talked about why Kentucky needs more entrepreneurs and offered their personal tips for success.

I know how much business people love lists of success tips, so I will share those later. First, though, I want to discuss why, beyond their obvious success, Host and Lyons are worth your attention.

Both are classic, hard-charging entrepreneurs. They are keen observers of business and society. Not only do they embrace change, they try to anticipate and drive it. They know that people always want better ways to satisfy their needs and desires, and in that space are great business opportunities. They know how to make things happen.

Jim Host

Host is a home-grown success story. He moved to Ashland as a boy and has spent most of his life in Kentucky, including serving in state government and running unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor early in his career.

Host created world-class companies in travel, sports marketing and communications. Now he is trying to create the future of television. Host never felt he needed to move elsewhere to succeed. More importantly, he never allowed his vision to be limited by Kentucky’s cultural aversion to change.

Most recently, Host led the effort to build Louisville’s KFC Yum Center arena, despite being a blue-bleeding University of Kentucky alumnus and fan. Working in Louisville underscored for him the foolishness of allowing intrastate rivalries to obstruct progress.

Host, 74, has become an evangelist for Louisville-Lexington cooperation. He was founding chairman of the Bluegrass Economic Advancement Movement, a new effort led by both cities’ mayors to bring more advanced-manufacturing jobs to Kentucky.

Lyons’ story is different. Born, reared and educated in Ireland, he came to Kentucky in 1974 because he thought it was a great place to start a business.

Pearse Lyons

Alltech began with the idea of developing and making all-natural animal nutrition supplements. Now, the company’s goal is no less than figuring out how to feed the world using natural ingredients and breakthrough technology, not to mention making good beer and whiskey on the side. Privately held Alltech now has 3,000 employees in 128 countries, including more than 500 in Kentucky.

Part of what makes Lyons worth watching is that he has figured out how to embrace and build upon Kentucky’s strengths without feeling limited by its traditional shortcomings. He is bullish about Kentucky’s potential. He took a “Kentucky Proud” road show to England’s Windsor Castle. Alltech is selling Bourbon Barrel Ale in China and, soon, in Ireland. Alltech just launched the Lyons Farm brand of premium meats, which have a distinct Kentucky marketing flavor.

“If you can’t sell Kentucky as a place to do business, then you’re not in any shape or form a salesman, because it’s an easy sale,” Lyons said. “I’ve been around the world I don’t know how many times, and I’ve never found a place as conducive to doing business or rearing a family as Kentucky — y’all.”

Now, about those success tips. Both entrepreneurs stressed the importance of having a positive attitude, passion for your work, a willingness to take risks, a confidence in self and a good sense of humor.

Among Host’s success tips:

■ Be prepared. Eighty percent of any sale is preparation; 20 percent is presentation.

■ Under-promise and over-deliver.

■ Do not lie or misrepresent to a client about anything. “You build great companies on integrity and character,” he said.

■ Write down the five most important things you need to do each day, and do the hardest one first. That will clear your head for creative thinking.

■ If you focus on creating excellence, profits will follow.

Among Lyons’ success tips:

■ Take a chance, any chance, to start a business. And, if possible, go it alone. You can never truly align partners’ dreams with your own.

■ Be curious and add to your expertise, both through your own education and by hiring great people.

■ Avoid negative people, whom he called “energy vampires.”

■ Be prepared to change your business, but not your core values.

■ You have two ears, one mouth; listen more than you talk, and take notes.

LOUISVILLE — Oh, the humanity! Oh, the humidity!

After a stormy night, the sun shone brightly on Churchill Downs all day Saturday as a record 165,307 sweltering fans turned out for the 138th running of the Kentucky Derby. They got a good show for their trouble, as I’ll Have Another blew past front-runner Bodemeister to win the $2 million purse.

The two-minute race capped a day of partying and networking that began long before Mary J. Blige, all decked out in red, rocked The Star-Spangled Banner to several interruptions of applause.

The beer-for-breakfast crowd arrived early in the infield, hoping to stake out a prime spot to pitch a tent, spread a tarp and set up lawn chairs. Many of the groups of families and friends have been coming back to the same spot for years, if not decades.

“I’ve always wanted to come,” said Tony Sirkin, a furniture store owner from Chicago who at mid-morning was trying to lay claim to one of the few remaining patches of green until a group of friends could arrive. “It’s something you’ve got to experience.”

His goal for the day? “To meet my future wife,” Sirkin said.

Nahru Lampkin of Detroit had the same goal Saturday as at his 17 previous Derbys: make a good day’s living as an entertainer. A fixture in the infield, he plays bongo drums and makes up hilarious rhymes about passing fans in hopes of encouraging them to drop some cash in his bucket.

“We come every year to seek this guy out,” Joe DeJohns of Chicago said of Lampkin. “This guy is really, really good.”

High above the infield and grandstand, in the air-conditioned comfort of the luxury suites overlooking the track, well-heeled groups of family, friends and business associates mingled.

For many at the Derby, it was a long day of glad-handing and networking. Lexington Mayor Jim Gray and U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler stopped by the Jockey Club suite of 21c Museum Hotel, the Louisville-based company that recently announced plans to open its third location, a hotel in Lexington, in what has become a small chain of boutique hotels.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer had a hectic day, greeting people, presenting an undercard trophy and entertaining 24 economic development prospects whom he declined to identify.

“It’s a great way to show off our city; you couldn’t ask for anything better than this,” Fischer said. “They always come away favorably impressed.”

Gov. Steve Beshear worked the crowd, which included a visiting group of other Democratic governors from Maryland, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina. When the other governors gathered in a suite, the hall was filled with their dark-suited security guards staring at each other.

Scattered throughout the Downs were celebrities, including Cindy Lauper, Debra Messing and Miranda Lambert. Head and shoulders above them — in both stature and popularity — were members of the championship University of Kentucky basketball team. They wandered through rooms posing for photos with fans before making their way to the Winner’s Circle to help present the Derby trophy.

The Millionaire’s Row crowd included many familiar Kentucky faces: House Speaker Greg Stumbo, Alltech’s Pearse and Deirdre Lyons, Toyota’s Wil James, lawyer and politico Terry McBrayer, and developer Woodford Webb.

The Derby is a fashionista’s paradise. Women seem to compete to see who can wear the tightest dress, the highest heels and the most bodacious hat. Among men, the competition seemed to be for the loudest sport coat, although Jim Leuenberger of Shawano, Wis., took things a step further. He attracted a lot of attention in the paddock with a bright red suit and matching bowler hat.

“I saw a guy last year with a yellow suit,” said Leuenberger, who was attending his 18th Derby. “He told me about a Web site where you can get any color. I’ve always wanted a red one.”

Many Derby regulars get their kicks by wearing outrageous hats sure to attract attention and photographers.

The first time Jan and Scott Baty of Traverse City, Mich., came to the Derby six years ago, she put a plastic pink flamingo on her hat. Her hats have gotten bigger and fancier, but she has stuck with the theme.

“This is our first year with a double-flamingo hat,” said Scott Baty, whose own Panama straw hat was covered with roses. “We ran out of singe-flamingo options.”

But few attention-seekers had it as hard as Tracy Lindberg of Chicago, who was in the infield for his 29th Derby wearing a 50-pound stuffed horse he called Seabiscuit on his head.

“I usually can wear it two or three hours tops,” Lindberg said. “I’ve done an hour, though, and I already can’t feel my neck.”

Marlitt Dellabough of Eugene, Ore., right, and Denise Meroni of Morris County, New Jersey, center, cheer on their horses in an undercard race on Kentucky Derby Day at Churchill Downs.  Photo by Tom Eblen

The view of the Twin Spires of Churchill Downs from the Jockey Club Suites on Kentucky Derby day.  Photo by Tom Eblen

Women make fashion statements at the Kentucky Derby with outrageous hats. With some men, it’s outrageous sport coats.  Photo by Tom Eblen

Jan and Scott Baty of Traverse City, Mich., were attending their sixth Kentucky Derby. She came the first year with a plastic flamingo on her hat and has stuck with the theme. “This is our first year with a double-flamingo hat,” Scott Baty said. “We ran out of singe-flamingo options.”   Photo by Tom Eblen

Jim Leuenberger of Shawano, Wisc., attending his 18th Kentucky Derby, attracted a lot of attention in his bright red suit and matching bowler hat.  ”I saw a guy last year with a yellow suit,” Leuenberger said. “He told me about a Web site where you can get any color. I’ve always wanted a red one.” Photo by Tom Eblen

Tony Sirkin, making his first trip to the Kentucky Derby, tried Saturday morning to save one of the last vacant plots of the infield for a group of friends. The furniture store owner from Chicago said his goal for the day was “to find my future wife.”  Photo by Tom Eblen

Joe DeJohns of Chicago, right,  said he has been coming to the Kentucky Derby since the mid-1980s and always seeks out Nahru Lampkin of Detroit, who sits in the infield playing bongo drums and making up hilarious rhymes about passersby in hopes that they will drop some cash in his bucket. Lampkin said this was his 18th Derby. Photo by Tom Eblen

Tracy Lindbert of Chicago was in the infield for his 29th Kentucky Derby, his second wearing the 50-pound hat he called Seabiscuit.  ”I usually can wear it two or three hours tops,” he said. “I’ve done an hour, though, and I already can’t feel my neck.” Photo by Tom Eblen

The ATM is always a popular destination in the Kentucky Derby infield, where there are plenty of opportunities to spend money.  Photo by Tom Eblen

Lexington leaders were almost giddy last week after 21c Museum Hotels announced plans to turn the old First National Bank building into one of its award-winning hotels and contemporary art museums.

They had every right to be giddy. It is a big deal, for many reasons, and comes at a pivotal time for downtown Lexington.

The Louisville-based company’s decision to make Lexington its third expansion city after Cincinnati and Bentonville, Ark., validates five decades of public and private struggle to keep downtown from dying. It was a problem shared by most cities during an era of suburban sprawl and often-misguided “urban renewal.”

This $38 million project confirms the wisdom of infrastructure investments by city government and civic-minded foundations and companies, as well as the judgment of developers, entrepreneurs and artists whose creativity and risk have made downtown hop again.

It validates the work of preservationists, who understood the value of Lexington’s built heritage. And it raises the bar for downtown architecture. The 15-story First National Bank building, Lexington’s first skyscraper, was designed by McKim, Mead and White, one of America’s best architectural firms a century ago. The renovation will be directed by Deborah Berke, one of today’s star architects.

More than anything, though, 21c Museum Hotels’ plan affirms those who see great economic development potential in making Lexington a city where the 21st century’s best and brightest people will want to live, work and play — an urban landscape that is as special as the countryside surrounding it.

Steve Wilson, the CEO of 21c Museum Hotels, described Lexington as “a city that is looking forward, and we are thrilled to be part of that.” Craig Greenberg, his business partner, said: “We’re very optimistic about downtown Lexington’s continued revitalization.”

Greenberg said one thing that attracted them to Lexington was the new, visionary plan for redeveloping 46 city-owned acres around Rupp Arena and Lexington Center. The plan calls for renovating Rupp, moving and expanding the convention center, adding mixed-use private development and uncovering Town Branch Creek to create a downtown water feature.

Greenberg said the plan’s success “will be absolutely critical to downtown.” So will more urban housing, he added. The downtown condo market is still recovering from over-building before the recession. But the restoration of historic in-town neighborhoods has continued unabated, and real estate people see increasing demand for moderately priced downtown rental units.

Construction of the mixed use CentrePointe project also is important, Greenberg said. The 21c partners discussed locating there, but things didn’t work out.

Developers Dudley and Woodford Webb now say Marriott will build a much larger hotel at CentrePointe, joining tenants Urban Active gym and Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse. With an architectural plan that since 2008 has gone from bad to excellent, the Webbs are trying to line up construction financing and more tenants.

Having a 21c Museum Hotel across the street should be a big plus for CentrePointe.

Still, while many business people agree there is a market for a boutique hotel like 21c, they doubt there will be enough demand for a big Marriott until the city’s convention facilities are expanded, which could be several years away.

CentrePointe’s ups and downs have attracted a lot of attention, but a bigger story over the past four years has been the tremendous amount of small-scale development downtown, despite the recession.

Much of that was fueled by infrastructure improvements. Fifth Third Bank’s donation of the market house to a renovated Cheapside Park created a magnet for both people and investment, including great new restaurants such as Dudley’s on Short and Table 310, whose owners renovated historic buildings. Several more old buildings are being restored as bars and restaurants, including the soon-to-open Shakespeare & Co. on Short Street.

Meanwhile, Jefferson Street has blossomed as another entertainment district. The new West Sixth Street Brewing Co. at the end of Jefferson is the first piece of what could become a development boom north of downtown near the new campus of Bluegrass Community and Technical College.

Triangle Park reopened last week after the Triangle Foundation completed a beautiful, $1 million renovation that could make it another downtown people magnet.

Where does Lexington go from here? That depends on how well local political and business leaders can execute their ambitious plans and keep the momentum going.

That means continued infrastructure investment: street and sidewalk improvements, bike lanes and paths and more parking facilities, especially on the east and west sides of downtown.

The city’s Design Excellence Task Force must translate “design excellence” into a practical framework of guidelines, policies and procedures that the Urban County Council can turn into law. Those laws must include a ban on speculative demolition of old buildings with high reuse potential, such as occurred on the CentrePointe meadow. And all of that needs to happen soon, before the economy improves and development pressure increases.

While some people in Lexington have always believed in downtown’s potential, it is significant that outsiders see it, too. Executives of 21c Museum Hotels see it. So did the urban design director of the Boston Redevelopment Corp., who made his first visit to Lexington earlier this month and said he was impressed.

“You have all of the ingredients for success waiting to be put together,” Prataap Patrose told me.

After speaking at the University of Kentucky and spending a couple of evenings walking around downtown, Patrose had these recommendations: Plant more trees along city streets. Convert some one-way streets to two-way traffic. Add more bicycle lanes. Widen more sidewalks to allow for more outdoor dining. Encourage more urban apartment development and more revitalization of residential neighborhoods near the city center and UK’s campus.

“When you try to attract businesses, they look at the downtown first,” he said. “Urban design is proving to be a critical factor in making choices. People want to go where there is a good quality of life. You seem to have that here. You need to make the most of it.”

Kentuckians love a good story. But when it comes to recording the stories of blacks in the commonwealth, historians have had a lot of catching up to do.

Gerald Smith, a University of Kentucky history professor, makes that point in the introduction to a special black-history issue of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, which he edited for publication in April.

Historians had written about slavery in antebellum Kentucky, but a deeper exploration of the black experience didn’t really begin until 1971, Smith writes. That was when the Kentucky Human Rights Commission published Kentucky Black Heritage, a supplementary text for seven- and eighth-grade students.

Then, in 1982, The Fascinating Story of Black Kentuckians was published by Alice Dunnigan, who was born in Russellville in 1906. Dunnigan made history of her own in 1948 when she accompanied Harry S. Truman on a Western tour, becoming the first black journalist in Washington to cover a presidential trip.

A scholarship milestone came in 1985 when George C. Wright published a book about black life in Louisville between the Civil War and 1930, Smith said. Wright followed that five years later with the chillingly detailed study, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940. Wright, now president of Prairie View A&M University in Texas, and Marion Lucas, a Western Kentucky University history professor, published the two-volume A History of Blacks in Kentucky in 1992.

Since then, more academics have mined this rich vein, including Smith and fellow historians J. Blaine Hudson, John Hardin, Tracy E. K’Meyer and Douglas A. Boyd. Another valuable resource is the UK Libraries’ Notable Kentucky African American Database.

Smith, Hardin and Karen C. McDaniel are now editing the Kentucky African American Encyclopedia and trying to raise money to finish the book by 2014.

Smith said this issue of The Register is another significant milestone. The Register, created in 1903, is one of the nation’s oldest historical journals. The quarterly publishes work from leading academics, but it also tries to be accessible to average readers. It is a good mix of scholarship and storytelling.

Hudson writes about the free black community in antebellum Louisville, and Hardin tells the stories of key figures in the desegregation of higher education in Kentucky. Smith writes about Kentucky chapters of the Congress of Racial Equality during the civil rights movement. Joshua D. Farrington’s article looks at strategies used to pass public accommodation laws in Louisville in 1960 and 1961.

One of the most interesting stories, by Sallie L. Powell, is titled “It is Hard to be What You Have not Seen.” It tells about Brenda Hughes of Lexington and the complex issues of race, gender and sports culture that she navigated to become a pioneer in Kentucky’s unofficial religion, basketball.

The Kentucky High School Athletic Association certified Hughes as a basketball referee in 1973. She went on to become the only black woman to officiate at a Kentucky girls’ state tournament game during the 20th century.

Good timing helped Hughes, a young mother of two, succeed. In 1971, a federal judge had ordered the KHSAA to hire more black referees. That was because, 15 years after desegregation, half of student athletes were black, but only 1 percent of refs were. The year after Hughes became a referee, the federal Title IX law forced Kentucky to reinstatement girls’ high school basketball after a 40-year absence that many people blamed on sexism.

While studying at the old Dunbar High School and UK, Hughes’ only athletic opportunities were cheerleading. But she grew up with three brothers, and sports became her passion. The full-time postal worker became a part-time youth sports leader for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.

“This is no front or cause for me,” she told Lexington Leader reporter Gary Yunt in 1973. “I want to be a referee.”

Hughes died in 1986 at age 39. Nine years later, she was inducted into the Dawahares-Kentucky High School Athletic Association Sports Hall of Fame. Her story, and others told in this issue ofThe Register, remind us that Kentucky history is a rich tapestry of stories, from epic social movements to a young woman determined to become what she has not seen.

While driving to Louisville last week, I listened to a radio interview with Bob Edwards, who has published his memoirs. The Kentucky-born broadcaster talked about having to lose his accent for network radio and having to endure lots of hillbilly jokes.

Kentuckians cringe at such stereotypes, but I took it in stride that morning. I was on my way to the Idea Festival.

The festival, which started in Lexington in 2000 and has been an annual event since moving to Louisville in 2006, shatters stereotypes about Kentucky as a place of nothing but under-educated, narrow-minded, backward people.

People from around the world come to the festival to hear fascinating speakers discuss new ideas about every subject imaginable. The program strives to create an intellectual mash-up of scientists, business people, artists, students, politicians, academics and technology geeks.

The format is similar to the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conferences, whose “TED talk” videos have become an Internet sensation. The goal is to help attendees stretch their minds and open themselves to the kind of creativity that will produce the breakthrough ideas of the future.

IBM’s Watson computer was there to play Jeopardy! against high school students after the leader of the team that created the supercomputer explained how it works. An astrophysicist discussed string theory. A “neuromarketer” talked about how to trigger buying impulses in the brain. A researcher explained the science behind kissing.

A geo-strategist analyzed world political trends. A spoken-word poet talked about preserving humanity in a Facebook/Twitter world. A top IBM executive and the head of an organic tea company compared notes on fostering business innovation. Other sessions covered health care, climate change and the value of historic landscapes.

Author Wes Moore told the compelling story of his life and the life of a man with the same name and a similar hard-luck upbringing who became a cop killer, instead of the Rhodes scholar that he became. The idea Moore wanted to explore: how others’ expectations of us shape the life-altering decisions we make.

Then, out of nowhere, the stage belonged to Linsey Stirling, a hip-hop violinist from Arizona whose creative musicianship reminded me of what Lexingtonian Ben Sollee does with a cello.

“We all act as if math, science and poetry are different things, but all knowledge is connected,” said Kris Kimel, the festival’s founder and president of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corp. “What the festival is about is how to deconstruct and reconnect that knowledge.”

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and his staff worked from desks in the lobby of the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, where the festival was held, so they could attend as many sessions as possible.

About 300 city employees got to attend at least one session. Ted Smith, the city’s innovation director, encouraged them to use the experience to come up with ways to make local government more effective and efficient. “A lot of innovation comes from empowering people to bring ideas forward,” Smith said. “We want to encourage that.”

Eighty-five students from Louisville’s duPont Manual High School spent all week at the festival. Principal Larry Wooldridge said that happened because senior class president Michael Perry attended last year’s festival and convinced him that more students should come. Perry even set up a meeting between Wooldridge and Kimel to work out the details.

“These kids challenge me and the teachers every day. They come in with ideas, and they also say, ‘Here’s how we can do it,’” Wooldridge said. He said he hoped the festival would give him ideas for better integrating his school’s five diverse magnet programs.

Kimel said each of this year’s sessions — many of which were ticketed separately — attracted about 500 people. But he was disappointed that there were some empty seats. Next year, he wants more Kentucky business people and students to attend.

“When you get people in an environment like this, you get them to begin to understand that the world really is changing,” Kimel said. “If we don’t understand that, we’re going to be left out.”

Each time I attend the Idea Festival, I think about its potential to change outsiders’ stereotypes of Kentucky — and, more importantly, how such creative thinking could change the realities at the root of those stereotypes.

Ted Smith, left, debriefed some of the 300 Louisville city employees attending the Idea Festival last week to see what ideas for improving local government the festival's sessions and atmosphere may have sparked. He was sitting at the temporary office of Mayor Greg Fischer, which set up in the lobby of the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts during the festival. Photo by Tom Eblen

IBM had Think Pads long before the invention of the laptop computer that now goes by that name. The original Think Pads were leather-bound pads of paper that IBM employees were given by management, beginning in 1923, to record their ideas and inspirations.

David Barnes, an IBM executive whose official title is “technology evangelist”, used the example to explain that innovation isn’t so much about a company’s technology as its attitude. He spoke at the Idea Festival on Friday about how to create and foster business innovation.

Too many companies are unwilling to trust employees enough to give them the time and flexibility to think creatively — or support innovation and new ideas when they come out of the rank-and-file.

“Too many companies are looking quarter-to-quarter; they are not looking long-term,” Barnes said. “They pretend they’re interested in innovation, but they’re not.”

Also talking about innovation was Heather Howell of Rooibee Red Tea, a Louisville-based organic tea company. The keys to her company’s success: “Get to know your customer. Be passionate.”

Howell said creating an innovative company is only possible if you trust employees and give them the freedom to innovate.

“Give them the leash to be creative,” she said. “The best thing I ever did was to not follow the rules.”