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Columns

  • Life’s painful rubbish can be transformed with care, mercy

     

    “It just doesn’t make sense” is the generalized response from those familiar with the Tsarnaev brothers. They seemed like the kind of young men you might like as neighbors: kind, quite, unobtrusive.

    These two alleged perpetrators of the Boston bombings? It just doesn’t make sense.

    Or does it?

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  • Social media makes for all kinds of 'kings-of-the-hill'

    For many reasons, Facebook seems to make the world a little smaller.

    Without leaving the house, I can poke around for updates on my circle of friends in Bowling Green. I can hear about the highlights on my daughters’ lives and their families in Lexington and Pensacola, Fla. I even can collect news updates from the Duck Dynasty characters while following the headlines of this very newspaper.

    Checking in with Facebook can be fun. But it also can be kind of weird.

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  • Doctor challenges county's expenditures regarding HMH

    After World War II the U.S. Congress passed a bill known as “Hillburton,” which provided funds to be used to build rural hospitals. This ignited the idea of a hospital in Elizabethtown. The project was first taken by the Elizabethtown Rotary Club in 1949. This was brought to a vote, the idea was rejected.

    A couple of years later, a wiser Rotary Club asked the Lions Club for assistance. The Rotary and Lions Clubs again put the question to a vote. This time the issue passed, and Hardin Memorial Hospital became a reality.

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  • Reinvigorating political parties could snap D.C. impasse

    A few weeks ago, the Republican National Committee issued a 100-page report aimed at reviving the GOP after its poor showing in last November’s elections. It was remarkably blunt about the specifics of the party’s shortcomings — its lack of inclusiveness, its hapless data initiatives, its poor grassroots organizing.

    What it did not take on, however, was an issue the RNC can do little about: the diminished influence, if not irrelevance, of both major parties in American politics.

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  • Life as learned through a game, a movie and a VW

    My baseball experience is spotty and without glory. Baseball doesn’t go well with poor eyesight and limited coordination. But you can learn to love it just the same.

    Many summer nights as a boy, I sat next to the wood-grain stereo listening to Cincinnati Reds’ games. The radio signal was stronger if you were near it. Sometimes, my father would drag my sleeping carcass from the floor to the bed when I dozed off during the seventh-inning stretch dreaming of Johnny Bench, Pete Rose or Lee May.

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  • Don't sell short the blessings of life

    I couldn’t shake the somberness that clung to me like lint on a suit of clothes. The grief I felt in the eyes of the family followed me out the door of the funeral home and into my car. A wintry mix of snow and rain added to the dreariness of the moment and the rhythmic swish and swash of my windshield wipers sounded like a death knell, projecting with every beat of its dirge the photographs I had just seen of the deceased in happy times, nagging me with one question: Why?

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  • Fiscal Court's second vote affirms first principles

    Hardin Fiscal Court plans a classic do-over.

    In self-officiated playground games of our youth, conflicts often were discarded with a shout of “do-over” and the disputed play would be tossed out. Play resumed as if it never happened.

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  • Observing the interactions of two popes

    Some predicted the meeting between newly elected Pope Francis and his predecessor, Benedict XVI, would be awkward. After all, the Roman Catholic Church hasn’t had a pope resign in 600 years.

    What would the two men say to each other? Would Benedict tell Pope Francis what he should and shouldn’t be doing? Would the former pope be looking over the new pope’s shoulder? And would the new pope feel threatened, even resentful?

    Would people find themselves torn between two popes?

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  • Once upon a time, a city decided to invest in tomorrow

    The city council was divided. Strong feelings were obvious on both sides. At times, the discussion threatened to cross the line from debate to argument.

    The topic was a big ticket expenditure that would commit the city to years and years of debt by spending millions on development of a recreational facility.

    It’s a quality-of-life issue providing unique facilities for the community. But the primary purpose was not hometown needs. Its objective was enhancing tourism, welcoming visitors who would occupy hotel rooms and dine in local restaurants.

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  • Judge-executive reviews decision about county government building

    Last month, Hardin Fiscal Court voted by an 8-1 margin to proceed with designing new county government facilities on county-owned property near the intersection of Rineyville Road and Ring Road. This is a decision contemplated, researched and developed over six years.

    As with any issue, there are strong opinions supporting and opposing this decision. Those viewpoints were expressed by countless individuals on numerous occasions over a six-year period.

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