The Bluegrass and Beyond

Here are some upcoming bicycle events, sent to me by Kenzie Gleason, Lexington’s bicycle/pedestrian coordinator (859-258-3605, kgleason@lfucg.com):

Town Branch Trail Benefit Concert & Bike Rally - Sept. 11 & 12

Town Branch Trail Inc has organized a benefit concert Friday, Sept. 11, at the new Busters in the Old Tar Distillery on Manchester Street.  Visit www.townbranch.org for details.  Then join Mayor Jim Newberry and other cycling friends for a 10-mile, police-escorted ride beginning downtown at 8:30 am (experienced cyclists 16 or older).  View more details and a description of the route atwww.townbranch.org

Second Annual Bike Prom - Sept. 12

Dance your bike around downtown Lexington during the Bike Prom! Gather at the Living Arts & Science Center for pre-prom appetizers and then ride to selected downtown destinations with a provided map. You’ll stamp your dance card at each location. Prizes for best dressed Prom King and Queen and other awards will be presented during the ‘prom’ at Molly Brooke’s Irish Bar. Bike valet parking available at the prom.  The event is $5 per person and all proceeds benefit the Living Arts & Science Center. The event is open to the public and for all levels of biking experience. Visit http://www.lasclex.org/upcoming_events.htm for more information.

Parks & Recreation to Host Public Meeting for Cardinal Run Park Trail - Sept. 15

Located in west Lexington, this trail will be approximately three miles long and will be constructed within Cardinal Run Park North (2101 Parkers Mill Road).  Parks & Recreation and a consulting team are in search of community feedback as they embark on trail design.  The meeting will be held on Sept. 15 at 6 p.m. at St Raphael Episcopal Church on Parkers Mill Road

Calling all Mountain Bikers: Public Meeting,  Veterans Park Mountain Bike Trail - Sept 17

Located in south Lexington, this off-road, unpaved trail will wind through and improve upon existing trails at Veterans Park.  Parks & Recreation and a consulting team will host a design workshop at the Tates Creek Branch Public Library on Thursday, Sept. 19 from 5:30 to 7pm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last spring, I wrote about two University of Kentucky professors who have studied Vancouver, British Columbia’s successes in urban redevelopment and sustaintability and how some of those lessons could apply to Lexington.

As part of their work, Ernest Yanarella, a political science professor, and Richard Levine, an architecture professor, organized a conference here in May. Yanarella has just published a Web site with more information on the subject.

You know it’s time for the Ichthus Christian music festival when the storm clouds start rolling in.

For most of its 40-year history, Ichthus has been plagued by bad weather, as Herald-Leader culture writer Rich Copley reminded us today.

For most of those years, Ichthus was held on the last full weekend of April and it always seemed to rain. And rain. And rain. More years than not, the site near Wilmore became a sea of mud by the time the festival was over.

After it snowed on festival weekend in 2005, organizers moved “Ickythus” to June in hopes of better weather. Judging by today’s storms, the rain seems to have followed.

But rain rarely seems to dampen the fun for those who attend Ichthus. This year probably won’t be any different. You can follow the action on Rich’s blog, Copious Notes.

I’m not a musician, a meteorologist or a theologian, but I have a suggestion: Move Ichthus to August. We always need rain then.

If you missed Commerce Lexington’s trip to Madison,Wis., last week – or even if you went – there’s another opportunity to see what metro Lexington can learn from other cities.

The University of Kentucky is sponsoring a seminar Saturday, ”Planning for Livability and Sustainability: Vancouver’s Lessons for Lexington and the Bluegrass,” at the Hilary J. Boone Center on Rose Street.

The seminar looks at Vancouver, British Columbia’s success over the past two decades at reviving its downtown and becoming an international model for urban planning, livability and sustainability — and how the lessons Vancouver has learned could be applied to Central Kentucky.

The seminar begins at 9 a.m. with remarks by UK President Lee Todd. Featured speakers are: Ian Smith, former senior urban planner in Vancouver and current project director of the Winter 2010 Olympic Village; Mark Roseland, Simon Fraser University geography professor and director of the SFU Centre for Sustainable Community Development; and Rick Balfour, an architect and director of the Vancouver Metro Planning Council.

The seminar — organized by Ernest Yanarella, a UK political science professor, and Richard Levine, a UK architecture professor — is sponsored by the Kentucky Environmental Council, Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection and Todd’s office. The session is a followup to a March 2007 seminar at the Kentucky Horse Park, and it is being coordinated with Bluegrass Tomorrow’s InnoVision2018 project.

All sessions Saturday are free and open to the public.

There’s a new effort to encourage young people to volunteer for Central Kentucky non-profit organizations — and it rocks.

The 10,000 Hours Show plans to have a major band play a concert next April at Applebee’s Park. The only way to attend will be to sign up and do at least 10 hours of community service between now and then.

Plans for the concert began several months ago as a service project of this year’s Leadership Lexington class, said class member Colleen Ebbitt. The goal is to generate at least 10,000 hours of service by at least 1,000 volunteers.

“It will be an all-ages show,” Ebbitt said. “All ages can volunteer and attend, but the music will be geared toward the 18-30 age group.”

During last week’s Commerce Lexington visit to Madison, Wis., the 260 attendees heard that Madison’s United Way sponsors a similar event. Last year, those who attended Madison’s concert had logged 38,674 hours of community service.

The event is being coordinated — and volunteer hours are being tracked — by the United Way of the Bluegrass.The presenting sponsor is W. Rogers Co. Applebee’s Park is providing the venue. Show partners include: University of Kentucky FUSION, Leadership Lexington, Georgetown College and Eastern Kentucky University.  Ebbitt said organizers are looking for additional sponsors, including a co-presenting sponsor.

Ebbitt said it may be January before a headline band is chosen because it will be late this year before many bands have firmed their tour schedules. Artists that have done these shows in other cities include Cake, Ben Folds and Guster. Ebbitt said organizers hope to get a band of that caliber.

To sign up for the 10,000 Hours Show volunteer effort, or for more information, go to the Web site.

One of my favorite things to do when I travel is to get up early and walk with my camera when the weather and light are good. Both were this morning.

Madison is a great city for walking, from the state capitol grounds to the pedestrian/public transportation corrider of State Street between downtown and the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

Here are a few photos from this morning.  Click each image to enlarge it.

There’s a famous Wayne Gretzky quote about skating to where the puck is going to be, rather than where it is. That is as true for successful cities as it is for professional hockey players.

That was the advice Madison-based consultant Rebecca Ryan gave to the 260 Kentuckians who arrived in Madison, WI, on Monday for Commerce Lexington’s 70th annual Leadership Visit. She is the author of Live First, Work Second.

Where will the puck be for cities in the years to come?  Ryan — who knows more about basketball than hockey, because she used to play hoops professionally in Europe — said the talented workers of the future will choose where they want to live and find work, rather than following a job where it takes them.

She was talking specifically about younger generations, but a lot of older-generation folks in the audience were nodding their heads, too.

As part of her work for this trip, Ryan came to Lexington and studied its attributes, along with those of Madison and other cities that Lexington likes to compare itself to. She compares cities according to seven indexes she said will be important for future success.

Those indexes are: Job growth prospects; educational resources; the “social capital” of talent; diversity and civic engagement; the cost of living; what there is to do for fun after work; and how easy it is to get around a city, especially by walking, biking and mass transit.

Lexington scored high in job growth prospects and cost of living, but lagged the other cities in some other key areas (although it still did pretty well).

Her advice: Focus on quality of life issues that will retain natives and attract new residents. I loved the way she put the challenge: “How to build a place that the next generation will be homesick for.”

Ryan said  cities need to focus on building their “social capital” by being more welcoming of new ideas and diverse groups of people. She noted that one reason the Irish potato famine of the early 1800s was so devastating was that farmers there planted basically one variety of potato.

“How can Lexington be a more open community?” Ryan asked. “What’s your idea should be more important than who your daddy is.”

Ryan showed a photo of her modest home, which she said she carefully designed with an architect based on  qualities and functions that were important to her. “The power of living in a built space that is intentionally designed is so powerful,” she said.

Ryan said the experience emphasized to her the importance of good architecture and urban planning. That includes building a human-scaled city designed for people, rather than cars. She said Madison’s State Street pedestrian mall downtown is a magnet for local residents as well as visitors.

Ryan took those talking points from a classic 1961 book I happen to be reading now: The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. I highly recommend it. Jacobs wrote the book to rail againt 1950s-era city planning ideas, which remained in fashion for decades and did a lot to damage cities, including Lexington.

Ryan looked at Lexington’s strengths and how it could build upon them. A key one she identified was developing more bicycle lanes and paths because Lexington is surrounded by so much bicycle-friendly countryside.

“This is a real area of potential for you,” she said, noting that Madison’s 150 miles of bike trails are a major civic asset.

I looked at the table behind me and noticed that two of Lexington’s biggest bike-trail boosters, Steve Austin of the Legacy Center and Urban County Councilman Jay McChord, had big smiles on their faces.

A little late to the party, as usual, I have joined Twitter.

The Herald-Leader’s hilariously good parenting blogger, Heather Chapman, had been after me for months to join Twitter. And I had been watching other colleagues such as Rich Copley and John Clay make good use of the 140-character instant headline software.  Then, Rich wrote a good column about Twitter last week.

I’m not a technophobe. In fact, just the opposite. I’m late joining Twitter for the same reason I put off getting a BlackBerry a few years ago and procrastinated on joining Facebook. I knew I would love them too much and they would take up a lot of my time, which they do. But they’re wonderful tools, and I suspect Twitter will turn out to be, too.

How will I use Twitter?  I have no idea. I’ll start figuring it out next week while 260 other folks from Lexington and I are on the Commerce Lexington trip to Madison, Wis.  You can follow by “tweets” here: @tomeblen.

Commerce Lexington will make its 70th annual Leadership Visit next Monday through Wednesday, taking more than 260 local people to Madison, Wis.

The idea of the trip is to get ideas for improving Lexington by visiting a similar-size city we can learn from. Last year’s trip to Austin, Texas, showed what live music can do to create a better quality of life and a more vibrant economy. The year before, in Boulder, Colo., the importance of bike and walking trails was a key takeaway.

What can Lexington learn from Madison?  For a column advancing the trip, I would like to hear from people who have lived in both Madison and Lexington.  What do you think Lexington’s leaders could learn?  Send me an email before Wednesday evening, and be sure to include your name and telephone number in case I want to call you back to follow up.

In a world of electronic mass culture, regional actors aren’t as famous as they once were. But anyone who has followed the acclaimed Actors Theater of Louisville over the years knows of Ray Fry.

Fry died last Monday at age 86. A memorial service is planned Sunday, May 17, at 10:30 a.m. in ATL’s  Bingham Theatre, 316 W. Main Street in Louisville.

Fry spent 24 years with ATL, from the late 1970s until the 1990s. He also acted elsewhere and directed many plays. Perhaps his best-known acting role, which he performed for 10 years, was as Ebenezer Scrooge in ATL’s production of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

I followed Fry’s career after I sublet his apartment during the summer of 1979 while he was off doing summer stock and I was working in Louisville for The Associated Press.  It was a small space in the attic of a sprawling Victorian house on Belgravia Court in Old Louisville. It was a place like Fry: full of character and one-of-a-kind.

Ron Eller, a noted authority on modern Appalachian history who teaches at the University of Kentucky, caused a stir at the East Kentucky Leadership Conference in Hazard on Thursday night by calling for an end to surface mining in the mountains.  Click here to listen to a three-minute excerpt from his speech.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo, a Prestonsburg Democrat who sits on the board of a coal company, responded in a speech to the conference the next day.  He said that rather than abolishing surface mining, local officials and regulators should work with land owners to determine the “highest and best” use of land after mining and plan before mining begins to make sure that happens.  Click here to listen to a three-minute excerpt from his speech.

It has almost become a cliché these past few weeks: African Americans, especially older ones, say they never expected to see this day come. They never expected to see a black president of the United States.

After all, this country has from its beginning been divided, obsessed and limited by race. Now that perhaps the most symbolic of glass ceilings has been shattered, what does it mean for the future?

That was much on the minds of 100 or so people who gathered Monday at the Urban League offices in Louisville’s West  End to watch a big television screen as Barack Obama took his oath of office.

They were black and white, old, young and everything in between. They cheered, they cried – and they hoped.

“I never dreamed I would ever see this,” said Georgia Powers, the first woman and first African American to be elected to the Kentucky Senate. “The blacks who helped build the White House were slaves. And just to think that there’s an African American who’s the leader in the White House is just amazing.  It’s just almost unbelievable.”

Powers, 85, is a civil rights legend.  She had been sick recently, and she had planned to stay home and watch the inauguration alone. She was afraid she might cry.

As a state senator in the 1960s, Powers was the driving force behind Kentucky’s passage of some of the South’s first civil rights laws, banning discrimination in housing and public accommodation. She and Martin Luther King Jr. were close associates and, as she later revealed in her autobiography, lovers.  When he was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, she was among those there with him.

Powers sees the work she and countless others did as paving the way for Obama and a new generation of people of all races to be able to work together to tackle society’s problems.

“I  just love these young people, because they don’t see color the way the older people did,” she said. “It makes a big difference. It’s waking up the older generation, too. These younger people are teaching the older generation some things.”

Powers’ thoughts and emotions were shared by many others, such as Leonard Lyles, who in the mid-1950s became the first black scholarship football player at the University of Louisville. “I’m just really pleased, really happy,” he said. “I hope I don’t cry.”

Walter Hutchins, 78, who was an activist with the Congress of Racial Equality in Philadelphia in the 1960s, summed up Obama’s election this way: “Evidence of possibility.”

Champagne glasses of grape juice were passed out, and as Obama finished his oath, there were cheers and toasts.  As Obama’s inaugural address was shown on the big screen, the crowd sat spellbound amid occasional mumors of “yes” and “amen.” Many wiped away tears.

“We have begun to cross that great divide in our country,” said Benjamin Richmond, the Urban League’s president. “We still have got a lot of problems to work on.  Racism is still high. But we’re getting there. We are getting there by leaps and bounds.”

Many said Obama’s inauguration meant not so much that African Americans have arrived, but that they are now able to join this nation’s great journey as an equal partner.

“It felt like the whole world stood still for a moment, and something had changed,” said D’Shawn Johnson, an Urban League officer. “If America was a stock, I would go out and buy some.”

Aside from the election of America’s first biracial president, what I found most inspiring Tuesday night were the speeches the candidates gave once the votes had been counted and the will of the people made clear.

And I wondered: How will Kentuckians respond?

John McCain’s concession speech was classy. After silencing the natural impulse of his supporters to boo Barack Obama, McCain spoke eloquently about what matters now:

“I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited,” the Republican nominee said.

“Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. … It’s natural, tonight, to feel some disappointment. But tomorrow, we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again.”

Obama then called for unity among Americans — black and white, red and blue.

“So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other. In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let’s resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that have poisoned our politics for so long,” said the Democrat, who went on to praise the GOP as “a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.”

“As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

Kentuckians voted overwhelmingly for McCain, and it will be interesting to see how they respond to change many did not want.

Obama’s historical reference made me think of how Lincoln was hated by so many fellow Kentuckians during his lifetime because his views against slavery were considered radically liberal.

My point is not that conservative Kentuckians should embrace Obama’s liberalism, but that they should move beyond ideology and fear of change to become influential voices in constructive dialogue about solving our nation’s problems.

Of course, Obama must live up to his words of inclusiveness and compromise. Politicians don’t always mean what they say. George W. Bush promised when elected to be “a uniter, not a divider,” and then became just the opposite.

If Obama and newly powerful Democratic leaders in Congress really do reach out in a spirit of compromise, how will Kentuckians respond?

America’s strength has never been in the purity of ideology. Real life doesn’t fit into neat, intellectual boxes. That is why 1960s liberalism failed as spectacularly as Bush conservatism. America’s strength is its ability to right the pendulum each time it swings too far to the left or right. Wisdom is about having principles, but knowing when to compromise with good people who disagree.

It will be tempting for Kentuckians to listen to the ideologues. They were already braying Wednesday on talk radio — gleeful to have an opponent in the White House who will boost their business model, and eager for the next opportunity to “take back America.” Just as dangerous are die-hard liberals who think they now have a mandate. What voters were really saying Tuesday is that government has a job to do, and they want it done.

Among “red” states in this election, few will be watched closer than Kentucky. It’s not just because of our historic aversion to change, or because of people like the 62-year-old Knott County man who told a reporter Tuesday that he was voting for McCain because “I just don’t like that colored fellow.” It’s because of Mitch McConnell. Kentucky’s senior senator now finds himself the nation’s most influential Republican. How will he use that power?

McConnell is a brilliant legislator, but he has often used his skill to further big-money special interests and gutter politics. He now has a unique opportunity to shape a different legacy, if he chooses to.

Before he became the Senate’s Republican leader in 2006, McConnell sat at an antique desk that once belonged to another Kentuckian. Henry Clay was a man of strong principles who nevertheless mastered the art of compromise, brokering deals among ideologues that held the nation together.

Will McConnell become the Obama administration’s obstructionist-in-chief, seeking to score points for Republicans waiting for the next election? Or will he become the next Henry Clay, leading a loyal opposition, speaking up for Republican principles, curbing Democratic excess and forging compromises that return America to peace and prosperity?

As we move forward, most Americans want to embrace the mottos of both presidential campaigns: Country First. Yes We Can.

How will Kentuckians respond?

In addition to the Second Sunday road-closing events on Oct. 12 in 71 of Kentucky’s 120 counties, several free activities are planned at Kentucky State Parks.  Here’s a summary of them from a parks press release:

Barren River Lake State Resort Park, Lucas

Barren River staff will lead an interpretive hike along the 1-mile Connell Nature Trail.  This hike takes approximately 1.5 hours and goes through a heavily wooded area. Participants will see a variety of trees and possibly some of the wildlife, which could include our triplet and twin white tail deer fawns.  Participants should wear comfortable clothes, hiking boots or tennis shoes (no flip flops). Bring along drinking water and apply sunscreen.  Hikers should meet in front of the lodge at 1 p.m. CST.  Terrain is easy-to-moderate.

Blue Licks Battlefield State Resort Park, Mount Olivet

Blue Licks will close a major portion of the park to vehicle traffic from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Children and adults can enjoy walking the park roads, riding bikes, skateboards, rollerblades, etc.

Buckhorn Lake State Resort Park, Buckhorn

Buckhorn Lake State Resort Park’s first 2-mile Back to Nature Walk begins in front of the lodge at 2 p.m.  Most of the walk will be on blacktop, with a small portion on gravel.   In addition, local health departments and clinics will provide services and tips.

Columbus-Belmont State Park, Columbus

This is the weekend of the Civil War Days event.  Festivities will include a “ghost walk” on Friday night that goes through park trails, which are earthworks built by Confederates during the Civil War.

Dale Hollow Lake State Resort Park, Burkesville

Dale Hollow Lake State Resort Park will offer a guided hike to Eagle’s Point at 4 p.m. This is a moderate 1.6-mile hike out to a beautiful overlook of the lake.  Learn about park and lake history and native wildlife, and see the fall foliage.

Greenbo Lake State Resort Park, Greenup

A Fern Valley hike begins at the trail head at the Jesse Stuart Parking Lot at 2 p.m. The walk will be at an easy pace and last about an hour. Greenbo also has hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding trails for all levels of expertise.

As for almost every other day of the year, Kentucky’s state park system has more than 250 miles of hiking trails of various levels of difficulty.  Find more information at www.parks.ky.gov.

There were so many good speakers and programs at the Idea Festival in Louisville this week, it was hard to attend them all, much less write about them all.

To read, see and hear more, go to the Idea Festival Web site, which includes Podcasts and videos. There’s also the festival’s official blog. Nicholasville blogger Wayne Hall and his helpers did a good job of covering the event.

For more information on the Idea Kentucky event I wrote about Wednesday, go to the Idea Kentucky Web site and another site, iMedia Kentucky Web site, a resource created by the Kentucky Science and Technology Corp. and two state agencies.

If you’re an architecture buff, the University of Kentucky College of Design’s Web site includes information about its fall lecture series and has videos of lectures that have already taken place.

Don’t you feel smarter already?

Here’s a good question: Should the legal drinking age be reduced from 21 to 18? It’s a question many university presidents want the public to discuss, according to an Associated Press story on the front page of today’s Herald-Leader.

You can vote, join the military and fight and die in Iraq at 18, but you can’t legally buy a beer. Does that make sense?

Anti-alcohol activists say it does. They think lowering the drinking age would lead to more alcohol use and abuse by younger people. They say the university presidents are just wanting to reduce their institutions’ liability for alchol-related problems.

But lowering the legal drinking age would put more of the responsibility for alcohol education onto parents and families. If people were taught to drink responsibly when they were at home, might the lesson stick better? Does making something illegal just make it more attractive to abuse?

All good questions. What do you think? Leave a comment below.

Nothing makes you feel old like watching a time capsule being opened – and remembering the day it was sealed.

I was 7 years old on that Sunday – Jan. 9, 1966 – and Southern Hills Methodist Church was dedicating its new sanctuary on Harrodsburg Road at what was then the edge of town.

We all gathered near the main door and watched as a copper box was cemented behind a cornerstone engraved ”1965.“ (Construction always takes longer than planned.) My parents told me the box was a ”time capsule“ that would be opened someday in the future, and people would look at the things inside and see who we were.

A few years earlier, as a wave of growth and development swept across the farmland south of Lexington, Methodist leaders decided they needed a church there. Southern Hills was started in 1959 by a few dozen families, including mine, and a dynamic young minister, Don Herren.

The congregation met in the old Picadome School until a church building was ready two years later. A little more than a year after the futuristic-looking sanctuary was completed, Southern Hills had more than 1,000 members.

Last Sunday, Southern Hills United Methodist Church began a yearlong celebration of its 50th anniversary. I don’t get back there very often. During the 22 years I was away from Lexington, I became active in another denomination.

When I arrived for the celebration service, I didn’t know the time capsule would be opened. All my parents had said was that the Tuttle family was barbecuing chicken for a dinner afterward. That’s all they needed to say.

Monthly potluck dinners were a staple at Southern Hills. But the serious food was reserved for one Sunday each summer when John Tuttle and the men of the church barbecued hundreds and hundreds of chickens and served them with baked beans and cole slaw. The sermon always seemed to go faster that day as the smoky aroma drifted in through the air-conditioning vents.

Tuttle was a poultry specialist at the University of Kentucky’s College of Agriculture, and he was always looking for ways to promote chicken. Like Colonel Sanders, he developed his own special blend of herbs and spices. He died years ago, but his children still have a company make up the sauce mix in bulk. Every few years, my father and I buy a five-pound bag.

Tuttle’s son and two daughters, dressed in special aprons embroidered for the occasion, were cooking away outside when I found a pew with my parents and read in the bulletin that the time capsule would be opened.

With help from Wiley Finney, a charter member well into his 90s, the Rev. Bill Moore carefully removed the box’s contents for everyone to see. There was a membership roster, other church documents and a photo of the sanctuary’s groundbreaking ceremony in 1964. Finney remarked that one man in the picture had died the previous week.

Herren, who served three terms as a Fayette County school board member and chairman, died in 2004. His wife, Pat, a music professor who always sang in the choir, was honored with a bouquet of roses.

The capsule held a complete copy of the Lexington Herald of Jan. 7, 1966, and several clippings of Herald and Leader stories and photos marking early milestones in the church’s life. I’ve always found it interesting that the simplest things we put in the newspaper will be clipped, saved and cherished.

It was fun seeing the time capsule opened. But as I looked around the sanctuary, the whole place seemed like a time capsule, reflecting both my life and the transformation of Lexington over the past half-century.

Seated in the pews were several of my old friends and their children, and many more of their parents – my old Sunday school teachers and Boy Scout leaders. So many familiar faces. In my mind’s eye, I still see many of them as the young UK professors, IBM engineers, lawyers, doctors, merchants, builders, teachers and salesmen whose labors and dreams would help make Lexington the city it has become.

It is moments like that when you realize a church is more than a building or a place to worship. It is a community built on faith, fellowship, dreams – and, if you’re lucky, great barbecued chicken.

You hear a lot of talk in Lexington about how encouraging more live music and entertainment venues downtown would be good for the economy, and that’s true.

It would improve Lexington’s quality of life and attract and retain the creative, young workers of the future and the companies that want to hire them.

But what the 275 Lexington leaders on the Commerce Lexington trip to Austin, Texas, are learning this week is that music and entertainment can develop into a significant industry itself, with the right planning and encouragement from local government, banks and other business interests.

And you don’t have to be a Nashville, Los Angeles or Austin to make it happen.

Austin’s music scene goes back to the 1930s, when Kenneth Threadgill hired local bands to play at his Gulf station at night and started selling more beer than gas. Things really took off when the cowboys and hippies collided in the late 1960s, with University of Texas students providing a ready-made audience.

Now, music employs 11,200 people in Austin, generates $11 million in taxes and has an annual economic impact of $616 million. And it’s only a piece of what Austin calls its creative industry sector, which also includes art, film production, digital music and visual media - otherwise known as creating video games.

“Fun is an important part of the economy,” said Jim Butler, a city employee whose job it is to nurture creative businesses. “We take it very seriously.”

Here’s a not-so-small but telling example:

Austin City Limits is one of the most successful and longest-running shows on public television. It showcases both top talent and up-and-comers for a worldwide audience. The show began in 1975, when Austin public television station KLRU convinced Willie Nelson to shoot a pilot to kick off a series of shows featuring Texas musicians.

“We started out just wanting to put a lens on what was happening in Austin at the time,” said Ed Bailey, the show’s vice president for brand development.

When Austin City Limits was still going three years later, producers decided to upgrade the set. They came up with the backdrop that shows Austin’s skyline, which three decades later has become the show’s trademark and has helped make Austin famous.

“It wasn’t part of a business plan to promote Austin,” Bailey said. “It happened because a few creative individuals got together and made a judgment call.”

Then, seven years ago, the show’s producers decided they could use their contacts in the music industry to create a festival as a fundraiser for KLRU. After all, some of the nation’s biggest entertainers had gotten their start on Austin City Limits and returned regularly.

The three-day festival now attracts 130 bands on eight stages and 75,000 fans a day to Austin’s Zilker Park each September. Over the past six years, the festival has generated $100 million in economic impact for Austin.

It was a success story that got several Lexington people thinking: Why not us?

After all, Kentucky has produced some of the nation’s most successful musicians, and there’s a whole genre of music called bluegrass. Lexington already has successful niche festivals, such as Festival of the Bluegrass at the Kentucky Horse Park and Ichthus near Wilmore.

Lexington has its own home-grown live music success story: Michael Johnathan’s “Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour,” which is beamed each week from the Kentucky Theatre to 491 radio stations worldwide, XM Satellite Radio, a number of public TV stations and streams live online. It will record its 500th show on Sept. 15.

More than a little brand equity there. Great contacts in the music industry.

So, could Lexington boost its economy and image - not to mention the show’s - with a festival?

Austin’s experiences also sparked ideas for Lexington on a smaller scale.

Lexington has some great large venues for shows - Rupp Arena, the Opera House, UK’s Singletary Center for the Arts. But what the city lacks is smaller venues like the Dame, which is looking for a new home since being displaced from Main Street by the proposed CentrePointe development. Those are the venues where musicians get their starts and a local music scene takes root and grows.

The most popular activity for the Lexington visitors Wednesday night was a “pub crawl” to four of the bars in downtown Austin. Many people later wandered over to some live performances at other clubs, such as Stubb’s Bar-B-Q, where Kentuckian Loretta Lynn will be singing June 13.

Wednesday night’s acts were less famous, but still popular.

“There were probably 1,000 people at that one show on a Wednesday night,” Lexington architect Clive Pohl said. “And we passed dozens of clubs on the way there and they were all packed.”

Craig Robertson, a young attorney, dreams of an outdoor concert venue in downtown Lexington, perhaps in the Cox Street parking lot beside Rupp Arena, and lots of small, downtown music clubs. “Where can you go now in Lexington to see the people who aren’t big headliners?” he said.

Vice Mayor Jim Gray appointed a downtown entertainment task force in October 2007 that will soon issue a report and some recommendations. And a few more recommendations are likely to be added when this group returns from Austin.

Council member Linda Gorton said little things Austin is doing to encourage clubs and entertainment venues could easily be done in Lexington - relaxing some ordinances, for example, or providing loading zones on streets for entertainers to use at night.

“We could remove some small obstacles and make it happen,” Gorton said.

Woodford Webb, president of the company that wants to build CenterPointe in downtown Lexington, has an op-ed piece in today’s Herald-Leader that explains some design changes made in response to community opposition to the project. “We have taken serious looks and made deep analysis into this project while preserving the building program elements required to make this a successful block and with the confidence that it will serve as a catalyst for the neighboring blocks’ imminent revitalization,” Webb writes.

Here are PDFs of revised renderings for CentrePointe released by The Webb Companies. The files are large, so they could take awhile to download. Click here for a Main Street view. Click here for an Upper Street view.

Donovan Rypkema of PlaceEconomics, a Washington, D.C., consulting firm that specializes in the economic revitalization of city centers and development of historic properties, discusses CentrePointe on his blog. He writes about LEED certification, which is intended to result in more environmentally friendly buildings and construction practices. But he says CentrePointe is an example of what is becoming a national pattern of “using LEED certification as the club to demolish historic buildings.”

Preserve Lexington, a community group formed to urge that CentrePointe incorporate some or all of the 14 buildings on the block that date as far back as 1826, plans a rally and fundraiser on Friday, June 13. The event will be from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Limestone Club, 213 North Limestone St. Admission is $20. There will be two bands — “The Swells” and “Between Clark and Hillsdale” — along with beer, barbecue and a silent auction of art posters.

Meanwhile, the South Hill Neighborhood Association has donated $2,000 to Preserve Lexington and challenged other downtown neighborhood associations to donate. The Elsmere Park Neighborhood Association also has given an undisclosed donation, a Preserve Lexington spokeswoman said.

The next step in the CenterPointe dispute comes June 25 at 1:30 p.m. in the Urban County Council Chambers when the Courthouse Area Design Review Board considers The Webb Companies’ revised development plans. The board must approve any changes to or destruction of buildings on the Main Street side of the block that fall within the courthouse overlay area. To win approval to demolish the buildings, The Webb Companies must show that it can’t make a reasonable financial return by restoring them.

And, finally, somebody sent me this example of a bar/restaurant in a century-old building in New York City that has helped humanize the scale of the skyscraper that covers the rest of the block. Something like this may or may not work on the CentrePointe block, but it’s interesting.