Some of it goes to pay for the reminder signs you see on roads.  And $9,300 of it will soon be used to pay for bicycle safety education that will benefit about 16,000 Fayette County Public Schools students from kindergarten through fifth grade.

The money came from the Kentucky Bicycle and Bikeway Commission’s Paula Nye Memorial Educational Grant program, which is funded by the $10 fee added to each Share the Road plate.

The grant will be used to teach kids that bicycles aren’t toys, but serious vehicles that must be ridden safely. That includes obeying traffic rules and wearing a helmet.

Elementary school physical education teachers will be trained by instructors certified by the League of American Bicyclists, then they will include bike safety in their curriculum.

“This is a topic near and dear to my heart,” Superintendent Stu Silberman said in a news release. “If we can keep one kid from having a serious accident through this grant, then our efforts will be worth it. But I’m confident we’re going to help a whole lot more than that.”

Silberman was an avid cyclist until three years ago when he was seriously injured in a freak accident. He hasn’t ridden on the road since then, although he keeps in shape by riding a bicycle trainer in his basement so he can resume cycling outdoors after he retires.

The superintendent said he sometimes speaks to students about bike safety, and shows them his helmet, which was cracked in three places when he lost his balance and fell off his bike while riding on country roads one weekend.  He thinks his accident would have been much worse if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet.

If you want to help support future bicycle safety education efforts, click here for more information about the Share the Road plates.

Digital technology has given news papers more readers than ever. Ironically, though, that technology means newspapers no longer are the dominant force in advertising, from where the money to support journalism has always come.

To make matters worse, most newspapers are owned by big corporations that went into debt to get bigger. They thought profits from advertising would make the debt affordable. They were wrong.

As a result, newspapers and newsrooms are dwindling in size. Radio and television newsrooms have been hit hard, too; they just don’t talk about it. But I worry most about newspapers, and not just because I work for one.

Newspapers have always done most of journalism’s heavy lifting, from investigations to public affairs reporting.

The Herald-Leader has gotten a lot of attention lately for exposing wasteful spending in some of Kentucky’s quasi- government agencies. But that kind of work is nothing new: Newspapers of all sizes have a long record of giving Kentucky’s powerful people and institutions some much-needed oversight.

Newspapers also play a big role in community-building. They do everything from covering neighborhood zoning disputes to printing wedding announcements.

You could call newspapers one of Kentucky’s “signature” industries. There’s at least one in each of Kentucky’s 120 counties, and almost all of them are struggling.

But I have an idea: What if newspapers could persuade the General Assembly to give them another way to replace the advertising revenue they used to have?

What if newspapers were allowed to put slot machines in some of that empty space where reporters and editors used to work? Big newspapers might even have room for full-blown casinos.

People who went to their local newspapers to gamble wouldn’t go out of state so much, so more of their money would stay in Kentucky.

Truthfully, though, much of that money would have stayed in Kentucky anyway. It just would have been spent on other things. So other than helping newspapers and the people associated with them, gambling revenue wouldn’t do a lot for Kentucky’s economy.

There would be other complications, too. For example, critics of slot machines and casinos say they attract crime and create other social costs.

There’s big money in addictive businesses like gambling, especially when they’re part of a government-sponsored monopoly.

Others would surely complain that it’s not fair for such a monopoly to benefit only one industry, like newspapers. At the least, TV and radio also would want a piece of the action. And it wouldn’t be long before politicians decided that government needed a bigger share of the take. After all, they created the monopoly, and they could just as easily take it away.

Even if newspapers could hang onto most of their new gambling revenue, I’m not sure it would be good for journalism in the long run.

Some media companies would use their cash infusion to invest in journalism — for a while. But corporate executives have a duty to maximize return for investors. If media companies could make big profits with slot machines and casinos, why would they want to subsidize journalism?

Even “signature” industries aren’t exempt from the laws of economics, no matter how special they think they are.

My guess is that journalism must find a way to adapt by attracting more loyal customers, doing a better job of marketing and selling its products, creating new business models and proving its value. It no longer can be totally dependent on something else, even advertising.

So maybe my newsroom gambling idea isn’t so good after all.

Besides, it’s not an original idea.

Another “signature” industry has tried this strategy in other states for years, with little evidence that slot machines and casinos are anything but a short-term fix for deeper economic issues.

Of course, that industry would have us think it’s a horse of a different color.

I wouldn’t bet on it.

We’re just beginning to climb out of the biggest economic slump since the Great Depression. Bad economic times beg for good ideas, and the only way those ideas can make a difference is when entrepreneurs turn them into reality.

Global Entrepreneurship Week is sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation to encourage young people around the world to explore their potential to be innovators, self-starters and entrepreneurs. Last year, 3 million people participated in 25,000 events in 77 countries affiliated with the effort.

Among this year’s events is one in Lexington: Startup Weekend, a 54-hour workshop designed to help would-be entrepreneurs figure out how to turn their ideas into businesses.

Awesome Inc., a business incubator on East Main Street started two years ago by four 20-something entrepreneurs, is hosting the workshop, which runs from Friday evening through Sunday evening.

Brian Raney, one of Awesome Inc.’s partners, expects as many as 75 participants. If you want to be one of them, you can sign up at lexington.startupweekend.org. The cost is $40, which covers all meals during the weekend.

Awesome Inc. Lexington held its first Startup Weekend a year ago, when it was organized by the Kentucky Startup Blog, the Young Entrepreneurs of Lexington and the University of Kentucky’s Entrepreneur Club. It included would-be entrepreneurs who ranged from high school and college students to people in their 50s and 60s, Raney said. Most of the ventures developed during the workshop were Internet-related because that works best in such a short session.

Startup Weekend, a concept developed promoted by a non-profit group in Seattle, has done events in more than 50 cities and 12 countries over the past two years. More than 250 businesses have come out of those workshops, the group claims.

Here’s how Startup Weekend will work:

On Friday night, participants with ideas they think could become businesses make pitches to the group. Teams self-select around the ideas that draw the most interest. The teams then spend the next two days fleshing out the ideas, developing business and technical plans and building a basic Web site.

At the end of the workshop Sunday night, each team makes a presentation about its proposed business and participants discuss and critique them.

The weekend will include presentations by Ken Sagan, an attorney with the law firm Stites and Harbison, and John Williamson of Uvestor. The company, an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of investment real estate, grew out of last year’s Startup Weekend.

Sponsors for Startup Weekend include Stites & Harbison and Commerce Lexington.

Raney said many entrepreneurs find the workshop a good way to develop their ideas, because there’s a sense of focus and community.

“Being around people who are interested in the same things you are interested in allows you to stay motivated,” he said. “It’s the same reason some people go to a gym to work out rather than doing it alone in their basement.”

It’s similar to the concept behind Awesome Inc., which rents workspace to 15 fledgling entrepreneurs who are looking for community and an inexpensive place to work that’s a more professional address than a home office.

Raney, 27, is a Campbell County native with economics and computer science degrees from the University of Kentucky who said he has started two businesses in addition to Awesome Inc.

He said Lexington has a bright future as a place for entrepreneurs. Reasons include UK, a relatively low cost of living, an attractive environment and a good quality of life.

“I think it has great potential,” he said of Lexington. “That’s why I’m still here instead of being in Austin, Boulder or San Francisco.”

And after this weekend, he hopes to have more company.

Jim Host thinks they’re right — but that they’re thinking too small. That’s no surprise; few Kentuckians think as big as Host.

The Ashland native turned college sports marketing into a business empire and headed the Commerce Cabinet and state parks system. Host, 71, was the first chairman of the Alltech FEI 2010 World Equestrian Games before stepping down to focus on building a new sports arena in downtown Louisville.

Host is a longtime Lexington resident who spends much of his time in Louisville. He said his experience has convinced him Kentucky will never achieve its full potential until its two biggest cities get beyond their rivalries and develop a close economic partnership with each other and the counties between them.

“Kentucky’s (economic) capital is between Lexington and Louisville,” Host said. “The limited resources of this state can’t afford for there not to be cooperation.”

America’s economy is experiencing fundamental change, with such longtime engines as California and Florida losing their luster. Host thinks that could be an opportunity for Kentucky.

Kentucky’s central location makes it ideal for companies such as Amazon.com, which has huge warehouses in Lexington and Campbellsville, and United Parcel Service, whose air freight hub is in Louisville.

Other industries — including Toyota, at Georgetown — have grown up between the two largest cities. Harley Davidson is considering Shelby County as the site for a 1,000-employee plant.

Many people whose jobs give them the flexibility to live anywhere have come to or stayed in Kentucky because it has a mix of city amenities, picturesque small towns and rural areas with natural beauty and recreation opportunities.

“How many people do you know who could afford to live anywhere, but they choose to live here?” Host asked.

States such as North Carolina, California and Minnesota have spurred economic development by forging close ties among their cities and universities.

Kentucky is catching on.

Commerce Lexington and Greater Louisville Inc. will make their first joint city visit in May, to Pittsburgh. Officials have said they see the trip as a step toward closer economic cooperation.

The 2010 World Equestrian Games are a great opportunity for Lexington to work with Louisville to showcase the larger region’s assets and potential. “Many top CEOs will come to the Games, and we won’t even know they’re here,” Host said.

Universities have huge potential to spur economic development, and Kentucky can no longer afford for the universities of Kentucky and Louisville to not be joined at the hip, Host said.

“There’s a lot more going on than people realize,” University of Kentucky President Lee T. Todd Jr. said when asked about that. A UK spokesman said there are 54 joint research projects, worth $24.4 million, between UK and U of L faculty.

But Host thinks there could be much more coordination and sharing of resources. He noted the two universities’ boards of trustees have never met together — at least not in anyone’s memory.

Part of the challenge, Host said, will be for Lexington and Louisville to convince the rest of the state that what’s good for them is good for everyone. That’s because infrastructure investment and economic development in the cities benefits the entire state through commuter jobs, spinoff industries and shared tax revenues.

“This is not to be in competition with the rest of the state, but to provide revenue for the rest of the state,” Host said.

Fayette and Jefferson counties together accounted for 22.5 percent of state real and tangible personal property tax receipts during fiscal 2009, according to the Revenue Cabinet, which doesn’t track sales tax collections by county.

The cultural and psychological distance between Lexington and Louisville has always been much greater than the 75 miles that separate them. A lot of that comes down to Wildcat blue and Cardinal red.

“It’s part of what we grew up with here — we don’t mess with U of L because they’re our arch-enemy,” said Host, a huge sports fan who once played baseball for UK and admits to bleeding blue. “That can be the case in athletics, but it can’t be the case any longer in academics.”

The bottom line is that Lexington and Louisville must become partners instead of rivals, and the rest of Kentucky must realize that as the economies of those cities go, so goes the rest of the state.

“Sometimes a bad economy causes things to be thought through better,” Host said. “Kentucky is a state with limited resources; we have to focus on how we can make one plus one equal four.”

Florence Reece, a miner’s wife, wrote that song about the economic controversies surrounding coal in Harlan County in the 1930s. Thursday’s forum, sponsored by UK’s College of Engineering, focused on the global controversies surrounding coal today.

What made the forum remarkable was that it might have been the first time that so many coal executives, environmentalists and community activists sat together in the same room and discussed those controversies openly and, for the most part, honestly.

Some speakers on both sides fell into the old traps — misrepresentations, oversimplifications and emotional appeals. But most stuck to facts. Things are different when you’re addressing your biggest critics, rather than preaching to your choir.

Historian Ron Bryant noted that coal’s effects on human health and the environment have been controversial since mining began in Kentucky in the 1820s. “But the need for coal stopped all arguments,” he said.

Coal powered the industrial revolution, and it fuels our modern lifestyle. But the global debate over climate change is making people realize that the future will be much different than the past.

Most of the world’s scientists and policy makers agree that climate change is real and that burning coal poses a threat to civilization. Meanwhile, there’s increased public opposition to surface and mountaintop-removal mining in Appalachia and the environmental damage it causes.

“We can no longer in this state maintain the status quo,” said Joe Blackburn, a regulator for more than three decades who heads the Lexington field office of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining.

“Dealing with change is never easy,” he said. “But change is a normal part of life.”

Some coal executives seemed surprised when economists outlined their industry’s declining influence in Kentucky.

Coal employment has fallen sharply since its peak in 1980 as mining has become more mechanized. Coal accounts for only 1 percent of statewide employment — and only 3.5 percent when spin-off jobs are included.

Mining creates some good-paying jobs, but it also crowds out other economic opportunities in coal-producing counties, some of which are among the nation’s poorest.

Coal production accounts for only 1.45 percent of gross state product — and it’s falling. Kentucky coal production peaked in 1988, and the market has shifted to cheaper coal from Western states.

Coal has kept Kentucky’s electricity rates among the cheapest in the nation. But those rates are rising and will continue to rise in a carbon-conscious world that will require coal to bear more of its true cost.

And here’s the rub: Coal now provides about half the nation’s electricity — and 92 percent in Kentucky. Renewable energy sources aren’t commercially advanced enough to replace coal, and they won’t be for years, if not decades.

Renewable energy and perhaps nuclear power must be developed soon, because we’re running out of coal. Kentucky might have only 20 years of coal left — or maybe 100 years, with improved mining technology and the right market conditions. But everyone agrees that coal is a finite resource whose end is in sight.

The forum wasn’t all doom and gloom; there was encouraging news. UK researchers talked about what they’re doing to develop renewable energy and lessen the environmental damage of mining and burning coal, and to reforest and reclaim mined land.

The unmistakable takeaway from this daylong “fair and balanced” discussion of coal’s future was that the solutions aren’t simple and the trade-offs won’t be painless, either for the coal industry or for the energy-consuming public.

But Kentucky is at a crossroads.

The coal industry can continue to deny climate change, fight regulation and use scare tactics to delay the inevitable. Or it can work with scientists and its critics to find more responsible ways to mine and use the coal we have left.

Kentucky’s political and business leaders can try to preserve the status quo, as they did for years with tobacco. Or they can focus on energy conservation. They can support research. And they can develop the energy technologies and industries that must eventually replace coal.

If last week’s public forum showed one thing, it’s that there’s only one logical path, no matter which side you’re on.

It’s even more astounding when you realize that the 30-acre site could be one of the hottest pieces of real estate in Lexington if it were redeveloped by someone able to think outside the big box.

Built in the 1970s, when malls were all the rage and suburban sprawl was in full bloom, Lexington Mall began declining in the early 1990s. Tenants moved out, complaining that Maryland-based Saul Centers wasn’t maintaining the place.

The last lonely tenant moved out in 2005, when Dillard’s closed its store. Since then, Lexington Mall’s doors have been boarded up and fenced off and its vast blacktop parking lot has cracked and crumbled.

City officials have been wringing their hands over Lexington Mall for years. Developers have tried unsuccessfully to buy it. Every few years, Saul breaks its silence and says the mall will be redeveloped. Then nothing happens.

Lexington Mall is out of sight and out of mind for its absentee landlord. But it has been much on the minds of local developers and landscape architects. Here’s why: The mall sits on a huge piece of prime land inside New Circle Road, situated between the city’s Idle Hour Park and the reservoir.

“It’s one of the few sites in Lexington with a water view,” said Brian Lee, a University of Kentucky landscape architecture professor whose students have studied the site for academic exercises in urban redevelopment.

The property fronts both New Circle and Richmond roads, and it is just 3 miles from downtown by way of the city’s most beautiful, upscale thoroughfare. There are schools, a fire station and shopping nearby.

Developers I talked with agreed that the site shouldn’t be another mall or Hamburg-style big-box retail center.

With a zoning change, they said, the site would be ideal for a “new urban” mixed-use village of one- to five-story buildings with shops, offices, condos and apartments, all situated on traditional streets and buffered by green space. Businesses on the mall’s edge — Home Depot, Applebee’s and Perkins restaurant, and Central Bank — could easily be worked into a new design plan.

“It seems like the idea of a cluster of smaller retail shops around a common green and serving as a village center with perhaps loft residential or office might have some merit,” said Morgan McIlwain, a landscape architect with M2D Design Group. The group’s recent work includes the site plan for the new Bluegrass Community and Technical College campus on the Eastern State Hospital site.

“It goes nicely with this notion of infill,” McIlwain added. “We could get higher density and not sprawl so much.”

Tom Low, a principal in the Charlotte, N.C., firm DPZ Architects and Town Planners — the firm most famous for designing a similar development in Seaside, Fla. — sent me an interesting diagram of examples for converting a site similar to Lexington Mall into a village-style development.

One developer cited the example also of Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio. I’ve also seen such projects in Charlotte, N.C., and Williamsburg, Va. When the economy and lending environment improves, something like that could make sense.

First, though, executives at Saul Centers need to find a map and remember where Lexington is. Then they need to find a calendar and realize it’s 2009, not 1990.

Then, maybe, they will partner with or sell Lexington Mall to a developer with the vision to turn one of this city’s most prominent examples of urban decay into a vibrant piece of the urban landscape.

Examples of how an old mall can be redeveloped into a mixed-use project with multiple buildings, streets and green space. Image: DPZ

When people in Lexington talk about great high school marching bands, the names Lafayette and Paul Laurence Dunbar always come up.

But as with many things in Kentucky, there is a lot of greatness beyond the big cities, out in the small towns and rural counties that so often define this state’s character.

The state’s other biggest band rivalry is Bourbon and Adair counties. It continued Saturday when Bourbon took first place and Adair second in Class 3A at the state championships.

For the big city rivalries, Lafayette finished first in Class 5A with Paul Laurence Dunbar coming in fourth. Madison Central was second.

Adair County has a long tradition built by Tim Allen, who became director there in 1981 and won more state championships than anyone else before stepping down this year.

But the competition has been tighter since one of Allen’s former students, Eric Hale, became director at Bourbon County five years ago.

Last year, Bourbon edged Adair by a fraction of a point to win the state championship. A few weeks later, Bourbon went to Indianapolis and won its division in the prestigious Bands of America Championship.

Hale credits parent and community support for the 79-member Bourbon County band’s recent success, as well as a good feeder program from the middle school where his wife, Nadine, is the band director. She also helps Hale and assistant director Kevin Akers at the high school.

But Hale, like other band directors, says success isn’t about always winning.

“I want them to learn that hard work doesn’t always mean you’ll win every time,” he said. “But if you don’t go out there and give it all you’ve got, you’re going to regret it.”

Hale enjoys the rivalry with Adair, where he still always seems to have a cousin or two in the band — someone who will gloat when they beat him, or be sore if he beats them.

The rivalry also keeps band members focused, said Bourbon County’s field commander, Rachel Quinn.

“All season we know they’re our biggest rival,” Quinn said. “Our goal isn’t necessarily to beat them, but to go out there and do the best that we can. And if we get first place along the way, that’s great.”

Adair County had a special challenge this year with Allen stepping down and being succeeded by Tom Case, who had achieved success with the John Hardin and Elizabethtown high school bands.

“I’ve always respected Adair County’s tradition, but living it is another thing,” Case said. “Adair County is a band nation. There’s no other way to describe it. The community support is overwhelming.”

Adair will represent Kentucky this year at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. It will be an expensive trip, but the money is already in the bank: the fund-raising goal was met this summer.

“We have such a legacy, such a tradition,” said Beth VanArsdale, who has had two daughters in the Adair County Band. “They’re like a big family, and when they get on the field, it all comes out.”

State marching band championships

CLASS A

1. Williamstown
2. Murray
3. Beechwood
4. Hazard

CLASS 2A

1. Washington County
2. Elizabethtown
3. Trigg County
4. Green County

CLASS 3A

1. Bourbon County
2. Adair County
3. Russell County
4. Boyle County

CLASS 4A

1. Madisonville – North Hopkins
2. Grant County
3. South Oldham
4. Mercer County

CLASS 5A

1. Lafayette
2. Madison Central
3. North Hardin
4. Paul Laurence Dunbar

Preliminaries in the five divisions, based on school size, were held earlier today around Louisville.

Here are more photos from the Class 5-A preliminaries, featuring bands from Kentucky’s largest high schools. Bands pictured include Lexington’s Paul Laurence Dunbar and Lafayette, Muhlenberg County, Madison Central and  Central Hardin.

Click on thumbnails to see full photos:

Click on each thumbnail to see entire photo:

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

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

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

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

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

And retired Keeneland chairman Ted Bassett will autograph his memoir.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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