Columns

As a child, our oldest daughter had an imaginary roomful of children: Patti, Terri, Kimmy, Vicki and baby Edward.

Whenever we traveled, all five climbed in the car. You had to hold the door until the imaginary kids all got in or the real child would shout frantically. It was cute ... the first few dozen times.

“I’m gonna write a book,” my friend Glen Sandusky announced to me when I saw him Sunday morning in the church office.

Glen was grinning from ear to ear, a sure signal he was up to something.

“What are you going to write about?” I played along.

“I’m gonna write about how my preacher kept his garden going in January!” Then snickering to the audience gathered around him, he proudly proclaimed, “No one told him you can’t keep a garden alive in the dead of winter, so he just did it!”

American revolutionary James Otis gets credit for saying: “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”

Whoever said it, those words ring just as true here today in Kentucky as they did in 18th century colonial Massachusetts.

Thankfully, State Auditor Adam Edelen also is demonstrating his belief in this founding principle with his initiative to hold accountable the more than 1,200 special taxing districts strung out across the commonwealth.

The birth of a child represents all levels of hope and possibility to society and to a family. We want the best for them. As a parent or grandparent, there's so much we want to teach these children.

It starts with basic life skills like walking without tumbling and feeding yourself without painting the walls with Spaghetti-0s. Little rhymes, fairy tales, counting and ABCs soon follow along with how to high five or throw a kiss. Some issues are struggles like managing buttons, zippers and shoelaces.